by Amin Maalouf
‘Suddenly an usher came to inform us that the ministers plenipotentiary of Russia and England were in the building and that they had an urgent note to convey to us. The session was suspended and the president of the Majlis and the Prime Minister went out; when they returned they looked like death. The diplomats had come to warn them that if the Shah were deposed, the two Powers would consider themselves regrettably obliged to intervene militarily. Not only were they getting ready to strangle us, but we were being forbidden to defend ourselves!’
‘Why such resolve?’ Baskerville asked, appalled.
‘The Tsar does not want a democracy within his borders. The very word parliament makes him tremble with rage.’
‘But even so, that is not the case with Britain!’
‘No. Except that if the Persians managed to govern themselves in an adult manner, that could give ideas to the Indians! And England would then just have to pack its bags. Then there is oil. In 1901 a British subject, Mr Knox d’Arcy obtained for the sum of twenty thousand pounds sterling the right to exploit oil reserves throughout the Persian empire. So far production has been insignificant, but a few months ago immense reserves were found in the Bakhtiari tribal areas, doubtless you have heard talk of this already. These reserves could represent an important source of revenue for the country. I therefore asked parliament to revise the agreement with London so that we might obtain more equitable conditions. Most of the deputies agreed with me. Since then the English minister has no longer invited me to the legation.’
‘But it is in the legation’s gardens that the bast is taking place,’ I said pensively.
‘The English consider that Russian influence is currently too great, and that Russia is only leaving them the congruent portion of the Persian cake, so they encouraged us to protest and opened their gardens to us. It is even said that they were the ones who printed the photograph which compromised Monsieur Naus. When our movement triumphed, London managed to obtain an agreement from the Tsar to share the country. The north of Persia would be the Russian zone of influence and the south would be the private property of England. Once the British got what they wanted, our democracy suddenly ceased to interest them. Like the Tsar they can only see it as an inconvenience and would prefer to see it disappear.’
‘By what right!’ Baskerville exploded.
Fazel gave him a paternal smile before carrying on with his account:
‘After the visit of the two diplomats, the deputies were disheartened. They were unable to confront so many enemies at the same time and could do no better than to lay the blame on the unfortunate Panoff. Several speakers accused him of being a forger and an anarchist whose sole aim was to provoke a war between Persia and Russia. The journalist had come with me to parliament and I had left him in an office near the door to the great hall so that he could give his testimony should it be necessary. Now the deputies were asking for him to be arrested and delivered to the Tsar’s legation and a motion had been put forward to that effect.
‘This man who had helped us against his own government was going to be handed over to the executioners! I who am so calm by nature, could no longer hold myself back. I jumped up on to a chair and shouted like one possessed: “I swear, by the soil which covers my father, that if this man is arrested I will call the ‘sons of Adam’ to arms and set this parliament awash in blood. No one who votes for this motion will leave here alive!” They could have lifted my immunity and arrested me too, but they did not dare. They suspended the session until the next day. That very night I left the capital for my birthplace, where I arrived today. Panoff came with me and is now hiding somewhere in Tabriz while waiting to leave the country.’
We talked and talked and soon dawn surprised us. The first calls to prayer sounded and the light became brighter. We debated and constructed a thousand gloomy futures and then debated again, too exhausted to stop. Baskerville stretched out, stopped in full flight, consulted his watch and stood up again like a sleep-walker and gave his neck a thorough scratch:
‘My God, it’s already six o’clock, a night with no sleep, how can I face my pupils? And what will the Reverend say seeing me come back at this hour?’
‘You can always pretend that you spent the night with a woman!’
Howard, however, was no longer in the mood to smile.
I do not want to speak of coincidence, since chance did not play a large role in the affair, but I am duty bound to point out that, just as Fazel finished his description of the plot being hatched against the young Persian democracy based on the documents which had been spirited away by Panoff, the coup d’état had already begun.
In fact, as I later learnt, it was toward four o’clock in the morning of that Wednesday, 23 June 1908, that a contingent of one thousand Cossacks, commanded by Colonel Liakhov, set off toward the Baharistan, the seat of the parliament, in the heart of Teheran. The building was surrounded and its exits under guard. Members of a local anjuman, who had noticed the troop movements, ran over to a neighbouring college, where a telephone had recently been installed, in order to call some deputies and certain religious democrats such as Ayatollah Behbahani and Ayatollah Tabatabai. They all came there before dawn to indicate by their presence their attachment to the constitution. Curiously the Cossacks let them through. Their orders had been to prevent anyone leaving, not entering.
The crowd of protesters kept swelling and at day-break there were several hundreds of them, including numerous ‘sons of Adam’. They had rifles, but not much ammunition – about sixty cartridges each, certainly not enough to enable them to withstand a siege. Moreover they were hesitant about using their arms and ammunition. They effectively took up position on roof-tops and behind windows but they did not know whether they should fire the first shots, thereby giving the signal for an inevitable massacre, or whether they should wait passively while the preparations for the coup were carried out.
