He kept his eyes open, looking out on the sea. The sky was clear; a cold front had moved through in the night, cleaning the air of haze and humidity. From where Rassa sat, he could see most of the eastern coastline of the Persian Gulf, the dark waters stretching north and south, lapping at the brown sands and dry foothills that made up the Iranian coast. The sea was hazy and gray and sparkled in the rising sun. Looking north, he could clearly make out the oil platforms and pipelines that crossed the shallow waters of the Gulf. Further out, he could see the drilling platforms and pumping stations of Khark and Ganaveh, the heart of one of the richest oil fields in the world. A row of tankers, perhaps four in all, lined up at the Bandar–e Bushehr offshore-pumping station to take on their load. Even from this distance, he could distinguish those that were already loaded with oil, for they sat much lower in the water than those that were waiting to be filled. After filling their bowels with Arabian crude, the tankers would steam south and east, through the Straits of Hormuz and into the Arabian Sea. It would take the monsters several weeks to reach their destinations in Japan, Taiwan, and the southern U.S. gulf ports. Rassa watched with only casual interest, for the oil fields of Iran meant very little to him. He benefited not at all from the incredible wealth that was generated through Iranian oil production, and because he had been watching the oil tankers since he was a child, there was little there he had not seen before.
Yet as he stared to the west, something did catch his eye. Far out at sea, maybe ten or twelve kilometers off the coast, a monstrous ship steamed into view. It started as a gray dot on the southern horizon, but grew quickly, and Rassa watched it carefully. As the ship moved closer, he saw the deck and the enormous steel mast, and he knew it was an American aircraft carrier. The carrier cut through the water, its sharp bow slicing through the three-foot seas, and made good time as it cruised to the north. Minutes later, Rassa saw one, and then two aircraft launch from its deck, pointed-nose fighters that disappeared for just a fraction of a moment below the carrier’s deck, then formed up together and turned to the west. F-14 Tomcats, Rassa could tell from the sweep of their wings.
The fighters accelerated together, then pulled their noses steeply into the air and disappeared beyond a high strand of gray clouds. Rassa watched them, curious. To his right, along the mountains, he saw two Iranian jet fighters, old Iraqi MiG 29s Saddam Hussein had sent over the border to Iran during the first hours of the Gulf War and which Rassa’s government had never returned. The MiGs screamed in from the north, low and fast, following the contours of the mountains before turning toward the brown sands of the coast. The MiGs always stayed away from the international waters, and they certainly never ventured near the American carrier as they circled over the coast, though one made a feint for a U.S. destroyer before quickly turning away. The MiGs were flying very fast, and they soon disappeared behind him, heading back to their base, their engines screaming as they sucked down their fuel.
Rassa watched with interest. He had seen the game of cat and mouse before: an American carrier group would move up the coast, flanked by their escorts and destroyers while launching their Tomcats on combat air patrols. The Iranian (or, in the old days, Iraqi fighters) would follow the American ships, watching and teasing in their own little show of force. Rassa wasn’t a military man, but he suspected if the U.S. fighters ever got serious, if they ever made a turn for the Iranian fighters, his brothers would turn tail and run. It was one thing to tease, but another altogether to get blown out of the air.
As Rassa watched, he realized such scenes had been far more common over the past several months than they had ever been before. And he had witnessed other things, things that worried him and were talked about in town. There seemed to be a constant line of army convoys moving up and down the coastal highway. Some said these army units were there to act as a barrier to the constant flow of Iraqi insurgents and foreign fighters that hid out in the Iranian deserts, where they had established base camps from which they would train and prepare for strikes into the newly democratic regime in Iraq. Others claimed the opposite, saying the Iranian army was providing training to the insurgents, as well as food, money, ammunition, and aid.
Rassa had also recently seen many more American warships than he had ever seen in the past. Normally, the Americans would keep their battle groups much farther to the south, rarely venturing much farther north than the northern coast of Bahrain, but lately the American ships regularly docked at the Iraqi ports near Umm Qasr, as well as the ports at Kuwait.
And there seemed to be many more western oil tankers in the Gulf. He glanced again to the offshore loading docks at Bandar–e Bushehr. On any given week, he might see one or two tankers load up at the port, but over the past year or so, and especially over the past several months, the number of American tankers had doubled, even tripled, and Rassa wondered why.
As he watched, the American aircraft carrier turned forty degrees to the west and was soon out of sight, though an escort trailed behind, staying between the carrier and the coast. There were no longer any fighters in the air, and Rassa shifted against the tower to look on his village below.
