Samarkand

CHAPTER 36

In the ochre dusk of a walled garden there was a groaning crowd. How was I going to recognize Baskerville? Everyone’s face was so brown! I leant against a tree, waiting and watching. The doorway of a lighted cabin had been made into an improvised theatre. The rozeh-khawari, story-teller and mourner, was drawing out the tears of the faithful along with their shouts and their blood.

A man stepped out of the shadows, a volunteer for pain. His feet were bare, his torso naked and he had a chain wound around each hand: he threw the chains up in the air and let them fall behind his shoulders on to his back: the chains were smooth, bruising and pummelling his flesh but it did not give — it took thirty to fifty strokes for the first blood to appear as a black spot which then started pouring out in fascinating spurts. It was the theatre of suffering, the age-old game of the passion.

The beating became more vigorous as his noisy breathing was echoed by the crowd. The blows went on and the story-teller spoke louder to make his voice carry over the sound of the flagellation. Then an actor sprang up and threatened the audience with his sabre. His grimaces first attracted curses and then volleys of stones. He did not stay on the scene for long. Soon his victim appeared and the crowd gave out a roar. I myself could not hold back a shout, for the man dragging himself along the ground had been decapitated.

I turned horrified to the reverend; he reassured me with a cold smile and whispered:

‘It is an old trick. They get a child, or a very small man, and on his head they place a sheep’s head which is turned upside-down so that its bloody neck points upward. Then they wrap a white cloth around it with a hole in the appropriate place. As you can see the effect is transfixing.’

He drew on his pipe. The headless man hopped and wheeled around the stage for minutes on end, until he gave up his place to a strange person in tears.

‘Baskerville!’

I gave the reverend another questioning look. He did no more than raise his eyebrows enigmatically.

The strangest thing was that Howard was dressed as an American, even sporting a top hat which struck me as irresistibly amusing in spite of the pervading atmosphere of tragedy.

The crowd was still yelling, lamenting and, as far as I could see, no one else’s face showed the least hint of amusement except the pastor’s. Finally he deigned to enlighten me:

‘There is always a European in these funeral rites, and curiously, he is one of the “goodies”. Tradition has it that a Frankish ambassador at the Omayyad court was moved by the death of Hussein, the supreme martyr of the Shiites, and that he showed his disapproval of the crime so noisily that he himself was put to death. Naturally, there is not always a European to hand who can appear in the spectacle, so they use a Turk or a light-skinned Persian. However since Baskerville has been at Tabriz they always call upon him to play this role. He plays it splendidly — and he really cries!’

At that moment the man with the sword came back and pranced boisterously around Baskerville who stood still and then flicked his hat off, revealing his blond hair which was carefully parted to the left. Then, with the slowness of a zombie he fell to his knees and stretched out on the ground. A beam of light lit up his clean-shaven child’s face and his cheekbones which were puffed up with tears, and a nearby hand threw a cluster of petals on to his black suit.

I could not hear the crowd any longer. My eyes were riveted to my friend and I was waiting anxiously for him to get up again. The ceremony seemed to go on for ever and I was impatient to retrieve him.

An hour later we met around bowl of pomegranate soup at the mission. The pastor left us alone and we ate amid an embarrassed silence. Baskerville’s eyes were still red.

‘It takes me a while to become a Westerner again,’ he apologized with a broken smile.

‘Take your time, the century has just begun.’

He coughed, brought the hot bowl to his lips and became lost again in silent thought.

Then haltingly he said:

‘When I arrived in this country, I could not understand how grown and bearded men could sob and work themselves up over a murder committed twelve hundred years ago. Now I have understood. If the Persians live in the past it is because the past is their homeland and the present is a foreign country where nothing belongs to them. Everything which is a symbol of modern life and greater freedom for us, for them is a symbol of foreign domination: the roads — Russia; the railways, telegraph and banking system — England; the postal service — Austria-Hungary …’

‘And the teaching of science, that’s Mr Baskerville from the American Presbyterian Mission.’

