The Colonel (18 page)

“Haven't you got a telephone here?”

This could have been taken any number of ways, for it was not hard to find out whether the colonel had a telephone in his house or not. Even so, Amir's first thought was that Khezr just wanted to make a call, but then he thought that perhaps he wanted to be absolutely sure whether there was a telephone in the house or not. Faced with Amir's silence, Khezr turned to sarcasm:

“What, not even a cordless phone? You'd be amazed at the things people have in their houses these days!”

Amir laughed. “No.” He was sure that, before he had come to the house, Khezr had investigated all the security angles and already knew most of the answers to his questions.

Mohammad-Taqi was now outside his room with a tray of tea; following Khezr's glance, Amir could see a sliver of
Mohammad-Taqi through the half-open door. He got up, went to the door and took the tray off him. Once Mohammad-Taqi had gone, he offered Khezr a glass.

“Was he listening at the door?”

Amir said he did not think Mohammad-Taqi did such things, but without thinking he got up and pushed the basement door to, feeling Khezr's eyes on him all the way. Khezr turned almost bashful:

“I'd heard Mohammad-Taqi was in Tehran. I'd rather it hadn't been him that opened the door to me. He's the only one here I'm worried about.”

Amir was silent, probably preoccupied despite himself with the difference between himself and his brother. He put a lump of sugar in his tea and listened as Khezr went on:

“It's true that he escaped arrest, but I had seen reports about him and I recognised him. It was because of Mohammad-Taqi that I was in two minds about coming here. Now I don't want him to know who I am, although I am sure he could find out through his friends, if he really wanted to. But I don't want him or anyone else to know. Got that?”

Amir kept his eyes glued to the floor, but Khezr Javid was clever enough to know what he was thinking. He had no doubt prepared himself before the meeting for all possible reactions on Amir's part. He knew all too well what a bind he had put Amir in. Even so, he probably did not expect Amir to start singing like a canary there and then. After all, Amir's situation was now quite different to when he had been under arrest and was being interrogated.

Khezr took a sip of his tea. Amir had his head down, but he was sure that Khezr was looking at him all the time, drilling into his forehead with his gimlet eyes. His being sunk in
silent thought was presumably annoying Khezr. Amir did not want to be brooding like this, either. He might lose control of himself and start kicking up a fuss about this security policeman being in his house. Who knows what consequences that might have? There were still plenty of people out there who were baying for the blood of hundreds of the likes of Khezr. Khezr, who imagined Amir might be thinking along these lines as well, broke the silence:

“I remembered your address from your file.”

Amir just nodded. But Khezr, trying to break his concentration, went on: “So I came straight here. I thought you'd be surprised to see me, but you haven't reacted at all. Why not?”

Still with his head down, Amir seemed to be talking to himself: “It's amazing, really bizarre. After I was freed I always imagined we might meet again some time, and in a situation just like this. Bizarre, isn't it?”

“You mean right here, in your house, in this basement?”

“Not here particularly, but in circumstances like this. I always thought so. Isn't it odd?”

“It's interesting, not odd. And it's interesting that I chose your house… Why you? It's not as though I haven't got friends in this country. I had over a thousand prisoners to interrogate, and quite a few of them turned. But we didn't ask you to come over. So why did I choose here, why did I choose you?”

“Maybe because of my weakness, my weakness and vacillation and my lack of certainty about anything.”

“No, I don't think so. No. My decision was in response to my need, and what I need now is to be rescued by my enemies. There has been a revolution, you see. So far, they have strung up seven of our people from the trees along the street, more than seven of our local officers… It's just my good luck that
nobody knows me here. But maybe that's precisely why I came to this town, to your house.”

Perhaps hoping to stop the conversation right there, Amir simply nodded again and said, “Right.” He still couldn't look Khezr in the eye. With his professional agility, Khezr now adopted a practised conciliatory tone:

“But some of our people were real bastards, it's true… particularly the high-ranking ones, who were just looking out for themselves and trying to save their own skins. Lots of them got the hell out of here while there was still time. Then I was arrested. I learned later that some of them had packed their families off abroad a full six months before the prison doors were thrown open. Then they followed them, and hung the rest of us out to dry, leaving us behind as scapegoats for everything that had happened. They sacrificed us to a people who all seemed to have gone mad. It's obvious now that the higher-ups knew a full year ahead that the game was up, maybe even longer than that!”

Amir was now able to look at Khezr: “Have you resigned?”

It was not in Khezr's nature to answer questions, and his response was silence. His silence may have emboldened Amir to press him: “Why? Do you still imagine you are protecting something?”

Khezr did not look at Amir: “I don't know… perhaps I just don't know any other life. Perhaps because I've spent all my life doing this; it's what I believe in. Perhaps I am just saving myself.”

