MY UNCLE NAPOLEON - Chapter One

One hot summer day, to be precise, one Friday the thirteenth of August, at about a quarter to three in the afternoon, I fell in love. The bitterness and longing I've been through since have often made me wonder whether if it had been the twelfth or the fourteenth of August things would have turned out differently.

That day, as on every day, they had compelled us-meaning me and my sister-by force and threats and a few golden promises for the evening to go into the cellar in order to sleep. In the savage heat of Tehran an afternoon siesta was compulsory for all the children. But on that day, as on every other afternoon, we were just waiting for my father to fall asleep so that we could go into the yard to play. When my father's snores became audible I stuck my head out from under the coverlet and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was half past two in the afternoon. In waiting for my father to go off, my poor little sister had fallen asleep herself. I'd no choice but to leave her and I tiptoed out alone.

Layli, my uncle's daughter, and her little brother had been waiting in the main garden for us for half an hour. Our two houses had been built within one big enclosure and there was no wall between them. As on every day, we settled down quietly to our games and conversation in the shade of a big walnut tree. And then I happened to catch Layli's eye. A pair of wide black eyes looked back at me. I couldn't tear my gaze away from hers. I've no idea how long we'd been staring at each other when suddenly my mother appeared standing over us with a little multi-thonged whip in her hand. Layli and her brother ran off to their house and my mother drove me into the cellar and under the coverlet, threatening me as she did so. Before my head was completely hidden under the coverlet I looked across at the clock on the wall; it was ten to three in the afternoon. Before she in turn put her head under the coverlet my mother said, "Thank God your uncle didn't wake up, because if he had, he'd have torn you all to pieces."

My mother was right. Dear Uncle (as we called him) was very particular about the orders he gave. He'd given an order that before five o'clock in the afternoon the children weren't so much as to breathe. Within the four walls of that garden it wasn't only we children who had learned what not sleeping in the afternoon and making a noise during Dear Uncle's siesta meant; the crows and pigeons appeared in the garden much less often because Dear Uncle had taken a hunting rifle to them a few times and effected a general slaughter. The street vendors of our area didn't go through our street, which was named after Dear Uncle, till five o'clock, because three or four times the man who came by on his donkey selling melons and onions had been slapped by Dear Uncle.

But that day my brain was working overtime and the name of Dear Uncle didn't put me in mind of his rages and bad temper. I couldn't get free of the memory of Layli's eyes and of her gaze even for a moment, and no matter how much I tossed and turned and how much I tried to think of something else, I saw her black eyes, brighter than if she were really there in front of me.
That night, underneath the mosquito net, Layli's eyes came after me once more. I hadn't seen her again that evening, but her eyes and her beguiling gaze were there.

I don't know how much time passed. Suddenly a weird thought seized my whole brain, "God forbid, I've fallen in love with Layli!"

I tried to laugh at this idea of mine, but no laughter came. It's possible for someone not to laugh at a stupid idea; that doesn't mean it's not stupid. But is it possible for someone to fall in love, just like that, without any forewarning?

I tried to recall all the information I knew about love. Unfortunately this information didn't amount to much. Although more than thirteen years of my life had passed, up to that moment I'd never seen anyone in love. At that time very few books about love or descriptions of the condition of people in love had been printed. Besides, they wouldn't have let us read any of them. My mother and father and relatives, especially Dear Uncle, the shadow of whose existence and thoughts and ideas enveloped every member of the family, forbade every kind of excursion from the house without a chaperone, and we didn't dare approach the other children who lived on our street. And the radio, which had begun broadcasting only recently, contained nothing in its two or three hours of daily programs which could help illuminate my mind.

In going over the information I had about love, the first thing I came to was Layli and Majnun, whose story I'd heard many times. But however much I dug around in the corners of my brain I realized that I hadn't heard anything about how Majnun fell in love with Layli; people just said that Majnun fell in love with Layli.

Perhaps it would have been much better if I hadn't brought up Layli and Majnun in my researches, since the identity of names between Layli and Dear Uncle's daughter had an effect on what happened to me later, probably without my being aware of it. But I couldn't help it. The most important lovers I'd heard of were Layli and Majnun. Apart from them, there were Shirin and Farhad, but I didn't know anything special about how they'd fallen in love either. There was a love story published as a newspaper serial that I'd read, but I hadn't read the first few episodes and one of my classmates had described them for me. Consequently I knew nothing about the beginning of the matter.

I heard the clock on the cellar wall strike twelve. O God, half the night was over and I hadn't slept yet. This clock had been in our house for as long as I could remember and this was the first time I'd ever heard it strike twelve midnight. Perhaps this sleeplessness was evidence of my falling in love. From behind the mosquito net, in the half darkness of the yard, the strange, weird silhouettes taken by the shadows of trees and shrubs I saw terrified me-because, before I could reach a conclusion as to whether I'd fallen in love or not, I was terrified by the fate of the lovers I'd gone over in my mind. Almost all of them had suffered a sorrowful fate, ending in death and disaster

Layli and Majnun, death and disaster. Shirin and Farhad, death and disaster. Romeo and Juliet, death and disaster. Paul and Virginie, death and disaster. That love story in the newspaper, death and disaster.

