Kader Abdolah - The House of the Mosque

Khalkhal kissed Khomeini’s hand again, then stood up and hurriedly left the room to begin his mission.

Even though it was night, Khalkhal put on the dark glasses he had bought in Paris.

This Khalkhal bore little resemblance to the Khalkhal who had set off a riot in Senejan to prevent Farah Diba from opening a cinema. With his black turban and long black beard, which had recently begun to go grey, he now had an aura of power. As Allah’s judge, he would inspire fear.

An hour later, with some files tucked under his arm, he stepped into a waiting jeep, which drove him to the city’s largest slaughterhouse, where thousands of cows and sheep were slaughtered daily to feed Tehran’s burgeoning population.

The top officials of the old regime had been arrested and brought to the slaughterhouse in the greatest of secrecy. The regime was so terrified that the Americans would try to liberate the prisoners that they had brought them to this stinking hellhole and thrown them in the stalls beside the cows.

Khalkhal entered a dark, bare room. In the middle were a table and two chairs — one for Allah’s judge and another, much lower, for the accused — and a ceiling lamp, placed in such a way that its yellow glow would light only the face of the accused.

There was little time. By dawn it had to be clear to the world that the old regime was gone for good and that the Americans would have no opportunity to restore the shah to power.

Khalkhal laid a file on the table. ‘Bring in the accused!’ he said to the guard.

The first to be brought in was Hoveyda, the shah’s former prime minister. He was led into the room in handcuffs. Hoveyda had served as prime minister for fourteen years. He had rarely been seen without an orchid in the lapel of his elegant suit, or without his walking stick and pipe. Now he was dressed in a filthy pair of pyjamas.

There was a third person in the room: a masked photographer, who kept circling round Hoveyda, taking pictures of him from every angle.

‘The accused may be seated,’ Khalkhal said curtly, and he lowered himself into his chair.

Hoveyda sat down.

‘You now find yourself before Allah’s judge,’ Khalkhal said, his voice as hard as steel. ‘Your case has been reviewed. You have been sentenced to death. Do you have anything to say to that?’

Hoveyda, who had been received as a guest of honour by the American president; Hoveyda, who had been given three standing ovations by the American Senate; Hoveyda, who had studied law at an American university, couldn’t believe that this stinking stall was a courtroom. And so he made no reply, though his lips moved involuntarily, as if he were smoking an invisible pipe.

‘Did you say something?’ Khalkhal asked.

‘No,’ Hoveyda replied numbly.

‘The accused is hereby sentenced to death!’ Khalkhal said. ‘The execution is to be carried out immediately!’

Hoveyda, still not quite realising that he was about to be executed, was led away by two guards.

They took him to the warehouse behind the main slaughter room, which was stacked with thousands of hides from freshly slaughtered cows. The stench was so bad that you had to hold your nose. The guards propped Hoveyda up against the wall between the stacks of hides and tied a blindfold over his eyes. According to Islamic custom, he was offered a glass of water, but he waved it away.

Hoveyda trembled in his pyjamas, still unable to believe he was going to be executed. He thought they were simply trying to frighten him. He heard Khalkhal’s footsteps in the corridor, and a moment later Khalkhal came in and signalled to the guards to kneel and aim their rifles.

‘Ready, aim—’ Khalkhal began.

‘I’m innocent!’ Hoveyda cried in a broken voice. ‘I demand to see a lawyer!’

‘Fire!’ Khalkhal ordered.

Seven shots rang out. Hoveyda slumped to the ground. His head struck the damp stone floor of the warehouse, and the photographer rushed up to take pictures of his bullet-ridden body.

Khalkhal returned to the interrogation room and called for the next prisoner.

The former chief of the secret police was led in. He had heard the shots and was so frightened that he could barely walk.

‘Sit down!’

The guards lowered him into the chair.

‘Are you Nassiri?’

There was a long pause. ‘Yes,’ he said at last.

‘Were you the chief of the secret police who ordered the arrest, torture and death of hundreds of resistance fighters?’

Nassiri made no reply.

‘Were you chief of the secret police?’ Khalkhal repeated.

‘Yes,’ he said softly.

‘Allah’s judge hereby sentences you to death!’ Khalkhal exclaimed. ‘The execution is to be carried out immediately. Is there anything you wish to add?’

The dreaded Nassiri, whose very name had made people quake, began to cry and beg for mercy, but Khalkhal motioned to the guards to take him away.

Nassiri was led to the warehouse where Hoveyda had just been executed. The guards blindfolded him, offered him a glass of water and stood him against the wall.

‘Take your positions!’ Khalkhal commanded.

The guards knelt and aimed their rifles at Nassiri.

‘Fire until you have no more bullets left!’ Khalkhal thundered.

Shots rang out, and the guards fired until they had no more bullets left, thus ensuring that the body stayed upright until the firing stopped. Only when the last bullet had been pumped into Nassiri’s body did he fall into a stack of fresh cowhides, where he sprawled, face down, with his arms outstretched.

Khalkhal kept going until dawn, until all of the ministers and high-level officials who had been arrested and imprisoned in the slaughterhouse had been executed.

When he was through, he washed his hands and ordered breakfast. Boiled eggs, milk, honey and freshly baked bread were brought in on a silver tray and placed in front of him, along with the morning edition of the paper.

The front page had a picture of the blindfolded Hoveyda, his arms held wide as the first bullet slammed into his chest.

In one week Khalkhal met with fifteen young imams from Qom. They were all students at a seminary, where they were studying Islamic law.

He appointed them as Islamic judges and sent them out to the larger cities to try those officials of the former regime who had been directly involved in crimes against the people. All fifteen judges had his permission to show no mercy.

There was a knock on Aqa Jaan’s door. He hadn’t come home yet from the bazaar, so Lizard opened the gate. Three armed men wearing green headbands came charging into the courtyard. They were soldiers in the Army of Allah — a militant faction formed during the revolution to carry out Khomeini’s orders.

‘Where’s Ahmad?’ one of the men snapped at Lizard.

Fakhri Sadat, who was in the kitchen, could see the men through the window, but couldn’t go out and talk to them because she wasn’t wearing a chador. She opened the window and shouted to Lizard, ‘Would you please bring me my chador?’

He scuttled off and came back with it. She put on her chador and went into the courtyard. ‘Gentlemen,’ she said, ‘how can I help you?’

‘Where’s Ahmad?’ one of them repeated in an insolent tone of voice. ‘We’ve been ordered to bring him in.’

‘Bring him where?’

‘To the Islamic Court.’

Just then Ahmad emerged from the library. Dressed casually in his long cotton shirt rather than his imam turban and robe, he headed towards the hauz . The men raced over to him.

Startled, Ahmad asked them what they were doing in his house.

‘We’ve been sent to pick you up. You’re going to be tried before an Islamic court.’

‘Why? What for?’

‘We don’t know.’