The King

by Kader Abdolah

  ‘And my grandmother? She’s already queen.’

  ‘But she will be dead before I die.’

  ‘You mustn’t speak of my mother and your own mother that way,’ protested the girl.

  The shah fell silent. It pleased him that this young girl made no attempt to disguise her opinions or to curry favour with him.

  ‘It’s light outside,’ the old woman told the shah.

  The shah kissed his daughter and went out to the garden, much relieved. With a stick in his hand he walked past the tall trees and returned to his own room, where the chamberlain had his breakfast waiting for him.

  11. The Cannon

  The matter of the hanging of the half-brothers had jolted the vizier awake. Mahdolia’s influence over the shah was still considerable. The vizier had been able to calm the popular unrest after the execution, but now he had to be on his guard against the shah’s unpredictable behaviour. The desire to retake Herat was still smouldering beneath the surface.

  The vizier had instructed the shah in the ways of the world, but he had enough experience to know that some of a child’s traits cannot be corrected by lessons. The shah was his father’s son: weak. But he was also his mother’s son: vindictive, hungry for power, obstinate and headstrong. And he was his grandfather’s grandson: a valiant fighter, a hard man whose will was law. The shah was a mixture of his father, his mother, his grandfather and his tutor.

  The vizier had to be able to cope with all these contradictions, not for the sake of the shah, nor for his own sake, but for the sake of the country, even though he knew he would probably have to sacrifice his life for his ideals.

  In the meantime the shah had put his troubles behind him for the time being. He took pleasure in life and he was going hunting. He had his own cannon, a cannon that Napoleon had given as a gift for the crown prince just after his birth, and he liked to shoot it.

  The French emperor had once written to the father of the shah.

  Bonaparte, the Emperor of the people of France, writes to the King of Persia:

  Greetings. Je vous salue.

  You are the king of a noble land that God has blessed with his devotion and his mercy.

  The inhabitants of Persia are magnanimous, clever and courageous, and they are worthy of good kings, but we know that the kings before you forsook their people and ignored the needs of the country.

  I am sending you one of my best advisors, who will personally convey to you my views and feelings with regard to your country. You may also tell him anything you wish. He is the most trustworthy man on our staff.

  May God help Persia.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  What the British and the Russians wanted was nothing new. Napoleon Bonaparte already wanted to get to India by way of Persia, and he tried to form an alliance with the father of the shah behind the backs of the Russians and the British. The late king had hoped that with Napoleon on his side he would be able to attack Russia and to free Azerbaijan from Russian hands. But Napoleon was forced to give up his dream. He did not keep his promises, and in failing to do so he abandoned the Persians. Russia punished the shah and took possession of part of the country.

  Napoleon was now a page in the annals of history, but he had left a tangible part of himself behind in Persia. During his Russian campaign he had sent Persia a cannon, a special gift for the young crown prince. The design of the cannon was new – it had two wheels – and Napoleon had arranged for the name of the crown prince and the royal coat of arms to be engraved on it in gold. It was clear from the elaborate ornamentation that this was a princely cannon.

  When he went to Tabriz as crown prince, Naser brought the cannon with him. After his father died, the cannon came along in the move to Tehran. It was kept in well-oiled readiness at Golestan Palace. The king never left the palace without it.

  ‘Sharmin?’ called the shah.

  The cat sprang from the chair.

  ‘We’re going for a little ride over the hills.’ When he reached the top of the outer stairs he took a deep breath and said, ‘Magnificent! You can smell the trees. What a fragrance!’

  Three servants took care of the cat. They placed her in a basket covered with a sheer white cloth and carefully put the basket in a coach that was furnished just for her.

  The shah climbed into his saddle and looked to make sure his cannon was ready. With great poise he rode to the gate, followed by a number of guards. His cannon was mounted on a decorated cart, which was pulled by two horses. The shah looked excited and happy.

  No sooner had he left the palace than the drummers and the trumpeter announced to the city that the shah was approaching. It was the first time in a long time that the shah had let himself be seen by his people. He had been afraid there would be disturbances after the execution of his brothers, but except for a few minor scuffles it had remained peaceful. This led the shah to believe that his subjects agreed with his decision. Now he was going hunting in the hills outside the city, but he had mapped out a route through a number of busy streets.

  The drummers beat their drums even harder and the town criers shouted, ‘Blind be the enemy, the king is approaching!’

  The people tried to catch a glimpse of the shah’s cat in her royal coach. It became more and more crowded, and the officers leading the procession had to lash the people with their whips to keep them away from the shah. Hundreds of blind, disabled and deformed people, who begged for coins or bits of bread in the street or in the bazaar, tried to get as closed as they could, crying out, ‘Javid shah, javid shah, long live the shah, long live the shah!’

  The guards raised their guns and beat the beggars, but they threw themselves on the ground in front of the horses and stretched out their hands to the shah, weeping and imploring.

  Deep in his heart the shah felt troubled. Recently he had complained once again to his mother, ‘We keep having the feeling that we have become king of an endless procession of indigents.’

