My Uncle Napoleon

by Iraj Pezeshkzad

  In addition, my father didn’t feel the respect he should have for Napoleon, and in meetings and family gatherings and sometimes in the presence of Dear Uncle, he would disrespectfully refer to Napoleon as an adventurer who’d dragged the French nation through suffering and misfortune. I think this was my father’s biggest sin, and the biggest reason for their falling out.

  To be sure, the smoldering embers of these differences were normally invisible under the ashes. Just occasionally, for various reasons, especially over backgammon, they would flare up, and then after a few days things would return to normal again through the help of a family member acting as go-between. These skirmishes between Dear Uncle and my father were not very significant to us children because, whatever happened, we were busy with our own games. But after I knew I was in love with Layli, one of my chief worries was a flaring up of the quarrel between Dear Uncle and my father and, as bad luck would have it, one of the biggest skirmishes ever to affect my whole life was lying in wait for me.

  The origin of the new hostilities was a party in the house of our uncle colonel. Shapur was uncle colonel’s son, and the whole family called him “Puri,” following the example of his mother. He had graduated from university and from the beginning of summer there had been talk of the splendid party that uncle colonel was going to give to celebrate his son’s graduation.

  Puri was a grind and the only member of our large family who’d taken his education beyond the level of a high school diploma. In Dear Uncle’s “aristocratic” family, the children usually stopped their education around the third or fourth class of high school, and Puri’s graduation from university really was a major event. Everyone in the family talked about his genius. Although the boy was no more than twenty-one, because of his height and the hump he had on his back he looked older than his age, and in my opinion he wasn’t an intelligent person, he just had a good memory. He memorized his lessons to the letter and got good grades. Until he was eighteen his mother would take him by the hand and lead him across the road. All in all he wasn’t a bad looking person, but when he talked he spluttered a bit. The whole family—especially Dear Uncle—had talked about his genius so much that we had nicknamed him “Puri the Genius.” There had been so much talk about the splendid party that uncle colonel intended to give in honor of Puri the great genius’s graduation that for the whole holiday half the chatter among us children revolved around it.

  Finally the news came that on the evening of Puri’s birthday there was also to be a party in celebration of his graduation. This was the first time that I’d spent from noon onwards preparing to go to a party. A bath and a haircut, ironing my suit, ironing my shirt, polishing my shoes, and all the rest of the preening and primping took up a good part of the afternoon. I wanted to show myself off as better than ever in Layli’s eyes. I even dabbed a touch from my mother’s bottle of “Souvenir de Paris,” which was a strong feminine scent, on my head and face.

  Uncle colonel’s house had also been built in the big garden but uncle colonel had separated it from our house by a wooden fence. Uncle colonel in reality wasn’t a colonel, he was a major, what they called then a “Yavar.” A few years earlier, however, he had felt he deserved a promotion, and since, coincidentally Dear Uncle Napoleon had suddenly referred to his brother as “colonel,” our family considered him a colonel and addressed him as such.

  As we went into the inner courtyard behind uncle colonel’s house I looked for Layli among the guests who had already arrived. She hadn’t come yet. But before I took in the other people, my eyes fell on the great genius Puri. He’d attached a stiff striped collar to his white shirt and there was a tasteless colored tie around his neck.

  After the genius’s collar and tie, the thing which attracted my attention was the two-man band sitting on chairs beside their instruments (a tar and a zarb); there was a little table in front of them with some fruit and a few cakes on it. The tar player seemed familiar. A moment later I recognized him. He was the mathematics and geometry teacher from our elementary school. Afterwards I discovered that, to eke out his meager teacher’s salary, he used to play the tar at gatherings and parties. The zarb player was a fat blind man who also sang. By eight o’ clock the party had really warmed up and at regular intervals the band played a few cheerful songs. In one corner a group was gathered around a table of alcoholic drinks. From time to time I would stretch out my hand to the plates of cakes and fruit and I always took two, one of which I gave to Layli and the other I ate myself. Incandescent lamps flooded the whole area with light, and so I looked at Layli, and offered her cakes and fruit, very circumspectly. Puri the genius kept glancing over at Layli and me in an angry, spiteful way.

