The House of the Mosque (6 page)

Aqa Jaan’s two daughters hid behind the curtains so they could see Khalkhal when he left the guest room.

The meeting between Khalkhal and his prospective bride had gone on for almost an hour when the guest-room door opened and Sadiq came out. She looked happy. She glanced at the grandmothers and went up to her room.

Shahbal gave Khalkhal a tour of the courtyard and introduced him to the grandmothers. Then Fakhri Sadat came downstairs. ‘This is Aqa Jaan’s wife – the queen of our household,’ Shahbal said, laughing.

Khalkhal greeted her without looking directly at her. Then the girls were introduced, one by one. After Khalkhal had met everyone, Shahbal took him to the bazaar, so Aqa Jaan could speak to him.

A few days later Aqa Jaan received Khalkhal and his father in his study. Alsaberi was also present. Their conversation had little in common with traditional marriage negotiations, since not a word was said about money or carpets. The bride would present the groom with a gold-embossed Koran, and she would leave her father’s house in a white chador, taking with her a collection of poems by the medieval poet Hafez. After all, everyone knew that the daughters of the wealthy families in Senejan weren’t sent to their new homes empty-handed. Of course Sadiq would be provided with everything she needed. And so the rest of the conversation was about the mosque, the library, the books, the centuries-old cellars, the blind muezzin and the cedar tree in the courtyard. Lastly they set a date for the wedding.

‘
Mobarak inshallah
,’ the men said, and they shook hands.

When they were done, Sadiq came in bearing a silver tray with five silver teacups.

The wedding was scheduled to take place on the birthday of the holy Fatima – one of the best days for a wedding. The weather would be relatively hot, but a breeze from the mountains would cool things down and make you want to take your bride in your arms and crawl under a light blanket. During the summer, most people slept on their roofs. Here and there you saw a gauzy white canopy on the roof, which is where the brides and grooms slept.

There would be a special ceremony, to which the leading families in the city and the bazaar would be invited. After all, this wasn’t an ordinary wedding, but the wedding of Imam Alsaberi’s daughter. And the groom wasn’t an ordinary teacher or a registry clerk or even a merchant. He was an imam in a black turban who came from Qom.

T
he day of the
arusi
, the wedding, had arrived.

Zinat Khanom asked her daughter to come to her room, then closed the door and kissed her. ‘Are you glad you’re going to marry Khalkhal?’ she enquired.

‘I don’t know . . .’

‘You should be. He’s handsome and your father says he’s very ambitious.’

‘That’s what scares me.’

‘I was scared too when I married your father. Girls are always scared when they have to leave home with a man they barely know, but as soon as the two of you are alone together, your fear will disappear. After all, a girl has to marry and leave her father’s house one day.’

Zinat Khanom calmed her daughter with soothing words, but deep in her heart she too had doubts. She didn’t know why. Suddenly the ghastly memories of her past came flooding back, though she hid them from Sadiq.

‘I still can’t believe it,’ she said to her daughter.

‘Believe what?’

‘That you’re grown up, that you’re going to marry and move away.’

‘Why do you sound so sad?’

Zinat’s eyes filled with tears.

‘I wish you joy,’ she said, and kissed her daughter.

Zinat had been afraid of losing Sadiq from the moment she was born. She was terrified of finding her dead one day – in her bed, in the garden, in the
hauz
.

The years of Sadiq’s childhood had been filled with anxiety, and those years had taken their toll. Zinat was terrified of going to sleep at night, because she had such horrible nightmares.

Zinat Khanom and Alsaberi were cousins. She had married him when she was only sixteen. First they had a daughter, Orza, born five years before Sadiq. When she was eighteen, Orza married a man from Zinat’s family. She now had three children and lived with her husband in Kashan.

Next Zinat had a son, Abbas. The hopes of the family had been pinned on him, for he was to be Alsaberi’s successor as the imam of the mosque. But one hot summer’s day, when Zinat and Abbas were alone in the house, a dreadful thing happened.

