him as the crowd parted to let him through. Both metal doors of the mosque were flung open. Usually only one door was used; the second was unlatched only for funerals, marriages, and ceremonies. Surrounded by the onlookers and standing taller than them all, Mulla Ali was waiting close to the door. It was the first time Ahmad had seen the mulla without his white turban. The man’s sparse gray hair was in disarray, as if he had run his hand through it in different directions. He had draped his black cloak over his shoulders without changing out of his striped cream pajamas and white undershirt. Inside the mosque, a few men stood facing the small door in the corridor that opened into the stairwell inside the minaret. The turquoise tiles of the minaret faded into the milky haze before Ahmad could see what was happening up at the crown.
“Come down, Nosser,” Nemat the Barber shouted up. “Don’t do this to the House of God.” Ahmad felt a hole open in his stomach down which his insides tumbled in an endless fall. It was his father Nemat was calling. The muffled sound of metal hitting something nonmetal was the only reply from the top of the minaret. “Step back! Step back!” shouted one of the men standing inside. Some ran out and others dashed farther into the mosque before something rumbled in the minaret and large chunks of broken brick shot out of the stairwell at the bottom. A flowerpot broke. Ahmad looked around at the faces he saw every day: the grocer; the bathhouse keeper; Mohammad the Carpenter; the baker; Salman’s father, Mash Akbar—a short man with a big stomach—and everyone else. It was hard to make out the faces of the women who were sitting—mostly in white chadors, camouflaged by the fog—on the roof tops witnessing the incident. He could not tell if his mother was among them. Why would she be watching and doing nothing? Salman’s father limped over to him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “What’s my father doing, Mash Akbar?” Ahmad asked, but before Mash Akbar could answer, there was a gunshot from the top of the minaret: a shot into the fog. Everyone looked up in sudden agitation, although nothing could be seen. Ahmad was afraid. A second shot was fired. Salman covered his ears. Ahmad, too, put his hands on his ears and took shelter behind Mash Akbar.
Mulla Ali combed his black-and-white beard with his long, bony fingers and looked up at the top of the minaret. “Nosser Khan, come down!” he shouted. “There are no Russians in the sky.” Another shot followed. A man stood next to Nemat the Barber with a sheet tied around his neck, half his head shaved clean and the other half covered in lather. Ahmad had seen him before, but did not know his name. Word had it he once loved a girl who broke his heart by running off with someone else. Now the man lived in a shack in the mountains and came down to Tajrish only to buy necessities, sell wild rhubarb, and shave his head. Nemat the Barber grabbed the man by the arm. “Let’s go,” he said, pulling gently. “Let’s go finish you. The man’s gone cuckoo again.” This he said looking at Ahmad, as if the ballyhoo was the boy’s fault. Ahmad kept his ears covered. There was another gunshot, and more brick came rolling down the spiral stairwell of the minaret.
“Nosser Khan,” shouted Mulla Ali, “your son is here. Can you hear me? Ahmad is here.”
Nosser was looking for trouble again; that was what Ahmad’s grandfather, Amin-olla Khan, would have said. Khan had certainly not yet heard what was happening, or else he would already be at the mosque to right things.
“Khan” was what they called Ahmad’s grandfather. He was not considered the chief of the village, but he had the village in his pocket. He was the owner of several apple orchards in Tajrish and the surrounding villages, in the foot of the Alborz mountain range, north of Tehran. In recent years he had purchased even more land and orchards in the eastern area of Damavand, and it was through his enterprises that years later, the Damavand apple became the most popular variety in the capital city of Tehran, synonymous with quality and taste.
Khan arrived in Tajrish a newborn in his mother’s arms when his great-great-great-grandfather, Agha, moved the family from the western parts of the country