The House of the Mosque Read online

  By the same author

  My Father’s Notebook

  First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  Copyright © Kader Abdolah, 2005English translation copyright © Susan Massotty, 2010

  Family tree copyright © Masoud Gharibi, 2005.Reproduced with permission of De Geus BV.

  The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted

  First published in The Netherlands in 2005 by De Geus BV, Postbus 1878, 4801 BW Breda

  This digital edition first published in 2010by Canongate Books

  Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

  The publishers gratefully acknowledge generous subsidy from the Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 84767 812 6

  Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd,Grangemouth, Stirlingshire

  www.meetatthegate.com

  To Aqa Jaan,

  so I can let him go

  Nun, wa alqalame wa ma yastorun.

  By the pen and by what you write.

  The Pen surah

  The Ants

  Alef Lam Mim. There was once a house, an old house, which was known as ‘the house of the mosque’. It was a large house with thirty-five rooms. For centuries the house had been occupied by successive generations of the family who served the mosque.

  Each room had been named according to its function: the Dome Room, for example, or the Opium Room, the Storytelling Room, the Carpet Room, the Sick Room, the Grandmother’s Room, the Library and the Crow’s Room.

  The house lay behind the mosque and had actually been built onto it. In one corner of the courtyard was a set of stone steps leading up to a flat roof, which was connected to the mosque.

  In the middle of the courtyard was a hauz,∗ a hexagonal basin of water in which people washed their hands and face before prayers.

  The house was now occupied by the families of three cousins: Aqa Jaan, the merchant who presided over the city’s bazaar, Alsaberi, the imam of the house and spiritual leader of the mosque, and Aqa Shoja, the mosque’s muezzin.

  It was a Friday morning in early spring. The sun felt warm, the air was filled with the rich smell of earth, the trees were in leaf, and the plants were beginning to bud. Birds flew from branch to branch, serenading the garden. The two grandmothers were pulling out the plants that had died in the winter, while the children chased each other and hid behind the thick tree trunks.

  An army of ants crawled out from under one of the ancient walls and covered the path by the old cedar tree like a moving brown carpet. Thousands of young ants, seeing the sun for the first time and feeling its warmth on their backs, surged down the path.

  The house’s cats, stretched out by the hauz, looked in surprise at the teeming mass. The children stopped playing to stare at the wondrous sight. The birds fell silent and perched in the pomegranate tree, craning their necks to follow the ants’ progress.

  ‘Grandmother,’ the children cried, ‘come and look!’

  The grandmothers, who were working on the other side of the garden, went on with their digging.

  ‘Come and look!’ one of the girls repeated. ‘There are millions of ants!’

  The grandmothers came over to investigate. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it!’ exclaimed one.

  ‘I’ve never even heard of such a thing!’ exclaimed the other. Their hands flew to their mouths in astonishment.

  The mass of ants was growing larger every second, making it impossible to get to the front gate.

  The children raced over to Aqa Jaan’s study, on the other side of the courtyard.

  ‘Aqa Jaan! Help! We have ants!’

  Aqa Jaan parted the curtains and looked outside.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Please come! Soon we won’t be able to reach the door. There are millions of ants crawling towards the house. Millions!’

  ‘I’m coming.’

  He threw his long aba around his shoulders, put on his hat and went into the courtyard. Aqa Jaan had witnessed a lot in the house, but never anything like this.

  ‘It reminds me of the Prophet Solomon,’ he said to the children. ‘Something must have set them off or they wouldn’t be swarming in such numbers. If you listen hard enough, you can hear them talking to each other. Unfortunately we don’t speak their language. Solomon could talk to ants. I can’t. I think they must be performing some kind of ritual, or perhaps spring has triggered a change in their nest.’

  ‘Do something!’ said Golebeh, the younger of the two grandmothers. ‘Make them go back to their nest before they get into the house!’

  Aqa Jaan knelt, put on his glasses and examined the ants up close.

  Then Golbanu, the older grandmother, made a suggestion. ‘Recite the surah about Solomon talking to the ants – the swarms of ants that covered the valley and brought Solomon’s army to a halt. Or read the Al-Naml surah, the part where Solomon talks to the hoopoe bird that brings him a love letter from the queen of Sheba.’

  The children waited, curious to see what Aqa Jaan would do.

  ‘Read Al-Naml before it’s too late!’ Golbanu insisted. ‘Tell the ants to go back to their nest!’

  The children looked expectantly at Aqa Jaan.

  ‘At least read the love letter,’ she pleaded. ‘If you don’t, the ants will take over the house!’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Bring me the Koran,’ Aqa Jaan said at last.

  Shahbal, one of the boys, ran over to the hauz, washed his hands, dried them on a towel that was hanging on the clothes-line and hurried into Aqa Jaan’s study. He returned with a very old Koran and handed it to Aqa Jaan.

  Aqa Jaan leafed through it in search of the Al-Naml surah and stopped at page 377. Bowing slightly, he began to chant softly, ‘Hattaa, edha ataa ‘ala wade an-namle, qalat namlaton: “ya ayyoha an-namlo ‘od kholaa masaakenakum, la yahtemannakom solaymano wa jonuudoho, wahum la yash‘oruun”.’

