A Hundred Sweet Promises

by Sepehr Haddad

  She smiled and said, “Oh yes, you left in such a rush that day, I never got a chance to tell you about it. Your grandfather shared this story with me a short while after we married!”

  I appreciated the excitement with which Mami began to tell me the story. As she recalled this tale, it seemed as if she had been at my grandfather’s side every step of the way.

  Chapter 3

  The Reluctant Return

  St. Petersburg, Russia, 1905

  “I did not come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home”— Rumi

  Nasrollah rode in a private droski, a horse-drawn carriage, on his way to the train station. He was embarking on the first leg of his trip from St. Petersburg through Moscow to his final destination, Tehran.

  Spring of 1905 in St. Petersburg had come so suddenly that only a few days earlier, the beautiful Neva River had been totally frozen. On this travel day, not an inch of ice remained as the city basked in the warm sunshine. The ducks had also returned on the Neva, and Nasrollah considered this an auspicious beginning to his long journey.

  The most famous thoroughfare of Russia, the Nevsky Prospect, which ran through the heart of the city, was spectacular. The droski rolled leisurely along a single track on the side of the avenue where strips of smooth wood pavement were reserved for such carriages. Workers of all kinds carried bulky loads in the middle of the road on cobblestone since they were not allowed to walk on the sidewalks. Kiosks were abundant, selling everything from papers to tobacco on every busy corner. Streetcars, wagons, and carriages all shared the same busy Nevsky, albeit haphazardly.

  Nasrollah knew how much he would miss this magnificent city where he had lived for the past seven years. Passing the Great Morskaya, another famous street of St. Petersburg, he encountered the usual battalion of Russian troops playing the martial music he enjoyed, which often echoed throughout the capital city many times a day.

  Nasrollah had a fondness for military music, undoubtedly due to growing up in a military household with a father who composed such pieces.

  In 1898, when Nasrollah was just thirteen, his father, Gholam-Reza Minbashian, known as Salar Moazaz, had brought him along to Russia to study music at the famed St. Petersburg Conservatory. (The honorary title of Salar Moazaz was given to Gholam-Reza Minbashian by royal decree for his contributions in the field of music.)

  Salar Moazaz himself was a pupil of the Russian composer Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov, having studied composition and orchestration under his tutelage.

  Father and son were together for five years studying music in St. Petersburg until, in 1903, Salar Moazaz left Russia and traveled back to Persia. His return was to answer the king’s call of creating the new music department at the Dar al-Funun (the Tehran Polytechnic), Persia’s first modern school.

  After his father’s departure, Nasrollah had remained in St. Petersburg for an additional two years to finish his music studies. It was now his turn to return to Persia, although he was doing so reluctantly, having spent his formative teenage years in this beautiful city. Nasrollah was not yet ready to leave since he wanted to add the mastery of music theory and orchestration to his repertoire at the conservatory, under the guidance of Rimsky-Korsakov.

  Despite his wishes, the revolutionary upheavals of 1905 in Russia had suddenly interrupted these plans. Rimsky-Korsakov, a lifelong political liberal, sided with the demonstrating conservatory students demanding the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. In March, he had been dismissed from his professorship, along with the expulsion of many of the student protestors.

  This event somewhat lessened Nasrollah’s unwillingness to return to Persia, now that the academic year had ended so abruptly. He decided to leave for home and planned to come back to St. Petersburg when the situation in Russia settled down.

  The winter of 1905 had not been kind to St. Petersburg due to the riots and student demonstrations occurring throughout the city. These protests culminated with the painful Bloody Sunday on a fateful January afternoon, where upward of one thousand demonstrators were killed and many more were wounded.

  Soldiers of the tsar’s Imperial Guard fired upon unarmed protestors as they marched toward the Winter Palace to present a petition to the emperor. The public outrage and resulting strikes had not had a softening effect on the regime. Instead, these demonstrations had prompted the tsar’s government to crack down even more violently on the protesters. There was a palpable feeling of unrest in the city.

