Nights of Repentance

In 1970 and 1971, I went to medical school in Mashhad. I had rented a room in a house. One night, when I had stayed up late to study for an exam, I heard a strange sound coming from the yard; the sound of someone lamenting and pleading, which was unexpected for that peaceful house. I bent down from the balcony into the yard and saw Haj Afshar, my landlord, sitting on his prayer mat, weeping in a strange way. There were still two or three hours left to morning prayer time. He was prostrating on his prayer mat, moaning and crying while repenting and asking God for relief. I went back to my room and tried to study. I couldn’t. The next day, before going to university, I saw Haj Afshar who was watering the garden flowers; there was no sign of the previous night’s weeping on his face.

Haj Afshar was tall, firm, strong, and strict. He was like commandos; like the bodyguards of Shah that the television showed. He was seventy or eighty years old but he was still strong. I had heard that he is a retired policeman but I didn’t know any more than that. He lived on the first floor and had rented out the second floor. Sometimes, when there were too many tenants, he rented out one of the rooms on the first floor too. He had built his house for tenants. The top floor had a large balcony facing several rooms. There were six of us students who slept in these rooms. Three of us were medical school students and the other three were students of other majors.

Haj Afshar charged half the normal rent but had a condition instead. He rented his rooms only to religious students and if he found out someone didn’t pray, at the end of the month, he would ask him to leave; and he wouldn’t take the lease from them either. One day, I saw one of my classmates who had moved into Haj Afshar’s house. I knew he was left-wing. I had seen him in the left-wing supporters’ mountain climbing group. In the mornings, I saw him perform a fake ablution and then leave. A few days later, he came to me and said, “Come intervene so he doesn’t kick me out. He has noticed that I don’t pray.” He knew Haj Afshar liked me very much. He had remembered. I asked my classmate, “How did he find out?”

He said, “He came behind my room door and realized that I don’t pray after performing ablution.”

I said, “Don’t waste your time. He is taking half the normal rent only because of prayers. And you’re not this kind of a person. It’s impossible for him to let you stay.”

Haj Afshar kicked him out and replaced him with another student. Haj Afshar’s house wasn’t our only bachelor pad. We lived in two houses. Our second house was one of those bachelor pads that you could always hear the sound of music and entertainment coming from. It was a place only for having fun, which was actually a cover-up. We mostly stayed in this house when we didn’t have to study for exams. We would copy cassettes and declarations. We put two cassette recorders facing each other and made copies of Dr. Shariati’s cassettes. We would copy some of the writings and declarations of Imam using carbon paper if they couldn’t be printed. We knew that the SAVAK would never become suspicious of this house. Pleasure seekers weren’t usually into politics. We spent a lot of time in that house, but the house where we were supposed to live and study in was Haj Afshar’s house. Sometimes, we went and saw that the SAVAK had come to Haj Afshar’s house, messed up our books, found nothing, and had left.

Haj Afshar didn’t have anything to do with the SAVAK. He didn’t talk about it either. He would quietly and mysteriously come and go and would tell apart the students who prayed from those who didn’t. He would never miss his prayers or fasts. He prayed midnight prayers, held mourning ceremonies, and made up missed fasts; but each night I stayed up, I saw him weeping and repenting. After a while, I realized he does this every night. He repents from midnight to dawn in the yard.

All of his tenants had heard the sound of his cries, but none of us had ever asked him about these wailings. His rapture and reserve didn’t allow us to. The next year that we were still his tenants, we got closer to each other. We would sit in the yard on some afternoons and drink tea, but he was usually quiet and didn’t get into a conversation. One day, he fell ill. I rushed him to the university hospital. I stayed beside him until he was in a stable condition. He was lying down on the bed when I gave myself the courage and asked, “Haji, you haven’t committed any sins in your lifetime. Why do you repent like this during the night?”

He said, “My sin is unforgivable.”

Then, as he was lying down, he started to recount, “In 1937, I was in charge of transporting a man from Khaaf and handing him over in Kashmar. Two of us were government officers, and there were two agents from the intelligence service. The four of us and that man were in the car, driving toward Kashmar. I didn’t know the man. He didn’t have a turban or a robe, but I knew he was a clergyman. I could tell from his face. He didn’t talk throughout the way. He was silently sitting in the back seat of the car. It was clear that the intelligence agents knew him. They treated him like a dangerous prisoner; like a prisoner who is sentenced to exile or death. Besides this, there was a sort of respect in their behaviour that was unusual. We hadn’t reached Kashmar yet that the man told us to stop for him to perform his prayers. It was afternoon. We stopped. It took a while for his prayers to finish. After his prayers, the intelligence agents said, “Haj Agha, stay here and open your fast. Then we’ll go.” I was surprised. His prayers had taken a while, but there were still two hours left to sunset; we weren’t usually allowed to stop for such a long time. We could drive to Kashmar and stop there at most half an hour later and get there for iftar. The man paused for a second and then accepted to stay there.

We stayed there until they said the night-time call for prayer. The man first performed his prayers. As soon as he stood up for prayers, the intelligence agents prepared him tea. They didn’t allow us to get near. They brewed the tea and when the man was finished praying, they placed the tea in front of him. After tea, they still made excuses for moving on. Not too long had passed since the man had sipped the tea that he fell to the ground. The intelligence agents didn’t move from their spot. We stayed there so long until the man was martyred.

It was only then that I realized they had poured poison in the teapot. The poison was probably odourless that the man had taken it so easily. We shouldn’t have kept so much distance from the intelligence agents. We shouldn’t have let them do whatever they wanted. We were the ones in charge of his transportation, not them; but they told us to stand aside. They laid the man down, wrapped him in a sheet, put him in the car, and took him. We weren’t able to do anything.

When we got back to Mashhad, we just realized that the man who was with us and was martyred was Sayyed Hasan Modarres and we hadn’t done anything for him.”

Haj Afshar started to cry when he reached this part of the account and there was nothing I could do to calm him. They were the same cries I had heard every night; the same cries I heard every night up until the time I was his tenant.