by Amin Maalouf
My way of presenting the facts to my readers, however, differed greatly from hers. For example, the princess never would have thought of writing:
‘The Persian revolution was triggered when a Belgian minister had the disastrous idea of disguising himself as a mullah.’
That, however, was not so far from the truth, although for Shireen the beginnings of the revolt were discernible at the time of the Shah’s course of treatment at Contrexéville in 1900. Wanting to go there with his retinue, the Shah needed money. His treasury was empty as usual and he had asked the Tsar for a loan and was granted 22.5 million roubles.
There was almost never such a poisoned gift. In order to make sure that their neighbour to the south, who was permanently on the brink of bankruptcy, would be able to pay back such a large sum, the St Petersburg authorities demanded and succeeded in gaining control of the Persian customs whose receipts were now to be paid directly to them. For a period of seventy-five years! Aware of the enormity of this privilege and fearing lest the other European powers take umbrage at this complete control over the foreign trade of Persia, the Tsar avoided entrusting the customs to his own subjects and preferred to have King Leopold II take charge of them on his behalf. That is how thirty or so Belgian functionaries came to the Shah’s court and their influence was to grow to dizzy heights. The most eminent of them, namely a certain Monsieur Naus, managed to haul himself up to the highest spheres of power. On the eve of the revolution, he was a member of the Supreme Council of the Kingdom, Minister of Post and Telegraph, General Treasurer of Persia, Head of the Passport Department and Director General of the Customs. Amongst other things, his job was to reorganize the whole fiscal system and it was to him that the new tax on freight carried by mule was attributed.
It goes without saying that by that time Monsieur Naus had become the most hated man in Persia, the symbol of foreign control. From time to time a voice would arise to demand his recall, a demand which seemed the more justified as he had neither a reputation for incorruptibility nor the alibi of competence. However he stayed in place, supported by the Tsar, or rather by the retrograde and fearsome camarilla who surrounded the latter and whose political objectives were now being expressed aloud in the official press of St Petersburg – the exercise of undivided tutelage over Persia and the Persian Gulf.
Monsieur Naus’s position seemed unshakeable and it remained so until the moment his protector was shaken. That happened more quickly than anyone in Persia had dreamt and it was precipitated by two major events. First, the war with Japan, which to the whole world’s surprise ended with the defeat of the Tsar and the destruction of this fleet. Then the anger of the Russians which was fuelled by the humiliation inflicted upon them because of incompetent leaders: the Potemkin rebellion, the Cronstadt mutiny, the Sebastopol uprising and the events in Moscow. I shall not discuss in detail these facts which no one has yet forgotten, but I shall content myself by emphasising the devastating effect that they had on Persia, in particularly in April 1906 when Nicolas II was forced to convene a parliament, the Duma.
It was in this atmosphere that the most banal event occurred. A masked ball was held at the residence of a Belgian functionary which Monsieur Naus decided to attend dressed up as a mullah. There were chuckles, laughs and applause; people gathered around him to congratulate him and posed for photographs with him. A few days later hundreds of copies of this picture were being distributed in the Teheran bazaar.
CHAPTER 34
Shireen had sent me a copy of this document. I still have it and sometimes I still cast a nostalgic and amused glance at it. It shows, seated on a carpet spread out amongst the trees of a garden, about forty men and women dressed in Turkish, Japanese or Austrian garb. In the centre foreground appears Monsieur Naus, so well disguised that with his white beard and salt-and-pepper moustache he could easily be taken for a pious patriarch. Shireen had written on the back of the photograph: ‘Unpunished for so many crimes, penalized for a trifle.’
It assuredly was not Monsieur Naus’s intention to mock the religious. On that occasion he could only be found guilty of naïveté, of a lack of tact and a touch of bad taste. His real mistake, since he was acting as the Tsar’s Trojan horse, was not understanding that, for a while, he should allow himself to lie low.
The distribution of the picture caused some angry gatherings and some incidents. The bazaar shut its gates. First of all Naus’s departure was demanded, then that of the whole government. Tracts were handed out demanding the institution of a parliament, as in Russia. For years secret societies had been at work amongst the population, invoking the name of Jamaladin and sometimes even that of Mirza Reza, and were now transformed by circumstances into a symbol of the struggle against absolutism.
The Cossacks surrounded the districts in the centre of the city. Certain rumours, propagated by the authorities, gave out that unprecedented repression was about to fall upon the protesters and that the bazaar would be opened by the armed forces and left for the troops to pillage – a menace which had terrified the merchants for centuries.
That is why, on 19 July 1906, a delegation of tradesman and money-changers from the bazaar went to see the British chargé d’affaires on a matter or urgency: if people in danger of being arrested were to come and take refuge in the legation, would they be afforded protection? The response was positive. The visitors retired showing expressions of gratitude and making solemn bows.
That very evening, my friend Fazel presented himself at the legation with a group of friends and was enthusiastically received. Although he was hardly thirty years old, he was, as his father’s heir, already one of the richest merchants in the bazaar. However, his rank was even more elevated by his vast culture and his influence was great amongst his peers. To a man of his status, the British diplomats had to offer one of the rooms reserved for visitors of distinction. However, he turned down the offer and, mentioning the heat, expressed his desire to install himself in the legation’s vast garden. He said that he had brought with him a tent for that purpose, along with a small carpet and a few books. Tight-lipped and frowning, his hosts watched as all these items were unpacked.
The next day thirty other merchants came in the same way to profit from the right of asylum. Three days later, on 23 July, there were eight hundred and sixty. By 26 July there were five thousand – and twelve thousand by 1 August.
This Persian town planted in an English garden was a strange sight. There were tents all around, clustered together by guild. Life there had been speedily organized with a kitchen being set up behind the guards pavilion from which enormous cauldrons were sent around to the different ‘districts’, each sitting lasting three hours.
There was no disorder and very little noise. Taking refuge, or taking bast as the Persians say, means giving oneself over to a strictly passive resistance in the shelter of a sanctuary of which there were several in the area of Teheran: the mausoleum of Shah Adbul-Azim, the royal stables, and the smallest bast of all, the wheeled cannon in Topkhane Square – if a fugitive clung to it, the forces of order no longer had any right to lay hands on him. However, Jamaladin’s experience had shown that the powers that be would not tolerate this form of protest for long. The only immunity that they recognised was that of the foreign legations.
To the English, every refugee had brought his kalyan and his dreams. From tent to tent there was a world of difference. Around Fazel was the modernist elite; they were not just a handful but hundreds of young and old men, organized into anjuman – which were more or less secret societies. Their debates raged ceaselessly around the topics of Japan, Russia and particularly France whose language they spoke and whose books and newspapers they assiduously read – the France of Saint-Simon, Robespierre, Rousseau and Waldeck-Rousseau. Fazel had carefully cut out the section of the law on the separation of church and state which had been voted on a year earlier in Paris. He had translated it and handed it out to his friends and they were now debating it heatedly albeit in hushed tones, for not
far from their circle there was a gathering of mullahs.
The clergy itself was divided. One party rejected everything which came from Europe including the very idea of democracy, parliament and modernity. ‘How,’ they said, ‘could we need a constitution when we have the Quran?’ To which the modernists replied that the Book had left to men the task of governing themselves democratically since it declared, ‘Let your affairs be a matter of mutual consent.’ Cunningly they added that if, upon the death of the Prophet, the Muslims had a constitution organizing the institutions of their embryonic state, they would not have seen the bloody struggles for succession which led to the ousting of the Imam Ali.
