The King Read online

  Much to the shock and joy of the carpet weavers the shah entered the factory with a train of guards and attendants. The shah was moved. Here he was, in one of the vizier’s own dreams. An operation like this was unprecedented in Persia. There was a beautiful gate leading to a classical enclosed garden with several ponds, around which were rooms where the workers wove carpets.

  The shah stopped at the entrance to one of the workrooms. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Inside were hundreds of girls and young women, sitting side by side, knotting carpets on looms. Up until then the carpets had been made by women in their own homes out in the villages, but it had never occurred to anyone to gather the women together. The shah had the urge to reach into his pocket and toss out a handful of coins, but he realised this custom would be out of place here.

  At first the women didn’t know he was the shah, but even so, having a strange man among them was quite unusual. And he must be a very important man to have such a retinue. Suddenly someone whispered his name. A tense silence fell. The women didn’t dare look up. They remained seated and stared at the carpets in front of them. The shah walked past the unfinished carpets and glanced at the women. A lump rose in this throat and his eyes began to burn. Then suddenly he turned and went outside.

  The next day the shah decided to go deer hunting in the mountains with his guards. The mountains of Farahan were the habitat of mighty wild stags who were no easy prey. Their colouration was the same as the stones’, and they hid behind the rocks as soon as they heard a strange sound.

  The hunters had spent half the day climbing around Mount Marzejaran and hadn’t encountered a single stag. They’d probably have to content themselves with a couple of pheasants and a few wild ducks. The shah was a good shot. He brought down two large pheasants, which increased his desire to climb further and to reach the top of the mountain. After seven pheasants and nine wild ducks the group returned, fully satisfied, to enjoy a delicious kebab of fresh meat.

  On the way back they spied a solitary stag. The shah motioned to his guards not to stir. He kept a close eye on the animal with his binoculars. Moving cautiously he picked up his gun and took aim. The stag stood with his ears cocked in the direction of the hunting party as the shah pulled the trigger. The stag started and momentarily lost his balance, so it looked as if he had been hit. But he recovered immediately, turned and bounded away. The shah released two more shots at the stag and set out in pursuit. The stag changed direction and ran into the woods.

  The shah galloped to the spot where he had seen the stag disappear, and his fellow hunters heard one last shot. The shah could go no further on horseback. He dismounted and ran among the trees, the horse’s reins in his hand. There was the stag, a short distance away, looking to see if the shah was still coming after him. Impatiently the shah shot, but he missed again. Refusing to let himself be beaten by such a beast, he jumped on his horse and rode to the rocks in order to head him off. Sweating and out of breath he reached the foot of the mountain, but there was no trace of the stag.

  The shah was superstitious, and he was convinced that he had not crossed paths with this stag by accident. He had shot and missed five times, which seldom happened. In the old Persian tales, deer, stags and gazelles led the kings on mysterious adventures, but this stag was serving a higher purpose.

  Because he was covered in sweat he wanted to keep moving. He was thirsty, and in the distance he saw a village. As he rode past the trees he heard a child crying in the bushes. He brought his horse to a halt and peered in. There he saw a dirty little boy, about seven years of age, standing in the bushes with bare feet.

  ‘What’s wrong? Why are you crying?’

  The scantily clad boy couldn’t see very well, or so it seemed. His eyes were oddly placed, too close together. His ears were larger than normal, and he was clutching a little bird to his chest with both hands.

  The shah smiled and got off his horse. The little boy stopped crying and looked over the shah’s head with his strange eyes.

  ‘What are you doing here? Do you live in that house?’ asked the shah, nodding towards a simple mud hut further down the road.

  The boy didn’t answer.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  He didn’t respond to this question either. Did he not understand the shah’s language, or was he deaf?

  ‘That’s a lovely little bird you have there. What’s his name?’

  ‘Malijek,’ said the boy.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Malijek,’ he said again.

  The shah laughed heartily, for the boy had taken the dialect word for wild sparrow – ‘malij’ – and turned it into a diminutive: ‘Malijek’.

  ‘Splendid! You’ve come up with a delightful new word. We’ll have to include it in one of our poems. Malijek, lovely, very good.’

  He took a sugar cube from his trouser pocket and put it in the boy’s mouth. Sucking on the sweet the boy grabbed the shah by the hand. It moved the shah, evoking a familiar feeling within him, and he gently stroked the boy’s hair. The boy pressed his head against his leg, as Sharmin had always done.

  ‘You’re a sweet little boy,’ said the shah. ‘It’s going to be dark soon. You have to go home, and we have to leave as well.’

  As he began walking back to his horse the boy followed him. ‘No, Malijek, don’t follow me. Go home.’

  But the boy said, ‘Malijek, Malijek, Malijek!’

  The shah looked at him and smiled. ‘We like you. Come, we’ll take you home with us.’ He picked the boy up and put him on his saddle.

  At that moment a girl’s voice cried out, ‘Give me my brother back!’

  The bushes moved and out stepped a young woman with large, wild, black eyes and tangled hair. The shah took a step towards her, but she turned and ran away.

  ‘Girl! Come here, and take your brother with you!’

