The House of the Mosque

by Kader Abdolah

  One thought was uppermost in his mind: let me reach Rahmanali before the fundamentalists see me. If they try to stop me, I’ll yell his name so loudly that Rahmanali will be sure to hear it, even if he’s sleeping more soundly than he ever has in his life.

  He entered the village as quietly as he could. There were four blocks to go before he reached the square where Rahmanali lived.

  The dogs had picked up his scent. An unfamiliar smell in the middle of a cold winter night spelled trouble. A dog behind him suddenly began to bark. It was bound to wake up the entire village. What should he do: run or keep walking? At the second block a huge black dog jumped over a wooden fence. ‘Allah!’ He burst into a run.

  Every dog in the village was now barking like mad. The black dog was chasing after him, so Aqa Jaan speeded up. Ahead of him he saw a group of surprised villagers. Two men tried to bar his way, but he pushed them aside. ‘Rahmanali!’ he shouted. He was running as hard as he could. His heart was pounding in his throat, and his eyes were so filled with tears he couldn’t see a thing. Blindly, he headed towards the square. Everyone knew where he was going.

  ‘Al-l-a-a-a-a-a-h! Rahmanali! Refuge! I’m seeking refuge for my son!’

  Three armed men suddenly came out of an alley. One of them hit Aqa Jaan on the back of his leg, so that he tripped and fell in the snow. ‘Who are you?’ the man demanded, and he shone a torch in Aqa Jaan’s face.

  They recognised him immediately, helped him to his feet and walked him back to the van, where a few villagers were gathered on top of the rocks.

  This was preposterous. Aqa Jaan couldn’t believe it was really happening. This was his village. His family was buried here. Why were they treating him like this? The revolution had brought out the worst in people. You couldn’t trust anyone any more, not even your own brother or sister. He’d read a lot of books about the lives of kings, so he knew that such people had always existed. Treachery and wickedness were part of human nature.

  Aqa Jaan climbed back in and Shahbal turned the van around.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ Aqa Jaan said.

  ‘Home?’

  ‘I’ll bury him in the courtyard, under the cedar tree.’

  Shahbal wanted to say something, but he couldn’t find the words.

  He carefully wound his way down the mountain. Eagles were soaring overhead – their first flight of the day. They had been awakened by the sun, which was slowly beginning to rise over the mountain peaks. The light wouldn’t reach the city for at least another hour.

  They needed to hurry, but Shahbal didn’t dare drive faster. Every time he braked, the van skidded and Jawad’s body bumped against the front seat.

  Suddenly, a mile or so behind him, he saw a car. The driver was flashing his lights. Aqa Jaan had noticed it too. ‘Pull over. Something must be wrong.’

  Shahbal stopped and they got out. He grabbed the torch and signalled to let the driver know he’d seen him.

  The car vanished behind a few rocks, then came back into view.

  ‘It’s a jeep!’ Shahbal exclaimed.

  The jeep stopped. The driver turned off the lights and got out. It was a man, wearing ordinary clothes, except for a French beret and knee-high boots. He rushed over to Aqa Jaan, uttered a gentle ‘Salaam’, embraced him and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Give me the body,’ he said. ‘I’ll bury Jawad on my estate. But we’ve got to hurry. It’ll soon be light.’

  Shahbal was puzzled. The man was obviously an old friend of Aqa Jaan’s, but Shahbal didn’t know him.

  ‘Help me get him into the jeep,’ the man said to Shahbal.

  Working together, the three of them loaded the body into the jeep.

  The man embraced Aqa Jaan again, patted Shahbal on the back, hopped into his jeep, skilfully turned the vehicle around and drove off into the mountains.

  Aqa Jaan and Shahbal stood by the empty van and watched until the jeep had melted into the darkness. The eagles circled the van one last time, then flew up high into the sky.

  All-Wise

  The house was shrouded in grief, as though a black chador had been drawn over it. No one talked, no one cried, no one broke the silence. Except for one person who chanted the All-Wise, All-Knowing surah over and over again:

  Oh, you, you are possessed!

  There is nothing, but we have its treasures with Us,

  And We send it down only in fixed measures.

