I swear I’ll go, I’ll go and take sanctuary. Right now. Right now.’

“She said so much that I finally felt infuriated. Everything went dark before my eyes. As we were sitting at supper, I picked up the dishes and threw them into the yard. It was evening. We got up and went together to Sheik Mehdi and in his presence I divorced my wife three times.* He shook his head. The next day I was sorry, but what was the use, when being sorry wouldn’t help and my wife was forbidden to me? For several days I prowled around the streets and the bazaar like a madman. I was so distracted that if an acquaintance ran into me, I couldn’t return his greeting.

“I was never happy again after that. I couldn’t forget her, even for a minute. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I couldn’t bear to be in the house: the walls cursed me. For two months I was ill in bed. All the time I was delirious I kept calling her name. When I began to recover, it was obvious that I could have had a hundred girls if I was interested. But she was something else. Finally I resolved that no matter what it took, I would marry her again. The time during which she couldn’t remarry came to an end. I tried everything, but I saw it wasn’t any use. I sold everything I had, even the junk: I got together eighteen tomans. There wasn’t any other choice except to find a legalizer, someone who would marry my wife and then divorce her, so that after the one hundred day waiting period, I could remarry her.

“There was a clownish good-for-nothing grocer in our neigh­bourhood. Even if seven dogs licked his face, it wouldn’t get clean. He was the kind who would cut off someone’s head for an onion. I went and arranged it with him so that he would marry Robabeh, then divorce her, and I would pay all the expenses plus five tomans. And he accepted. One shouldn’t be fooled by people – that bastard, that good-for-nothing…”

Shahbaz, pale, hid his face in his hands and said, “He was a grocer? What was his name? What kind of grocer was he? What neighbour­hood was he from? No… No… Nothing like that could happen.”

But Mirza Yadollah was so involved in what he was saying, and the past events had become so vivid to him, that he didn’t stop.

“That damn grocer married my wife. You don’t know how hard I took it. A woman who had been mine for three years. If someone had mentioned her name I would have torn him apart. Think of it: now, with my own help, she had to become the wife of that damned illiterate grocer.