The House of the Mosque

Tayareh

Whenever you were in the courtyard, you heard aeroplanes flying overhead. They took off in Tehran, crossed the desert and flew down to the Persian Gulf, where they continued on to Europe or America. On the return trip they usually took another route, crossing the Gulf of Oman and entering Iran at Bandar Abbas.

When the children were small, they used to sing a song whenever they heard a plane, looking up at the tiny, mysterious bird in the sky and singing:

Tayareh, tayareh,

Where are you going, tayareh?

Who is on board, tayareh?

When will it be my turn, tayareh?

Fakhri Sadat was sitting on the bench by the hauz, knitting. Since Lizard’s death, the jumper she’d been making for him had been left unfinished.

Aqa Jaan was working in the garden, burying his sorrow in a pit along with the dead leaves.

Suddenly a passenger plane flew over the house, so low the noise was deafening. The sun glinted off its broad wings and lit up Fakhri’s face, the trees, the hauz and the windowpanes.

Aqa Jaan, fearing that it was a bomber, grabbed his wife’s arm and dragged her down to the cellar. They peered up at the sky through the trapdoor, but the plane had already disappeared.

When they got over their fright, they saw Muezzin standing by his workbench. For once his hands weren’t covered in clay. Instead, he was dressed in a navy-blue suit and hat, and had already donned his usual travelling glasses. There was a suitcase at his feet.

‘Are you leaving on another one of your trips, Muezzin?’ Fakhri asked, saddened.

‘I can see that you’re all packed,’ Aqa Jaan said. ‘Where are you going this time?’

‘You’re the man who records everything,’ Muezzin said. ‘Make a note of this: I’m moving out.’

‘You’re moving out?’ Fakhri echoed in surprise. ‘Why?’

‘I hear the boy crying, all night long. He’s dead, but he still comes down to the cellar and plays around my feet when I’m working. He’s buried in the garden, but I see him sitting in the cedar tree. At night he weeps outside my door and crawls through my sleep.’

Fakhri Sadat began to sob quietly. ‘It’s the same for us. We hear him in the garden too, but that doesn’t mean you have to move out.’

‘I don’t want to, but the house is telling me to go. It’s turning me out. Look at my hands — I can’t make a thing any more. The cellar is piled high with my work, the garden is full of my vases, my plates are stacked up on the roof. Nobody buys my pottery. I’m being chased out. Let me go, brother, and wish me luck.’

Muezzin embraced Aqa Jaan, kissed Fakhri, picked up his suitcase and went up the cellar stairs. He paused for a moment in the courtyard and listened to the familiar sounds. ‘Old crow!’ he yelled. ‘Take good care of the house. I’m moving out!’

After Muezzin had shut the gate behind him, three warplanes flew over the house with a thunderous roar and were swallowed up in the clouds.

‘Iraqis!’ said Aqa Jaan.

But they weren’t Iraqi warplanes. They were Iranian air-force jets in hot pursuit of the passenger plane.

The president of Iran, Bani-Sadr, was inside the plane. He was trying to flee the country, and the jets were hurtling through the sky at top speed in an attempt to stop him. A week ago, Khomeini had accused him of working for the Mujahideen and dismissed him from office.

Bani-Sadr had gone into hiding, and the Mujahideen had devised a master plan for smuggling him out of the country. They had planned the escape down to the last detail and even informed Saddam Hussein of the flight, so that Iraqi aircraft would be standing by to escort the ex-president’s plane through Iraqi airspace.

The three Iranian jets didn’t catch him. Bani-Sadr’s plane reached Iraq in the nick of time and flew on towards Europe.

Four and a half hours later, when the plane was approaching Paris, the pilot radioed the control tower: ‘This is an emergency. I have the president of Iran on board, and he’s requesting political asylum.’