  We send forth the pollinating winds,

  While they are heavy laden.

  All-Wise! All-Knowing!

  It is We who give life and death.

  It is We who know those who came before

  And those who shall come after.

  Sorrow wilted the plants, a few of the fish floated belly-up in the hauz, and the old cat died on the roof of the mosque.

  Meanwhile, there had been a wave of executions. The opponents of the regime were buried outside the cities, at the foot of the mountains. No one was allowed to visit their graves. The eyes of the nation were focused on the martyrs at the front. Week after week, hundreds of bodies were transported to the cities during the Friday prayer.

  The crow was the first to break the silence in the house. It flew up into the air and cawed loudly, signalling the arrival of a visitor.

  Fakhri Sadat was in the kitchen, cooking dinner. Lizard opened the front gate.

  An unknown man in a worn suit and hat came in and walked towards the hauz.

  Fakhri Sadat stared in surprise at the stranger walking so calmly past her window.

  The man stopped by the hauz and stared at the fish. Then he strolled around the courtyard with his hands behind his back, pausing first by the stairs, then peering through the window of the guest room, and at last continuing on to the Opium Room, where he tried the door to see if it was unlocked.

  Fakhri Sadat opened the kitchen window. ‘Are you looking for someone, sir?’

  He didn’t answer, but moved in the direction of the library.

  Fakhri wanted to run after him and find out what he was up to, but she was frightened.

  ‘Muezzin!’ she called. ‘A stranger is wandering around the courtyard! Will you come up here and find out what he wants?’

  Lizard, who had been lying under the tree and keeping an eye on the visitor, scuttled down to the cellar to fetch Muezzin.

  The man disappeared behind the tree, where Fakhri couldn’t see him.

  Suddenly she heard a loud banging noise.

  Muezzin came up from the cellar, holding his walking stick, with Lizard at his side.

  ‘A man in a suit and a hat just went towards the library. I think he’s trying to break down the door,’ Fakhri Sadat said. ‘Can you hear him?’

  Muezzin hurried over to the library. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded. ‘Who are you? You can’t just come barging in here!’

  Fakhri Sadat put on her chador and went outside. The man was pounding a rock against the door, trying to smash it in.

  ‘What does he look like?’ Muezzin asked Fakhri Sadat.

  ‘I can’t see his face. He’s standing in the shadow.’

  ‘Does he have a beard?’

  ‘I don’t think so. All I can see is his hat.’

  Muezzin started to go over to him, but Fakhri stopped him. ‘I think he’s mad! He might be a tramp!’

  ‘Go and get Aqa Jaan!’ Fakhri said to Lizard, who had clambered up the tree, where he was monitoring the man’s every move.

  He leapt from the tree to the roof and disappeared.

  Muezzin brandished his walking stick. ‘Who are you?’ he repeated. ‘What are you doing here?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Stop that, you idiot!’ Muezzin said. He waved his walking stick again. ‘Stop banging on the door, you bastard, or I’ll beat the shit out of you!’

  But the man didn’t stop. Muezzin was about to hit him when Fakhri Sadat cried, ‘No, don’t! He’s mentally ill!’ And she dragged Muezzin away by his coat.

  Only when Aq
a Jaan arrived on the scene did the man stop pounding. ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked. Since the man was standing in the shadow of the library wall, Aqa Jaan couldn’t see him very well. ‘What’s your name, sir?’

  There was no response.

  ‘Step away from the shadow so I can see you,’ Aqa Jaan said. ‘Give me your hand, I won’t hurt you, I’m just going to lead you out of the shadow.’ Aqa Jaan calmly took the man by the arm and led him into the sunlight.

  ‘Would you like something to drink? Are you hungry?’

  The man’s eyes filled with tears.

  Those eyes were familiar . . .

  ‘Allah, Allah!’ exclaimed Aqa Jaan. ‘Fakhri, it’s our Ahmad!’

  Muezzin reached out to touch him. He ran his fingers over Ahmad’s hat and down his face, then pulled him close and wrapped him in his arms.

