by Kurban Said
My tea is getting cold. I’m sitting here in a tearoom so that people can see I do not spend my whole life in the harem. It is bad form to be with one’s wife all the time—already my cousins are pulling my leg. Certain hours of the day only belong to the woman, all the rest to the man. But to Nino I am everything: newspaper, theatre, café, circle of friends and husband, all at the same time. That is why I just cannot let her sit at home all alone, that is why I buy practically the whole bazaar, for tonight my uncle holds a big reception in my father’s honour. An Imperial Prince will be there, and Nino must stay at home, alone except for the company of the eunuch who wants to educate her.
I leave the bazaar and drive to Shimran. Nino sits in the big, rug-and carpet-covered hall, deep in thought, looking at a mountain of earrings, bracelets, silk scarves and bottles of scent. She kisses me quietly and gently, and my heart sinks in despair. The eunuch brings cool sorbet and looks at me disapprovingly. A man should not pamper his wife like that. In Persia life begins at night. The day is oppressive with heat, dirt and dust. But when night falls new life seems to seep into people, thoughts become free and easy, words come with new fluency. Teshachüt, Persia’s strange ritualistic etiquette, begins to emerge. I love and admire this way of life, so different from the world of Baku, Daghestan and Georgia. At eight o’clock my uncle’s gala coaches drove up to our door, one for my father, one for me. Thus etiquette decreed. Three Peshemeds stood in front of each coach, heralds and runners, holding lanterns that shed their light on those dedicated faces. When these men had been small boys their spleens had been cut out, and now their only task in life was to run before a coach and call out importantly: ‘Beware!’ The streets were empty, but even so the runners had to keep calling ‘Beware!’ for this was etiquette as well. We drove along narrow alleys, past endless grey clay walls. Huts or palaces might be behind these walls, barracks or offices. But clay walls only face the streets, sheltering the privacy of Persian life. In the white light of the moon the bazaar’s round cupolas looked like innumerable toy balloons, held together by an invisible hand. We stopped at a beautifully curved brass gate, set into a broad wall. The gate opened and we passed into the palace courtyard.
On ordinary days, when I came to this house by myself, an old man in a tattered coat would be standing at the gate. But tonight the front of the palace was covered with garlands and paper lanterns, and eight men bowed low when our coaches stopped. The immense courtyard was divided into two parts. On one side was the harem, where the fountain splashed and the nightingales sang. On the men’s side was just a rectangular pool, with goldfish swimming lazily about.
We stepped out. My uncle came to the door to receive us. His small hand covered his face as he bowed low and escorted us into the house. There were carved wooden walls and gilt pillars in the big hall, and it was crowded with people, wearing black sheepskin caps, turbans, and wide robes of thin dark material. In the middle sat an elderly man with an immense curved nose, grey hair and eyebrows like birds’ wings—His Imperial Highness the Prince. They all rose when we entered. After we had greeted the Prince first, and then all the others, we sank into soft cushions. The others followed suit. For a minute or two we sat silently. Then we all jumped up and bowed to each other again. At last we sat down for good, and a dignified silence reigned. Servants brought pale blue cups of fragrant tea. Baskets of fruit were handed round. His Imperial Highness broke the silence: ‘I have travelled far and know many countries. But nowhere are peaches and cucumbers as good as in Persia.’ He peeled a cucumber, sprinkled it with salt and ate it slowly, his eyes very sad.
‘Your Highness is right,’ said my uncle, ‘I have travelled in Europe and have been amazed to see how small and ugly the fruits of the unbelievers are.’
‘I am always absolutely content when I come back to Persia,’ said a gentleman who represented the Persian Empire at a European court. ‘There is nothing on earth we Persians need be jealous of. One can really say there are only Persians and barbarians in the world.’
‘One could count in a few Indians, perhaps,’ said the Prince. ‘When I was in India a few years ago I met some people who were quite civilised and nearly came up to our standards of culture. But then again—it is so easy to make a mistake. A high born Indian I knew, and whom I took to be one of us, proved to be a barbarian after all. He invited me to his house for a meal, and just imagine, he ate the outer leaves of a green salad.’
We were horrified. A Mullah with sunken cheeks, wearing a heavy turban, said in a soft tired voice: ‘The difference between Persians and non-Persians is this: We are the only ones who can appreciate beauty.’ ‘True—true,’ said my uncle. ‘I prefer a beautiful poem to a noisy factory any day. I forgive Abu Said his heresy, because he was the first to introduce our most lovely form of verses, the Rubaiyat, into our literature.’
