The House of the Mosque (31 page)

The next day an ABC van pulled up in front of Khomeini’s house in Paris.

It was late afternoon in the city, but early evening in Iran.

Am Ramazan rode excitedly into the alley, hopped down from his donkey and hurried into Aqa Jaan’s study. ‘Khomeini is in Paris!’ he exclaimed. ‘He’s going to be on television any moment now!’

‘He’s where?’

‘We can watch it in the Hajji Taghi Khan Mosque. Are you coming?’

Aqa Jaan didn’t want to go to the Hajji Taghi Khan. It was the mosque everyone was going to these days. It had become the centre of political upheaval in Senejan.

Only the elderly still attended Aqa Jaan’s mosque. But the Hajji Taghi Khan Mosque was so full that people had to stand outside. Young imams from Qom held fiery speeches there every night, whipping the masses into such frenzy that they poured out into the streets to demonstrate.

‘I’m sorry,’ Aqa Jaan said to Am Ramazan, ‘I’m busy right now. I’ll come later.’

And yet he was curious. He felt obliged to be a witness. To see everything, record it in his journal and save it for posterity. He
had
to be there. So he put on his coat and hat and set off for the Hajji Taghi Khan.

The mosque was packed and hundreds of people were milling around outside the gate. He sought a dark corner where he wouldn’t be noticed, then reproached himself: ‘You’re not a thief, so why are you hiding in the dark? Go in and see what’s happening.’

He pushed his way through the crowd. The men were in the courtyard, the women in the prayer room.

At a certain point he realised he wasn’t making any headway, so he turned round and went up to the roof. There he found a spot with a good view of the mosque. Three large television sets had been mounted high up on the wall so everyone could watch the unprecedented event.

Aqa Jaan was reminded of the portable television that Shahbal had brought home years ago so that he and Alsaberi could watch the moon landing. The conversation he’d had with Shahbal was still fixed firmly in his mind.

‘May I have a word with you, Aqa Jaan?’ Shahbal had asked him.

‘Of course, my boy. What’s on your mind?’

‘The moon.’

‘The moon?’

‘No, I mean, television.’

‘Television?’ Aqa Jaan had said in surprise.

‘An imam needs to know what’s going on. He has to keep up with current events,’ Shahbal had replied.

Alsaberi had died and Khalkhal had taken his place. Then Ahmad had come, and now there was this.

There was a flurry of movement by the gate.

‘
Salla ala Mohammad wa ale Mohammad!
’ shouted the men standing in the street.

Aqa Jaan looked down at the gate. A group of bearded men in stylish suits came into the courtyard and ushered a young imam over to the television screens, where Khomeini’s interview would soon be shown. Aqa Jaan recognised the men: they were the merchants who had taken control of the bazaar.

A woman came up to the men in the suits, exchanged a few words with them and went back into the prayer room. It was Zinat, but because she was so far away and wearing a black chador like the other women, Aqa Jaan hadn’t recognised her.

A young bearded man switched on the television sets. The crowd held its breath, and people craned their necks to get a better view.

At first the camera showed the quiet streets of Neauphle-le-Château. Then you saw a couple of French women go into a supermarket. Next a school bus drew up to a bus shelter, where you could see a brightly coloured ad of a sleek young French woman. Two girls with rucksacks got out of the bus and stared straight into the lens. The camera then panned to a house and showed the trees, the pergola, the garden.

At last Khomeini appeared on the screen. He was sitting on a Persian rug.

The crowd in the mosque went wild and shouted in one voice, ‘
Salaam bar Khomeini! Salaam bar Khomeini!
’

Back in those days you couldn’t watch a live foreign broadcast on Iran’s state-controlled television network, but the organisers had put a satellite dish on the roof of the mosque. The images were being beamed in from neighbouring Iraq.

The camera zoomed in on Khomeini’s face. It was the first time people had actually seen the ageing ayatollah who wanted to oust the Americans.

