Mahmoud Dowlatabadi - The Colonel

“Yes, sir, yes, it’s me. I’m going home to get a pick and shovel. No, my mistake. I’m actually on my way to my daughter’s house first… no, sorry, that’s wrong, I mean I’m going to my son-in-law’s house to borrow his pick and shovel. I’m sure you know him, Mr Allah-Qoli Qorbani Hajjaj.”

Another voice came from a dark corner: “Let him go, it’s only the colonel .” The mocking, sarcastic stress on the word ‘colonel’ seeped like poison into the colonel’s bone marrow.

Yes, my friend… you must be right. I know that in this country the person who’s invariably right is the one who can fix his bayonet fastest and hardest. Right? Did I say ‘right’?

In any small town you can always find someone who is different from the others and who, as chance would have it, also has an unusual name or a nickname. Such a creature becomes the butt of jokes and is mercilessly baited because, for whatever reason, he is on a different wavelength to everybody else. They treat him as a half-wit and a nutter. The young man who had recognised the colonel clearly saw him as just such a person. the colonel did not see himself as a nutter at all, but he was in no mood to bother about what other people thought about him. Without glancing round he carried on, trying not to be sidetracked by stray thoughts. Any moment, if he wasn’t careful, he would trip over and sink up to his knees in a muddy pothole. So, instead of worrying about the jokes and sneers, he concentrated on every step of the way to the house of his son-in-law, Allah-Qoli Qorbani.

Of course, he knew it was far too late to be calling but there was no other way, so he rang the bell. Ah, yes, the bell — the house had only just been built and, as far as the colonel could remember, the bell had not been connected yet. He would have to bang on the new ochre-painted steel gate with a stone, a shoe horn or a penknife. It was obvious that to do such a thing at that late hour, just before the dawn call to prayer, would give those inside a fright. Then again, he thought, anyone sleeping safe and sound in their own home should expect alarms and frights as a matter of course. Because we all, rightly or wrongly, learn to live with such frights; we are subconsciously primed to expect the next alarming event, as a kind of defence mechanism against living in a constant state of insecurity and blind terror. And isn’t this anxiety bound up with our abiding fear of death? Of course, it seemed natural to the colonel that nobody expected to die. By forgetting that death is decreed, one can bear the weight of the world on one’s shoulders and live a little. At the same time, he thought, everyone, in his own mind, without actually facing up to it, must be waiting for death. Of course, mused the colonel, everyone expects to die, even if they won’t admit it. It can happen to anyone that the grim reaper comes banging on the door just before the dawn call to prayer. Even Allah-Qoli Qorbani Hajjaj must believe that.

“Who is it? Who’s there?”

It was the shaking voice of his daughter Farzaneh. There could be nothing ordinary about all this commotion at the door. the colonel’s family had experienced more than their fair share of fear and alarm, and anxiety was a constant part of their daily lives, yet none of them had ever got used to it. As she spoke, Farzaneh’s voice betrayed her growing sense of unease. It was as though, even before she had been woken by his knocking, she had been with the colonel in his nightmares and had seen all that he had seen. The old man felt sorry for his daughter and felt that he ought not to keep her in suspense any longer. He needed to steel himself for a talk, however brief, with her. He wanted to put her mind at rest, but what should he tell her? Would the news that he had to break to her do anything to calm his Farzaneh down? Not likely. When he thought about it, he felt empty inside and wished that he hadn’t knocked on the door. But who else could he turn to? Who else was as close to him as Farzaneh? It was too late now, so he had better stop agonising over it. There was nothing else for it.

“Papa, papa… Is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me, my dear.”

“What are you doing there, why don’t you come in? And why are you standing there looking so worried?”

The first ‘why’ was clearly a reproach to the colonel for knocking the house up so late, but Farzaneh had quickly picked up the undue harshness of her tone and softened it by asking how he was. He was not offended by her tone, though. However old and grumpy fathers can be, they never let go of the capacity to forgive and indulge their children, and he did not have it in him to get angry with her. It was not his children that the colonel was angry with, but with their lives in general. Oh, Lord… we seem to spend our entire lives in not knowing what to do, and putting off to tomorrow what we need to do today…

the colonel could not think how to break the news of Parvaneh’s death to his surviving children. What made it all the more difficult was that here he was, at this hour, having to tell his daughter that her younger sister had been killed and then having to ask her to come with him to the cemetery to lay out her body. He lost his nerve; he couldn’t possibly tell her, not now. He would just have to get a grip on himself and tell her something else. But what?

“Er, Farzaneh, my dear, you had a pick and shovel here once, didn’t you? You must have a pick and shovel here somewhere, mustn’t you?”

the colonel’s daughter stared at her father in astonishment. She was quick-witted enough to smell that something dreadful had happened. the colonel had not been far out in thinking that everyone expects dreadful news sooner or later. And Farzaneh had been at the eye of a storm of tragedies of late. If she could only get over her amazement and open her mouth, she could force him to be frank with her and satisfy her quite justifiable curiosity. But the fact that Qorbani chose that moment to wake from his usual deep sleep left him still in the tangle. Qorbani harrumphed and called to his wife — calling her ‘Kuchik,’ the family name for Masoud — and his tone made it clear that he wanted to know where she was and who was at the door and what she was doing. Before Qorbani had time to sling a coat over his shoulders and come out onto the verandah of his new house, the colonel asked her again for the pick and shovel. Fearful that her husband would say something rude to the colonel, Farzaneh quickly forestalled him by turning her back on her father and running down to the basement, explaining to her husband on the way that the colonel just wanted to borrow a pick and shovel.

When he comes home at night, or early in the morning, his sweat smells of blood, Papa. His shirt, his vest, even the hair on the back of his hands smells of blood. I have seen bloodstains on his overshoes, and I’ve cleaned them off myself. Sometimes I’ve even seen blood on his trouser bottoms. I’ve seen all this with my own eyes and I’m sure… absolutely sure that…”

Farzaneh had said this to her father more than once. When the colonel saw that Qorbani had not been surprised by his banging at the door, or by his need for a shovel, he began to think that Qorbani might know what was up… And his suspicions became stronger when Qorbani simply ignored him, his own father-in-law, turning up in the middle of the night, and went back inside, muttering something sarcastic about the baby crying. He called his wife inside and, leaving the door half open as he went into the hall, gathering his coat tails, he paused:

“It looks as though nothing will ever make this rain stop.”