The King Read online

  Also by Kader Abdolah

  The House of the Mosque

  My Father’s Notebook

  THE KING

  Kader Abdolah

  Translated from the Dutch

  by Nancy Forest-Flier

  Published in Great Britain in 2014 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  www.canongate.tv

  Copyright © Kader Abdolah, 2011

  English translation copyright © Nancy Forest-Flier, 2014

  Map copyright © Joanna Dingley

  The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted

  First published as De Koning in the Netherlands in 2011 by De Geus BV, Post office box 1878, 4801 BW Breda

  This digital edition first published by Canongate Books in 2013

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  ISBN 9780857862952

  eISBN 9780857862983

  Dedicated to the two most distinguished Persian prime ministers of the late nineteenth century:

  Mirza Abolghasem Ghaemmagham Farahani

  and

  Mirza Tagi Khan Amir Kabir

  Contents

  Also by Kader Abdolah

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  List of Main Characters

  Map

  Introduction

  1. The Kings

  2. Prince Naser

  3. The Harem

  4. The Grand Vizier

  5. Mahdolia, the Mother

  6. Sheikh Aqasi

  7. Herat

  8. Sharmin the Cat

  9. The Brothers

  10. Taj, the Daughter of the Shah

  11. The Cannon

  12. The Reforms

  13. The Russians

  14. The Spring Festival

  15. The New Army

  16. The Russians Seek Contact

  17. The Albaloo Garden

  18. Fear

  19. The Ayatollah Who Committed Treason

  20. Mourning

  21. The Báb

  22. The Cats

  23. A Secret Message

  24. The Print Shop

  25. An Historical Decision

  26. Isa Khan

  27. Supernatural Forces

  28. The Invasion

  29. A Deathly Silence

  30. England’s Surprise Move

  31. The Woman

  32. The Country Prays for the Persian Gulf

  33. The Chronicler

  34. The Documents

  35. Fagri

  36. In the Palace

  37. The Black Blanket

  38. The Silence

  39. Malijak

  40. The Telegraph Service

  41. Import and Export

  42. Resistance

  43. Jamal Khan

  44. The Leader

  45. Mirzaye Shirazi

  46. The Letter

  47. The Hookahs

  48. Claiming Sanctuary

  49. The Journey

  50. The Light

  51. The Travelogue

  52. The Constitution

  53. The Journey Back

  54. Cable Complaints

  55. In the Bazaar

  56. The Ayatollahs

  57. The Embassy

  58. An Ultimatum

  59. On the Chessboard

  60. Majles

  61. Electricity

  62. The Law

  63. The Shah Has His Picture Taken

  64. Taj Olsultan

  Note from the Author

  Note from the Translator

  The Main Characters

  The shah

  Mahdolia, mother of the shah

  Taj Olsultan, daughter of the shah

  Mirza Kabir, the grand vizier, the prime minister

  Sheikh Aqasi, the shah’s spiritual vizier

  Jamal Khan, leader of the resistance group

  Mirza Reza, Jamal Khan’s right-hand man

  Introduction

  In the tea houses of Persia, tales of the ancient kings have been the constant fare of storytellers for the last thousand years. The storytellers played fast and loose with chronology and gave their fantasy free rein so the history they depicted would be strong and colourful. They relocated events, made the occasional omission and sometimes added a thing or two.

  They were elaborating on the narrative art that had been perfected by the great medieval Persian storytellers. When the Persian Empire fell fourteen centuries ago, however, the stories also came to an end. Persian pride was dealt a fatal blow.

  But then life brought forth the poet Ferdowsi. Ferdowsi wrote a great book called the Shahnameh, or The Tales of the Kings. In order to cover the vast number of events that had taken place in the former kingdom, Ferdowsi created the hero Rostam. He had Rostam live for about nine hundred years, thereby rescuing the nation’s lost heritage from oblivion.

  The teller of this story is following in that poet’s footsteps.

  1. The Kings

  In the beginning was the Cow, and the Cow was with God, who bore the name Ahura Mazda.

  The Cow did not yet produce milk. Ahura Mazda blessed the Cow, saying, ‘We have appointed no one to have dominion over you. We have created you for those who care for the four-footed beasts and for those who tend their pastures.’

  A few thousand years later, life brought forth the man Kayumars. One evening, as Kayumars was standing near his cave, he looked up at the stars and the moon, casting their light on the cattle and people in the never-ending pastures. ‘Someone should take command of this mystery,’ he thought.

  As he was standing once again near the mouth of his cave on a sunny afternoon, dark clouds appeared without warning and torrential rain began to fall. Churning rivers destroyed the pastures and swept away people and cattle alike.

  ‘Someone should take command of the rivers,’ Kayumars thought.

  On another day he saw the men fighting and beating each other to death with sticks. He saw that the women were afraid and the children were crying, and he said to himself, ‘Someone should take command of those men, and protect the women and children.’