  Fakhri Sadat laid her head on his shoulder and wept. ‘Oh, Ahmad!’ she said. ‘Our Ahmad! Let’s go inside. What have they done to you? How dare they! Come, everything will be all right.’

  Aqa Jaan unlocked the library door for him, but Ahmad didn’t go in. Instead, he shuffled over to the guest room, opened the door, went inside, took off his shoes and sank down on the bed.

  ‘Let him sleep,’ Fakhri said to Aqa Jaan and Muezzin.

  Khalkhal had arranged for Ahmad’s early release from prison, but the life had been drained out of Ahmad. After his arrest, his wife and child had gone back to live with her parents, and her influential father – a staunch supporter of the regime – had arranged a divorce and seen to it that his daughter had been awarded custody of the child. Ahmad had been robbed of his fatherhood.

  The next morning Fakhri Sadat called him for breakfast, but Ahmad was still unresponsive. So she went to his room, helped him out of bed and brought him outside, where she lovingly washed his hands and face in the hauz and led him to the library, so he could see that the door was now open.

  He went in and shuffled past the bookcases, running his finger over the spines of the books. He switched on the antique reading lamp on his desk and touched his chair, but didn’t sit down. Then he went out again and shuffled over to his old room, where he looked at his bed, his chair and his notebook – the one in which he used to jot down his ideas for the Friday prayers – and then sat down on the bed.

  He sat there all day, staring vacantly into space. Aqa Jaan brought him some food and tried to talk to him, but he could see that Ahmad wasn’t ready to talk, that he needed to be left alone for a while.

  That night Ahmad packed his suitcase and left.

  Lizard saw him leave and hurried over to alert Aqa Jaan. But it was too late. He had gone.

  The Mujahideen

  There was fierce fighting at the front. Iranian troops had recaptured a number of strategic areas and opened a new front in Iraqi territory, but it looked as though they’d never be able to oust the Iraqis from the vital oil cities of Khorramshahr and Abadan. Saddam used bombs and chemical weapons to keep the Iranians away from those cities.

  The leftist opposition had been almost completely wiped out, but there was one organised group that the regime had so far left untouched: the Mujahideen. The members of the Mujahideen were devout Muslims, though their interpretation of the Koran differed from Khomeini’s. In public they pretended to support the regime, but in secret they were amassing weapons, so that they could strike when the time was right.

  Khomeini declared them to be public enemy number one and warned that they were out to destroy the government from within. Now that Iran was fighting an endless war and growing weaker by the day, he wanted this internal foe to be eliminated once and for all. Because the Mujahideen were Muslims, however, Khomeini couldn’t simply make them disappear.

  An emergency meeting of the Executive Committee of the Islamic Republic was called to discuss the matter. They reached a unanimous decision: the Mujahideen, like the leftist opposition before them, were to be wiped out at once.

  Jeeps were driven in the middle of the night to the homes of the Mujahideen leaders. Armed agents burst into their homes from the rooftops, but not a single leader was found. They had all fled.

  Clearly, they’d had advance warning. It seemed that the Executive Committee had a spy in its midst.

  The chairman, Ayatollah Beheshti, called another committee meeting. He assumed that the spy wouldn’t show up, thereby giving himself away, but all of the members were present and accounted for. They spent a long time discussing the possible source of the leak.

  ‘I think I know how the information was leaked and who leaked it,’ said one of the members, a man known for his keen mind and decisiveness. The other men looked at him in surprise and waited breathlessly for him to reveal the name.

  He surreptitiously slid his black briefcase, which was under the table, closer to Beheshti’s feet, then stood up. ‘I have proof,’ he said. ‘It’s in my office. I’ll go and get it. I won’t be long.’

  As soon as he left the conference room, he tore down the stairs, raced to his car, jumped in and roared off.

  Before he even turned the corner, there was an explosion. The building behind him collapsed, sending up a huge cloud of fire and smoke, and killing every one of the committee members.

  The news was announced on the radio. Crowds gathered round Khomeini’s residence to express their sympathy. He came out on the balcony and calmly delivered a speech. ‘Enna lellah wa enna elayhi raje’un,’ he began. ‘This time the Americans worked their evil through the Mujahideen. But it doesn’t matter, because Allah is on our side! I have appointed a new committee. We will not let anyone or anything stand in our way!’

