My Uncle Napoleon

by Iraj Pezeshkzad

  Of course this resulted in Siamak being punished once by his parents, too, but we breathed a sigh of relief. We’d repeated this nickname under our breath so often that we felt we were suffocating.

  Dear Uncle had been crazy about Napoleon since his youth. Later we knew that he had gathered together in his library whatever books about Napoleon, either in Persian or French (Dear Uncle knew French to some extent), existed in Iran. And in fact a number of his bookcases contained only books about Napoleon. It was impossible for there to be any scientific, literary, historical, legal or philosophical discussion without Dear Uncle interrupting it by quoting some Napoleonic aphorism. Things had gone so far that, under the influence of Dear Uncle’s advocacy, most members of the family considered Napoleon Bonaparte to be the greatest of all philosophers, mathematicians, statesmen, men of letters and even poets.

  It seems that during the reign of Mohammad Ali Shah, Dear Uncle had been in the gendarmerie, with the rank of third lieutenant, and each of us had heard the story of his battles and clashes with bandits and insurgents forty or fifty times.

  Among we children each of these incidents was distinguished by a certain name; for example, the story of the Battle of Kazerun, the Battle of Mamasani and so on. In the early years, the basis of each incident was a description of a skirmish that had happened in the little town of Kazerun or Mamasani between Dear Uncle, with five or six gendarmes, and a group of insurgents and vagrant thieves. But as time passed the number of enemies and the bloodiness of the conflicts increased. For example, the Battle of Kazerun had in the beginning been told as a skirmish between a group of insurgents and Dear Uncle and five gendarmes, and their being cut off by ten or twelve of the insurgents, but after two or three years the Battle of Kazerun had changed to a bloody battle involving about one hundred and fifty gendarmes cut off by four thousand insurgents, egged on by the British, of course.

  But what we didn’t understand at the time, and which now that we’ve studied a little history we have understood, was that as Dear Uncle’s interest in Napoleon increased, not only did his battles increase astronomically in size but they also began to resemble Napoleon’s battles. As he was talking about the Battle of Kazerun he was also describing Napoleon’s Battle of Austerlitz, and he didn’t even stop himself from having infantry and artillery intervening in the Battle of Kazerun. Something else we only knew later on was that, when the gendarmerie in Iran was reformed and the previous members were given ranks according to their ability and knowledge, Dear Uncle, since he didn’t have sufficient skill and knowledge for such affairs, though he claimed to have a genius for them, was retired at a low rank.

  The second long night began. Once again Layli’s black eyes, once again Layli’s beguiling gaze, once again the agitated thoughts of a thirteen-year-old boy and the same questions and the same problems with the addition of one new question:

  Perhaps Layli has fallen in love with me, too. O God have mercy! Now if it were only me who was in love there might be hope of some deliverance, but if she too . . .

  During the whole time that we’d stood in line in front of Dear Uncle, although we were worried and apprehensive and terrified, and none of us had any confidence that Dear Uncle would find out the truth and administer justice fairly, still I either saw or felt Layli’s gaze on my face.

  Here was another problem that I had to find the answer to. Was it better for love to be one-sided or mutual?

  Who could I ask? Who could I consult? If only Layli were here. No, there can be no doubt that I’ve fallen in love, otherwise why should I be so keen for Layli to be here? How about if I asked someone? But who?

  How about if I asked Layli herself? But that’s really ridiculous. For me to ask Layli, “Am I in love with you or not?” But . . . perhaps I could ask Layli . . . what? Ask her if she were in love with me or not? That’s ridiculous, too. Besides, it’s impossible I’d ever have the nerve to ask her such a question.

  I thought about the children of my own age. No, it’s impossible . . . Layli’s brother, who was younger than me and wasn’t very bright, how could I ask Ali? No, he was also a tattletale, he’d go and tell my father or, even worse, he’d go and tell Dear Uncle. Good God, isn’t there anyone I can ask whether I’m in love or not?

  Suddenly in the midst of my torment and disordered thoughts, a ray of hope appeared: Mash Qasem.

