The next morning, he gathered his blankets and pillow and waited in the study. His father walked into the room with his tea and newspaper and took a seat on his reading chair. He opened the paper, blocking his son from view. Habib stepped forward. He cleared his throat and said that he wished to go to the Naishapur Seminary.
He was nervous and his voice came out shrilly. His father folded down the top of the newspaper to get a good look at his son. He was not impressed by his son’s aspiration to become a cleric and was irritated by his voice. He immediately agreed and the boy set off. He was eighteen years old.
When the bus pulled up in front of the seminary, Habib stumbled out in his only suit. The suit was navy, worn out by use, the pants covered in grime, his shirt frayed from repeated hand washes. He looked at the other young men who disembarked with him. They were all dressed in fresh clean clothes with proper luggage. He dusted himself off and slung his satchel over his shoulder and crossed the street.
The seminary was a massive two-story concrete building. The wrought-iron entrance gate was decorated with turquoise tiles that vibrated with cool color against the drab gray walls. Students passed through the central courtyard, dressed in abas and turbans. In one hand, they held their books, in the other, their worry beads. Their voices echoed through the enclosure.
The young men from the bus started laughing. He looked around. He had not realized that he was holding on to the gate bars with both hands and with his head wedged in between. A young seminary student strode toward him with a welcoming smile. “Brothers! Welcome. Welcome.”
The student threw open the gates and led the young men across the courtyard to the main hall. Habib looked up at the second-floor landing that encircled the courtyard. The scent of rosewater and prayer stones drifted through the air. Young seminary students wove in and out of rooms, some leaning on the railing, flicking worry beads, engaged in light banter, others engaged in serious debate. He caught a glimpse of an older man, a high-ranking cleric, probably a teacher, standing in the doorway of a classroom. Unlike the young men, his gaze was stern and heavy. His dark deep-set eyes followed Habib into the main hall.
The student host walked the young men through registration and took them on a tour of the building; the mess hall, the classrooms, the prayer hall, the library and study hall, finally leading them upstairs and showing them to their rooms, two in each. Habib was the odd man out and given his own room. He stepped in and closed the door. The room was small and windowless with a vent over the door. He dropped his satchel on the ground and looked at the two beds, one on either side with a seminary student uniform laid out on each. He had never had a room to himself let alone two beds to choose from. This sudden largesse filled him with a feeling of overwhelming shame.
He walked into his first class dressed in his seminary uniform. It was slightly large on him. The other boys were seated on the carpeted floor, in small groups of what appeared to be the start of friendships, engaged in conversation while wrapping their turbans. There was no opening for him to sit, so he found a seat in the corner of the room by himself and copied them. He propped up his knee and used it as a mock head, carefully wrapping the fabric around it and tucking the end underneath. He lifted it off his knee and placed it on his head just the way the other young men had done.
The cleric with dark deep-set eyes walked into the room. The young men scrambled into rows facing the front. The cleric took his seat on a slightly raised platform in front of the class and looked at the assembly before him. He unfolded a bookstand and put his Koran on it. He opened the book and began to page through it, not looking up as he said, “One of the most important skills you must master is public oration. It is a fundamental part of the propagation and renewal of our faith. And if you fail in this endeavor, you will have failed God and His Holy Prophet, may peace be upon Him.”
The class mumbled the “peace be upon Him” refrain. Habib was terrified. His voice had been nothing more than a source of nuisance and shame in his household. In school, he had always skirted the obligation to speak before the class by diligent study and high marks on written examination. But here, there was no escape. He looked at the door and for a brief moment entertained the thought of running out. But where would he run to? He heard the cleric say “you” and turned to see who he meant. The whole class had turned to face him as the cleric held out his finger pointed at Habib. “Read the first sura.”
Habib froze. He just stared at the cleric with a pained expression.
“What is it, young man? Are you mute?”
Habib shook his head.
“Then why don’t you read?”
Habib looked at the others. They all stared at him. Some were embarrassed for him, some were enjoying his humiliation. His neighbor handed his Koran to him. Habib opened it and looked at the first sura. He knew it by heart. He took in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and recited the first verse. The high-pitched screech of his voice rang out through the room. His classmates suppressed their laughter but he could hear the breathy convulsions. He stopped reciting and opened his eyes. The cleric shushed the room and addressed Habib. “I can see why you hesitated. Come forward.”
Habib closed the book and pushed himself to his feet. His legs were still slightly numb from fear. He slowly walked to the front of the class and stood at the foot of the platform where the cleric was seated. The cleric got up and ushered Habib onto the platform with him. They faced each other before the class. Habib turned his head to look at the boys staring at him.
“Eyes on me, young man,” the cleric said.
Habib looked back at the cleric. At close range, his gaze was not so much stern as certain. It felt comforting to be looked upon with purpose. The cleric pressed his hand against Habib’s larynx and said, “Now speak the first line.”
“In the name of God,” said Habib, in a high-pitched screech. The cleric smacked his larynx with such force that Habib stepped back to regain his balance. The cleric ushered him forward, put his hand back on the spot, and said, “Again.”
