The King Read online

  ‘So do we,’ he responded immediately. ‘We also have many wives.’

  ‘I know from reliable sources that he is not a good man. He is hot-tempered and he beats his wives.’

  ‘He will not beat you, and if he does I will have him hung.’

  ‘Father, I don’t love him,’ she pleaded.

  ‘Now you’ve gone too far,’ replied the shah sharply. ‘Stop this yammering. Those French books have deluded you with their ideas about marriage. It’s not about you. It’s about our tribe. You do it for your homeland. Be careful you don’t bring down our wrath upon your own head.’

  After this reprimand from the shah a group of old, experienced women from the tribe paid a visit to Taj Olsultan to prepare her to fulfil her obligation. They managed to talk her into going to see her father to offer her apologies.

  The shah kissed her on the head and said happily, ‘Now it’s time for a magnificent ashpazan.’ Ashpazan was a word that the shah himself had thought up. It meant ‘the communal preparation of a thick Persian soup’.

  The shah loved soup. He always looked for a reason to organise an ashpazan. The women of the harem were happy when the shah announced that an ashpazan was in the making. They saw it as a sign that the shah was in an excellent mood, and because it was a domestic feast it also created a pleasant atmosphere in the harem for a number of weeks. Quarrels and difficulties were set aside in order to satisfy the shah’s desires.

  Usually they cooked the soup for the shah and their own children, and gave the rest to the palace servants and guards. But this time the shah wanted to pull out all the stops. He wanted to share the soup with the poor of the city as a sacrifice to protect the marriage of his daughter from the Evil One.

  On the day of the ashpazan the shah entered the harem early. Just outside the palace a large tent had been set up, and people of the city, all of whom had brought along bowls or pans, fought for a place. In the back garden of the harem twenty large pots had been placed over fires in two rows. The fragrance of the soup filled the air. Everyone was hard at work cleaning vegetables, slicing meat and adding just the right herbs. During the ashpazan the women laughed, danced, sang and joked with each other. The shah’s attention added to their pleasure. He complimented his wives on their beautiful jewellery and caressed them.

  Taj Olsultan had put on her most festive clothing and spent most of her time with the children. Although all the women were jealous of her they knew she wasn’t happy. The shah had invited a group of female musicians to cheer her up. When the musicians entered, playing their instruments as they walked, Taj beamed. Motioning the musicians to stop, the shah turned to the women and said, ‘Ladies, soon we’re going to celebrate a great feast. Do everything that needs to be done and see that you’re beautifully dressed.’

  At his sign the musicians raised their instruments once again. The shah kissed his daughter and walked with her to the pots of soup, blessing each one with a handful of fresh vegetables.

  The shah sat down on his couch and was offered a glass of tea and a hookah. He put two sugar cubes in his mouth, took a sip of tea and began to smoke. A bowl of soup was handed to him. He tasted a couple of spoonfuls and let the women see how much he liked it.

  In the afterglow of the tea, still a bit dizzy from the hookah and sleepy from the gentle sun, he stretched out his legs and pressed his head into the pillows, preparing to take a nap. But no sooner had he dropped off than he was jolted awake by the bang of a gun. It was Malijak, who couldn’t help disturbing the peace.

  ‘Oh, you little rascal!’ cried the shah, laughing.

  Malijak always tried to get away with more when the shah was around. The sillier his behaviour the happier he made the shah. His main target was the women. They ran away screaming and threw sweets at him to distract him while the king roared with laughter, tears streaming down his face.

  At about noon, when the shah, his wives and his children had eaten enough, the women withdrew into the harem. A group of guards brought the remaining soup out to the people. The shah watched from the roof as the crowds jostled their way forward while the guards tried in vain to get them to form a queue. In all the commotion a man in the crowd pushed one of the guards against two other guards who were holding a pot of soup. The guards lost their balance, the pot fell and all the soup spilled out.

