The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi Read Free Book Online Page B

once, didn’t you? You must have a pick and shovel here somewhere, mustn’t you?”
    the colonel’s daughter stared at her father in astonishment. She was quick-witted enough to smell that something dreadful had happened. the colonel had not been far out in thinking that everyone expects dreadful news sooner or later. And Farzaneh had been at the eye of a storm of tragedies of late. If she could only get over her amazement and open her mouth, she could force him to be frank with her and satisfy her quite justifiable curiosity. But the fact that Qorbani chose that moment to wake from his usual deep sleep left him still in the tangle. Qorbani harrumphed and called to his wife – calling her ‘Kuchik,’ the family name for Masoud – and his tone made it clear that he wanted to know where she was and who was at the door and what she was doing. Before Qorbani had time to sling a coat over his shoulders and come out onto the verandah of his new house, the colonel asked her again for the pick and shovel. Fearful that her husband would say something rude to the colonel, Farzaneh quickly forestalled him by turning her back on her father and running down to the basement, explaining to her husband on the way that the colonel just wanted to borrow a pick and shovel.

    When he comes home at night, or early in the morning, his sweat smells of blood, Papa. His shirt, his vest, even the hair on the back of his hands smells of blood. I have seen bloodstains on his overshoes, and I’ve cleaned them off myself. Sometimes I’ve even seen blood on his trouser bottoms. I’ve seen all this with my own eyes and I’m sure… absolutely sure that…”
    Farzaneh had said this to her father more than once. When the colonel saw that Qorbani had not been surprised by his banging at the door, or by his need for a shovel, he began to think that Qorbani might know what was up… And his suspicions became stronger when Qorbani simply ignored him, his own father-in-law, turning up in the middle of the night, and went back inside, muttering something sarcastic about the baby crying. He called his wife inside and, leaving the door half open as he went into the hall, gathering his coat tails, he paused:
    â€œIt looks as though nothing will ever make this rain stop.”

    What was it that Amir had said on that rainy day when he had been sitting on the old velvet sofa next to the stove with his legs casually crossed, smoking his pipe and with that Bolshevik cap on his head that he refused to take off, even indoors? How he had banged on, so pretentiously, so much so that Qorbani had believed that his brother-in-law fancied himself as some sort of leader. What had happened in that room? the colonel had seen how Qorbani had slipped out and, without telling the family what he was up to, rustled up a crowd and brought them back to the colonel’s house to do honour to his son, the returning hero who, ‘After enduring years of imprisonment and torture, here
he is once more, with his head held high. Having depended on the unstoppable momentum of the people to secure his release from gaol, he is now going to mobilise that same force to overthrow this government of tyrants and oppressors and make this part of the country tremble with fear!’
    What a speech! No doubt Qorbani had learned this humbug and windbaggery from newspapers, which at that time had made a sudden U-turn from their former line. I hope I never read words like that in a newspaper again, let alone in a novel, for those kind of hollow, weasel words aren’t even worthy of a piece of fiction!
    And in no time a crowd of people, ‘simple gullible people’, as if they had suddenly been woken from a deep sleep, some with umbrellas and some without, began to beat a path to the colonel’s house in the pouring rain. the colonel, stunned and silent, looked on as tray after tray of fruit and pastries were delivered, ordered by