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all the colors and had clipped the wool ends smooth. His sense of discomforthad gone. The sun patch touched the center of the floor and was on the verge of becoming a perfect square. Jamshid dressed. At any minute the moazzin would begin calling the faithful to the noon prayer.
    Mullah Torbati walked in the door.
    â€œSalaam alaikum, Jamshid,” the mullah said. Jamshid’s eyes went at once to the mullah’s henna-stained fingernails. The hand seemed to blur, as if a red beak were about to take shape. He looked back to the mullah’s face.
    â€œSalaam alaikum, Mullah Torbati,” Jamshid said. A wave of revulsion surged up in him, but he resolved to hold his peace until he was more in control of himself.
    â€œI have come to speak with you,” the mullah said, “of your daughter.” His voice was high-pitched and rasping, and he spoke with grave, insinuating authority.
    â€œAh, my daughter . . .” Jamshid mumbled.
    â€œYou asked me to occupy myself over your daughter, dosh Jamshid.” The mullah called him by the slang for brother used between underworld fraternals. “I, who give myself in the service of God, am asked by a lowly repairer of rugs to find a match for his daughter. Mind you, I accept to do this. But to be truthful I have to tell you it is a difficult case . . . a very difficult case . . .” He paused to let his words seep in. Jamshid began to tremble.
    â€œ Very difficult . . .” the man of God continued. “A case my conscience had, yes, a scruple or two about accepting, a case only my devotion to good works and my friendly feelings toward you, brother Jamshid, finally persuaded me to undertake . . .” Now a placating tone came into the rasp. “A little extra contribution from you to the crippled and the poor . . .” he gestured deprecatingly, “could make all the difference . . . I might then, God willing, locate a candidate, pious, hardworking . . .”
    â€œ Very? . . .” said Jamshid.
    The mullah’s face lit up in a hideous smile. “Eh, brother Jamshid, so you know all about it?” The mullah stepped forward and his smile grew worse. Jamshid stepped back against the table. The sunpatch was absolutely perfect now. On the other side of it the black-robed, pale-headed figure shimmered like a bird. The voice rasped on. Jamshid could hardly make out what it was saying. “Of course you do. Who doesn’t? I myself have tried, naturally, to ignore the ugly stories. Young men, after all, boast and invent, I know that. Nevertheless, nothing makes it harder to marry off a girl than a bit of gossip, even if not one word be true . . .” The mullah’s expression now changed. His voice grew suddenly solicitous. “Ah, dosh, I see I have upset you.” He stepped forward again, his arm extended. The red-beaked hand lit up as it entered the falling sunlight. “Oh, mind you, the case isn’t hopeless, not at all,” Torbati continued, with soothing unction in his tone. “You have me as your friend. I shall not allow them to slander the girl. Why just last night, in the coffee house, I shut up an ignorant dog of a mason . . .”
    The hand opened suddenly as if it had caught fire. Jamshid took up the shears, stepped forward, and drove them with all his force into the mullah’s breast. The mullah staggered, then fell backwards. He fell on his back in the sunpatch, which at once stretched grotesquely out of shape. The shears had gone in up to the hilt, and the handles protruded like a bow-knot tied on the breast bone.
    Jamshid squatted down and looked at the body. He still saw the mullah alive. He saw his head turned to one side, nodding a little, as it did whenever the holy man mouthed sage advice. He could not help seeing the mullah as a little boy lying by the side of a pool. A nightingale was perched on the boy’s breast, singing of the life in paradise. The poolof the man’s blood