The House of the Mosque (11 page)

The tone of Khalkhal’s voice had changed. His words sounded more powerful than ever.

The mosque was filled to overflowing and everyone was listening intently to his words. ‘Imam Alsaberi has left us,’ Khalkhal said, ‘but the mosque has remained. One day all of us will pass away, but the mosque will remain.

‘Is that true? Will the mosque be here for ever? No, not even the mosque will be here for ever. Imams come and go, mosques come and go, but the voice remains.’

The men exchanged puzzled glances. Aqa Jaan and Shahbal looked at each other: ‘The voice remains? What does that mean?’

But Khalkhal was right, Aqa Jaan thought. Alsaberi had been forgotten and none of his words had remained, because he’d had nothing to say. Alsaberi’s father had been different. He’d been a remarkable imam who’d given fiery speeches, a man who wanted to make things happen, to change things. A man who dared to call a spade a spade. During his time as imam, he’d had the city in the palm of his hand. With one small gesture he’d been able to stir the bazaar to action. Alsaberi’s father had been dead for decades, but his voice remained. His voice lived on in the city’s memory.

He’d once preached a fiery sermon on the Prophet’s birthday against Reza Khan, the father of the present shah. Reza Khan had outlawed chadors and had ordered his soldiers to stop any veiled woman they saw on the streets and take her down to the police station. Alsaberi’s father had been arrested and banished to the city of Kashan. After that the secret police had boarded up the doors of the mosque.

Aqa Jaan remembered the arrest as though it had been yesterday. Several military vehicles had pulled up to the mosque, and armed soldiers had leapt out. Then an officer arrived in a jeep. Tucking his baton under his arm, he got out and strode into the prayer room with his shoes on, intending to arrest the elderly imam and haul him off to jail.

Aqa Jaan, then a young man who had only just been put in charge of the mosque, calmly went up to the officer and said, ‘If you leave the mosque now, the imam will come out by himself and go with you quietly. If you don’t, I’m afraid you’ll have a riot on your hands. Consider yourself warned.’

He said it so clearly and firmly that there was no room for doubt. The officer looked at the worshippers, who had formed a circle around the imam. He got the message. ‘Bring me the imam,’ he said, poking his baton in Aqa Jaan’s chest. ‘I’ll wait outside.’ He stalked out of the prayer room and waited by the gate.

Aqa Jaan, his head held high, escorted the imam to the jeep, followed by dozens of worshippers. The officer waited for the imam to get in, then he himself slid behind the wheel.

Meanwhile, the soldiers ordered everyone to leave the mosque and proceeded to board up the doors.

Not until three years later, when the British forced Reza Khan to leave the country and go into exile in Egypt, did the mosque open its doors again.

Aqa Jaan smiled and waited anxiously to hear what Khalkhal would say next. But Khalkhal sat there in silence, staring at his audience. Suddenly he uttered a single word, totally unconnected to what he had been talking about before: ‘America!’

It was as if he’d hurled a rock into the hushed audience. There were gasps on both sides of the curtain, because it was forbidden to talk about America in the mosque. The word itself was fraught with political overtones. The ayatollahs didn’t see America as the rest of the world did. America was evil. America was the enemy of Islam.

The young shah had been about to flee the country – thereby ending 2,500 years of monarchy – when a CIA-backed coup had restored him to his throne. Since then the ayatollahs had referred to America as ‘Satan’, and the mosques had become a hotbed of anti-American feeling.

An imam who uttered the word ‘America’ was in effect firing a bullet and shouting, ‘Down with Satan! Down with America!’

‘Times have changed,’ Khalkhal thundered. ‘Reza Khan is gone, and now America is everywhere. In Tehran. In Qom!’

He’d made a statement, and yet at the same time he hadn’t made one. Basically all he was doing was announcing an innocent truth: ‘Times have changed. America is everywhere.’

The city’s wise men weighed his words and noted that he was a clever orator. He knew that you had to use words in a certain sequence in order to heighten the suspense.

Khalkhal stared at his listeners. They were hanging on his every word, curious to hear what he would say next. He broke the silence by uttering two short words: ‘Allah, Allah!’

Those two words could mean almost anything. When you saw something you admired, you said, ‘Allah, Allah.’ When you were up to your ears in trouble, you said, ‘Allah, Allah!’

But Khalkhal had used those words in an altogether different context. By mentioning Qom and America in the same breath, he had added a new dimension to his statement. Qom! America! Allah, Allah! It was as though he’d fired
three
shots into the mosque.

Then Khalkhal changed tack and switched over to the Victory surah:

Aqa Jaan and Shahbal exchanged glances.

Khalkhal didn’t linger by the Victory, but moved smoothly on to the Rome surah:

And that was the end of his sermon.

His sermon had been highly suspect, open to various interpretations, and yet it had been worded in such a way that the secret police wouldn’t be able to lay a finger on him. He’d started out with the Prophet Muhammad, then slipped in the word ‘America’ and finally mentioned the decline of the Roman Empire. Clearly, he had no intention of explaining what he meant or where he was headed.

Aqa Jaan realised that the mosque was in for another exciting time – something he had long been waiting for.

Khalkhal got to his feet and stepped down from the pulpit. Hundreds of worshippers stood up for him. Aqa Jaan walked over to him, took him in his arms, kissed him on the left shoulder and proudly escorted him to the door.

