The Colonel

by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

  “You need someone who’s next of kin, Colonel; the body has to be washed by someone next of kin, like a mother or a sister.”

  Ali Seif ’s voice hit the colonel like a slap in the face and hung there for a moment until the echo died away. Of course, he knew perfectly well that the laying out had to be done by a close relative, but it vexed him that nobody had thought about it earlier. What could be done about it now that the ambulance had gone back? Why had they not told him before? How could nobody have thought about a body washer when they had sat him down in the ambulance, with no idea where he was going, next to his dead daughter? Isn’t body washing the most basic part of their job? What are they bloody paid for? They shouldn’t break things to people so suddenly and with such bad timing, when they should have thought about it beforehand. But it’s no good worrying about that now; I need to get on with it.

  “Yes, colonel, you need to sort this out. We’ll stay here until you get back. Go and fetch her sister. Have a think, and bring whatever else you need. But we haven’t got all night, you know.”

  “Yes, I know.” I know that we have to get this thing over with by daylight. “But where can I get a gravedigger from? Some out-of-work fellow off the street, maybe?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, are there graves ready dug, then?”

  “That’s a thought, but no. We’ll help you dig. But we need a pick and shovel. Where are we going to get them from?”

  “I wish you’d thought about that before the ambulance went off. I wish I had had my wits about me at the time, but then my wits aren’t what they used to be…”

  The colonel’s problem with his wits was that he had got used to living in the past and thinking about nothing else. The past had such a hold on him that he had grown afraid of dealing with what was happening under his nose. This fear of the present and living in the past had become a habit. Perhaps it was just an instinctive retreat, a defence against events.

  In occasional idle moments, his thoughts wandered back to the story of Rostam and Ashkabus, those ancient enemies of the Shahnameh, and he would lose himself in the story of their battle, which he never tired of… Really, he ought to have given his children names like Paridokht and Ashkabus.14 He was fully aware of this involuntary tendency of his to dwell on the past, and it bothered him that even now it might make him forget what it was that he had to fetch. And so, as he walked back home, he kept repeating aloud to himself, ‘pick and shovel; Farzaneh, shroud, pick and shovel; Farzaneh, shroud…’

  “Right, gentlemen… I’ll leave you in charge of my daughter until I get back.”

  The colonel left the mortuary without bothering to wait for an answer. He knew perfectly well that there could be no answer to what he had just said and, when he thought about it, he realised that there was no need to have said it. But then, is anything we say ever really necessary, and are all words to be weighed in the balance of reason? No, most things we say are to stop ourselves worrying and to keep a lid on our own fears, so that, in time, they become just a habit. It’s like when, without thinking, we tell one of our boys – let’s say my Kuchik – who is heading off to war, to take care. Well, really, as if he wouldn’t take care if we didn’t say it! In effect, aren’t we just trying to say that the war should look after him? No, since the war has not undertaken to take care of anyone. So, even though we know that what we say means nothing, we still say it, just out of a wish to stop our loved ones from worrying. Otherwise, could there be anything more moronic than a man of the colonel’s age asking two young warriors to look after his daughter, a girl who was asleep for all eternity in her coffin? After all, they had not looked after her very well when she’d been alive, had they?

  It’s stupid, just stupid; either everything is stupid, or I am an idiot!

  When young Masoud had been about to set off for the front, the colonel, without thinking, had said to him, “Take care of yourself, my boy.” The instant he said it, he was all too conscious of the fact that war was some kind of poisonous, carnivorous plant. You could make it responsible for anything, except for the lives of the people caught up in it. Apart from anything else, anyone could tell that, if war was going to be answerable for people’s welfare, then war would not be war. It would be something else. What else could I have said? Any fool can see that if someone’s worried about his own welfare, he is hardly going to go to war! So, if he had really wanted to dissuade little Masoud, he should have said something quite different to him before he had set off, and come up with some far more persuasive arguments.

  But I was firmly of the view that my children, each in their own way and independently of me, had the right to form their own set of values and standards, even though Masoud had persuaded himself that his entire family was beyond the pale, including me, his own father. Sure, I believed in independence for my children, but it’s a bit late to do anything about it now, even if I wanted to, isn’t it?

  Am I going the right way? It looks right.