Habib braced himself for another hit as he let out a high-pitched “In the name of God.” It came with even greater force as the cleric said, “Again.”
Habib’s throat was on fire. He opened his mouth and, just as he was about to say it again, the cleric smacked his larynx once more. The force of his hand sent Habib’s voice down to the floor of his diaphragm and a deep, honeyed sound came rising out of his throat as he proclaimed, “In the name of God.”
Habib looked out at the boys. The room was silent, stunned. The cleric stepped back and said, “Continue.”
From that day on, Habib’s voice remained where the cleric had trained it. The boys in the class clamored to befriend the cleric’s star student, this firebrand orator. Habib spent the next four years cloistered in the seminary studying everything from Islamic philosophy to jurisprudence to theology, interpretation of the Holy Book, history, and logic, arguing through many nights with fellow students and teachers, honing his oratory skills and his political leanings. It became clear that within the seminary there were two schools of thought: the quietists, who believed that it was not possible to create Paradise on earth and therefore refused to be involved in politics; and the activists, who believed that it was their responsibility to fight in this world for divine justice. His teacher was in the latter school and Habib followed his teachings.
Habib did not leave his teacher’s side until news of his father’s passing. Dressed in full clerical garb with a lush black beard, he returned to oversee his father’s burial and move back into his childhood home.
Reading the newspaper as his father once did, the mullah now sat in his living room staring at the photograph of a son of a wealthy local merchant. The young man who had been killed in the square. He had seen him around town, always dressed in the latest European fashions, leaning on his shiny red Citroën, winking at girls passing by. The young man was a scoundrel, born into privilege. After one year, he had dropped out of the universit
y to live at home. He worked in his father’s business after squandering a small fortune on pleasure, and his father, the mullah knew, had to pay off a young girl his son had impregnated. The girl was from a religious family and he had sent her off in the middle of the night to Mash’had for a back-alley abortion. The mullah looked at the young man’s clean, fresh face in the newspaper. The obituary read like a canon to a saint. It made his blood thicken.
He was pulled out of his seething by a knock on the door. When he opened it, the other young man, the one who had done the killing, was standing on his step. He took off his shoes at the door and bent down to kiss the mullah’s hands before entering the house. He followed the cleric into the living room and stood to the side with his hands clasped in front of him, eyes to the ground until the mullah bade him to sit at the tea service. The mullah poured him tea and sat back, flicking his worry beads, and said, “Have you recently come home?”
“Yes. I was at the university in Mash’had.”
“What brought you home?”
“My family needed me.”
“I see.”
They continued drinking their tea in silence. The young man had a pained look on his face. “Haj-Agha,” he burst out. “I did not mean to hurt him. I swear to you. I was arguing with him about the state of affairs for the poor of our country and the responsibility he and those of his privilege bear. I did not mean to hurt him.”
“Then why did you?”
The young man looked down at his hands and fell silent for a few moments, then said, “A blackness covered my eyes and I felt a hate so powerful that it forced my hand. I watched the rage lift my hand and push the knife into his side. I stuck him like the animal he was. I wanted to tear him to pieces. I was prepared to stand there and stab him repeatedly but the others pulled me away when the police came.”
“What did he say?”
“It’s not something he said.”
The young man kept rocking back and forth. He looked at the door as though he were planning an escape route.
“What did he say?”
“It’s not what he said. It was what he did.”
“What did he do?”
The young man stared at the wall behind the mullah and began to speak in a monotone voice, as though he were describing a film he was watching. “She came to my room at the university. My sister. I hadn’t expected to see her. She looked so frightened. She tried to tell me what had happened, but the moment she mentioned being with a man, I started to beat her. I screamed at her for shaming our family and I kept beating her. She just cowered in the corner of the room, apologizing. She ran out and I went after her but she disappeared into the streets. I went to bed and I was woken up by one of my roommates. I went into the hall and picked up the phone. It was my father. I could hear my mother wailing in the background and I knew something terrible had happened.”
He turned his eyes to the mullah and continued, “She’d hanged herself that morning in the backyard. She had hanged herself from a tree that we used to play under. The baby was still in her womb. She never went through with the abortion.”
The anguished tension on the young man’s face slowly disappeared and it almost seemed as though he turned to stone as he said, “He took my sister’s life, so I took his. And I will face whatever the consequences.”
“I will go with you to the police station.”
“Yes.”
“You realize that once we go, there is no turning back.”
“Yes.”
“They will hang you.”
“Yes.”
“Are you prepared for what this will do to your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you should go home and spend some time with your family. I will come by in a few days and we will walk over together.”
“Yes.”
The mullah was overcome with love and pride. This young man who sat before him for a mere few minutes was like a son to him now. And yet it was the mullah who had instructed one of his followers to seek out this young man and to tell him the name of the wastrel who had impregnated his sister.
The martyrdom of this young man would lay the foundation for a great uprising. He was a soldier in a war for the soul of a nation. The mullah vowed to use every ounce of his oratorical skill to make sure this death would mark the beginning of the end for the monarchy and save thousands of innocent young women from the predatory elite. He put his hand on the young man’s shoulder and led him to the door and said, “I will be by in a few days.”