  Her long green skirt covered with red flowers, her bare feet in the wild grass, the fear in her eyes and her undaunted voice: all this intrigued the shah. He put the boy down in front of the mud hut. ‘Go inside and ask your sister to bring us a bowl of water.’ But the boy wouldn’t move.

  The shah mounted his horse resolutely. The hunting party had found him by this time and were riding towards him. The little boy began to cry. An older man came out of the hut. Seeing the horsemen at the door, he suspected that this was an important person. He bowed subserviently and pulled the boy away.

  The girl walked up to the shah with a bowl of water. He took the water and looked into the bowl with surprise. ‘What is this? Why is the water so filthy?’

  ‘It’s not filthy. I put broken sugar cane in it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you take the cane out?’

  ‘You’re all sweaty and the water is cold. You’re thirsty. If you drink the water all at once you’ll get sick. You must drink slowly.’

  The shah drank the sweetened water, looking at the girl as he did so. Then he slid a gold coin into the bowl.

  ‘Let’s go!’ he said, and he set the horse in motion. The little boy came running after him, screaming. The shah stopped and the boy grabbed his boot and clung to it. Then it occurred to him: he was in Farahan, the region of the vizier. A stag had led him here, to this mud hut. All this had meaning. He called for one of his guards to come and stand beside him. ‘We’re taking this boy with us. The girl, too.’

  The guard rode back to the house, dismounted, talked with the peasant, pressed a sack of gold coins into his hands and was given permission to take his daughter and son back to the palace. The peasant spoke quietly with his wife, who looked at the shah with astonishment and bowed. She walked up to her daughter, talked to her, and kissed her on the forehead and on the eyes. A mule was fetched from the stable for the girl and her brother to ride on as part of the shah’s retinue.

  Five days later, back in the palace, the shah sent the girl to the harem. He replaced the ‘e’ in Malijek with an ‘a’ so the name would sound better. Then the shah instructed the chamberlain
to give the boy a bath.

  ‘He’s filling the empty place left by Sharmin, and his name is Malijak.’

  40. The Telegraph Service

  Malijak became the shah’s pet. His sister cared for the boy and was given a separate room with the servants, which she shared with her brother. During meals Malijak was allowed to sit on the floor next to the shah, just where Sharmin used to sit. At first the women took pity on Malijak and treated him kindly. But before a year had passed the child became troublesome. He hit the other children and pestered the women of the harem. No one dared say anything, and the shah let Malijak do whatever he liked. He poured out his heart to the boy.

  Malijak ate more than was good for him and soon became big and fat. The undernourished child had disappeared. The servants kept out of his way, and the women of the harem popped sugar cubes in his mouth whenever he unexpectedly made an appearance. The boy always wore exactly the same clothes as the shah: the same jacket, the same boots and the same hat. In the evening Malijak played in the shah’s company until it was time for him to go to bed.

  The stories about Malijak spread across the land. You never knew what was true and what was false. It was said that whenever Malijak began to cry because he missed his mother and father, the shah would get down on all fours like a donkey and give the boy a ride around the hall of mirrors.

  No one ever saw the shah without his tall cylindrical hat, but it was said that Malijak was allowed to grab the shah’s hat and play with it. The child was always dirty and he stank. He was afraid of water and never let anyone wash him.

  ‘The shah washes him himself in a big tub,’ people said. ‘And he cuts his hair with a pair of scissors, since Malijak doesn’t even let his own sister touch his hair.’

  It was said that the shah didn’t want Malijak to learn to read and write. Education was unnecessary because he regarded the boy as a pet. The only thing the shah taught him was to play a good game of chess so he could keep the shah amused.

  Malijak also liked to play tricks on Sheikh Aqasi. The shah enjoyed it whenever anyone teased the sheikh, and Malijak quickly caught on. As soon as the sheikh came into the room Malijak would run up to him, hang on his clothes and search his pockets for sweets. He loosened the scarf that Sheikh Aqasi used as a belt and ran through the room with it. The poor man would have to chase him to get his scarf back – but carefully, so his trousers wouldn’t fall down. The shah enjoyed this immensely and laughed out loud, and his pleasure egged Malijak on.

  The shah felt good when Sheikh Aqasi was around. By getting rid of the vizier he had the freedom to be himself again. He had always felt inferior to the vizier, and the words of his mother echoed in his head: ‘You act like the vizier’s errand boy.’

  With Sheikh Aqasi the roles were reversed. Now Sheikh Aqasi was the errand boy, and that gave the shah a tremendous sense of satisfaction. He could make decisions on his own.

  There was only one thing that kept the shah from being fully himself: his mother. With her he was powerless. After all, you can’t send your mother home, you can’t sack her and you can’t kill her. With his mother the shah would just have to be patient.

  Now that Sheikh Aqasi was vizier, England had more room to manoeuvre, although he was not an easy man to work with. He was not a trustworthy partner. To maintain firmer control over developments in the country, London decided to replace its ambassador in Tehran with the gifted politician Sir John Malcolm. He was fascinated by Persian history and he spoke reasonably good Persian. He knew that the country’s coffers were empty and that the shah’s personal expenses were inordinately high.