Abbas had just learned to walk and was merrily chasing the cats on his wobbly legs. Zinat had gone up to her room and forgotten about the boy. At some point she noticed that it was quiet outside and looked out of the window. Abbas was nowhere in sight. She raced down the stairs and saw the cats sitting by the
hauz
, and there, floating in the water, was the body of her son. She screamed and rushed to rescue him.

Two men, who had heard her screams, appeared on the roof of the mosque and hurried down to the courtyard to help her. They pumped the boy’s stomach, but couldn’t revive him. Zinat wailed. They turned him upside down and shook him, but to no avail. Zinat wailed. They lit a fire and held him above it to warm him. But it was too late. Zinat wailed again. The men lay the child on the ground and covered him with Zinat’s chador. Abbas, the hope of the house, was dead.

No one blamed Zinat for what had happened. But she retreated to her room, shocked and grief-stricken.

Aqa Jaan went up to talk to her. ‘I tell myself it was God’s will, Zinat. You should do the same.’

From that moment on, no one in the house ever talked about Abbas. For months Zinat wept in silence, but his name was never mentioned. Zinat thought of the silence as her punishment, and a very harsh one at that.

A year later she became pregnant with Sadiq. She left her room and helped the grandmothers in the kitchen. Only two years later, after the birth of Ahmad, could Zinat hold her head up high again and resume her normal life.

Even so, Zinat never regained her position in the household. She lived in the shadow of Fakhri Sadat and felt herself to be inferior.

If Fakhri Sadat had suffered a similar fate, Aqa Jaan would have stood by her and done everything he could to ease her pain, but Alsaberi was weak. Though he had never blamed Zinat, he hadn’t supported her during those difficult years either. At no time had he hugged her or spoken lovingly to her.

If your husband ignores you, everyone else will ignore you too. If you’re invisible to your own husband, you become invisible to others.

Zinat was still invisible. Her daughter was about to get married and no one had asked her permission.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Zinat said to her image in the mirror as she wiped away her tears. ‘My time will come.’

The house was a beehive of activity. The men had borrowed a curtain from the mosque – the long one that separated the men and women during prayers – and strung it across the courtyard.

Expensive carpets had been laid on the ground, and some men from the mosque had covered the walls of the house with tapestries woven with joyful sacred texts.

The trees were hung with green satin pennants inscribed with the poems of the old Persian masters. The most famous singer of sacred songs had been sent for from Qom. His renditions of rhythmic surahs from the Koran left a lasting impression on all who heard him.

Aqa Jaan had bought a new suit and gone to the barber. He liked being dressed in spotless new clothes. Thanks to Fakhri Sadat, he was one of the few merchants in the bazaar who paid attention to his appearance. His office boy kept his shoes polished, and the grandmothers ironed his shirts. Fakhri Sadat liked to tease him sometimes: ‘You’re the handsomest man in the city. Nobody who saw you with your clean-shaven face and dashing hat would ever guess that you could reel off the entire Koran by heart!’

The imam was sitting in the library as usual. Soon – after everyone had arrived – he would put in a brief appearance and then go back to his books.

The celebration had begun. The invited guests and the city’s most influential men came trickling in. The men stayed on the right side of the courtyard, beneath the cedar tree, sitting on chairs grouped around the
hauz
, while the women went behind the curtain and sat in the beautiful, fragrant garden – the pride of the gardener, Am Ramazan. None of the guests had brought their children, which was unusual. Children were normally welcome at weddings, but this was such a distinguished gathering that they had not been invited.

The guests were served tea and the very best pastries. Both men and women had rosewater sprinkled on their hands.

All of those present – especially the women – were curious to see Khalkhal.

A car drew up to the door. The mayor stepped out and was welcomed to the house by Aqa Jaan. The men stood up when he came into the courtyard and waited until he had seated himself by the
hauz
before sitting down again.

A second car drew up to the door. This one, as they all knew, contained the groom. Aqa Jaan welcomed Khalkhal and led him over to the place of honour by the mayor.

The mayor stood up to offer his congratulations, but the groom looked right past him, as if he hadn’t seen him and didn’t know who he was. To Khalkhal, the mayor was a lackey of the shah. He refused to sit next to him, much less shake hands with him.

