by Amin Maalouf
On the appointed day I went off to his residence on rue Pergolèse, incapable of imagining at the time that this visit to my grandfather’s favourite cousin would be the first step of my never-ending trip in the universe of the Orient.
‘So,’ he said accosting me, ‘you are sweet Geneviève’s son. Are you not the one to whom she gave the name of Omar?’
‘Yes. Benjamin Omar.’
‘Do you know that I have held you in my arms?’
As this was the case, he was now obliged to address me familiarly. The same, however, did not apply to me when addressing him.
‘My mother has actually told me that after your escape you landed at San Francisco and took the train for the East coast. We went to New York to meet you at the station. I was two.’
‘I remember perfectly. We spoke of you, of Khayyam and of Persia and I even predicted that you would be a great orientalist.’
I shammed a little embarrassment in admitting to him that I had side-stepped his vision and that my interests were elsewhere – I was more oriented toward financial studies, foreseeing myself one day taking over the maritime construction business started by my father. Appearing to be sincerely disappointed by my choice, Rochefort set off on a lengthy plea, intermixed with the Persian Letters of Montesquieu and his famous ‘How can one be Persian?’, the adventure of the gambling-addict Marie Petit who had been received by the Shah of Persia by passing herself off as Louis XIV’s ambassador, and the story of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s cousin who ended his days as a watchmaker in Isfahan. I was only listening to the half of it. Above all I was watching him, with his voluminous and immoderate head, his protruding forehead topped by a tuft of thick wavy hair. He spoke with passion, but without emphasis and without the gesticulations which one might have expected from him having read his intense writings.
‘I am mad about Persia, although I have never set foot there,’ Rochefort declared. ‘I do not have the soul of a traveller. Had I not been banished or deported those few times I should never have left France. But times change, and the events which are taking place at the other end of the planet are affecting our lives. If I were twenty today, instead of being sixty, I should have been very tempted by an adventure in the Orient – particularly if I were called Omar!’
I felt constraint to justify my lack of interest in Khayyam. In order to do so, I had to mention the dubious nature of the Rubaiyaat, the absence of a copy which could prove their authenticity once and for all. For all that, as I was speaking, an intense glimmer came into his eyes, an exuberance which I failed to understand. Nothing in my words was supposed to provoke such excitement. Intrigued and irritated, I ended up compressing what I had to say and then falling silent quite abruptly. Rochefort questioned me enthusiastically:
‘If you were certain that such a manuscript existed, would your interest in Omar Khayyam be reborn?’
‘Naturally,’ I admitted.
‘And if I were to tell you that I have seen this manuscript of Khayyam with my own eyes, in Paris what’s more, and that I have leafed through it?’
CHAPTER 27
To say that this revelation immediately turned my life upside down would be inexact. I do not believe that I reacted the way Rochefort had presumed I would. I was both abundantly surprised and intrigued, but I was still sceptical. The man did not inspire me with unlimited confidence. How could he know that the manuscript he had leafed through was the authentic work of Khayyam? He did not know Persian and the wool might have been pulled over his eyes. For what incongruous reason would this book have been in Paris without a single orientalist reporting the fact? I did no more than utter a polite but sincere ‘Incredible!’, since it showed both the enthusiasm of the man I was speaking to and my own doubts for I was not yet ready to believe in it.
Rochefort went on:
‘I had the chance to meet an extraordinary personality, one of those beings who cross History determined to leave their imprint on the generations to come. The Sultan of Turkey fears and courts him, the Shah of Persia trembles at the mere mention of his name. He is a descendant of Muhammad, but was nonetheless chased out of Constantinople for having said, at a public conference in the presence of the greatest religious dignitaries, that the profession of the philosopher was as indispensable to humanity as that of the prophet. He is called Jamaladin. Have you heard of him?’
I could only confess my total ignorance.
‘When Egypt rose up against the English,’ Rochefort continued, ‘it was at this man’s call. All the intellectuals of the Nile Valley take their inspiration from him. They call him ‘Master’ and revere his name. However, he is not an Egyptian and has only made a short stay in that country. He was exiled to India where he managed to arouse a considerable movement of opinion. Under his influence newspapers were established and associations were formed. The Viceroy became alarmed and had Jamaladin expelled, whence he decided to settle down in Europe and he continued his incredible activity in London and then in France.’
‘He worked regularly on l’Intransigeant and we used to meet often. He presented his disciples to me – Muslims from India, Jews from Egypt and Maronites from Syria. I believe that I was his closest French friend, but certainly not the only one. Ernest Renan and Georges Clemenceau knew him well, and in England his friends were people like Lord Salisbury, Randolph Churchill or Wilfrid Blunt. A little before his death, Victor Hugo met him too.’
‘This very morning, I was in the middle of going over some notes about him which I am thinking of inserting in my memoirs.’