  Yes, how about if I asked Mash Qasem? Mash Qasem was a villager who had become Uncle’s servant. The whole family always talked about Mash Qasem’s goodness and piety. Furthermore, he’d once proved it to me. One day Mash Qasem had seen me when I’d smashed a window in Dear Uncle’s house with a ball; he didn’t say a word to anyone.

  Mash Qasem was always on our side on principle, and he would tell us strange, peculiar stories. The nice thing about him was that he never let any question go unanswered, and every time we asked him a question he would first say, “Why should I lie? To the grave it’s ah . . . ah . . . !”

  And as he said “Ah . . . ah” he’d show four fingers and later on we realized he meant that since the grave was very close, only the width of four fingers away, one mustn’t tell lies. Although we sometimes understood or felt that Mash Qasem did tell lies, nevertheless he never let any question go unanswered; even if it were about something very profound or some astonishing phenomenon, he would find a response to it. It was a wonderful thing to us. When we asked him whether dragons were real or not, he immediately answered, “Well, m’dears, why should I lie? To the grave it’s ah . . . ah . . . One day I m’self, with my own eyes, saw a dragon, on the way from Ghiasabad to Qom; I’d just turned a corner when suddenly I saw a dragon jump out and stand there right in front of me. He was an animal—God save you from such a sight!—somewhere between a leopard and a buffalo and an ox and an octopus and an owl. From the slit of his mouth about three yards of flame came leapin’ out. I threw caution to the winds and with my spade I smacked him across his slit of a mouth and stopped his breath. He gave such a snort everyone in the town woke up . . . But what was the good of it, m’dears? Not a soul said to me, ‘Mash Qasem, thanks for your trouble.’”

  Mash Qasem had an explanation for every historical event and every stupendous invention, and if the atomic bomb had been invented at that time, he’d certainly have given a complete explanation of a nuclear explosion. That night the name of Mash Qasem shone like a ray of hope in my mind’s darkness, and I slept fairly peacefully.

  I woke up early next morning. Fortunately Mash Qasem was an early riser. As soon as he woke up he would busy himself with watering the flowers and attending to the garden. As I went toward him he was standing on a stool tidying the strands of sweetbrier that twisted about Dear Uncle’s arbor.

  “Can’t you sleep, m’dear? How is it you’re up so early today?”

  “I went to bed early last night. So in the morning I wasn’t sleepy.”

  “Well, go and play, it’s not long before school’ll be open.”

  I hesitated a moment, but I thought of the horrors of a third night. I threw caution to the winds and said, “Mash Qasem, I want to ask you something.”

  “Say on, m’dear!”

  “One of my classmates thinks he’s in love . . . but, how can I say . . . he’s not sure . . . he doesn’t have the nerve to ask anyone . . . do you know how a person finds out if he’s fallen in love?”

  Mash Qasem nearly fell off the stool. In a state close to astonishment he said, “What? How? In love? You mean he’s got a crush on someone? One of your classmates?”

  Very anxiously I asked, “But, Mash Qasem, is it very dangerous?”

  Staring fixedly at his gardening clippers, Mash Qasem said calmly, “Well, m’dear, why should I lie? To the grave it’s ah . . . ah . . . me m’self, I’ve never been in love . . . well, yes, I have, too. To cut a long story short I know what a disaster it is. May God not wish that on any poor devil! God willin’ and b
y all the saints, may God not inflict anyone with the sorrows and sickness of a lover! A grown man can’t get through bein’ in love except by the skin of his teeth, so what would it be like for a child, m’dear!”

  My legs didn’t have the strength to hold my body up. I was really scared. I had come to ask Mash Qasem what the symptoms and signs of love were and here he was describing love’s terrifying results to me. But no, I mustn’t give up! Since Mash Qasem was the only experienced person who could give me the information I needed about love, and the signs of falling in love, I had to be strong.

  “But Mash Qasem, this classmate of mine who thinks he’s fallen in love wants to know first of all whether he’s really fallen in love or not. And then, if he has fallen in love, he wants somehow to soften the pain of it.”

  “But, m’dear, can love be cured so easily? The damn thing is worse than every pain and unhappiness. God forbid, it’s worse than typhoid and stomach cramps.”

  Bravely I said, “Mash Qasem, this is all very well . . . but how can someone know he’s fallen in love?”