  ‘You may complain, but what you say is not true,’ his mother had said to comfort him. ‘You are the king of a very special land. The king of the princes who live in mysterious palaces, the king of the enigmatic Persian women, the king of the rich carpet dealers who populate our beautiful cities, and the king of thousands of large landowners in the villages. And you are also king of your mother.’

  He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a handful of coins, tossing them into the crowd. The people fought for them.

  ‘Javid shah, javid shah,’ cried the multitude.

  And once again Shah Naser threw out a handful of coins. The drummers beat their drums even harder and the trumpeters blew louder on their trumpets. Just like Napoleon on his horse in the painting, the shah pointed to a spot in the distance. The horsemen surrounded the shah and galloped through the city gate.

  Once they reached the hills the king took the lead, hunting for wild stags. Shooting from a galloping horse was a uniquely Persian feat. No one in the world could hit their mark on horseback the way a Persian soldier could. It was a skill acquired by all the future kings during their childhood years. The little princes practised it while hunting, and Shah Naser was a master. It made him happy when he shot and the animal fell.

  The shah also loved fighting. He who was sometimes so frightened in the palace proved quite courageous on the front. He had fought in two wars with his father. The first time they lost to the Russians. The second time was the battle of Herat, which ended in disaster when the British took possession of the city and handed it over to the Afghan tribal leaders. Everyone knew that the grief over the loss of Herat was what had caused the old king’s death.

  Hunting was in the shah’s blood. He used to hunt in the forests of Tabriz, searching for lions and tigers. Now he had to content himself with the stags of Tehran. While he pursued the animals his guards dragged the cannon to the top of the highest hill. When they reached the summit a sergeant blew on his trumpet to announce that everything was ready. The shah rode up the slope and, covered in s
weat, sprang from his horse and thrust his arm in the air. ‘This is an exceptional day! How good we feel!’

  He stroked the cannon’s barrel. One of the guards handed him a cannonball. The shah kissed the ball, placed it securely in the barrel and aimed it at a target on another hill. He was handed a burning torch with which he lit the fuse. Then he bent down, his hands over his ears. The cannon went off.

  After he had shot the cannon seven times an officer threw a coat around the shah to keep him from catching cold. He was handed some sweet rose water. He walked up to a table on which a large dish of delicacies had been placed and ate his fill of dates stuffed with walnuts, crisp almond biscuits and ginger cooked in butter and honey.

  When the servants had loaded all the bagged game onto the cart, the shah jumped back on his horse. He would have stayed longer, but he could tell from the eyes of his cat that she preferred to lie on her own sleeping spot at home.

  12. The Reforms

  The vizier had ordered local officials to build large carpet factories where hundreds of weavers could be employed. In the north of the country, near the Caspian Sea, small companies packed caviar in handy transportable boxes and pots.

  The vizier dreamt that his unemployed countrymen would find jobs in factories, just like British labourers. He dreamt that Persian girls would go to school, just like the girls in Moscow. He could hardly sleep for all the work that had to be done. In the meantime his enemies did everything they could to bring him down. He presented his plans to his advisors.

  ‘I have many dreams for this country, but we mustn’t try to do too many things at once,’ the vizier had said to the young men in his council of ministers. ‘All of you have studied abroad. But our country is not Russia, let alone England. In those countries the power is centralised. Here the majority of the population live in villages. In the countryside we have no power at all; there everything is in the hands of the large landowners.’

  ‘We are not losing sight of reality,’ said one of the ministers, a man named Takhi Khan. ‘That’s why we’re concentrating on the big cities, especially Tehran.’

  ‘Actually Tehran is more difficult than anywhere else. Everywhere we go we’re held back by the elite, who own all the property,’ argued the vizier.

  ‘We must work to establish a separation of powers, just like in the countries of the West,’ said Amir, the vizier’s young advisor. ‘That is essential to carrying out our plans.’

  ‘But we must not frighten the elite,’ said the vizier in measured tones. ‘We must move forward with caution. I will speak to the shah.’

  Persia’s wealth lay in the abundance of its gold mines, rubies, diamonds, spices and something that the Portuguese called ouro negro – ‘black gold’.

  The Portuguese had already tried their luck at extracting the ouro negro, or crude oil. They had drilled holes here and there in the Persian soil in search of the mysterious black liquid, but had found nothing.

  Later came N.R. Darsi, an adventurer from New Zealand. His expedition was financed by a chemical company. He searched for sources of crude oil, but what he found was not worth mentioning. Darsi returned empty-handed.

  It was then that people in the western countries began to understand what oil was actually worth. In a valley in Pennsylvania in America they had drilled down seventeen metres, and by the next day the well was filled with oil.

  In Persia’s southern province the nasty black liquid leaked up from the ground spontaneously. The local inhabitants called it qir, or pitch – they ladled it into crates and smeared it on the wheels of their carts.

  The French were asked by the vizier to set up businesses, to reform the army and to teach science. A number of them, however, had been given a secret assignment by the French government: to search for oil. The French asked permission to conduct drilling operations in addition to the mining activities they had agreed to. No one could have known that underneath the surface lay one of the largest crude-oil reserves in the world.

