The Flea Palace Read Online Free PDF Page A

opposition assumed power, but all the same, his letters remained unanswered and the authorities indifferent. As they became increasingly deaf to his pleas, he became muter, drifting inward. Everyone expected him to eventually get over the past, but just when they thought he had, he did something utterly unexpected.
    Now this man had a wife whom he had not touched in years and whom he had banished from his bed for snoring till daylight like an elephant. One day out of the blue, it was this woman that he started to chase around the house utterly unconcerned about the blame neighbours would place on himfor such lust at this age. He finally caught his wife after a long, scream-filled chase and, paying no attention to her excuses, objections, entreaties and curses, with total doggedness and the help of fortune impregnated her at the age of fifty.
    He did not waste a second to rush to the registrar’s office as soon as the baby was born. In order to make sure neither he himself, nor anyone else would ever forget the wrong done to him, in spite of all the protests of his wife and after giving fistfuls of bribe to the civil servant on duty, he officially named the son God had given him after all this time: ‘Injustice’.
    Long before Injustice had become implanted in his mother’s womb, however, the scandal of the saints started to fade away. Within two weeks after the removal of the tombs of Saint ‘Hewhopackedupandleft’, the political agenda had entirely altered and both the government and the opposition focused their full attention on the forthcoming elections. The municipal authorities who had meanwhile speeded-up the road construction project could thus assume the case closed and easily finish up the project without further trouble. What was done was done since the stone sarcophagi were removed during the excavation of the cemetery. Even so, during those prickly days when every event clustering more than ten people was bound to be crowned with a propaganda speech, the Third of the Three Consultant Buddies would have no difficulty in convincing his business partners not only that the saint’s file should not be closed, but also that it should be fully utilized for a public ceremony.
    A few weeks before the elections, a brief ceremony attended by a large number of spectators occurred on the southern slope of the old Muslim cemetery. Since the uneven ground next to the wall that once separated the orthodox Armenian cemetery was not suitable for the occasion, the question as to which tomb would be treated as genuine was automaticallyanswered. Some among the spectators were people hired specifically for this purpose. As for the rest, they were either totally unaware but curious passers-by, or, on the contrary, conscientious citizens who wanted to see with their own eyes how the scandalous event they had followed from the newspapers would come to an end.
    The ceremony comprised of three main parts. In the first part, two men, one young with an aged voice and the other old with a youthful voice, recited verses from the Qur’an which they had committed to memory in its entirety. During the second part, an official dressed up to the nines delivered a rather indicting but essentially passionless speech in response to all the accusations so far voiced. The third part was the most complicated. Pieces of the saint’s stone sarcophagus and an empty coffin – brought along at the last minute so as not to confuse those with barely any knowledge of the situation – were carried on shoulders and loaded onto the hearse. Then everyone got on buses heading to an empty, rusty-soiled lot surrounded by dilapidated buildings. There, immersed in mud, orations and applause, the empty coffin of Saint ‘Hewhopackedupandleft’ was first buried, then the pieces of the stone sarcophagus joined and erected, appearing far more magnificent now surrounded by a tall ornate wood railing. The Third of the Three Consultant Buddies had prepared the text of