by Amin Maalouf
‘How do you know what the Sultan might have said to Jamaladin in private?’
‘Sayyid Jamaladin himself told me. He trusted me and hid nothing from me. When I was in Constantinople he treated me like his own son.’
‘If you were so well treated there why did you come back to Persia where you feared being arrested and tortured?’
‘I am one of those who believe that no leaf falls from a tree unless that has been planned and inscribed, since the beginning of time, in the Book of Destiny. It was written that I would come to Persia and would be the tool for the act which has just been carried out.’
CHAPTER 32
If those men who strolled about on Yildiz Hill, all around Jamaladin’s house, had written on their fezzes ‘Sultan’s spy’, they would not have given away any more than what the most artless of visitors took in at first glance. Perhaps, however, that was their real purpose in being there: to discourage visitors. In fact, the residence, which usually swarmed with disciples, foreign correspondents and various personages who were in town, was totally deserted on that close September day. Only the servant was there, as discreet as ever. He led me to the first floor where the Master was to be found, pensive and distant and slumped deep in a cretonne and velvet armchair.
When he saw me arrive his face lit up. He came toward me with great strides and held me to him, apologizing for the trouble he had caused and saying that he was happy that I had been able to extricate myself. I described to him my escape in the smallest detail, and how the Princess had intervened, before returning to tell him of my too brief meeting with Fazel and then with Mirza Reza. The very mention of the latter’s name irritated Jamaladin.
‘I have just been informed that he was hanged last month. May God forgive him! Naturally he knew what his fate would be and could only have been surprised by the length of time it took to execute him – more than a hundred days after the Shah’s death! Doubtless they tortured him to extract a confession.’
Jamaladin spoke slowly. He seemed to have grown weak and thin; his face which was usually so serene was beset with twitches which at times disfigured him without detracting from his magnetism. One had the impression that he was suffering, particularly when he spoke of Mirza Reza.
‘I can hardly believe it of that poor boy, whom I had looked after there in Constantinople, whose hand never stopped shaking and who seemed incapable of holding a cup of tea – that he could hold a pistol and fell the Shah with one shot. Do you not think that they might be exploiting his unbalanced mind to pin someone else’s crime on him?’
I replied by handing him the cross-examination which the Princess had copied out. He put on a slim pair of pince-nez and read and re-read it with fervour, or was it terror, or, it seemed to me from time to time, a sort of inner joy. Then he folded it up, slipped it into his pocket and proceeded to pace up and down the room. There were ten minutes of silence before he uttered this curious prayer:
‘Mirza Reza, lost child of Persia! Would that you had simply been mad, would that you had just been wise! If only you had been content to betray me or to remain faithful to me, to inspire tenderness or revulsion! How can we love or hate you? And God Himself, what will He do with you? Will He raise you up to the victims’ Paradise or relegate you to hangman’s hell?’
He came and sat down again, exhausted, with his face buried in his hands. I remained silent, and even made myself breathe more quietly. Jamaladin sat up. His voice seemed calmer and his mood more lucid.
‘The words I read are indeed Mirza Reza’s. Until now I still had my doubts, but I do not any more. He is definitely the assassin. He probably thought he was acting to avenge me. Perhaps he thought he was obeying me. However, contrary to what he believes, I never gave him an order to murder. When he came to Constantinople to tell me how he had been tortured by the Shah’s son and his cohorts his tears were flowing. Wanting to shake him out of it, I told him: “Now stop whining! People will say that you just want them to feel sorry for you, that you would even mutilate yourself so that they will feel sorry for you!” I told him an old legend: when the armies of Darius confronted those of Alexander the Great, the Greek’s counsellors brought to his attention that the troups of the Persians were much more numerous than his. Alexander kept his poise and shrugged. “My men,” he said, “fight to win. The men of Darius fight to die!”’
Jamaladin seemed to be racking his memory.
