The Colonel Read online

  Who am I trying to fool? I’m well aware that at every stage of history there have been crimes against humanity, and they couldn’t have happened without humans to commit them. The crimes that have been visited on my children have been committed, and still are being committed, by young people just like them, by people stirring up their delusions, giving them delusions of grandeur. So why do I imagine that people might improve? Everything going on around us seems to indicate that the values our forebears passed down to us no longer apply. Instead, we have sown the seeds of mistrust, scepticism and resignation, which will grow into a jungle of nihilism and cynicism, a jungle in which you will never find the courage to even mention the names of goodness, truth and common humanity, a crop that is now bearing fruit with remarkable speed. We’re obliged to dig our own children’s graves, but what’s even more shocking is that these crimes are creating a future in which there is no place for truth and human decency. Nobody dares to speak the truth any more. Oh, my poor children… we’re burying you, but you should realise that we are also digging a grave for our future. Can you hear me?

  Abdullah had shovelled all the loose earth out of the hole. the colonel took up the pick to carry on digging the grave: “Wouldn’t things go a bit quicker if they dug these graves in advance, gentlemen?”

  Clearly touched by the colonel’s plight and frustrated by the slow pace of his digging, Abdullah took him gently by the arm and helped him respectfully out of the grave. The colonel was grateful for this, as he was utterly exhausted and demoralised. If he had to do it all by himself, the sun would be well up before he was finished. He knew that he should show his gratitude to the young man for helping him, but The Colonel’s dazzling boots had completely distracted me, and were drawing me towards him, as if to say that it was not my duty to dig my daughter’s grave; it had never been up to me to do that.

  You see my difficulty, don’t you, Colonel? But why have you put yourself to so much trouble, coming here on this dark rainy night? I thought you’d gone back long since. Of course, I meant to pay my respects to you earlier. But with my wife right there outside the mortuary, I didn’t want to embarrass her by acknowledging you. I thought you were just going to look in for a moment and then go. Oh, my dear Colonel… the blood is still dripping from your throat!28 I’m so ashamed. I wish you’d stayed at home. I could have sorted everything out and given you a report. It’s a wretched and sickening business, but it’ll soon be over. I think I’ll be on my own soon, as none of my children are left now. They’ll be bringing Kuchik back from the front for us to bury him. He’ll be less trouble, because they’ll take care of most of the arrangements. You probably heard about Mohammad-Taqi’s funeral… and Parvaneh will be buried tonight. That leaves Amir and Farzaneh, and she has already buried herself in Qorbani’s house, while Amir, as you know, won’t last more than another day or two. He dies ten times a day; he only comes alive to die again. He can’t take much more. He’ll be gone soon. His death will hardly leave a ripple. Tonight is the worst bit, and perhaps tomorrow night as well. As you can see, it’s hard work in all this mud and muck and rain. Shall we take a look inside the mortuary? It’s not a very nice place, Colonel, but… Our Parvaneh was going to be fourteen this year. The blood on your throat, Colonel… the blood on your throat… I wish you’d brought your head with you. For how many years, how many hundreds of years, must that dear, strange head stay on my mantelpiece? I know the true worth of that head, Colonel.

  Forouz, with her white hair and red eyes, was leaning over Parvaneh’s corpse on the concrete laying-out slab. the colonel could see that her arms were smeared with blood up to the elbows. The mother seemed to be washing Parvaneh’s thin, frail body with tears of blood. the colonel saw his daughter’s whole body covered in blood, and blood had dripped down all four sides of the slab into the channel below and was now licking at the toes of The Colonel’s shiny black boots. the colonel went and stood next to his wife to get a better look at Parvaneh’s face, and saw her skinny arms and hands, drenched in translucent blood, moving over the newly ripening body of their daughter. He bent down and looked at Parvaneh’s face, more intently than he had ever done before. Her eyes opened, and she looked at him briefly with a cheerful smile, before slowly closing them again. He could not believe it; leaning over the slab, he stooped to look at her open eyes once more, but it was too late… For his wife was laying her long bony hands on Parvaneh’s forehead and drawing them gently down from her hairline to below the girl’s delicate little chin, ending in a kind of tired shrug that signalled that her work was now done. And when she took her hands away, Parvaneh’s eyes were closed, her lips were closed and her face seemed mummified in blood… the colonel felt suddenly giddy.

