Free The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi Page A

the front door slamming told Amir that Parvaneh had left. Propping both hands against the side of the bed, he got up. Khezr zipped up his parka and went upstairs. Amir slipped his raincoat over his shoulders and followed him into the yard to hold the gate open for him. Khezr went out and Amir peered out into the alleyway. He imagined Parvaneh’s quick, light footsteps. Amir put the chain back on the door and was about to go back to the basement when he was seized by a strange spasm of fear, of a fear that he had been struck dumb. The rain, which he thought might have stopped for a while, had started again and he stood there, hunched up, mortified
and soaking wet. He had no idea how long for. He could sense the colonel standing by the window of his room, looking at him and following the receding footsteps of his daughter. The window had steamed up, blurring the colonel, just in the same way that Amir had been in a blur as he watched the colonel, after he had killed his mother, standing out there in the rain with blood dripping from his sabre. But the difference was that the colonel had not been hunched up like his pathetic son. He was ashamed of nothing and was not going to hide his crime from anyone. Amir was not ashamed either, for he knew that only a healthy mind could feel shame, and he felt no shame. No, the reason why he could not lift his head was fear of meeting the colonel’s gaze. For he would have found reflected in those eyes the thousand nightmares that were whirling round in his own head. He was terrified that Parvaneh would not come home again.
    Nor did she.
    I could have done something, could have put my foot down… I had not just the right, but a duty to put my foot down. After all, they were my own flesh and blood. Granted, they were all grown up, but so what? Now, let me check again… Shroud, shovel, pick, shroud… On my way now. Yes, this is the way to the cemetery. How are we doing for time? Not to worry, there’s still been no morning call to prayer from the minaret yet. But this rain, this never-ending rain…
    It was still pouring and the colonel had to watch his step at the end of the alleyway. He had to pick his way carefully down the slope at the end, round a big muddy puddle, and then up a steep bit. He stopped for a breather before carrying on towards the cemetery and mortuary, where the two policemen were still waiting for him, probably fed up by now. He rehearsed what
he would say in case Ali Seif and his colleague had a go at him for taking so long: “Look, my friend, my dear young friend, I’m so sorry. I’m an old man now, it’s a long way and it’s a rough track and…” He would impress on them how much effort it had been for an old man like him to get all his bits and pieces together, but I won’t breathe a word to them about Amir, not a word! Though, it’s not actually risky talking about him nowadays, now that he’s inactive politically and a complete irrelevance. But fear is now invading my soul – has invaded my soul – fear and a wish to hide myself away from wagging tongues and knowing looks.
    Repressed, hidden fear: the image of Amir. Fear eats away at the soul worse than leprosy; it hollows a man out and takes him over. The mere fact that he was alive and breathing was enough to convince him that he stood accused, guilty and condemned. Even though he had withdrawn from life and become completely passive, the colonel considered him to be inherently guilty. Amir himself felt guilty of the crime that must have been committed because of him. After all, he had never set foot on any of those conveyor belts that had been set up to take the likes of him to their deaths or, if he had, he had quickly jumped off. Albeit at the cost of his own gradual self-destruction in his father’s damp and mouldy basement. In any case, he was guilty and a ‘corrupting influence on the people’ and, at some point in the