The Colonel Read online

  “We were trying to find our own way in life, Sir. But I’m telling the story backwards.”

  “Look out of the door. Your children are right outside at this very moment, waiting for you. It’s a big show! If you want my advice, you’ll be a bit more compliant. They will be more lenient if you are. After all, how many times can they cut off a man’s head?”

  His Excellency sits in silence under The Colonel’s unblinking stare for a while, then, without meeting The Colonel’s gaze, gets up and gathers up his hat and stick: “So, you’ve decided to tough it out, have you? I admire the stand you are taking, I really do – I’m honour bound to say that to you. But on the other hand, your stubbornness is exasperating. For the same reason, I would like to break those fine upstanding legs of yours.”

  “Have you anything further to say?”

  No, everything had already been said. The old man was shaking now and his eyes were clouding over and he had a splitting headache. Was madness descending on him once more? It all seemed so unreal, and yet it was all too real. Alone with the monotonous, unrelenting din of the rain, he felt the evening filling the room with a suffocating darkness. He saw shadowy hands strapping a horse’s girth round The Colonel’s shoulders and leading him out through the rain into the street and on to the square. The Colonel held himself up straight and strode purposefully along. He no longer made any attempt to staunch the blood running from his throat over his shoulders and on to his chest.

  The room needed light. The old man stretched out a shaky hand to switch it on, and there was light. In the glow cast by the lamp, he saw that The Colonel’s picture was missing from its frame and that the photographs of his children had fallen on the floor, where they had been crumpled and kicked about. Rain was hammering on the old tin roof. The flame in the paraffin stove was guttering. It seemed that it was all over. On the wall his sword and his setar were still hanging there, covered in a thick film of dust. He was seized by a wish to take down his setar, dust it off and strike up a tune, but… No, he had to get on with it now. There were things on the table waiting to be dealt with: the box of sugar plums, the 35 tomans. He picked them up and went out.

  Outside, on the verandah, he was brought up sharp by a ghostly sound of disintegrating horror. Facing him was the eerie, misshapen, hunched-up creature with bulging mismatched eyes, wrapped up like a clenched fist in an old army blanket. His face was seared, his teeth were smashed, and his claw-like hand was clutching at his jugular as he yelled: “It was you Ali Seif, who slaughtered people like dogs…” He rambled on: “And my mother… my mother… I just want to suck her tits… colonel, tell my mother, before I chew my own throat…” Then he shouted: “Mother, Mother!” the colonel was no longer surprised by anything, not even by his next outburst:

  “I killed him, I killed him a thousand times over. He had fallen behind a sandbag and was groaning. I realised that his magazine must have been empty, but I didn’t bother to check whether the barrel of his machine gun was hot or cold. I didn’t want there to be an excuse for not killing him. No doubts or second thoughts. I flung myself at him. It was just as well that I couldn’t see his face, but it must have been screwed up with pain. All I could see was the gaping wound in his chest. I could have left him to die, or had him carried away by the medics. But no, I got stuck into him with a bayonet. The first blow got him right in the middle of his wound, I remember that. But after that, I don’t remember a thing. When I’d finished him off, I had just enough strength left to take his watch and put it on my own wrist. Then I fainted. Nausea. I thought my father would be pleased with the present of a watch I was going to bring him. Ali Seif! Ali Seif!”

  the colonel had opened the packet of sugar plums and held them out in front of Abdullah’s scorched face and crazed eyes. But presently he felt himself to be quite alone on the verandah. He could no longer hear Abdullah’s snuffling breath. He had gone… But no – he was still there after all. A misplaced curiosity drew the colonel towards the dark corridor, towards the misshapen, deformed creature standing, rock-like, under the canary’s cage. Its mismatched eyes, one blue, the other yellow, glowed in the dark like a jungle cat’s. It seemed to be speaking:

  “I’m dumb, colonel, I can’t speak.”

  “So am I, my son – but now I have things to do.”

