A Persian Requiem (33 page)

The coffin, swathed in eglantine and red roses, was to be taken from the driveway of the house by Hossein Agha, Hassan Agha, Majid Khan and Fotouhi as pall-bearers. Malek Rostam insisted on carrying the coffin too, but Zari dissuaded him, saying that
Abol-Ghassem
Khan had been right about one thing: the tribesman had shown himself too carelessly in public. She made him promise to put on Khadijeh’s chador after they had all left and escape to a safe hide-out through the back door of the garden.

Malek Rostam merely responded by saying, “It doesn’t really matter any more. Whatever’s going to happen will happen.”

Abol-Ghassem Khan begged the ladies to stay at home for lunch. A bite to eat could be arranged at his humble abode, and it wasn’t wise for them to attend the burial. Khanom Ezzat-ud-Dowleh would remain at the house too.

The emblem and the candelabrum went before the coffin while the Hejleh Ghassem followed it. Abol-Ghassem Khan gave his arm to one of Yusef’s sworn companions, and extracted a black
handkerchief
from his pocket which he used for dabbing at his eyes every so often. Zari and Ameh walked alongside him.

The door of the stable was open. The roan horse was feeding, but the mare and Sahar were standing quietly on the side-path, with Khosrow and Hormoz holding their bridles. Zari felt sick with grief at the sight of the horses and the boys. The mare’s saddle was completely covered with black fabric, with Yusef’s hat on top and his gun strapped to the mare’s neck. They had covered Sahar with a white sheet stained randomly with red ink like a bloodied shroud. When the mare saw the body, she picked up her ears and drummed her hoofs on the ground. Zari felt as if her own heart were being trampled on. Then the mare neighed twice. Zari thought she saw tears rolling down the horse’s flared nostrils. She remembered what the middle-aged woman had told her about Savushun, all those years ago.

Khosrow and Hormoz led the horses behind the Hejleh Ghassem. Abol-Ghassem Khan rushed at them and pulled the blood-stained shroud off Sahar. He bunched it up and threw it under one of the elm trees. Then he gave Hormoz a hard slap on the face, knocking his glasses to the ground. “What kind of nonsense is this?” he shouted. “Everything is being run by women and children all of a sudden! Take the horses back to the stables, you fools! My God, they make you livid with anger!”

The emblem of the Ta’zieh had by now been carried as far as the garden gate. Its porter, the man stripped to the waist, bent over to lower it, his bare back glistening with sweat. Everyone stopped. Hormoz picked up his glasses from the ground, shook out the broken bits of glass from the right lens and put them back on. Just then a car, sounding its horn, pulled up at the garden gate. An Indian soldier got out, bringing with him a white flower
arrangement
adorned with black ribbons in the shape of a cross. Entering the garden, he headed towards the coffin and tried to put the flowers on it. But the pall-bearers, standing on tip-toe, lifted the coffin out of his reach. Khosrow dropped Sahar’s bridle, went to the Indian soldier and took the flower arrangement from him. One by one he plucked the flowers from the cross and threw them in front of the horses. The horses sniffed at the flowers but didn’t eat them. The Indian soldier stared with bulging eyes at the black-clad mourners, as if he couldn’t believe what he saw. The crowd was so silent you could have heard a pin drop. Abol-Ghassem Khan put a hand on the soldier’s back and led him to the car, whispering something to him which the man seemed not to understand since he answered aloud
in a language no-one recognized. Then the car sounded its horn again and drove away.

Now the youngest son of their neighbour, the distiller, came running up to them, panting and sweating, with an armful of wild flowers. Khosrow took the flowers and smelled them before placing them on the coffin which the pall-bearers now lowered.

By this time the sun had penetrated every nook and cranny. Coming out of the garden, Zari noticed that all the shops in the side-street were closed. Haj Mohammad Reza, using pairs of wooden poles, had draped lengths of black material all along both sides of the street. Usually he tied colourful fabrics in red, blue, green and orange on them, or else dyed silks and wool to dry off in the sunlight.

They had barely gone half-way up the street when they saw a bare-headed Gholam approaching with the twins. Reaching Zari, Gholam spat and said, “Mohsen Khan telephoned, so I went and fetched them …”

Zari and Ameh stood aside to let the procession go ahead, but the crowd waited. Zari bent down and kissed the children. Mina was holding the keychain which she gave to her mother.