‘That is when I told Mirza Reza: “If the Shah’s son is persecuting you, destroy him, instead of destroying yourself!” Was that really a call to murder? Do you, who know Mirza Reza, really think that I could have entrusted such a mission to a madman whom a thousand people may have met here in this very house?’
I wanted to be honest.
‘You are not capable of the crime they are attributing to you, but your moral responsibility cannot be denied.’
He was touched by my frankness.
‘That I admit. Just as I admit that daily I wished that the Shah would die. But what use is it for me to defend myself. I am a condemned man.’
He went over to a small chest and took out a sheet with some fine calligraphy on it.
‘This morning I wrote my will.’
He placed the text in my hands and I read it with emotion:
‘I do not suffer from being kept prisoner. I have no fear of death being near. My only source of sorrow is having to state that I have not seen blossom the seeds I have sown. Tyranny continues to oppress the peoples of the Orient and obscurantism still stifles their freedom cry. Perhaps I would have been more successful if I had planted my seeds in the fertile soil of the people rather than in the arid soil of royal courts. And you, people of Persia, in whom I placed my greatest hopes, do not think that by eliminating a man you can win your freedom. It is the weight of secular tradition that you must dare to shake.’
‘Keep a copy of it and translate it for Henri Rochefort. L’lntransigeant is the only newspaper which still holds me innocent. The others treat me as an assassin. The whole world wants my death. Let them be reassured – I have cancer. Cancer of the jaw.’
As with every time that his resolve weakened and he complained, he tried to make up for it on the spot by giving a forced laugh of unconcern and making a learned jest.
‘Cancer, cancer, cancer,’ he repeated as if in warning. ‘In the past doctors attributed illnesses to the conjunctions of the stars, but only cancer has kept its astrological name, in all languages. The fear is still there.’
He remained pensive and melancholy for a few moments, but then hurried to carry on, in a happier vein which was blatantly affected but, for all that, more poignant.
‘I curse this cancer. Yet nothing says that it is the cancer which will kill me. The Shah is demanding my extradition: the Sultan cannot hand me over since I am still his guest, but be cannot let a regicide go unpunished. He has hated the Shah and his dynasty to no avail, plotted against him every day, but members of the brother-hood of the great of this world bolster each other against an intruder like Jamaladin. What is the solution? The Sultan will have me kill myself, and the new Shah will be comforted, since, in spite of his repeated requests for my extradition, he has no wish to stain his hands with my blood at the outset of his reign. Who will kill me? The cancer? The Shah? The Sultan? Perhaps I will never have the time to know. But you, my friend, you will know.’
He then had the gall to laugh!
In fact I never knew. The circumstances surrounding the death of the great reformer of the Orient remained a mystery. I heard the news a few months after my return to Annapolis. A notice in the 12 March 1897 edition of l’Intransigeant informed me of his death three days earlier. It was only towards the end of the summer, when the promised letter from Shireen arrived, that I heard the version of Jamaladin’s death which was current among his disciples. ‘For some months he had been suffering from raging tooth-ache,’ she wrote, ‘no doubt caused by his cancer. That day, as the pain had become unbearable, he sent his servant to the Sult
an who sent over his own dentist who listened to Jamaladin’s chest, unwrapped a syringe which he had already prepared and gave him an injection in the gums while explaining that the pain would soon die down. Hardly a few seconds passed before the Master’s jaw swelled up. Seeing him suffocating, the servant ran off to bring back the dentist, who had not yet left the house, but instead of coming back the man started to run as fast as he could towards the carriage which was waiting for him. Sayyid Jamaladin died a few minutes later. In the evening, agents of the Sultan came to take away his body, which was hurriedly washed and buried.’ The princess’s account finished, without any transition, by quoting words from Khayyam which she had carefully translated: ‘Those who have amassed so much information, who have guided us towards knowledge, are they themselves not swamped by doubt? They tell a story and then go to bed.’
