Ayatollah awkward

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The Ayatollah of Awkward



Part 1: The Ayatollah of Awkward


I knew things were off the moment the customs officer squinted at my passport like it owed him money.


“Name?” he asked, eyes darting between my face and the photo.


“Reza… Reza Johnson,” I said. (Yes, that Reza Johnson—half-Iranian, half-American, full-time disaster magnet.)


He stared. Then blinked. Then hit a buzzer under his desk. That’s never a good sound.


Within seconds, two very serious men in even more serious suits flanked me like I was carrying a suitcase full of uranium. One of them leaned in and whispered something in Farsi. The only word I caught was “operative.”


Spoiler alert: I am not an operative. I once got stuck in a beanbag chair for forty-five minutes. But before I could clarify this detail, I was being whisked away through a side door that said “Authorized Personnel Only” in ominous red letters.


“Excuse me,” I tried. “I think you’ve got the wrong guy—”


“You’ll explain everything to Commander Farhadi,” one of them said, already dialing a number on a sleek-looking phone. “He’s been waiting for you.”


“Uh… cool. Cool, cool, cool. But again, I’m just here to visit my grandmother and eat my bodyweight in tahchin.”


Silence.


Then the other guy looked at me and said, dead serious:

“You’re not here for Operation Pistachio?”


I blinked. “That… sounds like a snack.”


The serious one did not laugh.

The other one just tightened his grip on my arm.




Part 2: The Ayatollah of Awkward


I was escorted—no, dragged—through a maze of corridors that smelled like lemon-scented bleach and paranoia. We finally stopped in front of a door labeled “COMMANDER FARHADI – DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT WISDOM OR PERMISSION.” Which felt excessive.


The door opened and I came face to face with a man whose mustache entered the room a full three seconds before the rest of him.


He studied me like I was a Rubik’s Cube that owed him child support.


“So…” he said, steepling his fingers. “You are Agent R.J.”


“I’m A Reza Johnson,” I said. “I make a mean banana bread and once lost a staring contest with a goldfish. So, probably not the one you want.”


He ignored that. “Your signal was received. The timing aligns perfectly. Your beard matches the file. The plan moves forward.”


I reached up to my face. “This isn’t a beard, it’s just jet lag growing outward.”


He turned to the men who brought me in. “Activate Phase One. Send in the mole.”


Now, when you hear “send in the mole,” you don’t expect a woman in a trench coat, sunglasses, and stilettos to walk in holding a clipboard. She looked me up and down like she was deciding whether I was worth assassinating now or after lunch.


“This is the contact?” she asked.


“No!” I practically yelled. “I am not the contact. I am very contact-averse. I carry hand sanitizer and everything.”


She squinted at me. “Clever. The clueless tourist persona. He’s good.”


“Oh my god.”


“Take him to the safehouse,” Commander Mustache declared. “We begin the exchange at midnight.”


“And what happens at midnight?” I asked, laughing nervously.


Everyone turned to me.


“The pigeon lands,” the woman said.


“What pigeon? There’s an actual pigeon? I’m allergic to birds.”


No one responded. Instead, I was handed a duffel bag, a burner phone, and a very large Persian cat named “Colonel Snugglez.” Apparently, he was part of the mission.




Part 3: The Ayatollah of Awkward


Colonel Snugglez stared at me like he knew I was a fraud. The kind of stare that said, “I’ve clawed better men than you, Johnson.”


I tried to pet him. He responded by knocking the burner phone off the table with surgical precision and then walking across my chest like it was a runway in Milan.


The “safehouse,” by the way, was a questionable apartment above a carpet shop that sold rugs and mysterious whispers after sunset. The mole lady (whose name, I learned, was Leyla) was currently assembling what appeared to be a listening device inside a samovar.


“Stop pacing,” she snapped. “You’ll attract attention.”


“I’m not pacing,” I said, mid-pace. “I’m panicking in a rhythmic pattern.”


She didn’t smile. Spies don’t do humor. I was clearly the comic relief in this operation.


I glanced out the window. A man in a fake mustache (yes, a fake mustache in Iran, bold move) was selling newspapers with headlines like “MYSTERY AMERICAN ARRIVES – CITY ON EDGE.”


I pointed. “That’s about me, isn’t it?”


Leyla sipped her tea without breaking eye contact. “Depends. Are you the mystery American or just a really unlucky tourist with a face that says ‘Please confuse me for someone dangerous’?”


“I have a very average face!”


“Exactly. Too average. The perfect disguise.”


There was a knock on the door—two quick, one slow, one long. Colonel Snugglez immediately leapt off the couch and pressed a button on the wall with his paw. A tiny compartment opened, revealing… a falafel sandwich and a microchip.


“What—what just happened? Did the cat just activate a dead drop?”


Leyla didn’t even look up. “He’s our top field agent.”


I sat down, hard. “Of course he is.”


Then she handed me a tuxedo.


“Put this on.”


“Why?”


“You’re going to a gala. To meet the Ambassador. And deliver this.” She held up a USB drive shaped like a tiny Persian rug.


I squinted at it. “Let me guess—secrets?”


She nodded. “And maybe a few cat memes. The colonel insists.”




Part 4: The Ayatollah of Awkward


I emerged from the bathroom of the safehouse wearing the tuxedo, which was definitely not tailored for someone with my “international dad bod.”


“How do I look?” I asked, adjusting the bowtie, which might’ve actually been a clip-on zip-tie.


Leyla didn’t look up from her laptop. “Like a waiter who just got fired for knocking over a champagne tower.”


“Perfect. I’ll blend right in.”


Colonel Snugglez meowed in agreement—or possibly judgment. Hard to say. He then climbed into a discreet carrier shaped like a high-end designer purse and glared at me through the mesh like I owed him rent.


We arrived at the gala, hosted in one of Tehran’s fanciest hotels—the kind with chandeliers so big they probably had their own Instagram accounts.


Inside: velvet


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