The King

by Kader Abdolah

  After the ritual they took a bath, asked for God’s forgiveness and returned to normal life, where war and treachery prevailed.

  The shah had hired an experienced lady for the sabuhi who would provide the women for this occasion. She went to the shah’s country house and brought seven women with her. When the shah arrived he sat down among the cushions that had been elegantly arranged for him. Female musicians played their instruments while female dancers moved gracefully to a melancholy song sung by a young female singer who sat behind a transparent green curtain:

  Ah, amadi azizam, azizam, azizam

  Wa man in-ja montazer azizam, azizam, azizam

  You finally came, O my sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart.

  And I waited here so long for you, O my sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart.

  Savage lions stood between us, azizam, azizam, azizam

  And towering mountains, azizam, azizam, azizam.

  The seven scantily clad women shyly entered carrying wine and glasses. And thus the shah began a week in which he ‘celebrated life’, as he himself put it. Because he had not slept with his wives for a long time his experience of this sabuhi was very intense.

  After returning to the palace the shah received a message from the lady who had brought the women to the sabuhi. She had met an extraordinary young woman. The shah, who was not taken by the thought of returning to his country house, asked her what was so special about this girl.

  ‘She comes from the Russian state of Azerbaijan. She has a Russian mother and an Azari father. The shah can speak either Russian or Azari with her. I have seen many young women in my time, but this girl is unique. I can bring her to the palace.’

  The shah was curious, but he didn’t want to receive her in the palace. Only when the chamberlain assured him that no one would find out did he finally give in.

  ‘Does the girl know that you are introducing her to the shah?’ the chamberlain asked the lady.

  ‘Yes, of course. Otherwise she never would have agreed to come. She is a rare breed, a little jewel. She may look a bit timid, but that is certainly not the case.’

  That evening the chamberlain led the girl, disguised as a young man in a hat, up to the door of the hall of mirrors and encouraged her to continue on alone. With some reluctance she went in. She was startled to see the shah standing in the middle of the room in his royal robes. She greeted him softly in Persian: ‘Salam!’

  The shah studied her appearance, and from his face it was obvious that he had expected something else.

  ‘Take that hat off,’ he said with indifference, in Russian.

  Timidly the girl took off her hat, letting her long blonde locks tumble over her shoulders.

  The shah smiled. ‘How beautiful you are. Where did you get that head of golden hair?’ he asked enthusiastically.

  ‘From my mother.’

  She was younger than the shah had expected, and her very youth made him feel his own age. He turned around and said, ‘Please, make yourself at home.’

  The girl took off her shoes and walked uncertainly to the mirror, placed her leather satchel on the old royal chair, took off her men’s clothing, put on a dress, combed her hair in the mirror, applied some perfume from a small bottle and said softly, ‘Now I am myself again.’

  The shah turned and stared at her, speechless. There was an air of inexperience and innocence about her that made him feel uncomfortable. She was completely unlike any of the women with whom he occasionally spent time in his country house. She was vulnerable, like a girl from a fairy tale. For a moment he didn’t know what to do with her.

  ‘Would we like something to drink, perhaps?’ asked the shah awkwardly, pointing to the bottles of juice on the table.

  The girl walked to the table, studied the bottles, sniffed the juice and said, ‘I like white grape juice. Shall I pour you a glass as well?’

  The shah was surprised by this unusual question. Up until now no woman had ever asked him so casually if he would like something to drink.

  ‘No, no. Well, actually, yes. Why not?’ he answered.

  The girl elegantly poured a small amount of white grape juice into a glass for the shah and handed it to him. Only then did she pour half a glass for herself, drinking it down in a single draught.

  ‘Excuse me. I was thirsty.’

  ‘No, no. No need to apologise,’ said the shah.

  ‘It was so exciting coming here to meet you, it made my throat dry,’ said the girl.

  The shah found her explanation amusing, but it was difficult to carry on a conversation with her. ‘There’s also food if you’re hungry,’ he said.

  ‘No, not that. Not now. Maybe later. I’ve got to catch my breath.’

  Now what should he say? He couldn’t just take her to his bedroom. That idea didn’t even occur to him. He found her presence delightful, and he simply wanted to enjoy it.

  ‘We were recently given some photo albums as gifts,’ the shah remarked, ‘but we haven’t looked at them yet. If you like we could do that together.’

  ‘What kinds of photographs are they?’

  ‘They aren’t photographs but prints. They’re about light and other things. We’re quite curious ourselves.’

  He felt more and more at ease, and the girl saw it as an opportunity to get closer to him. For a moment he wondered whether he should sit on the couch or on the floor, where he smoked his hookah. The girl knelt on a feather cushion and crept up to the shah cautiously like a cat, so he could feel her warm, soft body against his leg.

  The shah picked up the Russian album and opened it. The girl bent down to look at the photographs.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked the shah, who now felt like a hungry lion beside a young gazelle.

  ‘Anya, Anastasia, Anita, Ani, Antonia, Anisia,’ she responded.

  ‘So many names? Even we as king don’t have so many titles,’ said the shah teasingly.