Beyond the debate on doctrine, the majority of the mullahs nevertheless accepted the idea of a constitution to put an end to the arbitrary nature of royal rule. Having come in their hundreds to take bast, they delighted in comparing their act to the Prophet’s migration to Medina and the sufferings of the people to those of Hussein, the son of Imam Ali, whose passion is the closest Muslim equivalent to that of Christ. In the legation’s gardens, professional mourners, the rozeh-khwan, recounted to their audience the sufferings of Hussein. People cried, flagellated themselves, and grieved unrestrainedly for Hussein, for themselves and for a Persia which was astray in a hostile world and had sunk over the centuries into unending decadence.
Fazel’s friends distanced themselves from these displays. Jamaladin had taught them to feel disdain for the rozeh-khwan. They could only listen to them with worried condescension.
I was struck by a cold reflection written by Shireen in one of her letters. ‘Persia is ill,’ she wrote. ‘There are several doctors at her bedside, some modern and some traditional and each one offers his own remedies. The future belongs to him who can effect a cure. If this revolution triumphs, the mullahs will have to turn themselves into democrats; if it fails, the democrats will have to turn themselves into mullahs.’
For the moment they were all in the same trench, in the same garden. On 7 August, the legation counted sixteen thousand bastis, the streets of the city were empty and any merchant of renown had ‘emigrated’. The Shah had to give in. On 15 August, less than a month from the start of the bast, he announced that elections would be organized to elect a national consultative assembly by direct suffrage in Teheran and indirect suffrage in the provinces.
The first parliament in the history of Persia met on 7 October. To read out the Shah’s speech, he judiciously sent a veteran opponent, Prince Malkom Khan, an Armenian from Isfahan and a companion of Jamaladin, the very same man who had put him up during his stay in London. He was a magnificent old man in the British mould who had dreamt throughout his whole life of standing in front of Parliament as he read out the speech of a constitutional sovereign to the representatives of the people.
Those who wish to examine this page of history more closely should not look for the name of Malkom Khan in documents of the time. Today, as in the time of Khayyam, Persia does not remember its leaders by their names, but by their titles, such as ‘Sun of the Kingdom’, ‘Pillar of the Religion’ or ‘Shadow of the Sultan’. To the man who had the honour of inaugurating the era of democracy the most prestigious title of all was given: Nizam al-Mulk. Disconcerting Persia, so immutable in its convulsions but how unchanged after so many metamorphoses!
CHAPTER 35
It was a privilege to be present at the awakening of the Orient. It was a moment of intense emotion, enthusiasm and doubt. What ideas, both brilliant and monstrous, had been able to sprout in its sleeping brain? What would it do as it woke up? Was it going to pounce blindly upon those who had shaken it? I was receiving letters from readers with anguished requests that I look into the future. They still remembered the Boxer Revolt in Peking in 1900, the foreign diplomats who were taken hostage, the troubles the expeditionary force came up against with the old Empress, the fearsome Daughter of Heaven, and they were afraid of Asia. Would Persia be any different? I replied with a definite ‘yes’, putting my trust in the emerging democracy. A constitution had just been promulgated in fact, as well as a charter of rights for the citizens. Clubs were coming into being every day, as well as newspapers – ninety dailies and weeklies in the space of a few months. They were entitled Civilization, Equality, Liberty, or more pompously Trumpets of the Resurrection. They were frequently quoted in the British press or the opposition Russian newspapers such as the liberal Ryesh and Sovremenny Mir which was close to the social democrats. A satirical newspaper met with overwhelming success from its very first issue. Its cartoonists’ favourite targets were the shady courtiers, agents of the Tsar and, above all, the false zealots.
Shireen was jubilant: ‘Last Friday,’ she wrote, ‘some young mullahs tried to raise a mob in the bazaar. They called the constitution a heretical innovation and tried to incite the crowd to march on Baharistan, the seat of the Parliament – but without success. They shouted themselves hoarse, but to no avail since the townspeople remained indifferent. From time to time a man would stop, listen to the end of some piece of invective and then walk off shrugging his shoulders. Finally three of the city’s most respected ulema arrived and with no further ado invited the preachers to go home by the shortest route and to keep their eyes cast below knee level. I can hardly believe it – fanaticism is dead in Persia.’