‘Exactly. What choice do the people of Tabriz have? To send their children to a traditional school where they learn by rote the same misshapen phrases that their ancestors were repeating back in the twelfth century; or to send them to my class where they receive an education which is the same as that of young Americans, but in the shadow of a cross and a star-spangled banner? My students will be the better, the more adept and the more useful for their country, but how can we prevent the others from seeing them as renegades? In the very first week of my stay I asked myself that question, and it was during a ceremony like the one you have just been watching that I found the solution.

‘I had mingled with the crowd and groans were being emitted all around me. Watching those devastated faces, bathed in tears, and gazing at those haggard, worried and entreating eyes, the whole misery of Persia appeared to me — they were tattered souls besieged by never-ending mourning. Without realizing it, my tears started to flow. Someone in the crowd noticed, they looked at me and were moved and then they pushed me toward the stage where they made me act out the role of the Frankish ambassador. The next day my students’ parents came to see me; they were happy that they could now answer the people who had been reproaching them for sending their children to the Presbyterian Mission: “I have entrusted my son to the teacher who cried for the Imam Hussein.” Some religious chiefs were irritated but their hostility toward me can be attributed to my success. They prefer foreigners to behave like foreigners.’

I understood his behaviour better, but I was still sceptical:

‘So, for you, the solution to Persia’s problem is to join in with the crowds of mourners!’

‘I did not say that. Crying is not a recipe for anything. Nor is it a skill. It is simply a naked, naive and pathetic gesture. No one should be forced to shed tears. The only important thing is not to scorn other peoples’ tragedy. When they saw me crying, when they saw that I had thrown off the sovereign indifference of a foreigner, they came to tell me confidentially that crying serves no purpose and that Persia does not need any extra mourners and that the best I could do would be to provide the children of Tabriz with an adequate education.’

‘Wise words. I was going to tell you the same thing.’

‘Except that if I had not cried, they never would have come to talk to me. If they had not seen me crying, they would never have let me tell the pupils that this Shah was rotten and that the religious chiefs of Tabriz were hardly any better!’

‘Did you say that in class?’

‘Yes, I said that. This young beardless American, this young teacher at the Presbyterian Mission denounced both the crown and the turban and my students agreed with him. So did their parents. Only the reverend was outraged.’

Seeing that I was perplexed he added:

‘I have also spoken to the boys about Khayyam. I told them that millions of Americans and Europeans had made his Rubaiyaat their bedside book and I made them learn FitzGerald’s verses by heart. The next day, a grandfather came to see me. He was very moved by what his grandson had told him and he said: ‘We too have great respect for the American poets!’ Naturally he was completely unable to name a single one, but that makes no difference. It was his way of expressing his pride and gratitude. Unfortunately not all the parents reacted in the same way. One of them came to complain to me. In the pastor’s presence he yelled at me: ‘Khayyam was a drunkard and an impious man!’ I replied: ‘By saying that you are not insulting Khayyam but praising drunkenness and ungodliness!’ The reverend almost choked on the spot.’

Howard laughed like a child. He was incorrigible and disarming.

‘So you hail everything they accuse you of! Might you also be a “son of Adam”?’

‘Did the reverend tell you that too? I have the impression that you both spoke a great deal about me.’

‘We have no one else in common.’

‘I will not hide anything from you. My conscience is as pure as that of a new-born babe. About two months ago a man came to see me. He was a huge man with a moustache, but quite timid. He asked if I could give a talk at the anjuman — the club of which he was a member and you will never guess on what subject! On Darwin’s theory! I found the matter amusing and touching, given the atmosphere of political upheaval which reigns in this country, and I accepted. I gathered together everything I could lay my hands on about Darwin. I set out the theories of his detractors. I think that my performance must have been boring, but the room was crowded and they listened to me religiously. After that I went to other meetings on more diverse subjects. There is an immense thirst for knowledge among these people. They are also the most determined Constitutionalists. Sometimes I would pass by their meeting hall to hear the latest news from Teheran. You ought to meet them, they dream of the same world as you and I.’