It was precisely that which delayed the Cossack’s assault even longer. Liakhov, surrounded by Russian and Persian officers, was busy stationing his troops as well as his cannons, of which six were counted that day, the most lethal one being installed on Topkhaneh Square. On several occasions the Colonel rode within the defenders’ line of sight, but the personalities present prevented the ‘sons of Adam’ from opening fire lest the Tsar use such an incident as a pretext for invading Persia.
It was toward the middle of the afternoon that the order to attack was given. Although the sides were unequal, the fighting raged for six or seven hours. By a series of bold strokes, the resisters managed to put three cannons out of action.
However this was the heroism of despair. By nightfall the white flag of defeat was raised over the first parliament in Persian history, but several minutes after the last shot Liakhov ordered his artillery to fire again. The Tsar’s directives were clear; it was not enough to abolish the parliament, they also had orders to destroy the building which had accommodated it, so the inhabitants of Teheran would see its ruins and it would be forever a lesson to all.
CHAPTER 38
Fighting had not yet come to an end in the capital when the first shooting broke out in Tabriz. I had gone to collect Howard as he came out of class and we were to meet Fazel at the anjuman to go and have dinner with one of his relatives. We had not yet stepped into the labyrinth of the bazaar when we heard shots which sounded as if they came from near by.
With a curiosity marked by recklessness, we headed down toward the source of the noise only to see, at about a hundred metres distance, a vociferous crowd marching forward. There was dust, smoke, a forest of clubs, rifles and glowing torches as well as shouts which I could not understand as they were in Azeri, the Turkish language of the people of Tabriz. Baskerville did his best to translate: ‘Death to the constitution’, ‘Death to parliament’, ‘Death to atheists’, ‘Long live the Shah’. Dozens of townspeople were running about in all directions. An old man was dragging a stupefied goat at the end of a rope. A woman stumbled and her son, hardly six yea
rs old, helped her to get up and supported her as she fled limping with him.
We ourselves hurried towards our meeting place. On the way a group of young men were erecting a barricade made of two tree trunks upon which they were piling up in completely random fashion tables, bricks, chairs, boxes and barrels. We were recognized and allowed to pass, but we were advised to go quickly with the words ‘they are coming here’, ‘they want to burn down the quarter’, ‘they have sworn to massacre the sons of Adam.’
In the anjuman building Fazel was surrounded by forty or fifty men and he was the only one not carrying a rifle. He only had an Austrian Mannlicher pistol whose sole use was to point out to all around him the positions they should take up. He was calm, less anxious than the evening before, in the state of calm which a man of action feels when the unbearable waiting is over.
‘You see!’ he told us with an imperceptibly triumphant tone of voice. ‘Everything which Panoff stated was true. Colonel Liakhov has carried out his coup d’état. He has declared himself military governor of Teheran and has imposed a curfew there. Since this morning supporters of the constitution have become fair game in the capital and all other cities, starting with Tabriz.’
‘It has all happened so quickly!’ Howard marvelled.
‘It was the Russian consul who was notified of the launch of the coup by telegram and he then informed the religious chiefs of Tabriz this morning. They in turn summoned their supporters to assemble at mid-day in the Deveshi, the Quarter of the Camel-drivers, whence they spread out through the city, first heading for the home of one of my journalist friends, Ali Meshedi. They dragged him out of his house accompanied by the screams of his wife and mother, cut his throat and severed his right hand and then left him in a pool of blood. But have no fear – Ali will be avenged before nightfall.’
His voice betrayed him. He managed a respite of a second and drew a deep breath before continuing:
‘If I have come to Tabriz, it is because I know this city will resist. The ground we are standing on is still ruled by the constitution. This is now the seat of parliament, the seat of the legitimate government. It will be a fine battle but we will end up winning. Follow me!’
We followed him, along with half a dozen of his supporters. He led us toward the garden, and walked around the house to a wooden staircase whose extremities disappeared in thick foliage. We went up to the roof, through a passageway, up a few more steps and then came to a room with thick walls and small yet potentially deadly windows. Fazel invited us to take a look: we were overhanging the most vulnerable entrance to the quarter which at present was blocked by a barricade. Behind it there were about twenty men, kneeling to the ground with their rifles aimed.
‘There are others,’ Fazel explained. Just as determined. They are blocking all the entrances to the quarter. If the pack comes, they will be given the welcome they deserve.’
The pack, as he called them, was not far off. They must have stopped on the way to set fire to two or three houses belonging to sons of Adam, but they were relentless and the noise and shots grew closer.
Suddenly we were seized by a kind of shudder. However much we expected them and were sheltered by a wall, the spectacle of a wild crowd calling out death and coming straight at one is probably the most frightening experience one can have.
Instinctively I whispered:
‘How many are they?’
‘A thousand, a thousand five hundred at the most,’ Fazel replied in a loud voice which was clear and reassuring.
Then he added, like an order:
‘Now it is up to us to frighten them.’
He asked his aides to give us rifles. Howard and I exchanged a quasi-amused glance. We felt the weight of those cold objects with both fascination and distaste.
