Free The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

to himself. A few moments later he fell silent and Parvaneh heard loud, irregular snoring from Khezr. He must have fallen asleep. She didn’t like the idea of her brother’s companion dropping off like that in the middle of his sentence – wasn’t that deeply insulting both to her and her brother? When she went into the colonel’s room, she felt as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over her. She realised immediately that, instead of going to her father, she should have gone straight to her room, buried her face in a pillow and cried herself to sleep.
    Parvaneh had even forgotten she’d said she’d fill up the stove. Clean forgotten! As if she’d never said it in the first place and as if she never used to do my stove for me every night and plump up my pillows as I like them. All that I could see on her face that night was death and dishonour. Her cheeks were scarlet with shame and
her lips were grey with the fear of death and her eyes – well, I never saw her eyes that night, as she never looked at me.
    The next morning, at about the time of the call to prayer, Khezr Javid got up and got ready to go. From the expression on his face, he did not want to hear another peep out of Amir. And when Amir did try to speak to him, Khezr ignored him and went upstairs to wash, leaving him there, sitting on a mattress on the floor. It was as if Immortal Khezr had cast a spell on him and struck him dumb. Speechless and filled with a terrible sense of foreboding, he guessed that Parvaneh had already got up to say her morning prayers. He knew that she always came down to see him before going out in the morning, but he could not summon up the strength to go upstairs and warn her that, just for today, just this once, she should stay at home. It was all he could do to haul himself up, sit on the edge of the bed and, ignoring the acid taste in his mouth, light the first cigarette of the day and clutch his head which, from long lack of sleep, weighed half a ton. And there he sat.
    Watched by her father, who was sitting watching the rain through the window, Parvaneh ran down the steps into the yard. Crossing to the steps, she went down to the basement, just in time to snatch out of Amir’s hand his second cigarette, which he was about to light, and stub it out. She was wearing a grey school smock, with a dark blue satchel slung over her shoulder. Amir could guess what sort of pamphlets and newspapers she had stuffed into it, and Khezr Javid would obviously soon find out.
    Why on earth had Parvaneh come down to the basement again after the night she had just gone through? This question really bothered the colonel. The fact was that the girl, after a night of agonising, had got a grip on herself and conquered
her fear of death. She had got it into her head to confront her brother and this scowling, arrogant guest, who had never been accepted into this house anyway, and try to correct the false impression that her brother had formed of her. She especially wanted to face down Khezr Javid, and so she waited in the basement until he came down. Not deigning to glance at him, she looked at her brother:
    â€œIsn’t your friend going to have breakfast?”
    â€œNo, and I don’t want any either.”
    Without looking at her, Khezr went straight to get his parka off the coat hook while Parvaneh, boldly curious, stared pointedly at his shoulder holster. But Amir was looking down, too weak to watch his sister’s self-possessed performance. He was turning over in his mind what Khezr had said the night before: “It’s dangerous for her, very dangerous.”
    Khezr’s voice was still ringing in Amir’s skull as Parvaneh stepped lightly up the stairs. He heard the swish of her blue plastic satchel as it rubbed against her coat. He could also hear that Khezr was ready to go and, hard as it was, he lifted his head to see the Immortal One doing up his shoelaces on the step.
    The sound of