  “Well, m’dear . . . why should I lie? From what I’ve seen it’s like this, when you’re in love with someone . . . when you don’t see her you think your heart’s frozen over . . . when you see her such a burnin’ starts in your heart you think someone’s lit a baker’s oven in there. You want everythin’ in the world, all the wealth in the world, for her, you think you’ve become the most generous man on earth . . . to cut a long story short, the only thing that’s goin’ to satisfy you’s an engagement party . . . but there’s this, too, if, God forbid, they give this girl to some other husband, then oh my Lord . . . There was a man in our town who was in love, and one evenin’ there was an engagement party for the girl and another man; in the mornin’ that neighbor of mine walked off into the desert, and now twenty years have gone by and still no one knows what happened . . . it’s as if he’d turned to smoke and gone up to the heavens.”

  Mash Qasem wasn’t in the mood to stop and he told one story after another about his neighbors and army buddies, and I was in a hurry to end the conversation because I was afraid someone would turn up. I said, “Mash Qasem, I wouldn’t want Dear Uncle to know I’d asked you anything . . . because then he’d want to know who this person is or isn’t or . . .”

  “Would I say anythin’ to the Master? Do you think I’m tired of life? If the Master hears anythin’ about people bein’ in love or sweet on one another he raises Cain . . . he’s quite likely to kill someone.”

  Mash Qasem nodded and then said, “God forbid anyone should fall in love with Miss Layli. Because the Master will wipe his family off the face of the earth.”

  With apparent indifference I asked, “But why would that be, Mash Qasem?”

  “Well, I remember once years ago a boy fell in love with the daughter of a friend of the Master’s . . .”

  “And how did that turn out, Mash Qasem?”

  “Well, why should I lie . . . to the grave it’s ah . . . ah . . . I m’self with my own eyes didn’t see it . . . but that boy suddenly disappeared. As if he’d turned to smoke and gone up to the skies . . . there were many who said the Master shot a bullet into his heart and threw him in a well . . . it was around the time of the Battle of Kazerun . . .” Mash Qasem started describing Dear Uncle’s Battle of Kazerun.

  We didn’t really know when Mash Qasem had become Dear Uncle’s servant but what we had gathered was, first, that he’d gone into service after Dear Uncle’s duties in the provinces were over and he had returned to Tehran. Secondly, Mash Qasem’s character was a little copy of Dear Uncle’s. His imagination worked in a very similar way to Dear Uncle’s imagination. At first when he backed up Dear Uncle’s stories and descriptions of battles, Dear Uncle would yell at him and say, “What are you talking about? You weren’t there!” But Mash Qasem took no notice and, because no one would listen to his daydreams independently and believe them, he directed all his attention over the years to becoming Dear Uncle’s sidekick. As Dear Uncle little by little felt that his audience wasn’t listening with sufficient credulity, particularly to his various stories about battles, perhaps because he needed a witness and perhaps because gradually, under the influence of Mash Qasem’s promptings, he actually saw him there on the battlefield, he slowly accepted Mash Qasem’s attachment to himself and his presence at the battles. This was especially so because, once Mash Qasem had heard the imaginary details of the battles of Kazerun and Mamasani and so on from Dear Uncle, he remembered them very well, and sometimes during the actual telling of a story he was able to help him out.

  But one day, two or three years previously, this acceptance had become official.

  That day Dear Uncle was furious. While repairing an irrigation channel Mash Qasem had carelessly, with a pick, cut through the root of Dear Uncle’s big sweetbrier bush. Dear Uncle was nearly beside himself with rage and, after hitting Mash Qasem on the neck a few times, he screamed, “Get out of here. You’ve no longer any place in this house.”

  And Mash Qasem, bowing his head, said, “Sir, you’ll have to have the cops take me out of this house, or have them take my corpse out of this house. Since you saved my life . . . while there’s a breath left in my body I have to stay in this house and serve you. When was it that you did the deed you did?”

