Kader Abdolah - The House of the Mosque

All of the morning papers carried reports of Farah Diba’s royal visit to the clinic and mentioned her presence at the cinema. Here and there it had been hinted that the mosque-goers had been mobilised by the imam for the most dubious of reasons.

And that’s why they had all come to the mosque: to experience what was left of the excitement.

The caretaker came out and greeted Aqa Jaan, then the two of them took a short stroll so they could go over their plan. On the way back, Aqa Jaan stole quietly into the cellar and headed towards the crypt. Suddenly Shahbal loomed up out of the darkness.

‘Where’s Khalkhal?’ Aqa Jaan asked.

‘In the storeroom.’

‘Go upstairs and ask your father to start the azan .’

He cautiously opened the storeroom door. ‘It’s me,’ he said.

In the dim light of the candle Khalkhal was totally unrecognisable. He was wearing the suit and the hat, and his beard had been clipped short.

‘The secret police are looking everywhere for you. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you why. I’ll do what I can to help you escape, but first there’s something I need to get off my chest: I’m not pleased with that demonstration of yours. You deceived me. You should have told me what you were doing, but you deliberately kept me in the dark. We’ll discuss this some other time. Now we need to concentrate on your escape. Shahbal will come for you after the prayer, and the two of you will leave the mosque along with everyone else. The caretaker’s cousin will be waiting for you outside the bazaar. You’ll get on the back of his motorcycle, and he’ll drive you to the village of Varcheh. The imam of Varcheh will somehow get you to Kashan, and the imam of Kashan will make arrangements for your trip to Qom. Here’s some money,’ Aqa Jaan said. ‘I’m going now.’ He turned and walked off without waiting for a reply.

He had wanted to lash out at Khalkhal, to say, ‘You deliberately put the city, the mosque, the house and the family at risk. My faith in you has been destroyed. I knew from the start that you couldn’t be trusted, but luckily the damage isn’t irreparable. Now get out. I don’t want to have to see you for a long, long while.’ But he hadn’t said it. He was glad he’d managed to keep his temper under control and had softened his language.

As soon as Aqa Jaan entered the prayer room, everyone stood up for him. They’d heard that the house had been raided last night and that Khalkhal had escaped.

A group of prominent merchants escorted Aqa Jaan to the place where the imam usually led the prayer. ‘I’m going to need your help,’ Aqa Jaan whispered to them. ‘This is a critical moment for the mosque. Khalkhal is in danger. I’ll lead the prayer. I know it’s unusual, but this is an emergency. I’d like all of you to stay here afterwards, so we can walk to the bazaar together.’

Aqa Jaan went over to the pulpit, mounted the first step and said, ‘Listen, everyone. Imam Khalkhal had to go to Qom suddenly, so we’re without an imam. I know it’s unusual, but I’ll take his place today. The morning prayer is short. Follow me!’

There was a buzz of consternation, but at Muezzin’s cry of ‘ Hayye ale as-salat’ , everyone fell silent and turned towards Mecca.

The morning prayer is the shortest of the day. It consists of standing up two times, bowing two times and touching your forehead to the ground two times.

At the end of the prayer, the merchants solemnly walked over to Aqa Jaan and escorted him to the courtyard, where they were joined by Shahbal and Khalkhal, who had emerged from the cellar and were mingling with the crowd. Aqa Jaan had invited only a few of the men to walk with him to the bazaar, but others had apparently sensed the air of urgency and were now walking silently behind Aqa Jaan.

Everywhere you looked there were policemen who had no idea why such a large group of people were strolling so casually down the street towards the bazaar.

The caretaker’s cousin was waiting with his motorcycle by the streetlight at one corner of the square. Khalkhal slipped away from the crowd and seated himself on the back of the motorcycle. The cousin revved the engine and off they drove, without so much as a backward glance. Shahbal watched until the motorcycle was safely out of sight. Then he rejoined the crowd, sidled up to Aqa Jaan and whispered, ‘He’s gone.’

Ha Mim. Autumn was drawing to a close, and Sadiq had gone to Qom to be with her husband before winter set in. The first snow of the season had already covered the mountaintops. Everywhere you looked, you could see white peaks jutting up from the villages.

In the house of the mosque Khalkhal’s name was rarely mentioned any more. They all had other things on their minds. Soon the migratory birds would be arriving, and maybe this time one of them would be special.

Aqa Jaan woke up one day and said to his wife, ‘Fakhri, I had another one of my wonderful dreams. You know I’m always in touch with the dead, and, believe it or not, last night I saw my father. I don’t remember the exact date of his death, but he still comes to me in my dreams. They’re hard to explain. In last night’s dream my father had died and we’d buried him in the cemetery, but when I got home I found him lying in his bed with a white sheet over his body. I knew it was my father, even though we’d just put him in the ground. I knelt by the bed. Somehow I knew that he wasn’t dead, that he was about to get up. After a while he moved, stuck his head out from under the sheet and tried to sit up. I went over and helped him stand, then handed him his hat and stick. He left the room and walked over to the hauz , where he sat on the bench and stared at the fish.’

‘You were thinking about him,’ said Fakhri Sadat. ‘You’re always thinking about the dead. That’s why you dream about them so often.’

‘I don’t think about them all the time. I do think about my father sometimes, but I dream about dead people I’ve never even met, like my father’s father, or my father’s grandfather. It’s strange. During the day, I’m in the world of the living and at night I’m in the world of the dead.’

‘Maybe it’s because of those mosque reports you’re always writing in your journal.’

He got out of bed and went over to the window. ‘Fakhri!’ he exclaimed.

‘What?’

‘The Tamuz sun has just come up!’

Fakhri Sadat looked at the sun — a red circle peeping out above the top of Mount Zardkuh, Yellow Mountain.

‘I’ve been looking at Mount Zardkuh every day,’ said Fakhri Sadat, ‘hoping to see the Tamuz sun. I was afraid we weren’t going to have one this year.’

‘I’ve been so wrapped up in that business with Khalkhal that the Tamuz sun completely slipped my mind.’

Winter had arrived. Sometimes on the last day of autumn or the first day of winter a bright red sun appeared above Mount Zardkuh. It was called a Tamuz sun because it was like the suns you see in Tamuz , July.

This unexpectedly mild day was always awaited with great anticipation in Senejan. The migrating birds, who knew it was coming before the people did, made use of it to fly over the snow-capped mountains. They began their migration in the cold regions of Asiatic Russia. For as long as anyone could remember, the birds had followed the old Silk Road, where the air was the warmest, and crossed the huge stretch of desert in one go. By the time they arrived in Senejan, they’d finished the most difficult part of their journey. They continued on towards warmer climes until they finally reached their nests in the palm trees of the Persian Gulf.

The day of the Tamuz sun was an important day for the family. It was also of importance to the bazaar and the carpet trade as a whole, for on that day Fakhri Sadat and the grandmothers stayed at home to trap birds.