My Uncle Napoleon

by Iraj Pezeshkzad

  Shamsali Mirza was also getting angry, “My dear sir . . . an attempt has been made against you . . . the crime of deprivation of a member . . . the accused intended to cut off a noble member from your body and you don’t know what time this happened?”

  Dustali Khan burst out in rage, “For God’s sake, I wasn’t wearing a watch on the noble member!”

  Asadollah Mirza exploded with laughter. He laughed so hard that tears trickled down from his eyes; in answer to the imperious gestures commanding him to be quiet he spluttered, in the midst of his laughter, “Moment . . . moment . . .”

  His laughter set uncle colonel and then Mash Qasem off laughing. Shamsali Mirza angrily put his hat on his head. “Then with everyone’s permission, your humble servant will take his leave of this joyful and amusing occasion.”

  With some difficulty they sat him down again. Asadollah Mirza, also with some difficulty, calmed himself down. The cross-examination continued.

  “We will leave this question, Mr. Dustali Khan . . . please tell us whether the knife was of the kind that has a sharp edge only or whether it was pointed like a dagger?”

  Dustali Khan was once again on the edge of bursting out in rage, but they smothered his first cry of “Agggh, she cut it” in his throat. After gasping for breath for a moment he said, “It was a kitchen knife.”

  Everyone present listened very carefully, their chairs ranged in a circle around Dustali Khan.

  “Which hand was she holding the knife in?”

  “How should I know? I wasn’t paying attention to such things.”

  Mash Qasem answered for him, “Well sir, why should I lie? When I’ve seen them butcher fellers ready to cut up meat, they hold the knife in the right hand.”

  Shamsali Mirza turned round to say something to Mash Qasem but once again Dustali Khan screamed, “Agghh! Butcher! You said butcher? Butcher?”

  Once again uncle colonel put his hand on Dustali Khan’s mouth and Shamsali Mirza went on, “So it appears that she was holding the knife in her right hand. Was there anything in her left hand?”

  “How should I know . . . how should I know?”

  Asadollah Mirza couldn’t control himself sufficiently to stay silent, “For sure, the noble member was in her left hand!”

  Mrs. Farrokh Laqa became extremely angry and, despite the fact that she was very keen to stay and discover a good slanderous subject for gossiping about, she left the garden in high dudgeon, the reason being that she took the conversation to be an insult to her son-in-law. Her son-in-law’s name was Mr. Noble.

  Shamsali Mirza continued, “Mr. Dustali Khan, be very careful, this is a question of great importance, at the moment of the attempt on your . . .”

  Shamsali Mirza hesitated for a moment and then in a very magisterial manner said, “In order to put this question, I have no choice but to declare a closed court.”

  Dear Uncle Napoleon objected, “What do you mean closed, your excellency? We aren’t strangers. I can tell my sister to go over there a little bit . . . sister dear, go over there for a minute and then come back.”

  My mother, who usually didn’t dare to express an opinion in front of Dear Uncle Napoleon, said in a furious voice, “I am going back to my house. There’s a limit to everything. This childish behavior is shameful at our age.”

  But Dear Uncle gave her a fierce look and said imperiously, “I requested you to be so kind as to step over there for a minute.”

  My poor mother didn’t have the strength to oppose him; she did as he had told her. Shamsali Mirza was silent for a moment and then stood up. He brought his head close to Dustali Khan’s ear and asked something. Once again Dustali Khan started whimpering and complaining, “Oh please . . . leave me alone . . . with that ugly old hag . . . haven’t you seen how she looks?”

  Again Asadollah Mirza couldn’t keep quiet, “Now that was a question about San Francisco.”

  And he guffawed with laughter. Dear Uncle angrily said, “Sir, shame on you!”

  Then he turned to Shamsali Mirza. “Your excellency, the problem lies elsewhere. I want you to get this man to confess just who it was who told his wife about his having an affair with a young woman. You’re asking about far-fetched, irrelevant . . .”

  Shamsali Mirza stood up and placed his hat on his head. “Then would you be so kind as to conduct the cross-examination? I shall humbly take my leave. A magistrate should not stay in a place where there is no respect for judicial authority!”