Rochefort took some sheets covered in minuscule writing out of a drawer and read: ‘I was introduced to an outlaw, a man famous throughout all of Islam as a reformer and a revolutionary – Sheikh Jamaladin, a man with the head of a saint. His beautiful black eyes, so gentle and yet fiery and his deep tawny beard which reached his chest gave him a particularly majestic air. He looked like a born leader. He understood French more or less although he could hardly speak it, but his ever alert intelligence easily made up for what he lacked of our language. Behind his calm and serene appearance his activity was frenetic. We soon became good friends for my spirit is instinctively that of a revolutionary and I am attracted to all freedom-fighters …’
He quickly put the sheets of paper away and then continued:
‘Jamaladin had rented a small room on the top floor of a hotel in Rue de Sèze near the Madeleine. That modest space was enough for him to edit a newspaper which went off by the bundle to India and Arabia. I only managed to wheedle my way into his den once, being curious to see what it could look like. I had invited Jamaladin to dine chez Durand and promised to go by and pick him up. I went straight up to his room. It was difficult to move around in it because of all the newspapers and books piled up to the ceiling there, some of them even covering the bed. There was a suffocating smell of cigar smoke.’
In spite of his admiration for him, he had pronounced this last phrase with a hint of distaste, which induced me to extinguish on the spot my own cigar which was an elegant Havana I had just lit. Rochefort thanked me for that with a smile and carried on:
‘After apologizing for the mess in which he was receiving me, and which, he said, was unbefitting for someone of my rank, Jamaladin showed me that day some books he was fond of – particularly that of Khayyam which was full of exquisite miniatures. He explained to me that this work was called the Samarkand Manuscript, and that it contained the quatrains which had been written in the poet’s own hand, together with a chronicle running in the margins. Above all he told me through what tortuous route the Manuscript had reached him.’
‘Good Lord!’
My pious English interjection draw a triumphal laugh out of cousin Henri. It was the proof that my cold scepticism had been swept away and that I would henceforth hang on to his every word and he lost no time in taking advantage of this.
‘Of course, I do not remember everything that Jamaladin must have said to me,’ he added cruelly. That evening we spoke mainly
of the Sudan. After that I never saw the Manuscript again but I can testify that it existed, but I am truly afraid that by now it has been lost. Everything my friend possessed was burned, destroyed or scattered around.’
‘Even the Khayyam Manuscript?’
By way of reply, Rochefort made a discouraging pout, before throwing himself into an impassioned explanation during which he made close reference to his notes:
‘When the Shah came to Europe to go to the World Fair in 1889, he suggested to Jamaladin that he returned to Persia “instead of passing the rest of his life in the midst of infidels”, giving him to understand that he would install him in high office. The exile set some conditions: that a constitution be promulgated, that elections be organized, that equality be recognized by law ‘as in civilized countries’ and that the hugh concessions granted to the foreign powers be abolished. It must be stated that in this area the situation of Persia had for years been the butt of our cartoonist: the Russians, who already had a monopoly on road-building, had just taken over military training. He had formed a brigade of Cossacks, the best equipped in the Persian army, which was directly commanded by officers of the Tsar; by way of compensation, the English had obtained, for a song, the right to exploit all the country’s mineral and forest resources as well as to manage the banking system; as for the Austrians – they had control of the postal services. In demanding that the monarch put an end to royal absolutism and to the foreign concessions, Jamaladin was convinced that he would receive a rebuff. However, to his great surprise, the Shah accepted all his conditions and promised to open up the country to modernisation.
‘Jamaladin thus went and settled in Persia, as part of the sovereign’s entourage. The sovereign, at the start, showed him all due respect and went as far as to introduce him with great ceremony to the women of his harem. However, the reforms were put off. As for a constitution, the religious chiefs persuaded that Shah that it would be against the Law of God, and courtiers foresaw that elections would allow their absolute authority to be challenged and that they would end up like Louis XVI. The foreign concessions? Far from abolishing those which existed, the monarch, ever short of money, was to contract new ones: for the modest sum of fifteen thousand pounds sterling he granted an English company the monopoly of Persian tobacco – not only its export but also domestic consumption. In a country where every man, every woman and a good number of children were addicted to the pleasures of the cigarette or the pipe, this was a most profitable business.
‘Before news of this last renunciation of Persian rights was announced in Teheran, pamphlets were distributed in secret advising the Shah to rescind his decision. A copy was even placed in the monarch’s bedroom, and he suspected Jamaladin of being the author. The reformer, who was by now worried, decided to go into a state of passive rebellion. This is a custom practised in Persia: when a person fears for his liberty or his life, he withdraws to an old sanctuary near Teheran, locks himself in there and receives visitors to whom he lists his grievances. No one is allowed to cross through the doorway to lay hold of him. That is what Jamaladin did and thereby provoked a surge of people. Thousands of men streaming from all corners of Persia to hear him.
‘In a state of vexation the Shah gave orders for him to be dislodged. It was reported that he hesitated a long time before committing this felony, but his vizir, who was educated in Europe moreover, convinced him that Jamaladin had no right to claim sanctuary since he was only a philosopher and a notorious infidel. Armed soldiers broke into the holy place, cleared a passage through the numerous visitors and seized Jamaladin, whom they stripped of everything he possessed before dragging him half-naked to the border.
‘That day, in the sanctuary, the Samarkand Manuscript was lost under the boots of the Shah’s soldiers.’