  The regrettable event happened at about half past ten. Dear uncle colonel was showing off the new hunting rifle which Asadollah Mirza, the official in the Foreign Ministry, had brought him from Baku, and he was going on and on about its good points and waiting for Dear Uncle Napoleon to express his opinion.

  Dear Uncle picked it up a few times and held it this way and that and looked at it. The women at the party reminded him a few times not to play with guns, and he answered with a smile that he was an expert on the subject of munitions and knew what he was doing.

  While he had the rifle in his hand, little by little he began to think of the brave battles of his past and started to recall his memories of them, “Yes, I had a gun just like this . . . I remember, once in the thick of the Battle of Mamasani, one day . . .”

  Seeing the rifle in Dear Uncle’s hand and perhaps guessing that there was going to be talk of the wars, Mash Qasem had stationed himself behind Dear Uncle, and at this moment he interrupted the conversation and shouted, “Sir, it was the Battle of Kazerun.”

  Dear Uncle threw an angry look at him. “Why are you talking rubbish? It was the Battle of Mamasani.”

  “Well, why should I lie, sir? As far as I remember, it was the Battle of Kazerun.” At this moment Dear Uncle realized something everyone had realized and this was that Mash Qasem had expressed an opinion on the name of the battle before he knew what Dear Uncle was going to say, and that this reflected badly on the genuineness of whatever story he was going to tell. Quietly, but in a voice full of anger, he said, “My good man, I haven’t yet said . . .”

  “Well, I don’t know about that, sir, but it was the Battle of Kazerun.”

  And he fell silent. Dear Uncle continued, “Yes indeed, it was one day in the thick of the Battle of Mamasani . . . we were in the middle of a valley. On both sides the heights had been taken by armed bandits . . .”

  As Dear Uncle went on with his story he would sometimes rise up from his seat and then sink back down into it, and with the rifle under his right arm he made descriptive gestures with his left, “Just imagine a valley three or four times the size of this courtyard . . . now I’m here with forty or fifty infantrymen . . .”

  In the midst of the guests’ total silence, Mash Qasem once again interrupted, “With your faithful servant Qasem!”

  “Yes, Qasem was what they now call my orderly . . .”

  “Didn’t I say, sir, that it was the Battle of Kazerun?”

  “I said don’t talk rubbish, it was the Battle of Mamasani, you’re getting old, your memory’s gone to pieces, you’re gaga . . .”

  “Sir, I never said a word!”

  “Fine! Shut up and it’ll be even better! Yes indeed, there I was and forty or fifty infantrymen . . . now those infantrymen were in a wretched state . . . as Napoleon has said, a commander with fifty well-fed soldiers can do much more than with a thousand hungry soldiers . . . and then all at once a hail of bullets started. The first thing I did was throw myself down from my horse. This Qasem here . . . with another fellow that was there . . . was next to me and I grabbed hold of him with my hand and pulled him down from his horse . . .”

  Once again Mash Qasem interrupted, “It was me and none other, sir.” An
d, shyly and fearfully, he added, “Not to be pushy like, sir, but I’d like once again to state it was the Battle of Kazerun.”

  Perhaps for the first time in his life, Dear Uncle regretted having allowed Mash Qasem into the arena of his battles.

  “Hell and damnation, wherever it was! Now will you let me speak?”

  “Sir, I’m completely dumb. I don’t know a thing.”

  Dear Uncle, in the midst of his rage at Mash Qasem’s impertinence—and if people hadn’t been sure of his religious principles they’d have been convinced he was drunk—continued, “Yes indeed, I pulled this idiot—and I wish my hand had been smashed and I’d never saved him—down from his horse, and I got myself behind a boulder . . . a boulder about the size of the living-room . . . so what’s the situation . . . two or three of our men have bullet wounds . . . and the rest have taken up positions behind rocks. From the way they’d attacked and were firing I immediately realized that I was dealing with Khodadad Khan’s lot . . . the famous Khodadad Khan . . . one of the old lackeys of the English.”