  When the colonel reached the main square, he saw a large crowd moving along. In the darkness and the rain, he could not make out a single clear face. All he could see were their gaping mouths, baying fearsomely, and their terrifying hypnotised eyes. They seemed to be high on some lethal drug, but the colonel saw no need to be afraid, for there was nothing left in him for that drunken mob to destroy. What was there to fear now? Anyway, I want to hand out those sugar plums to them.

  He opened the packet and held the coloured sugar plums out to the eager hands stretched towards him. They grabbed the sweets and stuffed them into their mouths. They would bring blessings on the show that was about to start. Shouting ‘Good Luck!’ at him, they parted and cleared a way for the colonel to get through to the centre of the square, where the show was about to take place.

  I’m not surprised, not in the least surprised!

  The accused had been made to sit down on the wet cobblestones, like prisoners of war. Some of them, it appeared, had already been sentenced and had punishment meted out to them. Amir Kabir, who stood out from the others, had been made to kneel in the mud. In the centre stands The Colonel, erect as ever.

  It was all like some nightmarish old historical panorama, rendered in shades of grey and black, with a landscape in the background shrouded in mist and rain. Even the blood – on The Colonel’s throat, flowing from the vein in Amir’s arm, pouring from Heidar’s heart and Sattar Khan’s leg – was grey.59

  Grey also was the blanket they had wrapped round Mossadeq’s shoulders. The only colour came from some bright red vertical lines in the left-hand edge of the painting, where a man with a red scarf round his neck was hanging from a red gibbet.60 His glasses had been shattered, but were still on his nose, and he was completely naked. The clear intention was to humiliate him. Unseen hands kept pushing his dangling body this way and that, so that it was lit from all sides by the glare of the spotlights. His naked body was just a bag of skin and bones, indicating that he had spent his youth locked up in damp and stinking jail cells. It was hard to see why the authorities were so insistent on publicly disgracing and torturing this man, as the performance did nothing to stop his mother from weeping and crying incessantly in Azeri: “Men evladimi tanimirem, bu men evladim deyir. Onu mene görsetin!”61

  This appeal has no effect whatsoever on the tyrant Hajjaj bin-Yousef Qorbani. He is bent on wiping these people out, and he has no intention of letting her Azeri gibberish penetrate his Arab brain.

  His particular speciality lies in that, before violating the honour of a nation through its women, first he shits on them and then makes them eat each other alive, just like Morshed Kabir in Safavid times, and then he throws the last of them to the hyenas of the Dead Sea deserts to the north, who have been driven over here, like an unwanted gift.62 It was absurd to expect Hajjaj Yousef Qorbani to be moved by the lamentations of an Azeri mother on her knees before the naked body of her son, wailing that she could not recognize him and begging the hangman to show him to her: “Musulmanlar, Musulmanlar, bu ki var menim evladim deyir. Taqi, Taqi… Ana!”63

  Another speciality of Qorbani Hajjaj Yousef ’s is to allow his victims – after they have denounced themselves – to choose how they want to be put to death. But on one condition – the victim’s decision must be announced over the loudspeakers by the colonel, who is to be the spokesman of his son-in-law. The colonel heard his own voice echoing over the square: ‘Praise be to Allah, there are many different forms of punishment, some two thousand four-hundred odd, each one designed for a specific crime.’ Qorbani, after the usual obsequious preambles praising the authorities, then listed the various crimes the prisoners were accused of.

  At th
at moment, the colonel’s gaze lighted on old Mossadeq, who was still sitting on the floor, wrapped in his old army blanket, with his right knee raised. The point of his walking stick was stuck in the ground, with the crook of it resting between his shoulder blades to support his back. He held his head down, looking at the ground. He looked like a dejected shepherd whose flock has been attacked by a pack of wolves. A knowing, distant smile played around his lips. Khezr’s ghostly face can just be made out in the mist.

  Now it was Heidar Amoghli’s turn: as a snowstorm began swirling over the square, he held the cold barrel of Mirza Kuchik’s rifle against his heart and, standing there next to the kneeling Sattar Khan and Sheikh Khiabani,64 gave Mirza the order to fire.

