The Colonel (6 page)

“Yes, sir, yes, it's me. I'm going home to get a pick and shovel. No, my mistake. I'm actually on my way to my daughter's house first… no, sorry, that's wrong, I mean I'm going to my son-in-law's house to borrow his pick and shovel. I'm sure you know him, Mr Allah-Qoli Qorbani Hajjaj.”

Another voice came from a dark corner: “Let him go, it's only
the colonel
.” The mocking, sarcastic stress on the word ‘colonel' seeped like poison into the colonel's bone marrow.

In any small town you can always find someone who is different from the others and who, as chance would have it, also has an unusual name or a nickname. Such a creature becomes the butt of jokes and is mercilessly baited because, for whatever reason, he is on a different wavelength to everybody else. They treat him as a half-wit and a nutter. The young man who had recognised the colonel clearly saw him as just such a person. the colonel did not see himself as a nutter at all, but he was in no mood to bother about what other people thought about him. Without glancing round he carried on, trying not to
be sidetracked by stray thoughts. Any moment, if he wasn't careful, he would trip over and sink up to his knees in a muddy pothole. So, instead of worrying about the jokes and sneers, he concentrated on every step of the way to the house of his son-in-law, Allah-Qoli Qorbani.

Of course, he knew it was far too late to be calling but there was no other way, so he rang the bell. Ah, yes, the bell – the house had only just been built and, as far as the colonel could remember, the bell had not been connected yet. He would have to bang on the new ochre-painted steel gate with a stone, a shoe horn or a penknife. It was obvious that to do such a thing at that late hour, just before the dawn call to prayer, would give those inside a fright. Then again, he thought, anyone sleeping safe and sound in their own home should expect alarms and frights as a matter of course. Because we all, rightly or wrongly, learn to live with such frights; we are subconsciously primed to expect the next alarming event, as a kind of defence mechanism against living in a constant state of insecurity and blind terror. And isn't this anxiety bound up with our abiding fear of death? Of course, it seemed natural to the colonel that nobody expected to die. By forgetting that death is decreed, one can bear the weight of the world on one's shoulders and live a little. At the same time, he thought, everyone, in his own mind, without actually facing up to it, must be waiting for death. Of course, mused the colonel, everyone expects to die, even if they won't admit it. It can happen to anyone that the grim reaper comes banging on the door just before the dawn call to prayer. Even Allah-Qoli Qorbani Hajjaj must believe that.

“Who is it? Who's there?”

It was the shaking voice of his daughter Farzaneh. There could be nothing ordinary about all this commotion at the
door. the colonel's family had experienced more than their fair share of fear and alarm, and anxiety was a constant part of their daily lives, yet none of them had ever got used to it. As she spoke, Farzaneh's voice betrayed her growing sense of unease. It was as though, even before she had been woken by his knocking, she had been with the colonel in his nightmares and had seen all that he had seen. The old man felt sorry for his daughter and felt that he ought not to keep her in suspense any longer. He needed to steel himself for a talk, however brief, with her. He wanted to put her mind at rest, but what should he tell her? Would the news that he had to break to her do anything to calm his Farzaneh down? Not likely. When he thought about it, he felt empty inside and wished that he hadn't knocked on the door. But who else could he turn to? Who else was as close to him as Farzaneh? It was too late now, so he had better stop agonising over it. There was nothing else for it.

“Papa, papa… Is that you?”

“Yes, it's me, my dear.”

“What are you doing there, why don't you come in? And why are you standing there looking so worried?”

The first ‘why' was clearly a reproach to the colonel for knocking the house up so late, but Farzaneh had quickly picked up the undue harshness of her tone and softened it by asking how he was. He was not offended by her tone, though. However old and grumpy fathers can be, they never let go of the capacity to forgive and indulge their children, and he did not have it in him to get angry with her. It was not his children that the colonel was angry with, but with their lives in general.
Oh, Lord… we seem to spend our entire lives in not knowing what to do, and putting off to tomorrow what we need to do today…

the colonel could not think how to break the news of Parvaneh's death to his surviving children. What made it all the more difficult was that here he was, at this hour, having to tell his daughter that her younger sister had been killed and then having to ask her to come with him to the cemetery to lay out her body. He lost his nerve; he couldn't possibly tell her, not now. He would just have to get a grip on himself and tell her something else. But what?

