The House of the Mosque (24 page)

Afterwards the policemen lingered and struck up a conversation with the substitute imam. They told him that they were from Isfahan, and that they were spending the night at an inn in Senejan before going on to the holy city of Qom.

The elderly imam invited them to his rooms for tea. He explained that he was only filling in for Alsaberi’s son, who, if all went well, would graduate from the seminary at the end of the year and take his father’s place. The policemen sipped their tea and kept their eyes on the courtyard.

‘Does anyone else live here, or do you live alone?’

‘I’m the only one living in the mosque, but the caretaker is around a lot. The mosque is his life. I’m grateful he’s so dedicated; he does the work of ten men. He gets here early in the morning and goes home late at night.’

‘I think I hear a noise in the cellar,’ said one of the policemen, inventing an excuse to go outside and look around.

‘This mosque is old, very old. It has many secrets. Don’t ask me who goes in and out of the cellar. Ancient mosques are always full of mystery. Sometimes I hear strange sounds, like footsteps in the night, or faint voices. The mosque has a life of its own. You have to ignore such sounds when you sleep here. You have to bury your head in your pillow and close your eyes.’

At the end of the evening, the policemen heard footsteps in the courtyard. They stood up, said goodbye and stole through the darkness to the cellar, where they crouched down and peeked through a small window.

The shadow of a man with a candle in his hand glided into the cellar. He seemed to be looking for something, or perhaps he was carrying out a ritual. In any case he was holding an object in his left hand, though they couldn’t tell what it was or see exactly what he was doing. He was either talking to himself or to someone else as he headed towards the darker regions of the cellar. They heard a door open, and the shadow disappeared.

They tiptoed into the cellar, crept cautiously down the stairs and stood stock-still, listening to the silence. They didn’t dare switch on their torches. They inched their way towards the place where they had last seen the shadow, taking care not to trip over the tombstones. As they approached the door, they heard a faint voice and saw a yellow strip of light beneath it.

They stopped. The voice – or voices – wasn’t very clear. It sounded like someone reading something aloud or telling a story. They pressed their ears to the door and heard snatches of something that made no sense to them at all:

Suddenly they heard a woman scream. They stared at each other in sheer terror, not knowing whether the shriek had come from the mosque or from the cellar. They raced up the stairs, making as little noise as possible, and hurriedly left the mosque.

It was Sadiq who had screamed. She’d been standing next to the
hauz
when she suddenly went into labour. A stabbing pain had gone from her belly to her back and left her feeling dizzy. She’d screamed and crumpled up in agony.

Aqa Jaan, Fakhri, Zinat and Muezzin had gone on a pilgrimage to a nearby village that evening and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. Luckily Shahbal had heard Sadiq’s scream. He ran to the
hauz
, helped her up and brought her to her room. There, in the bright light, he saw drops of blood on the floor.

‘Phone the doctor!’ he yelled to Nasrin, Aqa Jaan’s elder daughter. ‘I’ll go and get the midwife!’ He jumped on his bicycle and pedalled as fast as he could in the direction of the river.

When the midwife finally arrived, she took one look at Sadiq and said, ‘This is serious. I can’t deal with it on my own. You’ll have to send for a doctor.’

‘He’s already on his way,’ Nasrin informed her. ‘I’ll go and wait for him.’

Sadiq was in agony. She screamed so loudly that the midwife decided she’d have to do what she could or Sadiq would lose the baby.

‘The baby’s trying to come out, but something’s holding it back. I can’t see anything in this light. Nasrin, get me a lamp and some clean towels.’

Nasrin hurried out and came back with a lamp and a stack of towels.

‘Shine the light over here. Don’t be so clumsy. Concentrate!’

Nasrin stepped closer to the bed, but avoided looking at Sadiq as she held the lamp over the midwife’s head. ‘I think I hear the doctor,’ she said.

‘Shut up and hold that lamp still!’

A car stopped outside the gate. Nasrin’s hands were shaking. To calm her nerves, she began to hum.