As to the fate of the Manuscript, which was her purpose in writing to me, Shireen informed me in rather terse terms: ‘It was in fact amongst the murderer’s belongings. It is now with me. You may consult it at your leisure when you return to Persia.’
Return to Persia, where I had aroused so many suspicions?
CHAPTER 33
I had retained from my Persian adventure nothing but cravings. It had taken me one month to get to Teheran and three months to get out. I had spent a few days, which were both brief and numb, in its streets, having hardly had the time to breathe in the smells, or to get to know or see anything. Too many images were still calling me toward the forbidden land: my proud kalyan smoker’s sluggishness, lording it over the whisps of smoke rising from the charcoal in the copper holders; my hand closing around Shireen’s, a promise; my lips on breasts chastely offered by my mother of an evening and more than anything else, the Manuscript which awaited me lying in its guardian’s arms with its pages open.
To those who may never have contracted the obsession with the Orient, I scarcely dare mention that on Saturday at dusk I took myself out for a walk on a stretch of the Annapolis beach that I knew would be deserted, wearing a pair of Turkish slippers, my Persian robe and a lambskin kulah hat. There was no one on the beach, and immersed in my daydreams on my way back I made a detour via Compromise Road which was not at all quiet. ‘Good evening Mr Lesage,’ ‘Have a nice walk. Mr Lesage.’ ‘Good evening Mrs Baymaster, Miss Highchurch,’ the greetings rang out, ‘Good evening Reverend.’ It was the pastor’s raised eyebrows which brought me back to myself. I stopped dead in order to look contritely at myself from my chest to my feet, to feel my headgear and hurry on my way. I think I even ran, draped in my aba as if to cover my nakedness. Once home I tore off my attire, rolled it up with a gesture of finality and then tossed it angrily to the back of a broom cupboard.
I was on my guard not to do the same again, but that one walk had labelled me an eccentric – a label which doubtless would be with me for life. In England eccentrics have always been viewed sympathetically or even admiringly, as long as they had the excuse of being rich. America, in those years, was hardly ready for such behaviour; the country was approaching the turn of the century with a certain prudish reticence – perhaps not in New York or San Francisco, but certainly in my town. A French mother and a Persian hat – that was far too exotic for Annapolis.
That was the dark side, but my moment of folly also had its bright moments. It won me, on the spot, an undeserved reputation as a great explorer of the Orient. The director of the local newspaper, Matthias Webb, who had got wind of my walk, suggested that I write an article about my experience in Persia.
The last time that the name of Persia had been printed on the pages of the Annapolis Gazette and Herald was back to 1856, I believe, when a transatlantic liner, which was the pride of Cunard and the first ever metal-framed paddle-boat, collided with an iceberg. Seven sailors from our county perished. The unfortunate ship was called the Persia.
Sea-faring people do not play games with the signs of destiny. I also thought it necessary to remark in the introduction to my article that the term ‘Persia’ was incorrect, and that the Persians themselves called their country ‘Iran’ which was an abbreviation of a very ancient expression ‘Aïrania Vaedja’, meaning ‘Land of the Aryans’.
I then mentioned Omar Khayyam, the only Persian that most of my readers might have heard of, quoting one of his quatrains which was imbued with a deep scepticism. ‘Paradise and Hell. Might someone have visited these unique regions?’ It provided a useful preamble before I expounded over the course of some dense paragraphs on the numerous religions which, since the dawn of time, have prospered on Persian soil, such as Zoroastrianism, Manicheism, Sunni and Shiite Islam, Hassan Sabbah’s Ismaili variant and nearer our time, the babis, the sheikhis and the bahais. I did not omit to mentioned that our word ‘paradise’ comes originally from the Persian word ‘paradaeza’ which means ‘garden’.
Matthias Webb congratulated me on my apparent erudition, but when I become encouraged by his praise and suggested making a more regular contribution he seemed embarrassed and suddenly irritated.