  Things got out of hand. The guards struck the people with cudgels and the people then turned on the guards, beating them over the head with pans and bowls. The big soup pots fell to the ground and suddenly flames shot up from the back of the tent. In all the chaos the head of the guards began shooting into the air. The people took to their heels and the guards chased them until peace was restored.

  The shah looked down impassively at the lucky soup, which was flowing all over the ground.

  43. Jamal Khan

  The uproar that occurred during the ashpazan worried the shah. There was no question that Jamal Khan and his pals, disguised as beggars, had been part of the crowd the day before. They had caused the unrest and they were the first to come to blows with the guards. One report stated in black and white that Jamal Khan, who was being held responsible for overturning the soup pots, had been staying in Moscow at the time of the popular uprising in Russia. He was also the one who had set the tent on fire. To find out whether such agitators were active in other cities, the shah ordered a full-scale investigation.

  There was no organised security service in the country that could monitor the behaviour of suspected opponents. The chiefs of the police forces in the big cities were told to keep an eye on anyone who had been abroad and to report on their activities. That, thought the shah, was where the danger lay.

  When the shah received the dossiers two months later he couldn’t wait to study them. Every single chief reported on the existence of a group of young men in their respective cities who were meeting on a regular basis to scrutinise the national situation. All the reports noted that at least one or two men in the group had spent some time living abroad.

  At first the shah had seen the ashpazan outburst as an isolated incident caused by poor, ignorant people, but as he read the reports he realised that this could be the prelude to a whole storm of protests. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his brow, gasping for fresh air. He did not want revolts like those in Russia to happen in his own country. He had always been afraid that the men who had studied abroad would turn against his regime. The incident of the soup pots and the recent reports only confirmed his anxiety.

  He pulled out the report on the speeches of Jamal Khan that he had received earlier but had ignored because of the excitement of his daughter’s wedding. In one of the dossiers there was a sentence about Jamal Khan that might have served as a warning to him: ‘He is a rebel who maintains contact with the leaders of all the Muslim and Indian anti-British insurgent groups from Bombay to Egypt, and he corresponds with them.’

  Without further delay he sent for the chief of the Tehran police. The shah could barely control his nerves, but he began by asking the man a couple of general questions about the city. Gradually he brought the conversation round to the soup incident.

  ‘We have read your reports, but please listen carefully now to the questions we are going to ask and give us a straightforward answer. Are you sure that Jamal Khan was there in the crowd on that particular day?’

  ‘Yes, Your Majesty. Actually … in the report … yes, yes, pretty sure,’ stammered the man.

  ‘So what you mean is no,’ barked the shah. ‘The second question: Are you sure that the man who tipped over the big pot of soup was not a beggar but a man who lived for a short time in Moscow?’

  ‘Actually, our informers … I’ve got it all in the report …’ said the man with a quavering voice in an attempt to explain.

  ‘So what you mean is no,’ repeated the shah.

  The man was as white as a sheet. He waited for the next question.

  ‘Get this Jamal Khan!’ thundered the shah. ‘Bring him here a
nd have him fall on the floor at our feet. Then we’ll see if your reports are correct.’

  When Jamal Khan came back after spending time abroad he first moved in with his parents in Tehran. He gave speeches in the mosques, which he pretended was his only activity. But secretly he was weaving a network of contacts throughout the country. It was a tedious process because he had to travel back and forth across the country himself. It took more than a year to put the right men in touch with each other. Gradually hubs were created in the big cities where the situation in the country was discussed as well as the political changes taking place in neighbouring India and Russia.

  After the order was given to arrest Jamal Khan a group of agents stormed his parents’ house in the middle of the night, but they didn’t find him there.

  The chief of police issued warnings to his men in the big cities and sent them Jamal Khan’s particulars, so suspicious characters could be arrested even before they passed through the city gates. But it was difficult to tell from the vague description exactly what the man looked like, nor did they know where they could expect to find him.