  Notwithstanding the current political turmoil, there were many things about St. Petersburg Nasrollah knew he would miss. Notably, the enchanting summers with extremely short nights due to the city’s far-northern location. As the locals say, “In St. Petersburg, daylight lasts until daylight comes again!”

  The long and cold winters were a different story, for Nasrollah did not enjoy the cold climate. Still, he would remember with fondness the essential ingredient of all winter celebrations—vodka. He would reminisce about the times he spent with other students at the café, heatedly discussing the “new music.”

  Living in the capital city had also afforded Nasrollah many unique opportunities. One such instance was being invited to the apartment of Rimsky-Korsakov with several other foreign students to discuss the composer’s ideas about music. That one time, Rimsky-Korsakov had confessed, “I believe that to become a musician in the full sense of the word, it is not necessary to even be at the conservatory. I think that much of what they teach is nothing other than trivia that is only required by the school!”

  The professor felt that he could impart so much more to the students through individual tutoring. This was the main reason why Nasrollah wanted to study privately with him. Nevertheless, unlike what the professor suggested, Nasrollah did appreciate being a student at the prestigious St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music. Here he studied amongst some of the best and brightest musical minds of Russia.

  The conservatory also attracted aspiring talent from Europe and around the world who were drawn by the opportunity to learn from these masters. Nasrollah’s association with this pride of Russia cast him amongst the artistic elites of the world, and he loathed to walk away from it all.

  However, as all Persian sons of strong-willed fathers were taught, he had no choice but to comply with Salar Moazaz’s request to return home. At his father’s behest, Nasrollah would assist him in developing the country’s music department at the Dar al-Funun.

  It was a fourteen-hour overnight journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow on the fastest train in Russia, the courier train. This train traversed the four-hundred-mile distance at speeds double that of ordinary passenger trains, making stops along the way and consisting of only a few first-class carriages.

  Nasrollah was fortunate to be sharing one of these carriages with another passenger, as the company and conversation made the trip less tiresome. The train followed a straight line through desert and marshes with not much to see.

  Nasrollah introduced himself to his fellow passenger and asked, “Monsieur, may I ask if you know why the train line was constructed in such a linear manner?”

  The man, who seemed eager for conversation, offered Nasrollah a firm handshake and introduced himself as Rustam Somkhishvili (the surname meaning “child of Somekhi” or “Armenian” in the Georgian tongue).

  He responded, “Well, the rumor is that the tsar had willed it so by laying a ruler on a map and drawing a straight line from the new to the old capital city and demanding it be built in this fashion!”

  Somkhishvili was an older, fashionably attired businessman with a well-cut and well-fitted coat, displaying his decidedly good taste. He was handsome with thick, bushy gray brows that shaded his deep-set blue eyes and a long gray mustache that completely covered his upper lip. He was heading to his hometown of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, after a brief stay in Moscow.

  When Nasrollah asked him his profession, Somkhishvili took a long draw from his cigare
tte, and as a spiral of whitish-gray smoke curled above his head, replied, “I am an iron merchant and have been supplying materials for the ever-expanding Russian railway network; that is why I am familiar with the rumor of the tsar’s desired railway route.”

  Somkhishvili added with a chuckle, “You know, several routes had been suggested by his ministers, but the tsar suspected ulterior motives on their part and therefore made the final decision the way he did, with a ruler!”

  Nasrollah laughed and asked, “Are you by any chance of Persian descent?” recognizing Somkhishvili’s Christian name, Rustam, as the hero of the Persian epic Shahnameh, or Book of Kings.

  Somkhishvili replied, “No, I am not Persian. I am a Georgian, named after the famous bodyguard of Napoleon Bonaparte, Rustam Raza. He was also born in Tbilisi to Armenian parents, like me.”

  Nasrollah’s companion was a gregarious man with a delightful and entertaining character and seemed to have a good sense of humor. Traveling in a private carriage had its benefits when it came to Somkhishvili expressing his true feelings far from curious ears. He mentioned that his father, being Armenian and living in Georgia, had disdain for Russia’s domination and territorial desires. Even though both Armenia and Georgia were Christian countries, they never identified with Russia as a big brother.

