My Uncle Napoleon

by Iraj Pezeshkzad

  The husband and wife were considerably ahead of us and had reached the garden. We were running after them with all our strength when suddenly the sound of a shot rang through the garden and immediately after that we heard the noise of Dustali’s heart-rending scream, “Aaaggghhh! She’s killed me . . .”

  We had reached the walnut tree. We still hadn’t properly sorted out what had happened. At this moment Mash Qasem caught up with us, carrying a lantern. The lantern’s weak light brought us face to face with a strange scene.

  Dustali Khan had fallen prone on the ground, and on the back of his trousers, especially in the area of his buttocks, bloodstains were visible. Aziz al-Saltaneh, gun in hand, was standing by his head, motionless and dumbfounded, like someone who had just woken from a dream.

  Everyone was in a state of panic and confusion. My father was the first person to bend down and lift Dustali Khan’s head. The head fell back motionless to the ground.

  “We must do something. Mash Qasem, run and fetch Dr. Naser al-Hokama.”

  Over all the voices speaking to each other and past each other Qamar gave a loud laugh and said, “Mummy, did you kill daddy Dustali? . . . That’s good! Do you remember he kept saying let’s go to the doctor so he can get rid of the baby?”

  Uncle colonel took the gun from Aziz al-Saltaneh’s hand and said, “We have to get him to a hospital immediately.”

  Asadollah Mirza said with a smile, “The wretched fool goes off and does a San Francisco, and now he’ll have to sleep on his belly till the end of his life. Because this . . . because not to be impolite about it . . . this sit-upon of his won’t be a place for sitting upon any more.”

  Shamsali Mirza said with a frown, “Asadollah, please! This is no time for joking.”

  “Moment, moment, do you imagine it’s anything serious? What could four bits of buckshot, that can hardly kill a partridge, do in all the fat flesh of this donkey Dustali’s buttocks? He’s playing dead out of fear of Mrs. Aziz al-Saltaneh.”

  Uncle colonel said harshly, “Instead of chattering, give some thought to this poor devil. In my opinion Dr. Naser al-Hokama will be of no use. We have to take him to the hospital.”

  At this moment Mash Qasem came back. “The doctor says we’re to take the patient there.”

  My father also thought that we should take the wounded man to a hospital, but in an imperious voice Dear Uncle Napoleon said, “In my opinion, if it’s at all possible, it’s better we forget about the hospital.”

  Naturally Dear Uncle’s opinion was the one that was acted upon and the motionless body of Dustali Khan was transferred, on Mash Qasem’s back, to Dr. Naser al-Hokama’s surgery.

  FOURTEEN

  A FEW OF THE NEIGHBORS had gathered at the entrance. Shamsali Mirza went to the door and sent them off to their own houses, but before the door to Dr. Naser al-Hokama’s house could be closed the Indian brigadier, Maharat Khan, insinuated himself in.

  I glanced at Dear Uncle. He was staring at the Indian, pale and wide-eyed, and I could guess what was going on inside him.

  Dr. Naser al-Hokama loudly exclaimed, “Your good health, gentlemen, your good health, but I’m not a surgeon, you’ll have to take him to the hospital . . . Mash Qasem said he’d been hurt in the leg, but now from what you’re saying it seems he’s been shot.”

  Dear Uncle said to him quietly, “Doctor, for the sake of all our former friendship and neighborliness and closeness, I’m asking you to examine Dustali Khan . . . it’s out of the question that we take him to the hospital. I’ll explain everything to you later.”

  There was such supplication, and at the same time such firmness, in Dear Uncle’s voice that the doctor made no further objections. He simply said, “Then on your head be it. If, God forbid, an infaction develops then I’m not responsible.” The doctor always had a strange horror of infection, which he pronounced “infaction,” and he even terrified patients who had sprained their wrists with his talk of the consequences of “infaction.”

  Nevertheless he went over to Dustali Khan, who was lying on his stomach on the consulting room’s examination table, and said, “But all you ladies and gentlemen must leave the room. I can’t carry out an examination with all these people here.”

