Kader Abdolah - The House of the Mosque

‘Don’t move,’ Khan whispered.

Aqa Jaan looked at the man on the tractor. His face was hidden by a hat. When the tractor came to a tree, the man stopped, got out and strode over to the tree, where he’d left his lunch. There was something familiar about the way he carried himself, the way he walked.

Khan smiled.

The man grabbed a loaf of bread, sat down on the ground, leaned back against the tree and looked up at the sky, his face bathed in sunlight.

‘Ahmad!’ Aqa Jaan exclaimed. ‘It’s Ahmad!’ He took a few steps forward and studied the man more closely. No, he wasn’t mistaken. It was Ahmad: the son of the house, the imam of their mosque!

‘Go to him! Embrace him!’ Khan urged him.

Two eagles glided overhead and started circling above the field.

Aqa Jaan stepped into the open. Suddenly Ahmad saw Aqa Jaan walking towards him. He leapt to his feet and stared at him, speechless.

Aqa Jaan reached out and folded Ahmad into his arms. ‘You’ve become a farmer! And a modern one at that! You drive a tractor, you smell of diesel oil and you have the hands of a mechanic.’ Aqa Jaan beamed with joy. ‘You’ve gained experience and can now see life from a different perspective. Thank you, Allah, for this blessed moment!’

Ahmad was still too stunned by Aqa Jaan’s sudden appearance to speak. His hands trembled as he wiped the tears from his eyes.

‘Everything will be all right, my son,’ Aqa Jaan said. ‘This will all end one day, I swear. Then the mosque will be restored to us and you will go back to your library.’

‘He doesn’t want to be an imam any more,’ Khan said, smiling. ‘Let the ayatollahs have his turban and his robe! Come, he has work to do. You and I are going to have lunch. You both need to recover from the shock.’

Aqa Jaan, flabbergasted but overjoyed, walked back to the fortress with Khan. ‘You’re a true friend, Khan. You’ve done so much for me that I hardly know how to thank you.’

‘You don’t have to thank me, though there is one small thing you can do.’

‘I’ll be glad to. Just say the word.’

‘We’ll talk about it later. We have plenty of time.’

They reached the fortress, and the children greeted Aqa Jaan with whoops and cries. ‘I swear you’ve had a dozen more children since the last time I saw you,’ Aqa Jaan said.

‘I don’t know about that,’ Khan laughed. ‘You’d have to ask their mothers.’

Khan led Aqa Jaan into an elegant sitting room, where the candles in the tulip-shaped sockets of a crystal chandelier were burning brightly and the light was bouncing off an antique mirror. The room was pleasantly warm, and the antique Persian carpets on the floor added even more comfort and colour. The furniture dated back to the Renaissance, and had lost none of its splendour. A massive bookcase was lined with French and Persian books.

‘I hope you’re planning to stay for at least a week,’ Khan said.

‘I wish I could, but I can’t. I’ve left Fakhri all by herself in Jirya. She’s arranged to meet a couple of women today, and she doesn’t know I’m here. I just told the servant that I’d be back late.’

‘I understand, but you can’t leave now. I’ll send someone to fetch her.’

‘I don’t think she’s ready to deal with this yet. She’s only just starting to feel better. I never told her that you took Jawad’s body that night. She still finds it hard to talk about his death.’

‘That’s perfectly all right,’ Khan said. ‘I’ll send someone to tell her that you’re going to spend the night here. She can sleep at her sister’s, can’t she? You shouldn’t let women get used to sleeping in your arms! Let her sleep by herself for one night; it will do her good.’

Just then two servants came in with lunch on a round silver tray.

Later that afternoon, Aqa Jaan went back to the field. He and Ahmad walked through the mountains, talking about everything that had happened in the intervening years.

Afterwards, Khan took Aqa Jaan to see his wives, who welcomed them with tea and home-made biscuits. They stayed to eat dinner with the oldest wife.

When they’d finished eating, they went back to the fortress, where Khan showed him into the drawing room. The candles had already been lit.

‘You’re my guest of honour,’ Khan said. ‘Sit down, I’ll be back in a moment.’

Aqa Jaan suddenly felt a wave of melancholy wash over him. The stressful day had taken its toll. He stared blankly at the floor and waited for the return of his host, who came back a few minutes later carrying a bottle coated with a fine layer of dust. He set the bottle on the table, reached into the cupboard and took out two gold-rimmed goblets.

‘You and I have several reasons to celebrate tonight. I can see from your face that it’s been a sad, but wonderful, day.’

Aqa Jaan, who had never drunk a drop of alcohol in his life, shook his head. ‘I don’t drink,’ he said.

‘You’re making a mistake. A few hours ago you wanted to thank me, but you didn’t know how. It’s very simple: join me in a drink. Let that be your expression of gratitude. Listen, my friend, this is the oldest bottle of wine in my cellar. I’ve brought it up to share with you. My father laid it in the cellar thirty years ago. I’ve been waiting all these years for an evening that I knew would come, for just the right person, for a friend. No, don’t interrupt me. I know it’s against your principles, but I’d like the two of us to drink a toast to your son, who is buried here, and to Ahmad, who is happy and healthy and driving a tractor. Tonight is a special night. I won’t let you ruin it with religion. I’m going to pour you a glass of wine. Don’t say a word. I’ll raise my glass, you’ll raise yours, and then we’ll drink.’

He uncorked the bottle and sniffed the wine. ‘Allah, Allah, of course you shouldn’t be forced to drink something you don’t want to, but I’d be delighted if you would drink this wine with me.’

Aqa Jaan was silent. First Khan poured a small amount in his own glass. He picked it up and swirled it around. ‘This wine smells as sweet as the paradisiacal rivers of wine mentioned in the Koran.’

Aqa Jaan stared at him in silence.

‘Don’t look at me like that!’ Khan said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with what I just said. You’re not the only one who’s read the Koran. I’ve read it too — in my own way. The Koran says a lot of things about Paradise. It promises us handmaidens — beautiful women with lips tasting of milk and honey who will pour out divine libations. Here, raise your glass in a toast. One day this wine will be offered to you in Paradise!’

Aqa Jaan didn’t reach for his glass.

‘I’m a sinner from way back, but you aren’t,’ Khan said. ‘I wouldn’t ask you to do anything sinful. This wine was made out of grapes from my own vineyard. At harvest time the most beautiful girls in the mountains come here to pick the grapes and pour the wine into the old clay jars in the cellar.’

Khan took a sip and savoured it. ‘It’s unbelievable,’ he said. ‘In this wine you can taste the particles that make up the volcano, the particles that make up the universe. You can even smell the hands of the girls who picked the grapes. Take a sip, Aqa Jaan!’

When Aqa Jaan didn’t lift his glass, Khan decided not to press him any further. He went outside.

Bats were swooping across his property, wheeling above the tractor parked on the hillside. He saw Ahmad walking towards the stable, with something slung over his shoulder. He sipped his wine and listened to the sounds of the night. His children were still playing outside. He heard his daughters chasing each other through the darkness. Years ago he had lived in Paris. It had been a time of great upheaval, with demonstrators marching through the streets, existentialism in its heyday and Simone de Beauvoir captivating tout le Paris with her books. He’d been happy, he’d fallen in and out of love a dozen times and his French friends had welcomed him as if he were a Persian prince. He could have lived in Paris for ever. But after a while the tide turned. He wasn’t happy any more: he longed for home, for the hills of his youth and the women of the mountains. Paris was beautiful, but its beauty was not for him. He stored up his memories of Paris and went back to his fortress, this time for ever.