  One morning, just as the sun was coming up, the women and their children came to him and gave him a crown of young branches and fragrant blossoms. He put the crown on his head, stretched out his arms to the sky and spoke the following words: ‘Ahura Mazda! Grant me your strength, that I might take command of everything that is motionless and everything that moves upon the earth.’

  Then he went down from the mountain.

  Kayumars reigned for seven hundred years. Many kings came after him. One of them was Astyages, the king of the Medes and ruler over the Persians. Astyages had a dream that a grapevine grew out of the belly of his daughter Mandane, casting a shadow over the whole world. He asked his dream interpreters what this could mean. They said that his daughter, who was the wife of a prince of the subjected Persians, would bear a son who would topple the king from his throne.

  Astyages ordered that as soon as his daughter gave birth to a son, the child be put to death. But the child, who had been named Cyrus, was secreted away to be raised by a shepherd. Later, when Cyrus was fully grown, he killed Astyages and became the new king.

  Cyrus conquered the whole world during his reign. He left behind a clay tablet bearing the following words written in cuneiform script: ‘I am Cyrus, king of the world, great king, mighty king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters.

  ‘All the kings who sit upon thrones, from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea, and those who live in districts far off, and the kings of the West who dwell in tents, all of them brought their heavy tribut
e before me and in Babylon they kissed my feet.’

  Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, succeeded his father. After Cambyses there were three more kings until Darius the Third came to power. He established a strong empire on which the sun never set, and he built a network of new roads that brought together all the corners of his kingdom. He then decided to conquer Greece. Commanding an army of Indians, Ethiopians, Moschians, Thracians, Kissians and Assyrians, he entered the harbour of Athens.

  Greece was terrified by his divine presence. The Greeks knew they could never win the war, but the gods were on their side. Defying all expectations, they broke the invincible army of the Persians and the king fled.

  The flight of Darius the Third was an embarrassment to the gods of the East. They would sooner have seen him fall in battle, be taken prisoner or be hacked to pieces – anything but fleeing. There is an old saying that perfectly sums up what Darius did: a dead lion is still a lion, a wounded lion is a lion too, and a captured lion in a cage is a lion nonetheless. But a lion that flees from his enemy is not a lion.

  After this the gods turned their backs on the kings of Persia and the decline of the empire began.

  Later Alexander the Great dealt a staggering blow to the Persian Empire. He set all the palaces on fire and plundered the vast royal coffers. Then he left for India to subjugate that land as well.

  A few centuries after this the Muhammadans, with their freshly written Quran, descended on the weakened Persian Empire. They managed to seize power in three weeks. The deposed king, Yazdegerd, mounted his horse and galloped to the farthest eastern border, to Herat. There he planned to revive his disintegrated army and to drive the Arabs from his land. Deep in the night, the exhausted king sought rest at a mill. The miller strangled him in his sleep and stole his royal robes and jewels. Thus the great Persian Empire was brought to an end by a miller.

  Later still Genghis Khan journeyed from east to west, laying such waste to the land of the Persians that nothing remained of its former glory. It wasn’t until the Safavids came to power that Persia underwent a revival, but it was short-lived. The land fell into decline. The tribes fought each other for power.

  At the beginning of the nineteenth century one of those tribes succeeded in gaining control.

  This story is about one king of that tribe: Prince Naser.

  2. Prince Naser

  Once upon a time there was a Persian prince who later on, after he had become king, went to visit Paris.

  While meeting with a group of French businessmen he was introduced to the engineer Gustave Eiffel. No one suggested they go and see the great iron tower, however, since neither the city council nor the people of Paris were particularly happy with that useless pile of scrap.

  The prince’s official name was Naser Muhammad Fatali Mozafar. These were the first names of his father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather and his great-great-grandfather.

  His mother, Mahdolia, was a powerful woman.

  The prince had 374 brothers, for his father had married over 1,200 wives over the course of his long life – 1,235 to be exact.

  Tehran had become the capital of the country during the reign of the prince’s grandfather. Before that it had been a large village at the foot of the Alborz Mountains. In no time at all it had grown into a city of magnificent palaces, with the bazaar at its vibrant heart.

  In the northern part of the city there were princes living in exquisite country estates, while in the centre wealthy merchants had built spacious houses for their large families. The rest of the inhabitants worked for the merchants in the bazaar or they had little shops or workplaces where they busied themselves with handicrafts. There was also a mass of unemployed people who had left their villages and come to Tehran to seek their fortune.

  At that time Persia was bounded by Russia to the north and India to the east. To the south was the Persian Gulf, where the British sailed their big ships to India and back.

  The country was wedged between two great powers. Now that the old king was dead and a new king was about to ascend the throne, both Russia and England were trying to wrest some of the power for themselves.

  Although the late king had 375 sons, only eight of them were of any consequence. These were the sons whose mothers were from the same tribe as the king. In keeping with tradition the king had appointed each of these eight sons wāli, governor, of the most important districts. The crown prince was always the wāli of Tabriz.

