The Colonel Read online

  “Why are you sitting all hunched up, brother? What is it? Has the world come to an end? First of all, it hasn’t, and secondly, plenty of other people like you are out of work. That’s no reason to creep into a corner and shut yourself away like a leper. What’s up, Amir, my darling brother? At least think of Papa. He’s really aged since we heard about Mohammad-Taqi. You mustn’t be the end of him. Papa has had a really hard time, as you know better than any of us. You are the eldest son, after all, so you’ve got to start thinking about the family a bit more, about us. I’m just a married woman, I don’t have a choice. You know very well that my husband, Mr Qorbani, has banned me from coming here. My son is getting wind of things and his father’s started quizzing him. The boy can’t hold his tongue and he says things. He’s only a child, after all. He doesn’t understand. And my daughter. And the baby is always in the way. And Qorbani Hajjaj3 is a worried man, he suspects everyone and everything. But I can’t help myself. If I don’t come and see you, I’m so jumpy and ill at ease that I feel as if my clothes were on fire.4 Look, brother, I have to put up with my husband and obey him. I may just have to stop coming here to see you. Because Qorbani says that if I come here it will go on his file and he’ll have problems. Hajjaj is worried about his position, because they’re taking an unpleasant interest in him. It could cost him his job, he says. Tongues are wagging and they have given you and our whole family a bad name, brother. You know only too well, brother, that having a bad reputation you can’t get rid of is a worse fate than having a roof fall on your head. Every memorial service for these young men I go to, the women are talking about you. Some of them have sharp tongues, bro. But I can’t not go. When you get a bad name like that, you want to run away from yourself. I want to tell everybody a hundred times that I am someone else, not the person they think I am, but in my thoughts I am always with you!

  So, my dear brother, I have to keep away from you, or rather… from myself. But every time I see you or think of you, every time I think of the state Papa is in, shrunk to the size of a pullet as he is, I get a lump in my throat, my heart wants to burst and I want to melt away, I want the earth to swallow me up. Amir, Amir… my darling brother, just say something, just answer me, for heaven’s sake. You’re going to be the death of our father if you carry on like this. Look, you were such a good boy, why did you suddenly go this way? You always used to give good advice to people and taught them things. Your pupils gathered round you like moths to a flame, they loved you like an elder brother. You’re already getting grey hairs, dear brother!”

  I could hear her going on like this while I was rereading, for the hundredth time, the story of Manuchehr and Salm, Tur and Iradj, who had become so familiar to me that I could imagine myself caught up in the tangled mess of their lives.5 Recently I’d noticed how Amir had become even more cross-eyed: his expression was more vacant than ever, and an air of something between shame, panic and doubt – in any event an emotion that went beyond despair – had taken up residence behind his eyes. His long greasy hair fell over his shoulders and streaks of grey had appeared, not just on his temples, but in the middle of his head as well. I saw my son through the frosted glass of the basement door, and he was shrivelling up and growing old in front of my very eyes and I could do nothing for him. For some nights I had been hearing him scream and I felt for him in his frightening nightmares. Visions of catastrophe, of people falling off a high roof, or off towering rocks down into a hole, into nothingness, of young men plummeting into the black abyss of despair, dreams of distorted faces that had seen pain, only pain. Dreams of wild cries of despair, dreams of fathers taking their sons to the slaughterhouse to end it all, and of women ripping open their wombs so that no seed should take – and this was all that they could do, nothing else… And screams, silent screams of despair, muffled as if through cotton wool.

  Horrible chimeras plagued him. It took a lifetime for me to get used to witnessing all this without going crazy myself. But Amir still hasn’t managed to treat these horrors as normal. It seems to me that he’s tormented by a sense of guilt, like a broken bone sticking through a wound. Amir is still a boy to me, but not so young that he will take my advice any more. As time passes, we seem to be gradually losing our common language. He isn’t interested in a heart-to-heart and I’m too ashamed to talk. What could I say to him that wouldn’t seem forced or contrived? How can an entire nation endure so many long silences and so many unspoken words?

  That leaves only Farzaneh, who comes over whenever she can get away from her husband, and tries to draw Amir out in her artless way, because she can reduce big worries into little words and is less anxious about exactly how she should put things. Farzaneh just sits down on the top step of the basement stairs, holding her baby on her knee like a good woman, and weeps quietly as she speaks to Amir and, if I pay attention, I can just make out what she is saying:

  “I’m dying of grief, Amir, at least have pity on me. I can’t bear just watching you waste away in front of my eyes… I’ve now lost all of you, one way or another. First Mohammad-Taqi, then Masoud, well… we have no idea what happened to him and I’m beginning to lose hope. And our Parvaneh… Parvaneh… my little sister, Amir! Nothing is clear, nothing is certain on this earth except death: death, which has now lost face, lost its dignity. Whenever I imagine the day when they’ll bring in Masoud’s corpse, or at least his dog tag, I just laugh, because I won’t know what to do about it. And whenever I think of the day when they brought in Mohammad-Taqi’s body, and I didn’t know what to do, I just cry. Death and dying, there’s so much death… All my brothers… Just look what’s happened to us all, that I can talk about death so openly and shamelessly. What will happen to our sister, Amir, our little sister? The town is full of shrines to young men and coffins are being carried through the streets and the roads are wet with blood and my husband has become an agent of death, now that he’s decided to do… God knows what! There is such a lump in my throat, little brother, that I can hardly breathe and you… so silent, so silent… rescue me from this despair, little brother, Amir, Amir! I can see you withering away and it’s just killing me. At least say one word to me, please Amir, just one word!”