God forbid, I'd really fallen in love and was going to die, too! Especially since at that time death was common among prepubescent children. Sometimes during family gatherings I'd heard them counting the number of children women had given birth to and the number that still remained alive. But then a flash of lightning lit up my mind with hope: we'd heard and read the story of the famous Amir Arsalan many times; only Amir Arsalan had brought his longing to a successful conclusion. Although the story of Amir Arsalan, and its happy conclusion, did on the one hand somewhat allay my terror of romantic adventures, on the other, in answer to my basic question, it weighted the scale in my mind toward the positive answer, that I had fallen in love. How had Amir Arsalan fallen in love? He'd seen a picture of Farrokh Laqa, and in that moment he'd given his heart to her. So, was it possible that I too had fallen in love with a single glance?

I tried to sleep. I squeezed my eyelids together so that sleep would come and I'd be free of these twisting, turning thoughts. Fortunately sleep doesn't let a child stay awake till morning, even if he is in love. Apparently such problems are for grown-ups who are in love.

Morning came. I had no opportunity to think more, because I'd slept longer than usual. I suddenly jumped up from sleep at the sound of my mother's voice, "Get up! Get up! Your uncle wants you."
My whole body trembled as though it had been connected up to an electric outlet. My voice wouldn't come and I wanted to ask which uncle, but the words stuck in my throat.

"Get up! He said you're to go over there!"

I couldn't think. Although it was contrary to all logic and reason, even a child's reason, I was certain that Dear Uncle was aware of my secret and I trembled with fear. The first thing that came into my head to delay my torture was to say that I hadn't eaten breakfast yet.

"Get up and eat quickly and go!"

"You don't know why Dear Uncle wants me?"

My mother's answer calmed me down to some extent, "He said all the children are to go there!"
I breathed again. I was used to Dear Uncle's sessions of advice and moral guidance. Every now and then he would gather all the family children together at once and give them a little advice and at the end of the meeting he'd give each one a candy. So bit by bit I pulled myself together and reckoned that there was no possible way Dear Uncle could have realized my secret.

I ate breakfast fairly calmly and for the first time since I had woken up I once again saw Layli's black eyes, in the steam from the samovar, but I tried with all my strength not to think of her.
As I was going toward Dear Uncle's house I caught sight of Mash Qasem, Dear Uncle's servant, in the yard with his trousers rolled up, watering the flowers.

"Mash Qasem, do you know why Dear Uncle wants us?"

"Well now, m'dear, why should I lie? The Master said I was to call all the children. To be honest I don't know what he wants you for."

Only we, exceptionally, had the right to call Dear Uncle "Dear Uncle," otherwise all our friends and acquaintances and the inhabitants of the area called him "the Master." Dear Uncle Napoleon (as he was called behind his back) was one of those long seven syllable nicknames. Really seven syllables, in that you had to open and close your mouth seven times in order to have the right to say anything about Dear Uncle's existence. Dear Uncle's father, who for his part had had a six-syllable nickname, was simply the "Master" and little by little people forgot his name. Dear Uncle's father, on his own initiative, so that after he had gone there should be no split in the family unity between his sons and daughters, had had seven houses built in his huge garden and had divided them among his children while he was still alive. Dear Uncle was the oldest of these children and he had inherited the title "the Master" from his father, and, either because of his being the oldest or because of his own character and natural disposition, he considered himself the head of the family after his father's death, and he had made such an issue of this that none of this fairly large family dared so much as to take a drink of water without his permission. Dear Uncle had interfered so much in the private and public lives of his brothers and sisters that most of them had resorted to legal action in order to separate their houses from his and had either built walls or sold up and left.

In the part of the garden still remaining there were us, Dear Uncle, and one other brother of Dear Uncle's whose house was separated from ours by a fence.

Dear Uncle was in the sitting room with French windows, and the children were playing quietly in the inner courtyard of his house.

Layli looked up and came over to greet me. Once again our eyes stayed locked together. I felt my heart beating strangely. It seemed to be making a thumping sound. But I didn't have much opportunity to think about it and draw conclusions. Dear Uncle's tall, skinny, bony body, his leggings clinging to his limbs, appeared from within the room just as he was adjusting his thin cloak of Nain cloth over his shoulders. He was frowning. All the children, even those who were very little, felt that advice and moral guidance were not what was at stake and that something was badly wrong.

Dear Uncle's tall figure stood in front of us and as he looked upwards from behind his usual thick sunglasses he said in a dry, frightening voice, "Which of you has chalked filth on the door of this yard?"

And with a long, skinny finger he pointed behind us at the door of the inner apartments, which his servant Mash Qasem had just closed and beside which he was standing. We all automatically looked in that direction. On the door, in fact on the back of the door that led into the yard, someone had scrawled unevenly in chalk:

"Napoleon is a donkey."