  They all watched in silence, waiting to see what the ants would do.

  Aqa Jaan chanted some more and blew on the ants. The grandmothers fetched two braziers and threw a handful of esfandi seeds on the freshly laid fires, so that clouds of scented smoke billowed into the air. They knelt on the ground beside Aqa Jaan and blew the smoke towards the ants, chanting, ‘Solomon, Solomon, Solomon, ants, ants, ants, the valley, the hoopoe, the queen of Sheba. Sheba, Sheba, Sheba, Solomon, Solomon, Solomon, the hoopoe, the hoopoe, ants, ants, ants.’

  The children waited anxiously to see what would happen.

  Suddenly the creatures stopped. They seemed to be listening, as if they wanted to know who was chanting and blowing that fragrant esfandi smoke at them.

  ‘Clear the courtyard, children!’ said Golbanu. ‘The ants are turning back! We don’t want to upset them!’

  The children trooped upstairs and stared out of the windows to see if the ants had really turned back.

  Years later, after Shahbal had left the country and was living in a foreign land, he shared his memory of that day with his friends. After the surah had been read, he told them, he had seen with his own eyes how the ants had crawled like long brown ropes back into the crevices in the ancient wall.

  ∗For an explanation of foreign words see the glossary at the bac
k.

  The House of the Mosque

  Alef Lam Ra. Years went by, but never again had the ants crept out from under the ancient walls in such numbers. The event had become a distant memory. Inside the tradition-bound house life went on as usual.

  In the evenings the grandmothers busied themselves in the kitchen until Alsaberi, the imam of the mosque, came home and they had to get him ready for the evening prayer at the mosque.

  The old crow flew over the house and cawed. A carriage pulled up outside, and Golbanu rushed over to open the gate for Imam Alsaberi.

  The ageing coachman greeted her and drove off. He was the last of his kind, because horses had been banned from the city streets. Any coachman who managed to get his driving licence was given a subsidised taxi, but there was one old coachman who repeatedly failed the test. At Aqa Jaan’s request, the man was finally given permission to work as the mosque’s coachman. Alsaberi considered taxis unclean, and he also felt that it was unseemly for an imam to have himself driven around in a taxi like an ordinary person.

  Alsaberi was wearing a black turban – a sign that he was a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad – and a cleric’s long brown aba. He was just coming home, after performing a wedding ceremony for one of the city’s foremost families.

  The children knew they weren’t supposed to come too close to him. Every evening he led the prayer for hundreds of worshippers, and no one was allowed to touch him beforehand.

  ‘Salaam!’ the children called out to him.

  ‘Salaam!’ the imam answered with a smile.

  When the children were small, he used to bring them a bag of sweets and hand it to one of the girls. The children would scamper off and leave him to walk to his library undisturbed. Now that they were older, however, they no longer ran up to him, so he gave the bag to the grandmothers, who later divided up the sweets among the children.

  As soon as Imam Alsaberi entered the house, the grandmothers washed their hands in the hauz, dried them and went to the library to help the imam with his bath. They undressed him in silence. One of the grandmothers carefully removed his turban and laid it on the table. The other helped him out of his prayer robe and hung it up. The imam himself did nothing. He avoided touching his clothes.

  The grandmothers had often complained to Aqa Jaan. ‘You need to talk to him. It’s not normal or healthy, what he does, what he demands of others. We’ve never had an imam in this house who’s been so fanatical about cleanliness. Wanting to be clean is fine, but he goes to extremes. He doesn’t even touch his own children. And he only eats with a spoon that he carries around in his pocket. It’s wearing him out. He can’t go on like this.’

  The grandmothers told Aqa Jaan everything that went on in the house, including the secrets no one else was supposed to know.

  The grandmothers weren’t actually grandmothers, but servants who’d lived in the house for more than fifty years. Aqa Jaan’s father had brought them to the house when they were young, and they had never left. Everyone had long forgotten where they came from. The grandmothers never talked about their past. They had never married, though the whole family knew that both of them carried on in secret with Aqa Jaan’s uncle. Whenever he came for a visit, they were his.

  The grandmothers belonged to the house, much like the crow, the cedar tree and the cellars. One of the grandmothers had raised Alsaberi and the other had raised Aqa Jaan. Aqa Jaan confided in them, and they saw to it that the traditions of the house were maintained.

  Aqa Jaan was a carpet merchant and owner of the oldest establishment in the bazaar in the city of Senejan. He had more than a hundred men working for him, including seven draughtsmen who designed the patterns in the carpets.

  The bazaar is a city within a city. You can enter it through several gates. Its maze-like streets, covered with domed roofs, are lined with hundreds of shops.

  In the course of several centuries, the bazaars had evolved into the most important financial institutions in the country. Thousands of merchants – dealing mainly in gold, textiles, grain, brassware and carpets – operated out of the bazaars.

  The carpet merchants in particular had always played a crucial role in the history of the country. Thanks to his unique position, Aqa Jaan presided over both the bazaar and the mosque.