  No! I cannot believe that my Amir has lost his mind. No, it cannot be! But those crazy dreams, those terrifying nightmares of his…

  The colonel was not altogether wrong since, even after Amir had had these horrible dreams and nightmares, he did not behave oddly but just sat on the edge of his bed smoking, wiping the sweat from his brow with an old handkerchief. He had even heard Amir saying to himself, “I can cope and I will try to cope, if these nightmares will just let me.” And, even more unequivocally: “I haven’t lost my wits, I swear I haven’t.” The colonel believed that his son could still think straight and that he was trying to be strong. All the while, Amir had kept working on a bust of Amir Kabir6 – the colonel had seen its outline through the dusty basement window. So how could he despair of his son?

  It was I who introduced him to Amir Kabir and told him that he was a shining example to our nation. Wasn’t I right to do that? And why not? But… there are moments when I feel ashamed, even brow-beaten, for having introduced my sons to these free-spirited and patriotic figures, and I feel that I have in some way betrayed them. It’s just as well that those moments soon pass and don’t take root in my head, because I tell myself over and over again that I have done my duty to my sons. Sometimes I go further and pride myself that I have imbued them with all the progressive ideas of the last century. A young mind hungers for new ideas and, as a father, I had no right not to respond to that perfectly reasonable need. What else keeps a nation alive? So why should I blame myself? What else could I have done? Should I have lied to them? I admit, yes, that sometimes I held the truth back from them and that sometimes I inculcated things into them… But who can tell what they would have found out on their own? After all, nobody can pull the wool over the eyes of the young. No, I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, and I shouldn’t allow myse
lf to think that I’ve let my sons down in any way. Why should such an idea have ever entered my head? My sons, my sons, what have we come to that we have to regret having done the most reasonable thing one could have done?

  “Papa, papa, my head is bursting!” How many times had the colonel heard this plaintive cry coming through the walls and windows of the basement, over and over again, as his son wept bitterly and held his head in his hands. Amir seemed drained after each nightmare, exhausted as if running a fever, and could not make sense of anything. He guessed that his son had got himself into such a state that he did not even want to think any more. Not that he could stop himself, the colonel suspected. Amir had not lost his mind and Farzaneh was wrong if she thought that he had. the colonel reckoned that she should not muck him about the way she did and that she certainly should not drag up what his brothers and sister said about him, which only set him off again. He was certain, or at least he thought he was certain that, apart from those brief moments of desperation, Amir had dispelled all thoughts of his brothers and of his sister Parvaneh, perhaps because he had lost the courage to think about the tragedy or, worse, that he had been infected by doubt, by the leprosy of doubt and resignation. the colonel was aware that once someone has fallen into a deep slough of despond, it is virtually impossible to get out of it. You can twist and turn all you want, but in the end, you succumb to the giddying confusion of it all and throw in the towel.

  “I am the answer to a riddle that I have set myself, to which the only answer would seem to be death. I am having doubts not only about where I belong in my own country, but even about my own humanity. Who am I, what am I, where do I belong?”

  The colonel must have heard Amir say all this. How often had he felt the same thing himself, just what one should never allow oneself to say? He could read his son’s words on Farzaneh’s face, after all. Farzaneh bit her lip and wept in silence. She had lost weight, but she still reminded the colonel of her mother, with her light auburn hair, her greenish eyes, her smooth forehead, her elegant lips and her delicate little chin. But now her face bore the marks of confusion and failure. Reflected in it, the colonel could see the state that Amir was in; the state that they were all in.

  “You’re lost to us all, my sister, and I, Amir, have lost my faith.”

  He knew, he knew perfectly well, that his son was changing, but he absolutely refused to see this as him losing his mind. He could read Amir’s metamorphosis from his squinting eyes, which mirrored his descent into paralysis and lifelessness. The only signs of life left in him were of fear, shame, despair and failure. Now and then, his hopes were raised by seeing the outline of his son through the frosted glass of the little door, as he worked on the bust of Amir Kabir. That must do him some good. But he regretted that he had not said anything to Amir about all the comings and goings in the house of Khezr Javid, the Immortal Khezr.7 He worried that Amir appeared to be having nightmares more and more frequently. Should he have warned Amir not to let Khezr Javid come and visit him at the house? the colonel mulled over this question, rebuking himself for his passivity.

  For a long time now I have been trying hard to keep calm and not get upset, to take everything in my stride and not be surprised by anything. If I’d said something to Amir about Khezr, could I have prevented what happened, or at least delayed it? No, gentlemen, my son wasn’t a child anymore!

