Khezr put down his empty glass, crossed his right leg over his left, undid his shoelaces and took off one of his shoes. Amir took it from him and put it in a corner, leaving Khezr’s hands free to undo the other one. As Amir placed it beside the other, he realised that Khezr was intending to stay the night. His heart sank, not least at the thought of Mohammad-Taqi’s pistol in the sitting room. The pistol on its own was cause enough for horror but, added to it, was Mohammad-Taqi’s alarming curiosity about Khezr, a curiosity blended with a suspicion that had turned into a certainty. Given what Amir knew about his brother’s state of mind, and in particular his belief that the revolution had to be brought about through violence, he was worried that Mohammad-Taqi would take out his pent-up feelings of hatred on an enemy who, in his view, was a well known agent of the destruction of a whole generation of his countrymen. There was bound to be a bloody outcome. Nowadays, there were any number of people, ordinary people on the street or bazaar folk, all looking for revenge, either on personal grounds or simply because it had become a national pastime. From every other tree lining the streets they were busy stringing up dozens of known police informers like Khezr the Immortal. To a hotheaded, vengeful young man like Mohammad-Taqi, who had lost so many of his comrades over the years, it would seem only natural, after more than half a century of oppression, to drag a police torturer out of his house and sacrifice him to the mad juggernaut of the revolution.
… But what am I supposed to do in this situation? The ancient tribal customs of our country still more or less obtain, albeit they may have faded somewhat, and one of them is the sacrosanct duty of a host to protect his guest — even if he is a sworn enemy. The pressures of city life may have made it harder to observe these customs, but one does not forget them.
Why was I inclined to take these laws of hospitality so seriously, as if it were some sacred duty to look after Khezr Javid? Didn’t I have every right to throw him out? Not one hair of my body is happy to have him in the house. I’m terrified of the consequences of having him here, but just as terrified of driving him away. If I have invoked custom and tradition, it is only because I was afraid. I have no doubt that if I saw Khezr in the street, I would just cross over to the other side. But now it is a different situation and I am trapped in a corner and I can’t see a way out of this fix.
“Penny for your thoughts, comrade?”
He had used the word ‘comrade’ ironically, of course. Amir had no idea where on earth his mind was wandering to. He turned round to look at Khezr. He was lying on the bed, half leaning on the pillows and half propped up on his right elbow. He was looking at the tumbler in his hand, which he had filled without offering any to Amir. He was swirling the arack gently round in the glass as Amir stammered back that he had not been thinking about anything.
“I’ll be sleeping here tonight.”
Khezr said this in a bullying, aggressive tone, boasting his self-confidence. With a smile dripping with artifice, Amir replied that there was a bed and that he would change the sheets.
Khezr said nothing and Amir realised that he was pretending that it did not matter. Khezr seemed to be feeling hot, for he got up to take off his jacket. When he reached up to hang it on the coat rack, Amir saw his shoulder holster with his side arm in it. Just as in the interrogation room, it hung off his left shoulder and was slightly angled so that he could easily reach the butt with his right hand and draw it. As Khezr sat down again, Amir could see the holster more clearly, with the black pistol butt sticking out of it. Khezr picked up the glass and, raising it to his lips, he grinned:
“Would you believe that in all the mayhem of the revolution I still walked right through the middle of town, just like that? Would you believe that?”
Amir said that he believed it. He knew that the arack had gone to Khezr’s head, but had not made him drunk. He remembered that, some nights when things were not busy in the interrogation block, Khezr would sit in his room after a glass or two and talk about himself and brag about his deeds of derring-do, how he had been in Dhofar and been on dangerous missions in the marshes along the Iraqi border, which had all ended in success. And indeed, his swift rise in the security services did seem to indicate that there was some substance to his boasts.
“It must have been towards the end of February, in fact ten days after February 11th, the day the Shah left, that I saw three of your comrades. Two of them had been my prisoners and I knew the other one. What do you think happened? They went white as chalk. They knew very well that, one squeak out of any one of them, they were all dead meat. So what do you think happened then? Everything went off nice and peacefully, as it turned out. Except that, the very next morning, on the front page of your newspaper, there was a lead article asking what sort of revolution this was that allowed former executioners to walk freely in the streets. And this, of course, was under a big headline announcing that you were publishing a list of all SAVAK informers. The comrades had pointed out the lion tracks. So what was your politbureau up to, then? Why aren’t you drinking?”
There was no doubt in Amir’s mind that Khezr was telling this story because of Mohammad-Taqi. Khezr was clearly both suspicious and afraid of Amir’s wild and hot-headed brother, but he wanted to give the impression that he was not in the least worried by what he might do. Perhaps he had decided to spend the night here precisely in order to dispel any impression that he was going to creep around in fear of Mohammad-Taqi. As it happened, his reasons for doing so were quite different, but Amir would only learn about this later.
“You said you don’t want a drink. Why not?”
Amir said he didn’t like it; it damaged his brain. Khezr had already asked him this question. Now he was asking again. This showed that he liked repeating himself. Amir knew Khezr well enough to know that this was not a sign that he was unexpectedly drunk. Khezr drained his glass and told Amir he could put the stopper back on the can, and keep it for tomorrow evening. Then, not fussing about creasing his trousers, he stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes.
Amir knew that Khezr always slept with one eye open and never went into a deep sleep. But at least he was in bed now, and the evening was at an end, which meant that Amir, too, could think about sleeping at last. He could have gone upstairs to get a mattress and blanket for himself, but decided against it, firstly because he didn’t want to run into Mohammad-Taqi and, secondly because he did not want to stoke up Khezr’s suspicions any more. Instead, he made a makeshift bed on the rush mat on the floor, but he entertained no hopes of sleeping. He got up once to collect the glasses and other bits and pieces on a tray, which he did not want to take upstairs, then again to turn off the light and switch it back on again. Then he lay awake for a long time wondering whether Khezr wanted the basement door shut or left half-open. Every time he got up he noticed that Khezr’s right eye was half open. He also took in that Khezr was lying so as to face into the room. Amir usually slept with his face glued to the wall. Finally, leaving the light on and the door half-open, he lit a cigarette and lay back. With one arm flung over his forehead, he tried to calm himself down by watching the smoke curling upwards between his fingers. Sleep was out of the question, not because he had been sleeping all afternoon, but because he kept turning over in his mind what to do about Khezr — the enemy within — as Mohammad-Taqi would have put it. He wanted to treat it as a perfectly ordinary matter, but even that was impossible. He could only hope that Mohammad-Taqi had got off his high horse and had gone to bed. It was even more important that Masoud should spend at least tonight either in the mosque or at the neighbourhood Komité38 and not show his face at home. He also hoped that Parvaneh would not get to hear of his little problem. For it was quite possible that she, the last person one would expect to do such a thing, would let the cat out of the bag and bring disaster down on the family. Amir felt as if the evil eye had struck him through his brothers and sister, with all their crazy carryings-on in the revolution, and he was frightened by it. They were all in it, up to their necks, for heaven’s sake!