  Everyone made for the door, but Aziz al-Saltaneh, who kept hitting herself on the face and head, said, “But I have to stay . . . I wish my hand had been broken, that I’d been paralyzed so I couldn’t have done it . . . I have to stay to see this calamity of mine through.”

  “Your good health, but you too will have to be so kind as to leave, and if you don’t then I shall have nothing to do with the patient.”

  At this moment the Indian jumped into the conversation. “I have a very efficacious Indian ointment for the treatment of wounds of this nature which is certainly producing the most excellent healing effects in the wink of an eye. Right this minute I will go and fetch it.”

  And having said this he left in a great hurry.

  His face contorted, Dear Uncle said through gritted teeth, “Qasem! Don’t open the door to that shameless countryless wretch! Now he’s seen his plan didn’t work out as expected, he wants to kill Dustali Khan with his Indian ointment. No doubt Dustali Khan wanted to tell me the secret plans of the English.”

  Mash Qasem nodded his head and said, “If the bastard waits outside the door till mornin’, I won’t open it. I know what that ointment is . . . it’s a black oil that they get from the liver of black vipers. Put a little tin of it in front of an elephant’s nose and he’ll turn to ashes on the spot . . . there was a man in our town who . . .”

  I went over to the patient and the doctor to see what was going on there. Dr. Naser al-Hokama was standing to one side and waiting for everyone to leave his consulting room, and Aziz al-Saltaneh was refusing to move. Finally she too left, at Dear Uncle’s insistence. The doctor said, “My assistant isn’t here. Just Mash Qasem must stay, to help me.”

  Mash Qasem dashed forward, “At your service . . . I’ve a lot of experience at this kind of work. Why should I lie? To the grave it’s ah . . . ah . . . One time there was a man from our town who’d been stabbed in the spleen, and by myself, I . . .”

  The doctor frowned and said, “Your good health, Mr. Mash Qasem, there’s no need for you to stay either, you chatter too much, out you go . . . that gentleman can come and help me.”

  The doctor pointed at me. He cleared everyone from the room and said, “Either go to your own homes or sit in the waiting room. I don’t want to see anyone in the hallway or in the yard outside.” The waiting room and consulting room were on each side of the entrance to the building, and the doctor’s house was on the further side of the yard.

  When everyone had gone into the waiting room and the surgery was empty, the doctor said to me, “Your good health, my dear boy, help me get the clothes off the patient. Now you’re not afraid of blood, are you?”

  “No, doctor sir, certainly not.”

  “Then let’s get Dustali Khan’s jacket and trousers off.”

  I didn’t find this too difficult, because it was as if the motionless patient, even though he was unconscious, actually helped us remove his clothes, and he didn’t have the dead weight unconscious people normally have.

  The doctor cleaned the places that had been bleeding with swabs and alcohol. The wounds consisted of three small holes. The doctor touched the wounds and said under his breath, “It looks as though the pellets entered his body after they’d been fired from some distance away . . . they haven’t gone in very far, they’re just under the skin.”

  I realized that Dustali Khan’s forehead was covered in sweat and that he was moving. I drew the doctor’s attention to this. He brought his head down close to the patient’s ear and said, “Dustali Khan, can you hear me?”

  A smothered moan emerged from Dustali Khan’s throat, “Yes, I can hear you.”


  Then he raised his eyelids, looked carefully round the room and in a quieter voice asked, “My wife’s not here?”

  “Your good health, there’s no one here except myself and this young man.”

  It was as if Dustali Khan had been holding back his cries until this moment; he gave vent to a great moan and said, “What I’ve been through . . . Doctor . . . what’s happened? Where did it hit?”

  “Your good health, there’s nothing serious. Three little pellets fired from quite a distance away have struck you in the buttocks . . . but they haven’t gone in far . . . if you can stand it, I’ll be able to get them out . . . or would you rather I sent you to the hospital?”

  With a moan Dustali Khan said, “I’m dying of the pain . . . I’ve been in pain for an hour and haven’t dared to utter a sound.”

  “Why didn’t you utter a sound?”

  “Out of fear of that running sore . . . that murderer . . . my wife . . . I’ll tell you about it later, but I beg you on the soul of your own children not to send me to the hospital, and I’d like to ask you to tell my wife that my life’s in danger but that the hospital’s not . . .”

