The story is set in Senejan, a small town some 160 miles South-West of Teheran, and it begins in 1969, the start of the last decade of the Shah's reign. The house is a sprawling family house in which three branches of the same family are living around the same courtyard. The senior branch is headed by Aqa Jaan, the unquestioned head of the whole family, a respected and respect-worthy carpet merchant and head of the bazaar. The other two branches are headed by the imam and the muezzin respectively. (The three are said to be cousins, but in some places of the text they appear to be brothers. The curious "chart" at the beginning of the book is not a family tree: a proper family tree would have been helpful.) The older generation of the family are (with one exception) traditionally conservative and of course religious, as is the town. As a matter of course they are opposed to the Americans and to the secularizing Shah whom they regard as America's puppet, and they revere the ayatollahs in nearby Qom; but the family is politically inactive until the next generation comes along. A young imam from Qom marries into the family. The demonstrations he organizes in Senejan are a foretaste of the events leading to the overthrow of the Shah and of the eventual ascendancy of the fanatical ayatollahs; but at that time the Shah's police still had the upper hand. The Ayatollah Khomeini is in exile in Iraq and then in France. Cinemas and television penetrate Senejan, once too religious a place for such modernization. But the Shah also has secular enemies: one member of the younger generation joins the underground left-wing opposition to the Shah.
Then, in 1979, the Iranian Revolution takes place - Abdolah gives graphic accounts of it. The left, though secular, initially supported the revolution against the Shah, but they soon become victims of the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime. Aqa Jaan's family, with members in each camp and in none, is torn apart, with murderous results. In his usual spare prose, Abdolah shows the arbitrary and ruthless violence of the new fanatical rulers in all its horror. This becomes even worse after the outbreak of the war with Iraq. On the assumption that his readers are not familiar with this period, he supplies many historical details about it (including, for example, the American hostage crisis - though in this case he places the failed rescue mission in the desert near Senejan when in fact it was between 200 and 300 miles to the South East of it. He also puts an Ayatollah Araki in charge of the mosque which had been taken away from Aqa Jaan's family, though this cannot be the Grand Ayatollah of the same name.)
There are several subplots. Particularly charming I found the portrayal, in the first half of the book, of the two "grandmothers", who are in fact not grandmothers at all, but two old ladies who have been called such because they have been much-loved servants in the family since they had been young girls.
There is also a chapter on the famous Iranian film called `The Cow', perhaps the first of many that gave an international market to Iranian films. It has always puzzled me that under such a repressive regime, at one time so hostile to the cinema, such superb films could be made. Now it seems that Khomeini himself gave `The Cow' his public blessing.
There is a curiously peaceful coda to the book. After Khomeini's death and the end of the war with Iraq, the terrors ended. The ayatollahs were still in oppressive charge, but "there were no more executions and no more assassinations. Everyone was tired. Everyone needed a rest." The people in the mountain village who had once made the carpets for Aqa Jaan, who had refused him all help during the reign of terror, now warmly and apologetically welcomed him back. Some deep family griefs are assuaged. Symbolically, a garden blooms in a harsh landscape, watered by an underground aquifer.
The book gives an excellent insight into Iranian society and history. The author clearly has respectful affection for the Islamic religion, but he is also a radical exile from Iran who had been as much opposed to the Shah as he was of dictatorship of the ayatollahs. He now lives in the Netherlands, and wrote the book in Dutch. It has been translated into English by Susan Massotty, in a simple, clear, unadorned and sometimes minimalist style.
At the end of the book, Aqa Jaan receives a letter from one member of the family who has emigrated to the Netherlands:
"For the last few years I've spent all my time committing my stories to paper ... I write in another language now... Actually writing has been my salvation. It was the only way I could express the suffering and pain that you and our country have undergone..."
