Until only a few short years ago, having a television aerial on your roof was taboo in Senejan, but times had changed. Once, when an enterprising businessman had decided to convert the old bathhouse into a cinema, all it took was Khalkhal to rally the faithful and rout out even Farah Diba. Recently someone had bought the oldest garage in the city and transformed it into a modern cinema. Every night hundreds of young people queued up to buy tickets.
So many attractive businesses had opened in the city that the younger generation had lost touch with the bazaar. A few years ago, young people used to go to the bazaar just to take a stroll. Now the city had built a broad boulevard, to which they flocked during the evening prayer, eating ices and strolling beneath the trees in the garish neon light.
The shah had finally conquered the city. Posters of him were plastered on every government building, and his voice could be heard on every radio station in the country. In the past, shopkeepers used to keep their radios under the counter, for fear of offending their customers and losing trade. Now they displayed their radios prominently on a shelf, so that everyone could hear the broadcasts.
Some of the traditional carpet merchants in the bazaar even had portraits of the shah hanging in their shops. Only a few years ago, that would have been unthinkable, but things had changed so rapidly that sometimes you didn’t recognise your own city.
The focal point of Senejan was no longer the bazaar, but the new boulevard, where a large equestrian statue of the shah had been erected.
The shah’s voice now reached almost every home in Senejan; even the thick old walls of the house of the mosque could no longer shut it out. Every time the shah gave a new speech in some part of the country, the authorities parked a jeep next to the mosque and broadcast the speech through a loudspeaker. All day long the shah’s voice would echo through the courtyard. Fakhri Sadat couldn’t understand why Aqa Jaan didn’t speak up and why Ahmad didn’t protest.
Recently the shah had visited the grave of Cyrus, the first king of the ancient Persian Empire, and said with great hubris, ‘Cyrus! King of kings! Sleep quietly, for I am awake!’ The jeep outside the mosque had broadcast the speech non-stop for an entire week.
‘Such gruelling days! Such gruelling nights!’ Aqa Jaan wrote in his journal. ‘It’s a great humiliation to us all, but there’s nothing I can do about it! I’m so ashamed that I hardly dare to show my face at the mosque.’
No one could keep the shah out of the house any longer. Even the pictures of him, which a helicopter had scattered over the city, had been blown into the courtyard by the wind. Lizard had picked up a couple of them and put them on Aqa Jaan’s desk.
One day Aqa Jaan was standing in the courtyard when he heard loud music coming from the house of Hajji Shishegar. Music in the house of the pious Shishegar? It must be a special occasion.
Aqa Jaan looked over and thought he saw a television aerial on Shishegar’s roof. A television aerial on the roof of one of the most respected glass merchants in the bazaar? Surely his eyes must be deceiving him?
There was another burst of noise.
Aqa Jaan went up the courtyard steps and carefully picked his way through the darkness until he was directly opposite his neighbour’s roof. No, his eyes hadn’t been deceiving him. A long aluminium aerial was poking up from the roof!
Hajji Shishegar had decided that he and his sons needed to keep abreast of the latest developments. He had been invited to the mayor’s inaugural banquet, where each of the guests had been given a portrait of the shah to take home. And that portrait, now in a gold frame, had been placed on the mantelpiece, directly above the television.
But why was such loud music coming from the hajji’s house?
Aqa Jaan crept over to the edge of the roof and peeked into his neighbour’s courtyard.
The hajji was giving a party, to which he’d invited his many friends and relatives. It was a hot evening – too hot to sit inside. Shishegar’s twin sons, dressed in long cotton tunics, were lying next to each other on a wooden bed, which had been carried out into the courtyard and set down by the hauz. A group of street musicians was playing an American pop song with a strong beat, and a few of the men were dancing hand in hand.
Apparently they were celebrating the circumcision of the hajji’s sons. The mother of the twins was talking gaily to her guests with her chador down around her shoulders and only a wispy scarf on her head. There was no sign of the hajji’s first wife and her seven daughters.
