Kader Abdolah - The House of the Mosque

Janeshin had never been to Tehran, but in one of his sermons he made a remark that was quoted on the front page of the local paper: ‘I’ve been told that everyone in Tehran has a telephone in their home, and yet hundreds of mountain villages are without a single phone. If you cut your finger in a kitchen in Tehran, you can call an ambulance, but what am I supposed to do if I find my father on his deathbed? I’m warning you, Tehran! Take heed! We are all equal in the eyes of God.’

The secret police smiled at his innocent barbs. They valued such criticism; in fact, they even encouraged it.

Janeshin’s remarks were becoming increasingly popular and were often quoted in the local paper. Aqa Jaan was so satisfied with him that he gave him a bit more leeway. One time, after the paper had printed a photograph of Janeshin and an excerpt from one of his sermons, a colleague of Aqa Jaan’s had observed, ‘The man’s naïve, but sometimes he hits the nail on the head.’

Never before had the paper printed a picture of an imam. A photographer had been sent to the mosque, and Janeshin had been photographed on the roof, standing between the two minarets.

The next day, when the imam saw his picture in the paper, he was so excited he couldn’t sit still. His dream had come true. Ever since he was a little boy, he’d dreamed of speaking in a big mosque. Now that his sermon and his picture had appeared in the paper, he was suddenly a local celebrity.

According to the laws of the sharia, Zinat and Janeshin were doing nothing wrong and didn’t need to be so secretive. If a Muslim is away from his lawfully wedded wife for any length of time, he may take a temporary wife, a sigeh . But Janeshin knew that it was risky and that Aqa Jaan would send him packing if he found out.

Zinat was uncomfortable with her status as a sigeh . She was ashamed of herself for going to bed with Janeshin in the same mosque in which her husband and dozens of his predecessors lay buried. She refused to come to him every night, as he begged her to, for fear that Aqa Jaan would find out.

When she saw Janeshin in the daylight, she found it hard to believe that she had let him undress her and make love to her. It was different in the dark. She couldn’t see him then, she simply felt his hands, his shoulders, his back, his thrusting hips. He was as strong as an ox.

The moment it was over, Zinat would snatch up her chador and scurry home, wanting nothing more to do with him. She couldn’t bear to hear him utter another word. But the next night, after she’d turned off the light and crawled into bed, she missed his body.

Alsaberi, her late husband, had never kissed her breasts or bitten into her buttocks in an animal frenzy. Janeshin, by contrast, brought her to such blissful heights that she forgot everyone and everything.

Recently he’d taken her down to the crypt, where he had undressed her and made love to her on the cold hard tombstones. She had protested, spluttering that she didn’t want to do it on the tombstones, but he had insisted, and she’d thrown her arms around him, clung to him and surrendered herself.

‘I’m never going to do it again, I’m never going back to that man,’ Zinat always told herself as she tiptoed back to her room. ‘It’s over. I’m lucky no one has found out. I have to stop, and I will. I’ll go away for a while, I’ll go and visit my daughter in Qom and stay with her for a few weeks. I’ll go to Fatima’s tomb to show my remorse and beg for forgiveness. Yes, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll leave tomorrow, I’ll pack my bags and go.’

But she hadn’t gone and was now on her way to his room again.

Janeshin heard her walking softly towards the steps. For a moment she was swallowed up in the darkness of the stairwell, then she emerged to wash her hands in the mosque’s hauz and splash some water on her face.

Janeshin wanted to take her down to the crypt again, but she refused. Then he put his big hands around her waist and lay his head between her breasts, and she melted. He scooped her into his arms, opened the door to the cellar and carried her downstairs.

Deep in the darkness a candle was burning on top of a tall headstone. He took off her clothes, her shoes and her socks and led her barefoot into the candlelight, where he took off his imam robe and laid it on the headstone. Out of nowhere he suddenly produced a bunch of purple grapes, which he placed on her breasts and ate one by one. The juice ran down her breasts and over her belly, and when he lapped it up, Zinat thought she’d die of ecstasy.

They were so engrossed in what they were doing that they didn’t notice the person striding past the cellar window with a lantern.

Janeshin was drunk, from both Zinat and the grape juice. As he lay on top of her he recited the Al-Falaq surah:

I seek refuge with Him,

The Lord of the early dawn,

From the evil He created,

And from the evil of the night,

As darkness falls.

He spoke and Zinat listened with her eyes closed, unaware that a man with a lantern was coming down the cellar stairs.

Suddenly she saw a flash of light and heard footsteps. She pushed Janeshin off her, grabbed her black chador and hid in the darkness.

Janeshin wheeled around and saw a silhouette holding a lantern high above its head.

‘Imam! Pack your bags!’

Aqa Jaan sent for another substitute imam, an elderly man from Saruq who took things easy, devoting many of his sermons to the lives of the Muslim saints. Aqa Jaan was satisfied. The last thing the mosque needed right now was another firebrand.

Three months had passed by. It was now time for the pilgrims who had gone to Mecca to come home.

Aqa Jaan was planning to celebrate the grandmothers’ return with a party, to which the whole family would be invited.

Welcome-home parties for pilgrims were always special occasions. The house of the pilgrim was decorated with coloured lights, rugs were spread out in courtyards, sheep were sacrificed. For an entire week friends, relatives and neighbours dropped in to congratulate the pilgrims, and everyone was invited to eat. During such a mehmani , the honorary title of ‘hajji’ was bestowed on the pilgrims — a title they would proudly bear for the rest of their lives.

Aqa Jaan wrote to Nosrat:

Dear brother,

You’ve been gone a lot lately. Please come home more often. I’ve invited everyone to the grandmothers’ welcome-home party, and I’m hoping you’ll come too. Try to be on time.

The grandmothers have put their entire lives into this house, so the least you can do is be there for the most important celebration in their lives.

The children all miss their Uncle Nosrat.

See you soon!

A few days later Nosrat phoned. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t come. I’ve got an important appointment. I promise to visit another time to make up for it.’

The evening the grandmothers were expected home, Nosrat was scheduled to go to Tehran’s largest theatre, the one on Lalehzar Street, where the legendary singer Mahwash was to be performing. The theatre had hired Nosrat to take a series of artistic photographs of her, and Nosrat was determined not to miss the appointment. If his portraits turned out well, his reputation as an artist would be made.

Mahwash was a star who had changed Tehran’s nightlife for ever. It wasn’t so much her voice as the way she moved her arms, her breasts, her hips. She was the dream of every Persian male, the symbol of an era in which women had cast off their chadors and gone outside without their veils.

Men burned with desire as they watched her perform. She bewitched them with the movements of her bare arms and undulating breasts. Her high heels, slinky low-cut dress and red-lipsticked mouth drove them wild. She revealed the secrets that no decent Persian woman had ever before revealed to the masses of men who crowded to the theatre to see her. Tehran’s theatre owners treated her like a goddess, and photographers bumped and jostled each other to get a good shot.