Kader Abdolah - The House of the Mosque

Later, after the shah had been toppled and the revolution had been won, they were appointed to top government posts. It was these men who became president, prime minister, minister of finance, minister of foreign affairs, minister of industrial affairs, chairman of the Parliament and chief of the newly formed secret police.

What became of these seven men? Within a few short years, one was executed as an American spy, another was imprisoned for corruption, three of them were assassinated by the Resistance, the man who’d served as president fled to Paris, where he requested political asylum, and shortly thereafter the prime minister was dismissed from his post.

In Tehran millions of people took part in demonstrations being held almost daily. It seemed that no earthly power could prevent Khomeini’s return.

The face of the country changed almost overnight. Men grew beards and women enveloped themselves in chadors.

Massive strikes in the oil sector brought the country to an economic standstill. Workers abandoned their machines, students stopped attending classes, schoolchildren left their schools and everyone took to the streets.

The revolution also left its mark on the house of the mosque.

Zinat openly distanced herself from the family, and Sadiq went out more often. Both she and Zinat often attended mass gatherings of Islamic women.

Sadiq, who had never worn a headscarf inside the house, now swathed herself in a chador when she was at home. She used to spend all of her time indoors, cooking and taking care of Lizard. Now she dropped everything in order to go out. She came home late, grabbed a bite to eat and went to bed.

Aqa Jaan went to the bazaar every day, but the carpet business was the last thing on people’s minds. He felt himself to be more and more of a stranger in his own shop.

The storerooms were stacked with rugs that should have been posted to other countries weeks ago. The corridors and workrooms were filled with yarns and other materials that should have been sent to the workshops in the outlying villages.

His trusty office boy, whose job it was to usher customers into his office and bring them tea, had grown a beard. He no longer came to work on time, and left the building at odd moments, saying only that he had to go to the mosque.

The employees had cleared out one of the offices and turned it into a prayer room. They had removed the desks and chairs, put down a few rugs and hung a large portrait of Khomeini on the wall. They had even brought in a mosque samovar and set it on a table.

No one did any work. His employees hung around the shop all day, discussing the latest events. They drank tea in the prayer room and listened to the BBC’s Persian broadcasts so they could follow the developments in Paris.

Aqa Jaan could see that his business was on the brink of collapse, but he was powerless to do anything about it.

At home he saw that Fakhri Sadat no longer sparkled. She had lost her customary cheerfulness. She used to go into town periodically to buy new clothes, especially nightwear, but her shopping sprees were now a thing of the past.

Aqa Jaan always enjoyed watching Fakhri standing in front of the mirror, feeling her breasts to see if they were still firm. But she didn’t do that any more, and she also stopped wearing her jewellery. One day she tidied up her jewellery box, which had always lain on her dressing table, and put it away for good.

Nasrin and Ensi were also victims of the change. No one seemed to notice that Aqa Jaan’s daughters had reached a marriageable age and were still not spoken for.

Aqa Jaan missed Shahbal. He wanted to talk to him, to pour his heart out to him, but he didn’t get the chance. Shahbal came home for a quick visit every once in a while, then left again. Aqa Jaan knew that he was no longer attending classes. He tried to approach him a few times, but he got the feeling that Shahbal didn’t want to talk to him.

And yet he trusted him. He knew that Shahbal would eventually come back to him.

Aqa Jaan had taken to going down to the river and strolling along its banks in the dark. He remembered his father’s advice: ‘When you’re feeling sad, go down to the river. Talk to the river, and your sorrows will be borne away on its swift current.’

‘I don’t want to complain,’ Aqa Jaan said to the river, ‘but there’s a lump in my throat the size of a rock.’

His eyes were stinging. A tear rolled down his cheek and fell to the ground. The river caught it and bore it away in the darkness, without telling a soul.

Aqa Jaan was in his office at the bazaar. The office boy had just brought him a glass of tea when he heard a sudden commotion downstairs in the workroom. The employees had left their posts and were watching the two o’clock news.

‘What’s going on?’ Aqa Jaan called.

‘The shah has fled!’ the boy yelled up the stairs.

‘ Allahu akbar! ’ someone exclaimed.

There was no mention on the news of the shah fleeing, so apparently it had been a rumour, yet it was such a persistent rumour that the regime had been compelled to put the shah on television. He was shown receiving some of his generals, which only aggravated the situation. The shah, who used to appear on television every night, had been absent a great deal in recent months. Now people couldn’t believe their eyes: he had grown thin and looked like a man who was terrified of losing all he had.

The rumour had contained only a small grain of truth.

The next day a new rumour was making the rounds: ‘Farah Diba is fleeing to America with the children!’

This wasn’t entirely true. Farah Diba wasn’t fleeing with the children; her mother was.

A street war was about to break out in Tehran. The protestors were getting close to the palace. According to army intelligence, the mullahs were planning to attack the palace, so the shah had asked Farah Diba to leave the country and to take the children with her.

She refused. ‘I’m not going to abandon you at a time like this.’

‘I’m thinking about the children’s safety, not my own,’ the shah replied.

‘Then we need to come up with a different plan. I’ll ask my mother to go with them,’ was her answer.

While a helicopter was conveying the shah’s children from the palace to a nearby military base, where they would be flown out of the country in an air-force jet, Nosrat was taking the night train to Senejan.

The train drew into the station at four o’clock in the morning. Nosrat took a taxi to the house, then tiptoed into the guest room and fell asleep.

In the morning Lizard came to his room and woke him up.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ Nosrat said, and he took a pair of leather gloves out of his bag. ‘Here, put them on, then we’ll go to the bazaar and get something to eat. I’m starving.’

Lizard put on the gloves and crawled into town on his hands and feet alongside Nosrat. When they reached the giant statue of the shah on horseback, Lizard looked at Nosrat to see if it would be all right for him to climb onto it. Nosrat winked, and a few seconds later Lizard was seated in the saddle behind the shah.

Lizard was the only person who’d ever had the nerve to do such a thing.

At first no one noticed, but soon people stopped to stare. When he realised that he had a crowd of enthusiastic onlookers, Lizard got bolder. He leaned forward, threw his arms round the horse’s neck and pretended to gallop. Then he leapt from the horse’s neck to the shah’s head, slid down the horse’s long tail and hopped back into the saddle — all with such extraordinary agility that he looked more like a monkey than a lizard.

More and more people gathered round, and they were all clapping.