“If I’d passed the entrance exam for the officer training school, then maybe everything would have been different. But I failed. You had to be over five foot seven. It was fourteen years before I faced that selecting officer again, who meanwhile had become a brigadier-general. That was the day I went personally to staff headquarters to arrest one of his subalterns, a young second-lieutenant. I twisted his little finger and dragged him off to the general’s office, hurled him to the floor, looked the general straight in the eye and then kicked that second-lieutenant, who was over five foot seven, hard on the shins, and told the useless lanky bastard to get up!”
They are banging on the basement door and Khezr and I can hear heavy footsteps coming down the stairs. We sit up together and I can feel his hand shaking on his pistol holster. I am sure it is only Mohammad-Taqi at the door and my heart is exploding in my chest. I glance at Khezr and he has gone white as chalk, as if he has just walked into a trap. His face has gone purple from all the arack. I can feel him struggling to control himself.
“Brother!”
I am getting up — now — and I am putting on my shoes and going out. Mohammad-Taqi is standing at the top of the stairs and, as I am pulling the door shut behind me, two or three volleys of shots shatter the silence in the alleyway outside, and I think I can see the colonel’s face through the window. I am stunned by Mohammad-Taqi’s confusion. He is about to say something, which I know Khezr is going to hear too:
“Did you hear that?”
I did hear it, but Mohammad-Taqi wanted a reply. What needed to be said had not been said. I take him by the elbow and steer him up the stairs to Parvaneh’s room. She has come in without my noticing it and is tearing up sheets for bandages. I see a cardboard box beside her bed full of medicines and… I sit Mohammad-Taqi down on a chair beside the bed and I can see that the vein across the middle of his forehead has swollen up and that he is looking down so that I can’t see his bloodshot eyes. I pace up back and forth for a bit and then stand in front of Mohammad-Taqi: “I beg you to…” but Taqi does not let me finish. He looks up, and this is the first time that he looks into my eyes like this and he says, “Masoud is out on the street, he is in trouble and your guest’s partners in crime are shooting people; can’t you hear them?”
“Yes, I can. And I get your point!”
“My point doesn’t matter. You need to know what the people on the street are saying.”
Amir didn’t respond. He knew that was the only way to calm his brother down. And it worked; Mohammad-Taqi became more mollifying:
“I’m sorry I shouted at you, brother. I was angry.”
“I know, it’s all right. But please try and see my position and put up with it just for tonight.”
But Mohammad-Taqi had already dashed out of the room in response to a frantic banging on the outside gate. Parvaneh appeared, clutching her makeshift bandage strips. She was so bound up in her work that she seemed not to notice Amir. Amir ran out onto the verandah to see if his young brother Kuchik Masoud had come home. Yet it was not little Masoud who ran into the yard, but Abdullah, Habib Kolahi’s son. Mohammad-Taqi shut the gate behind the young man and pressed him for news of Masoud: “Kuchik, Kuchik… do you know what’s happened to him?”
“They went off into the forest.46 Kuchik and his lot followed them. I’m slightly…”
“Have you been wounded?”
He had been. Mohammad-Taqi led him past the pond towards the verandah steps. Meanwhile, Amir had disappeared into the basement, aware all the time of the colonel looking at him through the window. He seemed to be exultant:
“My children… ah, my children!”
Khezr Javid was sitting on the bed, smoking. He had got some colour back into his cheeks. Amir was beginning to understand that he was not as brave as he made himself out to be. His courage was the courage of men who know they have got the backing of a system behind them. Amir sat down, without drawing attention to the upside down turn of the events happening outside. Khezr was too clever to be easily led up the garden path, but he had not faced up to the facts of the situation. He either couldn’t, or wouldn’t face it. Stubbing out his cigarette, he simply remarked:
“I’ve put you in a bit of a spot, haven’t I?”
“No, no, not at all.”
“You know, If I had passed into officer training school, things might have turned out very differently, but I failed. I’ve no regrets. I’m not going to whine like a child the others won’t play with.”
“You still think you have a future, then?”
“I can see my future very clearly, rather more clearly than you can, with your crazy distorted view of life.”
Amir heard Mohammad-Taqi and Abdullah Kolahi going back down the verandah steps and hurrying to the main gate. Their footsteps were fast and light; Amir guessed they must be wearing trainers. He could take no more of it and ran up the stairs, just in time to see them going out into the alleyway with the boxes of medicines and bandages that Parvaneh had made. She peered out of the half-open gate and watched them go, then closed it and headed back to her room. Before she came in, Amir slipped down to the basement, closed the door softly behind him and waited until he was sure that his sister had gone upstairs. Then he went and sat down again. Khezr Javid was still lying there, with his arm over his forehead and his eyes closed. Sarcasm had got the better of him:
“So, the lads are out doing their bit for the movement, are they?” Then, as if talking to himself: “I suppose I shall just have to go out and sort something out with them in the morning.”
Two shots, one after the other. Amir’s heart missed a beat, and he forgot what he was going to say to Khezr. Khezr did not press him but instead, as if a great calm had come over him, began to snore loudly. As one eye was half-open, Amir assumed that he had gone to sleep, and lit himself a cigarette.
I know Khezr hadn’t want Mohammad-Taqi to open the door to him, but he had, and I could have done something about it. Khezr is deeply worried, I know, but he won’t face it. I know that Khezr is not unhappy that I went up and spoke to Mohammad-Taqi, and I’m damn sure Khezr is well aware of what Mohammad-Taqi thinks of him. I did my best not to let things get out of hand with Mohammad-Taqi and end in a fight, and they didn’t, but it was only about him letting Khezr stay just for one night, and not for ever. I tried to go straight back down to Khezr, which I did, and he didn’t say a word directly about what had happened, but… I’m still worried. I’m worried about my brothers, and I could see the same worry in the colonel’s eyes. Mohammad-Taqi has gone out, if only to take Abdullah home. Little Kuchik is still out there and, according to Abdullah, the trouble has spread beyond the city, out into the forest.
I was in a cold sweat. My eyelids felt like dried bricks rubbing together. One cigarette, then another…
Just as the morning call to prayer was called, I heard someone at the gate. I slipped out, dodging the watchful half-open eye of Khezr Javid, and went upstairs. Mohammad-Taqi was in the courtyard, squatting by the pond and washing his hands and face to freshen up after his long night. What on earth had he been getting up to all that time?
“Where’s little Kuchik? Did he spend all night at the mosque? Why hasn’t he come home?
“He’s just fine.”