  Jamal Khan’s comrades organised the speeches for him. He would appear at the Jameh mosques unannounced, and as soon as the police showed up he would disappear into the congregation.

  At Jamal Khan’s first talk he had told the people about developments in other countries and gave examples of present-day life in the West. He underscored how backward their homeland really was.

  The people who saw and heard him for the first time were intrigued and didn’t know how to respond to his arguments. He reminded them of the prophets of ancient times who stood on hilltops and preached warnings to their people. Oddly enough many people learned fragments of his speeches by heart.

  Jamal Khan no longer operated alone. He worked with a core of six loyal men. Fath Ali Akhondzadeh was one of them. He had lived in London and had immersed himself in the English language. He was the first to write a book on the grammar of the Persian language, and in the spirit of the former vizier he preached that all the children of the country should be given the chance to learn to read and write.

  Yusef Mostashar Aldoleh had worked for a number of years in the Persian embassy in Paris, but he was dismissed because he had criticised the homeland’s ruling system as corrupt. He swapped Paris for Istanbul, where he published a Persian newspaper that he arranged to have smuggled into the homeland.

  Zeinolabedin Maraghei was the third man, an artist who had lived in Bombay and then in Rome and had immersed himself in painting. Maraghei spoke Italian and became involved in the polemics contained in the Italian newspapers. He too returned to the homeland to awaken his countrymen.

  The fourth was Haj Abdolrahim Talebof, a man from Tabriz who had always lived across the border in Russia and had studied in St Petersburg. Talebof was in close contact with the leaders of the uprisings in Moscow.

  The fifth man in the group was Mirza Reza Kermani, a remarkable personality. He was the son of an ayatollah of the city of Kerman, and his father had sent him to Iraq to be trained as an imam. There he came in contact with a group of Egyptians who were struggling against the British colonial power. He travelled to Egypt, where he met Jamal Khan. The two kept in touch and met again in Tehran. Mirza Reza had replaced his turban with a cap, which was being worn at the time by the intellectuals of the Middle East.

  The last of the group was Amir Nezam, who years later would become prime minister of the country. Everyone knew him as the young engineer who had served as the vizier’s right-hand man. It was Amir who had rescued the vizier’s wife and two young daughters after the murder, hiding them in a farm cart and fleeing with them from Tehran. After that he had laid low for a while. His new beard and moustache now rendered him unrecognisable. He returned to Tehran as a repairman, where he met Jamal Khan and began working with him.

  The two men always travelled separately, as if they had nothing to do with each other. They came together at various locations and secretly formed a committee that was opposed to the regime.

  Six months after the soup incident Jamal Khan gave a speech at the temple of the holy Abdoldawood that was of crucial importance. The speech had been planned for a special place and a special day, when thousands of pilgrims would be coming to the temple to celebrate the birth of the holy messiah Mahdi. Rumours began circulating that Jamal Khan was going to give an important address. This was undoubtedly the best place to stage such an event before a large crowd, since the inner courtyard of the shrine was off-limits to the police. According to tradition everyone within the walls of the shrine was safe – even criminals.

  The six confederates had set up a podium for Jamal Khan inside the shrine of Abdoldawood. Those who had heard the rumour tried to stand as close to the podium as they could. The crowd waited impatiently for his arrival. Suddenly there was a flurry of movement. Wearing a green scarf Jamal Khan climbed onto the podium.

  A green scarf was only worn by descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. It was the first time Jamal Khan had ever appeared in public wearing it. As soon as the people saw the green scarf they began shouting, ‘Salalah ala Muhammad wa ale Muhammad. Hail Muhammad and his descendants.’ The tension mounted. There wasn’t a single empty spot in the whole vast courtyard.

  ‘Countrymen!’ began Jamal Khan, speaking into a megaphone. ‘We have come here today to commemorate the birth of Mahdi the messiah. One day the saviour will come to deliver the world from its misery. But fellow believers, we insult him if we ourselves do nothing, if we just sit back passively and wait for the saviour to come.

