‘Excuse the interruption,’ Aqa Jaan said to Janeshin. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this design for weeks. Those seven men are my draughtsmen, my carpet designers. They’re magicians, really. Their names are known throughout the Middle East. Carpets designed by them are worth a fortune. But that’s enough of that. I gather that you’re willing to stay with us for an extended period of time?’
‘Yes.’
‘You realise that it might be a year or two? After all, Alsaberi’s son still has to finish his imam training.’
‘I know, but I think of it as a great opportunity. I’ve always wanted to be an imam in an urban mosque, but unfortunately I never got the chance. That’s why I’m glad you offered me this position. I won’t be able to manage without your help, though.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll give you all the help you need.’
‘I’ll be grateful for that. I mean, preaching a sermon in a village is not the same as giving a speech in the city. In the village you talk about small things, about everyday matters like cows or fodder. In the city you have to talk about big things, like politics. I think it’s interesting to talk about such subjects and to speak with more power when influential men are present. I’d like to elevate the tone of my sermons. I’d like my listeners to look up to me in admiration.’
Aqa Jaan smiled. He knew what the man meant, but, to be honest, Janeshin wasn’t made of the right stuff. He didn’t have the proper attitude or the gift of words or the necessary charisma. He was a village imam, with big hands and a heavy brow. You had to be a Khalkhal to get both old men and young women to support you.
‘I’m sure they will,’ Aqa Jaan said, ‘but after the confusion of Alsaberi’s death and Khalkhal’s escape, I wouldn’t mind having a bit of peace and quiet in the mosque again. Go ahead and talk about trees and plants and your experiences in the country. City folk will be fascinated by such topics. Just be yourself and everything will be fine.’
The imam smiled and hung his head.
‘I mean it,’ Aqa Jaan said. ‘I’m curious to hear what you’re going to say on Thursday evening. Talk about Jirya, for example. About the mountains, the almond trees, the rare breed of mountain goats, the saffron. If you have any questions, you can ask the caretaker to get in touch with me. By the way, I’ve asked him to make arrangements for your stay here. Is there anything else you’d like to know?’
‘Not that I can think of.’
The office boy came in and ushered the imam to the door.
That evening, when Aqa Jaan was lying in bed beside Fakhri Sadat, he suddenly chuckled.
‘What’s so funny?’ Fakhri Sadat asked.
‘Nothing. I was thinking about the substitute imam. He’s a simple man, with lots of ambition, but he has no idea how to realise his dreams.’
‘So you’re laughing at the poor man?’
‘No, not at all. I appreciate the fact that he wants to make something of himself. It’s just that he has the build of a peasant.’
‘You can hardly blame him for that,’ Fakhri Sadat said, smiling.
‘You’re right. But I know from experience that you won’t get very far without talent. It’s not enough to have the lamp – there has to be a genie inside. I won’t bore you with the details, but, you know, he set his turban at an angle and said, “I’d like to elevate the tone of my sermons.”’ Aqa Jaan roared with laughter.
‘You are laughing at him,’ Fakhri Sadat said.
‘No, I’m not really, I’m just feeling happy. Everything is going the way it should. The mosque is doing well, the imam is right for the job, the business is rolling along as usual, and the new design is finished and it’s beautiful. Orders are pouring in and people can hardly wait to see our new carpets. Everyone wants them. It’s going to be a good year. Besides, we’re all in good health. What more could anyone want?’
He turned and laid his hand on Fakhri Sadat’s breasts. ‘Plus I have you,’ he said, ‘and I’m in the mood for love. What more could a man want?’
Fakhri Sadat batted his hand away, turned over on her side and lay with her back to him. He slipped his hand underneath her nightgown and caressed her bottom. ‘Take off your nightgown,’ he said softly. ‘I want you naked.’
Fakhri Sadat pulled the blanket over her head. ‘Are you crazy?’ she said. ‘What’s got into you that’s made you want me naked?’
He pressed his hand between her warm thighs and whispered:
My thirsty lips
Search yours.
Take off my clothes
Embrace me.
Here are my lips,
My neck and burning breasts.
Here is my soft body!
‘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.
Zinat
One Wednesday evening, when the family was gathered together, Zinat told them a magical tale:
And Allah fell in love with his creation. He fell in love with the stars, with his Milky Way, with his sun, with his moon and especially with his beautiful Earth. He was so proud of the Earth that He wanted to go and live there himself. But how could He do that?
One night Allah had a brilliant idea. He asked his messenger Gabriel to go down to Earth and bring him back some clay. Gabriel did as he was told, and Allah fashioned a man out of the clay, exactly as He wanted him to be. Then He asked the spirit to enter the body, but the spirit refused. The spirit thought he deserved something better than a body made out of clay. So Allah appointed Gabriel as his go-between.
‘Step into that body!’ Gabriel ordered the spirit.
The spirit refused.
‘I order you in the name of Allah to step into that body!’ Gabriel said.
‘Now that you’ve invoked Allah’s name, I will,’ said the spirit. And with a shiver of distaste, the spirit stepped into the body. As the spirit was passing through the chest, the man unexpectedly stood up, then lost his balance and fell over.
Allah smiled. ‘He hasn’t learned how to be patient,’ Allah said to Gabriel.
The man was given a name: Adam.
Adam sat in the same spot for seven days and waited. Allah sent him a golden throne studded with jewels, a silk carpet and a crown. Adam got dressed, put the crown on his head and seated himself on the throne. Then the angels lifted Adam and his throne onto their shoulders and carried him down to Earth. At that time Creation was 1,240 years old.
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 strengt
h. 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:
Qol, a‘uudhu be-rabb-en-nas,
Malek-en-nas,
Elah-en-nas.
Refuge,
Refuge,
Refuge from the evil
Of the sly whisperer
Who whispers in my heart.
He is a jinn.
He is a jinn.
He is a jinn.
The King of mankind,
Refuge, refuge.
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:
Someone will come,
Someone who will look at me
And ask:
Will you take off
Your chador for me?
Will you show me
Your hair?
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:
By the charging and snorting stallions
Whose hooves make the sparks fly,
And by the raiders in the morning,
Sending up clouds of dust and
Breaking through the battle array.
‘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.