Mahmoud Dowlatabadi - The Colonel

At the door Forouz, soft and translucent, turned her head and glanced at the colonel with her bloodshot eyes, as if she were about to call him. the colonel quickly pulled himself together, plodded towards his wife and stood beside her as if ready for anything that she might suggest . Forouz turned to him and whispered reproachfully into his ear:

“I expected you to invite me to Parvaneh’s wedding; you should have come to pick me up!”

the colonel stood transfixed, his mouth gaping in astonishment. He did not know what was going on or what his wife was talking about. With the fingers of her left hand, she pushed back a loose strand of white hair that had fallen over her cheek and was dangling beside her nose. Then, carefully lifting the hem of her shroud with her fingertips, she left the mortuary. As she receded into the distance, her figure seemed to grow in stature, like a tall white cloud, hand-in-hand with Parvaneh, who was glowing like a bright red tulip. the colonel stood in the doorway, watching the vanishing cloud and the moth-like wings of his Parvaneh and muttered: “Did you hear that, Colonel? She was talking about a wedding, Parvaneh’s wedding, Colonel!” But he could not sense The Colonel’s presence there any longer. His polished black boots, which seemed to be made of steel, had marched out of the mortuary in a huff, away from the rain, the night and the mud. So there he stood, a broken old man, abandoned in a mortuary and drained of all emotion. He felt paralysed, his head felt swollen and odd voices were buzzing round inside it. All he could remember was that, if he did not get a move on, he would not be able to find the grave and would have to spend the whole night wandering about in the mud looking for it. He had to find a way out of this dead end of congealing death before he got caught in it.

I could feel the rain, which was still pouring down. Drunk and seething with rage, I was standing in the alleyway, bare-headed and with my collar undone, and staring at the drawn sabre in my hand, which I was about to plunge into my wife’s heart.

That night was the first and last time that the colonel would drink himself nearly to death. While Amir was at his little table by the window reading his lecture notes, the colonel sat on the edge of the bed, tossing back glass after glass of arack. He did not know what he was doing, or more accurately: I knew exactly what I was doing and I was drinking myself into oblivion.

The sabre glinted in the dim glow cast by the streetlight. There was no-one in the alleyway save the colonel and a soggy stray dog with its tail between its legs. the colonel listens to the cars, as they roar past the entrance to his street on the wet main road. He is waiting for one to stop at the road end and drop off Forouz. She will open her little umbrella and head towards her house, and the car will move off.

I never thought about the man behind the wheel, what he looked like. I’d always thought the man who brought her home was just a driver, and that, from where she was sitting on the back seat, Forouz probably couldn’t, or didn’t want to, see the driver’s face properly in the rear-view mirror. But I remember that she always got out of the car left foot first. And then she would hug the wall as she came down the street towards the door, over a little road that bisects the street north — south, and then down our little cul-de-sac. On those nights her head was always held low, she never looked right or left. Even though she was drunk, she could always find her way and… then I thought about what was in my wife’s mind and I supposed that she must be dying a thousand deaths as she made her way home. But who can say? I have no other choice. I wait as she approaches, thinking whatever she is thinking. I won’t say anything stupid or insulting to her, I’ll just thrust my sabre straight between her left ribs and drive it right into her heart. I’d done this in my thoughts at least a thousand times before, so my mind and hand were steady and I didn’t miss, I got my wife bang in the heart. To make sure she was finished, I gave the sabre a full twist round in her chest and, as she fell back, I thrust at her once more, and once more after that. At the last blow it was as if I was trying to skewer her to the wall, like Shaghad. 29

“As well as hurting other people, you have also ruined your own life, colonel.”

“I was aware of that, Your Honour.”

He could feel it still raining and he realised that he should not have taken so long. His wife was standing in the grave. All he could see was her white hair tumbling over her shoulders. Parvaneh was standing awkwardly at the graveside, waiting. Forouz lifted up her skinny arms towards her daughter. the colonel stood next to Parvaneh in case she needed help, but there was no need. Holding her in her bony arms, like a full-length mirror, her mother carefully took her down into the bottom of the grave and very gently laid her down and stretched out beside her, her arms encircling her neck and cradling the little girl’s head on her chest, and merged into her. She gently closed her eyes and waited, peacefully, to be consigned to the earth.

the colonel stood by the graveside as Abdullah finished his good deed by shovelling the earth back into the grave. Just as his bleary eyes saw it was now filled in, the colonel heard the Allah-u Akbar of the morning call to prayer and realised that it was all over and he could at last relax. Abdullah smoothed out the earth with the back of the shovel. Ali Seif stepped onto the now-level ground to hand the colonel back his pick and slung his weapon back on his shoulder:

“See you again, colonel. You know that you aren’t allowed to put anything on the gravestone, don’t you?

“Yes, I know.”

They went off, and the colonel felt dreadfully alone once they had gone. He had better go home now, he thought, but then he thought of the long-haired man who was presumably still wandering about the graveyard in the rain. Was he glad that he was now free of the great weight that had been taken off his back?

I’ll go home, but I’m tired and done for. It’s all been very strange… it really was just like a graveyard!

What could I do? Just what? My feet were my feet, my home was my home, my problem was my problem and nobody else’s, and getting back was up to me. My head is hurting!

A feeling of faintness had overcome him once again. The false dawn added to his dizziness. Everything around him was blurring into fuzzy infinity — and the rain! He had to get moving. He had no fear of losing his way. He just had to keep calm and head for home the same way as he had come.

“That way, colonel. You look like a drowned rat!”

“No, colonel, it’s this way!”

Well, which way is it, my children? But nobody answered. All he heard, coming from every door and window in the city, was the news that the great trial was about to take place. The great trial of the past. The one they had been promising for ages. It would be remarkable. The whole of history would be in the dock. It was possible that the funerals of the war casualties, including the colonel’s Little Masoud, the news of whose return had been broken to the colonel by Qorbani, would all take place in the full, naked light of history. It was not unlikely that, for greater effect, the two performances would be combined into one, but this was all beyond the colonel’s comprehension. He would just have to put up with whatever came. He was not surprised by anything any more, since people are only surprised by things that fall outside their everyday lives. But when chaos and disorder become part of the very warp and weft of life, as they had done for him, there is nothing surprising about being surprised. If you want to retain your sanity, the only thing you can do is look on without letting go of your mind. So that is what the colonel did, sure in the knowledge that he was in full control of his faculties and that his brain was in full working order, whatever people might be saying about him behind his back.