  The drilling produced nothing and the French brought this particular sideline to a halt. Then one day they happened to see a black substance glittering in one of their wells, so they resumed drilling – with no appreciable results. They ladled the oil out of the well, put it in vats and sent it to France. It was something, but nothing in comparison with what lay ahead.

  The vizier made too many demands, but the temptation of the mineral resources and the chance to gain power over the Persian army was irresistible to the French. They agreed to all the conditions, and the vizier drew up a list of projects he wanted be carried out, namely the setting up of:

  – Three technical schools in Tehran, Tabriz and Isfahan.

  – A large library in Tehran containing modern scientific books on urban development and road construction.

  – A mining school in the city of Sultanabad.

  – Five printing offices in five major cities.

  – A hospital in Tehran and a women’s clinic in Tabriz.

  – Several primary schools for the children of Tehran.

  – Leather and shoe factories.

  – A military training institute for young people.

  – Schools for drawing and painting.

  – Two boarding schools for orphans in Tehran.

  – Textile, glass, iron, copper, paper, sugar and tobacco factories in various cities.

  – A small spring factory in Shiraz for the suspension of carts and coaches.

  – And last, a factory for the casting of medium-sized bells for the cities.

  On top of all this he firmly demanded that a number of cannon and cannonball factories be built in Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz so the army would no longer be dependent on Russian or British cannons.

  The vizier realised he would not be able to bring all his plans to fruition during his lifetime. He knew how great the opposition would be. But of all his dreams there were at least three that he wanted to see fulfilled.

  First he wanted all the children in the country to be vaccinated against smallpox. This would bring a halt to the nation’s increasing rate of blindness. His second dream was a technical school for gifted children, which he would later incorporate into his development plans. His third dream was highly personal. When he was still a boy, his father worked as a minister in the cabinet in which he would later be prime minister. After having travelled to Russia his father told him about the bells that hung high up in the churches there, the bells that rang so the entire city could hear them. Later, when Mirza Kabir was a young man, he was part of a delegation to Moscow. In the Kremlin he heard for the first time the bells his father had described. The whole notion of time made him tremble with happiness: time that advances, time that slips away.

  That boyhood dream had never left him. He had met with the engineer of a French bell foundry to discuss the possibility of hanging a number of bells in big cities like Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and Tabriz. The bells could not be placed in the minarets, of course. That would be too reminiscent of churches, which would create ill feeling. The vizier thought of putting the bells on the great squares of the country’s bazaars. Sometimes while riding to the bazaar he could almost hear the bells ringing in his mind. Time was standing still in his homeland. He wanted to use the bells to get time moving again.

  He had made his wish known. The engineer would erect a foundry and start making bells as soon as the country entered calmer waters.

  There was one big problem standing in the way of these developments: the country had no decent roads, only narrow tracks that had been beaten down naturally by horses and coaches. Long ago Persia had boasted the greatest roads in the world, but time and war had destroyed them and they lay buried beneath many layers of earth.

  To stay on good terms with the populace and to quell their unease about the presence of the French, the vizier asked the Russians if they would be willing to build a new network of roads to connect the cities of Persia. They accepted the offer immediately and went straight to work. They passed over the
southern cities and began with the roads that brought them closer to the borders with India. The vizier was aware of this, but he also knew that what the Russians were doing was good for the country.

  The presence of the Russians in the northern and eastern parts of Persia was another thorn in the side of the British. They had no leverage with the vizier, who was eager to keep everybody happy. Another problem was that the vizier came from a family that was not easily bribed. So the British decided to wait. They provided the Afghan tribes with weapons and military advisors to block any Russian invasion of India that might take place.

  At the same time the British tried to use their front men to set Mahdolia further against the vizier. They sent her false reports that the vizier was planning to weaken the position of the shah over time.

  ‘He signs whatever papers the vizier puts in front of him, without asking any questions,’ complained Mahdolia to her confidant, Sheikh Aqasi.

  ‘It is indeed disquieting,’ agreed Sheikh Aqasi. ‘It won’t be long before the shah loses all his power. It is your duty to admonish the shah.’

  ‘I will talk to him,’ said Mahdolia. ‘I must talk to him.’

  13. The Russians

  The shah often went on cross-country journeys, and he always took a group of his wives with him. During these journeys he gave his subjects the opportunity to admire him, and he also received local officials. He invariably paid visits to the army barracks.

  He looked forward to receiving delegates from the various trades, which happened every now and then. He also had regular visits from clergymen, with whom such contacts were useful. He invited the imams with royal connections to come round on holy feast days, such as the birthdays of the Prophet Muhammad and the holy imam Ali, and the anniversaries of their deaths.

  When the clergymen came the chamberlain had to make them wait for the shah in the golden hall for a long time. While they waited they were treated to tea and refreshments. When the shah came in the clergymen all bowed, and one by one they kissed his hand. The shah then gave a brief speech, chatted with some of them, asked them to pray for him and for the kingdom, pressed special gold coins bearing his image into their hands and withdrew once again. Then he would whisper in Sharmin’s ear, ‘A pack of fools. They all smell of goat droppings.’