The stares of most of us, of nine or ten children that is, turned toward Siamak, but before Dear Uncle lowered his head we realized our mistake and looked at the ground. For us there was no doubt that Siamak had done it, because we had frequently talked about Dear Uncle's love for and interest in Napoleon, and Siamak, who was more mischievous than the rest of us, had sworn that one day he would write out Napoleon's donkeylike quality on Dear Uncle's door. But a feeling of common humanity prevented us from betraying him.

Dear Uncle, who was standing in front of the line of us like a commanding officer in a prisoner of war camp, started to talk, but in the forceful, frightening, threatening speech he made he mentioned nothing about the insult to Napoleon; the pretext was making the door filthy with chalk.

After a terrifying moment of silence had passed Dear Uncle suddenly yelled out in a voice that seemed quite out of proportion to his skinny body, "I said, who did this?"

Once more surreptitious stares turned toward Siamak. This time Dear Uncle both noticed the stares and fixed his own angry and terrifying gaze on Siamak's face. At this point something happened. (I'm embarrassed to write this but I hope considerations of truthfulness and honesty will excuse such openness.) Siamak was so afraid that he peed in his clothes and began to stammer apologies.
When the punishment for both the crime itself and the crime committed during the search for the guilty one had been carried out, the crying Siamak set off for his house and we children followed him in a silence that was partly the effect of our fear of Dear Uncle, and partly respect and sympathy for Siamak's painful ordeal, since we to a great extent had caused it.

When the weeping Siamak complained to his mother about Dear Uncle, she, though she'd guessed and was in fact certain which Uncle he was talking about, automatically asked, "Which Dear Uncle?"

And her pain-wracked little boy unthinkingly answered, "Dear Uncle Napoleon."

We were all aghast, and stood there rooted to the spot. This was the first time that the nickname which we had given to Dear Uncle among ourselves had been spoken aloud before one of the grown-ups.

Of course this resulted in Siamak being punished once by his parents too, but we breathed a sigh of relief. We'd repeated this nickname under our breath so often that we felt we were suffocating.
Dear Uncle had been crazy about Napoleon since his youth. Later we knew that he had gathered together in his library whatever books about Napoleon, either in Persian or French (Dear Uncle knew French to some extent), existed in Iran. And in fact a number of his bookcases contained only books about Napoleon. It was impossible for there to be any scientific, literary, historical, legal or philosophical discussion without Dear Uncle interrupting it by quoting some Napoleonic aphorism. Things had gone so far that, under the influence of Dear Uncle's advocacy, most members of the family considered Napoleon Bonaparte to be the greatest of all philosophers, mathematicians, statesmen, men of letters and even poets.

It seems that during the reign of Mohammad Ali Shah, Dear Uncle had been in the gendarmerie, with the rank of third lieutenant, and each of us had heard the story of his battles and clashes with bandits and insurgents forty or fifty times.

Among we children each of these incidents was distinguished by a certain name; for example, the story of the Battle of Kazerun, the Battle of Mamasani and so on. In the early years, the basis of each incident was a description of a skirmish that had happened in the little town of Kazerun or Mamasani between Dear Uncle, with five or six gendarmes, and a group of insurgents and vagrant thieves. But as time passed the number of enemies and the bloodiness of the conflicts increased. For example the Battle of Kazerun had in the beginning been told as a skirmish between a group of insurgents and Dear Uncle and five gendarmes, and their being cut off by ten or twelve of the insurgents, but after two or three years the Battle of Kazerun had changed to a bloody battle involving about one hundred and fifty gendarmes cut off by four thousand insurgents, egged on by the British of course.

But what we didn't understand at the time, and which now that we've studied a little history we have understood, was that as Dear Uncle's interest in Napoleon increased, not only did his battles increase astronomically in size but they also began to resemble Napoleon's battles. As he was talking about the Battle of Kazerun he was also describing Napoleon's Battle of Austerlitz, and he didn't even stop himself from having infantry and artillery intervening in the Battle of Kazerun. Something else we only knew later on was that, when the gendarmerie in Iran was reformed and the previous members were given ranks according to their ability and knowledge, Dear Uncle, since he didn't have sufficient skill and knowledge for such affairs, though he claimed to have a genius for them, was retired at a low rank.

The second long night began. Once again Layli's black eyes, once again Layli's beguiling gaze, once again the agitated thoughts of a thirteen-year-old boy and the same questions and the same problems with the addition of one new question:

Perhaps Layli has fallen in love with me, too. O God have mercy! Now if it were only me who was in love there might be hope of some deliverance, but if she too . . .

During the whole time that we'd stood in line in front of Dear Uncle, although we were worried and apprehensive and terrified, and none of us had any confidence that Dear Uncle would find out the truth and administer justice fairly, still I either saw or felt Layli's gaze on my face.

