Un Souvenir d'Événements

The Architect

May 1844

It had been nine years since the fair had left the Mazandaran province behind and I had swiftly entered into my nineteenth year.

From time to time the nameless boy would pass through my dreams or unconscious thoughts, haunting me with his memory. Guilt would rest upon my conscience for hours after he came to mind. I would think of him still locked behind those bars, being whipped and goodness knows what else, and I would find myself taking the blame for it. In many ways it was the loss of his freedom that pushed me to working for the Shah, amongst other things.

At seventeen, I was working for the police, doing what I could to ensure the safety of the people residing in the area. At nineteen, I had proven myself enough to move up through the ranks and became a commanding officer. By the time I was twenty, I was a part of the royal guard which allowed me to work more closely with the Shah and the rest of the royal family.

I worked unlike any other officer there, and adored the job I had. It didn't take me long to earn different positions within the guard, and quite soon I became one of the Shah's most trusted. Being close to the Shah was a dangerous business, anyone knew that, but I knew that I had nothing to fear.

It still brings a warm smile to my lips to this day when I think of my mother's reaction to hearing this piece of news. She had stared at me when I first walked through her doors and told her. She had then hit my arm, not harshly, and told me that I was lying. I remember laughing and shaking my head and watching her expression change from disbelief to astonishment to pride in a matter of seconds before she enveloped me into a tight hug, laughing. It's one of the reasons I like the job, I love to see my mother smile like that, and unlike her other children who now live far away, Earl being a Doctor and Octavia often spending time with her lover, I am perhaps the only one of her children she sees regularly. To make my mother proud and potentially save the lives of others, or at the very least improve them, is something I adore doing.

It is the guilt I feel for letting that young boy go though that causes me to work twice as hard as before, as if it in some ways makes up for his loss of freedom and- as I thought at that point- his loss of life.

I by now had my own small house on the other side of town. It was nothing special, in fact it had been on the cheaper side due to its ramshackle exterior and dilapidated appearance, but I was happy to renovate it, for the house wasn't what I had spent the money on- it was the view. One look out of the windows at the back of the house gave a breathtaking view of the Caspian Sea and an utterly priceless seat to watch the sunset each and every night.

I spent my spare time bringing the house up to a good standard, repairing its peeled and cracked walls and floors, purchasing new furnishings such as a small stove, a bed and a few rugs amongst other things until finally I had a place to call home. At the end of a long day, provided I wasn't working at night or in another province or country, I would sit and watch the sky turn from a soft sapphire to a gentle gold and then a radiant ruby. Each colour would merge so beautifully into the next, making the sky above dance with a spectrum of fantastical colours and shades as the magnificent honey coloured orb took her rest for the night and her counterpart, the ever faithful moon, with her waxen, milky colour, would take to the sky to nestle amongst the glimmering stars.

It would last for thirty minutes, perhaps longer in the Summer months, but if I had the opportunity, I would never fail to watch this wonder play out before my eyes as I felt the sea breeze against my face and listened to the faint cries of birds as they flew overhead. I took this time to clear my mind of the events of the day and reflect upon myself and where I stood in the world. I was twenty one, had one of the highest positions in the royal guard, my own home and a good income. I knew of people in their forties or fifties that were still trying to make this kind of living and in many ways it made me feel guilty.