The House of the Mosque (16 page)

‘What did you say?’ Fakhri Sadat said in surprise. She pushed back the blanket and sat bolt upright in bed.

‘It’s a modern poem,’ he said, and kissed her neck. Then he carefully pulled her nightgown over her head and lay her down on her back. ‘If I recite the poem,’ he whispered, ‘will you repeat it to me?’

‘No, I won’t. You’re scaring me. What do you want?’

‘I want
you
.’

Fakhri Sadat closed her eyes.

O
ne Wednesday evening, when the family was gathered together, Zinat told them a magical tale:

Wednesday evening was storytelling time. Every Wednesday the family ate together, then listened to Zinat. The grandmothers lit the candles, switched off the lights and passed round a bowl of nuts.

Zinat Khanom was a born storyteller. She had a warmth in her voice that made you want to listen to her. Her stories were drawn from old books, particularly those with extensive interpretations of the Koran. The Koran is a stark, but highly evocative, book. The stories are never told in great detail. As a result many books have been written to explain and flesh out the bare bones of the stories, and it was from these books that Zinat drew her inspiration.

For the most part Zinat was quiet and withdrawn. Nobody knew about her storytelling talent until the day she told a couple of children a short story she knew by heart.

After her son Abbas had drowned, Zinat had taken refuge in her room. Only when she became pregnant again with Sadiq had she emerged from her self-imposed isolation, venturing into the courtyard more often and going to help the grandmothers in the kitchen.

After Sadiq’s birth, Zinat was plagued by so many fears that she couldn’t sleep. During this time, the grandmothers never left her side. They were her main source of comfort and strength. Night after night they sat by her bed until she fell asleep.

When Ahmad was born, her fears were rekindled. One day she handed the baby to Golbanu. ‘Watch him for me!’ she said. ‘I’m afraid of losing this child too. I’m going to the mosque. I need to pray.’

Since then Zinat had gone faithfully to the mosque every day.

When Alsaberi was still alive, he used to retreat into his own world in the library and not get involved in the life of his wife and children.

Zinat’s children thought of Aqa Jaan as the head of the household, which is why they called him ‘Father’.

After Alsaberi’s death, Zinat spent hours and hours in the library of the mosque. Everyone thought she was going to the mosque to mourn the loss of her husband, but she was actually preparing for a new phase in her life.

At first she kept to herself, but later she met a couple of women in the mosque who took her along to their devotional meetings.

An odd thing happened to Zinat Khanom when she became a widow. All of a sudden she seemed to have been liberated, though no one could have said from what. Before then, she had felt like a balloon whose string had become snagged on a tree, but now she felt herself soaring into the sky. It was a wonderful – and terrifying – feeling.

The moment the summer holidays began, she gathered up her children and went to her parents’ house in the mountains, where she hoped to find some peace.

Zinat had never thought of Alsaberi as a real man, as a husband. He had been more of an imam than a family man.

When she compared her marriage to Fakhri Sadat’s, Zinat realised that she didn’t have a family life. Instead, she was merely a woman who had given birth to a son, a successor.

Fakhri Sadat had Aqa Jaan, and she had a real life. Zinat’s bedroom was on the same floor as hers. Late in the evening, when she walked past Fakhri’s door, she invariably saw Aqa Jaan lying beside his wife in the reddish glow of the nightlight. And sometimes she heard Fakhri giggling in the middle of the night.

But Alsaberi had never lain beside Zinat. He had slept with her only when he needed her, and he hadn’t needed her all that often. After the birth of Ahmad, he had never again gone to Zinat’s bed.

Zinat had accepted the fact that Fakhri was the lady of the house. Wherever Fakhri went, the wives of the other businessmen treated her like a queen, but no one showed the slightest interest in Zinat.

Fakhri was the one who snared the birds, the one who was entrusted with the secrets of the carpet designs. Zinat’s job was to cook for the family.

That’s simply the way things were. Zinat had never been asked what she thought of the situation. She had accepted her role and found some measure of peace in prayer. Still, she knew her life wouldn’t go on like this for ever. One day she would come into her own, and everyone would say, ‘Look, there goes Zinat!’

When she started attending the devotional meetings, Zinat had been a mere pupil. Gradually, however, a circle of like-minded women gathered round her, and she began to devote more attention to them and to explain the devotional texts.

She had become their confidante. They listened to her and followed her advice.

Zinat was pleased with her new status, but she still hadn’t found the peace she’d been looking for. Something was lacking.

One afternoon, on her way back from the bathhouse, she stopped at the mosque. It was late. There was rarely anyone there at that hour. She slipped into the empty prayer room, then came back out, washed her hands in the
hauz
and splashed her face with water.