The midwife told Sadiq to keep breathing and to push harder. ‘The baby’s turned the wrong way,’ she explained. ‘It can’t come out. We’re going to have to try something else.’ Sadiq let out a loud cry and fainted.

Just then the doctor came into the room.

‘The doctors are always the last to arrive!’ the midwife muttered. ‘They’re always tucked up nicely in their comfy beds.’

It was a difficult birth, but a few hours later, with the help of the midwife and Nasrin’s humming, the doctor delivered the baby. ‘It’s a boy!’ he said.

The midwife held the baby upside down. ‘He’s not breathing.’ She shook him a few times until at last he began to cry. ‘Thank God!’

The doctor went over to Sadiq, took out his stethoscope and listened to her heart. ‘She’s exhausted, but doing all right,’ he said to the midwife, who was washing the baby in a basin that Nasrin had filled with water.

‘There’s something wrong with its back,’ the midwife said, and she carefully laid the baby on its stomach.

The doctor put on his glasses and ran his finger along the baby’s spine, examining the bones. ‘A severe deformity,’ he muttered.

‘Just as I thought,’ the midwife sighed.

The doctor left.

‘Both mother and baby are asleep,’ the midwife said to Nasrin. ‘I’m sorry I snapped at you. These situations are always difficult. I’m going home to get a few hours’ sleep, but I’ll be back first thing in the morning. There’s a problem with the baby. The doctor will phone Aqa Jaan tomorrow.’

The house had settled down again. There was still a light on in Sadiq’s room, and the windowpanes were casting their multi-coloured glow onto the stones in the courtyard.

Shahbal was awed by the baby’s birth.

In the past, when a child had been born in the house of the mosque, Aqa Jaan had always recited a melodious surah into the baby’s ear, because, according to one of the Prophet’s sayings, ‘The first words that a child hears remain in his memory for ever, like a sentence carved in stone.’

Shahbal went into the library, took the oldest Koran out of the cupboard and tiptoed back to Sadiq’s room. She was fast asleep. The baby lay in its cradle by the wall. Shahbal opened the Koran and leafed through it in search of a melodious surah. Then he changed his mind and put it aside. Leaning over, he whispered a poem in the newborn’s ear, a verse by the famous contemporary Persian poet Ahmad Shamlou, which Shahbal knew by heart:

The baby opened its eyes.

L
izard was now a year old. He crawled over to the
hauz
and played with the water. It was the first time he’d ever ventured so far from his room.

In the beginning everyone used to watch him like a hawk, but after a while no one paid any attention to him. He stared into the water at the red fish, who stared back at him with their blank eyes. Lizard opened and shut his mouth in imitation of the fish, then giggled. He was happy. He crawled closer and suddenly fell into the water.

Everyone was stunned. Sadiq ran over and tried to pull him out, but Lizard didn’t want to go. Instead, he paddled through the water, chasing the fish. So Shahbal stepped into the
hauz
, scooped him up and handed him to Sadiq, who carried the crying child to her room.

Owing to a congenital spinal defect, Lizard was unable to sit up, but he grew quickly and started exploring his surroundings at an early age. He often crawled under the bed and under the blankets like a giant lizard. It didn’t take him long to find his way to the courtyard, where he liked to crawl between the plants in the garden. Later they discovered that Lizard was unable to talk.

Aqa Jaan’s children didn’t want him coming into their rooms and crawling under the blankets, so they began to lock their doors. They found him repulsive and were ashamed of their feelings, but it was hard to shake them off. It took time to adjust to his deformity, to get used to holding a child who looked more like a reptile than a human being.

Still, Lizard had his own favourites: the moment he saw Am Ramazan, he would crawl over to him as fast as he could. Then Am Ramazan would pick him up, put him on his shoulders and walk around the courtyard, pointing out the flowers, the trees, the crow, the cats.

Lizard also felt at ease with Muezzin. He liked to crawl across his room and lie under his bed.

