The Collected Stories

At this there was chatter from the French party. The tour was scheduled to be conducted, points of interest were scheduled to be indicated. The tour was costing three hundred and seventy-five rials.

‘O?, ladies-gentlemen,’ Hafiz said. ‘Ladies-gentlemen come by me to commence informations. Other ladies- gentlemen come to microbus in one hour.’

An hour was a long time in the Friday Mosque. Normanton wandered away from it, through dusty crowded lanes, into market-places where letter-writers slept on their stools, waiting for illiterates with troubles. In hot, bright sunshine peasants with produce to sell bargained with deft-witted shopkeepers. Crouched on the dust, cobblers made shoes: on a wooden chair a man was shaved beneath a tree. Other men drank sherbet, arguing as vigorously as the heat allowed. Veiled women hurried, pausing to prod entrails at butchers’ stalls or to finger rice.

‘You’re off the tourist track, Mr Normanton.’

Her white high-heeled sandals were covered with dust. She looked tired.

‘So are you,’ he said.

‘I’m glad I ran into you. I wanted to ask how much that dress was.’

She pointed at a limp blue dress hanging on a stall. It was difficult when a woman on her own asked the price of something in this part of the world, she explained. She knew about that from living in Bombay.

He asked the stall-holder how much the dress was, but it turned out to be too expensive, although to Normanton it seemed cheap. The stall-holder followed them along the street offering to reduce the price, saying he had other goods, bags, lengths of cotton, pictures on ivory, all beautiful workmanship, all cheap bargains. Normanton told him to go away.

‘Do you live in Bombay?’ He wondered if she perhaps was Indian, brought up in London, or half-caste.

‘Yes, I live in Bombay. And sometimes in England.’

It was the statement of a woman not at all like Iris Smith: it suggested a grandeur, a certain style, beauty, and some riches.

‘I’ve never been in Bombay,’ he said.

‘Life can be good enough there. The social life’s not bad.’

They had arrived back at the Friday Mosque.

‘You’ve seen all this?’ He gestured towards it.

She said she had, but he had the feeling that she hadn’t bothered much with the mosque. He couldn’t think what had drawn her to Isfahan.

‘I love travelling,’ she said.

The French party were already established again in the minibus, all except the man with the moving camera. They were talking loudly among themselves, complaining about Hafiz and Chaharbagh Tours. The German couple arrived, their sunburn pinker after their exertions. Hafiz arrived with the two American girls. He was laughing, beginning to flirt with them.

‘So,’ he said in the minibus, ‘we commence the Shaking Minarets. Two minarets able to shake,’ he read, ‘eight kilometres outside the city. Very famous, ladies- gentlemen, very curious.’

The driver started the bus, but the French party shrilly protested, declaring that the man with the moving camera had been left behind. ‘Ou est-ce qu’il est?’ a woman in red cried.

‘I will tell you a Persian joke,’ Hafiz said to the American girls. A Persian student commences at a party –’

‘Attention!’ the woman in red cried.

‘Imbecile!’ the professor shouted at Hafiz.

Hafiz smiled at them. He did not understand their trouble, he said, while they continued to shout at him. Slowly he took his spectacles off and wiped a sheen of dust from them. ‘So a Persian student commences at a party,’ he began again.

‘I think you’ve left someone behind,’ Normanton said. ‘The man with the moving camera.’

The driver of the minibus laughed and then Hafiz, realizing his error, laughed also. He sat down on a seat beside the American girls and laughed unrestrainedly, beating his knees with a fist and flashing his very white teeth. The driver reversed the minibus, with his finger on the horn. ‘Bad man!’ Hafiz said to the Frenchman when he climbed into the bus, laughing again. ‘Heh, heh, heh,’ he cried, and the driver and the American girls laughed also.

‘Il est fou!’ one of the French party muttered crossly. ‘Incroyable!’

Normanton glanced across the minibus and discovered that Iris Smith, amused by all this foreign emotion, was already glancing at him. He smiled at her and she smiled back.

Hafiz paid two men to climb into the shaking minarets and shake them. The Frenchman took moving pictures of this motion. Hafiz announced that the mausoleum of a hermit was located near by. He pointed at the view from the roof where they stood. He read slowly from one of his leaflets, informing them that the view was fantastic. ‘At the party,’ he said to the American girls, ‘the student watches an aeroplane on the breast of a beautiful girl. “Why watch you my aeroplane?” the girl commences. “Is it you like my aeroplane?” “It is not the aeroplane which I like,” the student commences. “It is the aeroplane’s airport which I like.” That is a Persian joke.’

It was excessively hot on the roof with the shaking minarets. Normanton had put on his linen hat. Iris Smith tied a black chiffon scarf around her head.

‘We commence to offices,’ Hafiz said. ‘This afternoon we visit Vank Church. Also curious Fire Temple.’ He consulted his leaflets. ‘An Armenian Museum. Here you can see a nice collection of old manuscripts and paintings.’