He cleared his throat and recited:
“Te medressé ve minaré viran neshúd
In kar kalendari bisman neshúd
Ta iman kafr ve kaft iman neshüd
Ek bendé hakikata musulmán neshúd.”
“Before not mosque and school are closed for good
The men who search for Truth cannot in truth be good
Before not Faith and Unbelief are one for good
No man can be Mohammedan for good.”
‘Terrible,’ said the Mullah. ‘Terrible. But this rhythm …’ and he repeated lovingly: ‘Ek bendé hakikata musulman neshúd.’ He rose, took a slender silver water-can with a long slim neck and staggered out. After a while he came back and put the can on the floor. We all rose to congratulate him, for his body had cleared itself of superfluous matter. Now my father asked: ‘Is it true, Your Highness, that Vossough es Dawleh, our Premier, is about to make a new treaty with England?’
The Prince smiled: ‘You’ll have to ask Assad es Saltaneh about that—though it is not really a secret.’
‘He is,’ said my uncle. ‘It is a very good treaty. For from now on the barbarians are going to be our slaves.’
‘Are they? How?’
‘It’s like this: the English love work, and we love security. They love fighting, we love peace. So we have come to an agreement: we don’t have to worry about the security of our borders any more. England is going to protect them, to build roads and houses and on top of it to pay us for all that. For England knows that it is mainly we who have brought culture to the world.’
My cousin Bahram Khan Shirvanshir was sitting next to my uncle. He raised his head and said: ‘Do you think England appreciates us because of our culture or because of our oil?’
‘Both lighten the world and need protection,’ said my uncle indifferently. ‘And surely we could not possibly be soldiers?’
‘Why not?’ This time it was I who put the question. ‘I for one have fought for my people, and might well fight again.’ Assad es Saltaneh looked at me disapprovingly, and the Prince put his teacup down. ‘I did not know,’ he said, haughtily, ‘That there are soldiers amongst the Shirvanshirs.’
‘But your Highness! Actually, he was an officer.’
‘It’s all the same, Assad es Saltaneh. Officer,’ he repeated mockingly and pushed his lips out. I kept silent. I had forgotten that in the eyes of a noble Persian to be a soldier is to be low class. My cousin Bahram Khan Shirvanshir seemed to be the only one who had different ideas from those of the others. He was young. Mashir es Dawleh, a much decorated nobleman, sitting next to the Prince, told him at great length that Iran was under God’s special protection, and did not need the sword any more to shine in the world. It had proved its valour in days long gone by. ‘In the King’s treasure chamber,’ he finished, ‘there is a globe made of gold. Every country on this globe is inlaid with jewels, each country with a different stone. But Iran is the only one covered with the clearest and most brilliant diamonds. This is more than a symbol—this is Truth.’ I thought of all the foreign soldiers stationed in the country and of the policemen, covered in rags, in the port of Enseli. That
was Asia, laying down its weapons before Europe, afraid to become European itself. The Prince despised soldiers—yet he himself was a descendant of the Shah under whom my forefather had been one of the conquerors of Tiflis. In those days Iran knew how to use weapons without losing face. But times had changed, and Iran had degenerated, as it had when ruled by the artistic Sefevids. The Prince preferred a poem to a machine-gun, maybe because he knew more about poems than about machine- guns. The Prince was old, and so was my uncle. Iran was dying, but dying gracefully. A poem by Omar the Tentmaker came suddenly to my lips:
‘A chessboard made of Night and Day
Is used by fate, on which his game to play
With men, put up and push around and then
Return each one to where before he lay.’
I had not realised that, deep in thought, I had spoken the verses aloud. The Prince’s face softened. ‘I suppose you became a soldier more or less just by coincidence,’ he said condescendingly. ‘I see you are an educated person. If you had the choice to decide your fate, would you seriously consider becoming a soldier?’ I bowed. ‘You ask what I would choose, Your Highness? Just four things: Ruby-red lips, the sound of guitars, wise counsel and red wine.’ Dakiki’s famous verse put me back in favour with every one. Even the Mullah with the sunken cheeks smiled graciously.
