Alsaberi considered taxis unclean, and he also felt that it was unseemly for an imam to have himself driven around in a taxi like an ordinary person.
Alsaberi was wearing a black turban – a sign that he was a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad – and a cleric’s long brown aba. He was just coming home, after performing a wedding ceremony for one of the city’s foremost families.
The children knew they weren’t supposed to come too close to him. Every evening he led the prayer for hundreds of worshippers, and no one was allowed to touch him beforehand.
‘Salaam!’ the children called out to him.
‘Salaam!’ the imam answered with a smile.
When the children were small, he used to bring them a bag of sweets and hand it to one of the girls. The children would scamper off and leave him to walk to his library undisturbed. Now that they were older, however, they no longer ran up to him, so he gave the bag to the grandmothers, who later divided up the sweets among the children.
As soon as Imam Alsaberi entered the house, the grandmothers washed their hands in the hauz, dried them and went to the library to help the imam with his bath. They undressed him in silence. One of the grandmothers carefully removed his turban and laid it on the table. The other helped him out of his prayer robe and hung it up. The imam himself did nothing. He avoided touching his clothes.
The grandmothers had often complained to Aqa Jaan. ‘You need to talk to him. It’s not normal or healthy, what he does, what he demands of others. We’ve never had an imam in this house who’s been so fanatical about cleanliness. Wanting to be clean is fine, but he goes to extremes. He doesn’t even touch his own children. And he only eats with a spoon that he carries around in his pocket. It’s wearing him out. He can’t go on like this.’
The grandmothers told Aqa Jaan everything that went on in the house, including the secrets no one else was supposed to know.
The grandmothers weren’t actually grandmothers, but servants who’d lived in the house for more than fifty years. Aqa Jaan’s father had brought them to the house when they were young, and they had never left. Everyone had long forgotten where they came from. The grandmothers never talked about their past. They had never married, though the whole family knew that both of them carried on in secret with Aqa Jaan’s uncle. Whenever he came for a visit, they were his.
The grandmothers belonged to the house, much like the crow, the cedar tree and the cellars. One of the grandmothers had raised Alsaberi and the other had raised Aqa Jaan. Aqa Jaan confided in them, and they saw to it that the traditions of the house were maintained.
Aqa Jaan was a carpet merchant and owner of the oldest establishment in the bazaar in the city of Senejan. He had more than a hundred men working for him, including seven draughtsmen who designed the patterns in the carpets.
The bazaar is a city within a city. You can enter it through several gates. Its maze-like streets, covered with domed roofs, are lined with hundreds of shops.
In the course of several centuries, the bazaars had evolved into the most important financial institutions in the country. Thousands of merchants – dealing mainly in gold, textiles, grain, brassware and carpets – operated out of the bazaars.
The carpet merchants in particular had always played a crucial role in the history of the country. Thanks to his unique position, Aqa Jaan presided over both the bazaar and the mosque.
The rugs produced by Aqa Jaan’s company were known for their extraordinary colours and startling motifs. Any rug that bore his label was worth its weight in gold. Of course his rugs were not intended for ordinary buyers. Special dealers ordered them long in advance for customers in Europe and America.
Nobody knew how the designers came up with such original motifs or such a superb blend of colours. It was the company’s greatest asset and the family’s most closely guarded secret.
The era of private bathrooms had not yet dawned. There were several large bathhouses in Senejan. The men of the house had always gone to the oldest one, where a special place was reserved for the imam. But Imam Alsaberi had broken with tradition. He refused to set foot in a bathhouse used by dozens of other people. Even the thought of being naked in front of all those men made him sick.
So Aqa Jaan had asked a bricklayer to add on a bathroom. Since the only bathing facilities the bricklayer was familiar with were the bathhouses, the man had dug a hole in the room behind the library and built the imam a mini-bathhouse.
That evening Alsaberi sat down as usual on the stone floor in his long white undergarment. One of the grandmothers poured a jug of warm water over his head. ‘It’s cold,’ he shrieked. ‘Cold!’
The grandmothers ignored his cries. Golebeh washed his back with soap, then Golbanu gently poured water over his shoulders, making sure not to splatter.
After rinsing off the soap, they helped him into the bathtub, which was not very deep. He lay down and plunged his head under the water for a fairly long time. When he resurfaced, his face was ashen. The grandmothers helped him up, then hurriedly draped a towel around his shoulders and another one around his waist and led him over to the stove. Frowning with distaste, he wriggled out of his wet drawers and quickly put on a clean pair. They dried his hair and pulled a shirt over his head, sticking his hands in the sleeves. Then they walked him back to the library, where they sat him down in his chair and inspected his nails under a lamp. One of the grandmothers clipped a ragged edge off the nail on his forefinger.
They helped him into the rest of his clothes, placed his turban on his head, put his glasses on his nose and polished his shoes with a rag. The imam was now ready for the mosque.
Golbanu went outside and rang the bell hanging from the old cedar tree to call the mosque’s caretaker. When he heard it ring, he went up to the roof, climbed down the stone steps and walked past the guest room to the library.
He never saw the grandmothers. Just before he came into the library, they would slip modestly behind one of the bookcases. He always greeted them, though, and they always returned his greeting from behind the shelves. Tonight he scooped up the books that had been laid in readiness on the table and escorted the imam to the mosque.
The caretaker walked ahead to fend off any dogs that might unexpectedly come up to the imam. He was the imam’s trusted aide – the only person besides the grandmothers who was allowed to touch him, hand him anything or take anything from him. The caretaker was as fanatical about cleanliness as the imam himself. He never went to the municipal bathhouse, but had his wife scrub him at home in a copper tub.
Outside the mosque a group of men waited to escort the imam to the prayer room. These same men always stood in the first row behind the imam during the prayer. As soon as they caught sight of the imam, they called, ‘Salawat bar Mohammad! Blessings on the Prophet Muhammad!’
Hundreds of worshippers had come to the mosque for the evening prayer. They stood up when he entered and made way for him. He sat down in his usual spot, and the caretaker placed his books on the table beside him.
All eyes then turned to the muezzin, who called out from the top of the centuries-old Islamic pulpit, ‘Allahu akbar! Hayye ale as-salat! God is great! Hasten to the prayer!’ The moment he mounted the stairs, the prayer had officially begun.
The muezzin was Aqa Jaan’s cousin, Aqa Shoja, who had been born blind. Aqa Shoja had a beautiful voice. Three times a day – just before sunrise, at noon and just before sunset – he climbed to the top of one of the mosque’s twin minarets and cried, ‘Hayye ale as-salat!’
No one ever used his name. Instead, he was known by his title: Muezzin. Even his own family called him Muezzin.
‘Allahu akbar!’ he thundered.
The worshippers stood and turned to face Mecca.
Normally it was impossible for a blind man to become a muezzin. He had to be able to see when the imam bent down, when he touched the ground with his forehead and when he got up again. But