The House of the Mosque by Kader Abdolah Page A

symphony of birds. What you heard just now was a symphony made by people. I saw you standing by the trees this morning, listening to the birds. I think you need a bit of music in your life.’
    The next time Nosrat came home, he brought Muezzin a transistor radio. Late that night he slipped it into his brother’s hands. ‘Now you can listen to music whenever you want to. And to the news and to other people.’
    ‘A radio in this house? What would Aqa Jaan say?’
    ‘You’re a grown man,’ he said. ‘Put it in your pocket and don’t tell him about it. You don’t owe anyone an explanation! I have something else for you, too, something no one in Senejan has ever seen.’ And he handed him a tiny gadget with a set of wires.
    ‘These are earphones. When you want to listen to the radio, you put them in your ears. Stand up and I’ll show you how they work.’
    Muezzin hesitated. Nosrat put the radio in Muezzin’s pocket, threaded the wires under his sweater, stuck the earphones in his ears and switched on the radio.
    ‘Can you hear it?’
    ‘Yes!’
    ‘Excellent! And remember, if anyone asks you what it is, don’t answer!’
    Ever since then Muezzin had gone everywhere with his earphones in, and when anyone asked him what those things in his ears were, he didn’t answer. After a while everyone got used to them and assumed they were some kind of extension to his dark glasses.
    At the end of the forty days of mourning, the men of the family gathered together in the Opium Room. They sat round the brazier and smoked with Kazem Khan.
    The grandmothers had taken seven opium pipes out of a trunk in the cellar and had warmed them in the embers.
    The men smoked opium, sipped tea, sucked sugar crystals and reminisced about Alsaberi while the smoke spiralled up out of their mouths and drifted through a half-open window.
    The women were in the dining room, smoking a hookah. Zinat was the only one who wasn’t there. Ever since Alsaberi’s death, she had spent hours in the mosque’s library, reading. Aqa Jaan was aware of it, but had decided to let her cope with her grief in her own way.
    Before it got dark the men took a walk by the river, then went to the mosque to hear Khalkhal speak.
    During the last few weeks, Khalkhal had spoken in the mosque every Friday. As these sermons were intended to let the worshippers get acquainted with him, he had deliberately chosen neutral topics. He was waiting patiently for the right moment to show the men of the bazaar what kind of a man he was and how the pulpit could be used as a weapon when the need arose. But the time was not yet ripe. Until the shadow of Alsaberi’s death had passed and he’d won everyone’s trust, he had to keep a low profile. Tonight he was planning to talk about Alsaberi and focus on the long history of the mosque. Aqa Jaan had provided him with the necessary documents a while ago and he had examined them in detail.
    After their walk, the men performed their ablutions in the hauz and hurried over to the mosque. It was customary for the men of the family to stand at the door and welcome the guests.
    The grandmothers had repeatedly warned the women that it was time to go, but they were still in the dining room, eating fruit, drinking tea and smoking the hookah. After Aqa Jaan had issued his final warning, the grandmothers bustled into the dining room. ‘The prayer, ladies!’ they chided. ‘Hundreds of women are waiting for you in the mosque and you’re sitting around smoking a hookah! Hurry, or Aqa Jaan himself will come and fetch you!’
    Fakhri Sadat flung on her black chador, and the rest of the women followed her to the mosque. Zinat emerged from the library and trailed along behind the others.
    The only person who had so far failed to arrive was Nosrat. Still, he usually turned up unexpectedly: he never phoned, he never knocked, suddenly you’d see him standing in the middle of the courtyard or strolling past the rooms, snapping pictures of everyone when