Here was another problem that I had to find the answer to. Was it better for love to be one-sided or mutual?

Who could I ask? Who could I consult? If only Layli were here. No, there can be no doubt that I've fallen in love, otherwise why should I be so keen for Layli to be here? How about if I asked someone? But who?

How about if I asked Layli herself? But that's really ridiculous. For me to ask Layli, "Am I in love with you or not?" But . . . perhaps I could ask Layli . . . what? Ask her if she were in love with me or not? That's ridiculous, too. Besides, it's impossible I'd ever have the nerve to ask her such a question. I thought about the children of my own age.

No, it's impossible . . . Layli's brother who was younger than me and wasn't very bright, how could I ask Ali? No, he was also a tattletale, he'd go and tell my father or, even worse, he'd go and tell Dear Uncle. Good God, isn't there anyone I can ask whether I'm in love or not?

Suddenly in the midst of my torment and disordered thoughts, a ray of hope appeared: Mash Qasem.

Yes, how about if I asked Mash Qasem? Mash Qasem was a villager who had become Uncle's servant. The whole family always talked about Mash Qasem's goodness and piety. Furthermore, he'd once proved it to me. One day Mash Qasem had seen me when I'd smashed a window in Dear Uncle's house with a ball; he didn't say a word to anyone.

Mash Qasem was always on our side on principle, and he would tell us strange, peculiar stories. The nice thing about him was that he never let any question go unanswered, and every time we asked him a question he would first say, "Why should I lie? To the grave it's ah . . . ah . . . !"
And as he said "Ah . . . ah" he'd show four fingers and later on we realized he meant that since the grave was very close, only the width of four fingers away, one mustn't tell lies. Although we sometimes understood or felt that Mash Qasem did tell lies, nevertheless he never let any question go unanswered; even if it were about something very profound or some astonishing phenomenon, he would find a response to it. It was a wonderful thing to us. When we asked him whether dragons were real or not, he immediately answered, "Well, m'dears, why should I lie? To the grave it's ah . . . ah . . . One day I m'self, with my own eyes, saw a dragon, on the way from Ghiasabad to Qom; I'd just turned a corner when suddenly I saw a dragon jump out and stand there right in front of me. He was an animal-God save you from such a sight!-somewhere between a leopard and a buffalo and an ox and an octopus and an owl. From the slit of his mouth about three yards of flame came leapin' out. I threw caution to the winds and with my spade I smacked him across his slit of a mouth and stopped his breath. He gave such a snort everyone in the town woke up . . . But what was the good of it, m'dears? Not a soul said to me, 'Mash Qasem, thanks for your trouble.'"

Mash Qasem had an explanation for every historical event and every stupendous invention, and if the atomic bomb had been invented at that time, he'd certainly have given a complete explanation of a nuclear explosion. That night the name of Mash Qasem shone like a ray of hope in my mind's darkness, and I slept fairly peacefully.

I woke up early next morning. Fortunately Mash Qasem was an early riser. As soon as he woke up he would busy himself with watering the flowers and attending to the garden. As I went towards him he was standing on a stool tidying the strands of sweetbrier that twisted about Dear Uncle's arbor.

"Can't you sleep, m'dear? How is it you're up so early today?"

"I went to bed early last night. So in the morning I wasn't sleepy."

"Well, go and play, it's not long before school'll be open."

I hesitated a moment, but I thought of the horrors of a third night. I threw caution to the winds and said, "Mash Qasem, I want to ask you something."

"Say on, m'dear!"

"One of my classmates thinks he's in love . . . but, how can I say . . . he's not sure . . . he doesn't have the nerve to ask anyone . . . do you know how a person finds out if he's fallen in love?"

Mash Qasem nearly fell off the stool. In a state close to astonishment he said, "What? How? In love? You mean he's got a crush on someone? One of your classmates?"

Very anxiously I asked, "But, Mash Qasem? Is it very dangerous?"

Staring fixedly at his gardening clippers, Mash Qasem said calmly, "Well, m'dear, why should I lie? To the grave it's ah . . . ah . . . me m'self, I've never been in love . . . well, yes, I have, too. To cut a long story short I know what a disaster it is. May God not wish that on any poor devil! God willin' and by all the saints may God not inflict anyone with the sorrows and sickness of a lover! A grown man can't get through bein' in love except by the skin of his teeth, so what would it be like for a child, m'dear!"

My legs didn't have the strength to hold my body up. I was really scared.

I had come to ask Mash Qasem what the symptoms and signs of love were and here he was describing love's terrifying results to me. But no, I mustn't give up! Since Mash Qasem was the only experienced person who could give me the information I needed about love, and the signs of falling in love, I had to be strong.

"But Mash Qasem, this classmate of mine who thinks he's fallen in love wants to know first of all whether he's really fallen in love or not. And then, if he has fallen in love, he wants somehow to soften the pain of it."

