Kader Abdolah - The House of the Mosque

Muezzin came up from the cellar, holding his walking stick, with Lizard at his side.

‘A man in a suit and a hat just went towards the library. I think he’s trying to break down the door,’ Fakhri Sadat said. ‘Can you hear him?’

Muezzin hurried over to the library. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded. ‘Who are you? You can’t just come barging in here!’

Fakhri Sadat put on her chador and went outside. The man was pounding a rock against the door, trying to smash it in.

‘What does he look like?’ Muezzin asked Fakhri Sadat.

‘I can’t see his face. He’s standing in the shadow.’

‘Does he have a beard?’

‘I don’t think so. All I can see is his hat.’

Muezzin started to go over to him, but Fakhri stopped him. ‘I think he’s mad! He might be a tramp!’

‘Go and get Aqa Jaan!’ Fakhri said to Lizard, who had clambered up the tree, where he was monitoring the man’s every move.

He leapt from the tree to the roof and disappeared.

Muezzin brandished his walking stick. ‘Who are you?’ he repeated. ‘What are you doing here?’

There was no answer.

‘Stop that, you idiot!’ Muezzin said. He waved his walking stick again. ‘Stop banging on the door, you bastard, or I’ll beat the shit out of you!’

But the man didn’t stop. Muezzin was about to hit him when Fakhri Sadat cried, ‘No, don’t! He’s mentally ill!’ And she dragged Muezzin away by his coat.

Only when Aqa Jaan arrived on the scene did the man stop pounding. ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked. Since the man was standing in the shadow of the library wall, Aqa Jaan couldn’t see him very well. ‘What’s your name, sir?’

There was no response.

‘Step away from the shadow so I can see you,’ Aqa Jaan said. ‘Give me your hand, I won’t hurt you, I’m just going to lead you out of the shadow.’ Aqa Jaan calmly took the man by the arm and led him into the sunlight.

‘Would you like something to drink? Are you hungry?’

The man’s eyes filled with tears.

Those eyes were familiar…

‘Allah, Allah!’ exclaimed Aqa Jaan. ‘Fakhri, it’s our Ahmad!’

Muezzin reached out to touch him. He ran his fingers over Ahmad’s hat and down his face, then pulled him close and wrapped him in his arms.

Fakhri Sadat laid her head on his shoulder and wept. ‘Oh, Ahmad!’ she said. ‘Our Ahmad! Let’s go inside. What have they done to you? How dare they! Come, everything will be all right.’

Aqa Jaan unlocked the library door for him, but Ahmad didn’t go in. Instead, he shuffled over to the guest room, opened the door, went inside, took off his shoes and sank down on the bed.

‘Let him sleep,’ Fakhri said to Aqa Jaan and Muezzin.

Khalkhal had arranged for Ahmad’s early release from prison, but the life had been drained out of Ahmad. After his arrest, his wife and child had gone back to live with her parents, and her influential father — a staunch supporter of the regime — had arranged a divorce and seen to it that his daughter had been awarded custody of the child. Ahmad had been robbed of his fatherhood.

The next morning Fakhri Sadat called him for breakfast, but Ahmad was still unresponsive. So she went to his room, helped him out of bed and brought him outside, where she lovingly washed his hands and face in the hauz and led him to the library, so he could see that the door was now open.

He went in and shuffled past the bookcases, running his finger over the spines of the books. He switched on the antique reading lamp on his desk and touched his chair, but didn’t sit down. Then he went out again and shuffled over to his old room, where he looked at his bed, his chair and his notebook — the one in which he used to jot down his ideas for the Friday prayers — and then sat down on the bed.

He sat there all day, staring vacantly into space. Aqa Jaan brought him some food and tried to talk to him, but he could see that Ahmad wasn’t ready to talk, that he needed to be left alone for a while.

That night Ahmad packed his suitcase and left.

Lizard saw him leave and hurried over to alert Aqa Jaan. But it was too late. He had gone.

There was fierce fighting at the front. Iranian troops had recaptured a number of strategic areas and opened a new front in Iraqi territory, but it looked as though they’d never be able to oust the Iraqis from the vital oil cities of Khorramshahr and Abadan. Saddam used bombs and chemical weapons to keep the Iranians away from those cities.

The leftist opposition had been almost completely wiped out, but there was one organised group that the regime had so far left untouched: the Mujahideen. The members of the Mujahideen were devout Muslims, though their interpretation of the Koran differed from Khomeini’s. In public they pretended to support the regime, but in secret they were amassing weapons, so that they could strike when the time was right.

Khomeini declared them to be public enemy number one and warned that they were out to destroy the government from within. Now that Iran was fighting an endless war and growing weaker by the day, he wanted this internal foe to be eliminated once and for all. Because the Mujahideen were Muslims, however, Khomeini couldn’t simply make them disappear.

An emergency meeting of the Executive Committee of the Islamic Republic was called to discuss the matter. They reached a unanimous decision: the Mujahideen, like the leftist opposition before them, were to be wiped out at once.

Jeeps were driven in the middle of the night to the homes of the Mujahideen leaders. Armed agents burst into their homes from the rooftops, but not a single leader was found. They had all fled.

Clearly, they’d had advance warning. It seemed that the Executive Committee had a spy in its midst.

The chairman, Ayatollah Beheshti, called another committee meeting. He assumed that the spy wouldn’t show up, thereby giving himself away, but all of the members were present and accounted for. They spent a long time discussing the possible source of the leak.

‘I think I know how the information was leaked and who leaked it,’ said one of the members, a man known for his keen mind and decisiveness. The other men looked at him in surprise and waited breathlessly for him to reveal the name.

He surreptitiously slid his black briefcase, which was under the table, closer to Beheshti’s feet, then stood up. ‘I have proof,’ he said. ‘It’s in my office. I’ll go and get it. I won’t be long.’

As soon as he left the conference room, he tore down the stairs, raced to his car, jumped in and roared off.

Before he even turned the corner, there was an explosion. The building behind him collapsed, sending up a huge cloud of fire and smoke, and killing every one of the committee members.

The news was announced on the radio. Crowds gathered round Khomeini’s residence to express their sympathy. He came out on the balcony and calmly delivered a speech. ‘ Enna lellah wa enna elayhi raje’un ,’ he began. ‘This time the Americans worked their evil through the Mujahideen. But it doesn’t matter, because Allah is on our side! I have appointed a new committee. We will not let anyone or anything stand in our way!’

The hunt for the Mujahideen supporters began at once. There was a spate of random shootings. Mujahideen sympathisers blocked off a few streets in the centre of Tehran and reached for their weapons. Street fighting broke out between the Mujahideen and the security troops.

Everyone who was arrested that day was summarily executed the very same night.

The next week, the chief of the secret police met with Khomeini to inform him of an urgent security issue. He knelt before Khomeini and kissed his hand. ‘The Mujahideen have managed to infiltrate the government at the highest levels,’ he whispered. ‘While our attention was focused on the front, they took over the most strategic posts. They’ve even penetrated your inner circle. I’ve put together a list of suspects in high ministerial positions. With your permission, I’ll notify the prime minister and have the suspects arrested at once.’