“Er, Farzaneh, my dear, you had a pick and shovel here once, didn't you? You must have a pick and shovel here somewhere, mustn't you?”

the colonel's daughter stared at her father in astonishment. She was quick-witted enough to smell that something dreadful had happened. the colonel had not been far out in thinking that everyone expects dreadful news sooner or later. And Farzaneh had been at the eye of a storm of tragedies of late. If she could only get over her amazement and open her mouth, she could force him to be frank with her and satisfy her quite justifiable curiosity. But the fact that Qorbani chose that moment to wake from his usual deep sleep left him still in the tangle. Qorbani harrumphed and called to his wife – calling her ‘Kuchik,' the family name for Masoud – and his tone made it clear that he wanted to know where she was and who was at the door and what she was doing. Before Qorbani had time to sling a coat over his shoulders and come out onto the verandah of his new house, the colonel asked her again for the pick and shovel. Fearful that her husband would say something rude to the colonel, Farzaneh quickly forestalled him by turning her back on her father and running down to the basement, explaining to her husband on the way that the colonel just wanted to borrow a pick and shovel.

Farzaneh had said this to her father more than once. When the colonel saw that Qorbani had not been surprised by his banging at the door, or by his need for a shovel, he began to think that Qorbani might know what was up… And his suspicions became stronger when Qorbani simply ignored him, his own father-in-law, turning up in the middle of the night, and went back inside, muttering something sarcastic about the baby crying. He called his wife inside and, leaving the door half open as he went into the hall, gathering his coat tails, he paused:

“It looks as though nothing will ever make this rain stop.”

What was it that Amir had said on that rainy day when he had been sitting on the old velvet sofa next to the stove with his legs casually crossed, smoking his pipe and with that Bolshevik cap on his head that he refused to take off, even indoors? How he had banged on, so pretentiously, so much so that Qorbani had believed that his brother-in-law fancied himself as some sort of leader. What had happened in that room? the colonel had seen how Qorbani had slipped out and, without telling the family what he was up to, rustled up a crowd and brought them back to the colonel's house to do honour to his son, the returning hero who, ‘After enduring years of imprisonment and torture, here
he is once more, with his head held high. Having depended on the unstoppable momentum of the people to secure his release from gaol, he is now going to mobilise that same force to overthrow this government of tyrants and oppressors and make this part of the country tremble with fear!'

And in no time a crowd of people, ‘simple gullible people', as if they had suddenly been woken from a deep sleep, some with umbrellas and some without, began to beat a path to the colonel's house in the pouring rain. the colonel, stunned and silent, looked on as tray after tray of fruit and pastries were delivered, ordered by Qorbani and his cronies. After a while, so many people had piled in on top of each other in the courtyard, and even in the alley outside, that there was no more room for them. He noticed that Amir had been dragged out of the living room onto the verandah to give a speech of thanks. But the crowd wanted more. The place was not large enough for such a huge gathering, nor was there a loudspeaker, but it did not matter. That was the sort of thing that Qorbani was used to dealing with, and before Amir had had time to think, he was being swept along by the crowd to the town square. Amir, whom Qorbani claimed had ‘risked his life, all his worldly goods and his reputation to further the cause of the revolution' – more weasel words – was hoisted up onto a dais, fully equipped with a lectern and microphone. Helpers were even hauled in to hold umbrellas over his son in the rain, which was still drumming down mercilessly through the barrage of slogans and clichés
that bellowed out in broken fragments from the loudspeakers: ‘Oppression… inflation… oil… fatherland… workers… proletariat… dictatorship… ism… more isms… and freedom, oh yes, we mustn't forget freedom.' And the people suddenly found they had a talent for listening, for harmony and conformity. Raised fists and slogans, a scuffle or two at the edge of the square, a couple of random shots, shouts of ‘make way,' and then Qorbani and his boys forced a passage through the crowd for Amir to a big car that was waiting there with its doors open. It had been borrowed from a showroom belonging to one of Qorbani's new best friends.

Back in the house, the colonel opened his cigarette case, lit one and stared silently at his son… Amir hoped for at least a brief look of approval from his father, albeit mixed with the customary measure of mistrust. He wanted to know that he had impressed the colonel and had finally persuaded him to believe in his son. Perhaps it was this burning, yet unspoken, urge that prompted him to ask: “What did you think, colonel?” But the colonel did not give him the answer he wanted. He just closed his cigarette case and tried to suppress the faint smile that played across his lips, a smile that made Amir blurt out, “It's the revolution – we've got a revolution!”

So now he had to find a quick way of putting Farzaneh's mind at rest.

“With all this rain coming down, you could get flooded out if you didn't have a pick and shovel to hand,” he said to her, as casually as he could, while laying the pick and shovel together to hoist them over his shoulder. Without waiting for an answer he turned round and set off.