"But, m'dear, can love be cured so easily? The damn thing is worse than every pain and unhappiness. God forbid, it's worse than typhoid and stomach cramps."

Bravely I said, "Mash Qasem, this is all very well . . . but how can someone know he's fallen in love?"

"Well, m'dear . . . why should I lie? From what I've seen it's like this, when you're in love with someone . . . when you don't see her you think your heart's frozen over . . . when you see her such a burnin' starts in your heart you think someone's lit a baker's oven in there. You want everythin' in the world, all the wealth in the world, for her, you think you've become the most generous man on earth . . . to cut a long story short, the only thing that's goin' to satisfy you's an engagement party . . . but there's this too, if, God forbid, they give this girl to some other husband, then oh my Lord . . . There was a man in our town who was in love, and one evenin' there was an engagement party for the girl and another man; in the mornin' that neighbor of mine walked off into the desert, and now twenty years have gone by and still no one knows what happened . . . it's as if he'd turned to smoke and gone up to the heavens."

Mash Qasem wasn't in the mood to stop and he told one story after another about his neighbors and army buddies, and I was in a hurry to end the conversation because I was afraid someone would turn up. I said, "Mash Qasem, I wouldn't want Dear Uncle to know I'd asked you anything . . . because then he'd want to know who this person is or isn't or . . . "

"Would I say anythin' to the Master? Do you think I'm tired of life? If the Master hears anythin' about people bein' in love or sweet on one another he raises cane . . . he's quite likely to kill someone."

Mash Qasem nodded and then said, "God forbid anyone should fall in love with Miss Layli. Because the Master will wipe his family off the face of the earth."

With apparent indifference I asked, "But why would that be, Mash Qasem?"

"Well, I remember once years ago a boy fell in love with the daughter of a friend of the Master's . . . "
"And how did that turn out, Mash Qasem?"

"Well, why should I lie . . . to the grave it's ah . . . ah . . . I m'self with my own eyes didn't see it . . . but that boy suddenly disappeared. As if he'd turned to smoke and gone up to the skies . . . there were many who said the Master shot a bullet into his heart and threw him in a well . . . it was around the time of the Battle of Kazerun . . . "

Mash Qasem started describing Dear Uncle's Battle of Kazerun.

We didn't really know when Mash Qasem had become Dear Uncle's servant but what we had gathered was, first, that he'd gone into service after Dear Uncle's duties in the provinces were over and he had returned to Tehran. Secondly, Mash Qasem's character was a little copy of Dear Uncle's. His imagination worked in a very similar way to Dear Uncle's imagination. At first when he backed up Dear Uncle's stories and descriptions of battles, Dear Uncle would yell at him and say, "What are you talking about? You weren't there!" But Mash Qasem took no notice and, because no one would listen to his daydreams independently and believe them, he directed all his attention over the years to becoming Dear Uncle's sidekick. As Dear Uncle little by little felt that his audience wasn't listening with sufficient credulity, particularly to his various stories about battles, perhaps because he needed a witness and perhaps because gradually, under the influence of Mash Qasem's promptings, he actually saw him there on the battlefield, he slowly accepted Mash Qasem's attachment to himself and his presence at the battles. This was especially so because, once Mash Qasem had heard the imaginary details of the battles of Kazerun and Mamasani and so on from Dear Uncle, he remembered them very well, and sometimes during the actual telling of a story he was able to help him out.

But one day, two or three years previously, this acceptance had become official.

That day Dear Uncle was furious. While repairing an irrigation channel Mash Qasem had carelessly, with a pick, cut through the root of Dear Uncle's big sweetbrier bush. Dear Uncle was nearly beside himself with rage and, after hitting Mash Qasem on the neck a few times, he screamed, "Get out of here. You've no longer any place in this house."

And Mash Qasem, bowing his head, said, "Sir, you'll have to have the cops take me out of this house, or have them take my corpse out of this house. Since you saved my life . . . while there's a breath left in my body I have to stay in this house and serve you. When was it that you did the deed you did?"

Then Mash Qasem turned to Dear Uncle's brothers and sisters and their children, who had all gathered there without daring to show any signs of interceding on his behalf, and with emotion in his voice said, "Think of it . . . in the Battle of Kazerun I'd been wounded by a bullet . . . I'd fallen between two boulders . . . bullets were rainin' down on all sides . . . I'd said my last prayers . . . the crows and the vultures were up there in the sky, eyein' me like . . . then suddenly, God bless him, the Master, and may God keep him, the great gentleman he is, in the midst of that hail of bullets got himself to me. Like a lion he threw me across his shoulders, and he carried me just like that, I don't know how far, till he got back to our foxhole. Do you think a man's goin' to forget something like that?"

All of us, who'd been so moved listening to the story, became aware of Dear Uncle. All signs of rage had disappeared from his face. He was gazing off into the distance. It was as if he really saw the battlefield there. Gently a slight smile formed on his lips.

Mash Qasem had also realized the change in the situation. In a mild voice he said, "If it hadn't been for the Master I'd have been dead and rotten, too, like poor Soltanali Khan."

