The King Page 17

  His voice was drowned by all the chaos.

  ‘Ladies! It is I, the vizier. Allow me to come and help you.’

  No one heard him. Were the women so upset because something had happened to the shah? Had he dropped dead? Had he been murdered by one of his wives? Was Khwajeh Bashi trying to keep the women inside in order to prevent the dreadful report from leaking out?

  The vizier could no longer control himself. With his hands held over his eyes he went in.

  ‘Ladies? Where is the shah? What is going on here?’

  A deadly silence fell. The women were surprised by the presence of the vizier. All of them were unveiled, without their niqabs, and they were in a state of total confusion.

  ‘Cover your heads!’ shouted Khwajeh Bashi.

  The servants of the harem went to fetch the chadors and passed them out. When the women had covered themselves the vizier pulled his hands away from his eyes and asked once more what had upset them so.

  The women burst out crying as if they were seeing their older brother or father, to whom they could pour out their hearts. The shah, the queen mother and the princes all despised the vizier, but he was beloved of the shah’s wives. They knew he loved his own wife and that he wrote her letters when he was travelling. All of them knew the beginning of that one letter by heart:

  My love,

  Always be home when I return,

  or I am forced to go from room to room,

  calling your name until you come.

  ‘Everyone is ill, everyone in the harem is going to die,’ cried one of the women through her sobs.

  ‘It’s a plague,’ cried another. ‘The harem has been struck by the plague.’

  ‘What did you say?’ asked the vizier, who thought he hadn’t heard properly.

  ‘Plague has broken out in the harem.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ he said, refusing to believe it.

  ‘A woman died tonight,’ one of the women bawled. ‘She’s still lying in her bed.’

  ‘A plague has broken out in the city,’ cried another woman. ‘Everyone knows about it but us.’

  ‘It’s not true. I’ve just come from the city, and there is no plague. Don’t be afraid. They’re just trying to scare you. The woman in the harem probably died of something else.’

  ‘There are many women sick in bed and the shah has run away. He’s taken his mother, his cat and his daughter with him and has left us all here to die.’

  The vizier was shocked. He spoke privately with Khwajeh Bashi and came to understand what may have taken place in the palace. The shah’s court physician had probably diagnosed plague among the sick women of the harem. He had then informed the shah in confidence, after which the shah had decided to go to his country house, where it was safe.

  ‘It’s going to be all right, ladies. I’ll take care of everything,’ said the vizier, and he turned to Khwajeh Bashi. ‘Remove the dead woman from the harem and gather all the sick women together in the big room on the other side of the palace. I’ll notify the doctor immediately.’ Then he said to the women, ‘The doors of the harem will be kept open. You may go to the garden for fresh air. Clean everything in the bathrooms and in all the other chambers. Wash your children and yourselves.’

  The vizier’s fatherly advice did the women good. Peace and quiet were restored. The body of the dead woman was taken away immediately and the sick women were examined by the doctor. The women launched a major clean-up operation in the harem, and the children began running freely through the palace gardens again.

  The vizier was disappointed by the shah’s irresponsible behaviour. He didn’t believe that plague had broken out in Tehran, and he suspected that the resulting panic had caused the women of the harem to imagine things to be worse than they really were. He mounted his horse and rode towards the city of Qazvin, to a small village in the mountains where the shah had gone to stay.

  The country air was good for him. His anger cooled and he even began to sympathise with the shah for going away. Something quite serious must be going on.

  He left the last hills behind him and rode through the open fields. At one point he noticed people lying on a path along the riverbank. At first he thought they were farmers resting in the grass, but when he got closer he couldn’t believe his eyes. They were sick people who had been left there to die, thrown out of the village by others who were afraid of the plague.

  The vizier was dumbfounded. Everywhere, men and women were lying on the ground like dead beasts. He saw mothers wrap their dead children in shrouds. He saw parents fleeing with their children to the mountains. Powerless to do anything he walked past three dead women whose bodies lay half in the river, their legs bare. The gravediggers tossed quicklime over the corpses to keep the wild dogs away.