  Somkhishvili added, “My father, God rest his soul, believed that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, and therefore he admired Napoleon, naming me after the French emperor’s Georgian-born Armenian bodyguard!”

  Nasrollah’s great-grandfather, the head of the Minbashian clan, was also born in Georgia, back when it was part of Persian territory and called Gorjestan in Persian. Minbashian means “one thousand heads” since Nasrollah’s ancestor commanded one thousand men.

  Nasrollah revealed, “Even though I also have a Georgian heritage, I have never visited, but I will be passing through Georgia on my way to Baku on the Caspian, as part of my next leg home.”

  Somkhishvili declared, “In this whole world, there is no country more beautiful than Georgia!”

  As everyone speaks about their own homeland like this, Nasrollah had a feeling this was just typical bragging.

  Sensing this, from the look on Nasrollah’s face, Somkhishvili added, “You see, Monsieur, Georgians tell the story of how it was that they came to possess the most beautiful land in the world.”

  Smiling proudly, he continued, “When God was distributing land to all the different peoples of the world, the Georgians were having a party and had too much to drink, and hence arrived a bit late to where God was portioning out the land. When they mentioned they were late because they were drinking in praise of Him, God was pleased and gave the Georgians the part of the world that He had been reserving for Himself!”

  Nasrollah laughed along with Somkhishvili when he finished telling him this tale. With a common heritage and many hours of laughter and conversation, the two men bonded, only sleeping for a few hours during the overnight train ride.

  Once they arrived in Moscow, Somkhishvili convinced Nasrollah to stay at the Bolchaya Moskovskaya Gastinitsa. Nasrollah was to stop over for one week before continuing his trip to Persia, while Somkhishvili was planning to remain in the city of the Muscovites to attend several business meetings. Nasrollah agreed to join him at this attractive caravansary since he had not yet arranged a place to stay.

  Luckily, the seven years Nasrollah had lived in St. Petersburg had offered him fluency in the Slavic tongue. He was often mistaken for a Russian, mainly because he spoke the language with no hint of a foreign accent. In the native Russian Gastinitsa, which in every way was thoroughly Russian, this ability was a necessity. This gave Nasrollah an advantage over other foreigners who were the target of unscrupulous locals, looking to take advantage of newcomers' ignorance of the language and local customs.

  After settling in at their hotel, Nasrollah and Somkhishvili went for a short walk to stretch their legs after the long train ride. They bought some cigarettes at the tobacco kiosk nearby and returned to the hotel since they were still tired. They had a quiet dinner and began planning the next day’s schedule.

  Somkhishvili told Nasrollah, “Tomorrow morning, I have to attend to some business, but we should meet up at the Sandunovsky baths later to seek refreshment and rejuvenation, after a long day of meetings for me and sightseeing for you.”

  The Sandunovsky baths were considered some of the best in the world, and Nasrollah eagerly agreed to Rustam’s offer since he wanted to experience the spa, drink, and socializing that the venue offered during this brief stopover in Moscow.

  The next day after breakfast, each went his own way, with Nasrollah spending his time visiting the splendid monuments, museums, and churches of this grand city. However, his visit to one place left a deep impression on him: The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The Russians built the cathedral as a sign of their gratitude that Napoleon Bonaparte had retreated from Moscow during the 1812 Patriotic War.

  This building held a particular interest for Nasrollah since it had been the scene for the world premiere of the famous 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky. This was a source of pride for Nasrollah because Tchaikovsky, who was considered a Russian national treasure, had also graduated from the conservatory in St. Petersburg.

  While exploring the incredible cathedral, a tour guide who mentioned he was from the town of Vilnius began explaining the history of the war to Nasrollah. The guide, who displayed an apparent dislike for Napoleon, said, “Near my town, there is a simple monument bearing two plaques. On one side, facing towards Russia, it is written, Napoleon Bonaparte passed this way in 1812 with four hundred thousand men, while on the other side, leaving Russia, are engraved the words Napoleon Bonaparte passed this way in 1812 with nine thousand men!”