‘Is that you, my boy, or is it the cat?’ Muezzin always said with a laugh.

Lizard would hand Muezzin his walking stick. It was his way of saying he wanted to go for a walk, so Muezzin would stroll around the courtyard, with Lizard crawling along behind.

Nobody knew how he got his nickname. Aqa Jaan had forbidden his children to call him ‘Lizard’, but it suited him so well that it had stuck.

Officially his name was Sayyid Mohammad, but he didn’t respond when he was called that. He only crawled over to those who called him ‘Lizard’.

He was a creature who was closer to the world of cats, chickens and fish than to the world of people. Everyone had accepted this fact. Even his mother had stopped fighting it and resigned herself to her fate.

Khalkhal had disappeared from their lives but come back in the form of Lizard, who had his father’s face. Lizard crawled into Sadiq’s bed and tugged at her to get her attention. She didn’t want him, but she had no choice. He was her child.

The day that Lizard fell into the
hauz
turned out to be an important day in the history of the house.

Ahmad, the son of the late Alsaberi, had finally completed his imam training in Qom and had come home to assume his father’s position.

In a few days he would be installed as the imam of the mosque. The entire family had gathered for this once-in-a-lifetime event. It would be the beginning of a new era in Senejan, as the relationship between the mosque and the bazaar was bound to change. Everyone was curious to see how the mosque would fare under Ahmad’s leadership.

Last week Aqa Jaan had gone to Qom to attend Ahmad’s ‘robe presentation’ and had spent the night, so that he and Ahmad could have a quiet talk about his installation ceremony and his future duties.

Ahmad’s inexperience was obvious to Aqa Jaan. But he was a handsome young imam who dressed neatly, carried himself erectly, doused himself with cologne and wore a modish turban.

He also had a powerful voice, a good delivery and a natural gift for reciting the melodious Koran passages by heart. Time would tell how competent he was in other matters.

Ahmad arrived with his suitcase the night before the festivities. Aqa Jaan immediately took him into the library to discuss his speech, but Ahmad had other priorities. He laid his suitcase on the table, unlocked it, took out his beautiful new imam robe and looked around for a place to hang it up. ‘Why isn’t there a coat-hook?’ he asked, annoyed.

‘You can hang it in your bedroom,’ Aqa Jaan replied.

Ahmad jammed a pencil between two bookcases and hung his robe on that. Then he began to unpack his suitcase. ‘Where can I put my clothes?’ he said. ‘I’ll need a chest of drawers in the library.’

‘You can keep your personal belongings in your bedroom,’ Aqa Jaan patiently reiterated.

‘I want my things in here,’ Ahmad said.

Aqa Jaan realised that this wasn’t a good time to go over Ahmad’s speech.

‘I think you need to rest. I’ll talk to you tomorrow in my study,’ he said and left.

Late that night he wrote in his journal: ‘The new imam begins tomorrow. Ahmad has arrived, and I can see from the way he behaves that times have changed. He’s very different from his father and the other imams I’ve known. I mustn’t doubt his abilities. After all, he’s young and has a lot to learn. One thing I can say with absolute certainty, however, is that we now have a charming imam in our house. I like him and I am curious to see where he’ll lead us.’

On Friday the bazaar closed at ten o’clock, and thousands of people flocked to the mosque for the special prayer service. The installation of a new imam was a simple, yet festive, occasion. The prayer was to be held outdoors, so dozens of rugs had already been spread on the ground.

Policemen were patrolling the area, and vans filled with armed soldiers were parked in the side streets. This level of security was unusual for Senejan, but during the last two or three years the situation in Iran had changed drastically. Students at the University of Tehran were demonstrating against the shah and chanting ‘Down with America!’ The regime was afraid that riots could break out at any moment.

Aqa Jaan went through the details with Ahmad for the last time, put on his hat and left for the mosque.

‘May your day be blessed!’ exclaimed his neighbour, Hajji Shishegar, who was also going to the mosque with his twins.