  Darkness had just fallen when he rode into the village and reached the castle. He rode straight to the gate but was stopped by the guards.

  ‘His Majesty is not receiving anyone,’ said the head of the guards.

  ‘Will you please tell the shah that the vizier is standing at the gate?’

  ‘Even the guards aren’t allowed in,’ declared the man.

  ‘You can shout through the hatch that I’m standing here at the gate,’ said the vizier, trying to control his rage.

  ‘His Majesty does not want to see anyone. Not anyone. He gave me this order in person,’ said the man resolutely.

  The vizier saw himself standing at the gate. What was he doing there, anyway? What could the shah do about a plague that apparently had stricken the entire district? If there was anyone who could do anything at all, it was the vizier. Why come here like a mendicant, begging the shah to speak to him?

  He decided to turn back and try to preserve Tehran from calamity. Perhaps he ought to ask the Russians and the British for help. He would go straight to the British ambassador to warn him. The ambassador could ask London to send British army nurses to Tehran by way of Herat. That was their only hope.

  The vizier wanted to go to Tehran, but the thought of a carefree shah in his safe castle made him angry. The king had a responsibility for his people.

  He began to scream, ‘Shah! The vizier has come! The vizier has come! The vizier has come!’

  The guards tried to chase him away, but to no avail.

  The vizier shouted even louder, ‘Shah! The vizier has come! The vizier! The vizier!’

  The head of the guards picked up his rifle, but he didn’t dare aim it at the vizier. The vizier in turn picked up his own rifle and began shooting it into the air, repeating over and over again, ‘The vizier has come!’

  There was chaos at the gate. The horses neighed, the watchdogs barked and the guards tried to keep the vizier from coming any further.

  Inside the castle the shah was listening indecisively. He heard the tapping of his mother’s walking stick. Mahdolia stood behind him and said, ‘What are you waiting for? Kill him now. He’s become too powerful.’

  At that very moment the gate of the castle opened. Taj Olsultan, the daughter of the shah, went outside with a torch in her hand. She walked calmly up to the vizier and said, ‘Salam, Vizier. Is there something I can do for you?’

  ‘No, no, my daughter. I am glad the princess is in good health, that is enough for me,’ said the vizier.

  ‘I heard you had been wounded in the south. I was worried, but now I’m glad to see you again. How are you, Vizier? I have thought of you very often.’

  Taj’s words surprised the vizier. His anger cooled. He looked at her standing there in the dark beside the gate, part of her face visible in the light of the torch. The vizier saw that Taj had grown and that, although she was still young, she acted like a real grown-up princess.

  ‘I thank you for your heart-warming words, my daughter. I am doing better. You have become an extraordinary princess.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Taj, and she smiled.

  ‘Go back inside, and take good care of yourself,’ said the vizier. He tipped his hat, bowed and spurred his
horse to a gallop.

  37. The Black Blanket

  Tehran was stricken by the plague, but England extended a helping hand to the vizier just in time. They sent Indian nurses to the villages around Tehran to cope with the epidemic. Russian army doctors also came over, pitching tents on the bazaar squares in the northern cities.

  Thousands of people died in Tehran and the surrounding countryside. In the harem three more women succumbed. Every Friday the populace went to the Jameh mosque to ask for God’s help, under the imam’s direction. And their prayers were heard, for winter came earlier than expected and it was so cold that the rocks crumbled in the mountains. It snowed for one whole week, and the snow froze. The weather was so severe that it was impossible to know whether people were dying from the cold or the plague.

  As if that weren’t enough famine caught them unawares. Experience teaches that when hunger strikes you no longer think about death. The hunger was so intense that everyone forgot about the plague.

