Chapter 54
TEHRAN, IRAN
Golshifteh Farahani stepped into the crowded sidewalk outside her school. She turned her head against a stiff breeze that rustled the tarps covering the street-vendor's merchandise.
Most activity had stopped, as the populace of the city watched the world burn on television. Men and women watched, mouths agape, as the former world superpowers obliterated each other with nuclear missiles. One by one the TV screens dissolved into static.
Golshifteh hurried back home, where her family was hunched around the radio. Her mother cried silently.
"I don't understand," she said. "Why? What started this?"
Golshifteh's father grimaced, "Rumor has it that Pakistani terrorists were the first to use the bomb. They destroyed the Chinese army in Islamabad, apparently. That doesn't explain why Russia and the USA got involved, but I'm sure that's how it got started. Fools, all of them."
Before Golshifteh could respond, she heard a loud POP from the street outside.
"Oh, god..." said her mother, "Not here!"
Golshifteh ran to the door and threw it open and looked down into the street, expecting to see either her city being engulfed in nuclear fire or rioters being shot by the police.
She didn't expect to see two very sunburned people appear out of thin air and crumple into a heap. A young man and a young woman clutching onto what appeared to be a police officer who had been shot several times.
The young man groaned in pain and clambered to his feet.
"Padma?" he whispered. "Padma, are you OK?"
The young woman whimpered in pain. "I need water..."
Golshifteh went back inside.
"There are two people outside! They look badly burned!"
Golshifteh and her family quickly and carefully brought the two newcomers inside and began tending to their burns.
After it was finished, Golshifteh got down to business.
"Where the hell did you come from?" she asked.
The man stared at her for a minute.
"I think I know who you are... You wouldn't happen to have met a young Arab guy by the name of Ziad Jarrah, would you?"
It suddenly started to make sense.
"Oh. That crazy bastard. Yep. I know him"
The man smirked, "Yeah, he talked about you a lot. You sound like kind of a bitch, but there's no accounting for taste. Anyway, he's probably..."
He stopped, and his face fell.
"He's probably dead, now. Along with a million other Londoners."
The man was silent for some time. Then, a small smile crossed his face.
"This is Tehran, right?"
"Yes."
"Can I make a phone call?"
Shlomi and Padma took a taxi to a government building. Mariam Jarrah met them outside. She ran towards Shlomi and stopped short when she saw the extent of his burns.
"Well, you're alive, and that's what matters."
She turned to Padma.
"Sorry, we've never met. I'm Mariam Jarrah, Ziad's older sister and Shlomi's wife."
Padma shook her hand. "Padma Patil."
The group stood there awkwardly.
"Yup." said Shlomi.
EPILOGUE
The Republic of Iran became the world's newest power, as the old ones had been damaged beyond repair by the nuclear war. The United States was reduced to a population of between ten and twenty million, mostly in the farm states of the mid-west and Rocky Mountain area. Russia and China faced similar fates, with their primary population and economic centers destroyed.
India was an interesting study- Delhi and Mumbai, along with three other cities, were destroyed, but it was not that loss that reduced their status, but the increased relative power of the Naxalite Communist rebels in Jarkhand province that spelled the downfall of Indian stability.
The UN peacekeeping forces in Iran, almost entirely from nations that no longer existed, formed the backbone for the new Iranian military, which swept across the Middle East in the years that followed the Nuclear Downfall, eventually resulting in the creation of the Middle Eastern Coalition in 2003.
This Coalition was ruled from Tehran by a triumvirate- an Israeli Jew, a Sunni Muslim, and a Shia Muslim. The Middle East had never seen such prosperity and stability.
Shlomi and Mariam worked tirelessly to bring about the Coalition's rise, and lived happily ever after.
Padma Patil, upon healing completely from the radiation burns she took during her magical escape from London, immediately enlisted in Iran's army. Twenty years later she was its leader. She retired to a lonely mountain village in northern Iran and lived out the remainder of her years as somewhat of a hermit.
Colonel Venter, somehow, ended up surviving the annihilation of England and turned up five years later in South Africa, where he led a military coup against the existing government and instituted a military Junta.
Golshifteh Farahani became the most renowned historian in the world after she wrote a series of incredibly in-depth books about the Nuclear Downfall and the rise of the Middle Eastern Coalition. She retired a wealthy and influential woman.
It would take two centuries for the world to recover from the Nuclear Downfall.
Is it the end? No! Not yet.
Ziad awoke.
He rolled over in his bed. The sound of birds could be heard outside, and the gentle ocean breeze stirred his hair.
The sun shown brightly through his apartment's window.
He could smell breakfast being cooked up in the kitchen. He yawned happily. Halfway through the yawn, he felt a sharp pain on his face.
Ziad quickly stood up and shuffled into the bathroom and stared into the mirror.
"What in the name of God..."
The face was barely recognizable. The left side had a nasty burn across it, and old scars and stress-lines marred the rest.
Ziad glanced down at his shirtless body. He had muscles that hadn't been there last night. Tattoos covered his strange new body in a half-dozen different languages.
"Ziad! Come get breakfast! And hurry, because I have something to tell you!"
"Coming, mom! One minute!"
He quickly threw on some clothes and a hat and went into the kitchen. His mother stood at the stove stirring a pot.
"Ziad, your dad is dead."
Strange memories were starting to rush back, like memories of a dream.
"Ziad, did you hear me? He was killed last night in Gaza. The Israelis finally got him."
The memories- they couldn't be right, but the more that came in the more it made sense.
"We're going to live with my brother in London tomorrow. We can't stay here."
Ziad glanced up at his mother.
"Ziad? Are you listening?"
Well, there's the ending. It may not be the best ending, but it is an ending.