  At his official introduction to the shah Sir John made a good impression from the minute he walked in. He presented the shah with a hunting rifle, and the shah in turn invited him to go hunting.

  Both men had a feel for language, and both loved poetry. During one of Sir John’s tea visits to the palace the shah entrusted the ambassador with one of his poems:

  O wretched heart, I hear thy piteous groan,

  Since thou must pay for what the eyes have done,

  For had mine eyes not gazed on love’s sweet face

  How could love by an innocent heart be known?

  ‘It is a most regal poem,’ Sir John had remarked.

  One of the first things Sir John arranged for the shah was to cancel the construction of the domestic telegraph system. London had resisted the plan from the beginning, and Sir John promised the shah a monthly bonus in exchange for dropping it.

  To avoid any appearance of bribery he replaced the word ‘bonus’ with ‘tax’, thereby obliging England to pay a monthly telegraph tax to the shah. The shah beamed with happiness. He was being given a large sum of money, right out of the blue. It was as if God were rewarding him for his deeds.

  Sir John Malcolm realised that without the cooperation of the elite, England would not be able to maintain its position. So he invited the influential princes to the embassy and asked them for their support. He gave them all positions in the national telegraph scheme, which existed only on paper, and arranged monthly salaries for them.

  This enabled England to make more headway with the activities arising from the plans it had agreed on with the vizier concerning the telegraph line to India. Several thousand men from the countryside were put to work chopping down trees, and hundreds of young men from Tehran learned how to install telegraph poles and cables. Experienced masons from throughout the land were called on to build scores of telegraph offices along the India line.

  The shah had hoped that by scrapping the national telegraph system his subjects would be cut off from news of the latest developments. But this was far too simplistic. The merchants who travelled abroad kept coming back with impressive tales of new products, companies, cities, squares, bridges and newspapers. Wherever the shah went he heard people talking about these things. Even the royal circles were all abuzz.

  The princes tried to add prestige and panache to their conversations by peppering them with the latest English and French terminology. Everyone was trying to give others the impression that they had seen or heard something new.

  While travelling to Isfahan for a working visit the shah happened upon a group of Persian men in blue work clothes who were installing cables and insulators on telegraph poles. He saw policemen at the Isfahan gate walking about in uniforms that were unfamiliar to him. He was not aware of the existence of these officers, which surprised him. Upon enquiring he was told they weren’t policemen at all but guards for the telegraph offices then under construction.

  Curious, he spent some time visiting a company where the cables were cut to measure and insulators were fixed to iron bars. The country was changing before his very eyes. It distressed him, and he remembered how often the murdered vizier had told him he ought to go to France or England to see the industrial developments there first-hand. He had always dismissed the idea. How could he have travelled with an easy mind when the fate of Herat was hanging in the balance, and when people were lying in wait, ready to seize power from him?

  During his visit to the villages around Isfahan he noticed that the villagers were gathering round the telegraph poles and debating with each other. How could a handful of poles and a few cables cause such a commotion?

  ‘It’s a miracle. They put your words in the cable, and in a flash it gets sent to the other side of the world.’

  ‘What words do they send?’

  ‘English words, I think, or Russian ones.’

  ‘What about Persian words, then?’

  ‘I don’t think it works with Persian.’

  ‘It’s orders from the king of England. He says something and then they send it out to the whole world through these cables.’

  ‘Can our king use the cables, too?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’re not for us. The cables belong to the British. The shah has only leased out the land to them to put their poles in.’

  The peasan
ts admired the shah for his wisdom, and the shah made it seem as if he was riding along the telegraph route to inspect the operations in person.

  When it came to the telegraph system Sheikh Aqasi was of the same mind as the shah’s mother.

  ‘The British have laid more than two thousand kilometres of cable across our country,’ she said. ‘They’ve chopped down thousands of trees to make telegraph poles. Are they doing this for our benefit? No, they’re marching down our back in order to reach India faster. Why are we letting them do this? I asked this question once, and I’ll keep on asking it until I get an answer.’

  ‘Mother, you’re forgetting that England was in possession of the south. We had to negotiate. You have to see this collaboration on the telegraph project as a symbol of the changing times,’ said the shah, and he ended the discussion.

  The cables were laid with incredible speed. The British had gas lanterns, which meant that the work could go on all night. When people got up in the morning they saw that the workers were already hundreds of poles further along.

  When the telegraph headquarters in Tehran was finished, Sir John Malcolm asked the shah to officiate at the opening. The shah was extremely pleased with the invitation. He rode to the ceremony with his attendants and his cannon. A group of Indian army musicians welcomed him with a jolly victory march. Sir John received the shah, took from his inside pocket a piece of chocolate wrapped in gold paper, and gave it to Malijak.

  The entrance to the headquarters was decorated with Persian wall tapestries as well as British flags. Beneath the admiring glances of the distinguished guests, Sir John gave a speech in Persian in which he praised the shah for his exceptional cooperation and his friendship with the British royal family. He handed the shah a pair of scissors on a gold tray and invited him to cut the ribbon. This was followed by a tour through the building and past the telegraph equipment.