CHAPTER 37

In the evening few stalls stayed open in the Tabriz bazaar, but the streets were alive and men were sitting around talking at the crossroads, setting up circles of wicker chairs and of kalyan pipes whose smoke was gradually displacing the thousand smells of the day. I followed close on Howard’s heels as he turned from one alley into another without a second glance; from time to time he would stop to greet the parent of one of his students, and the street urchins everywhere stopped their games and scattered as he passed.

We finally arrived in front of a gate which was almost eaten away by rust. My companion pushed it open and we went through a small overgrown garden and up to a mud-brick house whose door, after seven raps, opened creaking on to a huge room which was lit up by a row of storm lamps hung from the ceiling and which a draught of air was swaying ceaselessly. The people present must have been used to it, but I very quickly felt as if I was on board a flimsy raft. I could no longer focus on anyone’s face and felt the need to lie down as soon as possible and close my eyes for a few moments. Baskerville was not unknown at the ‘sons of Adam’ meeting — he caused quite a stir when he walked in and as I had accompanied him I also had the right to some fraternal embraces which were duly redoubled when Howard revealed that his arrival in Persia was partly due to me.

When I thought it was time for me to sit down against a wall, a large man stood up at the end of the room. He had a long white cape draped over his shoulders which set him apart from the others as the most eminent person in the meeting. He took a step toward me:

‘Benjamin!’

I stood up again, took two steps and rubbed my eyes. ‘Fazel!’ We fell into each other’s arms with an oath of surprise.

‘Mr Lesage was a friend of Sayyid Jamaladin!’

Immediately I stopped being a distinguished visitor and became an historic monument, or even a religious relic. People came up to me with awe, which was quite embarrassing.

I presented Howard to Fazel. They knew each other only by reputation. Fazel had not been to Tabriz for more than a year, even though it was his birthplace. Moreover, there was something unusual and unsettling about the whole evening, together with Fazel being there within those flaking walls and under those dancing lights. Was he not one of the leaders of the democratic party in parliament, a pillar of the Constitutional Revolution? Was this the moment for him to be away from the capital? These were the questions which I put to him. He appeared embarrassed. However, I had spoken quietly in French. He looked furtively at the men next to him, and then by way of an answer he said, ‘Where are you staying?’

‘In the caravansary in the Armenian quarter.’

‘I shall come to see you during the night.’

Toward midnight we met again, six of us, in my room. There were Baskerville, myself, Fazel and three of his companions whom he introduced hurriedly for reasons of secrecy, only by their first names.

‘You asked at the anjuman why I was here and not in Teheran. Well, it is because the capital is already lost as far as the constitution goes. I could not state it in these terms to thirty people, I would have caused panic. But that is the truth.’

We were all too stunned to react. He explained:

‘Two weeks ago a journalist from St Petersberg came to see me. He was the correspondent of Ryesh. His name is Panoff but he writes under the pseudonym “Tané”.’

I had heard about him and his articles were often quoted in the London press.

‘He is a social democrat,’ Fazel continued, ‘and an enemy of Tsarism but when he arrived in Teheran some months ago he managed to hide his beliefs, worked his way into the Russian legation, and by some chance or other or even by some plan, he managed to lay his hands on some compromising documents including a project for a coup d’état which the Cossacks would carry out in order to re-impose an absolute monarchy. It was all written down in black and white. The underworld was to be given free rein in the bazaar in order to sap the merchants’ confidence in the new regime, and some religious chiefs were to address petitions to the Shah asking him to invalidate the constitution by reason of its being against Islam. Naturally Panoff was taking a risk in bringing me those documents. I thanked him for them and immediately asked for an extraordinary meeting of Parliament. Having exposed the facts in detail, I demanded that the Shah be dismissed and replaced by one of his young sons, that the Cossack brigade be broken up and the clerics incriminated in the documents be arrested. Several speakers came up to the dais to express their indignation and to support my proposals.

‘Suddenly an usher came to inform us that the ministers plenipotentiary of Russia and England were in the building and that they had an urgent note to convey to us. The session was suspended and the president of the Majlis and the Prime Minister went out; when they returned they looked like death. The diplomats had come to warn them that if the Shah were deposed, the two Powers would consider themselves regrettably obliged to intervene militarily. Not only were they getting ready to strangle us, but we were being forbidden to defend ourselves!’