At this point Dear Uncle repeated under his breath, "Poor Soltanali Khan . . . I wanted to do something for him, too, but it wasn't to be . . . God have mercy on him."

By means of these few words, from that day on, Dear Uncle formally accepted that Mash Qasem had been there in the war, under his command. A man who a little while previously had under no circumstances been ready to acknowledge that he had even known Mash Qasem at that time, after that referred to Mash Qasem as his orderly and he would ask Mash Qasem for the names of certain people and places during the repeated telling of his war stories. After a year or so, during gatherings of friends, he even had Mash Qasem tell the tale of how he, Dear Uncle, had saved his life. In this way Mash Qasem-though the biggest incident in his life he could come up with while we were small children had been a fight with a few stray dogs in Qom-was also enrolled as one of the brave heroes of the battles of Kazerun and Mamasani.

That day, as usual, Mash Qasem once again started off on his description of the Battle of Kazerun, and while he was talking I quietly stole back to the house.

The conclusion of the involved thoughts that kept going back and forth in my head was that I really had fallen in love with Layli; in particular, the evening of the day when the itinerant ice cream seller had come by and I had happily given half of my ice cream to Layli, the wise words of Mash Qasem came into my mind, "You want everything in the world, all the wealth in the world, for her, you think you've become the most generous man on earth." It had never happened before that I had ever offered someone any of my ice cream.

Little by little I experienced all the signs and signals Mash Qasem had mentioned. When Layli wasn't there I really did feel as though my heart were frozen over, and when I saw her the heat in my heart spread even to my cheeks and ears. When she was with me I never gave a thought to the terrible consequences of love. Only when night came and she had gone back to her house and I was alone did I once again think of the terrible whirlpool of love. After a few nights, little by little, my fear and horror abated. Then, even when alone at night, I wasn't that afraid, because my nights were filled with memories of seeing her during the day. One of our relatives, who was employed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had brought Dear Uncle a few bottles of Russian eau de cologne from Baku. Sometimes Layli's scent, which was that Russian eau de cologne, would stay on my hands and then I didn't want to wash my hands so that the smell wouldn't go. Little by little I felt I was enjoying being in love. After the misfortunes of the first few days I'd become a fortunate person, but I still had one worry in my heart. I wanted to know whether Layli was in love with me or not. I felt she was, but I wanted to be sure.

Despite this uncertainty, the days once more passed in complete happiness. The only times a cloud appeared in the clear sky of my cheerfulness was when I thought-God forbid-Dear Uncle had found out my secret. Sometimes I dreamt that Dear Uncle was standing over me with a gun in his hand, staring at my face with his enraged eyes. In terror I'd start up from sleep, soaked in sweat. Although I tried not to think about the outcome of my love, it was more or less clear to me that Dear Uncle would never accept it. The story of the falling out between Dear Uncle and my father was a very old one. Dear Uncle had been against his sister's marrying my father from the beginning, because he believed his own family was a noble one and he could never accept as suitable the union of an individual who was, in his phrase, an aristocrat, with an ordinary person, and one from the provinces at that. If my father's marriage to Dear Uncle's sister hadn't happened during Dear Uncle's father's lifetime, perhaps it would never have happened.

In addition, my father didn't feel the respect he should have done for Napoleon, and in meetings and family gatherings and sometimes in the presence of Dear Uncle, he would disrespectfully refer to Napoleon as an adventurer who'd dragged the French nation through suffering and misfortune. I think this was my father's biggest sin, and the biggest reason for their falling out.

To be sure, the smoldering embers of these differences were normally invisible under the ashes. Just occasionally, for various reasons, especially over backgammon, they would flare up, and then after a few days things would return to normal again through the help of a family member acting as go-between. These skirmishes between Dear Uncle and my father were not very significant to us children because whatever happened we were busy with our own games. But after I knew I was in love with Layli, one of my chief worries was a flaring up of the quarrel between Dear Uncle and my father and, as bad luck would have it, one of the biggest skirmishes ever to affect my whole life was lying in wait for me.

The origin of the new hostilities was a party in the house of our uncle colonel. Shapur was uncle colonel's son, and the whole family called him "Puri," following the example of his mother. He had graduated from university and from the beginning of summer there had been talk of the splendid party that uncle colonel was going to give to celebrate his son's graduation.

Puri was a grind and the only member of our large family who'd taken his education beyond the level of a high school diploma. In Dear Uncle's "aristocratic" family, the children usually stopped their education around the third or fourth class of high school, and Puri's graduation from university really was a major event. Everyone in the family talked about his genius. Although the boy was no more than twenty-one, because of his height and the hump he had on his back he looked older than his age, and in my opinion he wasn't an intelligent person, he just had a good memory. He memorized his lessons to the letter and got good grades. Until he was eighteen his mother would take him by the hand and lead him across the road. All in all he wasn't a bad looking person, but when he talked he spluttered a bit. The whole family-especially Dear Uncle-had talked about his genius so much that we had nicknamed him "Puri the Genius." There had been so much talk about the splendid party that uncle colonel intended to give in honor of Puri the great genius's graduation that for the whole holiday half the chatter among us children revolved around it.

