The House of the Mosque (10 page)

‘I don’t feel like going to the prayer,’ Golbanu said.

‘Let’s rest here for a while before they all come back,’ Golebeh replied.

Since Alsaberi’s death, they’d had no reason to be in the library, and because they weren’t close to Khalkhal, they didn’t dare to go in when he was there. As long as Alsaberi had been alive, the library had been their private domain. Khalkhal had robbed them of that. They disliked him because of it and longed for the day when Alsaberi’s son would finish his training and be installed as the mosque’s imam.

‘Alsaberi was like a pearl that slipped through our fingers,’ Golebeh said. ‘Khalkhal is arrogant. He struts around like a sultan, keeps his distance from everyone, and doesn’t even sit with the other men. He’s the most conceited imam this house has ever had. He holes himself up in the library and expects Kazem Khan to come to
him
. Aqa Jaan knew it from the start. It was sensible of him to send Khalkhal back to Qom to get his identification papers.’

The grandmothers were greatly offended, and now with Alsaberi gone, they realised that they weren’t going to live for ever either. They had been so busy with the funeral that the last few weeks hadn’t been too awful. But what would they do when all of the guests had gone?

Since Khalkhal had taken over the library, they’d been forced to spend their days and evenings in the kitchen, but they couldn’t stand being cooped up there much longer. If they couldn’t escape to the library occasionally, the house would finish them off for good.

More than once they’d decided to pour their hearts out to Aqa Jaan. But why bother? They realised that the imam’s death was the end of an era.

Sometimes they went into his empty bathroom and wept silently.

Kazem Khan was their only hope. Yet he too was getting old. When he died, the light would go out of their lives for ever.

The grandmothers sat on the bench by the
hauz
for a long while without talking. The sky was clear; one by one the stars came out. They could hear the bats squeaking. A stranger looking down at the two figures from the roof of the mosque would no doubt assume they were statues.

They would have fallen asleep if the silence hadn’t suddenly been broken by a rustling in the darkness by the trees. ‘Did you hear that?’ Golebeh whispered to Golbanu.

Kazem Khan, they thought, might have stayed in his room instead of going over to the mosque.

They padded over to the Opium Room, but the door was locked. From the courtyard came a muffled giggle.

‘What was that?’

They hid behind the cedar tree and listened to the sounds of the night. Again there was a girlish giggle. This was followed by the opening of the door to one of the guest rooms. ‘It’s probably Nosrat!’ Golebeh whispered.

‘Mercy!’

They caught sight of a silhouette in the light coming from the room and recognised Nosrat’s shadow.

‘When did he get home? Why didn’t we see him? And who’s that woman?’ Golebeh exclaimed.

A woman in a black chador was briefly visible in the green glow of the minarets before being engulfed again by the darkness.

‘Maybe it’s that woman from Tehran.’

‘No, that rascal never stays with anyone for long. Besides, the woman from Tehran was short; this one is tall and has on a chador. It’s a different one.’

‘What are they doing?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

Nosrat led the girl over to the courtyard steps.

‘Come on, sweetie,’ he said to her.

‘I’m not going up on the roof! I wouldn’t dare!’ the girl said, laughing.

‘Don’t be scared,’ Nosrat said. ‘Nobody’s going to see us. They’re all busy reciting their prayers. The house is empty.’

‘I’m not going up there: it’s too high!’ she said.

‘Why’s he taking her up to the roof?’ Golbanu whispered.

‘The devil himself doesn’t know what Nosrat is thinking,’ Golebeh replied.

There was a silence, then a few moments later they saw Nosrat and the girl on the roof. The grandmothers tiptoed over to the stairs, climbed up to the roof, crawled over to the dome on their hands and knees and crouched behind it.

Nosrat opened the trapdoor in one of the minarets, to reveal a set of increasingly narrow and rickety stairs.

‘I don’t dare climb up those stairs!’ the woman exclaimed.