“Now take us so we can watch too!” she said. “Oh look at the lights! Look at all the stars!”

Abol-Ghassem Khan, who had gone ahead a few steps, came back to warn Zari, “They’ll be trampled on. Sister, please take them to Khanom Ezzat-ud-Dowleh.”

“No, Ameh Khanom,” Zari replied. “Leave them with Ferdows.”

At that, the twins started to cry. None of Ameh’s pleading and cajoling had any effect. Finally Gholam picked Mina up and Ameh took Marjan as the crowd made way for them to leave.

Along the main road, policemen were either scattered randomly or walking around in pairs. In the side-street opposite, a truck full of soldiers was waiting. When the policemen first sighted the funeral procession they simply stood and watched, but when the procession turned towards the main road, the policeman in command blew his whistle, bringing his men into a line to block the crowd’s path. But the Ta’zieh emblem had already been carried into the main road and its front feather seemed to nod in greeting to the crowds spread out on the roof-tops and pavements. What loudspeaker could have drawn the people to the street in such numbers?

The police officer came towards the crowd and shouted, “Gentlemen, except for the relatives of the deceased, everyone else must disperse.” He waited. Abol-Ghassem Khan remained
standing
with his back to the crowd. Zari turned round to look. Men dressed in black were still flocking out through the garden gates. Then a voice proclaimed in Arabic, “There is but one God!” In unison, the crowd repeated the sacred phrase.

The policeman shouted again, this time on behalf of
Abol-Ghassem
Khan. “Do you hear me or not? The honourable
Abol-Ghassem
Khan cannot speak out because of his grief … to thank all of you. The weather is hot. He bids you gentlemen farewell.”

A voice from the crowd replied calmly, “We are all related to the deceased.”

Hossein Agha, who was one of the pall-bearers, signalled to Seyyid Mohammad to replace him as he walked up to the
policeman
and addressed him. “Sir, a young man has been killed unjustly. We’re mourning his death. That is all.”

“I’m asking the crowd, very politely, to disperse,” the policeman declared in a loud voice. “Go back and open your shops. If you don’t, your trading licences will be revoked. That’s an order. Do you understand? If you don’t obey, I’ll have to resort to force …”

This time, Mashallah Qari came forward. He said, “Sir, you know what kind of a fellow I am, don’t you? When I say
something
, I stand by my word. We don’t mean to stir things up. We’re just mourning one of our fellow-townsmen. Imagine it’s Karbala here and today is the massacre of Ashura; you don’t want to be Shemr, do you?”

Someone cried out, “O Hussein!” And the crowd enthusiastically echoed, “O Hussein!”

Zari thought bitterly, “Or imagine it’s Savushun and we’re mourning Siavush.”

“I told you to disperse!” The police commander shouted even more angrily, “I’m going to smash that candelabrum to pieces!” And he made for the upright candelabrum which was being carried on a tray over a porter’s head. The man with the candelabrum had come right up against the line of gendarmes blocking the main road. His companion nudged him in the side and whispered
something
in his ear. The man turned to the right and went off to stand by the dried-up gutter along the street, the candelabrum pendants jingling to his movement.

The policeman turned around and motioned to the truck full of soldiers in the side-street opposite. The truck’s engine revved, and the vehicle swerved noisily, coming to a halt a little beyond the Ta’zieh emblem on the main road. The crowd watched the truck. An officer stepped out. He was stout, with a perspiring face, and he had three stars on his epaulette. He came over and stood by the policeman.

“As God is my witness,” he said, “I don’t want any of you to come to any harm. We have families too. Go back to your work and livelihood.”

The crowd seemed to take heart at the captain’s gentleness. Mashallah Qari stepped forward again and said, “Sir, you know what sort of a fellow I am, don’t you? As long as I’m around, I’ll make sure our brothers and sisters here are safe and sound. We’ll take the body to the Shah Cheraq Shrine, go round it, mourn and flagellate for a while …”

“What! The Shah Cheraq?” shouted the captain, quickly losing his temper. “Right in the centre of town? Whoever gave you
permission
to do that? Can’t you be spoken to in a civilized way? Now, go straight back to where you belong!”