O
ne day when Aqa Jaan was walking by Khalkhal’s desk, he happened to see a poem lying there. He picked it up and read it. He couldn’t believe his eyes:
Khodaa ya tu busideh-ye hich gah . . .

It was a shocking poem. God, kisses, a drunken woman, unripe breasts – and all of that on Khalkhal’s desk!

The poet’s name was printed at the bottom: Nosrat Rahmani. Aqa Jaan had never heard of him.

Who was he?

How dare he write such blasphemous words?

‘Things are out of hand,’ Aqa Jaan mumbled to himself. The shah encourages this kind of rubbish, but what’s Khalkhal doing with it? And why does he bring such things back to the library?

There were other poems on the desk. Aqa Jaan began to read one. It was a remarkable poem, because it had been written by a woman:

He heard Khalkhal’s footsteps in the courtyard. There wasn’t time to finish reading the poem, so he swiftly put it back on the desk and hurried over to a bookcase, where he pretended to be searching the shelves.

Khalkhal came in. Aqa Jaan removed a book at random and quickly left the library. Still mulling over the poems, he went into his study. He couldn’t get the last one out of his mind. It bothered him so much he couldn’t concentrate on his work:

Who was this female poet?

Had the country changed so much that women could talk openly about themselves and express their innermost feelings? Had it changed so much that they could now talk intimately about their bodies? Why hadn’t he noticed the change? Who were these women? Why hadn’t he ever met them? What did they look like? And where did they live? In Tehran?

The shah! It was all the fault of the shah and the Americans! American culture came pouring into their homes via radio, television and film.

The regime did whatever it could to lure young people away from the mosque and transform them into supporters of the shah and his ideals.

The shah had launched his ‘White Revolution’. He had published a thin volume in which he’d outlined his hopes for the country. In an effort to combat illiteracy, he’d sent young women to the villages to work as teachers. They’d taken off their veils, donned hats, and gone into the mountains, much as the shah’s soldiers had done, to set up schools in remote villages.

Yes, everything had changed. Aqa Jaan hadn’t noticed . . . or hadn’t wanted to. The country was being industrialised at a rapid pace, which is why so many foreign investors had been granted permission to build factories in Tehran and other major cities.

Senejan was no exception. Dozens of Japanese and European companies had seized the opportunity to take part in this new development. A tractor factory was being built on the outskirts of the city. Soon it would be employing hundreds of young people from Senejan and the nearby villages.

The management of the factory would be in the hands of the world-famous Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi. The idea was to produce a small tractor that could be used in the mountains. Thanks to a government subsidy, every farmer would soon have one of those tractors. And so the farmer and the shah would be bound together by Mitsubishi.

No, Aqa Jaan wasn’t up on the latest trends; on the contrary, he was far behind. He never listened to the radio and had never owned a television. If he’d seen the shah’s wife, Farah Diba, on television, he’d have a better idea of what was going on in his country. She was working hard to improve women’s lives. Aqa Jaan didn’t realise how popular she was with women, even those who went to mosque every day.

Farah Diba was the shah’s third wife – the one who finally bore him a son. His first two wives had failed to give him the crown prince he longed for. He’d met her at a party in Paris, where she was a student, and now she was the queen of Iran. She was hoping to improve the position of women, to free them from their bonds.

Until now things had gone well, and it seemed as if the shah was managing to keep the ayatollahs in line. Secure in this knowledge, Farah Diba flew to Paris once a month to shop at the famous boutiques where Hollywood celebrities bought their clothes.

While the
New York Times
described the country under the shah’s rule as an oasis of peace, Farah Diba made an appointment with a clinic in France to have her Persian nose shaped into a French nose. She came back home with a new hairdo as well.

No newspaper dared to mention the nose job, but every hairdresser in Iran had immediately set about imitating the hairstyle. Farah’s hair was the talk of the town. Even Fakhri Sadat, the wife of Aqa Jaan, had succumbed to the
Farahi
– the Farah cut – though Aqa Jaan hadn’t even noticed.

In Senejan people were busy setting up a women’s clinic. According to the latest statistics, the numbers of women suffering from female disorders were higher in the more religious cities and villages, and yet devout women refused to be treated by male doctors. As a result the authorities in religious cities decided to open a clinic staffed exclusively by female physicians. The clinic in Senejan was to be the first and largest women’s clinic in the country.

Farah Diba’s royal cultural institute supported the plan, and Farah herself was scheduled to come to Senejan to open the clinic.

Khalkhal, who kept abreast of developments across the country, had gradually started including the everyday life of the city in his sermons. Recently he’d criticised the mayor because there wasn’t a decent public library in Senejan and the kiosks were selling Farsi translations of trashy American novels.

Another time he attacked the city’s theatre for putting on a play in which an imam was ridiculed. The play was aimed at schoolchildren. Every day a new group was brought in to see the performance. Khalkhal was incensed. ‘It’s a disgrace to the honourable city of Senejan. How dare they turn an imam into a figure of fun to entertain our youth? I warn the bazaar: a cunning attack has been launched in this city against Islam. Have you looked in your children’s schoolbags lately to see what kind of blasphemous ideas are being taught at their school? Are you aware of the poisonous poetry being assigned to your daughters in the name of literature? My hands shook when I read some of those poems. Out of respect for the women sitting on the other side of the curtain I won’t tell you what those poems were about. War has been declared on our faith. Don’t play with fire. I warn you! Don’t play with fire!’