  The doctor cut him off, “But I haven’t got anything to anaesthetize you with here, you’ll have to grit your teeth while I get the pellets out with tweezers . . . you’ll have to put up with it!”

  “Yes, doctor, I’ll put up with it . . . but promise you’ll tell my wife my life’s in danger and that there’s not much hope I’ll pull through . . . if she realizes I’m not in too bad a shape she’ll throttle me before morning’s here, she’ll kill me.”

  And then he addressed me, “And you, on your own mother’s soul, don’t you be saying anything . . . you know Aziz, you know she’ll . . .”

  “Don’t worry about that, Mr. Dustali Khan, I promise I won’t say a word to Mrs. al-Saltaneh.”

  Dustali Khan breathed a sigh of relief and asked for a glass of water. The doctor went out to talk to the people in the waiting room. After I’d given Dustali Khan a drink of water from the doctor’s metal washstand, I followed him. The doctor was insisting to Aziz al-Saltaneh that she return home.

  “You go back to your house now, Mrs. al-Saltaneh, your husband is not at all well, but I am doing my very best . . .”

  As he was saying this the doctor winked at Dear Uncle and the others who were there, and in this way let them know he wasn’t telling the truth.

  Asadollah Mirza came over to me and quietly asked, “How is he?”

  I answered as quietly, “It’s nothing serious, he pretended to be unconscious out of fear of Mrs. al-Saltaneh.”

  Despite the doctor’s insistence, no one was ready to leave the premises. The doctor had no choice but to go back to his consulting room. I followed him. With Dustali biting into the pillow while great drops of sweat formed on his forehead, the doctor extracted the three tiny pellets with tweezers, and then dressed the wounds.

  In a voice choking from the intensity of the pain, Dustali Khan managed to beg the doctor that he bandage his whole body, and asked him to say that he couldn’t be taken home and that he was to sleep in Dear Uncle’s house that night.

  When the doctor emerged from his consulting room everyone clustered around him. Aziz al-Saltaneh shouted, “Doctor, doctor, tell me the worst, tell me how he is.”

  “Your good health, ma’am, your good health, at the moment we can’t say anything. It depends on how tough his body is. If he makes it through the night, perhaps he’ll live . . .”

  Once again while he was saying this he indicated, by winking and moving his eyebrows, to Dear Uncle and the rest that what he was saying was just a convenient ruse.

  Then he went on, “But let him sleep at the Master’s house tonight, so that he’ll be closer to me and if he collapses I’ll be able to get to him more quickly. I’ve given him some morphine for now so that if he comes round he won’t suffer too much.”

  We placed the motionless bandaged body of Dustali Khan on a portable cot and transferred him to Dear Uncle’s house.

  Azizullah Khan, the local constable, who had been pacing up and down at the doorway, accompanied us to Dear Uncle’s house. Dear Uncle said to him, “Mr. Azizullah Khan, Dustali is better. You can be on your way.”

  “But sir, it’s my duty to make out a report. Someone’s been shot.”

  “It was an accident, my good man, he was cleaning a gun when it went off. He’s in good shape and no one’s lodging a complaint.”

  “But saving your grace, sir, how was he cleaning his gun if the bullet went into that part of his body? Do you take me for a child?”

  Mash Qasem became angry, “Why are you makin’ things so difficult, Azizullah Khan? All you folks from Malayer know how to do is make things difficult. The poor feller was playin’ with his gun and it went off . . .”

  Constable Azizullah Khan interrupted him, “Then are you telling me he was playing with the gun with his backside?”

  “Well, a gun’s a gun . . . sometimes it hits a man in the eye, sometimes in his liver, sometimes in that part. There was a man in our town who . . .”

  Dear Uncle angrily interrupted him, “Mash Qasem, can I possibly ask you not to interfere?”

  Dear Uncle took Azizullah Khan into a room and there convinced him by logic and irrefutable proofs that it was possible, while a man was playing with a gun, for a stray bullet to strike that part of his anatomy, because when Azizullah Khan emerged from the room he said, “You’ve really put me to shame, sir, you’ve been that good to me, sir . . . I’ll be off now, and I never heard nothing about all this fuss . . . but if, God forbid, anything should happen to Dustali Khan, you’ll have to tell the police station yourself by morning.”