  Then The Colonel appeared, holding his head and bloodied astrakhan cap above his head like a lantern. And finally it was the turn of the great Amir Kabir. Calm and grimly silent, he knelt down where he stood, as if on a prayer mat, or facing an execution block, bracing himself with his hands on the cold cobbles and looking at the ground. He seemed not to notice the brownish blood seeping out of his forearm. He is holding a eulogy in one hand, perhaps for the great Qaim Maqam…65 65 He is looking down as Qorbani Hajjaj appears, clutching a dagger still greyish-red from the blood of Dadviyeh.66 His sleeves are rolled up, and the folds of his cloak are girt up. The bands that hang down three sides of his pointed steel helmet are adorned with glittering rubies and emeralds. His bare, ugly feet are covered in mud and blood up to the ankles. Standing beside Amir, he speaks from the back of his throat, spraying out spittle with every word. With a string of foul imprecations, he lambasts him as a criminal of the first order and then asks him how he wishes to be executed. Without deigning to look up at him, Amir gives the order himself: “Off with my head!”

  How could anyone take pleasure in the curve of a sabre in this savage method of separating a body from its head, still less when it is kneeling down with its palms nailed to the ground? It’s a ghastly form of revenge.

  the colonel recalled that when criminals were hanged in the old days in Execution Square or Artillery Square, people would scatter coins at their feet by way of expiation. There was something disgusting and self-abasing about the whole performance, for what they were really doing was trying to purge themselves of complicity in the act.

  Without thinking, the colonel takes the last few sugar plums out of the packet and, like a farmer scattering seed, strews them over the bloody pile of severed heads. The world goes dark in front of him and, in the depths of the darkness, all he can see is the tall, upright figure of The Colonel holding his head high above him, blazing like a torch.

  His head was still spinning as he lifted up his forehead from the cold cobblestones in the square. He hesitated and then, with some trepidation, opened his eyes. The rain had stopped and the square was empty. There was just the echo of marching boots on the bare flagstones. The whole square was spattered with blood. Looking up, he saw a procession, led by The Colonel, of the great men marching out of sight, each one holding his head under his arm. Their old field boots gleamed in the light of the street shrines erected in memory of their sons, and in the light of the flame that was The Colonel’s head, held high above them all.

  Oh, my forefathers… these are the men who went before us!

  the colonel could not understand what Amir was saying. He was standing in front of his father, holding the pick and shovel on his shoulder like an old gravedigger. the colonel looked at him and Amir glanced back at his father. We have nothing to say to each other. Although we belong to different generations, we have both witnessed the same things, so we are now as one. Except for one thing, which I hold dear, but do not have the courage to admit to…

  the colonel got up, not caring that his clothes were all stained with blood. He set off at an easy pace, shoulder to shoulder with his son. The sound of their footsteps was the only sound in the square. They stopped at the side of the square. It was as if they had both agreed to go their own separate ways.

  In the Traditions of the Prophet it is decreed that corpses should not be buried at night.

  Amir headed off in the direction of the cemetery, nonetheless. the colonel watched his son as he disappeared. He did not give a moment’s thought to feeling any sympathy for Amir, for he had plenty of other things to do now.

  “I must get on.”

  The alleyway was completely lit up by the shrine to Masoud. As he passed it, the colonel realised that he was still clenching his left hand into a tight fist. He relaxed it. The 35 toman notes in his hand were damp with sweat. He laid them, all screwed up, at the foot of the shrine to his Little Masoud. “I can’t stop, my boy. I’ve got to go home and see to your sister’s canary.” He knew that if he let the bird out of its cage, where it had lived all its life, it would not be able to fly away, let alone survive. But he would rather do that than leave it to a living death in its cage.67

  He went straight up the steps into the corridor to open the cage. But as he did so he heard the mewing of the old black cat by the pond. He stopped to look at it. The cat looked back at him. He stamped and shouted, trying to shoo it away, but the cat refused to budge. It seemed to him the cat was quite shamelessly letting him know that it was just waiting for Parvaneh’s canary to come out so that it could gobble it up.

  the colonel would have cheerfully killed it, but he thought he ought to have a look at the canary first. He crossed the verandah and went into the passage, switched on the light and walked up to the canary’s cage, which hung on the wall. No bird. He could not believe his eyes. He took the cage down and held it to the light, but the bird was gone.