  The Colonel’s black field boots were on the march, heavy and hard as stone, crashing in the silence of the mortuary and keeping time with the beat of the old man’s heart as, stiff and frozen, he stood by the concrete table, staring at them. Their soles and polished toes were now red and, with each stride, they left a bloody trail behind them. Presently, the boots came to a halt by the table and he found himself saying, “You need more than your heart to see with, Colonel; it’s a pity you didn’t bring your head with you.” His voice echoed round the mortuary and, as it echoed back, it sounded as if someone else had been speaking. But then normality returned. Continuing with her task, the colonel’s wife had taken hold of Parvaneh’s hand and was busy lifting her down off the concrete table, handling her as carefully as if she were a mirror, a full-length dressing mirror. Parvaneh was being careful, too, putting her dainty little feet down softly on the cold floor of the mortuary. Looking as if she was wearing a shirt of blood and earrings of red dewdrops, she strode off and away, hand in hand with her mother, who floated along like a white cloud beside her. the colonel stood gazing at the trail of blood left by their feet as they crossed the cold, wet floor, as if he had forgotten for a moment that he should be going along with his daughter and his wife.

  At the door Forouz, soft and translucent, turned her head and glanced at the colonel with her bloodshot eyes, as if she were about to call him. the colonel quickly pulled himself together, plodded towards his wife and stood beside her as if ready for anything that she might suggest. Forouz turned to him and whispered reproachfully into his ear:

  “I expected you to invite me to Parvaneh’s wedding; you should have come to pick me up!”

  the colonel stood transfixed, his mouth gaping in astonishment. He did not know what was going on or what his wife was talking about. With the fingers of her left hand, she pushed back a loose strand of white hair that had fallen over her cheek and was dangling beside her nose. Then, carefully lifting the hem of her shroud with her fingertips, she left the mortuary. As she receded into the distance, her figure seemed to grow in stature, like a tall white cloud, hand-in-hand with Parvaneh, who was glowing like a bright red tulip. the colonel stood in the doorway, watching the vanishing cloud and the moth-like wings of his Parvaneh and muttered: “Did you hear that, Colonel? She was talking about a wedding, Parvaneh’s wedding, Colonel!” But he could not sense The Colonel’s presence there any longer. His polished black boots, which seemed to be made of steel, had marched out of the mortuary in a huff, away from the rain, the night and the mud. So there he stood, a broken old man, abandoned in a mortuary and drained of all emotion. He felt paralysed, his head felt swollen and odd voices were buzzing round inside it. All he could remember was that, if he did not get a move on, he would not be able to find the grave and would have to spend the whole night wandering about in the mud looking for it. He had to find a way out of this dead end of congealing death before he got caught in it.

  I could feel the rain, which was still pouring down. Drunk and seething with rage, I was standing in the alleyway, bare-headed and with my collar undone, and staring at the drawn sabre in my hand, which I was about to plunge into my wife’s heart.

  That night was the first and last time that the colonel would drink himself nearly to dea
th. While Amir was at his little table by the window reading his lecture notes, the colonel sat on the edge of the bed, tossing back glass after glass of arack. He did not know what he was doing, or more accurately: I knew exactly what I was doing and I was drinking myself into oblivion.

  The sabre glinted in the dim glow cast by the streetlight. There was no-one in the alleyway save the colonel and a soggy stray dog with its tail between its legs. the colonel listens to the cars, as they roar past the entrance to his street on the wet main road. He is waiting for one to stop at the road end and drop off Forouz. She will open her little umbrella and head towards her house, and the car will move off.

