had seven children. Aga Akbar, the youngest, was born a deaf-mute.
She noticed it before he was even a month old. Though she saw that he didn’t react normally, she didn’t want to believe it. She kept him with her at all times, allowing others to see him only briefly. This went on for six months. Everyone realised that the baby was deaf, but nobody dared to say anything. Finally Kazem Khan, Hajar’s oldest brother, decided that it was time to broach the subject. Kazem Khan, an unmarried man who rode through the mountains on horseback, was a poet. Though he lived by himself on a hill above the village, there were always women in his life. The villagers saw a succession of women silhouetted against his lighted window.
Nobody knew what he did or where he went on his horse.
When there was light in his house, people knew he was home. “The poet is at home,” they then said to each other.
Nothing else was known about him. Yet when the village needed him, he was always ready to lend a helping hand. At such moments he was the voice of the village. If a flash flood suddenly turned the dry riverbed into a raging torrent and their houses filled with water, he immediately appeared on his horse and diverted the flow. If a number of children unexpectedly died and the other mothers feared for their children’s lives, he galloped up on his horse with the doctor in tow. And all the village brides and grooms considered it an honor to have him as a guest at their wedding feast.
This same Kazem Khan rode his horse into the courtyard of Hajar’s house and stopped in the shade of an old tree. “Hajar! My sister!” he called, still in the saddle.
She opened the window.
“Welcome, brother. Why don’t you come in?”
“Could you come to my house tonight? I’d like to talk to you. Bring the baby with you.”
Hajar knew he wanted to talk to her about her son. She realised she would no longer be able to hide her baby.
As evening fell, Hajar strapped her baby to her back and climbed the hill to the house that the villagers referred to as “a gem that had fallen among the walnut trees”.
Kazem Khan smoked opium, a generally accepted practice in those days. It was even considered a sign of his poetic nobleness.
He had lit the coals in the brazier, laid his pipe in the warm ashes and put the thin slices of brownish-yellow opium on a plate. The samovar was bubbling.
“Sit down, Hajar. You can warm up your dinner in a moment. Let me hold the baby. What’s his name? Akbar? Aga Akbar?”
She reluctantly handed the baby to her brother.
“How old is he? Seven or eight months? Go ahead and eat your dinner. I’d like some time alone with him.”
Hajar felt a great weight bearing down on her. She couldn’t eat. Instead, she burst into tears.
“Come now, Hajar, there’s no need to cry. Don’t feel so sorry for yourself. If you hide the baby, if you give up on him, you’ll just make him backward. For the last six or seven months, he’s seen nothing, done nothing, had no real contact with the world. Everywhere I go in the mountains, I see children who are deaf and dumb. You have to let people talk to him. All you need is a language, a sign language that we can invent ourselves. I’ll help you. Starting tomorrow, let other people take care of him too. Let everyone try to communicate with him in his or her own way.”
Hajar carried her child into the kitchen and again burst into tears. This time tears of relief.
Later, after Kazem Khan had smoked a few opium pipes and was feeling cheerful and light, he came in and sat down beside her.
“Listen, Hajar. I don’t know why, but I have the feeling I should play a role in this child’s life. I didn’t feel this way about your other children, mostly because they were fathered by that nobleman, and I don’t want to have anything to do with him. But before you leave, we need to talk about him and about your baby’s future. It’s high time that nobleman learned that Akbar has an uncle.”
The next day Hajar took Akbar to the palace. Never before had she shown any of her children to their father. She knocked on the door of his study and entered with Akbar in her arms. She paused for a moment, then laid the baby down on the desk and said, “My child is deaf and dumb.”
“Deaf and dumb? What can I do to help you?”
A few moments went by before Hajar could look him in the eye.
“Let my child bear your name.”
“My name?” he asked, and fell silent.
“If you’ll let him have your name, I promise never to bother you again,” said Hajar.
The nobleman remained silent.
“You once said you liked me, and once or twice that you respected me. And you said I could always ask you for a favour. I’ve never asked for anything before, because I didn’t need to, but now I beg you: let my child bear your name. Only that. I’m not asking you to make him an heir. Just to have Akbar’s name recorded in an official document.”
“The baby’s crying,” he said after a while. “Give him something to eat.”
Then he stood up, opened the window, and called to his servant, “Go and get the imam. Hurry up, we haven’t got all day!”
Before long, the imam arrived. Hajar was sent off to wait in another room while the two men discussed the matter behind closed doors. The imam wrote a few lines in a book, then drew up a document and had the nobleman sign it. The whole thing took only a few minutes. The imam rode back home on his mule.
“Here, Hajar, this is the document you wanted. But remember: keep it in a safe place and tell no one of its existence. Only after my death can it be shown to other people.”
Hajar tucked the document in her clothes and tried to kiss his hand.
“There’s no need for that, Hajar. You can go home now. But come and visit me often. I’ll repeat what I’ve said before: I like you and I want to go on seeing you.”
Hajar strapped her baby to her back and left. When she came down from the mountains, she knew she was carrying a child with a venerable name: Aga Akbar Mahmud Ghaznavi Khorasani.
The document turned out to be worthless. After the nobleman died, his heirs bribed the local imam and had Aga Akbar’s name removed from the will. Since Hajar hadn’t been expecting her child to inherit anything, it hardly mattered. She was satisfied with the name alone. Aga Akbar’s parentage was known. His father had roots that could be traced back to the palace on Lalehzar Mountain.
Akbar grew up, married and had children. And even though he was a simple carpet-weaver, he remained proud of his lineage. He kept with him at all times the document with his long name.
Akbar often talked about his father. He especially wanted his son Ishmael to know that his grandfather had been an important man, a nobleman on a horse with a rifle slung over his shoulder.
The nobleman was killed by a Russian. Just who the murderer was, nobody knew. A soldier? A gendarme? A Russian thief who sneaked over the border?
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