  ‘I haven’t known my name since I was fifteen,’ she said. ‘The men themselves make up names for me, but I don’t mind.’ And then she asked him, ‘What’s your name?’

  The shah was caught off guard by this question. No one had ever asked him his name before. He burst out laughing, and with tears in his eyes he said, ‘We no longer know our name, either.’

  ‘Really?’ said the girl. ‘Well, that’s all right. You’re still a sweet man.’ With these innocent little words she touched the shah’s heart. No one had ever told him he was sweet before. He took her face in both his hands and planted a kiss on her left cheek.

  ‘Your moustache tickles,’ she said.

  The shah had to laugh again. ‘Who are you, anyway? You’re so … so … How can I put it? There’s something familiar about you that makes us feel you’re ours.’

  The girl wiped the tears from the shah’s face with her hand.

  ‘We remember,’ said the shah. ‘Our name is Naser Muhammad Fatali Mozafar.’

  ‘Are they all titles?’ asked the girl.

  ‘They’re not titles. They’re the first names of my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather and my great-great-grandfather.’

  ‘Were they all kings like you?’

  ‘Of course. We’ll show you. Come here. We can look at the albums later.’

  He set the book aside, stood up, took the girl by the hand and led her all the way upstairs, to the big room next to the library where the kings’ personal possessions were kept. No one ever came into this mysterious room except the shah’s immediate family. The floors were covered with rare carpets, and hanging on the walls were portraits, articles of clothing and jewel-encrusted guns, swords and daggers.

  The shah had a little bag of sand from Herat that he kept here in a niche. There were old closets containing the boots and leather slippers of past kings. Woollen socks and handkerchiefs were stored in handmade wooden boxes, and there were special glass caskets containing gold rings and necklaces. Displayed on the great mantelpiece were the kings’ writings, quills, scissors and combs. The gi
rl stared in wonder at a series of thin glass tubes in which hairs from the kings’ heads and beards were preserved.

  The shah pointed at a portrait on the wall and said, ‘This is our father. He died of grief.’

  ‘Of grief?’

  ‘The part of Azerbaijan that you come from used to be ours. The Russians took it from us in a war with my father. The grief of that loss was the death of him,’ explained the shah sadly.

  To show her sympathy she began stroking the shah’s arm.

  ‘This is our grandfather, an extraordinary man. He held the country together. He restored our beloved Afghanistan to the homeland and was planning to make India part of Persia as well, but he was killed.’

  ‘Killed?’ asked the girl.

  ‘One of his Afghan guards murdered him in his sleep with a dagger. Look, his bloody coat is hanging there on the wall.’

  Later that evening they lay together in bed and looked at the catalogues. In the Russian album there were incredible pictures of Russian industries, of impressive tools and of machines with gigantic wheels. How was it possible for men to make such extraordinary devices?

  The shah was fascinated by one picture in particular, a photograph of the first train to run from Moscow to St Petersburg. Just before all the uproar in the country he had reached an agreement with the Russians on the building of a railway line from Tabriz to Tehran. But it was only by looking at this photograph that he understood how the combination of a locomotive and two iron rails would actually work. And when he saw a picture of passengers getting out of the carriages he became completely smitten by trains.

  ‘Amazing, don’t you think?’ he said. ‘That people will sit in a monster like this that rides on two iron rails.’

  ‘I’ve ridden in that train!’ said the girl suddenly.

  ‘What? You? In this train?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘How? – Or where, we mean?’

  ‘In St Petersburg on the way to Moscow,’ she responded.

  ‘You? To Moscow? What were you doing there?’

  ‘I was with those men. I went with them,’ said the girl.

  Men? What men? the shah wanted to ask, but he didn’t. He thought she was lying, fantasising, but nevertheless her story had frightened him a bit. Could she be a Russian spy, someone sent to charm him with her innocence in order to rob him of his royal power?

  The girl pushed the Russian album aside and picked up the French catalogue. She thumbed through it and looked at the monumental buildings of Paris, at the Assemblée nationale and at Notre Dame, and the graceful bridges over the River Seine.

  ‘This is something you shouldn’t miss,’ she said, and pulled the shah towards her. The candle on the bedside table fell onto the bed, and candle wax dripped on her leg.

  ‘Hot!’ she cried, and pulled her leg away. The shah picked up the candle, lit it again with another candle and put it back on the bedside table. The girl was disappointed that he paid no attention to her leg, which had reddened.

  ‘You are a king, but you still use candles,’ complained the girl. ‘Your bedroom stinks. I had expected you to have that new kind of light.’

  The shah took the girl’s indignation seriously. He ran his hand gently along her bare leg and kissed her hair. He lay down beside her and looked at the picture. It was a photograph of Paris by night. A bridge elegantly connected one bank of the River Seine to the other, and there were two cast-iron telegraph poles standing at either end of the bridge like two works of art. The telegraph cables hung over the bridge like swaying black lines. Part of the photograph was covered by the branch of a tree. In this mysterious environment a young woman in a fashionable black hat was walking across the bridge in the light of an electric lamp.

  The girl pointed with her finger and said, ‘I’ve been here and I’ve walked on this bridge.’