Finally the news came that on the evening of Puri's birthday there was also to be a party in celebration of his graduation. This was the first time that I'd spent from noon onwards preparing to go to a party. A bath and a haircut, ironing my suit, ironing my shirt, polishing my shoes, and all the rest of the preening and primping took up a good part of the afternoon. I wanted to show myself off as better than ever in Layli's eyes. I even dabbed a touch from my mother's bottle of "Souvenir de Paris," which was a strong feminine scent, on my head and face.

Uncle colonel's house had also been built in the big garden but uncle colonel had separated it from our house by a wooden fence. Uncle colonel in reality wasn't a colonel, he was a major, what they called then a "Yavar." A few years earlier, however, he had felt he deserved a promotion, and since, coincidentally Dear Uncle Napoleon had suddenly referred to his brother as "colonel," our family considered him a colonel and addressed him as such.

As we went into the inner courtyard behind uncle colonel's house I looked for Layli among the guests who had already arrived. She hadn't come yet. But before I took in the other people, my eyes fell on the great genius Puri. He'd attached a stiff striped collar to his white shirt and there was a tasteless colored tie around his neck.

After the genius's collar and tie, the thing which attracted my attention was the two-man band sitting on chairs beside their instruments (a tar and a zarb); there was a little table in front of them with some fruit and a few cakes on it. The tar player seemed familiar. A moment later I recognized him. He was the mathematics and geometry teacher from our elementary school. Afterwards I discovered that, to eke out his meager teacher's salary, he used to play the tar at gatherings and parties. The zarb player was a fat blind man who also sang. By eight o' clock the party had really warmed up and at regular intervals the band played a few cheerful songs. In one corner a group was gathered around a table of alcoholic drinks. From time to time I would stretch out my hand to the plates of cakes and fruit and I always took two, one of which I gave to Layli and the other I ate myself. Incandescent lamps flooded the whole area with light, and so I looked at Layli, and offered her cakes and fruit, very circumspectly.

Puri the genius kept glancing over at Layli and me in an angry, spiteful way.

The regrettable event happened at about half past ten. Dear uncle colonel was showing off the new hunting rifle which Asadollah Mirza, the official in the Foreign Ministry, had brought him from Baku, and he was going on and on about its good points and waiting for Dear Uncle Napoleon to express his opinion.

Dear Uncle picked it up a few times and held it this way and that and looked at it. The women at the party reminded him a few times not to play with guns, and he answered with a smile that he was an expert on the subject of munitions and knew what he was doing.

While he had the rifle in his hand, little by little he began to think of the brave battles of his past and started to recall his memories of them, "Yes, I had a gun just like this . . . I remember, once in the thick of the Battle of Mamasani, one day . . . "

Seeing the rifle in Dear Uncle's hand and perhaps guessing that there was going to be talk of the wars, Mash Qasem had stationed himself behind Dear Uncle, and at this moment he interrupted the conversation and shouted, "Sir, it was the Battle of Kazerun."

Dear Uncle threw an angry look at him, "Why are you talking rubbish? It was the Battle of Mamasani."

"Well, why should I lie, sir? As far as I remember, it was the Battle of Kazerun." At this moment Dear Uncle realized something everyone had realized and this was that Mash Qasem had expressed an opinion on the name of the battle before he knew what Dear Uncle was going to say, and that this reflected badly on the genuineness of whatever story he was going to tell. Quietly, but in a voice full of anger, he said, "My good man, I haven't yet said . . . "

"Well, I don't know about that, sir, but it was the Battle of Kazerun."

And he fell silent. Dear Uncle continued, "Yes indeed, it was one day in the thick of the Battle of Mamasani . . . we were in the middle of a valley. On both sides the heights had been taken by armed bandits . . . "

As Dear Uncle went on with his story he would sometimes rise up from his seat and then sink back down into it, and with the rifle under his right arm he made descriptive gestures with his left, "Just imagine a valley three or four times the size of this courtyard . . . now I'm here with forty or fifty infantrymen . . . "

In the midst of the guests' total silence, Mash Qasem once again interrupted, "With your faithful servant Qasem!"

"Yes, Qasem was what they now call my orderly . . . "

"Didn't I say, sir, that it was the Battle of Kazerun?"

"I said don't talk rubbish, it was the Battle of Mamasani, you're getting old, your memory's gone to pieces, you're gaga . . . "

"Sir, I never said a word!"