  I never thought about the man behind the wheel, what he looked like. I’d always thought the man who brought her home was just a driver, and that, from where she was sitting on the back seat, Forouz probably couldn’t, or didn’t want to, see the driver’s face properly in the rear-view mirror. But I remember that she always got out of the car left foot first. And then she would hug the wall as she came down the street towards the door, over a little road that bisects the street north – south, and then down our little cul-de-sac. On those nights her head was always held low, she never looked right or left. Even though she was drunk, she could always find her way and… then I thought about what was in my wife’s mind and I supposed that she must be dying a thousand deaths as she made her way home. But who can say? I have no other choice. I wait as she approaches, thinking whatever she is thinking. I won’t say anything stupid or insulting to her, I’ll just thrust my sabre straight between her left ribs and drive it right into her heart. I’d done this in my thoughts at least a thousand times before, so my mind and hand were steady and I didn’t miss, I got my wife bang in the heart. To make sure she was finished, I gave the sabre a full twist round in her chest and, as she fell back, I thrust at her once more, and once more after that. At the last blow it was as if I was trying to skewer her to the wall, like Shaghad.29

  “As well as hurting other people, you have also ruined your own life, colonel.”

  “I was aware of that, Your Honour.”

  He could feel it still raining and he realised that he should not have taken so long. His wife was standing in the grave. All he could see was her white hair tumbling over her shoulders. Parvaneh was standing awkwardly at the graveside, waiting. Forouz lifted up her skinny arms towards her daughter. the colonel stood next to Parvaneh in case she needed help, but there was no need. Holding her in her bony arms, like a full-length mirror, her mother carefully took her down into the bottom of the grave and very gently laid her down and stretched out beside her, her arms encircling her neck and cradling the little girl’s head on her chest, and merged into her. She gently closed her eyes and waited, peacefully, to be consigned to the earth.

  the colonel stood by the graveside as Abdullah finished his good deed by shovelling the earth back into the grave. Just as his bleary eyes saw it was now filled in, the colonel heard the Allah-u Akbar of the morning call to prayer and realised that it was all over and he could at last relax. Abdullah smoothed out the earth with the back of the shovel. Ali Seif stepped onto the now-level ground to hand the colonel back his pick and slung his weapon back on his shoulder:

  “See you again, colonel. You know that you aren’t allowed to put anything on the gravestone, don’t you?

  “Yes, I know.”

  They went off, and the colonel felt dreadfully alone once they had gone. He had better go home now, he thought, but then he thought of the long-haired man who was presumably still wandering about the graveyard in the rain. Was he glad that he was now free of the great weight that had been taken off his back?

  I’ll go home, but I’m tired and done for. It’s all been very strange… it really was just like a graveyard!

  What could I do? Just what? My feet were my feet, my home was my home, my problem was my problem and nobody else’s, and getting back was up to me. My head is hurting!

  A feeling of faintness had overcome him once again. The false dawn added to his dizziness. Everything around him was blurring into fuzzy infinity – and the rain! He had to get moving. He had no fear of losing his way. He just had to keep calm and head for home the same way as he had come.

  “That way, colonel. You look like a drowned rat!”

  “No, colonel, it’s this way!”

  Well, which way is it, my children? But nobody answered. All he heard, coming from every door and window in the city, was the news that the great trial was about to take place. The great trial of the past. The one they had been promising for ages. It would be remarkable. The whole of history would be in the dock. It was possible that the funerals of the war casualties, including the colonel’s Little Masoud, the news of whose return had been broken to the colonel by Qorbani, would all take place in the full, naked light of history. It was not unlikely that, for greater effect, the two performances would be combined into one, but this was all beyond the colonel’s comprehension. He would just have to put up with whatever came. He was not surprised by anything any more, since people are only surprised by things that fall outside their everyday lives. But when chaos and disorder become part of the very warp and weft of life, as they had done for him, there is nothing surprising about being surprised. If you want to retain your sanity, the only thing you can do is look on without letting go of your mind. So that is what the colonel did, sure in the knowledge that he was in full control of his faculties and that his brain was in full working order, whatever people might be saying about him behind his back.

