Free The House of the Mosque by Kader Abdolah Page B

when he entered the house in the company of his horsemen – he had laid his hands on the two maids and received them, in turn, at night in his bed.
    The hours they spent with Kazem Khan were the happiest the grandmothers had ever known in that house. In their younger years, they sparkled when he was there, skipping across the courtyard and singing as they worked in the kitchen.
    Now that they were old, they could no longer be heard giggling in the kitchen, but if you looked carefully, you could see the smiles on their faces and smell their delightful rose perfume.
    After Kazem Khan had rested for a while, eaten a bit and smoked enough opium to relax him, he got up and went into the courtyard to greet his relatives. First, however, he went up to the old cedar tree, poked the trunk with his walking stick, inspected the branches and touched the leaves. Then he went over to the hauz and recited his latest poem:
    Del-araaie del-araaie del-araa,
    Samman-qaddi, boland-baalaa, del-araa . . .
    Darling, darling, my darling,
    My tall, jasmine-scented darling,
    The clouds are crying lover’s tears,
    The garden is a sweetheart’s laugh.
    The thunder grumbles as loudly
    As I do at this early hour.
    The children raced over when they saw him standing by the hauz . He patted them on the head and read them a new poem, which he’d written specially for them:
    A deaf man thought:
    I can sleep a bit longer,
    Until the caravan passes by.
    The caravan passed by,
    In a billowing cloud of dust,
    But the deaf man didn’t hear it.
    Kazem Khan provided the children with a brief explanation: ‘The caravan is a symbol of fleeting time, and the deaf man represents people who fritter away their precious time.’
    At the end of the poetry session he handed each child a banknote, pausing longer by the girls, who were encouraged to give him a kiss, for which they received an additional red banknote.
    Then he turned to the women. Fakhri Sadat, the wife of Aqa Jaan, was obviously accorded the most attention. He always had a poem for her – the beauty of the house. He handed it to her and she smiled and tucked it in her sleeve.
    Eyes that strike your soul like the lash of a whip.
    And so green that they look like apples.
    Your eyelashes have stolen my heart.
    Your lips speak of justice, but your eyelashes steal.
    Now you demand a reward for the stolen goods.
    How odd: I, who was robbed, must fence them for you?
    The cats were addicted to Kazem Khan’s opium. A row of them always sat up on the roof, where they could keep an eye on him. The moment he headed towards the Opium Room, they jumped down and waited expectantly by the door. Every time he took a puff, he blew the smoke in their direction. The cats were overjoyed by the clouds of smoke.
    Today, after his afternoon nap, Kazem Khan went down to the cellar to pay his customary visit to Muezzin. He liked to go down to Muezzin’s studio to have a chat and drink some tea.
    ‘My greetings to Muezzin!’ he boomed in a poet’s voice as he entered the studio. Muezzin stood up, but because he was up to his elbows in clay, he didn’t come out from behind his pottery wheel.
    ‘How are you?’
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘And how’s your son Shahbal?’
    ‘Also fine.’
    ‘And your daughter?’
    ‘She leads her own life, now that she has her own family.’
    With his acute hearing and keen sense of smell, Muezzin didn’t miss much. Some people claimed that he wasn’t blind at all, that from behind his dark glasses he saw everything that went on. But Muezzin had been born blind. He never went anywhere without his sunglasses, which Nosrat had brought him from Tehran, or without his hat and walking stick.
    ‘How’s your clock?’ Kazem Khan asked him. ‘Is it still ticking?’
    ‘Yes, thank goodness.’ Muezzin smiled.
    The odd thing about Muezzin was that he always knew what time it was. It was a gift. He had an internal clock that was extremely accurate. Everyone in Senejan knew about it. ‘What time is it,