  Prince Naser was the crown prince. His mother Mahdolia was the cousin of the late king and had been his favourite wife and closest kin. Accordingly she enjoyed special status in the royal household.

  Following tradition the crown prince resided in Tabriz. This city, which lay close to the Russian border, was the second most important in the country.

  On his deathbed the king had arranged for both Russia and England to recognise and support the crown prince as his heir. After the king’s death the Russians – with hundreds of horses and coaches – would accompany the crown prince from Tabriz to Tehran, where his coronation was to take place. This caused great irritation among the British. They too wanted to play a prominent role in the transfer of power.

  Prince Naser was an adult when he became shah and he had acquired sufficient life experience, but the real power lay in the hands of his capable vizier, Mirza Kabir. So the vizier arranged for a British army brigade to escort the prince from the city of Qazvin to Tehran. This seemed to satisfy the British embassy. Word got around that England would cover the ceremonial costs as a gesture. In an elaborate and elegant ritual held in Golestan Palace, the prince placed his father’s crown on his own head, ascended the throne and was given the official title of Shah Naser. The Russian and British representatives in Tehran congratulated him and personally presented him with gifts from Moscow and London.

  The festivities in Tehran continued for forty days. The bazaar was decorated and the army musicians played day and night in the bazaar square with great enthusiasm. Many tents were erected in the middle of the city where people could come and eat.

  While the shah made merry, Mirza Kabir governed the country. On the forty-first day after the coronation the vizier went to the palace to discuss the most important affairs of state with the shah. At the end of a long talk he alerted the shah to one burning issue.

  ‘The British and the Russians may have reached an agreement with your late father to support you, but they are also supporting your brothers in an effort to promote their interests in India.’

  ‘Which brothers?’ asked the shah anxiously.

  ‘All seven. The brothers have risen up in revolt. They have declared their independence. The three brothers who are governing the border regions – Mozafar Khan on the Russian border, Muhammad Khan and Jafar Khan on the borders with Afghanistan and India – have established open contact with the British. The country is in danger of splitting apart.’

  ‘What is the nature of this support?’

  ‘The Russians and the British are providing them with money and weapons.’

  ‘Traitors!’ cried the shah.

  The vizier urged him, as commander-in-chief of the army, to give the order to crush all pockets of resistance, ruthlessly and without delay. After Shah Naser had signed the order the vizier bowed to his king, put the paper in his leather bag and walked to the inner courtyard where his horse was saddled and waiting for him.

  Now that the long period of festivities had come to an end the shah was finally able to rest. He withdrew to the official sleeping quarters, where a special bed had been prepared, one in which all the kings of his tribe had spent their nights.

  3. The Harem

  The new king had inherited a ponderous legacy from his father. The country was in dire straits: the treasury was empty, the army was poorly equipped, and the population was largely illiterate and living in poverty and uncertainty. And always there was a threat of war on the border with India, where the British were in control.

  These were the issues the shah wou
ld have to deal with during his reign, but he didn’t know where to begin and he preferred to leave it all to his vizier. Mirza Kabir did have a plan. It was a grand plan for which he needed the shah’s consent. But as long as the shah was busy with his own affairs, the vizier was free to make whatever preparations had to be made in order to implement his reforms and set the country on the road to growth.

  The king’s first concern was the housing of his wives. His father had kept more than twelve hundred wives in his harem, but Shah Naser had only 230. They had already been travelling for two weeks to get from the Russian border city of Tabriz to Tehran.

  The shah received Khwajeh Bashi, his harem’s overseer. This man’s father had been a faithful servant of the deceased king, and when his son was still a child he’d had him castrated to enable him to work in the harem as a eunuch later on. Once the boy was grown the old king sent him to Tabriz to serve in the harem of the crown prince. His loyalty later earned him the title ‘Khwajeh’, a high royal distinction for a eunuch.

  Khwajeh Bashi received his instructions directly from the shah. After the shah he was second in command in the harem, where his word was law. He took care of all the women’s needs, and knew all there was to know about their bodies and their secrets. None of the women were allowed to take a single step outside the harem without his permission. It was Khwajeh Bashi himself who guarded the entrance. The shah was able to get to his bedroom from the harem by means of a special passageway.

  Khwajeh Bashi had now been summoned by the shah to report on the new accommodations. The shah was standing in the middle of the hall of mirrors when his chamberlain, a taciturn man in a long, tight-fitting black coat, asked permission to admit the harem overseer. The shah nodded.

  Khwajeh Bashi had an ugly, sallow, hairless face as a result of the castration. The fact that he plucked his eyebrows did not improve his looks. He wore a filthy, dark blue coat, from which he was inseparable, and a white, unwashed scarf. The shah accepted his stench and distasteful appearance because it was the only way to keep the women away from him. Under his arm he carried a stick for keeping impertinent women in line. The shah allowed him to keep hold of the stick while standing in the royal presence.