‘I really would like to put you to the test, if you will promise to drop this annoying habit of peppering your text with barbarian words!’
My face betrayed my surprise and incredulity. Webb had his reasons.
‘The Gazette does not have the means to take on, permanently, a Persian specialist. However, if you agree to take charge of all the foreign news, and if you think you are capable of making distant countries accessible to our compatriots, there is a place for you on this newspaper. What your articles lose in profundity they will gain in range.’
We both managed to smile again; he offered me a peace cigar before continuing:
‘Just yesterday, abroad did not exist for us. The Orient stopped at Cape Cod. Now suddenly, under the pretext of the end of one century and the start of another, our peaceful city has been laid hold of by the world’s troubles.’
I must point out that our discussion was taking place in 1899, a little after the Spanish-American war which took our troops not only to Cuba and Puerto Rico but also the Philippines. Never before had the United States exercised its authority so far from its shores. Our victory over the dilapidated Spanish empire had cost us only two thousand four hundred dead, but in Annapolis, seat of the Naval Academy, every loss could have been that of a relative, a friend or an actual or potential fiancé; the most conservative of my fellow citizens saw in President MacKinley a dangerous adventurer.
That was not Webb’s opinion at all, but he had to pander to his readers’ phobias. To get the point over to me, this serious and greying pater-familias stood up, uttered a roar, pulled a hilarious face and curled his fingers up as if they were the claws of a monster.
‘The tough world outside is striding towards Annapolis, and your mission, Benjamin Lesage, is to reassure your compatriots.’
It was a heavy responsibility, of which I acquitted myself without too much ado. My sources of information were articles in newspapers from Paris, London and of course New York, Washington and Baltimore. Out of everything I wrote about the Boer War, the 1904-5 conflict between the Tsar and the Mikado or the troubles in Russia, I am afraid that not a single line deserves to go down in history.
It was only on the subject of Persia that my career as a journalist can be mentioned. I am proud to say that the Gazette was the first American newspaper to foresee the explosion which was going to take place and news of which was going to occupy much column space in the last months of 1906 in all the world’s newspapers. For the first, and probably the last, time articles from the Annapolis Gazette and Herald were quoted, often even reproduced verbatim in more than sixty newspapers in the South and on the East Coast.
My town and newspaper owe that much to me. And I owe it to Shireen. It was in fact thanks to her, and not to my meagre experience in Persia that I was able to understand the full extent of the events which were brewing.
I had not received anything from my princess for over seven years. If she owed me a response on the matter of
the Manuscript, she had supplied me with one which was frustrating but precise. I did not expect to hear anything more from her, which does not mean that I was not hoping to. With every mail delivery the idea ran through my mind and I looked over the envelopes for her handwriting, for a stamp with Persian writing, a number five which was shaped like a heart. I did not dread my daily disappointment, but experienced it as a homage to dreams which were still haunting me.
I have to say that at that time my family had just left Annapolis and settled in Baltimore where my father’s most important business was to be concentrated. He envisaged founding his own bank along with two of his young brothers. As for me, I had decided to stay in the house where I was born, with our old half-deaf cook, in a city where I had few good friends. I do not doubt that my solitude amplified the fervour of my waiting.
Then, one day, Shireen finally wrote to me. There was not a word about the Samarkand Manuscript and nothing personal in the long letter, except perhaps the fact that she began it with ‘Dear distant friend’. There followed a day-by-day report of the events unfolding around her. Her account abounded in painstaking details, none of which was superfluous, even when they seemed so to my vulgar eyes. I was in love with her wonderful intellect and flattered that she had chosen to direct the fruit of her thoughts to me of all men.
From that moment I lived to the rhythm of her monthly letters, which were a vibrant chronicle and which I would have published as they were if she had not demanded absolute discretion from me. She did authorize me, however, to use the information contained in them, which I did shamelessly, drawing on them and sometimes translating and using whole passages with neither italics nor quotation marks.
