The House Of The Mosque

The Story: Based in Iran in the 1950’s, Abdolah tells the fictional story of the family of the mosque who live their lives blissfully unaware that they are on the brink of tragedy and revolution. Its story is difficult to regurgitate because there are so many interwoven stories and characters each carrying their own significance but I’ll try my best. It is centred around Aqa Jaan, a carpet merchant and head of the city bazaar and his family who have lived in the house of the mosque in the Iranian province of Senejan  and have done for eight generations.

Although largely fictional, Abdolah throws in some non-fictional characters in i.e. Sadam Hussein and follows through a pivotal period in Iranian history as the reign of the hated Western (specifically American) backed Shah’s reign comes to an end under the fanatical reign of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Abdolah begins by ingratiating you into the family in a sense. You get to learn of Aqa Jaan’s love of his renowned carpets whose patterns are based on the plumage of emigrating birds his wife, Fahkri Sadat, traps on the roof. The two grandmothers who sweep the compound daily and dream of visiting Mecca before they kick the bucket. Blind Muezzin who always knows the time of day. Fahkri Sadat’s love of silky underwear. Sadiq, Aqa Jaan’s daughter, who sits and waits for a suitor to come and ask her hand in marriage (little does she know she will marry a crazy fundamentalist and bear him a deformed child, Lizard, I liked him, he seemed sweet). Shahbal’s yearning for a television set from which he can watch the landing on the moon. Everything is seemingly idyllic and you wish you could awake to the muezzin call, visit the bazaar and sit and smoke some opium with Nosrat under the watchful eye of the storks in that reside in the minarets.

Like a delicious broth, he sprinkles in a few embellishments here and there which render the story even more interesting. These flavours come in the form of KhalKhal who comes to marry Sadiq. He later becomes “Allah’s Judge” under Khomeini’s rule and see’s to the execution of many wretched souls with complete sangfroid.  There is also Ahmad who becomes the mosque’s Imam after Khalkhal’s departure, characterised by his opium addiction and lust for women. Crazy Qodsi always full of portent, who ominously prophesies to Aqa Jaan, “You won’t die. You will stay until they’ve all gone and come back again”. Nosrat, Aqa Jaan’s wayward brother of many vices who later becomes Khomeini’s proverbial court jester (this leads to his demise). And let’s not Zinat Khanom, a harpy who later meets her end with her flesh about to be gorged on by vultures and the like by a salt-water lake.

Using these characters, Abdolah explores fanaticism, tribalism and Islamic fundamentalism. As the story continues to unravel, the consequences of political unrest in Iran begin to trickle into Aqa Jaan’s peaceful household. Small trickles to begin with but these soon become a downpour and everything that Aqa Jaan and his ancestors built begin to crumble around him and he is powerless to stop it. The fall of the Shah and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini destroy the established order of the house of the mosque. The world turns upside down: Shahbal backs the Islamic revolution, while Aqa Jaan’s other nephew, Nosrat, a westernised film-maker, becomes a member of Khomeini’s inner circle. The characters you thought you knew become totally unpredictable, gentle becomes callous and kind becomes cruel.

As the Persians say, ‘our story is over, but the crow still hasn’t reached its nest’.

Rewa’s take on things: I was drawn to this novel because of the photo on the cover. The little boy just screamed of culture, history and running through the saffron-smelling streets of the bazaar. I must say, initially I found the story a bit confusing because there were so many characters weaving in and out, so many names to remember, so many Imam’s whose stories drew in the crowd etc. I found it difficult to keep up. I picked up this novel to read about 3 weeks ago but put it down to read “Never Let Me Go” and “Let Me In”. I finally returned to it last week and finished it over the weekend (I was too excited by my new Kindle and reading stories on there). By the time I returned to it, I had sort of lost the cadence of the story and just wanted it all to be over (sorry Abdolah :-S). The story only really starts to spice up when Shabal smuggles a television set into the house. I found this quite interesting as the t.v. set in my opinion symbolises the West and after its entry, things start to go topsy turvy, just as Qodsi predicted.  

My favourite character by far was Aqa Jaan as I think will be the case with most readers. I found him to be honourable, compassionate and all in all a good man. After the death of his son Jawad, you felt like being his best friend – poor man! In this complex novel, while things around him are changing, Aqa Jaan and the house of the mosque remain unchanged and it is interesting to see how it pans out as they try to resist both the influences of the West and the clutches of Islamic fundamentalism.

 For all the ebb and flow in my interest levels, I was grateful for its many offerings. For a start, I was totally ignorant to the Iranian revolution. You see wannabe-cool people saying “peace in the middle east”, throwing up lame peace signs without stopping to think of the meaning behind it and what it meant. I got to know a bit about what it was like for Iranian denizens living under the rule of the Westernised shah and then the fanatic rule of the Ayatollah. How your neighbour could easily become your enemy after listening to the Ayatollah’s aphoristic-filled frenzied speech. I also got to read some beautiful sulahs that were extracted from the Quoran. My wonderful boyfriend is muslim and though I got to know a bit more about the basics of Islam and the messages of peace that it seeks to perpetuate, this was the first time I had ever had any sort of emotional connection with it. It was alsi a great insight into how people can be brainwashed by the fundamentalist ideologies of one man.

 In summary, I would describe the novel as enlightening. For me, it was most certainly ‘putdownable’ but I am grateful to Abdolah for giving me the insight into why the beautiful religion of Islam is so lionized (when practised as intended). Needless to say, while I may reach for my boyfriends english-translated Quoran to learn a bit more about those poetic sulahs, I will not be donning a chador anytime soon…