  Everyone was busy persuading Shamsali Mirza to stay where he was when a shout rang out from the roof of Dustali Khan’s house, “So the little rat’s down there, is he? I’ll burn the bugger’s beard off . . .”

  Everyone looked up. It seems that Mrs. Aziz al-Saltaneh, who had been complacently assuming that her husband had taken refuge somewhere on the roof and would finally have to come down, had gone up to look for him.

  Dear Uncle shouted up to her, “My good woman, don’t shout like that! What do you think you’re doing!”

  “Ask that shameless little rat. I know and he . . .”

  As she was saying this she disappeared from the roof into the house. Dustali Khan, who was trembling with fear, squeezed his hands into his groin again and screamed, “Now she’s coming here, agghh, help me . . . hide me somewhere,” and he tried to get up from where he was lying but they held him where he was.

  “Calm down, we’re all here . . . we have to sort this matter out . . .”

  But Dustali Khan struggled wildly to get himself up and run away somewhere. Mash Qasem, at a sign from Dear Uncle, had grabbed him tightly by the shoulders. “Sit down now, there’s a good boy . . . the Master’s here . . . these little things don’t matter so much . . .”

  “It’s all right for you to talk . . . she was going to kill me, is that a little thing?”

  Asadollah Mirza said, “Mash Qasem meant the thing she was going to cut off. He’s not lying either. It can’t be that big.”

  Mash Qasem calmly went on where he had stopped, “Now why should I lie? To the grave it’s ah . . . ah . . .”

  Dear Uncle was about to yell at both of them but he didn’t have the chance because there was a sudden violent hammering at the door to the house.

  Dustali Khan grabbed at the hem of Dear Uncle’s cloak. “Please, on the soul of your father, don’t open that door . . . I’m terrified of that witch . . .”

  His beseeching tone of voice made everyone stop in their tracks. But the knocking at the door didn’t stop for a moment. Finally Dear Uncle said, “Mash Qasem, run and open the door; she’s making a laughing stock of us.”

  The terrified and trembling Dustali Khan was almost hidden under Dear Uncle’s cloak by the time the door opened; Mrs. Aziz al-Saltaneh flung herself into the garden, in her housecoat and with a broom in her hand, like a lion that suddenly finds its cage door open, and made for the group of people there.

  “That little rat, that fatherless son of a bitch . . . I’ll give him what for . . . I’ll tear him to shreds . . .”

  Dear Uncle Napoleon stood shielding Dustali Khan and said in a commanding voice, “Silence, madam!”

  “I will not be silent neither . . . what the hell’s it got to do with you? Is he my husband or your husband?”

  Everyone tried to calm her down, but Dear Uncle Napoleon raised his hands signalling everyone to be quiet and said, “Madam, the honor and prestige of our family are too important to be stained by these ridiculous feuds. Please explain to us what has happened.”

  “Ask the smothered little rat himself . . . ask his dirty leering eyes!”

  “Is it possible that you tell us just who told you about his relations with a certain young woman?”

  “Whoever said it said the truth . . . the shameless dirty bastard, for a year now he’s been saying ‘I’m tired, I’m sick, I’m worn
out, I’m every damn thing’ and he’s with the wife of Shir Ali the butcher . . . I’ll give him what for!”

  At this moment a smothered sound came from Dustali Khan’s throat, and with all the strength left in his body he moaned, “Blessed Morteza Ali, save me now . . .”

  Uncle colonel involuntarily placed his hand over Aziz al-Saltaneh’s mouth. The name of Shir Ali the butcher had left everyone thunderstruck.

  Shir Ali, the local butcher, was a horrifying man. He was well over six feet tall; his whole body, from head to toe, was covered in tattoos, and there were numerous knife scars visible on his head. His character and temperament fitted his terrifying body exactly. They said that with one blow of a meat cleaver he had sliced through the neck of a man who’d been having an affair with his wife, and since it was obvious that the victim and his wife had been carrying on in a compromising way, he’d only been given six months imprisonment. We couldn’t personally remember this incident but we’d heard it referred to many times. But we had repeatedly seen that Shir Ali’s shop would be closed for three or four months and people said he was in prison. He wasn’t a wicked man but he was extremely jealous and possessive of his wife. In spite of Shir Ali’s ferocity, his wife (who everyone—be they big, little, young or old—swore was one of the most beautiful women in the city) went right on with her mischievous behavior.

