The Colonel (29 page)

“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.

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 that 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
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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.

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.

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.
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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…