The Navigators

Tehran does not welcome pedestrians. It is eight o’clock on a July evening and the sun has plunged out of the air with alarming speed; the sky is the colour of wine, and the air is thick with the scent of heat and petrol. I have long forgotten where we are going. Dust-coloured buildings spill out to the horizon, many of them protected by barbed-wire gates. In this part of town it is so unusual for people to walk on the streets at night — I am told that only fools and prostitutes do so — that the pavements are unlit, and we rely on the rippling glow of the traffic to guide us. An ancient, sour smell drifts through the door of a butcher’s shop; at the entrance stands a pyramid of sheep skulls, the blank faces neatly assembled as though awaiting instructions.

I was met at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport two weeks ago by Maryam, an impatient and slightly scrappy young actress who has travelled in England and Europe with her theatre group. I stay with her at her parents’ home in Tehran’s affluent northern suburbs: here sycamores line the streets, scattering the sunlight over the ground in pale crescents. The family treat me like an old friend, and I am given my own room that is filled to the ceiling with dolls and cuddly toys. All the windows are kept closed, and the apartment is entered first through an automated gate, then a coded lift, and finally two front doors. There are layered rugs, and two fat Persian cats lie on mounds of bronze cushions in the hallway; it is as if the place has been discreetly decked out as a padded cell.

Maryam’s mother is sweet and ghostly, frail from an illness which makes her look twice her age.