‘Why such resolve?’ Baskerville asked, appalled.

‘The Tsar does not want a democracy within his borders. The very word parliament makes him tremble with rage.’

‘But even so, that is not the case with Britain!’

‘No. Except that if the Persians managed to govern themselves in an adult manner, that could give ideas to the Indians! And England would then just have to pack its bags. Then there is oil. In 1901 a British subject, Mr Knox d’Arcy obtained for the sum of twenty thousand pounds sterling the right to exploit oil reserves throughout the Persian empire. So far production has been insignificant, but a few months ago immense reserves were found in the Bakhtiari tribal areas, doubtless you have heard talk of this already. These reserves could represent an important source of revenue for the country. I therefore asked parliament to revise the agreement with London so that we might obtain more equitable conditions. Most of the deputies agreed with me. Since then the English minister has no longer invited me to the legation.’

‘But it is in the legation’s gardens that the bast is taking place,’ I said pensively.

‘The English consider that Russian influence is currently too great, and that Russia is only leaving them the congruent portion of the Persian cake, so they encouraged us to protest and opened their gardens to us. It is even said that they were the ones who printed the photograph which compromised Monsieur Naus. When our movement triumphed, London managed to obtain an agreement from the Tsar to share the country. The north of Persia would be the Russian zone of influence and the south would be the private property of England. Once the British got what they wanted, our democracy suddenly ceased to interest them. Like the Tsar they can only see it as an inconvenience and would prefer to see it disappear.’

‘By what right!’ Baskerville exploded.

Fazel gave him a paternal smile before carrying on with his account:

‘After the visit of the two diplomats, the deputies were disheartened. They were unable to confront so many enemies at the same time and could do no better than to lay the blame on the unfortunate Panoff. Several speakers accused him of being a forger and an anarchist whose sole aim was to provoke a war between Persia and Russia. The journalist had come with me to parliament and I had left him in an office near the door to the great hall so that he could give his testimony should it be necessary. Now the deputies were asking for him to be arrested and delivered to the Tsar’s legation and a motion had been put forward to that effect.

‘This man who had helped us against his own government was going to be handed over to the executioners! I who am so calm by nature, could no longer hold myself back. I jumped up on to a chair and shouted like one possessed: “I swear, by the soil which covers my father, that if this man is arrested I will call the ‘sons of Adam’ to arms and set this parliament awash in blood. No one who votes for this motion will leave here alive!” They could have lifted my immunity and arrested me too, but they did not dare. They suspended the session until the next day. That very night I left the capital for my birthplace, where I arrived today. Panoff came with me and is now hiding somewhere in Tabriz while waiting to leave the country.’

We talked and talked and soon dawn surprised us. The first calls to prayer sounded and the light became brighter. We debated and constructed a thousand gloomy futures and then debated again, too exhausted to stop. Baskerville stretched out, stopped in full flight, consulted his watch and stood up again like a sleep-walker and gave his neck a thorough scratch:

‘My God, it’s already six o’clock, a night with no sleep, how can I face my pupils? And what will the Reverend say seeing me come back at this hour?’

‘You can always pretend that you spent the night with a woman!’

Howard, however, was no longer in the mood to smile.

I do not want to speak of coincidence, since chance did not play a large role in the affair, but I am duty bound to point out that, just as Fazel finished his description of the plot being hatched against the young Persian democracy based on the documents which had been spirited away by Panoff, the coup d’état had already begun.

In fact, as I later learnt, it was toward four o’clock in the morning of that Wednesday, 23 June 1908, that a contingent of one thousand Cossacks, commanded by Colonel Liakhov, set off toward the Baharistan, the seat of the parliament, in the heart of Teheran. The building was surrounded and its exits under guard. Members of a local anjuman, who had noticed the troop movements, ran over to a neighbouring college, where a telephone had recently been installed, in order to call some deputies and certain religious democrats such as Ayatollah Behbahani and Ayatollah Tabatabai. They all came there before dawn to indicate by their presence their attachment to the constitution. Curiously the Cossacks let them through. Their orders had been to prevent anyone leaving, not entering.