He looked up, looked Amir straight in the eye. There was an implicit threat in his voice: “Are you certain no one is listening to us?”

Amir nodded, though he was not at all certain: “Apart
from Mohammad-Taqi, the only other people living here are Masoud, the colonel and Parvaneh, right?”

“Yes.”

“And Farzaneh lives with her husband Qorbani, doesn't she?”

“Yes.”

“I know Qorbani well. He knew quite a lot of our informers here. But I don't trust him. He just waits to see which way the wind is blowing. He's a pompous idiot. At the beginning, he probably hung around you quite a lot, didn't he? Yeah… and he thought that your lot would end up on top. As if our lot were already dead and buried!”

“You say what you think, don't you, Khezr Javid? I noticed that about you when I was your prisoner. Don't think I'm flattering you, but I have to say that you've got some nerve. You're a brave man. But what I still don't understand is how anyone could put such qualities at the service of a hellish system like that. What made you do it? What was it all for?”

Javid finished the rest of his tea and reflected for a moment: “My face didn't fit. My nose was too big.”

“No, I'm serious.”

“And I gave you a serious answer. My nose was too big. It made me want to worship something, so I worshipped the Shah, so my nose made me enter the service of the Shah.”
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But as for a ‘hellish system,' I have to say that you intellectuals really do exaggerate. You use the most overworked terms for everything, don't you? Hellish system, indeed. No, if you ask me, that was only purgatory. The real hell is yet to come.”

There was nothing more to be said. They both fell silent. Khezr tucked a cushion under his elbow and leaned back on it. He lit another cigarette and, so that Amir could not see what he was thinking, closed his eyes as if he were having a nap. Amir felt the air around him becoming suddenly heavy, and the dead end to their conversation felt unbearably oppressive. He decided now was the time to confront Khezr, and ask him why he, a security policeman and his former interrogator, had come to his home – when the whole city was alive with rumours, counter-rumours and misunderstandings, which could destroy not just individuals but whole families as well? Did he not think that that might be asking too much? Amir was still weighing his words when Khezr spoke, without parting one eyelid from the other:

“Not all revolutions get off the ground these days, you know. The fate of small nations is in the hands of the superpowers, comrade. So I haven't given up all hope. You don't remember the days between 15th and 18th August of '53, but I do. I was a young man then, counting the minutes for the order to come out into the streets. But then the tables were turned and we saw with our own eyes that Sha'ban the Brainless was sitting there instead of Mossadeq and Khosrow Rouzbeh!”
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With his eyes still closed, he continued:

“Tell them to bring us something to eat, anything. And find a way to tell your family I'm here, without letting on who I am.”

“Where will you sleep? Do you want to spend the night here?”

Khezr did not answer, but just stared back at him. Amir looked down, just as he did when he was being interrogated and had dared to ask a question, only to have Khezr bark back at him: ‘I ask the questions here. You just answer them.' To escape Khezr's vice-like hold over him, Amir got up, stuck his head out into the stairway and called up for someone to make them some supper and bring it down. He hoped that Mohammad-Taqi would answer. He guessed that Parvaneh had not yet come home and he knew that, as usual, Masoud would be late back from the mosque because after the mourning ceremonies and prayers he would stay behind to sweep the prayer hall and clean up the pantry and only come home if there was nothing else to do. It was not unusual for Masoud to sleep in the mosque. Which was why, whatever Mr Immortal Prophet Khezr might have preferred, there was nobody except Mohammad-Taqi in the house to serve them. All that Amir could do was to go back and talk to Khezr and distract him from thoughts of Mohammad-Taqi.

“Supper's ready, bro!”

At the sound of Mohammad-Taqi's voice, Khezr blinked and sat up on the edge of the bed. Before his brother could
come down, Amir shot up and grabbed the tray from him and was about to turn round and come down with it when Mohammad-Taqi said, rather louder than he should have:

“Father wants to see you, bro!”

Amir went weak at the knees, but, toughing it out and giving no sign of his alarm, he went back down into the cellar, set the tray down on the rush mat and made a place for Khezr to sit down next to it, while watching for Khezr's reaction to what Mohammad-Taqi had said. Khezr gave no sign that he had heard anything and began to chew quietly on his food. Amir now seemed to have lost interest in inquiring about Nur-Aqdas. He was more interested in where Khezr was going to sleep after his supper, and why Mohammad-Taqi had used their father as an excuse to get him away from Khezr. How was he going to find an excuse for leaving his guest alone?

“Is there any hooch around the place?”

There was. He put the plastic petrol can of arack down in front of Khezr, with a glass and a bowl of olives. When he got stuck in, Amir had an excuse to leave the room. He put on his slippers and went upstairs to the sitting-room, where his father was waiting for him. He was sitting on a chair next to the stove, beneath the portrait of The Colonel, reading the
Shahnameh
, the story of Manuchehr, most likely.
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