Kader Abdolah - The House of the Mosque

‘What’s got into you, Shahbal?’ Aqa Jaan enquired fiercely.

Lizard rose to his hands and feet.

‘I don’t need to spell it out for you, Aqa Jaan,’ Shahbal said, his face as hard as steel. ‘There’s no time. Give me back the gun, please, before it’s too late!’

Aqa Jaan felt powerless to resist. He wanted to shout, ‘You can’t do this! Get out of my study!’ But he couldn’t. He realised to his horror that he didn’t want to stop Shahbal, that a part of him actually approved.

Shahbal wrenched the gun from Aqa Jaan’s hand.

Aqa Jaan wanted to snatch it back, but Shahbal held him at arm’s length with his free hand. ‘Don’t say anything! Don’t do anything!’ Shahbal said. ‘Save your words for later. Wish me luck!’

Dazed, Aqa Jaan suddenly found himself alone in his study. He felt as if he’d momentarily stepped out of his life. For one long minute he’d been unable to move or to say a word.

Shahbal squatted next to Lizard, kissed him and hurried outside, where he bumped into his father and accidentally knocked him down.

Shahbal knelt, took his father’s head between his hands and planted a kiss on top of it. ‘I’m in a hurry, Father. I’ll call you later!’

Lizard scuttled off behind Shahbal.

The ayatollah’s Mercedes pulled up a few feet away from the mosque.

Shahbal was standing in the darkness of the alley, waiting.

Three bodyguards got out and took a quick look around. They didn’t see anything suspicious, so one of them opened the door, while the other two started walking towards the mosque.

Shahbal slipped the gun out from under his waistband. Lizard, who had been crouching silently behind him, began to crawl towards the Mercedes. Shahbal wanted to stop him, but it was already too late. Lizard, scrabbling along on his hands and feet, was heading straight for the ayatollah. The bodyguard, who had just helped the ayatollah out of the car, recoiled at the sight. The ayatollah took a step backwards and shouted, ‘Scram!’ as if Lizard were a stray dog.

But Lizard crawled up to him anyway and stuck his head under his robe, which completely unnerved the man.

‘Ayatollah!’ Shahbal yelled.

The ayatollah looked up in surprise, not sure where the voice was coming from.

Three shots rang out. The ayatollah raised his hands, took two steps backwards and fell to the ground.

The bodyguards pulled out their guns and started shooting wildly at anything that moved.

‘Al-l-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ah!’ It was the voice of Aqa Jaan on the roof.

A motorcycle came roaring round the corner. Shahbal hopped on and it sped off.

The ayatollah’s body lay in front of the mosque. His turban had fallen a few feet away, near the spot where Lizard now lay stretched out on the pavement. He no longer looked like a lizard, but like a little boy asleep in the dark, amid the pool of blood that was seeping out of his body.

Aqa Jaan knelt beside him, kissed his cold cheek, lifted him up and cradled him in his arms.

Whenever you were in the courtyard, you heard aeroplanes flying overhead. They took off in Tehran, crossed the desert and flew down to the Persian Gulf, where they continued on to Europe or America. On the return trip they usually took another route, crossing the Gulf of Oman and entering Iran at Bandar Abbas.

When the children were small, they used to sing a song whenever they heard a plane, looking up at the tiny, mysterious bird in the sky and singing:

Tayareh, tayareh ,

Where are you going, tayareh ?

Who is on board, tayareh ?

When will it be my turn, tayareh ?

Fakhri Sadat was sitting on the bench by the hauz , knitting. Since Lizard’s death, the jumper she’d been making for him had been left unfinished.

Aqa Jaan was working in the garden, burying his sorrow in a pit along with the dead leaves.

Suddenly a passenger plane flew over the house, so low the noise was deafening. The sun glinted off its broad wings and lit up Fakhri’s face, the trees, the hauz and the windowpanes.

Aqa Jaan, fearing that it was a bomber, grabbed his wife’s arm and dragged her down to the cellar. They peered up at the sky through the trapdoor, but the plane had already disappeared.

When they got over their fright, they saw Muezzin standing by his workbench. For once his hands weren’t covered in clay. Instead, he was dressed in a navy-blue suit and hat, and had already donned his usual travelling glasses. There was a suitcase at his feet.

‘Are you leaving on another one of your trips, Muezzin?’ Fakhri asked, saddened.

‘I can see that you’re all packed,’ Aqa Jaan said. ‘Where are you going this time?’

‘You’re the man who records everything,’ Muezzin said. ‘Make a note of this: I’m moving out.’

‘You’re moving out?’ Fakhri echoed in surprise. ‘Why?’

‘I hear the boy crying, all night long. He’s dead, but he still comes down to the cellar and plays around my feet when I’m working. He’s buried in the garden, but I see him sitting in the cedar tree. At night he weeps outside my door and crawls through my sleep.’

Fakhri Sadat began to sob quietly. ‘It’s the same for us. We hear him in the garden too, but that doesn’t mean you have to move out.’

‘I don’t want to, but the house is telling me to go. It’s turning me out. Look at my hands — I can’t make a thing any more. The cellar is piled high with my work, the garden is full of my vases, my plates are stacked up on the roof. Nobody buys my pottery. I’m being chased out. Let me go, brother, and wish me luck.’

Muezzin embraced Aqa Jaan, kissed Fakhri, picked up his suitcase and went up the cellar stairs. He paused for a moment in the courtyard and listened to the familiar sounds. ‘Old crow!’ he yelled. ‘Take good care of the house. I’m moving out!’

After Muezzin had shut the gate behind him, three warplanes flew over the house with a thunderous roar and were swallowed up in the clouds.

‘Iraqis!’ said Aqa Jaan.

But they weren’t Iraqi warplanes. They were Iranian air-force jets in hot pursuit of the passenger plane.

The president of Iran, Bani-Sadr, was inside the plane. He was trying to flee the country, and the jets were hurtling through the sky at top speed in an attempt to stop him. A week ago, Khomeini had accused him of working for the Mujahideen and dismissed him from office.

Bani-Sadr had gone into hiding, and the Mujahideen had devised a master plan for smuggling him out of the country. They had planned the escape down to the last detail and even informed Saddam Hussein of the flight, so that Iraqi aircraft would be standing by to escort the ex-president’s plane through Iraqi airspace.

The three Iranian jets didn’t catch him. Bani-Sadr’s plane reached Iraq in the nick of time and flew on towards Europe.

Four and a half hours later, when the plane was approaching Paris, the pilot radioed the control tower: ‘This is an emergency. I have the president of Iran on board, and he’s requesting political asylum.’

The control tower passed the message on to the airport manager, who immediately contacted the French president, then asked Bani-Sadr a few questions, which he answered in flawless French. ‘I am the elected president of the Islamic Republic of Iran,’ he announced. ‘I have on board with me the leader of the Mujahideen. I am requesting political asylum for myself, the leader of the Mujahideen and the pilot.’

The plane circled above Paris while the airport manager and the French president discussed the matter.

Bani-Sadr, who had a PhD in economics from the Sorbonne, had lived in Paris for years. In fact, he still had the key to his Paris apartment. He had been doing some postgraduate work when Khomeini had left Iraq and moved to Paris.