Kader Abdolah - The House of the Mosque

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A sweeping, compelling story which brings to life the Iranian Revolution, from an author who experienced it first-hand.
In the house of the mosque, the family of Aqa Jaan has lived for eight centuries. Now it is occupied by three cousins: Aqa Jaan, a merchant and head of the city's bazaar; Alsaberi, the imam of the mosque; and Aqa Shoja, the mosque's muezzin. The house itself teems with life, as each of their families grows up with their own triumphs and tragedies.
Sadiq is waiting for a suitor to knock at the door to ask for her hand, while her two grandmothers sweep the floors each morning dreaming of travelling to Mecca. Meanwhile, Shahbal longs only to get hold of a television to watch the first moon landing. All these daily dramas are played out under the watchful eyes of the storks that nest on the minarets above.
But this family will experience upheaval unknown to previous generations. For in Iran, political unrest is brewing. The shah is losing his hold on power; the ayatollah incites rebellion from his exile in France; and one day the ayatollah returns. The consequences will be felt in every corner of Aqa Jaan's family.

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Aqa Jaan didn’t know exactly how old the mosque and the house were, though he could have found out easily enough. All he had to do was to take his lantern and walk past the coat-racks to the darkest recesses of the crypt, where he would no doubt find the oldest chest and the very first journal. The blueprints of the house and the mosque might well be in that chest.

There was a dark passage at the far end of the room, which made Aqa Jaan suspect that there were even more nooks and crannies, with even more ancient chests. He decided to explore. The first thing he saw when he held up his lantern were parchment documents hanging on the wall, though the light was too dim to make out the words.

Just as he was about to step into the passage, he saw a thick layer of dust on the red carpet, thicker than that on the chests, prayer robes and other items. For the last hundred years or so, no one had ventured any further than where he was now. Aqa Jaan didn’t feel that he could go any further either. The dust represented a kind of seal that wasn’t meant to be broken.

He would have liked to stroll past the robes and read the names of the former imams and occupants of the house. Who were those people? What kind of clothes had they worn? What sort of rings had they worn on their fingers?

He wanted to open one of the chests and examine its contents, to smell the clothes, try on the rings, read the entries in the journals. What had people written about back then? What had gone on in the house, the mosque, the bazaar? What colour were the hauz’s first fish? What type of tree had grown in the middle of the courtyard before the cedar tree? Which crow had been the predecessor of the one they had now?

He wanted to spend weeks or even months in the cellar, journeying back to the past, finding the answers to his questions. But that was impossible. The treasure room was a secret that lay in the dark, a secret that was bound up for ever with the mosque, a secret that was more suited to the Koran and the long-lost past. The past was a room to which you had no access. Once Aqa Jaan had reached this conclusion, he was able to curb his curiosity.

Tonight he tiptoed into the treasure room and laid Kazem Khan’s poetry book in a chest. Then he placed his uncle’s shoes at the end of the row and blew out the lantern.

Kazem Khan had stated in his will that he didn’t want to be interred in the crypt, so the villagers looked around for an appropriate burial site. They chose a spot at the bottom of his garden, where an old almond tree shed myriad blossoms in the spring.

The next day dozens of villagers came to the city to collect the body of their poet and take it home to Jirya.

Aqa Jaan, Fakhri Sadat, Zinat Khanom, Muezzin and the grandmothers went with them.

Exactly forty days after the death of Kazem Khan, the grandmothers were scheduled to begin their trip to Mecca. After the morning prayer they donned their chadors, picked up their suitcases and went out to stand by the hauz .

‘We’re leaving!’ Golbanu shouted.

‘On the trip of our lives!’ Golebeh added.

The grandmothers had been terrified that the trip would be cancelled if anyone discovered their secret. Today, however, they couldn’t stand the strain any longer.

Muezzin was the first to hear their cries. He rushed upstairs. ‘What trip?’ he asked.

‘To Mecca!’ they said in chorus.

‘Really?’ he said. ‘Mecca?’

‘We aren’t allowed to talk about it, Muezzin. You’ll just have to take our word for it.’

He ran his hand over their suitcases. They were indeed embossed with the holy Kaaba. ‘The grandmothers are going to Mecca!’ he hollered.

It seems that everyone was already awake, because when Aqa Jaan switched on the lights in the courtyard, they all came trooping out in their best clothes. Laughing and crying, they hugged and kissed the grandmothers.

Fakhri Sadat came over to the grandmothers with a brazier full of fragrant esfandi seeds. Her daughters, Nasrin and Ensi, carried a mirror and some red apples, while Zinat Khanom bore the traditional bowl of water that was used to wish the travellers a safe journey.

Shahbal went to the library to fetch the antique Koran and handed it to Aqa Jaan. Golbanu and Golebeh picked up their suitcases. Aqa Jaan kissed them, held the Koran above their heads and escorted them to the gate.

Zinat threw water on the ground behind them, and everyone wept, as if the grandmothers were leaving the house for good.

Sayeh

Aqa Jaan had seen Zinat slip out of her room at night sometimes like a sayeh — a shadow — but he had no idea where she went. Zinat’s bedroom was on the second floor, and to reach the stairs, she had to go past Fakhri and Aqa Jaan’s bedroom.

Late one evening, Aqa Jaan was reading in his study when he heard the door at the top of the stairs open. He thought it was Fakhri, but when he didn’t hear any footsteps, he looked out through the chink in the curtains and saw someone stealing through the darkness.

He opened the door and stepped into the courtyard, just in time to catch a glimpse of a black chador by the stairs. It might be Zinat, but what was she doing up so late at night?

He went back inside. Suddenly the crow screeched.

The crow’s warning reminded Aqa Jaan of the woman from Sarandib:

Once upon a time there was a merchant from Sarandib, whose wife was named Jamiz. She was so beautiful that people could hardly believe she was real. Her face glowed like the day of victory, and her hair was as long and as dark as the night in which you wait for a lover who never comes.

Jamiz was secretly having an affair with a famous artist who could do magical things with his brush. She slipped out occasionally to visit him, and together they experienced the most beautiful of Persian nights.

Then one night she said to him, ‘It’s becoming harder and harder for me to steal away from my house, and even harder for me to have to wait so long. Think of something, so I can visit you more often. After all, you’re an artist!’

‘I have an idea,’ said the artist. ‘I will make you a veil. On one side, it will be as clear as the reflection of the morning star in a pool of water. On the other side, it will be as dark as the night. At night you can wear the dark side of the veil, so that when you come to me, you will blend in with the night. In the morning you can turn it round to the clear side, so that when you go back home, you will merge with the morning.’

With the grandmothers away, the house entered a new phase. The rhythm they brought to the house had been broken. A sure sign of this was that the antique clock stopped ticking. When the grandmothers were at home, the kitchen was abuzz with activity, the crow cawed to announce the arrival of visitors and the library was always neat and tidy. But those days were over.

It was the grandmothers who woke the children and helped Fakhri Sadat clean her room. It was the grandmothers who told Aqa Jaan what was going on in the house. And it was the grandmothers who kept an eye on Muezzin’s studio. While they were away, their tasks were left undone.

No one could fill their empty shoes. If the grandmothers had been here, they would already have followed Zinat to the roof.

Aqa Jaan was satisfied with the substitute imam. Janeshin carried out his work with enthusiasm and seemed to be happy. During their initial talk, Aqa Jaan had noticed that he was ambitious, but had doubted that he would accomplish much.

The man still couldn’t talk about anything but rural matters, though he did that well enough. Not long ago he’d criticised the Minister of Agriculture for doing too little to help the poverty-stricken villages.

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