‘Don’t be such a scaredy-cat,’ Nosrat said gently. ‘It’ll be fun! Besides, you promised. Come on, I want to take you to the top of the minaret, I want to kiss you and make love to you in that holy green glow right at the top.’

‘I won’t do it! Somebody will see us.’

‘There’s no need to be afraid. Once we’re up there, no one can see us.’

He helped her through the trapdoor, while she laughingly repeated, ‘I won’t go, I don’t dare, I don’t want to!’ Once she was safely on the first stair, he crawled into the minaret and closed the trapdoor behind him.

The grandmothers, from their hiding place behind the dome, looked at each other in astonishment.

‘Lord have mercy!’ they muttered.

In the green light high up in the minaret, they saw Nosrat and the girl. Their shadows fell on the wall on the other side of the mosque.

The wind caught the girl’s chador, and it fluttered out of the minaret like a black flag. ‘Stop that!’ the girl moaned. And because she was so high up, her words echoed over the mosque.

Nosrat’s giant shadow began making rhythmical movements on the wall. The grandmothers clapped their hands to their mouths and trembled at the sight. At a certain point he pushed the girl against the edge of the minaret, so that she exclaimed with a nervous laugh, ‘Stop it! I’ll fall!’

Her laughter rang out over the mosque, but was quickly drowned out by Khalkhal’s sermon, which was being broadcast over a loudspeaker. The girl moaned again. Then there was an unexpected silence and the shadows disappeared from view.

The grandmothers slipped out of their hiding place and crept down the stairs. They unfurled their prayer rugs on the floor of their room, put on their chadors and hurriedly turned to face Mecca.

D
uring the first few months, Khalkhal had managed to keep things on an even keel in the mosque. He knew that agents of the secret police were attending his sermons in order to find out what he was up to.

In everyday life he had few social skills and came across as a stiff and stern imam, but the moment he climbed into the pulpit he was transformed into a witty man with a ready smile who spiced up his sermons with humour, so that it was a pleasure to listen to him.

In his first sermons he deliberately focused on neutral topics, often taking a surah from the Koran and explaining the historical and narrative aspects of the text. Sometimes he took the analysis a step further and talked about the power of the language and the poetry of the surahs. He gave examples and read melodious passages in his beautiful voice.

His listeners enjoyed his interpretations. The majority of the mosque-goers couldn’t read the Koran, much less understand it. The Koran had been written in Arabic, which bore little resemblance to Persian. Besides, the language in which it had been written was fourteen hundred years old, which meant that many of the historical references in the surahs couldn’t be understood without some measure of expertise.

Khalkhal was not only knowledgeable, but he could also explain the Koran in a simple way that ordinary people could understand.

The agents of the secret police enjoyed his humour and were satisfied with his sermons. They sent positive reports to the main office.

The bazaar was also satisfied with Khalkhal. The merchants praised his knowledge of history and his skill in translating the ancient texts, though, as some of them occasionally hinted to Aqa Jaan, they had expected more fireworks. ‘He’s a substitute imam,’ Aqa Jaan always told them. ‘We can’t be too demanding. In a year or two, when Alsaberi’s son has finished his training, we’ll have a permanent imam, and then we’ll know where we stand.’

The bazaar might grumble, but Khalkhal had stolen the hearts of the worshippers by gradually bringing up new and startling topics. Sometimes he discussed things the merchants had never heard of before.

Recently he’d talked about migratory birds – a topic not usually discussed in the mosque. He described how the birds could always find their way back home. Even fledglings, he explained, could fly an unfamiliar route and still find their way back to their parents’ nest.

People listened to him in wonder as he described the hierarchy in the ant kingdom and the precision with which the ants worked together. He showed them traces of God’s greatness.

Aqa Jaan admired Khalkhal for his fresh approach and was pleased that his modern subjects were attracting a younger crowd: more and more youngsters were coming to the sermons on Fridays.

Khalkhal had learned a bit of English. He could barely speak it, but he was able to read English texts. He bought a scientific journal published in the UK and spent hours in the library, looking up words in the dictionary and trying to understand the articles. Then he formed his own opinion and turned it into an exciting sermon.