Bowls of biscuits and sweets had been placed here and there, and the children were chasing each other round the large courtyard. The hajji chatted with his guests and offered them biscuits. Every once in a while he snatched the camera out of the photographer’s hands, took a few shots of his sons, then flopped down on the bed beside them for the umpteenth time and shouted, ‘Take a picture of the three of us!’
At a certain point he rounded up a couple of other men, went into the living room and came back out with a huge cabinet television. They set it down by the hauz, under the tree that was sheltering his sons. The hajji switched it on and a group of female dancers from Tehran filled the screen. Everyone crowded round and stared at the dancers in awestruck silence.
Aqa Jaan retraced his steps until he was standing by the big blue dome. He touched its cold glazed tiles, then walked over to the edge of the roof, where he could look down into the courtyard of the mosque and see the hauz and the trees. He looked up at the minarets, but noticed to his surprise that there didn’t seem to be any storks, or even any nests. Maybe it was too dark to see them from where he was standing, Aqa Jaan thought, so he walked over to the other side of the roof to view the minarets from that angle. No, he hadn’t been mistaken: there was no trace whatsoever of the storks.
He opened the trapdoor in one of the minarets, climbed up the narrow stairs and stood at the top. There was a snap of twigs beneath his feet – all that remained of the stork nests. Something inside him snapped as well. He had grown old. This unexpected realisation took him by surprise. He looked out over the city. Coloured lights twinkled everywhere, and the giant portrait of the shah near the entrance to the bazaar was lit by floodlights. The cinema’s red and yellow neon lights were flashing on and off in the new centre of town. Although it was late, he could hear music and women’s voices drifting over from the boulevard.
When had the sounds of surahs disappeared from the city? He knew that the mosque, the bazaar and the Koran were up against a powerful enemy, but he hadn’t expected the regime to conquer Senejan quite so easily.
Where were the ayatollahs who had fought against the shah?
What had happened to the guerrillas who had been organised enough to arrange an escape from prison?
What changes had been brought about by the clandestine books read by Shahbal?
Where were the radios that had once railed against the regime?
Where was Khalkhal, who had fought the shah with such ferocity?
Where were the students who had wanted to change the world?
And where was Nosrat, who could have filmed all these changes?
These were quiet years. How could Aqa Jaan have known that a new era was going to dawn with dizzying swiftness? Or that a storm of destruction was heading his way? A raging storm that would lash him so hard that he would bend in trembling fear.
He climbed down the stairs, shut the trapdoor behind him and went into the courtyard, a broken man. He wanted to crawl in bed beside his wife and forget his troubles, but decided to go down to the river instead.
It was dark and quiet. Even the river wasn’t making a sound. He looked at the vineyards and at the mountains on the opposite bank. All was still. As he walked, he thought about his life.
He had been born in that house. He had devoted his life to the mosque and worked long hours at the bazaar, putting all of his energy and talent into the carpets. His daughters were grown, and Jawad, his only son, was no longer a boy, but a young man, studying for his exams so he could go to universi
ty. Aqa Jaan reminded himself that he had not yet been to Mecca, although it was his duty, as a man of means, to make the pilgrimage at least once in his life.
Everything had changed, and on top of that, Ahmad had damaged the reputation of the mosque.
There was an unexpected caw from the vineyard, and the crow flew back across the river. Aqa Jaan heard men’s voices and saw the silhouette of a veiled woman detach itself from the trees and walk towards the bridge.
Crazy Qodsi, he suddenly realised.
The silhouette stopped in the middle of the bridge.
‘Qodsi!’ Aqa Jaan called.
She hurried off. ‘Qodsi! Wait!’ he called. ‘What are you doing here so late at night?’ And he ran after her, stumbling through the darkness.
‘They will all die,’ Qodsi suddenly prophesied in a crow-like voice. ‘All of them except you.’
The Television
As Lizard grew up, he became even more of an enigma. People were never sure if he was a disabled child or an animal. His head, hands and feet were human, but his movements were like those of a reptile.
The older he got, the more reptilian he became.
Sadiq tried to teach him how to talk, but he never learned. He wasn’t interested.
Lizard did things his own way and paid little attention to other people’s behaviour and habits. He refused to eat with everyone else, go to bed at a normal hour or use a knife and fork. He ate his meals like a cat.
‘I can’t stand it another minute! I’m exhausted. I don’t want this strange child any more!’
‘You mustn’t say that!’ Aqa Jaan protested.
Sadiq burst into tears. ‘I’ve had one misfortune after another!’ she lamented. ‘Why has everything in my life gone wrong?’
‘You’re still young, my daughter; you have a long life ahead of you. No one expects life to be a bed of roses. Remember: there’s a reason things happen the way they do. If anyone has a right to complain, it’s Muezzin. He was born blind, but you don’t hear him moaning about it. He’s accepted the fact that his eyes are sightless, and so have we. He can’t see, but he has two keen ears, two sensitive hands and two strong legs that remember the way. If you ask me, he sees everything, even things you and I will never see. Don’t cry, my daughter! Your son is a natural part of life. I’m glad we have him. I think of him as a gift to our house. I mean that. We must need him for some reason; otherwise he wouldn’t have been sent to us. Hundreds of people have lived in this house, and he isn’t the first unusual creature to be born here. Trust in life. We must need your son, or else he wouldn’t have been sent to us!’
‘I wish I were as trusting as you are,’ Sadiq said between sobs.
The next day Aqa Jaan summoned Lizard to his study and made it clear to him that he was to come there every day after the morning prayer. He had decided that he would spend the next few years teaching him how to read. All that was needed was patience and old-fashioned discipline. Lizard’s response was unexpectedly positive: he took to crawling over to Aqa Jaan with a book between his teeth, dropping it in his lap and making him read every word of it.
Once Lizard had learned to read, he spent much of his time lying in the garden in the shade of the cedar tree. When that got too hot, he crawled up to the roof with his book, seeking the shadow of the dome. During the winter, he went down to the cellar so he could sit by Muezzin’s stove and read.
Ahmad let him come into the library, where he spent hours among the books. No one ever knew if he understood a word of what he was reading or whether he simply made up stories of his own.
His world was the world of the house. He rarely left it, going outside only when Am Ramazan took him for a ride on his donkey. As they passed the grocery shop, the old men lounging around outside always stopped the donkey so they could get a better look at Lizard. Everyone had heard of the boy. They doffed their hats and joked with him. Lizard enjoyed it and responded enthusiastically to their attention.
Later Am Ramazam started taking him along to the river when he was mining sand. He would dig a hollow in the warm sand, and Lizard would curl up inside it and read his book. Lizard felt comfortable with Am Ramazam.
At first Sadiq had stopped Am Ramazam and asked him not to take Lizard with him.
‘Why not?’ Am Ramazam had asked. ‘There’s no need to hide him.’
Zinat was often away from home these days. She spent a lot of time in the countryside, giving Koran lessons to rural women. The moment she got home, however, she went looking for Lizard. She liked to tell him ancient tales, and he never tired of listening to them.
Zinat looked after Lizard more than the others did. She thought of him as a punishment for her sins. Lizard never learned to talk, but he had an acute sense of hearing and could move with extraordinary speed. He compelled everyone to interact with him in some way.
Nosrat avoided him during his visits. He stroked Lizard’s hair and gave him a few sweets, but that was all, and he slept with his door closed so Lizard wouldn’t come in.
One night Lizard crawled in anyway. He lay down in the corner of the room and took out his book. Nosrat didn’t know what to do. For a while he simply sat in his bed and stared at him. He wanted to help the boy in some way, but didn’t know how. Suddenly he had a flash of inspiration. ‘Come with me,’ he said.
Nosrat went into the courtyard and down into the cellar, with Lizard scuttling along behind him. ‘Listen, Lizard. Shahbal brought a television into this house a number of years ago so that Aqa Jaan and Alsaberi could see the moon. Alsaberi was an unsophisticated imam who fell into the hauz and died, but that television ought to be here somewhere. It’s yours, if I can find it. You were born in the wrong house, you know. The world is changing, but everything in this house is forbidden. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
Of course he didn’t. Lizard stared at him blankly.
