The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

embarrassed. They were all dressed alike, in a forties or fifties style. Later, I saw television footage of street demonstrations from that period where people were dressed like that, with double-breasted jackets, hair parted on the left and pencil moustaches. 20
    He was dazed, tired and thirsty and had forgotten that he had to get to Nur-Aqdas’s house, wherever it was. He just wanted to find a quiet corner to sit down, but there wasn’t room to swing a cat in that crowd, and no way of getting a glass of tea, or even a glass of water. He felt unsafe in a crowd. His tight collar was suffocating him, and he twisted his neck this way and that to get some relief. It had not occurred to him to undo his collar button. In the middle of his contortions, he suddenly saw a police vehicle pull up by the kerb. It was a paddy wagon, with a side door that could be opened to snatch people off the street. A bunch of armed policemen jumped out, looking agitated. Some of them were talking into pocket radios. Amir could not hear what they were saying, but he guessed that all this kerfuffle had to do with something that had happened, or some ceremony that was about to take place, that he had not heard about.
    I had guessed right. In no time at all a group of men in smart new dark suits, shiny black shoes, clean-shaven and with neatly combed hair, gathered round the police van. Their numbers grew
as they went up the steps in front of the building next to the post office, which led to the front of the senate house.
    The throng was now pushing its way up to the senate building, forcing Amir back down the steps. He was being pushed back towards the entrance by the crowd, which seemed intent on forcing its way in. As he struggled to keep upright, he caught sight of the old banger again, with its strange combination of green and rusty blue paint, parked at an angle on the south side of the road. It was on the kerb, tipped over onto its left side. The passenger-side doors were flung open and the roof appeared to have been blown open by a grenade or a small bomb. It was riddled with bullet holes and the dust of a hundred years of death appeared to have settled on the seats. There was no sign of the four young men who had been in it before, just a trickle of blood and engine oil dripping from the back seat onto the road.
    Water… water… just a sip of water… My tongue feels as dry as a brick. My mouth’s on fire. A sip of water, just a drop…
    He had to think hard to find a way out of this bizarre adventure, out of this story that had started with Mansour Salaami’s bloodstained knife and had led on to Nur-Aqdas’s room on the second floor of her aunt’s house, squeezing the juice out of Amir’s heart as it went on its simple way. Against his will, he was being thrown from one frying pan into one fire after another, each one hotter than the last. He was being passed from the jaws of one defeat to another, which could end only in his death. But what was killing him now was his thirst, which he could not do anything about. The crowd that kept pushing him into the building was not interested in the raging thirst of a young small-town boy.
    The senate building was a glorious architectural mish-mash
of vernacular and foreign styles from unrelated periods. The ceiling was supported by thick, round pillars finely carved in the Greek, Roman and Persian styles. It was reminiscent of the Reichstag in the way it conveyed a sense of might and majesty. It had the same kind of showy opulence that Reza Shah, who had built it, had once seen, or thought he had seen, in the Christian churches he had visited in Isfahan and Rezaiyeh, but it also called to mind the proportions of the Vakil Mosque in Shiraz. The floor of the entrance hall was covered with red carpeting that was clearly not the work of Persian weavers. It was completely plain, with none of the wonderful workmanship of Kashan, Tabriz or Isfahan to be seen anywhere.