In one of his sermons he talked about aeroplanes and the history of aviation. He praised Orville and Wilbur Wright for trying to fly like birds, but hastened to point out that the ancient Persians had attempted flight long before the Americans. He gave the story a humorous twist. ‘The Americans,’ he began, ‘always want to be the first in everything. They began to fly fifty or sixty years ago, but the roots of aviation lie deep in our own soil.

‘Long ago Nimrod, one of our earliest Persian kings, decided that he would fly. He was so powerful he thought he could do whatever he wanted. He even thought he could compete with God. One day he decided he would go into the sky to do battle with God. He ordered the scientists of his day to make a vehicle that could fly. They came up with a spectacular invention: a rudimentary aeroplane based on a chariot. The four corners of a specially designed wicker chair were attached to four powerful eagles by means of long, strong ropes. Nimrod seated himself in his royal chair, and four pieces of meat were dangled high above the heads of the eagles. The birds spread their wings and tried to grab the meat, in the process pulling the chariot into the sky. And that’s how the world’s first aeroplane came into being.’

Another time Khalkhal talked about Einstein and his theory of relativity. None of his listeners had ever heard of Einstein. They had no idea that light could travel, let alone that it travelled at a speed of almost 300,000 kilometres per second.

Khalkhal, aware of their ignorance and hoping to impress them, started off by reading a quotation in English. He might, in fact, have been the first imam in the country to use an English quotation in a sermon: ‘Einstein said, “One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike – and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”’

He didn’t explain the quotation, but told them about the theory of relativity, or at least as much of it as he himself understood. ‘Let’s suppose we have a plane that can fly 300,000 kilometres a second and that it’s parked up on the roof of the mosque, waiting for passengers. Let’s also suppose that we divide the passengers into two groups: one with boys and one with girls between the ages of twelve and fifteen. The girls are asked to stay here in the mosque and the boys are sent up to the roof as passengers.

‘The pilot revs the engines, the plane takes off and the boys are hurled into space. Don’t forget that the plane is flying at the speed of light. Listen carefully now. The boys fly for three hours, then come back and land on the roof of the mosque. According to their watches they’ve been in the air for three hours. The boys get out of the plane, walk down the stairs and go into the prayer room. They pull back the curtain between the men’s and women’s section and can’t believe their eyes. The girls have turned into old women, into toothless hags!’

His listeners stared at each other in puzzlement and disbelief. How could the girls have aged so much in the three hours the boys were gone?

‘Relativity,’ Khalkhal explained. ‘The relative speed of light. A different logic applies when you travel at the speed of light. That’s why I chose that quotation. Traces of God are everywhere. Power upon power, light upon light.’

Meanwhile, Khalkhal’s fame had spread throughout the city. He was especially popular with the young people, and the women doted on him.

Even though he was married, he was surrounded by veiled women who slipped him love letters as he strode through the mosque’s dark corridors. He tucked the letters into his robe without so much as a backward glance.

‘You’re a handsome imam,’ said one woman, when she chanced upon him alone in the corridor.

‘I want to fly into space in Einstein’s aeroplane with you,’ said another in passing.

‘You smell so good. Where do you buy your cologne?’ asked a young woman from out of the darkness, making sure to keep her face concealed.

‘You look so handsome when you wear your turban at an angle,’ whispered another.

The curtain separating the men’s and women’s sections ran down the entire length of the prayer room. The pulpit was on a platform between the two. The young women usually sat in the first few rows so they could get a better look at Khalkhal. He revelled in their attention.

Khalkhal waited patiently for the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, when he would be able to make his true feelings known. According to custom, that’s when issues of vital importance were discussed. It was no coincidence that much of the protest in the holy city of Qom had taken place on the Prophet’s birthday. Everyone was curious to know what Khalkhal was going to say on that day.

Khalkhal entered the prayer room on the Prophet’s birthday escorted by Aqa Jaan and Shahbal. He sat down in his chair and, after a brief silence, began to recite the melodious Earthquake surah: