by Gina nahai
Shah Abdol-Azzim was small and dark and full of echoes. There were narrow, airless corridors where the heat was trapped and dust rose with every step. There was a small room with a low ceiling where the holy man was buried. The Shah went through the shrine, came up to the mausoleum, and touched his forehead against the silver rail surrounding the grave. He was murmuring a prayer when Arash the Rebel looked around and saw a stranger approach.
It was a man—a pallid creature with an unshaking hand. He came up to Arash and held out a letter, indicating he wanted to give it to the Shah. Atabak Amin-al Sultan tried to interfere—to take the letter from the man and deliver it to His Majesty without letting the stranger come close. Nasser-ed-Din Shah waved him away; he was in a generous mood, and he wanted to receive his subject himself. The man came up to the Shah. Instead of the letter, he extended a gun. Arash the Rebel heard the world explode.
In the tumult and the panic that followed the shooting, Arash saw Nasser-ed-Din Shah spread on the ground, his Russian sable coat splattered with blood. The Cossack leader and the royal guards charged the attacker, took away his gun, and tied his hands. The man never resisted even for a moment.
Atabak Amin-al Sultan came up to the Shah, shaking violently, and pressed an ear to His Majesty's chest. All he heard was the sound of the crowd outside the mausoleum— the people, having heard the gunshot, bursting into a frenzy of cries and questions as they wondered about the monarch's fate. Atabak Amin-al Sultan decided that the Shah's death could not be revealed. He stood up above the corpse, his face crimson, and suddenly recognized the assassin: he was
Mirza Reza of Kerman, a man with close ties to the clergy, who had spent his life opposing Nasser-ed-Din Shah. For years he had been in jail, tortured and abused but always released under pressure from one mullah or another. He had complained of the Qajars' injustice—of Nasser-ed-Din Shah killing half a dozen men only because they had approached his caravan at a time when he did not wish to receive anyone; of the Shah's son performing scientific experiments on helpless peasants, ordering a gardener to put his face into a pot of boiling rosewater just to observe the effects of a severe burn on a man's eyes and lips. The last time he had been released from jail, Mirza Reza of Kerman had gone to see a mullah.
"The Shah is unjust," Mirza Reza had said.
"Then you must create your own justice," the mullah had advised.
Atabak Amin-al Sultan ordered the guards to keep Mirza Reza inside the shrine. He went out to face the crowd:
"Praise God," he announced with unwavering conviction, "His Majesty the King of Kings is alive and unharmed."
Inside the shrine again, he ordered that the assassin be taken away. Mirza Reza was placed in an open carriage, his hands still tied, but as he rode toward Tehran and death, he looked at the people and smiled with dignity.
Atabak Amin-al Sultan called for the royal chair. He picked up the Shah's corpse, and arranged it on the chair so it was sitting straight, the eyes still open. With Arash's help, he held the corpse in place and waited for it to harden. Arash stood in the shrine for hours, suffocating as sweat poured down his face and into his clothes and boots, wondering about a future without Nasser-ed-Din Shah. Then, at last, Atabak announced that it was time.
"Hold His Majesty's hand," he commanded. "Talk to him as you walk."
Through the crowd of spectators outside Shah Abdol-Azzim, and all during the ride back to Tehran, Arash the
Rebel spoke to the corpse of Nasser-ed-Din Shah. He had set out on the mission still a child. He returned a man.
At midnight the next day, Nasser-ed-Din Shah's heir, Muzaffar-ed-Din Khan Qajar, was sworn to the throne. Only then did Atabak allow news of the assassination to spread to the people. Soon afterward, Mirza Reza Kermani would be hanged before the entire city. Standing on the gallows, he would face his executioner and say:
“I have done what was right.”
Salman the Coal Seller had worked since he was three years old. He was always black—like the actors who performed on the streetcorners in Tehran, and who painted their faces and hands with coal— and he coughed so badly everyone knew him by the sound of his lungs. He wore a long, soot-covered coat, carried the coal in an enormous bag the size of his own body, and which he dragged across his shoulder. Even in his youth, before he had ever married, Salman the Coal Seller knew he would die of consumption.
He was born into a family of scholars, but he never learned how to read. His father, a Talmudic instructor, had escaped a massacre in a Russian ghetto only to find himself in Juyy Bar. He was young when he arrived, but he had come with great expectations, and the very shock of reality had made him weak and disappointed. He knew nothing of the Persian language, and seemed unable to learn. He could not teach, could find no other work, and above all, he could not accept Juyy Bar as his new home; he had risked his life and abandoned his ancestors' graves in order to escape oppression. In Juyy Bar he was victim not only to the mullahs, but also to the Jews, who treated him as an outsider and refused him kindness. His wife, the only educated woman of her time, was forced to work as a maid in the
Armenian quarter. She was beautiful but frail, and after a few years in Tehran she took ill and died in the cold of winter. On the anniversary of her death, Salman the Coal Seller's father ate poison and committed suicide in bed.
Salman the Coal Seller would have died that first year, but Taraneh the Tulip took him in and raised him as if he were her own. She sent Salman to work, taught him to buy the coal, scoop it up with his hands at every house where he stopped, count his change, and haggle for each penny. At night, when he came home, she bathed him and changed his clothes, put him in a clean bed with sheets that smelled of fresh bleach. Salman the Coal Seller loved Taraneh more than his life—loved her more than he would ever have loved his own blood. He grew up thinking of her as his mother, believing she would always be there, but then, all at once, she met the son of Esfahan's governor, and told Salman he must manage alone. When she left, Salman the Coal Seller abandoned himself to darkness.
He began to store the coal in his room, and did not mind when the walls turned black, the rug became spoiled, and the water tasted of soot. He ate bread and cheese every night, never washed or changed his clothes, slept on the bare rug, and used the bag of coal as his pillow. He lived in this way for many years, and almost died twice of pneumonia, but when he was twenty years old, Taraneh the Tulip came back. She dragged him out of his house and forced him to marry a lame girl.
"Have a child," she commanded. "Live again."
They had Blue-Eyed Lotfi, a boy with white skin and crystal eyes, whose arrival changed Salman's life again: he was born in 1882, and because of him, Salman the Coal Seller thought he was blessed.
He had six more sons after Lotfi, raised them all in a clean house, sent them to Raab Yahya's Torah class, and refused to let them touch the coal that was killing him in his youth. In 1898 he heard that a school had opened for Jews in the Tehran ghetto. Salman the Coal Seller abandoned his house, gave away his coal, and moved to Tehran with his sons.
A man had come to the Pit—Monsieur Jean, a Frenchman with a graying goatee and a three-piece suit that he wore in the blazing heat of summer, and that never seemed to wrinkle in spite of the heat. He came as a guest to the court of Muzaffar-ed-Din Shah. He was a messenger, he said, from the Jews of Europe.
In 1878, Nasser-ed-Din Shah had journeyed to London, and met with the heads of the Alliance Israelite Universelle. They had confronted him with reports of massacred Jews, of unequal treatment before the law and disproportionate poverty, of the mullahs commanding greater power than the Shah and releasing their vengeance upon the Jews.
“Lies!'' Nasser-ed-Din Shah had exclaimed in fury. "All of my subjects are treated equally and with dignity."
The gentlemen from the Alliance inquired why Jews in Persia were not allowed to read and write the national language. Flustered, Nasser-ed-Din Shah and denied knowledge of the fact. They asked if His Majesty would allow
the situation to be remedied—if he would permit a school to be opened for the Jews of Tehran.
"Of course!" Nasser-ed-Din Shah insisted. "We will even pay the teachers' salaries Ourself."
He had come back to Tehran and hoped to forget the entire incident. For two decades nothing was heard of the Alliance again. Shortly after Nasser-ed-Din Shah's assassination, Monsieur Jean arrived.
"Your Majesty," Monsieur Jean told Muzaffar-ed-Din Shah, "your father made a commitment to the people of Europe. It is upon you to honor his word."
Muzaffar-ed-Din Shah was trapped in an impasse: to refuse Monsieur Jean's wish would be to alienate Europe. To accept it would be to anger the mullahs of Persia. He weighed his choices and allowed the school.
"The Jews of Tehran," Monsieur Jean wrote in his first report to the Alliance in London, "have treated me as if I were a Messiah. 'Now that you have come,' they say, 'we can die in peace, and know that our children will be saved.'"
On opening day in the Pit, Monsieur Jean woke up in the dark and put on his suit, which he kept pressed under his mattress. He stepped into the courtyard to use the toilet, and suddenly thought himself under siege: hours before class time, the house was already filled with students—boys, mostly—standing with their shoes under their arms and their faces smeared with doubt, coming to him like a fallen tribe in search of salvation, as if waiting for the word that would break their spell and free them from their bondage.
Salman the Coal Seller walked up to Monsieur Jean. He had brought all seven of his sons.
Blue-Eyed Lotfi attended both sessions of Monsieur Jean's class: in the morning with the boys, at night with the girls and the adults. He completed every year with honors, and when he was eighteen, Monsieur Jean offered him the school's first scholarship to France.
Salman the Coal Seller was enthralled at news of Lotfi's success. He cried with his wife, boasted to all his friends, gave away a whole bag of coal in celebration. Then he found out that the boy had rejected the scholarship; he had fallen in love, Lotfi told his father without shame, and he intended to marry.
He knew a girl from school—Heshmat, daughter of Peacock the Esfahani, who peddled gold. She was two years older than Lotfi, but they had sat across from each other ever since the school first opened, and Blue-Eyed Lotfi had always known he would marry her as soon as he started to work and earned a living.
Against all of his parents' objections, Blue-Eyed Lotfi gave up his chance at Europe and married Heshmat instead. They held the wedding in Zilfa the Rosewoman's house, in her garden where she had planted only white for the season, on a day when the air sparkled and the world radiated color. They were so poor they lived in Salman's room and slept on a borrowed mattress for the first year. Then Blue-Eyed Lotfi accepted a job as assistant to Monsieur Jean, and became the school's first Jewish teacher. Salman the Coal Seller was so proud of his son's position that he forgave Lotfi. His other children grew up and went to Europe and became doctors, but among them all, Lotfi remained his father's favorite; he had been born in the darkest years of Salman's life, and the very light of his eyes had blazed a trail of hope through the Coal Seller's heart.
Arash the Rebel was fifteen years old when he left the palace to live in the Cossack headquarters at Tehran. The year was 1903, and Muzaffar-ed-Din Shah had just acquired a handful of machine guns for his army. The guns were called Maxims, and they were placed in the care of a Cossack officer named Reza Khan. Himself trained by a group of European advisers, Reza Khan the Maxim in turn enlisted Arash and nine other Cossacks in the machine-gun division. Together they went through Persia—machine guns in tow—and trained other Cossacks in every town and province where they stopped. For the first time in his life, Arash the Rebel saw Persia as it really lived and suffered. Slowly, as he served Muzaffar-ed-Din Shah and Reza Khan, Arash understood that the Qajar dynasty was about to falter.
The year he became King, Muzaffar-ed-Din Shah had sold to Greece the exclusive right to exploit Persia's rich northern forests. A year and a half later he had bestowed upon the French the license to extract and own all of Persia's archaeological treasures. Then he decided that he needed a vacation—to Europe, of course, for he was the son of Nasser-ed-Din Shah and planned to keep alive his legacy. To raise money for the trip, he sold to Belgium all of Persia's customs revenues.
In Tehran, and especially around the bazaar, where the mullahs had the greatest influence, people spoke of limiting the Shah's powers. From Europe and Russia they had learned the idea of nationalism—of a people bound together not by religion or race, but by a common border; of the duty of kings to protect their country's soil and integrity. Secular-minded nationalists had joined forces with the clergy, and together they demanded the establishment of a parliament and the writing of a constitution. Each group had a distinct and opposing goal: the nationalists envisioned a law based upon modern secular thought; the mullahs planned a constitution drawn from the Qoran, one that placed the clergy above the Shah. Still, they joined forces against the Crown, each group believing it would overpower its ally once it had achieved victory.
Muzaffar-ed-Din Shah learned about the alliance of his opposition, but he was in no mood to address problems. He went to Europe and stayed for many months, returning only when he had spent the entire Belgian loan and run out of money. He came back sulking; it was not fair that he should be so limited, that money should be such an issue. He was entitled to greater extravagance than he was allowed. He should have been able to take more than the three hundred aides and wives who accompanied him on the last trip; he should have been able to stay longer, buy more toys for himself. He was, after all, the King.
