You can read the end of the first chapter below. Angela and Doug are in a taxi on their way to a hotel.

​

​

​

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

     

It started when the cabbie let the three male passengers out near a yellow-brick building with decorative tile on its façade but no name. The taxi driver glanced at the building and then kept an eye on the rearview mirror as if he were assessing their reactions.

Angela stiffened. The facilitator in Doug’s company’s orientation had mentioned that nameless buildings might house SAVAK, the Shah’s dreaded secret police. The adjacent roundabout featured a statue of the Shah in its center. The taxi circled the statue and turned north.

“Khiaban-e Chahar Bagh.” The driver was apparently playing tour guide. Dirty water oozed through open ditches cluttered with decayed greens, melon rinds, and cigarette stubs on both sides of the main north-south artery, which the cabbie had just called the Street of the Four Gardens. The stench brought Angela’s breakfast into her throat, and she swallowed hard. Some shopkeepers had lowered their latticework grills for the hottest part of the day. Others napped on mats or carpets at their shops’ entrances. The taxi wove its way north—due north, Doug told her—through the city’s center.

The exhaustion of long-distance travel swept over her like a cloudy trail of jet fuel and added to the unease the unnamed building had initiated. She cared little about international politics, but the regime’s human rights violations distressed her. Her stomach churned, and she shuddered, overcome by nausea and terror of what she imagined inside that yellow- brick SAVAK building: instruments of torture, odors of burning flesh and involuntary defecation, bloodied bodies, and shrill screams, all concealed from the public. And, anonymity for such a prominent building must contribute to the fear, paranoia, and rumors essential to a tyrant’s grip on power.

In Iran, she and Doug might not have the luxury of ignoring the ramifications of megalomaniacal politics.

​​​

​​​