  He then added with a sense of pride, “It’s a tragic depiction of how many men the French lost trying to defeat the Russians, don’t you agree?”

  Nasrollah agreed with a nod of his head, but at the same time thought, Somkhishvili’s father would not have liked to hear this story, recalling what Rustam told him just yesterday about his father’s love for the retreating emperor.

  Later that day, as planned, Nasrollah and Somkhishvili met in front of the bathhouse, a stately structure that was three stories high and covered a whole city block. Nasrollah noticed that Somkhishvili seemed rather well-dressed for a simple visit to a spa. As Nasrollah had just come back from a day of sightseeing, he wondered if he should have upgraded his attire.

  The Sandunovsky provided various kinds of baths, from the cheap scrubbing for ordinary customers to the luxurious private suites fitted with all sorts of devices for cleansing. These included dry heat, showers, and massages, a treatment costing many rubles but well worth it for pampering the well-to-do to rid the body from a full day of tiredness.

  They waited at the counter to pay upfront for the services they desired and to be given numbers, based upon which they would be ushered into their private suites for bathing and massage. Even though they had arrived together, Somkhishvili was given a low number, while Nasrollah was given a much higher number, which meant a longer wait for him to get in. He attributed this to Somkhishvili being a return customer, an older gentleman, and perhaps because he was better dressed. Nasrollah guessed there had been an assumption on the part of the proprietor of Somkhishvili’s higher station in life, which could lead to an ample gratuity for each service provided.

  The establishment was busier than usual this evening. The short-handed staff seemed to be rushed and inattentive, so much so that Nasrollah had to wait half an hour after Somkhishvili had already gone in to be assisted. To add to his disappointment, the bath attendant and masseur were rough and seemed lacking in their service, performing their tasks in a perfunctory way. Nasrollah did not feel so much attended to, but more like a chore to be gotten over with quickly. He was surprised as to why the bathhouse had garnered such excellent accolades.

  Once his bath was over, he met up with his friend, who was wai
ting in the cool-down room, sipping a freshly squeezed, chilled pomegranate juice. When Nasrollah ordered a similar drink, to his surprise, it was a warm and stale libation.

  Somkhishvili, totally unaware of what his friend had just experienced, inquired, “Monsieur Minbashian, how did you enjoy the spa?”

  Nasrollah replied, “Unfortunately, it did not meet my expectations!”

  Somkhishvili, who was a regular customer at the bathhouse whenever he visited Moscow, had always enjoyed the best attention while there. That is why he was genuinely surprised to hear of the unprofessional and hurried service Nasrollah had received. He wondered if maybe Nasrollah was exaggerating the level of his discontent.

  Sensing this, Nasrollah offered his drink to Somkhishvili, saying, “Take a sip of my drink to see what I mean.”

  After drinking some of Nasrollah’s pomegranate juice, Somkhishvili’s mouth flooded with the warm, sour taste, as he smacked his lips theatrically to show his displeasure with the flavor. He immediately got up from his seat with great purpose, and Nasrollah asked him, “Where are you going?”

  Somkhishvili, who had suggested coming to this bathhouse, felt terrible and replied, “I’m going to complain to the proprietor for the disrespect they have shown towards you!”

  Nasrollah was surprised to see how upset Somkhishvili was and calmly stated, “My friend, please do not bother yourself; there is no need to complain.”

  Nasrollah thought for a moment as his eyes began to glow with excitement, adding with a sly smile, “I have another idea. Let us have some fun with them instead.”

  Somkhishvili sat back down, curious to see what Nasrollah planned to do. When the time came for payment of the gratuity to each provider, Somkhishvili believed that Nasrollah, to show his displeasure, would either pay nothing and give them each a scolding or, at the absolute best, pay them each a kopek or two. To Somkhishvili’s astonishment, Nasrollah gave each attendant a gratuity that was much more than they had expected, even if they had provided the best service.