Indecent police officer
Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan
2022-05-24
I have a memory from the provincial trips (in the years 1356 and 1357 corresponding to 1977 and 1978) that are worth quoting. A security team was missioned to go to Qazvin and deployed there. The Shah was also supposed to come from Mazandaran and inaugurate the Alborz Industrial Town during an official ceremony. There was a change in the date of the ceremony, and we were still stationed, and in practice we had become out of work and overtime; so we decided to go around the city and get some fresh air. I along with one of my classmates named "Taqi Jelodar" wore personal clothes and took a two-hour leave. We walked for half an hour and bought traditional ice cream from a shop near Shahzadeh Hussein, which was very crowded, and entered a secluded alley with a garden wall on one side and a few houses and buildings like a workshop or warehouse on the north side that had no traffic. When we went a few steps further, we noticed that something unusual was going on in the middle of the alley. It was dusk in the evening, and there were some very old mulberry trees with several people standing and arguing. Suddenly a man shouted, "Your husband does a damn thing. I order to flog you and abort your baby." In response, a woman moaned and begged. There was a small shop nearby where an old man was sitting with a little boy on the platform in front of the shop. As soon as the voice was heard, the old man hurriedly took the child by the hand and went inside the shop, closing the wooden door of the shop and even turning off the headlight. Taqi suddenly took my hand and said, "Rescue! I recognized this guy who shouted, I saw him this morning, the villain is a police officer." We had become very close. The two men were tall with shaved chins and ironed pants. A young woman had almost been surrounded. The woman was wearing a flowered chador and was leaning against the tree in a state of confusion. A pair of slippers had come out of her foot and had fallen a meter or two away. With the feeble look on her face and the tears in her eyes, it was still clear how beautiful she was. One of the two men turned to us. It turned out I was a stranger. In small towns, at that time, all the inhabitants knew each other. Our type was also different from the natives. The man looked at us like a shot wolf with a swollen jugular vein and growled in response to our curious and surprised looks: "Get out of here. It's a personal matter."
His friend was still rudely threatening the woman and insisting on coming with them, and if she resisted he would do so and so and did not look at us at all, in that closed environment they had such power that it was clear that they were not afraid of anyone or anything. I guessed that the woman's husband had either committed a crime or they had made a case against him saying that they would imprison her husband. Taqi was a boxer and his body was thin but extremely agile and ready. He went forward. Both men turned to him in anger and impatience. Without any introduction and saying a single word, Taqi slapped both several left and right hooks under their chin with a speed as fast as Bruce Lee movies, which caused them to be confused and lost their balance. He spun around them as fast as he could, pounding his quick, powerful fists into the mouths, bellies, and faces of both opponents, knocking both to the ground. One of them got up, but because he was embarrassed, he slipped and his head hit firmly on the tree. The poor woman grabbed her slippers and ran across the alley, and we two ran in the opposite direction. The end of the alley ended in a small and shattered square, which was the hangout of the fruit sellers. A chain of camels also came out of an old dock or caravanserai on the corner of the square. As we came out of the alley, breathless and sweaty, all the vendors came back and looked at us in surprise. We did not know the city well enough to find our way soon and came back to the headquarters. But Taqi was cool. When we were refreshed, he turned to me and said, “”Rescue! A military man should not be afraid of cowards. By God, if I see them right now, I will not leave a single tooth in their mouth."
I told him, “Taqi, we have nothing to show that we are servicemen. I have no doubt they are armed. If they find us now, they will shoot first, then question who we are and what we are doing.”
Without asking anyone for an address, we found our way with much difficulty and reached the headquarters. We were housed in a large old house that had no special signs or signboard from the outside, but inside the house had been equipped like a military base. It had dormitories, warehouses, offices and even detention centers. Without saying anything, we mingled with the guys and had dinner and slept. In the morning, a coded telegram was received that the ceremony would take place in the afternoon.
It was eight o'clock when Major Azar called two of us, asking to go to the command office. He sat down at the table and took a few deep breaths angrily, tapping the butt of his pen on the table several times, saying: "You have no right to go out until the ceremony is over and we return to Tehran, got it?"
Saying these things to just two of us and privately had a clear meaning.
I asked cautiously, "Did something happen, Major?"
He looked at me in a way that I regretted my question. He said: "Two police officers were attacked while on duty, the shoulder of one of them has been broken, and the face of the other one has been badly damaged, who dares to do this ?! "Local people do not engage with them."
Taqi and I looked at each other from the corner of our eyes as we stood half-attention, and remained. The major continued to stare at the table while frowning, played with his fingers, and after one or two minutes said, "They took treatment duration from forensic medicine department. One hundred thousand tomans of blood money has been determined." The major glanced at us and whispered, "One of the officers' eyes is badly damaged, and one of his eyes may become blind. If the culprit is found, he is sentenced to a mutilation. Attacking the police while on duty, they will be punished severely, whoever they are."
It was crystal clear that major Azar was going to back us. He might protect his own unit so that none of his forces was involved in conflicts and frame-up. But we never found out that the identities of the two of us had been revealed to the police, or that only the news of the incident had somehow reached the guards in the special circumstances in which the Shah intended to arrive in the area.
Source: Goldoost, Hussein, The Soldier of Banned City, a documentary narration of the memoirs of second lieutenant (a member of Imperial Guard) late Najafqoli Eskandari, Tehran, Ravayat-e Fat’h Publications, 1400 (2021), PP. 60-64.
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