The crowd of protesters kept swelling and at day-break there were several hundreds of them, including numerous ‘sons of Adam’. They had rifles, but not much ammunition — about sixty cartridges each, certainly not enough to enable them to withstand a siege. Moreover they were hesitant about using their arms and ammunition. They effectively took up position on roof-tops and behind windows but they did not know whether they should fire the first shots, thereby giving the signal for an inevitable massacre, or whether they should wait passively while the preparations for the coup were carried out.

It was precisely that which delayed the Cossack’s assault even longer. Liakhov, surrounded by Russian and Persian officers, was busy stationing his troops as well as his cannons, of which six were counted that day, the most lethal one being installed on Topkhaneh Square. On several occasions the Colonel rode within the defenders’ line of sight, but the personalities present prevented the ‘sons of Adam’ from opening fire lest the Tsar use such an incident as a pretext for invading Persia.

It was toward the middle of the afternoon that the order to attack was given. Although the sides were unequal, the fighting raged for six or seven hours. By a series of bold strokes, the resisters managed to put three cannons out of action.

However this was the heroism of despair. By nightfall the white flag of defeat was raised over the first parliament in Persian history, but several minutes after the last shot Liakhov ordered his artillery to fire again. The Tsar’s directives were clear; it was not enough to abolish the parliament, they also had orders to destroy the building which had accommodated it, so the inhabitants of Teheran would see its ruins and it would be forever a lesson to all.

CHAPTER 38

Fighting had not yet come to an end in the capital when the first shooting broke out in Tabriz. I had gone to collect Howard as he came out of class and we were to meet Fazel at the anjuman to go and have dinner with one of his relatives. We had not yet stepped into the labyrinth of the bazaar when we heard shots which sounded as if they came from near by.

With a curiosity marked by recklessness, we headed down toward the source of the noise only to see, at about a hundred metres distance, a vociferous crowd marching forward. There was dust, smoke, a forest of clubs, rifles and glowing torches as well as shouts which I could not understand as they were in Azeri, the Turkish language of the people of Tabriz. Baskerville did his best to translate: ‘Death to the constitution’, ‘Death to parliament’, ‘Death to atheists’, ‘Long live the Shah’. Dozens of townspeople were running about in all directions. An old man was dragging a stupefied goat at the end of a rope. A woman stumbled and her son, hardly six years old, helped her to get up and supported her as she fled limping with him.

We ourselves hurried towards our meeting place. On the way a group of young men were erecting a barricade made of two tree trunks upon which they were piling up in completely random fashion tables, bricks, chairs, boxes and barrels. We were recognized and allowed to pass, but we were advised to go quickly with the words ‘they are coming here’, ‘they want to burn down the quarter’, ‘they have sworn to massacre the sons of Adam.’

In the anjuman building Fazel was surrounded by forty or fifty men and he was the only one not carrying a rifle. He only had an Austrian Mannlicher pistol whose sole use was to point out to all around him the positions they should take up. He was calm, less anxious than the evening before, in the state of calm which a man of action feels when the unbearable waiting is over.

‘You see!’ he told us with an imperceptibly triumphant tone of voice. ‘Everything which Panoff stated was true. Colonel Liakhov has carried out his coup d’état. He has declared himself military governor of Teheran and has imposed a curfew there. Since this morning supporters of the constitution have become fair game in the capital and all other cities, starting with Tabriz.’

‘It has all happened so quickly!’ Howard marvelled.

‘It was the Russian consul who was notified of the launch of the coup by telegram and he then informed the religious chiefs of Tabriz this morning. They in turn summoned their supporters to assemble at mid-day in the Deveshi, the Quarter of the Camel-drivers, whence they spread out through the city, first heading for the home of one of my journalist friends, Ali Meshedi. They dragged him out of his house accompanied by the screams of his wife and mother, cut his throat and severed his right hand and then left him in a pool of blood. But have no fear — Ali will be avenged before nightfall.’