He took a few steps towards the main road and motioned again to the soldiers in the truck. One by one the soldiers got out, rifle in hand, and lined up behind the police. The captain turned to the crowd and, wiping the sweat off his forehead with his hand, said, “That man’s always been trouble, dead or alive.”

Zari thought she was the only one who had heard the insult to her husband, but Hossein Agha turned to Abol-Ghassem Khan and said, “The poor man hasn’t been buried yet, and you let them insult him like that?”

The captain slapped Hossein Agha sharply across the face, making his nose bleed. “You shut up!” he barked.

Abol-Ghassem Khan took out a silver cigarette-case from his pocket which he opened and held in front of the captain.

“Captain, please have one,” he said, blinking. “I seem to
recognize
you. Aren’t you the son of Agha Mirza Mehdi, the porter at the oil-maker’s caravanserai? Your father respected the dead …”

“Is this the time to be pulling out my pedigree?” the captain shouted angrily. “Why do you lead these people on?” Turning to the crowd, he yelled, “I told you to get lost!”

Hossein Agha had cupped his hand under his nose. “How can we
do that?” he asked. “You’re blocking our way.”

The captain dealt Hossein Agha several more blows on the back of the head. “Why are you jabbering again?” he bellowed. “Didn’t I tell you to shut up?”

They began to grapple with each other. Just as Mashallah Qari had pinned the captain’s arms behind him, the police commander blew his whistle and the policemen and soldiers charged the crowd, hitting out left and right with their batons or rifle-butts. But the crowd managed to make its way down the main road. First Fotouhi and Hassan Agha, then Majid and Seyyid Mohammad, out of necessity, left the coffin on the ground by the side-street and followed the crowd into the main road.

The road itself became blocked. Cars were backed up in both lanes; several carriage-horses shied. The noise of drivers cursing and lashing at their horses, car drivers honking and vainly
attempting
to reverse, mingled with that of the mourners who had taken out their chains and begun to flagellate amidst the general hubbub and confusion of the crowd.

The man carrying the candelabrum tried to cross the dried-up gutter to reach the sidewalk, but he was pushed by the crowd and the candelabrum crashed to the ground, breaking into bits. The man, with the empty tray still on his head, squatted down to pick up the bits of crystal. The others, however, managed to escape to the sidewalk with the Ta’zieh emblem which they leaned against a wall. A group of people helped make way for the Hejleh Ghassem to be taken back to the garden.

Now all the crowd had poured into the main road and the coffin, decked with flowers, was lying abandoned by a wall along the side-street. Only Zari and Abol-Ghassem Khan remained.
Wordlessly
, they tried to pick up the coffin. It was heavy. The eglantine and red roses had withered, but the wild flowers were still fresh. Zari looked down the main road for help. Suddenly she heard gun shots. The people who had been watching from the shop roof-tops retreated a little.

Zari spotted Khosrow who was struggling and shouting, “Let me go!”

A policeman was holding both his arms with one hand, and Hormoz, wearing his one-eyed glasses, was punching the
policeman
on the chest.

Those who were injured or unconscious were being carried off by
others, many of them with torn clothing revealing naked flesh underneath. What a cloud of dust there was in the air! Meanwhile, no-one could be found to help them pick up the coffin from the ground, and Zari was against dragging it on the dirt all the way back home as Abol-Ghassem Khan suggested. Feeling sick to the stomach, she had to resort to her smelling salts again.

Eventually four buses, honking non-stop, managed to scatter the crowd and open up a way for themselves. They narrowly passed the truck, now empty of soldiers, hitting the deserted sidewalk with a thump. The odd remaining spectator dodged the vehicles as they pulled up and parked, one after the other, beyond the Ta’zieh emblem. Indian soldiers peered out from the bus windows and the crowd, which had momentarily retreated, converged again,
shouting
and clamouring.

The captain approached Zari and Abol-Ghassem Khan. “I think you ought to go and bury the body right away,” he told
Abol-Ghassem
Khan. “I’ll find you a car. When you get a crowd roused up …” He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his face.

“I have a car myself,” Abol-Ghassem Khan answered.

An Indian officer got out of the first bus and pushed his way through to the captain. He saluted and said in broken Persian, “We on holiday. Soldiers been visiting Shah Cheraq. Only two days’ holiday.”

“You can see for yourself that the road is blocked,” the captain informed him loudly.