The Colonel Read Online Free PDF Page B

a river bank, wrapped in a dirty cloth, which flapped this way and that every time the ambulance hit a bump in the road.
    But… was it really because I disobeyed orders, was arrested and went to prison, that I could not do my duty by Parvaneh, my youngest child? After all, Farzaneh, her elder sister, was busy looking after her husband, and my boys had all gone their own
ways. Amir was in prison, Mohammad-Taqi was trying to get into university and Masoud was a complete loner. Oh my poor children… at least one of you might have taken better care of yourselves. It’s not as if you had to bear the whole weight of the world on your shoulders! I am not as strong as you may think I am. Do you want to take on the whole world? Life is not about winning, you know… But whenever I tackled them about this, they always had an answer up their sleeves.
    â€œBut we get it all from you, papa, you are one of the few officers of the Shah who refused to go to Dhofar. You were the only person who told us all about Mossadeq and how he nationalised the oil industry.” 12
    I walked a very straight line, my dear children. But none of you cared about the others and you all went charging off in different directions. What’s the matter with you all? You’re all one family, but you bark up different trees! What is it that you are all after, that keeps you so much at each other’s throats? Are you all living on different planets?
    No, in fact they were living on the same planet. But each of them reckoned to have found their own answers to life. They showed me respect but, at bottom, they did not believe in me. When it came down to it, they saw me as an officer of the Shah, although they granted that I’d had no part in the crime that was Dhofar. But even that couldn’t prevent them from regarding me as a creature of the old regime.
    They knew all about the pyramid structure of the Shah’s army, but I could never get them to accept the truth. My children did not despise me, but I felt their contempt deep
within me. Maybe they were brighter than me and were simply foreseeing the day when their father, the great patriotic military man, would end up as an old pigeon fancier and a setar player who couldn’t even play any more. And if I hadn’t killed their mother, would they even pay me the slightest attention nowadays? Who knows? But I did kill my wife, and it wasn’t difficult. Which was how I ended up going to the detention barracks without a care in the world.
    â€œDid you really kill your wife, colonel?”
    â€œYes, I did. Does that surprise you?”
    â€œAnd you didn’t go to Dhofar?”
    â€œAs you can see, no.”

    â€œWe’re here, colonel. Please step down.”
    â€œYes, all right, just a minute.”
    The back doors of the ambulance opened and practised hands pulled the coffin out. The coffin was light, very light, feather-light. They put it down in the mud next to one of the graves and stood aimlessly around it. In the darkness, one could not make out which prominent family the grave belonged to. It was still raining, which was probably why the driver hauled himself over to the passenger side, stuck his head out of the window and told one of the policemen, whom he addressed as Ali Seif, that it was time to get back. This was when the colonel learned the policeman’s name, and he made an effort to keep it in his head. He thought that it was perfectly natural for the driver to want to get back, as he had done his job. He had taken a lot of trouble, coming out of his way over the muddy, bumpy track up the hill to the
graveyard. Ali Seif said nothing to the driver, or perhaps he did and the colonel did not hear him above the hissing of the rain. The driver started to move off and they all knew that he would have to reverse first to find a wider space to turn round in. They kept staring at the ambulance as it went off, clearly worried that one of its back