  There was no sign of the plague in the southern part of the country. The British were working on the harbour in the Persian Gulf, and in the city of Masjed Soleyman they were laying the foundation for the first major oil installation in the Middle East.

  All this time the shah stayed in his castle and sent his orders to Tehran from there. Just before a thick layer of snow threatened to cut the shah off from the outside world, he returned to the palace. He avoided the harem and refused to allow anyone to talk about the tragic deaths.

  On one of those cold winter nights, when the streets were deserted and everyone had their windows covered over with blankets, the shah summoned the vizier. The shah had had no personal contact with him since that one evening at the castle before the invasion of Herat. A messenger had been conveying messages back and forth between them. It was strange that the shah wanted to see him just now, in this cold and so late at night.

  ‘I have a bad feeling about this. It would be better if you didn’t go alone,’ said his wife, Fagri.

  ‘Don’t worry. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Listen to me. Think of something. Say you’ll drop in tomorrow.’

  ‘I can’t do that. The shah needs me now. Otherwise he wouldn’t have summoned me at this late hour.’

  ‘God help us,’ wept Fagri silently.

  ‘Vizier-koshan’ was a well-known hallmark of Persian history. It meant ‘kill the vizier!’ The murder of a competent vizier was not an unusual occurence in royal circles. Each vizier was fully aware that at any unexpected moment he could be killed by the king. There were also many examples of princes who had murdered a king, and of kings who had taken the lives of their sons and brothers.

  The story of Grand Vizier Hasanak was an example everyone knew about. Hasanak was popular and powerful. On one ill-fated day the sultan summoned him. Hasanak knew that he was hated among the royalty, but he never suspected that the sultan wanted to kill him. As soon as he rode into the palace grounds the gate was closed and bolted from inside. Bayhaqi, the medieval chronicler, recorded the following scene in his book:

  The next day, Hasanak the grand vizier was put on a shabby nag and taken to the gallows. He had never ridden on such a small horse before.

  The executioner wanted to blindfold him, but Hasanak refused.

  ‘Stone him!’ cried the sultan.

  But no one threw a single stone.

  ‘Hang him!’ cried the sultan.

  The executioner hung Hasanak. For seven years Hasanak hung on the gallows. The Persian sun burnt him and the east wind carried his ashes away.

  Another familiar example was the death of Grand Vizier Mirza Tagi Khan. Early one morning he went to the hamam to bathe. After his bath he sat down in the barber’s chair. The barber sharpened his razor, removed the superfluous hair from the vizier’s neck, placed the razor on his artery and severed it. He did this by order of the king.

  Fagri knew those stories, which is why she was afraid that her husband would meet the same fate.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ the vizier told his wife. He kissed her and rode to the palace.

  When he got to the gate he noticed the guards were different. He had never seen this head of the guards before. It was customary that when the vizier appeared on the square, a horn would be sounded and the head of the guards would come out and salute him. This time there was silence, and the head of the guards did not move from his post.

  Still seated on his horse he heard the sound of the bolt in the gate, which he suspected was being locked behind him. The branches of the trees bowed low under the frozen snow, the palace chimney smoked and the torches near the pond were burning. The shadow of the shah fell on the curtains of his study, as if he were spying on the vizier from the window.

  The vizier dismounted and gave the reins to a groom who was also unfamiliar to him. He was a muscular man who lacked a groom’s customary deftness.

  The vizier cautiously climbed the icy stairs to the palace entrance. Inside the corridors were dark, but a small lantern was burning in front of the door to the hall of mirrors. There was menace in the air. A voice within him urged him to turn back before it was too late, but he couldn’t turn back. The shah had seen him and was waiting for him. Instinctively he turned round, pulled the door open and was about to go outside. The man who had taken his horse away was standing at the top of the stairs.

  ‘His Majesty is waiting for you,’ he said calmly, and closed the door.

  The vizier walked back to the hall of mirrors, knocked gently on the door and called out, ‘Aga Moshir!’