  Under the influence of Dear Uncle’s exciting story, Mash Qasem seemed to have taken leave of his senses, and once again jumped into the narrative, “Didn’t I say it was the Battle of Kazerun?”

  “Shut up! Yes indeed, the first thing I did was I said I’ve got to trick this Khodadad Khan . . . usually these rebels are pretty daring while their leader’s alive, but as soon as he’s killed they all run away . . . I crawled my way up the side of the boulder . . . I had a fur hat, I put it on a stick and lifted it up so they would think . . .”

  Once again Mash Qasem couldn’t contain himself, “Sir, it’s like it was yesterday . . . I can see your fur hat before me eyes . . . now, if you remember, you lost your fur hat in the Battle of Kazerun, I mean it was shot through . . . in the Battle of Mamasani you didn’t have a fur hat at all.”

  We were all waiting for Dear Uncle to brain Mash Qasem with the barrel or the butt of the rifle. But contrary to everyone’s expectation, he melted a little. Either he wanted to quiet Mash Qasem down and finish his story, or in the world of his imagination he simply changed the site of the episode. He mildly said, “It seems that Mash Qasem’s right . . . apparently it was the Battle of Kazerun . . . that is, it was around the beginning of the Battle of Kazerun . . .”

  Mash Qasem’s eyes lit up with joy. “Didn’t I say so, sir? Why should I lie, to the grave it’s ah . . . ah . . . it’s like it was yesterday.”

  “Yes, I only had one thought in my head. This was to get Khodadad Khan. When I put my fur hat on that stick, Khodadad Khan, who was a first class shot, lifted his head up from behind a rock . . . now it was me and him . . . I invoked the blessed Ali and took aim.”

  Dear Uncle’s tall body rose up. As if he were taking aim he put the rifle against his right shoulder and even closed his left eye.

  “I saw nothing but Khodadad’s forehead . . . I had seen him many times . . . those wide eyebrows . . . the scar above the right eyebrow . . . I aimed between the two eyebrows and . . .”

  Suddenly, at this moment, in the midst of everyone’s complete silence and just as Dear Uncle was aiming right between the eyes of his enemy, an unexpected event happened. From near the area where he was standing, a sound was heard. It was a dubious sort of sound, like the scraping of a chair leg over stone, or the unexpected squeaking of a worn out chair, or . . . but later I realized that most of the guests thought its origin was a chair and nothing worse had entered their minds.

  For a moment Dear Uncle stood rooted to the spot. Everyone at the party was as if turned to stone; no one stirred. After a moment Dear Uncle’s gaze seemed to wake up and move, glaring as if all the blood in his body had rushed into his eyes. He turned toward the nearby area where the sound had come from.

  There were only two people there: my father and Qamar, a fat, heavy girl, one of our relatives, who was a bit simple.

  For a short moment there was silence. All of a sudden Qamar began to laugh in an idiotic fashion. As a result of her laughter the children and a few of the adults, and even my father, began to laugh. Although I didn’t really understand what was going on, I sensed the storm that was about to break and I squeezed Layli’s hand hard in mine. For a moment Dear Uncle turned the rifle barrel so that it was pointing at my father’s chest. Everyone fell silent. My father looked in a confused way from one side to the other. Dear Uncle suddenly threw the rifle onto a sofa at the side of the courtyard and in a strangled voice said, “As Ferdowsi put it:

  ‘To raise up someone vile, to hope that they

  Might then improve themselves in any way,

  Is tantamount to cutting your own throat

  And nourishing a snake inside your coat.’”

  And then as he was on his way toward the door, he yelled, “Let’s go!”

  Dear Uncle’s wife set off after him. And Layli, though she hadn’t properly understood what was going on, felt its seriousness and withdrew her hand from my fingers’ tight grip. With a quick look she said goodbye to me and set off after them.

  TWO

  IT LOOKED AS THOUGH I had another sleepless night ahead of me. I tossed from side to side beneath the mosquito net but sleep didn’t come. It was over an hour since I’d returned from the party in uncle colonel’s house. After my father left, immediately on the heels of Dear Uncle’s angry departure, the party more or less collapsed. Perhaps a few of the guests were still there but they were talking so quietly that their voices didn’t reach beyond Dear Uncle’s yard, and I was sure they were discussing the unfortunate incident.