The mayor sat down again and no one commented on the incident. Aqa Jaan had been so busy talking to someone that he hadn’t even noticed the snub.

At three o’clock the man from the registry office arrived with two bearded assistants, each of whom was carrying a ledger. They sat at the table where the marriage certificate was to be signed and opened their ledgers. The official part of the ceremony could begin.

Just then shouts arose from the women on the other side of the curtain. ‘
Salaam bar Fatima!
’ they cried. ‘Greetings to Fatima!’

This signalled the arrival of the bride. She sat down at the table where the registry clerks were busy writing in their ledgers.

The bride was more beautiful than ever. She was wearing a pale green chador with pink flowers over a milky-white gown. Her eyebrows had been carefully plucked, and she was wearing mascara, so that she looked more like a young woman than a girl.

The registry clerk asked for the bride’s birth certificate. Aqa Jaan reached into his inside pocket, took out the document and handed it to him. The clerk meticulously noted the details in his ledger, then asked the groom for his birth certificate.

Khalkhal checked his pockets, one by one, but came up empty-handed every time. He and his father had a whispered exchange, after which he rummaged through his overnight bag. All eyes were glued on the groom, as everyone waited for him to produce the certificate.

‘I forgot to bring it,’ Khalkhal said.

Horrified gasps were heard from the women on the other side of the curtain. This was an extraordinary situation.

The registry clerk thought for a moment, then said, ‘Do you have any other form of identification?’

Khalkhal checked his pockets again, and he and his father had another whispered exchange. No, he didn’t have any kind of identification with him.

A scandalised buzz broke out on both sides of the curtain.

Aqa Jaan looked at the mayor and read the mistrust in his eyes. He looked at several of the bazaar’s leading merchants. Everywhere he looked he saw disapproval. How could Khalkhal have forgotten to bring the necessary documents to his wedding? Everyone was waiting to see how Aqa Jaan would react. He suspected that Khalkhal had left his identification papers at home on purpose, hoping to force the family into letting their daughter marry him without having the marriage officially registered. That might be customary in the countryside, where the bride and groom simply exchanged vows in the presence of a village imam, and then the man was granted access to the woman’s bed. In such a marriage the man was free to take other wives. But marriages of that sort no longer took place in the city and certainly not in the prominent circles to which Aqa Jaan’s family belonged.

‘Perhaps you left the documents at your father’s house,’ Aqa Jaan said to Khalkhal.

‘No, I don’t think so. They’re in Qom.’

Aqa Jaan sat down beside the mayor and they conferred briefly.

‘You’re right,’ the mayor concluded. ‘You shouldn’t go through with it.’

Then Aqa Jaan went over to Alsaberi, who had just emerged from the library and was standing by the cedar tree, next to the caretaker.

‘We’re going to have to postpone the wedding,’ Aqa Jaan said. ‘Khalkhal must go to Qom to get his identification papers.’

‘In that case he won’t be back until after midnight. It might be better for them to say their vows first. Then he can go to Qom and get his papers.’

‘No, because once they’ve exchanged vows, that’s that. Sadiq will belong to him and we’ll be powerless to help her. He’ll take her away, and we’ll be left with nothing. You of all people should know that.’

‘You’re right,’ Alsaberi replied. ‘Let him go and get his papers.’ And he went back into his library.

Aqa Jaan strode over to the registry clerk. ‘Without valid identification papers,’ he announced, ‘there will be no marriage!’

Everyone began talking at once.

Aqa Jaan turned to Khalkhal. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said calmly. ‘You can go to Qom to get your papers. I’ll wait. We’ll all wait.’

Khalkhal was taken aback. ‘But that’s impossible! There’s no train going to Qom at this hour. And I don’t trust the buses.’

‘I’ll arrange for transport,’ Aqa Jaan said. He went over to where the mayor was sitting and spoke with him. The mayor nodded several times in agreement.

‘It’s all set,’ Aqa Jaan told Khalkhal. ‘A jeep will pick you up shortly. The mayor’s chauffeur will drive you to Qom. I’m a patient man, but you’d better not take too much time.’