Kader Abdolah - The House of the Mosque

She flipped on the light, got out of bed, went over to the mirror and looked at her hair. It was no longer black, but it wasn’t entirely grey either. She looked at her eyebrows. They were still black. Her brown eyes were tired, but that night they were shining with an unaccustomed glow. She ran her fingers over her face and across her lips. She might have aged, but she wanted to start all over again.

It was only right that she should try and get back some of the years she had lost in that house.

Even so, Zinat curtailed her visits to the imam and tried to avoid running into him. Then one evening he spoke to her out of the darkness: ‘Zinat Khanom! Why have you stopped coming to see me? Your questions are always on my mind.’

Three days later Zinat found herself sitting across from him again, talking about her interpretation of a certain passage. He stared at her in silence, listening to her words, then suddenly interrupted her. ‘Zinat Khanom,’ he said calmly, ‘your eyes glow like two candles in the night when you’re talking to me… I mean, talking about the text.’

Zinat pretended not to have heard him. She went on talking, though she could barely concentrate. He didn’t pursue the matter, but behaved like any other imam who was counselling a troubled woman.

Janeshin realised that he’d have to wait until she was ready to hear the rest of what he wanted to say. Luckily he didn’t have to wait long, because two evenings later he found Zinat waiting by his door.

‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I don’t have any plans for tonight, and I’m bored. Did you bring another text to discuss?’

Zinat sat down and began to read the text she’d brought with her.

The imam listened. ‘You read so well,’ he said. ‘You bring the dead words to life. I hear them, I feel them, I see them on your lips.’ And he pointed to her lips, almost brushing his hand against her lower lip as he did so.

Zinat packed her suitcase and went for a week to her father’s house in Jirya, where she hoped to banish Janeshin from her mind.

She did a lot of soul-searching while she was there and concluded that she didn’t want to get involved with him. After all, he was married, with children. He was also the imam of the mosque that her son was going to take over one day.

But when she returned, things didn’t go as she had planned.

She was shopping in the bazaar, staring at a jewellery display case, when Janeshin’s reflection suddenly loomed up beside hers in the glass. ‘Zinat Khanom,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘I miss you. The chair you usually sit on in my office is empty.’

Zinat didn’t say a word. She didn’t even turn to look at him. She simply stood with her back to him and listened.

His voice was hard to resist. And yet for the next two days she stayed away from the mosque, skipping both the morning and the evening prayers. Then she couldn’t hold out any longer. After the caretaker had locked up and gone home, she put on her black chador, went up the stairs to the roof and walked over to the mosque.

On her way to the prayer room, she passed the imam’s office.

‘Is that you, Zinat?’ he called calmly from within.

‘Yes, I’m on my way to the prayer room to get a book.’

‘You’re welcome to come in, if you like. I’ve made a fresh pot of tea.’

Zinat continued on to the prayer room, found the book she was looking for, snatched it up and started back down the corridor.

‘I always hear your footsteps in the night,’ Janeshin said from inside his office.

Zinat went in, sat down on the chair and laid the book on his desk.

Janeshin stood up. He closed the door softly and turned the key. Then he lit a candle, set it on the desk and switched off the light.

Zinat sat quietly in her chair and waited.

He took out his prayer book and looked for the words that you recite when you want to sleep with a woman who isn’t your lawfully wedded wife. According to the teachings of Islam, once he had uttered the ankahtu marriage vow and Zinat had said ‘ Qabilto ’ (I consent), he would be allowed to take her to bed.

He softly began to recite the words.

Zinat closed her eyes.

‘ Ankahtu wa zawagto ,’ the imam chanted, bowing over his book.

Zinat was silent.

‘ Ankahtu wa zawagto ,’ he chanted a second time.

Zinat was silent.

‘ Ankahtu wa zawagto ,’ he chanted a third time.

‘ Qabilto ,’ Zinat said slowly, and she dropped her chador to her shoulders.

The imam put down his Koran. Then he touched her lips and caressed her warm neck.

The grandmothers, having awakened early, grabbed their brooms and watering cans and tiptoed outside. First they sprinkled water on the ground, then they began to sweep. They couldn’t remember how old they were when they first started to sweep the path to the gate, but they did it in the greatest of secrecy because they wanted to go to Mecca.

Millions of Muslims dreamed of making the pilgrimage to Mecca, but not all of them got there, because you had to be well-off to afford the trip.

The grandmothers had no money at all. They’d never thought about money and didn’t need any, because the family saw to their needs. And yet they’d known since childhood that the only way a poor person could go to Mecca was by sweeping. There were three conditions: first, the path had to be swept every day before sunrise for twenty years; second, no one must see you doing it; third, it had to remain a secret.

On the last day, the Prophet Khezr would appear and present you with your reward. The legendary Khezr, one of the first prophets, had lived long before Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Jacob and David.

But just how Khezr would arrange the trip to Mecca was a secret between the prophet and the sweepers.

The grandmothers had swept the path every day for twenty years, but the prophet hadn’t come. Perhaps they’d done something wrong, they reasoned. Perhaps they hadn’t counted properly or had overslept once or been seen by someone who guessed their secret.

So they began all over again for another twenty years.

Their labour might be in vain, but what else could they do? The one thing that kept them going was their goal of seeing Mecca. It gave meaning to their lives. There was always the hope that they would awaken to a new dawn and have one more day in which to await the coming of the prophet.

According to their calculations, they had now reached the end of their second twenty years, and yet there was no sign of the prophet.

At the end of their first twenty years, they had still had the energy to go to Mecca. When they began the second round, however, they knew that at the end they’d be so old that they probably wouldn’t have enough energy to make the pilgrimage. But they went on sweeping anyway.

A few days later the grandmothers were sitting gloomily in the dark on the floor of the Carpet Room.

‘If someone took away our brooms, we’d drop dead,’ Golbanu said. ‘We can’t stop sweeping now. We have to go on, even if all we can do is crawl to the gate with a broom in our hands.’

‘We must have made a mistake,’ Golebeh said. ‘Maybe we counted wrong again.’

‘We couldn’t have. Every year we write an X on the wall. Here, count them. We’re long past the twenty-year mark.’

‘Maybe we broke one of the rules.’

‘What rules? There are no rules. Get up early, sweep, keep it a secret.’

‘I think I know what the problem is.’

‘You can think all you like, but what do you know for sure?’

‘We’ve made a big mistake,’ Golebeh said. ‘Both of us.’

‘What did we do wrong?’

‘We weren’t supposed to tell anyone our secret,’ she said.