It was midnight when the doors of the dining room opened, and we entered. An enormous sheet had been put on the carpets. In the middle stood a big brass bowl, filled with pilav. All around lay big flat white loaves of bread, and innumerable bowls of all sizes, either empty or filled with various delicacies tempted us. Servants, standing in the corners motionless like statues were holding lanterns, spreading soft light. We sat down and began to help ourselves, each in any sequence he liked. We ate quickly, as custom decreed, for eating is the one thing a Persian does quickly. The Mullah said a short prayer. My cousin Bahram Khan sat next to me. He ate little, and looked at me curiously: ‘Do you like Persia?’
‘Yes, I do, very much.’
‘How long will you stay here?’
‘Until the Turks have taken Baku.’
‘I envy you, Ali Khan.’ His voice was full of admiration. He made a roll of a flat piece of bread and filled it with rice. ‘You sat behind a machine-gun and saw tears in the faces of your enemies. Iran’s sword is rusty. We enthuse over poems Firdausi wrote four hundred years ago, and we can easily distinguish between a verse by Dakiki and one by Rudaki. But we don’t know how to build a road fit for motor cars, or how to lead a regiment.’
‘Roads fit for motor cars,’ I repeated, and thought of melon fields in the moonlight on the road to Mardakjany. It was very good that nobody in Asia knew how to build these roads. If they did a horse from Karabagh could never, never catch up with a European car.
‘What do you need motor roads for, Bahram Khan?’
‘To transport soldiers on trucks, even though our statesmen say we don’t need soldiers. But we do! We need machine-guns, schools, hospitals, a well-organised system of taxation, new laws, and people like you. The last thing we need is old verses. Iran is falling to pieces while old men sit about reciting poetry. But we have other songs now: do you know the poet Ashraf’s verses, the one who lives in Giljan?’ He bent forward and recited softly: ‘“Our country is attacked by Sorrow and Grief. Rise up, follow Iran’s coffin. Persia’s Youth was slain in this wake. Red are the moon, the fields and hills and valleys— red with their blood.” ’
‘Terrible rhymes, the Prince would say. His sense of beauty would be deeply offended.’
‘There is another poem, even more beautiful,’ said Bahram Khan stubbornly, ‘by a poet called Mirza Aga Khan. Listen to this: “May Iran be spared the fate of being ruled over by an unbeliever. Iran the Bride must never share the bed of the Russian bridegroom. Her unearthly beauty must never be the plaything of English lords.” ’
‘Not too bad,’ I said, and smiled. Young Persia seemed to differ from Old Persia mainly by composing bad poems. ‘But tell me, Bahram Khan, what do you really want to accomplish?’
He sat stiffly on the pale red carpet and answered: ‘Have you seen Maidani Square? A hundred old rusty cannons are standing there, their muzzles turned to all four corners of the earth. Do you realise that these stupid dusty relics are the only guns in all Persia? And that there’s not one single fort, not one single man-of-war, practically not one single soldier—except of course the Russian Cossacks, the English Redcoats, and the four hundred fat Bahaduran of the Palace Guard? Just look at your uncle, or the Prince, or all these honourable noblemen, with their marvellous titles: dim eyes, weak hands, old and rusty like the cannons on Maidani-Sipeh Square. They haven’t got many more years to live, and it’s high time for them to go. Far too long has our country been in the tired hands of Princes and poets. Persia is like the outstretched hand of an old beggar. I want it to be the clenched fist of a young man. Stay here, Ali Khan. I have heard about you. How you were the last to stay with your machine-gun, defending the old wall of Baku, how you killed an enemy by biting his throat in the moonlight. Here you would have more than an old wall to defend, and you would have more than one machine-gun. Wouldn’t that be better than sitting about in the harem, or buying up all the treasures in the bazaar?’ I was silent, deep in thought. Teheran! The oldest city in the world. ‘Roga Rey’ the Babylonians called her, Roga Rey, the City of Kings. The dust of old legends, the faded gold of old palaces—twisted pillars of the Diamond Gate, faded lines on old carpets, and calm rythms of old Rubaiyats—here they were before me, in past, present and future.
‘Bahram Khan,’ I said, ‘Suppose you get what you want. When you have built your asphalt roads and forts, and when you have sent the worst servants to the most modern schools—what will become of the soul of Asia?’
‘The soul of Asia?’ he smiled. ‘We’ll build a big house on the far end of Cannon Square. There we’ll house the Soul of Asia: the flags of the mosques, the manuscripts of the poets, miniature paintings, and dancing boys, for they too are a part of the soul of Asia. And on the front of the building we’ll write in the most ornamental Kufi script: the word “Museum”. Uncle Assad es Saltaneh can be the museum’s manager and His Imperial Highness its director. Will you help us to build this magnificent edifice?’
