and now America is everywhere. In Tehran. In Qom!’
He’d made a statement, and yet at the same time he hadn’t made one. Basically all he was doing was announcing an innocent truth: ‘Times have changed. America is everywhere.’
The city’s wise men weighed his words and noted that he was a clever orator. He knew that you had to use words in a certain sequence in order to heighten the suspense.
Khalkhal stared at his listeners. They were hanging on his every word, curious to hear what he would say next. He broke the silence by uttering two short words: ‘Allah, Allah!’
Those two words could mean almost anything. When you saw something you admired, you said, ‘Allah, Allah.’ When you were up to your ears in trouble, you said, ‘Allah, Allah!’
But Khalkhal had used those words in an altogether different context. By mentioning Qom and America in the same breath, he had added a new dimension to his statement. Qom! America! Allah, Allah! It was as though he’d fired three shots into the mosque.
Then Khalkhal changed tack and switched over to the Victory surah:
You will see them bow and prostrate themselves.
The marks of prostration are on their foreheads.
In the Torah and the Gospel they are likened
To a seed that sends forth shoots
And is made strong.
It then becomes thicker
And rests firmly on its stalk,
Which fills the sowers with delight.
Aqa Jaan and Shahbal exchanged glances.
Khalkhal didn’t linger by the Victory, but moved smoothly on to the Rome surah:
The Romans have been defeated
In a land that is close by.
But after this defeat they shall be victorious,
Soon as well as later.
And on that day you shall rejoice.
He is Almighty.
And that was the end of his sermon.
His sermon had been highly suspect, open to various interpretations, and yet it had been worded in such a way that the secret police wouldn’t be able to lay a finger on him. He’d started out with the Prophet Muhammad, then slipped in the word ‘America’ and finally mentioned the decline of the Roman Empire. Clearly, he had no intention of explaining what he meant or where he was headed.
Aqa Jaan realised that the mosque was in for another exciting time – something he had long been waiting for.
Khalkhal got to his feet and stepped down from the pulpit. Hundreds of worshippers stood up for him. Aqa Jaan walked over to him, took him in his arms, kissed him on the left shoulder and proudly escorted him to the door.
The Cinema
Khodaa ya tu busideh-ye hich gah
labb-e sorkh-e faam-e zani mast-ra?
Be pestane kaalash zadi dast-ra?
God, have you ever kissed
the blushing lips
of a drunken woman?
Have you ever touched
her unripe breasts?
One day when Aqa Jaan was walking by Khalkhal’s desk, he happened to see a poem lying there. He picked it up and read it. He couldn’t believe his eyes: Khodaa ya tu busideh-ye hich gah . . .
It was a shocking poem. God, kisses, a drunken woman, unripe breasts – and all of that on Khalkhal’s desk!
The poet’s name was printed at the bottom: Nosrat Rahmani. Aqa Jaan had never heard of him.
Who was he?
How dare he write such blasphemous words?
‘Things are out of hand,’ Aqa Jaan mumbled to himself. The shah encourages this kind of rubbish, but what’s Khalkhal doing with it? And why does he bring such things back to the library?
There were other poems on the desk. Aqa Jaan began to read one. It was a remarkable poem, because it had been written by a woman:
My thirsty lips
Search yours.
Take off my clothes,
Embrace me.
Here are my lips,
My neck and burning breasts.
Here is my soft body!
He heard Khalkhal’s footsteps in the courtyard. There wasn’t time to finish reading the poem, so he swiftly put it back on the desk and hurried over to a bookcase, where he pretended to be searching the shelves.
Khalkhal came in. Aqa Jaan removed a book at random and quickly left the library. Still mulling over the poems, he went into his study. He couldn’t get the last one out of his mind. It bothered him so much he couldn’t concentrate on his work:
Here are my lips,
My neck and burning breasts.
Here is my soft body!
Who was this female poet?
Had the country changed so much that women could talk openly about themselves and express their innermost feelings? Had it changed so much that they could now talk intimately about their bodies? Why hadn’t he noticed the change? Who were these women? Why hadn’t he ever met them? What did they look like? And where did they live? In Tehran?
The shah! It was all the fault of the shah and the Americans! American culture came pouring into their homes via radio, television and film.
The regime did whatever it could to lure young people away from the mosque and transform them into supporters of the shah and his ideals.
The shah had launched his ‘White Revolution’. He had published a thin volume in which he’d outlined his hopes for the country. In an effort to combat illiteracy, he’d sent young women to the villages to work as teachers. They’d taken off their veils, donned hats, and gone into the mountains, much as the shah’s soldiers had done, to set up schools in remote villages.
Yes, everything had changed. Aqa Jaan hadn’t noticed . . . or hadn’t wanted to. The country was being industrialised at a rapid pace, which is why so many foreign investors had been granted permission to build factories in Tehran and other major cities.
Senejan was no exception. Dozens of Japanese and European companies had seized the opportunity to take part in this new development. A tractor factory was being built on the outskirts of the city. Soon it would be employing hundreds of young people from Senejan and the nearby villages.
The management of the factory would be in the hands of the world-famous Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi. The idea was to produce a small tractor that could be used in the mountains. Thanks to a government subsidy, every farmer would soon have one of those tractors. And so the farmer and the shah would be bound together by Mitsubishi.
No, Aqa Jaan wasn’t up on the latest trends; on the contrary, he was far behind. He never listened to the radio and had never owned a television. If he’d seen the shah’s wife, Farah Diba, on television, he’d have a better idea of what was going on in his country. She