‘Still, you’re lucky. If you’d been born to any other family, you would have been sold to a circus long ago. This family gives you love, and people need love. But in many ways they’re backward. They’re God-fearing people who are afraid of everything – radios, TVs, music, the cinema, the theatre, happiness, other women, other men. There’s only one thing they like: cemeteries. They feel at home among the dead. I’m serious! Have you ever gone to a cemetery with them? Suddenly they get all happy and excited, absolutely in their element. That’s why I left when I was young. Anyway, let’s see if we can find that television; it must be in here among all this junk. Let’s hope the grandmothers didn’t throw it out. Ah, the grandmothers. It’s a pity you never knew them. They were very dignified. They didn’t approve of me, but that’s beside the point. They went to Mecca and never came back, the crafty old biddies. Oh, I think I’ve found it! Look, Lizard, here’s a portable TV for you! As soon as I’ve rigged up the aerial, your life will change for ever. Hmm, let me think. Where can we put it so you can watch without being disturbed? I know: in the shed behind the dome. It used to be my secret hideout, the place where I went to read dirty books. Later Shahbal added a bed. Now that he’s gone, you can have the shed.’
Lizard crawled up to the roof behind Nosrat. Nosrat set the television on the table next to Shahbal’s bed.
‘From now on this bed belongs to you. Go ahead and lie on it. I’ll show you how to use the TV.’
Lizard climbed onto the bed. Nosrat strung the cable through the window and carefully screwed the tiny aerial onto the end of a beam, where no one could see it.
‘Now watch closely,’ he said, and switched on the television.
A young woman wearing heavy make-up and a sleeveless red dress appeared on the screen.
‘Don’t be scared, my boy! The world outside of this house looks very different. Do you like women? Oh, oh, don’t ask me that question! One of these days I’ll take you to Tehran. Actually, this TV is too small. The next time I come I’ll bring you a bigger one. Meanwhile, you’ll have to make do with this one. It’s yours, and no one can take it from you. If anyone t
ries to take it away, bite him. Sink your teeth into his ankle and bite down hard. Is that clear?’
For an entire year Lizard managed to keep his hideout a secret, but one night Aqa Jaan tiptoed up the stairs and flung open the door. Lizard was so surprised that he bounded from the bed to the television in one leap and draped himself over it like a cat, with his feet dangling over one side and his head over the other.
Aqa Jaan stood for a moment in the doorway. Then he shut the door, walked over to the stairs and went down to the mosque.
The Locusts
It was an extraordinary day. More things happened than anyone could have expected.
Lizard, having heard the doorbell, opened the gate and looked up to see two big brown horses staring down at him in the late afternoon sun. To get a better look, he grabbed hold of the gate and pulled himself up until he was standing. A large horse-drawn wagon containing two coffins had stopped outside.
‘A delivery for Aqa Jaan!’ bellowed the coachman in a long black coat and black hat.
Lizard crawled quickly over to Aqa Jaan’s study, where he pointed at the gate and neighed like a horse. When Aqa Jaan saw the coachman, he put on his hat and went to the gate.
‘Enna lellah!’ the coachman said.
‘Enna lellah,’ Aqa Jaan replied. ‘How can I help you?’
‘I have two dead people for you.’
‘Dead people? For me?’
‘I beg your pardon, I don’t mean actual people, just the remains.’
‘Of whom?’
‘Two women from Mecca.’
‘The grandmothers!’ exclaimed a horrified Aqa Jaan.
‘Sign here,’ the coachman said, and handed him the documents.
‘I need my spectacles,’ said Aqa Jaan.
Lizard scurried back inside and fetched Aqa Jaan’s reading glasses.
One of the documents was an official letter in Arabic. It consisted of a few Koran verses, followed by a short statement explaining that the bodies of the grandmothers had been found in a cave in Hira Mountain near Mecca.
The House of the Mosque Page 21
