“Allow me to be your humble servant, colonel. I am your servant… what am I to do? They told me to say this. But… I swear to you, I treated your daughter as a sister… But even so… I’m so ashamed, colonel, that I’ve decided go and join Masoud at the front in the next draft of reinforcements. To be honest, I don’t intend to come back. I’ve told my wife. I’ve come to ask for your blessing. Give me your blessing, colonel.”
Abdullah disappeared, vanishing in a cloud of black smoke that washed over the colonel’s eyes. His head felt as heavy as a millstone and his heart felt as if it had been uprooted and was crashing around inside his ribcage like a demented canary. When he came to, he found himself gripping the back of the chair. The old sheet had slipped off and was lying on the floor in a heap, and he was standing there, stark naked and shivering like a dog. His mind was a blank. But he could still feel, and he felt cold. He picked up the sheet under his feet and wrapped it round him, but did not know what to do next. The canary was huddled in its cage. All I thought was that it was just a canary that had stopped singing.
Wondering whether canaries liked sugar plums, he took one out of the packet, walked down the passage, stood in front of the cage, pushed it through the bars of the cage and offered it to the canary. But the canary did not move, or even look up. the colonel looked at the rain and decided not to let the canary out. Even if it hadn’t been raining, letting the canary free would have been to pass a death sentence on it. It’s not used to life outside its cage. One flap of its wings and it’s on the floor, and the first cat… That black cat skulking round the pond would go for it.
Mind you, if it hadn’t been raining, I probably would have let it go. After all, since it’ll just pine away and die in its cage after we’re all gone, I might as well let it die free, outside its cage.
But Parvaneh’s canary was already pining away, wasn’t it?
He did not know, nor did he know how long he had been standing there by the cage, silently studying the bird. He walked out on to the edge of the verandah and stood there, on his usual spot, looking out at the rain. The courtyard gate was half-open, and there was no sign of the pick and shovel.
I do hope Amir hasn’t gone out and taken them with him.
There was no certainty about anything. the colonel felt a terrible pang of loneliness. There was nothing but the rain, drumming on the rusty old tin roof. the colonel could not recall that once, at least once a long time ago, he had seen the ochre colour of the roof in the sunset after a rainstorm. His mind was a blank. Was it sunset, or wasn’t it? It was night, or wasn’t it? What time of day was it, anyway?
What is it? Qorbani must be along soon to take me to the cemetery. And my clothes are still wet. What shall I do if they come to tell me that they’ve brought Masoud in? But they won’t bring him, they won’t. No, they haven’t brought back my Kuchik now for forty days, forty winters, forty times forty days and forty nights in the wilderness.
Gentlemen of the cloth! You gentlemen who want history not to be written down, to keep history hidden under a heap of shit, I have told you before that I have lost count of the days and of the nights and of the seasons, and it is now forty days, forty times forty days and forty nights that I have been wandering in the rain, and I feel my bones to be damp and hollow and that I have drained myself out… All I can see now are grotesque creatures. Stranger still, those ghosts are coming back to tell me that my sight is fading, because I can’t distinguish my Masoud from anyone else, while I… It’s bizarre, outlandish… I am telling them that this severed head that has been stuck onto a body is not my son’s head. But do they believe it? No, they don’t. It’s just not possible that I should have forgotten what my son looks like. It’s true that a bullet took one eye and half his face off, but what’s left of this face cries out to me that it does not belong to my Masoud. But the body, the body could well be my son’s. Why would I want to tell a lie, and say that this dishevelled head stuck on to Masoud’s body isn’t his? I know my son’s shoulders, his arms and even his hands. Even though one of his arms is missing from the elbow down, I can still identify him. And let’s not mention that his guts are spilling all over the place and one of his knees has been practically severed and… but nobody is listening to me, which is very odd, very odd. Because, every time I try to speak, before I can get more than one word out, the hired mourners start their lamentations and flagellations and drown my voice out. I want to say, ‘Gentlemen, my brothers, my sons… believe me, this severed head does not belong to my Kuchik.’ That is all I want to say, nothing more, but they won’t let me. They are filling the mortuary with the noise of their wailing and howling and their chest-beating. They are forcing me into silence.
I suppose I could suggest that they go and fetch the father or mother of this head so they can put it back where it belongs, but then it occurs to me that this head might belong to a Kurd. This dishevelled half a face is not Masoud’s, I am sure of that. From what’s left of it — the nose and chin and a bit of the forehead — I’m guessing that the owner of this head must have been Kurdish. I’ve seen it in a book, The Faces of Iran I think it was called, which had photos showing the physiognomy and skull structure of the Kurds, which are quite distinctive. Quite apart from that, I’ve seen a few Kurds and have had a bit to do with them. It’s a problem, and not just because I can’t get anyone to listen to me; the problem is that it’s a forbidden subject and I’m sure I daren’t mention it to Qorbani, who seems to be in charge of the funeral arrangements and has implicitly made himself the guardian and owner of the martyr — that is to say, the owner of my son Masoud.
the colonel was quite astounded at the efficient way Qorbani was setting things up and organizing the funeral. One would think his family had been body-washers, gravediggers and carrion eaters for generations. There was nothing he could do about it. This was his fate and it was plainer to him than the lines on the palms of his hands that if he did not accept his lot, they would ram it up my arse and then his problems would be a hundred times worse. He would just have to accept it and agree that that head, a head that does not belong to my Masoud! did belong to him and that it would have to be stuck on to Masoud’s headless body and be buried. That was it.
the colonel had served in the army of the dictator48 (who was nothing but an invisible white kid glove covering a bludgeon up the sleeve of an ancient nation) and he had learned that power was exercised through the business end of that bludgeon, but he had never imagined that a time would come when coercion would come from both ends of the bludgeon.49 But, thought the colonel, he would just have to put up with it. If only he had been better prepared for such times, but they don’t tell you anything! They take you unawares and thoroughly brainwash you until you really believe everything they say.
“Now, young man, will you tell me how to get from here to where everyone else is going?”