  I went over the events of the last few days in my mind: I had suddenly fallen in love with Layli, Dear Uncle Napoleon’s daughter. After love’s first anxiety-filled days, I’d gradually felt myself to be lucky and I was glad I’d fallen in love, but then this unfortunate incident had destroyed my peace of mind and everyone else’s. From the furious protests with which my father had responded to Dear Uncle’s irate accusation I’d guessed that my father had had no part in producing the dubious sound. I could still hear the lowered voices of my mother and father coming from their mosquito net. Sometimes my father’s voice would be raised and threatening but it was clear that my mother would then put her hand over his mouth. A few times I heard her say, “For goodness sake, dear, make less noise, the children might hear . . . whatever happens, he’s my older brother . . . you know I’d do anything for you . . . just let it go!” The last time, before I slept, I clearly heard my father’s angry voice again, “I’ll give him a Battle of Kazerun he won’t forget in a hurry . . . reciting that ‘To raise up someone vile’ poem at me!”

  The next morning I came out from my mosquito net dreading the events which would logically come next. I ate my breakfast in the midst of my mother’s and father’s silence, and there was complete silence in the garden, too. It seemed that everything, even the trees and flowers, were waiting to see what Dear Uncle would do. Even uncle colonel’s servant didn’t raise his head while he was bringing back the chairs and plates we had lent for the party. I walked up and down till ten, waiting for Layli to come out of the house. Finally I couldn’t stand it any more and I went over to Mash Qasem. “Mash Qasem, why haven’t the kids come into the garden today?”

  Mash Qasem was rolling a cigarette; he shook his head and said, “Well, m’dear, why should I lie? To tell the truth, I don’t know anythin’ . . . but it’s possible the Master’s told them they’ve no right to put a foot outside the house. You were at the colonel’s house last night, weren’t you? You saw what happened, didn’t you?”

  “Is Dear Uncle very angry?”

  “Why should I lie? I haven’t seen the Master from morning till now. But old Naneh Bilqis, when she took his tea for him, she said you’d think he was a wounded lion . . . and, m’dear, he’s got every right to be. For that to happen right in the middle of talkin’ about the Battle of Kazerun . . .
now, if it’d been the Battle of Mamasani it would’ve been different, but the Battle of Kazerun’s no laughin’ matter . . . me m’self, I’ve seen with these very eyes the things the Master did there . . . if those parts is safe as houses now that’s all the Master’s doin’ . . . God preserve him, I say. When he was on his bay horse swingin’ his sword about on the battlefield . . . you’d think a lion was coming . . . me—who was one of us—I was scared to death, never mind the enemy.”

  “But Mash Qasem, do you think . . . that sound last night . . .”

  “Certainly, m’dear, it was that all right . . . of course, why should I lie, I didn’t really catch it properly, I mean I heard it but I was thinking about what the Master was sayin’ . . . but the Master himself heard it . . . and when we got back to the house with the Master, young master Puri really stirred things up.”

  “You mean he went back to Dear Uncle’s house with you?”

  “Certainly, m’dear, he came as far as the door . . . in fact, he came right in. He kept whisperin’ in the Master’s ear that it was a great insult to the Master.”

  “But why, Mash Qasem? What will Puri get out of it if Dad and Dear Uncle are at each others’ throats?”

  I froze when I heard Mash Qasem’s answer, the truth of which I only realized later.

  “Well, m’dear, if you’re askin’ me, this young master Puri’s really fallen for Miss Layli . . . his mother’s already told Naneh Bilqis that she wants to come and ask for Miss Layli’s hand like . . . that time last night when you and Miss Layli were foolin’ about enjoyin’ yourselves, well, it’s like he was jealous. Besides, he hasn’t figured it out that Miss Layli’s thirteen or fourteen years old and can get married, but you, m’dear, can’t get married at thirteen or fourteen.”