Agha Jari Deh was an ancient town, with maybe a little more than four thousand people, a number that hadn’t changed much over the past several hundred years. From where he sat, on top of the tower that was uphill from Agha Jari Deh, Rassa watched his town come to life. He saw a pair of mutawwa’in, the religious police, walking the streets dressed in their black turbans and white robes, ready to enforce the morning call to prayers. In the center of the village, a new civic center was being built, a modern brick-and-glass building going up alongside ancient mud huts stiffened with palm leaves and logs. The village market, or suq, was exactly as it had been for almost five hundred years. The money changers were out, already clinking their coins to advertise their business as the merchants set out their wares—flour, copper, peaches, fine rugs, ancient spices (which had been the catalyst of too many wars), coffee, tea, sugar, holy water from Mecca, pistachios, goat’s meat, and thin cuts of lamb—everything needed for daily life could be bought in the market. The streets were busy with pedestrians and bikers, but there were also many more automobiles than there used to be, including Mercedes and Land Rovers brought in from Europe. Islam had never preached it was a sin to grow rich, and many of the villagers had grown relatively wealthy from working in the offshore oil fields or trading with the foreigners and city dwellers who came to the market every day.
From where Rassa sat, he could see the fault line that ran almost straight through the middle of the town. Every hundred years or so, his village suffered a powerful earthquake, but afterwards, whatever houses or shops that had been shaken down were quickly rebuilt. His people were not easily rattled, and what they lacked in resources, they made up in tenacity and patience and reduced expectations.
The sun was rising higher now, and it was quickly growing warm. Rassa felt drowsy and peaceful, and he considered a moment, thinking of his home.
Rassa was a simple man, but he was not unlearned, having been educated in one of the finest private schools in the region (one of the few benefits of being the grandson of the Shah), and he knew this place where he stood was truly unique in the world. He surveyed his village, a village that had its roots going back almost 2,500 years, back to the days when men were just learning to plow, when they realized an ox could do more work than a boy, back to the age of the old kingdom in Egypt, the first great civilization that was to rise in the Mideast. He knew that countless warlords and emperors had likely stood in this place. From the first nomadic tribesmen to the Persian kings, from the Roman senators to the Muslim caliphs, from the Russian czars to the British generals—many of the world’s greatest leaders had fought for this ground. From the beginning of time, they had considered Persia a brilliant gem, a pearl of desire, a land worth fighting for.
How many men had died, how many wars had been fought, how many empires had risen and settled over Persia, this fertile piece of land th
at he called home?
Persia. The White Pearl. Treasure of Ancient Days.
The world had been changed here.
Might Persia change history again?
Rassa Ali Pahlavi had a feeling, somewhere deep in his soul, that it was to be. This feeling, this thing he had felt since he was a child, had been one of the reasons he had chosen to stay. In the years following the fall of his grandfather the Shah, most of the royal family (and they had numbered in hundreds) had accepted luxurious exile in various nations outside of the Persian Gulf. There they had retired with their millions, their servants and aides and butlers and wine. But in leaving, they had forgone any influence on their nation, as well as any hope of a respectful return. But Rassa’s father, now dead, had chosen to stay, and Rassa had followed his lead; even if anonymous, even if poverty stricken, he wanted to remain in this land, for he believed a time would come when he would see better days, when the glory of Persia would rise once again. And he wanted to be there when the great day arrived.
As Rassa stood in the rising sun, he sensed both good and darkness, the passing of time, the passing of history, of dreams and disappointments, of birth and death, the emotion passing over him like a wave of warm air. Bending, he ran his fingers through the two hundred years of dust and dirt that had settled on the stone bulwark at the top of the tower. It was black, like the soil below it, and he let it sift through his fingers, then lifted his hand and smelled the richness there. He turned in a slow circle, looking from the forest to the mountain, then back to the valley below. Where else could man stand and look down upon more than two thousand years of civilizations, the tracings of wars, long forgotten, but which had shaped the history of the world?
He considered ancient Persia as he stood in the morning sun.
* * *
The history of Iran was one of rise and fall, of defeat and renewal, of brutal oppression followed by tenacious rebuilding. It was a story of both progress and depravity, of faith and disbelief.
It began along the seashore, where the air was cooler in the summer and wet with rain, where the fruit trees grew naturally and the black soil—rich trailings of retreating glaciers—was so thick it extended down to bedrock. The Iranians were a mixture of many nations and races: the Achaemenids and Aryans, as well as Arabs, Turks, and Mongols, but they could also trace their roots to the first race of people who inhabited western Asia, a region extending from the present republic of Turkestan to the Mediterranean. In Iran, the Old Asians, tall people with strong arms and elegantly long necks, first settled along the coast some 2,500 years before, then spread over the western parts of the plateau running to the Zagros Mountains. For centuries, minor battles were fought between the various peoples that were struggling to establish their young cultures there, but eventually the Elamites took over the whole of the Tigris Valley, from Assure to the Persian Gulf. These people then became the first to experience the rising power of Babylon. By the time King Nebuchadnezzar had finished his conquest, little was left of their infant civilization.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Zagros mountains, the Aryans, who would become ancestors of people in present-day India, Iran, and western Europe, were moving down from the north, mixing with the native Old Asians while planting the foundation of several great civilizations to come.
As time passed, the Persian kingdom grew up on the upper plateaus, not far from where Rassa now stood. On the other side of the Zagros range, the Babylonian empire continued to thrive, growing in majesty and power until, about the time of Jeremiah in the Bible, six hundred years before the birth of the great prophet Jesus, Cyrus the Great rose up and united
the kingdoms into one.