"Fine! Shut up and it'll be even better! Yes indeed, there I was and forty or fifty infantrymen . . . now those infantrymen were in a wretched state . . . as Napoleon has said, a commander with fifty well-fed soldiers can do much more than with a thousand hungry soldiers . . . and then all at once a hail of bullets started. The first thing I did was throw myself down from my horse. This Qasem here . . . with another fellow that was there . . . was next to me and I grabbed hold of him with my hand and pulled him down from his horse . . . "

Once again Mash Qasem interrupted, "It was me and none other, sir." And, shyly and fearfully, he added, "Not to be pushy like, sir, but I'd like once again to state it was the Battle of Kazerun."
Perhaps for the first time in his life, Dear Uncle regretted having allowed Mash Qasem into the arena of his battles.

"Hell and damnation, wherever it was! Now will you let me speak?"

"Sir, I'm completely dumb. I don't know a thing."

Dear Uncle, in the midst of his rage at Mash Qasem's impertinence-and if people hadn't been sure of his religious principles they'd have been convinced he was drunk-continued, "Yes indeed, I pulled this idiot-and I wish my hand had been smashed and I'd never saved him-down from his horse, and I got myself behind a boulder . . . a boulder about the size of the living-room . . . so what's the situation . . . two or three of our men have bullet wounds . . . and the rest have taken up positions behind rocks. From the way they'd attacked and were firing I immediately realized that I was dealing with Khodadad Khan's lot . . . the famous Khodadad Khan . . . one of the old lackeys of the English."

Under the influence of Dear Uncle's exciting story, Mash Qasem seemed to have taken leave of his senses, and once again jumped into the narrative, "Didn't I say it was the Battle of Kazerun?"

"Shut up! Yes indeed, the first thing I did was I said I've got to trick this Khodadad Khan . . . usually these rebels are pretty daring while their leader's alive, but as soon as he's killed they all run away . . . I crawled my way up the side of the boulder . . . I had a fur hat, I put it on a stick and lifted it up so they would think . . . "

Once again Mash Qasem couldn't contain himself, "Sir, it's like it was yesterday . . . I can see your fur hat before me eyes . . . now, if you remember, you lost your fur hat in the Battle of Kazerun, I mean it was shot through . . . in the Battle of Mamasani you didn't have a fur hat at all."

We were all waiting for Dear Uncle to brain Mash Qasem with the barrel or the butt of the rifle. But contrary to everyone's expectation, he melted a little. Either he wanted to quiet Mash Qasem down and finish his story, or in the world of his imagination he simply changed the site of the episode. He mildly said, "It seems that Mash Qasem's right . . . apparently it was the Battle of Kazerun . . . that is, it was around the beginning of the Battle of Kazerun . . . "

Mash Qasem's eyes lit up with joy, "Didn't I say so, sir? Why should I lie, to the grave it's ah . . . ah . . . it's like it was yesterday."

"Yes, I only had one thought in my head. This was to get Khodadad Khan. When I put my fur hat on that stick, Khodadad Khan, who was a first class shot, lifted his head up from behind a rock . . . now it was me and him . . . I invoked the blessed Ali and took aim."

Dear Uncle's tall body rose up. As if he were taking aim he put the rifle against his right shoulder and even closed his left eye.

"I saw nothing but Khodadad's forehead . . . I had seen him many times . . . those wide eyebrows . . . the scar above the right eyebrow . . . I aimed between the two eyebrows and . . . "

Suddenly, at this moment, in the midst of everyone's complete silence and just as Dear Uncle was aiming right between the eyes of his enemy, an unexpected event happened. From near the area where he was standing, a sound was heard. It was a dubious sort of sound, like the scraping of a chair leg over stone, or the unexpected squeaking of a worn out chair, or . . . but later I realized that most of the guests thought its origin was a chair and nothing worse had entered their minds.

For a moment Dear Uncle stood rooted to the spot. Everyone at the party was as if turned to stone; no one stirred. After a moment Dear Uncle's gaze seemed to wake up and move, glaring as if all the blood in his body had rushed into his eyes. He turned toward the nearby area where the sound had come from.

There were only two people there: my father and Qamar, a fat, heavy girl, one of our relatives, who was a bit simple.

For a short moment there was silence. All of a sudden Qamar began to laugh in an idiotic fashion.
As a result of her laughter the children and a few of the adults, and even my father, began to laugh. Although I didn't really understand what was going on, I sensed the storm that was about to break and I squeezed Layli's hand hard in mine. For a moment Dear Uncle turned the rifle barrel so that it was pointing at my father's chest. Everyone fell silent. My father looked in a confused way from one side to the other. Dear Uncle suddenly threw the rifle onto a sofa at the side of the courtyard and in a strangled voice said, "As Ferdowsi put it:

' To raise up someone vile, to hope that they
Might then improve themselves in any way,
Is tantamount to cutting your own throat
And nourishing a snake inside your coat.'"

And then as he was on his way toward the door, he yelled, "Let's go!"

Dear Uncle's wife set off after him. And Layli, though she hadn't properly understood what was going on, felt its seriousness and withdrew her hand from my fingers' tight grip. With a quick look she said goodbye to me and set off after them.