  When I went into the room where they had lain Dustali Khan down on his stomach, I caught sight of Layli, who was sitting with tearful eyes next to the patient’s bed. I couldn’t bear to see her upset and unhappy. I signalled her to come over to me and told her that the wounded man was not in a serious condition and was playing the role of a patient at death’s door out of fear of his wife.

  Aziz al-Saltaneh could not keep still. She constantly slapped herself about the face and head, moaning and sobbing, “God cripple me . . . God strike me dead, I never wanted to see Dustali like this . . . for goodness sake, think of something, bring another doctor . . . let’s take him to the hospital.”

  And Dear Uncle was trying to calm her down. “Mrs. al-Saltaneh, another doctor will be of no use . . . what doctor are we going to get at this time of night? And it’s not at all advisable to move him now. He’s only just stopped bleeding . . . and then the hospital is going to ask questions about what happened . . . do you want to go to prison?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then a moaning sound came from the wounded man, and his lips moved. He seemed to be saying something but no words came from his mouth.

  Asadollah Mirza, who had remained quiet during this whole period, said, “Moment, it looks as though he wants to say something.”

  Then he sat down by the bed and brought his head down to the patient’s mouth, “Speak, Dustali . . . if you’re still alive say something. If you’re already on your way give our regards to those who’ve gone before.”

  Dustali’s lips continued to tremble. Finally his voice could be heard, “Where’s Aziz?”

  Striking herself on the head and chest, Aziz al-Saltaneh sat down next to him and said, “I’m here, Dustali, may God let me suffer in your place. I’m here.”

  With his eyes closed, in a weak voice, Dustali Khan said, “No, no, you’re not Aziz . . . I . . . I . . . I want . . . Aziz.”

  “It’s me, it’s really me, I’m Aziz, O God, what I wouldn’t do to hear that voice of yours . . .”

  “You’re . . . you’re . . . not Aziz . . . I . . . want Aziz.”

  “God strike me dead . .
. he doesn’t know me any more . . . Dustali . . . Dustali, open your eyes, I’m Aziz.”

  A moment later Dustali Khan opened his eyes and stared at his wife’s face. “Agh . . . agh . . . thank God . . . I’ve seen you once more . . . Aziz . . . let bygones be bygones . . . let me depart with an easy mind . . . water . . . water . . .”

  We managed to give him a drop of water. He opened his eyes completely and went on in the same weak voice, “Aziz . . . forgive me . . . maybe I’ve committed many sins but . . . in the matter of Qamar I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t the guilty one. I was innocent . . .”

  Dustali Khan’s gaze wandered round the room and he asked, “Where’s Qamar?”

  “In the other room with the children . . . God, I’d be glad to hear she’d died after she’s caused all this . . .”

  “Watch over her . . . that girl is crazy . . . to save the family honor I said to her that . . . but . . . but . . . I wasn’t the guilty one . . . where’s Shamsali Mirza?”

  Shamsali Mirza came quickly forward, “I’m here Dustali . . .”

  “Please, get hold of a pen and paper and write my will down, so that I can sign it before my strength finally gives out . . . everything I own belongs to Aziz . . .”

  Aziz al-Saltaneh struck herself on the face, “What are you saying? May God strike Aziz dead . . . Aziz isn’t going to outlive you for you to leave her anything.”

  Dustali Khan screamed, “Shamsali! Do not refuse me my last request!”

  Mash Qasem interrupted, “Eh, don’t upset him . . . God rest his soul, he was a good feller.” Everybody looked angrily at Mash Qasem and he hung his head.

  Shamsali Mirza produced a pen and paper and Dustali Khan began to dictate his will. He left his house, shop and worldly goods to his wife. At the end he said with a moan, “Just a moment, I forgot the property at Mahmudabad. Write that, in the same way, I leave to my wife the entire estate in Mahmudabad near Qazvin, together with its water canals . . .”

  Once again Aziz al-Saltaneh struck herself in the face. “May God strike Aziz dead and may she never see the property in Mahmudabad again . . . by the way, was that caravanserai in Mahmudabad yours too?”