  He wasn’t going to Qorbani’s house for two reasons. Firstly because, as one of those responsible for staging the great forthcoming event, Qorbani would have his work cut out with all the preparations, and a visit from his father-in-law would be even more unwelcome than usual. Secondly, Qorbani’s pick and shovel – that family have been grave diggers for generations – would come in more handy at the colonel’s house. So he should go straight home, and dry his clothes, dry his whole body and dry his bones. He felt that even the brain in his head had got soaked and that, if he did not dry it out, it might rot.

  When he got home, he saw Amir squinting at him through the sitting-room window, his wide eyes looking like those of a sick owl. But the colonel’s most pressing need was to get rid of the pick and shovel and find the lavatory; he was bursting. Hopping round in circles holding his hands tight over his privates like an old buffoon, he recalled that most houses had their lavatories at the end of the yard, so why should his be any different? He ducked under the low roof in the corner of the yard and presently came out, feeling greatly relieved. The only thing weighing him down now was his clothing, which seemed to have absorbed a vast load of rainwater. He was chilled to the bone and felt that he had shrunk to the size of a rat. What a treat it would be if the paraffin had not run out and the stove were still burning. He then fell to speculating that, if Amir could only snap out of his nightmare for a moment, just this once, and if he could be bothered to do so, he would witness this absurd and ridiculous spectacle of his father. He would then be able to compare it with that other, similarly rainy night when he had been staring out of the same window into the courtyard, and the colonel had marched back in with his drawn sword still dripping with the warm blood of his wife’s heart, as if returning as a conquering hero from a great battle. His blood-charged sabre glinted in the dancing light of the never-ending rain, and the thought struck him that, by having been put to use on his wife, this weapon, which he had only ever worn on parades, had finally lost its historical pointlessness and found some real purpose. He was victorious; with his head erect and his shoulders back he marched up the steps into the room and, as he laid the sabre, still loaded with warm blood, down on the mantelpiece, right in front of The Colonel’s photograph, he stood to attention and declared, to no-one in particular: “I’m a soldier, a soldier am I, and let the whole world know it!”

  But now, as he climbed the stairs, he looked like nothing so much as a condemned man. As he wa
lked into the room, he could not bring himself to look at his son. Amir would not look at him either; his face looked as though it was framed behind the glass in the window. the colonel wanted nothing to do with him and dragged himself like a whipped dog to the stove, which still had a glimmer of heat in it, and began unbuttoning his clothes, which were all covered in muck and smelt of death and rotting flesh. As he did so, one baneful thought kept nagging at him, buzzing round his head like a fly: he wanted to ask Amir whether he had ever thought about his own death.

  Amir’s finally emerging from his basement appeared to signal some change in his state of mind. Everything and anything seemed possible to the colonel, except that his son’s mental state might have improved. It meant he could only be heading for his death. It could also have been that the pressure of his never-ending nightmares had forced Amir out of his basement. The colonel remembered that Amir had once wanted to become an architect and had been fascinated by history.

  Youth, youth… the fleeting moment of youth is like a school exercise book overwritten with correction marks; the forces that keep a young man going are his hope and his ambition. Sometimes a young man realises he cannot fulfil all his aspirations, but he won’t let that get him down. For instance, a young man who has decided to become a doctor or an engineer can go one of two ways: he can become a vague idealist who believes that he can go and eliminate hookworm from the south of the country, with its hot, foul climate or, if he can get through a course of road engineering, he might believe that he will be able to produce a comprehensive plan to improve the country’s road infrastructure. On the other hand, it is only those realists sitting on the benches in the university lecture halls who, right from the word go, imagine themselves actually owning a lucrative medical practice or running a construction company.