  Now, am I sure I locked the door behind me? Yes, I can feel the key in my coat pocket. But did I lock it properly? Maybe, maybe not. I can’t honestly remember. How can I be sure? Not being sure is what starts me worrying so…

  It was clear to the colonel that he would have to walk in front of the two policemen. He knew the form as well as they did: anyone arrested for a crime, whatever it may be, was required to walk between and slightly in front of the arresting officers. It had been like that since the beginning of time, and it would go on being like that.

  That’s as may be, but I must make sure I’ve locked the door behind me…

  the colonel was too old to want to go against these unwritten rules. His back was bent in a stoop, his head hung low and he was staring in front of his feet. He could feel his grey hat pressing down on the tip of his nose, while his coat tails seemed to grow longer, dragging in the mud of the alleyway and wrapping themselves round his shins.

  “This way, colonel.”

  Yes, that’s just it. I just have to go along with them.

  They had reached the end of the alley, and were turning into the main road. On each corner stood another brightly lit shrine to a young martyr, casting its glow out into the main road. They were getting to the town square, with the prosecutor’s office on its western side. Passing between two more shrines on either side of the entrance, they climbed the steps. The stairway was dark and silent, lit only by a naked, lifeless bulb hanging from the ceiling. ‘So much for their economy measures’, the colonel thought, treading carefully, as befitted his age, on the staircase, which was wet and muddy from all the comings and goings.

  Even before his dishonourable discharge, the colonel had not been one for gambling or such things as bridge or snooker. He had never even held a cue in his hand. Yet he knew that the upper floor of this building had once been a snooker hall. In his youth he had played the setar, and he still wanted to play; he had recently got a pair of doves and he was not unfond of his daughter Parvaneh’s pet canary. In vain, he now tried to remember how to play snooker, even though he had not seen it played more than once in his life. And indeed, now that he saw a man sitting behind a table covered with a green baize cloth – he’s the spitting image of my son-in-law Qorbani! – with another two lads on the other side of the table, he was certain that this must have been one of the old snooker tables, with the cushions sawn off, that the prosecutor’s office was now using as a temporary desk. The two policemen who had brought him in sat down on either side of the table.

  “Were you an officer, colonel?”

  “ Yes… I was.”

  “If you want to take the body and bury it yourself, you have to make a contribution to our funds.”

  “I see… of course.”

  “Everything is ready. Two men will accompany you and stay with you until the end of the funeral. Kindly sign here, and here…

  “Yes… kindly… certainly… yes sir!”

  I think I was saying earlier that for a long time now I’ve given up expecting any good news. But is it too much to ask that they don’t give people bad news at such an awful time and in such a dreadful place? Well now, at this time of night, how can I bring more disgrace on myself? Of course…

  Of course, the colonel knew full well that the point of dragging him there at that ungodly hour was to ensure that the whole matter was over and done with by dawn. Anyone with half a brain understands certain things without needing to have them spelt out. It made sense to cooperate with the court officials and not ask awkward questions. the colonel had learned and inwardly digested that Parvaneh’s funeral had to take place without any fuss and in secret and that the first step in this direction would be to stop up his own sobbing and try instead to conduct himself in a calm, dignified and becoming manner with a certain degree of meekness and submission, while somehow standing firm. In sum, he did what was required of him. In any case, their clipped tones and matter-of-fact attitude scotched any thoughts of extravagant mourning. So, instead of getting worked up, the colonel just stood there for a while, stunned.

  Unable to find a pay desk, he came back to the snooker table and fished out all the notes he had in his wallet, of small and large denominations and, not knowing exactly how much he owed, slapped the whole bundle down on the green baize. With any luck, that would settle the matter. But what still niggled the colonel was that he had made a mistake about the snooker business. About thirty years ago – or was it even longer? – around the time of the Mossadeq affair, one autumn afternoon he had gone to a snooker hall with one of his fellow officers, who not long after had been shot. They were both lieutenants and
were strolling along Lalezar Avenue8 when his friend suggested they go in and play a couple of frames. the colonel knew nothing about snooker and, not surprisingly, lost. But he could vividly recall every detail of the hall, with its green baize tables, the brightly coloured balls, the perfectly formed wooden triangles, the finely turned cues, the little pieces of chalk and the empty lemonade bottles, and his friend telling him that the game had originally come from Russia. And so he approached the man sitting behind the table and said, as if he were making a confession:

  “I made a mistake… a mistake… forgive me; I forgot that I did actually play snooker once.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing, sir… nothing… it just came out. You see, I just can’t help saying things sometimes. Something in me makes me want to rake over all my past sins and tell someone about them.”

  Somewhat taken aback, the man behind the table stared blankly at the colonel, looking long and hard at his face as if there was something odd about it. Realising that the man hadn’t the faintest idea what he had been talking about, the colonel turned away. He could not possibly understand what was going through the colonel’s mind and why he was talking in such a random fashion. He was sure that if the fellow had been in his shoes, he would have started thinking about things, too, and would have reflected on his past and would have tried to find the reasons for his sins and, at least, would have undergone some sort of self-examination.