  The rugs produced by Aqa Jaan’s company were known for their extraordinary colours and startling motifs. Any rug that bore his label was worth its weight in gold. Of course his rugs were not intended for ordinary buyers. Special dealers ordered them long in advance for customers in Europe and America.

  Nobody knew how the designers came up with such original motifs or such a superb blend of colours. It was the company’s greatest asset and the family’s most closely guarded secret.

  The era of private bathrooms had not yet dawned. There were several large bathhouses in Senejan. The men of the house had always gone to the oldest one, where a special place was reserved for the imam. But Imam Alsaberi had broken with tradition. He refused to set foot in a bathhouse used by dozens of other people. Even the thought of being naked in front of all those men made him sick.

  So Aqa Jaan had asked a bricklayer to add on a bathroom. Since the only bathing facilities the bricklayer was familiar with were the bathhouses, the man had dug a hole in the room behind the library and built the imam a mini-bathhouse.

  That evening Alsaberi sat down as usual on the stone floor in his long white undergarment. One of the grandmothers poured a jug of warm water over his head. ‘It’s cold,’ he shrieked. ‘Cold!’

  The grandmothers ignored his cries. Golebeh washed his back with soap, then Golbanu gently poured water over his shoulders, making sure not to splatter.

  After rinsing off the soap, they helped him into the bathtub, which was not very deep. He lay down and plunged his head under the water for a fairly long time. When he resurfaced, his face was ashen. The grandmothers helped him up, then hurriedly draped a towel around his shoulders and another one around his waist and led him over to the stove. Frowning with distaste, he wriggled out of his wet drawers and quickly put on a clean pair. They dried his hair and pulled a shirt over his head, sticking his hands in the sleeves. Then they walked him back to the library, where they sat him down in his chair and inspected his nails under a lamp. One of the grandmothers clipped a ragged edge off the nail on his forefinger.

  They helped him into the rest of his clothes, placed his turban on his head, put his glasses on his nose and polished his shoes with a rag. The imam was now ready for the mosque.

  Golbanu went outside and rang the bell hanging from the old cedar tree to call the mosque’s caretaker. When he heard it ring, he went up to the roof, climbed down the stone steps and walked past the guest room to the library.

  He never saw the grandmothers. Just before he came into the library, they would slip modestly behind one of the bookcases. He always greeted them, though, and they always returned his greeting from behind the shelves. Tonight he scooped up the books that had been laid in readiness on the table and escorted the imam to the mosque.

  The caretaker walked ahead to fend off any dogs that might unexpectedly come up to the imam. He was the imam’s trusted aide – the only person besides the grandmothers who was allowed to touch him, hand him anything or take anything from him. The caretaker was as fanatical about cleanliness as the imam himself. He never went to the municipal bathhouse, but had his wife scrub him at home in a copper tub.

  Outside the mosque a group of men waited to escort the imam to the prayer room. These same men always stood in the first row behind the imam during the prayer. As soon as they caught sight of the imam, they called, ‘Salawat bar Mohammad! Blessings on the Prophet Muhammad!’

  Hundreds of worshippers had come to the mosque for the evening prayer. They stood up when he entered and made way for him. He sat down in his usual spot, and the caretaker placed his books on the table beside him.

  All eyes then turned to the muezzin, who called out from the top of the centuries-ol
d Islamic pulpit, ‘Allahu akbar! Hayye ale as-salat! God is great! Hasten to the prayer!’ The moment he mounted the stairs, the prayer had officially begun.

  The muezzin was Aqa Jaan’s cousin, Aqa Shoja, who had been born blind. Aqa Shoja had a beautiful voice. Three times a day – just before sunrise, at noon and just before sunset – he climbed to the top of one of the mosque’s twin minarets and cried, ‘Hayye ale as-salat!’

  No one ever used his name. Instead, he was known by his title: Muezzin. Even his own family called him Muezzin.

  ‘Allahu akbar!’ he thundered.

  The worshippers stood and turned to face Mecca.

  Normally it was impossible for a blind man to become a muezzin. He had to be able to see when the imam bent down, when he touched the ground with his forehead and when he got up again. But in Aqa Shoja’s case the imam simply raised his voice a bit to let him know he was about to bend down or touch the ground with his forehead.

  Muezzin had a married daughter named Shahin and a fourteen-year-old son named Shahbal. His wife had died of a serious illness. Muezzin had no desire to remarry. Instead, he slipped off every once in a while to the mountains to visit a couple of women. At such times he donned his best suit, put on his hat, grabbed his walking stick and disappeared for days at a time. While he was away, his son Shahbal took over his duties and climbed into the minaret to call the faithful to prayer.

  After the evening prayer Imam Alsaberi was escorted back to the house by a group of men. Aqa Jaan always stayed a bit longer to talk to people. He was usually the last to leave the mosque.

  Tonight he had a quick word with the caretaker about some repairs that needed to be made to the dome. As he was heading home, he heard his nephew Shahbal call his name.

  ‘Aqa Jaan! May I have a word with you?’

  ‘Of course, my boy!’

  ‘Do you have time to walk down to the river with me?’