  The hunt for the Mujahideen supporters began at once. There was a spate of random shootings. Mujahideen sympathisers blocked off a few streets in the centre of Tehran and reached for their weapons. Street fighting broke out between the Mujahideen and the security troops.

  Everyone who was arrested that day was summarily executed the very same night.

  The next week, the chief of the secret police met with Khomeini to inform him of an urgent security issue. He knelt before Khomeini and kissed his hand. ‘The Mujahideen have managed to infiltrate the government at the highest levels,’ he whispered. ‘While our attention was focused on the front, they took over the most strategic posts. They’ve even penetrated your inner circle. I’ve put together a list of suspects in high ministerial positions. With your permission, I’ll notify the prime minister and have the suspects arrested at once.’

  Khomeini put on his glasses, examined the list and gave his permission for everyone on it to be arrested.

  The chief of the secret police went directly from Khomeini’s house to an undisclosed location, where a cabinet meeting was being held. First he spoke with the prime minister, relaying the gist of his conversation with Khomeini, then the two of them went to the cabinet meeting to inform the ministers.

  The chief of the secret police came right to the point. ‘I’ve just come from the house of Imam Khomeini,’ he said. ‘I spoke to him in private, and he knows I’m here. I’m expecting a phone call from him at any moment. I’ve also spoken with the prime minister. The Mujahideen have infiltrated our—’

  Just then the phone rang. The chief set his black briefcase on the table, excused himself and went into the adjoining office to take the call. He picked up the phone. ‘Yes, it’s me,’ he said, speaking loud enough for everyone in the next room to hear. ‘I’ve just spoken to the prime minister. Yes, I have it with me. No, wait, I may have left it in the car. Would you hold on for a moment? I’ll go and get it.’ He raised his voice at the end to make sure everyone heard him. Then he put down the phone, left the room, went down the stairs, got into his car and drove off at great speed. Nobody suspected a thing, since they had no way of knowing that history was repeating itself. The explosion shook the ground for miles around.

  The Mujahideen’s fight against the regime continued. Week after week, bombs went off at random places throughout the city. But the re
gime was still going strong, despite the fact that Khomeini’s hand-picked cabinet had fallen for the same trick. When the Mujahideen realised that, they deliberately set out to create chaos in the city, setting fire to buses, banks and government buildings, and shooting as many functionaries as they could.

  After a while their strategy began to look more like political suicide, for the Revolutionary Guard retaliated by arresting scores of sympathisers and ruthlessly shooting anyone who tried to escape. Within days, hundreds of members of the Mujahideen had been summarily executed.

  The Mujahideen then abandoned the streets and switched to another tactic. This time they concentrated on acts of revenge. Focusing their wrath on the ayatollahs in the major cities, they set out to liquidate them one by one.

  After the ayatollahs of Isfahan and Yazd had been assassinated, the Mujahideen stunned everyone by killing Ayatollah Mortazavi. An Islamic philosopher and one of the regime’s most important theorists, he held no political office of any kind. Instead, he taught young imams.

  One day, when he was walking to his seminary, he was greeted by a young man: ‘Salaam aleikum, Ayatollah.’

  ‘Salaam aleikum, young man,’ the ayatollah replied.

  ‘I have a message for you.’

  ‘Oh? What is it?’

  ‘Your interpretation of the Koran is about to end!’

  ‘What do you mean it’s about to—’

  ‘I mean now!’ the young man said, and he fired three shots.

  The chain of assassinations sowed fear and confusion in the regime. No one knew who the next target would be or where the next assassination would take place.

  The ayatollah of Ghazvin was likewise singled out. His own cousin pulled the trigger. Only a few days before it happened, the ayatollah, worried about his security, had asked his cousin to be his chauffeur.

  The ayatollah had spoken out against the attacks. ‘America is killing us, Saddam is killing us, the Mujahideen are killing us. But they haven’t killed our spirit! We taught America a lesson once before, and now it’s time to teach Saddam and the Mujahideen that same lesson!’