My brother Michael made a jaunt to the village for an armload of fresh barbari bread but returned shaken. An old man squatting beside the bakery had tossed stones at him. We shrugged it off. But tension pervaded the beach house itself. As people wolfed down their comfort food and knocked back little red vials of Vitamin B, it was impossible to avoid the topic of the latest horrific act of violence down at the other end of the country.
Who was responsible for the massacre of innocent citizens at Cinema Rex? Although most of us believed it was the work of Islamist fanatics, the twisting logic of that confusing time provided the possibility that forces loyal to the beleaguered Shah had perpetrated the atrocity in order to damn the opposition.Dad and I exchanged looks of embarrassment and alarm. I couldn’t meet the eyes of the Iranian friends with whom I’d grown up, now glaring with contempt at these loudmouthed interlopers. Suddenly the colonial mindset I had studied briefly in college as part of a required “Western Civ” course was cartoonishly real.