He tried to console himself by building a palace—a magnificent structure high atop Hyssop Hill, just north of the capital. He would call it the Palace of Joy, make it a white, semicircular structure with tiers of open verandas, and around it he would build a royal menagerie in which to keep specimens of native lions, tigers, and leopards alongside imported fauna. To finance the venture, and to raise money for his next trip, he decided to secure more loans.
From Russia—his country's greatest enemy—he borrowed twenty-two and a half million rubles. In return, he promised never to build a railway in his own country. The British became jealous and wanted a concession as well. The Shah gave to D'Arcy exclusive license to extract and own all of Persia's oil.
In 1904 a plague came to Tehran. It was a small outbreak of short duration, and it took few victims, but in the atmosphere of anger and discontent that prevailed in Persia, it struck a special note of tragedy. Certain that they had once again become objects of God's vengeance, the people of Tehran screamed for help and ran to hide. They had no doctors, no place to take the sick, no one to administer guidelines for general hygiene. Annoyed by the vision of devastation he faced in his own capital, Muzaffar-ed-Din Shah took another loan, and went back to Europe.
Tehran's two greatest clerics, Seyyed Behbahani and Seyyed Tabataba'i, declared an alliance between themselves, and joined the nationalists: the Shah, they insisted, must allow the writing of a constitution based upon Shiite principles, the establishment of Islamic courts, and the appointment of Islamic judges who would wield ultimate authority even over the Crown.
Muzaffar-ed-Din Shah came back to Persia and listened to his Prime Minister report on the mullahs' demands. He found the entire matter too complicated for his attention. He was not about to strain his mind listening to rebels' requests, he said. But he did announce that he had just given another concession to the Russians: to build and operate a bank at the center of the Amir bazaar in Tehran. The site designated for the bank was a cemetery where victims of the recent plague had been buried.
The mullahs called for a Jihad. The Shah, they said, was selling the country to the enemy. Banks operated on the principle of usury—charging interest on borrowed money— which was in direct contradiction to Shiite law. To build their bank, the Russians would have to desecrate Muslims' graves, carry away believers' corpses, and
bury them in unholy places and unmarked graves.
The day the Russians broke ground on the cemetery, the mullahs of Tehran ordered the Amir bazaar closed down in strike. Mobs walked the streets, wielding torches and demanding that the Shah expel the Russians. Believers occupied every mosque and listened to their clergy speak of the Qajars' treachery. Nationalists gathered in every district and joined the people on the street.
From his barracks in Tehran, where he had returned with Reza Khan the Maxim, Arash the Rebel watched the unrest and found himself rooting secretly for the resistance.
Muzaffar-ed-Din Shah was disgusted by the unrest in his capital. Wishing only to regain his peace of mind and return to his beloved Europe, he conceded immediately to the rebels' demands. He paid the Czar his damages, restored the cemetery in the Amir bazaar, and asked the mullahs if they would forget the entire incident.
It was too late, the mullahs responded. The rebellion had spread throughout the country. The Shah must agree to constitutional rule, or face war. One Friday, three thousand of Tehran's mullahs gathered in one place, and left the city. They went to Qom, staged a sit-in at a mosque, and swore they would not return unless the Shah conceded to their demands.
Tehran was paralyzed. The people were in a panic. The Shiite clergy were the believers' only link to God. To be abandoned by mullahs was to be damned by God. Even the dead could not be buried without a mullah's blessing. Once again, mobs returned to the streets, asking that the Shah bring back their holy men. Ein-al-Dulah, the Prime Minister, suggested sending Cossacks to bring back the mullahs by force. But Muzaffar-ed-Din Shah was afraid of confrontation.
“Send for them to Qom," he commanded Ein-al-Dulah. “Tell them they can have their damn parliament."
And so the mullahs returned triumphant, riding through Tehran in royal carriages sent by the palace, greeted by welcoming crowds. It was a spectacle of shame and mockery, the essence of what had always been the curse of Persia: the men with the turbans wishing to supplant the man with the crown.