  ‘Countrymen! We have rights. Men have rights, women have rights and children have rights.

  ‘People of Persia! It is your children’s God-given right to learn to read and write. The rulers of this country have denied us these rights. They treat us all like beasts.

  ‘People of Persia! I am in contact with resistance groups in neighbouring countries. Right now England is in the south of our country, searching for crude oil day and night. There are probably immense oil fields in our southern province, a fact that the British want to keep secret.

  ‘People of Persia, you may not know it, but crude oil is just as valuable as pure gold. It is the fuel that is used to keep the wheels of factory machines in motion. England has bribed the shah and the princes. Those nearest the shah are filling their pockets. They’re richer than ever, while thousands upon thousands of parents in this country aren’t even able to buy shoes for their children.’

  Because he was standing on a raised platform Jamal Khan could see a group of armed men gather just beyond the gates of the shrine. He knew they had come for him and were guarding all the exits to keep him from escaping. But he also knew that they didn’t dare come inside.

  ‘People of Persia! You have the right to bathhouses and hospitals. Not everyone can make a living from his land or his animals. You have the right to work. The only problem is that we have no industry in this country. Look around you. Here in this shrine there are hundreds of beggars, blind people, paralysed children and people who are aged and sick. We think it’s all a normal part of life, but let me tell you it doesn’t have to be this way. They can be healthy. They’re supposed to be healthy, just like the princes, just like the rich. People of Persia! The rulers of this land don’t think about you. They think only of themselves. Countrymen! Wake up!’

  He saw a policeman with a gun in his hand climb up the wall and hide behind the façade of the gate. He brought his speech to a close.

  ‘People of Persia! I must hurry. But there’s one more important announcement I want to make. Let me bring your attention to an unmarked grave,’ he shouted, pointing to a spot next to the podium. ‘That is where the vizier Mirza Kabir lies buried, killed by the shah. We have had a tombstone made, and later we want to—’

  He was unable to complete his sentence. Shots were fired, and one bullet struck a pole that was holding up the podium. The police entered the shrine. More shots were fired. People fled. Jam
al Khan tried to escape by the back of the podium, but three officers blocked his way. One of them hit him on the shoulder with a truncheon, causing him to stumble and fall. The men bound his hands behind his back, using his green scarf. They pulled him to his feet and pushed him to the gates of the shrine. Then the people turned on the police, refusing to tolerate their presence in the temple. Jamal Khan’s five comrades took advantage of the turmoil and began pounding the police with sticks, thereby allowing Jamal Khan to escape and disappear into the crowd.

  A group of armed officers forced their way into the shrine and began beating everyone with their rifle butts. Women screamed, children cried and the elderly were trampled underfoot, but the stronger pilgrims took their lives in their hands, grabbed the guns from the hands of the police and kicked them out through the gates of the shrine.

  The pilgrims were furious at the officers who had entered the shrine and had even fired shots there. With this misbehaviour they had violated a centuries-old tradition, thereby dishonouring the holy Abdoldawood. The cry ‘Allah-o-akbar!’ was released from thousands of throats.

  After a while peace and quiet returned to the temple. The pilgrims stood in a circle round the grave of the murdered vizier while an undertaker’s man recited from the Quran. The comrades of Jamal Khan solemnly placed a tombstone on the grave bearing the vizier’s name: ‘Here lies buried Mirza Kabir, vizier of great skill.’

  44. The Leader

  After the episode in the temple all suspicious meetings were closely monitored by special plain-clothes policemen to prevent more unwanted speakers from addressing the public. But since that day it was a long time before any other noteworthy incidents had took place.

  The regime’s opponents kept their heads down and seemed to have no intention of regrouping, at least not yet. Apparently they had grasped the fact that the shah would be merciless in his response if they were to disturb the peace again.