‘I’ll think about it, Bahram Khan.’
The meal came to an end. The guests were sitting about in loose groups. I got up and went out to the open verandah, where the air was cool and fresh. From the garden came the fragrance of Persia’s roses. I sat down, a rosary gliding through my fingers, and looked out into the night. Over there, behind the clay cupolas of the bazaar, was Shimran. There my Nino was lying, covered by rugs and pillows. She was probably asleep, her lips just open, her eyelids swollen by tears. Deep sadness engulfed me. All the treasures of the bazaar put together were not enough to bring back the smile to Nino’s eyes. Persia! Should I stay? Among eunuchs and Princes, dervishes and fools? To build asphalt roads, to form armies, to bring Europe still further into the heart of Asia? Suddenly I felt that nothing, nothing in the world was as dear to me as the smile in Nino’s eyes. When had I last seen that smile? One day, long ago, in Baku near the old wall. A wave of wild homesickness swept over me. In my mind’s eye I saw the dusty wall again, and the sun setting behind the Island of Nargin. I heard the jackals howling at the moon under the Gate of the Grey Wolf, in the desert sand covering the steppe around Baku. Merchants were haggling near the Maiden’s Tower, and when you walked along Nikolai Street you came to the Lyceum of the Holy Queen Tamar. And under the trees in the court of the Lyceum stood Nino, her exercise book in her hand, her eyes big and astonished. The fragrance of the Persian roses had suddenly vanished, and instead the clear desert air of Baku and the faint scent of sea, sand and oil was around me. I called to my homeland as a child calls for its mother, and this homeland, I felt dimly, was no more. Never, never should I have left this town, where God let me be born. I was chained to the old wall, like a dog to his ken
nel. My eyes turned to the sky. There Persian stars were big and far away, like the jewels in the Shah’s crown. Never had this feeling of being a stranger here come over me as strongly as at this moment. I belonged to Baku, where Nino’s eyes looked smiling at me in the shade of the old wall.
Bahram Khan touched my shoulder. ‘Ali Khan, are you dreaming? Have you thought about what I said—will you help to build the house of New Iran?’
‘Cousin Bahram Khan,’ I said, ‘I envy you. Only a refugee knows what his homeland means to him. I cannot build Iran. My dagger was sharpened on the stones of Baku’s wall.’
He looked sadly at me. ‘Madjnoun’ he said in Arabic, and that meant Lover as well as Madman. He was of my blood and had guessed my secret. I rose. The dignitaries were bowing before the Prince in the big hall. I saw his hands with the long withered fingers and red finger-nails. No, I was not made to display Firdausi’s verses, Hafis’ sighs of love and Sa’adi’s quotations. I went into the hall and bent over the Prince’s hand. His eyes were sad and absent, filled with foreboding of a threatening destiny. Then I drove to Shimran and thought of the Square where the rusty cannons stood, of the Prince’s tired eyes. Nino’s submissive calm and the puzzle of ruin without escape.
25
Glaring and entangled the colours on the map ran into each other. Names of towns, mountain ranges and rivers were mixed up and practically unreadable. The map was spread out on the divan, and there I sat, little coloured flags in my hand. I had a newspaper too, and in those columns the names of towns, mountain ranges and rivers were just as confused as on the coloured map. I was bending over both pieces of paper, trying industriously to get the correct solution from the mistakes in the newspaper and the unreadability of the map. I put a little green flag into a little circle, next to which was printed ‘Elisabethpol (Gandsha)’. But the last five letters were overprinted on to the mountains of Sanguldak. According to the newspaper the solicitor Feth Ali Khan of Choja in Gandsha had proclaimed the Free Republic of Azerbeidshan. The row of little green flags east of Gandsha represented the army Enver Bey had sent to liberate our country. From the right Nuri Pasha’s regiments were moving towards the town of Agdash. On the left Mursal Pasha occupied the valleys of Elissu. The New Azerbeidshan Volunteers’ Battalions were fighting in the middle. Now the map was quite clear and understandable. Slowly the Turkish ring was closing round Russian- occupied Baku. The little green flags needed just a little more readjusting—and then the red flags would be squeezed together in one lump on the big spot that was marked ‘Baku’.