The House of the Mosque Read Online Free PDF Page A

sin taking place in the library?
    Nothing, they told each other with their eyes.
    Like generations of grandmothers before them, their duty was to pretend that nothing had happened. They had been entrusted with so many family secrets they had long ago learned to lock them in their hearts and throw away the key. No, they hadn’t seen or heard a thing.

    The imam had already begun the prayer. The rest of the family was lined up behind him, facing Mecca. The grandmothers slipped in unnoticed beside the other women. The house was silent. The only sound was that of the imam’s prayer:
    Allaho nur-os-samawate wa-alard
    mathalo nurehi kameshkaatin feeha . . .
    He is light.
    His light is like a niche with a lantern.
    The glass is like a shining star,
    Lit by the oil of a blessed olive tree.
    Its oil is almost aglow.
    Light upon light!

Khalkhal
    T he girls in the house had grown up and a few of them had reached a marriageable age. But how could they marry if no man knocked on the door and asked for their hand?
    In Senejan strangers never knocked on your door to ask for your daughter’s hand. Marriages were arranged by matchmakers – older women who set up meetings between the groom and the family of the bride. These visits usually took place on cold winter evenings.
    Some families did without a matchmaker. In that case the women in the family donned their chadors, the men put on their hats and the group set off to pay a surprise visit to a family with an eligible daughter. Families with unmarried daughters didn’t want to be caught off-guard by an unexpected knock, so they made sure they were always ready to receive visitors.
    Such evenings were filled with long conversations about gold and carpets, the basic ingredients of the bride’s dowry and about the house, plot of land or sum of money that the groom would have to give his bride if the marriage foundered.
    After the men reached an agreement, it was the women’s turn to talk. They discussed the bridal clothes and the jewellery to be presented to the bride during the ceremony. Wristwatches were currently a novelty at the bazaar in Senejan, so every bride was dying to have one.
    On cold winter evenings, when the lights shone in the neighbours’ windows longer than usual, you knew that they were conducting marriage negotiations. Their living rooms were warm, and their windows steamed up from the hookahs. But those same winter evenings were a torment to the many families with an eligible daughter but no likelihood of a groom.
    In the house of the mosque the imam’s daughter, Sadiq, was old enough to marry.
    The family waited in silence. Perhaps someone would knock, perhaps the phone would ring. But winter was nearly over, and there hadn’t been a single suitor.
    Finding a suitable husband for the daughters of the house wasn’t easy. Not just anyone could ask for their hands in marriage. Ordinary girls had enough young men to choose from: carpenters, bricklayers, bakers, junior civil servants, schoolmasters or railway employees. But such men were not suitable for the daughters of the house of the mosque.
    The shah’s regime was corrupt, so anyone who worked for the government was automatically excluded. What about secondary school teachers? That was a possibility. But when all was said and done, only the sons of prominent merchants were considered suitable.
    With winter almost over, the girls who hadn’t received a marriage proposal knew they’d have to wait another year. Luckily, however, life doesn’t always follow tradition, but carves out a path of its own. And so one evening there was a knock on the door.
    ‘Who’s there?’ asked Shahbal, the son of Muezzin.
    ‘Me,’ called a self-confident male voice from the other side of the door.
    Shahbal opened the door and saw a young imam in a striking black turban standing in the yellow glow of the streetlight. He wore his turban at a jaunty angle and smelled of roses. His long dark imam robe was so new that this was