  Out of the darkness came a voice: ‘Go in. The chamberlain is not here.’

  All the curtains in the hall of mirrors were closed, but the candles were burning in the chandelier. The vizier walked across the big green carpet, sat down on the pomegranate-coloured satin chair and began to massage his leg, which was acting up again.

  Every time he came here to wait for the shah he marvelled at the patterns in the carpet beneath his feet. It was one of the most beautiful carpets he had ever seen. Many thin threads of gold were woven into it, and hundreds of finely polished, colourful little jewels were worked into its floral patterns.

  No one knew exactly when the royal carpet had been crafted, but it was thought to have come from one of the Persian palaces that had been set on fire by the Muhammadans when they conquered the Persian Empire thirteen centuries before. Muhammad’s disciples had plundered all the palaces and burned them down, but one servant managed to save this carpet. This distraction helped put the vizier at ease.

  ‘The vizier was frightened for a moment,’ he said to himself. ‘This is not like you. You’re tired. Why not go back to Farahan for a week and get some rest?’

  Suddenly he heard footsteps behind the small door the chamberlain always used.

  ‘Aga Moshir!’ he shouted.

  No one responded. He went to the small door to see who it was, but the door, which was always open, was now locked. He heard someone walk away.

  ‘Aga Moshir, is that you?’

  The silence that followed filled him with fear. Something moved behind the long curtain from which the shah always made his appearance. The vizier expected the shah, but it was Sharmin, sticking her head out from underneath.

  ‘Sharmin!’ he called, greatly relieved. ‘Come, come here!’

  The cat didn’t budge. She seemed to smell that something was amiss. She stared at the vizier for a moment, then pulled her head back and disappeared. Sharmin convinced the vizier that the situation in the hall of mirrors was not as it should be. Otherwise she would have come up to him and rubbed herself against his leg.

  The vizier hesitated. Perhaps he ought to notify the shah himself: ‘Your Majesty, I’m waiting for you.’

  He walked to the curtain.

  ‘Your Majesty! Are you there?” he called again.

  Perhaps the shah wasn’t in the building yet and the vizier had been mistaken when he thought he saw the shah’s shadow. He paced back and forth through the room with hi
s hands behind his back. Something told him he had walked into a trap. His body had warned him right from the start, but he had ignored all the signs.

  What else could he have done? He couldn’t have disregarded the summons. He couldn’t have stayed at home or fled. He had to obey the shah, so he had come to the palace.

  The fact that his enemies wanted to kill him was something he always had to take into account. But he hadn’t thought they would set the trap in the hall of mirrors.

  He tried to rally his courage. Perhaps the shah was just angry at him and was trying to offend the vizier by making him wait too long. Besides, what could the shah do? When the shah’s father had asked him to be his son’s prime minister, the vizier had agreed under one condition: ‘If the crown prince swears by the Quran that he will never kill me.’

  The crown prince had laughed and said, ‘I swear by the Quran that I will never have your blood on my hands,’ at which the shah’s father had happily placed his son’s hands in those of the vizier.

  ‘Now I can die in peace,’ he said.

  The vizier was startled to recall the shah’s words. The shah hadn’t sworn that he wouldn’t kill the vizier, only that he would never have his blood on his own hands. He could leave that to others.

  The torches around the pond had been extinguished and the courtyard was pitch dark. The gate was closed and there wasn’t a guard in sight. The vizier had not been wrong. He had to save himself. He flung open the door and ran smack into the broad back of the guard, who was blocking the entrance like a brick wall.

  ‘I believe His Majesty is very busy and will probably be occupied for quite some time,’ said the vizier. ‘I’m going to prepare myself for prayer.’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere. His Majesty is waiting for you.’

  ‘It won’t take long.’

  ‘You cannot leave,’ said the guard.

  ‘I believe I am being detained?’ said the vizier with a tone of irony.