  Yes, he could see the city lights in front of him. It was lucky that the city was out of range of Iraqi missiles, otherwise there would have been blackouts and the colonel would not have been able to find his way. By now, though, he was sure he was on the right track, heading towards the entrance to the narrow street which, after several twists and turns past a number of cul-de-sacs, eventually emerged into the square in front of the town hall and carried on to the little alley where his house was. He did not have to go through the square, though. Another way was to climb a grassy slope, taking care not to slip on the wet, rotting grass and then go down to a big hollow, which was not very deep but was always full of mud and rainwater, where he had to watch his step. After going round the hollow, he reached his alleyway, a little alleyway that was just made for a fine spring day when a man could take his stick and go out for a walk. For no sooner had you emerged from it than you could see in front of you the meadows on the foothills ablaze with flowers, and inhale the breeze that came down the mountains to fill the lungs, blowing away the accumulation of cheap cigarette smoke, and sucking in the delight of being alive. These were moments to be savoured, when no black clouds hung over the sky, and the sun did not seem to have swallowed itself in grief. Not like these days, when the sun seemed to have been buried for ever and there was nothing but the irritating drip of incessant, soul-destroying rain.

  As the colonel turned into his street he knew that he had to be careful how he went at this late hour, and have some answers ready for the young men who hung around on every street corner like goats, seeing conspiracies and plots in the most everyday comings and goings. It was as if they were training to be detectives, practising on the passers-by. To lend weight to their dangerous game, they had to imagine that each of the passers-by had committed some criminal act. At the very least, they were involved in adultery or drug smuggling, or visiting a cache of weapons, or were linked to people who were plotting to overthrow the regime. Perhaps the colonel was getting carried away, but the fact was that he had no wish to make his problems any worse and, if he was letting his imagination get the better of him, he chose to see it as some passing compulsion that was not natural to him. It grew out of the atmosphere that pervaded the streets and alleyways where he lived. He regarded the fear and insecurity that this atmosphere provoked in him as a kind of necessary training for life which, like it or not, everyone was forced to be inoculated with. Take the sensation of fear, for instance. You can be frightened of something without knowing what it is. Looming over your head, you fancy you see a sword held in an invisible hand, and you have long felt its steel in your bowels. This feeling is irrational, and you cannot shake it off. Because you fear being spied upon, you end up believing that you really are being spied upon. But if this turns out not to be so, you still have to ask yourself why you can’t stop imagining that it’s happening. Where does this corrosive and exhausting feeling that constantly tells you that every eye is watching you come from?

  “Yes, sir, yes, it’s me. I’m going home t
o 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.”

  What was it that Amir had said on that rainy day when he had been sitting on the old velvet sofa next to the stove with his legs casually crossed, smoking his pipe and with that Bolshevik cap on his head that he refused to take off, even indoors? How he had banged on, so pretentiously, so much so that Qorbani had believed that his brother-in-law fancied himself as some sort of leader. What had happened in that room? the colonel had seen how Qorbani had slipped out and, without telling the family what he was up to, rustled up a crowd and brought them back to the colonel’s house to do honour to his son, the returning hero who, ‘After enduring years of imprisonment and torture, here he is once more, with his head held high. Having depended on the unstoppable momentum of the people to secure his release from gaol, he is now going to mobilise that same force to overthrow this government of tyrants and oppressors and make this part of the country tremble with fe
ar!’

  What a speech! No doubt Qorbani had learned this humbug and windbaggery from newspapers, which at that time had made a sudden U-turn from their former line. I hope I never read words like that in a newspaper again, let alone in a novel, for those kind of hollow, weasel words aren’t even worthy of a piece of fiction!

  And in no time a crowd of people, ‘simple gullible people’, as if they had suddenly been woken from a deep sleep, some with umbrellas and some without, began to beat a path to the colonel’s house in the pouring rain. the colonel, stunned and silent, looked on as tray after tray of fruit and pastries were delivered, ordered by Qorbani and his cronies. After a while, so many people had piled in on top of each other in the courtyard, and even in the alley outside, that there was no more room for them. He noticed that Amir had been dragged out of the living room onto the verandah to give a speech of thanks. But the crowd wanted more. The place was not large enough for such a huge gathering, nor was there a loudspeaker, but it did not matter. That was the sort of thing that Qorbani was used to dealing with, and before Amir had had time to think, he was being swept along by the crowd to the town square. Amir, whom Qorbani claimed had ‘risked his life, all his worldly goods and his reputation to further the cause of the revolution’ – more weasel words – was hoisted up onto a dais, fully equipped with a lectern and microphone. Helpers were even hauled in to hold umbrellas over his son in the rain, which was still drumming down mercilessly through the barrage of slogans and clichés that bellowed out in broken fragments from the loudspeakers: ‘Oppression… inflation… oil… fatherland… workers… proletariat… dictatorship… ism… more isms… and freedom, oh yes, we mustn’t forget freedom.’ And the people suddenly found they had a talent for listening, for harmony and conformity. Raised fists and slogans, a scuffle or two at the edge of the square, a couple of random shots, shouts of ‘make way,’ and then Qorbani and his boys forced a passage through the crowd for Amir to a big car that was waiting there with its doors open. It had been borrowed from a showroom belonging to one of Qorbani’s new best friends.