  I’d once asked Mash Qasem about Shir Ali’s fights, and he’d answered, “Well, m’dear, why should I lie? To the grave it’s ah . . . ah . . . this Shir Ali’s a bit deaf and he don’t hear people’s chatterin’ too well . . . he only understands when he sees with his own eyes that his little woman’s messin’ around with someone . . . then he gets really mad and it’s up with his cleaver to make mincemeat of someone . . . they say that these days he’s calmed down a lot . . . when he lived in his village they say he chopped four of his wife’s friends into little pieces with that cleaver.”

  That night in my hiding place I well understood Dustali Khan’s terror and the shock that everyone felt when they heard the name of Shir Ali the butcher. Once in the bazaar I’d seen him fling his cleaver at the baker’s assistant in such a way that if it had hit his head it would certainly have split the skull into two halves. Fortunately it slammed into the bakery door, and went so far in that only the strength of Shir Ali himself was able to get it out again.

  The sound of Asadollah Mirza’s voice brought the astonished and appalled group back to themselves, “Moment . . . well really, moment . . . this Dustali Khan, with this body of his, has been off to San Francisco with Shir Ali’s wife? Wonders will never cease! My congratulations!”

  Immediately he turned to Aziz al-Saltaneh, “My dear woman, really and truly it would have been a great pity if you’d cut it off. You should kiss the hem of Dustali’s jacket. From the time of the great poet Sa’di until now, butchers have always had evil designs on everyone, even on poor old Sa’di himself. You remember that Sa’di says: ‘Better to die for want of meat than that butchers’ evil designs . . .’ And now that Dustali Khan has taken revenge on a butcher, on poor old Sa’di’s behalf, you’re reproaching him? If I were in your shoes I’d buy a prize watch for the noble member.”

  Aziz al-Saltaneh was not in the mood for jokes and sarcasm and shouted, “You shut up, you rotten brat!”

  And she took a swipe at Asadollah Mirza with her broom; he ducked his head and skipped back out of danger. When he was a couple of paces away he said, “Moment . . . moment . . . why are you fighting with me? This donkey goes off to San Francisco with Shir Ali’s wife and I have to suffer for it . . . he knows and Shir Ali and you . . .”

  Then he shouted toward Dustali Khan’s house, “Eh, Shir Ali . . . eh, Shir Ali . . . come over here . . .”

  Dustali Khan threw himself at Asadollah Mirza and put his hand over his mouth. “Please, your excellency, have pity on me . . . if that polar bear hears, he’ll chop me into bits with his cleaver . . .”

  Everyone started arguing together. Aziz al-Saltaneh’s voice and shouting were louder than everything else. At that moment I realized that our servant was squatting a couple of meters away behind a group of trees and, like me, was listening to the group’s conversation. He wasn’t a particularly curious man and I made a good guess that he’d been sent by my father, who had heard the uproar and dispatched him to bring back news of what was going on. My father had sent him on these errands a few times before, in order to find out what was happening in Dear Uncle’s house.

  Seeing my father’s spy there really worried me but there was nothing I could do about it. Dear Uncle Napoleon’s voice rose above the others’, “Mrs. Aziz al-Saltaneh, I ask you, by the sacred name of our family, to tell me who told you that Dustali Khan was having an affair with Shir Ali the butcher’s wife.”

  Dustali Khan interrupted him in a beseeching voice, “Please have mercy and don’t say that man’s name so much . . . my life’s in danger.”

  Dear Uncle adjusted his language, “Please tell me who told you that this idiot was having an affair with the wife of that ogre in human form?”

  Aziz al-Saltaneh had quieted down a little. She said, “I can’t say.”

  “Please! Tell us.”

  “I said I can’t say.”

  “Madam, I know, I know which malicious individual’s started all this but I want to hear it from your own mouth. In the name of the reputation and prestige of a great family, in the name of your husband’s honor, I’m requesting you to . . .”

  Once again Aziz al-Saltaneh flared up; flinging her broom at her husband who was sitting with his head down next to Dear Uncle, she yelled, “To hell with my husband’s honor . . . I don’t want a husband for the next seventy years . . . tomorrow morning I’m going to tell Shir Ali the whole thing from soup to nuts and then we’ll see if I’ve a husband left to play these dirty tricks on me!”