The control tower passed the message on to the airport manager, who immediately contacted the French president, then asked Bani-Sadr a few questions, which he answered in flawless French. ‘I am the elected president of the Islamic Republic of Iran,’ he announced. ‘I have on board with me the leader of the Mujahideen. I am requesting political asylum for myself, the leader of the Mujahideen and the pilot.’

The plane circled above Paris while the airport manager and the French president discussed the matter.

Bani-Sadr, who had a PhD in economics from the Sorbonne, had lived in Paris for years. In fact, he still had the key to his Paris apartment. He had been doing some postgraduate work when Khomeini had left Iraq and moved to Paris.

During his studies, Bani-Sadr had come up with an economic model that combined capitalism and Islam. His plans were ideal for Khomeini, who knew absolutely nothing about economics.

When Khomeini flew from Paris to Tehran, Bani-Sadr was one of the seven men educated in the West who went with him. Later he was elected the first president of Iran.

The plane was circling Paris for the fourth time when the airport manager informed Bani-Sadr of the decision: ‘The French government has agreed to offer asylum to you and your fellow passengers. Your plane may land. Welcome to France.’

Bani-Sadr’s escape was the lead story on French television that night.

Khomeini had just come to the end of his evening prayer when Rafsanjani, then commander-in-chief of the armed forces, knelt by his side and broke the news to him.

Khomeini stood up and immediately launched into another prayer. Now that he had been informed of this unfortunate news, he hoped that an extra prayer would bring him closer to God. He needed Allah’s advice. After he’d uttered the last rakat, his eyes gleamed. He turned to Rafsanjani. ‘Our moment of glory has come!’

Ever since the war began, the Iranian army had been waiting for the right moment to liberate the occupied city of Khorramshahr. The largest oil refinery in the Middle East was located in its strategic harbour. Up to now the operation had been impossible, because American satellites relayed every movement in and around Khorramshahr to the Iraqis.

‘Allah is on our side,’ Khomeini said to Rafsanjani. ‘We will liberate Khorramshahr. The moment has come. Call a meeting of all your generals!’

Saddam had toasted his good fortune and was on his way to a cabinet meeting to break the news of Bani-Sadr’s escape to his ministers when the Iranian army attacked Khorramshahr simultaneously from six sides.

Thousands of Iraqi and Iranian soldiers were killed. The streets were lined with corpses. After half a day of heavy fighting, two Iranian soldiers managed to tear down the Iraqi flag on top of the refinery and replace it with the green flag of Islam.

The Iraqis regrouped, but the ayatollahs unexpectedly opened a new front: the Iranians attacked the Iraqi harbour of Basra. The Iraqi soldiers were so shaken by the news of the invasion that they went on the rampage, destroying every house in Khorramshahr and torching the trees before retreating in a vain attempt to save Basra.

After this historic victory, Khomeini appeared on television and was seen to be smiling for the first time. He gave thanks to Allah and congratulated the parents of the fallen soldiers on their sons’ bravery.

Millions of people took to the streets to celebrate the liberation of Khorramshahr. They set off fireworks, drove around in cars, honking and flashing their lights, danced on top of buses and treated each other to biscuits, sweets and fruit.

The rejoicing went on until deep in the night. It was the first nationwide celebration since the ayatollahs had come to power.

A full moon shone that night, comforting those who had suffered the pains and sorrows of war. Not everyone was rejoicing, however. Some people took advantage of that joyful night to exact revenge.

The light of that same moon shone down on a saltwater lake near Senejan, where the half-submerged body of Zinat Khanom lay. There was a note in a plastic holder round her neck: ‘She forced young unmarried women who had been sentenced to death to sleep with an Islamic fundamentalist before being executed. She has been tried and punished here at this salt lake, at the express wish of the mothers whose daughters were unwillingly made brides on the last night of their lives.’

Soon the moon would fade, and the sun would take its place. A flock of desert birds would spot Zinat’s body by the lake and circle noisily above it.

A traveller riding by on a camel would stop at the lake to see what had attracted the birds’ attention. And he would get down from the camel, kneel by the corpse and read the note.