Help, help! See what this drunkard wants from me. Do you think the city has no laws? I’ll turn you over to the police right now. Police!”

Entrance doors opened one by one. People gathered around them and the crowd grew continually larger. Hajji’s face turned red. The veins on his forehead and neck stood out. He was well known in the bazaar. A crowd had built to look at them, and the woman, who had covered her face tightly with her chador, was shouting, “Police!”

Everything went dark and dim before Hajji’s eyes. Then he took a step back, and then stepped forwards and slapped her hard on her covered face, and said, “Don’t… don’t change your voice. I knew from the very beginning that it was you. Tomorrow… Tomorrow I’ll divorce you. Now you’ve taken to leaving the house without bothering to get permission? Do you want to disgrace me? Shameless woman, now don’t make me say more in front of these people. You people be my witness. I’m going to divorce this woman tomorrow – I’ve been suspicious of her for some time, but I always restrained myself. I was holding myself back, but now I’ve had all I can take. You be my witness, my wife has thrown away her honour. Tomorrow… you, tomorrow!…”

The woman, who was facing the people, said, “You cowards! Why don’t you say anything? You let this good-for-nothing man lay hands on someone else’s wife in the middle of the street? If Mashadi Hosein the moneylender were here he would show all of you. Even if I only live one more day I’ll take such revenge that a dog would be better off. Isn’t there anyone to tell this man to mind his own business? Who is he to associate with human beings? Go away. You’d better know who you’re dealing with. Now I’m going to make you really regret it! Police!…”

Two or three mediators appeared and took Hajji aside. At this point a policeman arrived. The people stepped back. Hajji and the woman in the white-trimmed chador set out for police headquarters, along with two or three witnesses and mediators. On the way each of them stated his case to the policeman. People followed them to see how the business would turn out. Hajji, dripping with sweat, was walking next to the policeman in front of the people, and now he began to have doubts. He looked carefully and saw that the woman’s buckled shoes and her stockings were different from his wife’s. The identification she was showing the policeman was all right, too. She was the wife of Mashadi Hosein the moneylender, whom he knew.