  The shah smiled. He didn’t want to say it, but he said it anyway: ‘You probably went to Paris with those men.’

  ‘No. I was alone, and that night I stood against this pole for a very long time.’

  She’s not a spy, thought the shah. This girl just has a vivid imagination.

  ‘My girl, you intrigue us. You have so many lovely things in your head.’

  ‘And suddenly,’ she continued, ‘I heard voices as I stood there with my back against this telegraph pole.’

  ‘What kinds of voices?’ asked the shah, amused.

  ‘I pressed my ear against the pole and I could feel movement. Words and phrases being sent from the telegraph office,’ said the girl.

  The shah ran his hand gently down her back and over her buttocks. The girl turned round quickly, pulled the shah’s hand towards her and said, ‘Shut your eyes.’

  Obediently he closed his eyes. The girl began tapping into the palm of his hand with her finger.

  ‘Can you tell me what I tapped?’

  Bewildered, the shah opened his eyes and looked at his palm.

  ‘Shut your eyes and I’ll do it again. Then you guess,’ said the girl once more.

  ‘We don’t know,’ said the shah.

  ‘“You are a lovely man” is what I tapped,’ said the girl with a smile. ‘In Morse code.’

  The shah didn’t know how to respond. He kissed the girl on the mouth and silently gazed at her.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that? What are you thinking?’ she said. She laid her head on his sturdy chest and began to sob quietly.

  ‘Why are you crying, my girl?’

  ‘You’re strong on the outside and soft on the inside. I have never seen such a charming man. When I’m with you I feel like a real princess. I can surrender to you completely, something I’ve never done with anyone else in my life.’

  The shah was silent.

  ‘Say something. Why are you so quiet?’

  ‘We’re thinking about tomorrow,’ said the shah.

  ‘Me too. Tomorrow you’ll send me away.’

  ‘No, we don’t think so. Someone who has come so far can never go back.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Nothing. Forget it,’ he said.

  The shah put his arm round her and was silent once again.

  ‘You frighten me with your silences.’

  ‘There’s something about you that’s like trains, like light, like birds that sit high up on the telegraph wires. We like you.’

  It was one of the rare times that the shah had told a woman he liked her. His own words moved him. He opened the drawer of his bedside table and took out a pomegranate-coloured velvet pouch. When the girl heard the jingling of the gold coins she sat straight up in bed and said, ‘What are you doing?’

  The shah opened the pouch and placed the gold coins in the girl’s neckline. Taken by surprise she drew her hands up to her breasts and looked at the shah questioningly. He stroked her breasts, which now made a noise like gold coins.

  He got out of bed and said, ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘We’re sending you away.’

  The girl was astonished. ‘Why are you sending me away? I thought I was allowed to stay.’

  ‘We’ve changed our mind.’

  ‘I want to sleep with you tonight.’

  The shah hesitated. He looked at her.

  ‘Have I done something wrong?’ asked the girl.

  While considering her question the shah opened his closet, reached into a small box and took out an old necklace of magnificent green stones from India. He fastened the necklace around the girl’s neck and said, ‘No, you haven’t done anything wrong.’

  The shah left the room and rang his little bell.

  ‘Send her home!’ he said to the chamberlain, and he walked down the stairs and into the moonlit gardens.

  Years later, just before his death, the shah remembered the girl. He heard the golden coins tinkling in her blouse and saw before him the brilliant necklace. These were the last things he remembered before taking leave of this life.

  51. The Travelogue
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  The vizier got in touch with the governmental representatives of Russia, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium, France and England to enable the shah to travel to Europe. To his delight he received highly positive reactions from every country.

  The Europeans had all read about the Persians in their history books. They knew the saying ‘the law of the Medes and the Persians’, and whenever they thought about Persia they thought of gold, flying carpets, mysterious kings, beautiful princesses, the Thousand and One Nights and caviar. But no one had ever seen a Persian king in the flesh before.

  None of the books made any mention of a visit to a European country by a Persian king. Shah Naser was the first one to make such a journey, which accounted for the great enthusiasm among the European royal houses and presidential palaces. It was so heart-warming that the vizier could no longer keep the good news to himself. He had to tell the shah about the impressive reactions he had received.

  ‘The kings and presidents of the various countries of Europe convey their special greetings to Your Majesty and anxiously await the opportunity to welcome the shah of Persia.’

  The shah was surprised, yet he played down the enthusiastic invitations and said with a smile, ‘The kings of the West probably think that the king of kings wants to come and admire their country. What they may not know is that we are merely the king of an endless parade of beggars.’

  ‘What you say is not true, Your Majesty. Your land is one of the most beautiful in the world. We also have affluent people, we have imposing cities, we have Isfahan, which is unique in its beauty. Your Majesty, we have the city of Shiraz, once the capital of the greatest empire on earth, we have mosques that are architectural wonders, we have insightful literature and hundreds of classical works, and our women are the most mysterious anywhere. We have carpets we can fly on. We have saffron, we have the most delicious tea in the world, we have our brilliant tales of the Thousand and One Nights and the beautiful royal peacocks. Our fame is legendary. You are the king of the descendants of the Medes and the Persians.’