Thus began the reign of the great Persian kings. The first great king, Cyrus, was courageous and generally tolerant of others’ religions and beliefs. Upon conquering Babylonia, he retained the king as the governor and eventually freed the Jewish slaves, allowing them to return to their homeland and the ancient temple of Solomon which they so dearly loved. Even the Jews held the great king in esteem, putting the name of King Cyrus on a pedestal of respect and gratitude.
Cyrus was followed by other kings, first his son and then others, all of whom built great highways, postal systems, waterways, and grand cities. These kings set up a system of governing the conquered lands through local governors (a system that was later copied by the Romans), and created the most recognized and accepted coinage in the world. The kings also developed a corps of brilliant engineers, who built the first canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea.
For nearly three hundred years, the Persians grew in influence and power, until they peaked in expansion when King Xerxes attempted to subvert the Greeks. An odd man, probably mad, who worshiped the moon and preferred to sleep on the ground with his dogs, Xerxes did manage to drive his army to Athens, but then he was quickly driven back and his army was nearly destroyed in the retreat. Beaten and demoralized, King Xerxes spent the remainder of his days drinking, shopping for new wives, and lopping off the heads of his army commanders. Soon after, the age of the great kings drew to a close. In 324 b.c., a Macedonian named Alexander defeated King Darius III, leaving the Macedonian kings in control of most of the civilized world.
Meanwhile, a new empire began to rise in the west. The Romans were edgy and ambitious neighbors, and though the two nations lived side by side for a time, their trust of each other was always paper thin. Still, Persia realized the strategic potential of an alliance with Rome, and sought to exploit her location as the bridge between east and west. Just before the birth of the prophet Jesus, Iran established trade relationships with both China and Rome and quickly grew rich from taxing the trade that moved along the Silken Road.
These riches brought great power. Power and riches brought envy. And envy, as it always did, brought conflict and war.
For the next eight hundred years, the Persians warred continually with their neighbors, bitter and bloody wars which, though never quite enough to bring the Persian empire down, were enough to keep it from growth and prosperity.
So it was that the Persians were easy prey to the Muslim invaders who arrived with their Arabian horses, curved swords, and black robes. The Arabs were eerily determined, almost suicidally so, for to them death brought only the promise of a greater reward. They had one god, called Allah, and he was worth fighting for; so when the battle was pitch and the outcome unassured, the Arabs would cry from their horses, “Allah-o-Akbar!” Great is the One and Only God. It was their great call to arms, and it gave them strength.
With the arrival of the Muslim armies, the Persian Empire, decadent and weak, quickly collapsed. Like a sand castle washed away before the crashing waves of the storm, the Persian kings were swept from power by the disciplined Muslim troops.
But what was the power that really destroyed them?
Nothing but the power of God.
The Muslims had a core belief to fight for, a fire inside them that drove them to fight, the belief that, come pain or death, they were fighting the battles of God, that he could not be defeated and they were destined to succeed.
So it was that, along with conquest, the Muslims brought a new religion, a commanding set of beliefs that resonated with such power it could not be ignored. The religion of Islam was gratefully accepted by the Persians, even though it came at the tip of a sword, because, at a time when most Persians were bound by a harsh and unchanging caste system, the followers of Muhammad claimed equality for all, regardless of race or social status.
For the next hundred years the Persians penetrated most of the Muslim world, contributing greatly to Muslim art, literature, science, and culture. They also became great warriors, eventually establishing a state of Persian Islam.
In a.d. 1220, however, the history of Iran took a bloody and bitter turn for the worse.
It came in the form of a dark man on horseback, an enormous man, bloodthirsty and evil and bent on conquering the world. Genghis Khan was a Mongol prince, leader of a bitter and fea
rsome people, a people born of hardship and suffering, a people who drank human blood as easily as others drank water. The armies of Genghis Khan were hardened, violent, and as loyal as any army ever assembled. Toughened nomads turned warriors, they were bent on conquering the world.
A dark man, huge and evil, with greased-back dark hair and yellow slits for eyes, Khan approached the lands of Persia on a gray horse. Ruling his soldiers with an iron fist while rewarding his officers with the many spoils of war, Genghis was a tactical genius who swept through Persia like a hot blade through ice, destroying entire populations before him. He massacred whole towns, beheading men, women, and children and stacking their heads in gory piles that reached fifty feet high, their dead eyes staring out, their dry tongues protruding from gaping mouths. Those few he didn’t massacre he kept as slaves. Rape, torture, and suffering were his preferred methods of dealing with his subjects, and his armies massacred the Persians with no more mercy than if they were killing sick rats. Eventually, Khan ruled the largest empire in the world, from Korea to Hungary, and under his rule the land of Persia became a long and mournful cry of devastation and fear.
But again, God showed his mercy, and Genghis Khan died. His empire was soon divided, and once again small and independent states sprouted along the Persian coast.
The Great and Terrible Page 24