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touched Jamshid’s foot, and he got up with a start. The sunlight had been inching forward and had already started to leave the corpse. He tried to think what he must do. It was clear, he must turn himself in. He felt glad that, unlike the mosque, the police station could be reached without going through the bazaar. In case they wanted to reconstruct the crime, he would, of course, leave everything exactly as it was. He stepped across the corpse, stumbling a little on it, as he went for the door.
    At the door he stopped. Supposing they did not believe him and turned him away with scoffing laughter? He would have to make everything plain. Returning to the body, he took hold of the shears. By opening and shutting them slightly, making little silent snips down in the dead heart, he was able to loosen them. He went out with the shears in his hand. At the turning of the stairs someone was climbing. He saw the face of Akhbar the mason.
    â€œSalaam alaikum,” said Akhbar. “I have come to present my bill.” Jamshid held out the shears, so as to indicate he could not discuss the bill at this moment. Having just come in from the sunlight, Akhbar did not see well and reaching to shake hands, he touched the shears.
    â€œWhat the devil . . .?” he whispered.
    â€œNow that bill . . .” said Jamshid, momentarily confused. “Oh, yes, for the little oven? A graceful little thing . . . meek . . . a good cook . . .” Akhbar had vanished down the stairs.
    A moment later Jamshid went back into the shop. This time he fetched the black umbrella from the corner and dropped the shears into it. He saw that the pitch of sunlight had slipped almost entirely off the body and was taking on its old geometrical form again. There was something pleasing about that. The body was turning drab.
    Out in the street Jamshid could hear the loudspeaker in some minaret singing the call to prayer. It seemed a piece of good luck that he had to go to the police station, and so did not have to go to these prayers, which now seemed completely pointless. He registered the extra weight of his umbrella. Mullah Torbati, for one, he reflected, would not be at noon prayer either.

chapter four chapter four
    J amshid walked through the bright sunshine. From time to time he gave a little swing to the umbrella. School had just let out for the lunch hour and there were many children about. As a rule Jamshid did not care for children; he particularly disliked thinking of them in school, which he believed was bad for them. But now he experienced an almost giddy sympathy with these creatures who ran so freely in the sunlight. One little boy had a little girl down and was pummelling her. Jamshid, who another day might have beat them apart, merely looked on. Pretty soon they got to their feet, both of them laughing, and ran off together. They were headed home, he thought, also to surrender.
    As he walked between the mud walls, one brilliantly yellow, one soft brown, he felt he was walking through time. He had often walked down this lane, but now he saw it as the street of his childhood. At the foot of the shaded wall, with treetops lifting over it, he and his childhood friend Varoosh used to toss coins, to see whose coin would land nearest the wall. He saw Varoosh, in a slight crouch, moving his arm back and forth as he aimed his toss, a silver glitter in the crook of his forefinger, turning his head now, inhis comic way, to make some amusing remark to his friend about that skinny, guilty-looking man carrying a weighted umbrella through the sunshine.
    Just here was a jube in which he and Varoosh used to sit listening to an old darvish they had befriended recounting his marvelous travels: his adventures among the Zoroastrians on the southern deserts, who feed the corpses of their dead to the birds; his springs and autumns as doctor to the Qashqai tribe during its migrations; nights in the opium gardens of Shiraz, where a poet would recite a ghazzal of