The young man smiled at the mullah as he put on his shoes and headed out into the street. He felt a lightness wash over him that he had not felt since his sister had come to visit him—asking for his help.
A SYMPHONY IN RUINS
The annual Festival of Arts in Shiraz and Persepolis had taken place for the last decade to great acclaim. Every year, Nasreen glued herself to the television and radio, watching and listening to performers of music, theater, dance, and film from home and abroad. The festival had shaped her desire to perform onstage and led to fantasies in which she raced to rehearsals and cafés, ran off on global tours, free from tradition. This last notion appealed to her above all else. She wanted to express herself. She wanted to be herself. The only place in her life where she had found this freedom was in the moments she shared with Madjid.
Madjid knew of the depth of her ambitions. Her eyes lit up every time she spoke about a performance. His own passions were about the world, how it should be but was not. At times, Nasreen’s singular focus on the arts seemed frivolous to him. “How can you not care about politics?” he finally said. “To ignore injustice is a crime.”
She gave thought to her answer before she spoke. She wanted to be honest with him, something she had never considered in her relationship with her mother and father. She wanted him to see her. “Madjid,” she said, “I want my own life to be worth living. And if I can do something that moves you, maybe makes you feel less alone in the world, how is that a crime?”
At first, Madjid brushed off her confession as nothing more than childish sentiment. He had spent so much time in the company of idealistic young men who spoke of “we” and “them” that to be confronted by a young woman who spoke of “me” and “you” seemed trifling. But a few days later, he was handed a pamphlet at a political meeting. It was a Persian translation of Tolstoy’s “On Anarchy.”
The last line was: “And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.”
Straight after the meeting, he rushed to her house and apologized for not listening to her. He told her that he would support her in her pursuit. “How you choose to live your own life does matter,” he said. “I will follow you anywhere.”
At the weekly family lunch, Bibi-Khanoom and Akbar-Agha announced that they would be attending the festival. Did anyone care to join them? Shazdehpoor almost squealed with delight. He was particularly interested in a Polish chamber orchestra that was scheduled to perform Samuel Barber’s String Quartet in B Minor. But if his uncle and aunt hadn’t gone, he wouldn’t have gone alone. Only in his salon was Shazdehpoor a man of the world. He had many brochures and itineraries and dreams of traveling Europe’s great cities to see museums and symphonies. But he approached the planning stage with such fervor and imagination that when the time came to act, his enthusiasm had already waned. And his fears took over.
For the festival this year, he was careful to keep his feelings in check and only see to the necessities: he briefly glanced at the brochure for performance times, called a hotel to make reservations, and checked train schedules to Tehran. He did not hold grand imaginary concerts in his salon or buy a leather valise or linen traveling trousers.
Ghamar was absolutely against going. She couldn’t understand the point of traveling all the way across the country to see strange performances by foreigners. Mohammad simply shrugged in agreement.
Only Bibi-Khanoom noticed the dejected look on Nasreen�
�s face, despite her smile.
That evening Nasreen slipped into her father’s tailor shop at the back of their house. The shop had a telephone on which she could speak with Madjid without her mother hovering over her. She sat at her father’s worktable, slumped over and stifling tears. “She will never let me come.”
“Just tell her that you will be with Akbar-Agha and Bibi-Khanoom,” said Madjid. “It’s the truth anyway.”
“She doesn’t care. She knows you’re going and she thinks we’ll . . . you know.”
“No. Tell me.”
“Come on, Madjid.”
“Say it.”
“Stop it!”
“San Francisco.”
“Madjid! Stop it!”
Madjid heard Nasreen’s muffled laughter through the receiver. “San Francisco” was the code word for sexual relations used by a character on the television series My Uncle Napoleon. Neither of them had ever gotten over the joke.
“Have Bibi-Khanoom speak to your mother. You have to come,” he said. “You love this festival more than any of us.”
Days passed. Nasreen moped around the house like a woman in mourning, torturing herself by listening to radio programs about the festival and watching snippets of news footage about the preparations in Shiraz and Persepolis. She even watched a documentary program on the history of the ancient citadel, which had been designed in such a way that horses could easily ascend the many steps that led inside. Her heart ached with longing to be there, to be free, to be away from her mother.
The day before leaving for the festival, Bibi-Khanoom paid a visit. Nasreen didn’t dare come out of her room for fear of upsetting her chances. She was even afraid to hope too loudly. She could hear the women arguing in the living room and hurriedly packed a bag for the trip, just in case it tipped the decision in her favor.
When the voices fell quiet, she stuck her head out and saw her mother on the sofa admiring a silver platter—a bribe from Bibi-Khanoom. From her mother’s sighs, Nasreen could tell their agreement was tenuous at best. She grabbed her bag and repeatedly thanked and kissed her mother, insisting on leaving with Bibi-Khanoom right then and there. “You will stay by Bibi-Khanoom’s side at all times,” said Ghamar.
To Keep the Sun Alive Page 7