I used this last phrase as the title of my best article. I was so imbued with the Princess’s enthusiasm that what I wrote was a real act of faith. The director of the Gazette suggested that I make it more balanced, but the readers approved of my ardour, judging by the ever-increasing number of letters I was receiving.
One of them bore the signature of a certain Howard C. Baskerville, a student at Princeton University in New Jersey. He had just received his BA and wanted to go to Persia to observe the events which I was describing. One of his expressions had stopped me in my tracks: ‘I bear the deep conviction that if, at the beginning of this century, the Orient does not manage to wake up, the West soon will not be able to sleep any more.’ In my reply I encouraged him to make this trip and promised to provide him, when he had made his decision, with the names of some friends who would be able to receive him.
A few weeks later, Baskerville came to Annapolis to tell me in person that he had obtained the position of teacher in Tabriz at the Memorial Boys’ School which was run by the American Presbyterian Mission; he was to teach young boys English and science. He was leaving immediately and requested advice and letters of recommendation. I eagerly congratulated him and promised, without thinking too much about it, to stop by and see him should I be in Persia.
I was not thinking of going there so soon. It was not that I lacked the desire to do so, but I was still hesitant about making the trip because of the spurious accusations which were hanging over me. Was I not considered an accomplice to a regicide? In spite of the rapid changes which had taken place in Teheran, I feared being arrested at the border because of some dusty warrant and not being able to notify my friends or my legation.
Baskerville’s departure nevertheless prodded me into taking some steps to straighten out my position. I had promised never to write to Shireen, and not wishing to risk the loss of her letters, I wrote to Fazel whose influence I knew to be growing daily. In the National Assembly where the big decisions were made he was the most sought-after deputy.
His answer reached me three months later. It was warm and friendly and most importantly it was accompanied by an official paper bearing the seal of the Ministry of Justice and stating that I had been cleared of all suspicion of complicity in the assassination of the old Shah and accordingly I was authorized to travel freely throughout all the provinces of Persia.
Without waiting a second longer I set off for Marseille and from there to Salonika and Constantinople and then Trebizond. Riding a mule, I skirted around Mount Ararat and finally reached Tabriz.
I arrived there a on a hot June day. I settled myself into the caravansary in the Armenian quarter as the sun was level with the roof-tops. However
I was eager to see Baskerville as soon as I could, and with this intention I went off to the Presbyterian Mission which was a low sprawling building freshly painted brilliant white and set amongst a forest of apricot trees. There were two discreet crosses on the gate, and on the roof above the main doorway there was a banner studded with stars.
A Persian gardener came to meet me and take me to the office of the pastor who was a large red-haired man with a beard and the looks of a sailor. He gave me a firm and welcoming handshake. Before even asking me to take a seat he offered me a bed for the duration of my stay.
‘We have rooms which we keep prepared for our countrymen who surprise us and honour us with their visits. You are not being accorded any special treatment. I am just happy to be able to follow a custom which has been practised as long as this mission has been in existence.’
I expressed my sincere regrets.
‘I have already placed my baggage at the caravansary and I am planning to move on the day after tomorrow to Teheran.’
‘Tabriz deserves more than one hurried day. How can you come this far without agreeing to spend an idle day or two in the labyrinths of the largest bazaar in the orient or without going to see the ruins of the Blue Mosque which was mentioned in the Thousand and One Nights? Travellers are in too great a rush these days, in a rush to arrive – whatever it takes. But you do not arrive only at your destination. At every stage of the journey you arrive somewhere and with every step you can discover a hidden facet of our planet. All you have to do is look, wish, believe and love.’
He seemed sincerely upset that I was such a bad traveller and I felt obliged to justify myself.
‘In fact I have some urgent work to do in Teheran. I only made a detour via Tabriz in order to see a friend of mine who is teaching at your mission, Howard Baskerville.’
