going up on the roof! I wouldn’t dare!’ the girl said, laughing.
‘Don’t be scared,’ Nosrat said. ‘Nobody’s going to see us. They’re all busy reciting their prayers. The house is empty.’
‘I’m not going up there: it’s too high!’ she said.
‘Why’s he taking her up to the roof?’ Golbanu whispered.
‘The devil himself doesn’t know what Nosrat is thinking,’ Golebeh replied.
There was a silence, then a few moments later they saw Nosrat and the girl on the roof. The grandmothers tiptoed over to the stairs, climbed up to the roof, crawled over to the dome on their hands and knees and crouched behind it.
Nosrat opened the trapdoor in one of the minarets, to reveal a set of increasingly narrow and rickety stairs.
‘I don’t dare climb up those stairs!’ the woman exclaimed.
‘Don’t be such a scaredy-cat,’ Nosrat said gently. ‘It’ll be fun! Besides, you promised. Come on, I want to take you to the top of the minaret, I want to kiss you and make love to you in that holy green glow right at the top.’
‘I won’t do it! Somebody will see us.’
‘There’s no need to be afraid. Once we’re up there, no one can see us.’
He helped her through the trapdoor, while she laughingly repeated, ‘I won’t go, I don’t dare, I don’t want to!’ Once she was safely on the first stair, he crawled into the minaret and closed the trapdoor behind him.
The grandmothers, from their hiding place behind the dome, looked at each other in astonishment.
‘Lord have mercy!’ they muttered.
In the green light high up in the minaret, they saw Nosrat and the girl. Their shadows fell on the wall on the other side of the mosque.
The wind caught the girl’s chador, and it fluttered out of the minaret like a black flag. ‘Stop that!’ the girl moaned. And because she was so high up, her words echoed over the mosque.
Nosrat’s giant shadow began making rhythmical movements on the wall. The grandmothers clapped their hands to their mouths and trembled at the sight. At a certain point he pushed the girl against the edge of the minaret, so that she exclaimed with a nervous laugh, ‘Stop it! I’ll fall!’
Her laughter rang out over the mosque, but was quickly drowned out by Khalkhal’s sermon, which was being broadcast over a loudspeaker. The girl moaned again. Then there was an unexpected silence and the shadows disappeared from view.
The grandmothers slipped out of their hiding place and crept down the stairs. They unfurled their prayer rugs on the floor of their room, put on their chadors and hurriedly turned to face Mecca.
The Sermon
During the first few months, Khalkhal had managed to keep things on an even keel in the mosque. He knew that agents of the secret police were attending his sermons in order to find out what he was up to.
In everyday life he had few social skills and came across as a stiff and stern imam, but the moment he climbed into the pulpit he was transformed into a witty man with a ready smile who spiced up his sermons with humour, so that it was a pleasure to listen to him.
In his first sermons he deliberately focused on neutral topics, often taking a surah from the Koran and explaining the historical and narrative aspects of the text. Sometimes he took the analysis a step further and talked about the power of the language and the poetry of the surahs. He gave examples and read melodious passages in his beautiful voice.
His listeners enjoyed his interpretations. The majority of the mosque-goers couldn’t read the Koran, much less understand it. The Koran had been written in Arabic, which bore little resemblance to Persian. Besides, the language in which it had been written was fourteen hundred years old, which meant that many of the historical references in the surahs couldn’t be understood without some measure of expertise.
Khalkhal was not only knowledgeable, but he could also explain the Koran in a simple way that ordinary people could understand.
The agents of the secret police enjoyed his humour and were satisfied with his sermons. They sent positive reports to the main office.
The bazaar was also satisfied with Khalkhal. The merchants praised his knowledge of history and his skill in translating the ancient texts, though, as some of them occasionally hinted to Aqa Jaan, they had expected more fireworks. ‘He’s a substitute imam,’ Aqa Jaan always told them. ‘We can’t be too demanding. In a year or two, when Alsaberi’s son has finished his training, we’ll have a permanent imam, and then we’ll know where we stand.’
The bazaar might grumble, but Khalkhal had stolen the hearts of the worshippers by gradually bringing up new and startling topics. Sometimes he discussed things the merchants had never heard of before.
Recently he’d talked about migratory birds – a topic not usually discussed in the mosque. He described how the birds could always find their way back home. Even fledglings, he explained, could fly an unfamiliar route and still find their way back to their parents’ nest.
People listened to him in wonder as he described the hierarchy in the ant kingdom and the precision with which the ants worked together. He showed them traces of God’s greatness.
Aqa Jaan admired Khalkhal for his fresh approach and was pleased that his modern subjects were attracting a younger crowd: more and more youngsters were coming to the sermons on Fridays.
Khalkhal had learned a bit of English. He could barely speak it, but he was able to read English texts. He bought a scientific journal published in the UK and spent hours in the library, looking up words in the dictionary and trying to understand the articles. Then he formed his own opinion and turned it into an exciting sermon.
In one of his sermons he talked about aeroplanes and the history of aviation. He praised Orville and Wilbur Wright for trying to fly like birds, but hastened to point out that the ancient Persians had attempted flight long before the Americans. He gave the story a humorous twist. ‘The Americans,’ he began, ‘always want to be the first in everything. They began to fly fifty or sixty years ago, but the roots of aviation lie deep in our own soil.
‘Long ago Nimrod, one of our earliest Persian kings, decided that he would fly. He was so powerful he thought he could do whatever he wanted. He even thought he could compete with God. One day he decided he would go into the sky to do battle with God. He ordered the scientists of his day to make a vehicle that could fly. They came up with a spectacular invention: a rudimentary aeroplane based on a chariot. The four corners of a specially designed wicker chair were attached to four powerful eagles by means of long, strong ropes. Nimrod seated himself in his royal chair, and four pieces of meat were dangled high above the heads of the eagles. The birds spread their wings and tried to grab the meat, in the process pulling the chariot into the sky. And that’s how the world’s first aeroplane came into being.’
Another time Khalkhal talked about Einstein and his theory of relativity. None of his listeners had ever heard of Einstein. They had no idea that light could travel, let alone that it travelled at a speed of almost 300,000 kilometres per second.
Khalkhal, aware of their ignorance and hoping to impress them, started off
