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Ghassem Abad Miravim Ma...(2)

As we sat there thinking about what to do, he offered that if we waited for a few minutes, he could call his friend in Ghassem Abad Olya to see if he could arrange a “viewing” of chadorshabs for us. We thanked him and waited while he went into his shop to make the phone call. Five minutes later we saw him lock his office door and pull down the shades, walking towards our car! He said O.K. I have talked to my friend and he is waiting for us! Us? I asked him if he was coming with us, and he said yes, that we wouldn’t be able to find the place by ourselves. This felt presumptuous on his part and made me a little uneasy. I got off the passenger side and went to sit in the back, offering my seat to the Chaboksar guy, Jafar Agha. We drove in silence until we reached a fork in the road, the branch on the right leading to Ghassem Abad Sofla and the road on the left leading to Ghassem Abad Olya. We took the left road for a few minutes when the man told us to stop the car. His friend, Akbar Agha, joined us in the car now, giving us directions to his house. It was a typical village road, bumpy and winding, going through an endless series of farms and citrus orchards. I was slowly developing trepidations at this whole business! What would we do if something went wrong? Who were these people in our car? Where were they taking us? Who was waiting for us at the end of this road? Who would know where to look for us if we disappeared? I slowly pulled my cellular phone out of my purse and when I realized there was no reception signal on it, put it back in my purse, feeling even worse. I looked at my companion’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He looked confused and concerned, too. I wanted to protest, but thought that it would be so rude. Then I was mad at myself, for if anything should happen to us, we would have given up our lives not to be impolite! How typically Iranian of us! We kept on driving until we reached what seemed to be the end of the road. Akbar Agha and his friend jumped out of the car and in their sweet Gilak accent said: “Befarmaid!” We reluctantly got out of the car. I was thinking all kinds of bad thoughts, walking with leaden feet towards a typical Gilan village house on wooden stilts, with clay steps leading to the residential portion of the home upstairs.