‘Position yourselves at the windows,’ Fazel yelled. ‘And shoot at anyone who approaches. I have to leave you. I have a surprise up my sleeve for these barbarians.’
He had hardly gone out before the battle started although to speak of it as such is most probably an exaggeration. The rioters arrived. They were a vociferous and bird-brained mob and their forward ranks threw themselves against the barricade as if it were an obstacle course. The sons of Adam fired one salvo and then another. A dozen of the assailants were downed and the rest fell back. Only one managed to scale the barricade, but that was only to be run through by a bayonet. He gave out a horrible cry of agony and I turned my eyes away.
Most of the demonstrators wisely stayed back, making do with shouting out hoarsely the same slogan: ‘Death!’. Then a squad was thrown anew into an assault on the barricade – this time with a little more method, that is to say that they were firing on the defenders and the windows from which the shots had come. A son of Adam hit on the forehead was the only loss in his camp. His companion’s salvoes were already starting to mow down the first lines of the assailants.
The offensive tailed off, they fell back and discussed a new strategy noisily. They were regrouping for a new attempt when a rumbling sound shook the quarter. A shell had just landed in the middle of the rioters, causing carnage followed by headlong flight. The defenders then raised their rifles and shouted: ‘Mashrouteh! Mashrouthe!’ – Constitution! From the other side of the barricade we could make out dozens of corpses stretched out on the ground. Howard whispered:
‘My weapon is still cold. I have not fired a single cartridge. What about you?’
‘Nor have I.’
‘To have someone’s head in my sights, and to press the trigger to kill him …’
Fazel arrived a few moments later in jovial mood.
‘What did you think of my surprise? It was an old French cannon, a de Bange, which was sold to us by an officer in the imperial army. It is on the roof, come and take a look at it! One day soon we shall place it in the middle of the largest square in Tabriz and write underneath it: “This cannon saved the constitution!”’
I found his words too optimistic even though I could not contest the fact that he had won a significant victory in a few minutes. His objective was clear – to maintain a zone where the last Constitutionalists could assemble and find protection, but above all where they could all plan out the steps they were to take.
If someone had told us on that troubled June day that from just a few tangled alleys in the Tabriz bazaar and with our two loads of Lebel rifles and our single de Bange cannon we were going to win back for Persia its stolen freedom, who would have believed it?
Yet that is what happened, but not without the purest of us paying for it with his life.
CHAPTER 39
They were dark days on the history of Khayyam’s country. Was this the promised dawn of the Orient? From Isfahan to Kazvin, from Shiraz to Hamand, the same shouts issued blindly from thousand upon thousand of people: ‘Death! Death!’ Now one had to go into hiding in order to say the words liberty, democracy and justice. The future was no more than a forbidden dream and the Constitutionalists were hunted down on the streets, the meeting rooms of the sons of Adam were laid to waste and their books were thrown into a pile and burnt. Nowhere, throughout the whole of Persia, could the odious spread of violence be checked.
Nowhere apart from Tabriz. And when the interminable day of the coup came to an end, out of the thirty main quarters of the heroic city only one was holding out – the district called Amir-Khiz at the extreme north-west of the bazaar. That night a few dozen young partisans took turns to guard the approaches, while Fazel was sketching ambitious arrows on a crumpled map in the anjuman building in the general quarter.
There were about a dozen of us fervently following the smallest mark of his pencil which the swinging storm lamps accentuated. The deputy stood up straight.
‘The enemy is still suffering the shock of the losses which we inflicted on them. They think that we are stronger than we actually are. They have no cannons and do not know how many we have. We must profit from this without delay to extend our territory. It will not take the Shah long to send troops and the
y will be in Tabriz within a few weeks. By then we must have liberated the whole city. Tonight we shall attack.’
He bent over and every head – bare or turbaned – bent over too.
‘We cross the river by surprise,’ he explained. ‘We charge in the direction of the citadel and attack it from two sides, the bazaar and from the cemetery. It will be ours before evening.’
The citadel was not taken for ten days. Lethal battles raged in every street but the resisters advanced and all the clashes turned to their advantage. Some ‘sons of Adam’ occupied the bureau of the Indo-European Telegraph on the Saturday, thanks to which they were able to keep in contact with Teheran as well as with London and Bombay. The same day a police barracks went over to their side, bringing with it as a dowry a Maxim machine gun and thirty cases of ammunition. These successes gave the population its confidence back. Young and old became emboldened and flocked to the liberated quarters in their hundreds, sometimes with their weapons. Within a few weeks the enemy had been pushed back to the outskirts. It was only holding on to a thinly populated area in the north-east of the city stretching from the Quarter of the Camel-drivers to the camp of Sahib-Divan.
Toward mid-July an army of irregulars was formed, as well as a provisional administration in which Howard found himself made quartermaster. He now passed most of his time scouring the bazaar and compiling a list of food stocks. The merchants showed themselves more than willing to cooperate. He himself found his way perfectly through the Persian system of weights and measures.
