ABSTRACT
The author pushed the front-door buzzer; the women, cursing as their scarves and faces became wet from the drizzle, pushed harder. When the wood-facade steel door was buzzed open, the women crowded past, not giving the chance to invite them to go first. A few feet beyond the threshold, the camera operator, short and bald with a scruffy salt-and-pepper beard, stood behind a tinted window. Business for the government, for themselves, or for both was more likely. Or, perhaps, they were Iranian representatives of European or American companies. Even possibly new-generation bazaaris, Persian merchants who have bought and sold through the ages and, since the revolution, have become ever closer in appearance to modern businessmen with portable telephones, laptops, and fax modems. In author's experience, Iranians had almost always forgotten a casualty of the revolutionary impulse to deny the United States any positive role in Persian history.