Few people knew Khomeini personally, and no recent pictures of him had ever been published. Since no one knew exactly what he looked like, the camera stayed on his face for a long time. He had a long grey beard, and his face glowed in the light of the cameras, which made him look like a saint.

He started to stand up. Someone – probably one of the camera crew – offered him a helping hand, but he waved it away and got to his feet unaided.

He went out into the garden, where two rugs – a large one and a small one – had already been spread on the ground. He took off his shoes and stepped onto the small rug. Then he reached into his pocket, took out a compass and tried to find the east, but couldn’t see the needle. So he patiently put on his glasses, consulted the compass, and turned to face Mecca.

Beheshti was standing behind him, on the large rug. Khalkhal had deliberately kept out of sight. He knew that, as Khomeini’s most loyal adviser, it would be better to remain anonymous.

Khomeini’s wife, Batul, shrouded from head to foot in a black chador, came out for the prayer and took her place behind Beheshti. The camera focused on her for a moment, and she stood as still as a statue. Then the scene shifted to a green hedge, where a few French women and their children were watching in amazement.

Within days a horde of journalists from all over the globe descended on Neauphle-le-Château, thereby focusing the attention of the world on the approaching revolution.

Until then Beheshti and Khalkhal had been the only men at Khomeini’s side, but within twenty-four hours of the interview seven more arrived from America, Germany, England and Paris. For a while they formed the new Revolutionary Council.

Later, after the shah had been toppled and the revolution had been won, they were appointed to top government posts. It was these men who became president, prime minister, minister of finance, minister of foreign affairs, minister of industrial affairs, chairman of the Parliament and chief of the newly formed secret police.

What became of these seven men? Within a few short years, one was executed as an American spy, another was imprisoned for corruption, three of them were assassinated by the Resistance, the man who’d served as president fled to Paris, where he requested political asylum, and shortly thereafter the prime minister was dismissed from his post.

In Tehran millions of people took part in demonstrations being held almost daily. It seemed that no earthly power could prevent Khomeini’s return.

The face of the country changed almost overnight. Men grew beards and women enveloped themselves in chadors.

Massive strikes in the oil sector brought the country to an economic standstill. Workers abandoned their machines, students stopped attending classes, schoolchildren left their schools and everyone took to the streets.

The revolution also left its mark on the house of the mosque.

Zinat openly distanced herself from the family, and Sadiq went out more often. Both she and Zinat often attended mass gatherings of Islamic women.

Sadiq, who had never worn a headscarf inside the house, now swathed herself in a chador when she was at home. She used to spend all of her time indoors, cooking and taking care of Lizard. Now she dropped everything in order to go out. She came home late, grabbed a bite to eat and went to bed.

Aqa Jaan went to the bazaar every day, but the carpet business was the last thing on people’s minds. He felt himself to be more and more of a stranger in his own shop.

The storerooms were stacked with rugs that should have been posted to other countries weeks ago. The corridors and workrooms were filled with yarns and other materials that should have been sent to the workshops in the outlying villages.

His trusty office boy, whose job it was to usher customers into his office and bring them tea, had grown a beard. He no longer came to work on time, and left the building at odd moments, saying only that he had to go to the mosque.

The employees had cleared out one of the offices and turned it into a prayer room. They had removed the desks and chairs, put down a few rugs and hung a large portrait of Khomeini on the wall. They had even brought in a mosque samovar and set it on a table.

No one did any work. His employees hung around the shop all day, discussing the latest events. They drank tea in the prayer room and listened to the BBC’s Persian broadcasts so they could follow the developments in Paris.

Aqa Jaan could see that his business was on the brink of collapse, but he was powerless to do anything about it.

At home he saw that Fakhri Sadat no longer sparkled. She had lost her customary cheerfulness. She used to go into town periodically to buy new clothes, especially nightwear, but her shopping sprees were now a thing of the past.

Aqa Jaan always enjoyed watching Fakhri standing in front of the mirror, feeling her breasts to see if they were still firm. But she didn’t do that any more, and she also stopped wearing her jewellery. One day she tidied up her jewellery box, which had always lain on her dressing table, and put it away for good.