What was she doing in the mosque that afternoon, long before the prayer? Why had she washed her hands in the
hauz
? She had never done that before, not once in all the years that her husband had been the imam of the mosque. Besides, since she’d just come from the bathhouse, it wasn’t even necessary.

The substitute imam, who was staying in the mosque, came out into the courtyard. Zinat was startled by the sound of footsteps behind her.

‘
Salaam aleikum
, Zinat Khanom!’ he said.

Zinat returned his greeting, without looking at him. Then she dried her face on her chador and fled into the busy street, away from her sinful thoughts.

Last night as she lay in bed, she couldn’t help thinking about the substitute imam. She’d thought about him before, but this time the image was so graphic she couldn’t block it out. It was the first time she’d ever thought about another man. Alsaberi, whom she’d married when she was sixteen, had been the only man she’d ever known intimately. She’d given her life to him and had never even noticed other men.

To banish all thoughts of the substitute imam, she pulled the covers over her head and murmured:

When she got to the end, however, the image of the substitute imam appeared again. This time he was standing beside her bed, looking down at her, his eyes moving from her face to her breasts.

Alsaberi had never looked at her like that.

Zinat threw her arms over her breasts and muttered a few words to herself, words that could conceivably be the start of a good poem, words that came straight from her heart. She knew nothing about the female poets whose work had recently caused such a stir in Tehran, poems in which they described their emotions and their bodies. If she had, she would have grabbed a pen and committed her words to paper:

Zinat couldn’t remember exactly when she’d first started fantasising about the substitute imam. She had a certain amount of contact with Janeshin, since she frequently discussed devotional texts with him and asked his advice when she couldn’t answer the questions posed by the other women. On these occasions he received her in the prayer room after the prayer, advised her and took the time to answer her questions.

She also ran into him sometimes in the courtyard of the mosque, when he was strolling around, smoking a cigarette.

It wasn’t as if she went looking for him, and yet she kept bumping into him. He seemed to know when she was coming to the mosque, for whenever she entered its dark corridors, she inevitably saw him standing there.

Sometimes when she passed his office, she noticed that the door had been left ajar and that Janeshin was sitting in his chair without his turban, reading the Koran. She didn’t really want to look into his room, but she couldn’t resist the temptation. Every time she peeked in, their eyes met. Zinat couldn’t help feeling that he deliberately left the door ajar for that very reason.

Of course it was all right for her to talk to him. After all, he was now the imam of the mosque, filling in for her late husband and her son Ahmad, while he was studying to be an imam in Qom.

She was not the only woman who came to his office. Many others popped in to talk to him. One of the imam’s tasks was to welcome the women, listen to what they had to say and offer his advice.

The second time Zinat met with the imam she noticed that he was wearing a special scent – the one known as the Mecca scent. Her late husband had also brought back a bottle from Mecca, so she recognised it instantly. She also knew that it was worn only on special occasions.

The imam had sat in his chair, and Zinat had sat across from him. The door had been left ajar, as usual, since he never shut it when he had a female visitor.

Most women discussed their personal problems with the imam, telling him things they wouldn’t dream of telling their husbands or doctors. But Zinat went to him so he could explain religious texts that she didn’t understand.

One day she went to his office again after the evening prayer to ask him about a couple of verses in the Al-Adiyât surah. She understood what it meant, but she thought – or rather sensed – that there must be some profound, mysterious subtext that she had failed to grasp.

With the imam sitting across from her as usual, Zinat laid her Koran on the desk, leafed through it until she found the right surah, then slid the book over to him.

Janeshin put on his glasses and ran his finger down the page.

‘Would you read it out loud?’ he said. ‘I’d like to hear you reading it.’ And he gently slid the book back over to her.

Zinat hesitantly began to read:

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘There
is
a hidden meaning. When you read it aloud, I could see what you were getting at. Your voice forced me to listen to it carefully and think about it. You’re a special woman. I rarely meet women like you. As I listened to you read, I ran alongside those snorting stallions whose hooves make sparks fly. I’ve read that surah many times, but this is the first time it’s ever touched me so deeply. I owe that to you.’

Zinat soaked up his words like a desert soaks up a sudden rain. And his last sentence did its work. That night, as she lay in bed, she thought of his ‘I owe that to you.’

She felt a kind of warmth, a kind of sensitivity, in his words: ‘You sent me running alongside those snorting stallions whose hooves make the sparks fly.’

She flipped on the light, got out of bed, went over to the mirror and looked at her hair. It was no longer black, but it wasn’t entirely grey either. She looked at her eyebrows. They were still black. Her brown eyes were tired, but that night they were shining with an unaccustomed glow. She ran her fingers over her face and across her lips. She might have aged, but she wanted to start all over again.

It was only right that she should try and get back some of the years she had lost in that house.