  Then Mash Qasem turned to Dear Uncle’s brothers and sisters and their children, who had all gathered there without daring to show any signs of interceding on his behalf, and with emotion in his voice said, “Think of it . . . in the Battle of Kazerun I’d been wounded by a bullet . . . I’d fallen between two boulders . . . bullets were rainin’ down on all sides . . . I’d said my last prayers . . . the crows and the vultures were up there in the sky, eyein’ me like . . . then suddenly, God bless him, the Master, and may God keep him the great gentleman he is, in the midst of that hail of bullets got himself to me. Like a lion he threw me across his shoulders, and he carried me just like that I don’t know how far, till he got back to our foxhole. Do you think a man’s goin’ to forget something like that?”

  All of us, who’d been so moved listening to the story, became aware of Dear Uncle. All signs of rage had disappeared from his face. He was gazing off into the distance. It was as if he really saw the battlefield there. Gently a slight smile formed on his lips.

  Mash Qasem had also realized the change in the situation. In a mild voice he said, “If it hadn’t been for the Master I’d have been dead and rotten, too, like poor Soltanali Khan.”

  At this point Dear Uncle repeated under his breath, “Poor Soltanali Khan . . . I wanted to do something for him, too, but it wasn’t to be . . . God have mercy on him.”

  By means of these few words, from that day on, Dear Uncle formally accepted that Mash Qasem had been there in the war, under his command. A man who a little while previously had under no circumstances been ready to acknowledge that he had even known Mash Qasem at that time, after that referred to Mash Qasem as his orderly and he would ask Mash Qasem for the names of certain people and places during the repeated telling of his war stories. After a year or so, during gatherings of friends, he even had Mash Qasem tell the tale of how he, Dear Uncle, had saved his life. In this way Mash Qasem—though the biggest incident in his life he could come up with while we were small children had been a fight with a few stray dogs in Qom—was also enrolled as one of the brave heroes of the battles of Kazerun and Mamasani.

  That day, as usual, Mash Qasem once again started off on his description of the Battle of Kazerun, and while he was talking I quietly stole back to the house.

  The conclusion of the involved thoughts that kept going back and forth in my head was that I really had fallen in love with Layli; in particular, the evening of the day when the itinerant ice cream seller had come by and I had happily given half of my ice cream to Layli, the wise words of Mash Qasem came into my mind, “You want everything in the world, all the wealth
in the world, for her, you think you’ve become the most generous man on earth.” It had never happened before that I had ever offered someone any of my ice cream.

  Little by little I experienced all the signs and signals Mash Qasem had mentioned. When Layli wasn’t there I really did feel as though my heart were frozen over, and when I saw her the heat in my heart spread even to my cheeks and ears. When she was with me I never gave a thought to the terrible consequences of love. Only when night came and she had gone back to her house and I was alone did I once again think of the terrible whirlpool of love. After a few nights, little by little, my fear and horror abated. Then, even when alone at night, I wasn’t that afraid, because my nights were filled with memories of seeing her during the day. One of our relatives, who was employed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had brought Dear Uncle a few bottles of Russian eau de cologne from Baku. Sometimes Layli’s scent, which was that Russian eau de cologne, would stay on my hands and then I didn’t want to wash my hands so that the smell wouldn’t go. Little by little I felt I was enjoying being in love. After the misfortunes of the first few days I’d become a fortunate person, but I still had one worry in my heart. I wanted to know whether Layli was in love with me or not. I felt she was, but I wanted to be sure.

  Despite this uncertainty, the days once more passed in complete happiness. The only times a cloud appeared in the clear sky of my cheerfulness was when I thought—God forbid—Dear Uncle had found out my secret. Sometimes I dreamt that Dear Uncle was standing over me with a gun in his hand, staring at my face with his enraged eyes. In terror I’d start up from sleep, soaked in sweat. Although I tried not to think about the outcome of my love, it was more or less clear to me that Dear Uncle would never accept it. The story of the falling out between Dear Uncle and my father was a very old one. Dear Uncle had been against his sister’s marrying my father from the beginning, because he believed his own family was a noble one and he could never accept as suitable the union of an individual who was, in his phrase, an aristocrat, with an ordinary person, and one from the provinces at that. If my father’s marriage to Dear Uncle’s sister hadn’t happened during Dear Uncle’s father’s lifetime, perhaps it would never have happened.