Nasrin and Ensi were also victims of the change. No one seemed to notice that Aqa Jaan’s daughters had reached a marriageable age and were still not spoken for.

Aqa Jaan missed Shahbal. He wanted to talk to him, to pour his heart out to him, but he didn’t get the chance. Shahbal came home for a quick visit every once in a while, then left again. Aqa Jaan knew that he was no longer attending classes. He tried to approach him a few times, but he got the feeling that Shahbal didn’t want to talk to him.

And yet he trusted him. He knew that Shahbal would eventually come back to him.

Aqa Jaan had taken to going down to the river and strolling along its banks in the dark. He remembered his father’s advice: ‘When you’re feeling sad, go down to the river. Talk to the river, and your sorrows will be borne away on its swift current.’

‘I don’t want to complain,’ Aqa Jaan said to the river, ‘but there’s a lump in my throat the size of a rock.’

His eyes were stinging. A tear rolled down his cheek and fell to the ground. The river caught it and bore it away in the darkness, without telling a soul.

A
qa Jaan was in his office at the bazaar. The office boy had just brought him a glass of tea when he heard a sudden commotion downstairs in the workroom. The employees had left their posts and were watching the two o’clock news.

‘What’s going on?’ Aqa Jaan called.

‘The shah has fled!’ the boy yelled up the stairs.

‘
Allahu akbar!
’ someone exclaimed.

There was no mention on the news of the shah fleeing, so apparently it had been a rumour, yet it was such a persistent rumour that the regime had been compelled to put the shah on television. He was shown receiving some of his generals, which only aggravated the situation. The shah, who used to appear on television every night, had been absent a great deal in recent months. Now people couldn’t believe their eyes: he had grown thin and looked like a man who was terrified of losing all he had.

The rumour had contained only a small grain of truth.

The next day a new rumour was making the rounds: ‘Farah Diba is fleeing to America with the children!’

This wasn’t entirely true. Farah Diba wasn’t fleeing with the children; her mother was.

A street war was about to break out in Tehran. The protestors were getting close to the palace. According to army intelligence, the mullahs were planning to attack the palace, so the shah had asked Farah Diba to leave the country and to take the children with her.

She refused. ‘I’m not going to abandon you at a time like this.’

‘I’m thinking about the children’s safety, not my own,’ the shah replied.

‘Then we need to come up with a different plan. I’ll ask my mother to go with them,’ was her answer.

While a helicopter was conveying the shah’s children from the palace to a nearby military base, where they would be flown out of the country in an air-force jet, Nosrat was taking the night train to Senejan.

The train drew into the station at four o’clock in the morning. Nosrat took a taxi to the house, then tiptoed into the guest room and fell asleep.

In the morning Lizard came to his room and woke him up.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ Nosrat said, and he took a pair of leather gloves out of his bag. ‘Here, put them on, then we’ll go to the bazaar and get something to eat. I’m starving.’

Lizard put on the gloves and crawled into town on his hands and feet alongside Nosrat. When they reached the giant statue of the shah on horseback, Lizard looked at Nosrat to see if it would be all right for him to climb onto it. Nosrat winked, and a few seconds later Lizard was seated in the saddle behind the shah.

Lizard was the only person who’d ever had the nerve to do such a thing.

At first no one noticed, but soon people stopped to stare. When he realised that he had a crowd of enthusiastic onlookers, Lizard got bolder. He leaned forward, threw his arms round the horse’s neck and pretended to gallop. Then he leapt from the horse’s neck to the shah’s head, slid down the horse’s long tail and hopped back into the saddle – all with such extraordinary agility that he looked more like a monkey than a lizard.

More and more people gathered round, and they were all clapping.

Two policemen came striding up, but didn’t dare to intervene. One of them reported the incident on his walkie-talkie. A while later a van pulled up with a squad of riot police, but since they hadn’t been ordered to disperse the crowd either, they merely kept an eye on things. The situation in the country was so tense that anything they did could trigger a riot.