  “I’m so ashamed of myself, colonel. You should treat me as you would your son. I… I’ve eaten it, but it was already dead.”

  It was the cat speaking, or so it seemed, with its mismatched eyes… or was it Abdullah? the colonel wasted no time dwelling on what might have happened to Parvaneh’s dead bird. With a venomous “You’re welcome to it!” he went out on to the verandah. He felt like stopping there for a while to breathe in the fresh air after the rain and recall that one day he had seen the sun setting over the ochre-coloured tin roof after the rain. He stood there with his arms crossed and thought that – hoped that – tomorrow would be a sunny day, like the day when they had brought home Mohammad-Taqi’s body. He thought how lucky were the people who would still be alive tomorrow. He did not begrudge it to them for a moment, or wish that he was going to be alive the next day. No, he thought, why should he spoil the end of his life by letting envy of other people get the better of him? No, life’s tribulations may open one’s eyes and ears and torment one’s soul, but they can also purge it of narrow-mindedness. And enjoying life makes death seem young and beautiful…

  In these final moments, this thought took the stoop out of his back and he stood up straight and took a deep, delicious, breath of the air after the rain. No, I never wanted to go out with a whimper. I refuse to go quietly, not after all this.

  He would have to take a shower and have a shave, brush his hair, and put on his old uniform, I’m a soldier, damn it! He was not going to forget his old standards now. He attached his aiguillettes, took his field boots out of the suitcase, polished them up and put them on. His insignia of rank had been stripped off when he was cashiered. He felt now that he had somehow pre-empted death by cleansing his body of all its slimy, grubby traces. He was purged. He just needed to dust off his beloved old setar and leave it hanging on the wall as a memorial.

  I’m sure someone’ll play it again one day. He took his sabre down off the wall, wiped the dust off it with the back of his hand and tested its bright, shining blade with his finger.

  Before I die, I must turn on all the lights in the house. He wanted the house to be ablaze with light. It was time to go. He was turning on all the lights in his house, in all my children’s rooms, as well…

  He set off, picking up Amir’s will from under the sugar bowl on the table as he went. He tried to read it, and also to remember w
hat he himself had written: “If those who are to come were to take the time to pass judgement on the past, in all likelihood they would say: ‘Our forefathers were powerful and impressive men, who sacrificed themselves to the great lie in which they fervently believed and which they spread. And the moment they began to doubt their beliefs, it was off with their heads! No doubt the bazaar merchants, businessmen and wheeler dealers among them will end up with the view that we would all be happy if we could just elect to be ruled by the least arbitrary of the thugs amongst us.’”

  He put the sheet of paper back under the sugar bowl and, once more, held his sabre up to the light and studied its flashing blade. Running his freshly cleansed fingers along his jugular vein, he stepped out onto the verandah.

  Now, have I turned on all the lights in the house? Yes, I have…

  Ever after that rainless night, the street people and the bazaar folk heard the strumming of an old setar reverberating in the darkness of the alleyways. They said that in the dead of night one saw a man roaming the narrow little streets, holding a lantern in his hand as he chanted these ancient lines:If you see on your way a severed head

  Tumbling along to that square of ours,

  Ask it, just ask it, how we all fare;

  It will tell you that buried secret of ours!

  Glossary of Names and Terms

  Amir Kabir, Mirza Taqi Khan: major reformer and prime minister of Iran under Naser ad-Din Shah from 1848 to 1851. He established new ministerial departments, reorganised the financial system, founded the country’s first newspaper and first modern university and introduced compulsory vaccination against smallpox. In 1851, he was accused of conspiracy, dismissed from office and sent into exile in Kashan where, at the Shah’s instigation, he was murdered the following year in a bath house. Amir Kabir is widely regarded and revered as the founder of modern Iran.