Without breaking his flow, Rochefort stood up, leant against the wall and crossed his arms in his favourite pose.
‘Jamaladin was alive but he was ill and above all shocked that so many visitors, who had been listening to him enthusiastically, could have stood meekly by while he was publicly humiliated. He drew some curious conclusions from this – the man who had spent his life denouncing the obscurantism of certain clerics, who had been a regular visitor at the masonic lodges of Egypt, France and Turkey – he made up his mind to exploit the last weapon he had to make the Shah bend no matter what the consequences.
‘So he wrote a long letter to the chief of the Persian clerics, asking him to use his authority to prevent the monarch from selling off the property of the Muslims to the infidels. What happened then, you know from the newspapers.’
I remember that the American press indeed reported that the great pontiff of the Shiites had circulated an astounding proclamation: ‘Any person who consumes tobacco places himself thereby in a state of rebellion against the Mahdi, may God speed his arrival.’ Overnight no Persian lit a single cigarette. The pipes, the famous kalyans were shelved or smashed and tobacco merchants closed up shop. Amongst the wives of the Shah the ban was strictly observed. The monarch panicked, and wrote a letter to the religious chief accusing him of irresponsibility ‘since he was not concerned with the grave consequences which being deprived of tobacco could have on the health of Muslims’. However, the boycott lasted and was accompanied by stormy demonstrations in Teheran, Tabriz and Isfahan. The concession had to be annulled.
‘Meanwhile,’ Rochefort carried on, ‘Jamaladin had left for England. I met him there and had long talks with him; he seemed to be distraught and could only say, time and again: “We must bring the Shah down”. He was a wounded and humiliated man who could think of nothing but avenging himself – all the more so since the monarch, the target of his hatred, had written an angry letter to Lord Salisbury: “We expelled this man because he was working against the interests of England, and where should he take refuge? In London.” Officially the Shah was informed that Great Britain was a free country and that no law could be invoked to suppress a person’s freedom of expression. In private, the Shah was promised that they would seek legal means of restraining Jamaladin’s activity and he found himself being asked to cut short his stay – which made him decide to leave for Constantinople, but with death in his heart.’
‘Is that where he is now?’
‘Yes. I am told that he is deeply dejected. The Sultan has allotted him fine quarters where he can receive friends and disciples, but he is forbidden to leave the country and lives under constant and tight surveillance.’
CHAPTER 28
It was a sumptuous prison with wide-open doors: a palace of wood and marble on the hill of Yildiz, near the residence of the grand vizir; hot meals were delivered straight from the Sultan’s kitchens; visitors came one after another, crossing through a metal gate and walking down an alley before leaving their shoes outside the door. The Master’s voice boomed from above with its grating syllables and closed vowels, he could be heard castigating Persia and the Shah and announcing the evils which would come to pass.
I tried to make myself unobtrusive, being the foreigner – an American with a small foreign hat, small foreign footsteps and my foreign concerns who made the trip from Paris to Constantinople, a trip of seventy hours by train across three empires, in order to ask after a manuscript, an old poetry book, a pathetic bundle of papers in a tumultuous Orient.
A servant came up to me. He made an Ottoman bow, spoke a few words of greeting in French but asked not the slight question. Everyone came here for the same reason, to meet the Master, to hear the Master or to spy on the Master. I was invited to wait in the huge sitting room.
As I entered, I notice the silhouette of a woman. This induced me to lower my eyes; I had been told too much about the country’s customs to walk forward beaming and cheery with my hand outstretched. I simply mumbled a few words and touched my hat. I had already repaired to the other side of the room from where she was sitting to settle myself into an English-style armchair. I looked along the carpet and my glance came up against the visitors shoes, then trave
lled up her blue and gold dress to her knees, her bust, her neck and her veil. Strangely however, it was not the barrier of a veil that I came across but that of an unveiled face, of eyes which met mine, and a smile. I looked quickly down at the ground, over the carpet again, swept over the edge of the tiling and then went over inexorably towards her again, like a cork coming up to the surface of the water. Over her hair she wore a fine silk kerchief which could be pulled down over her face should a stranger appear. However, the stranger was there and her veil was still drawn back.
This time she was looking into the distance, offering me her profile to contemplate and her skin of such pure complexion. If sweetness had a colour, it would be hers. My temples were throbbing with happiness. My cheeks were damp and my hands cold. God, she was beautiful – my first image of the Orient – a woman such as only the desert poet knew how to praise: her face was the sun, they would have said, her hair the protecting shadow, her eyes fountains of cool water, her body the most slender of palm-trees and her smile a mirage.
Could I speak to her? In what way? Could I cup my hands to my mouth so that she would hear me on the other side of the room? Should I stand up and walk over to her? Sit down in an armchair which was closer to her and risk seeing her smile evaporate and her veil drop like a blade? Our eyes met again, and then parted as if in jest when the servant came and interrupted us – which he did a first time to offer me tea and cigarettes. A moment later he bowed to the ground to speak to her in Turkish. I watched her stand up, veil herself and give him a small leather bag to carry. He went quickly towards the exit and she followed him.