  Dear Uncle Napoleon calmly said, “That is exactly what you must not do . . . Shir Ali . . . I mean, this individual, if he never realizes his own bad luck until the last minute, it’s because no one dares to tell him what’s going on. Last year my own servant, Mash Qasem, merely said to him, ‘Keep an eye on your wife’ . . . and for a week Shir Ali forgot all about his business and sat outside our house with a cleaver while we hid Qasem . . . we had to beg him and plead with him before he’d go back to his sheep carcasses . . . isn’t that so, Qasem?”

  Mash Qasem found an opportunity to speak, “Well, why should I lie! To the grave it’s ah . . . ah . . . just four fingers . . . I’d said this much to him, too . . . I said, ‘Don’t let your wife go out of the house too much’ . . . because a thief had come and pinched their carpet. I wanted to say, ‘Tell your wife to be in the house so thieves don’t come.’ I said it and the godless so-and-so chased me with a cleaver, as God’s my witness, from the bazaar to the door of our house. I closed the door and fainted . . . God save him, the Master watched over me for ten or twenty days with a rifle.”

  Asadollah Mirza found a moment to interrupt; in a serious voice he said, “Ma’am, as God’s my witness, if with my own eyes I were to see this Dustali go astray, I wouldn’t believe it . . . the poor wretch has hardly got the strength to breathe . . . a mouse could come and eat wheat grains off him . . . how is it possible that he . . .”

  Aziz al-Saltaneh suddenly lost all control and yelled, “What’s this . . . what’s this . . . so Dustali’s old and worn out, is he? Dustali can’t catch his breath . . . if you’d had enough breath your wife wouldn’t have divorced you!”

  With some difficulty Dear Uncle Napoleon and uncle colonel quieted down this new argument. Shamsali Mirza said, “If the Master will give his permission, I will put one question to Mrs. Aziz al-Saltaneh which will completely clear up the ambiguities of the case.”

  But Shamsali Mirza hadn’t yet put his question when there was a knocking at the door to the garden. Everyone looked at everyone else.

&nbs
p; “Who can it be at this time . . . Qasem, go and open the door.”

  Everyone stared at the door and Mash Qasem went to open it. Immediately after the sound of the garden door opening we heard Mash Qasem cry out, “God save us all, it’s Shir Ali . . .”

  There was a short moment’s silence and then the muffled sound of Dustali’s voice became audible, “Shir Ali . . . Shir Ali . . . Shir . . . Shir . . . sh . . . sh . . .” And he more or less fainted into the cushion he was propped against.

  Shir Ali approached the group with heavy footsteps; his head was completely shaved and the old knife scars glittered on it. He greeted everyone and said to Dear Uncle Napoleon, “I saw the light was on and I says to meself, I’ll come in and pay me respects . . . you gotta pardon me, sir, I couldn’t make it to the mourning ceremony . . . I’d gone off to the shrine at Sha’abdolazim.”

  “May your prayers be answered.”

  “Very good of you, sir, I’m sure . . . I hadn’t actually gone to the shrine like . . . I’d gone to settle up the account I’ve got with Kol Asghar the sheep-dealer . . . if you’ll pardon me saying so, sir, the bastard had palmed off a rotten sheep on me . . .”

  Dear Uncle said in a loud voice, “God willing, the account was cancelled and you got your money back?”

  “You bet your life, sir . . . no one’s gonna walk off with my money . . . of course, at first he was a bit unwilling but when I’d slapped him about a bit with the carcass of the sheep he’d sold me—well, he didn’t just give me back the money for the sheep, that was nothing, he gave me the fare to Sha’abdolazim, too.”

  “And what disease did the sheep have, Shir Ali?”

  “I don’t know, but it was really rotten . . . I was afraid the people in this area’d be poisoned . . . and, if you’ll pardon me, his organ was all swollen. I didn’t realize it at first and I sold two or three fillets. To cut a long story short, I came home tonight and my missus told me you’d had a mourning ceremony, I was really sorry I wasn’t there. On the way I said if you’re still awake I’ll go and say I didn’t mean no disrespect, just I wasn’t here. I’m really sorry and I hope you’ll excuse me.”