His voice betrayed him. He managed a respite of a second and drew a deep breath before continuing:

‘If I have come to Tabriz, it is because I know this city will resist. The ground we are standing on is still ruled by the constitution. This is now the seat of parliament, the seat of the legitimate government. It will be a fine battle but we will end up winning. Follow me!’

We followed him, along with half a dozen of his supporters. He led us toward the garden, and walked around the house to a wooden staircase whose extremities disappeared in thick foliage. We went up to the roof, through a passageway, up a few more steps and then came to a room with thick walls and small yet potentially deadly windows. Fazel invited us to take a look: we were overhanging the most vulnerable entrance to the quarter which at present was blocked by a barricade. Behind it there were about twenty men, kneeling to the ground with their rifles aimed.

‘There are others,’ Fazel explained. Just as determined. They are blocking all the entrances to the quarter. If the pack comes, they will be given the welcome they deserve.’

The pack, as he called them, was not far off. They must have stopped on the way to set fire to two or three houses belonging to sons of Adam, but they were relentless and the noise and shots grew closer.

Suddenly we were seized by a kind of shudder. However much we expected them and were sheltered by a wall, the spectacle of a wild crowd calling out death and coming straight at one is probably the most frightening experience one can have.

Instinctively I whispered:

‘How many are they?’

‘A thousand, a thousand five hundred at the most,’ Fazel replied in a loud voice which was clear and reassuring.

Then he added, like an order:

‘Now it is up to us to frighten them.’

He asked his aides to give us rifles. Howard and I exchanged a quasi-amused glance. We felt the weight of those cold objects with both fascination and distaste.

‘Position yourselves at the windows,’ Fazel yelled. ‘And shoot at anyone who approaches. I have to leave you. I have a surprise up my sleeve for these barbarians.’

He had hardly gone out before the battle started although to speak of it as such is most probably an exaggeration. The rioters arrived. They were a vociferous and bird-brained mob and their forward ranks threw themselves against the barricade as if it were an obstacle course. The sons of Adam fired one salvo and then another. A dozen of the assailants were downed and the rest fell back. Only one managed to scale the barricade, but that was only to be run through by a bayonet. He gave out a horrible cry of agony and I turned my eyes away.

Most of the demonstrators wisely stayed back, making do with shouting out hoarsely the same slogan: ‘Death!’. Then a squad was thrown anew into an assault on the barricade — this time with a little more method, that is to say that they were firing on the defenders and the windows from which the shots had come. A son of Adam hit on the forehead was the only loss in his camp. His companion’s salvoes were already starting to mow down the first lines of the assailants.

The offensive tailed off, they fell back and discussed a new strategy noisily. They were regrouping for a new attempt when a rumbling sound shook the quarter. A shell had just landed in the middle of the rioters, causing carnage followed by headlong flight. The defenders then raised their rifles and shouted: ‘Mashrouteh! Mashrouthe!’ — Constitution! From the other side of the barricade we could make out dozens of corpses stretched out on the ground. Howard whispered:

‘My weapon is still cold. I have not fired a single cartridge. What about you?’

‘Nor have I.’

‘To have someone’s head in my sights, and to press the trigger to kill him …’

Fazel arrived a few moments later in jovial mood.

‘What did you think of my surprise? It was an old French cannon, a de Bange, which was sold to us by an officer in the imperial army. It is on the roof, come and take a look at it! One day soon we shall place it in the middle of the largest square in Tabriz and write underneath it: “This cannon saved the constitution!”’

I found his words too optimistic even though I could not contest the fact that he had won a significant victory in a few minutes. His objective was clear — to maintain a zone where the last Constitutionalists could assemble and find protection, but above all where they could all plan out the steps they were to take.

If someone had told us on that troubled June day that from just a few tangled alleys in the Tabriz bazaar and with our two loads of Lebel rifles and our single de Bange cannon we were going to win back for Persia its stolen freedom, who would have believed it?

Yet that is what happened, but not without the purest of us paying for it with his life.

CHAPTER 39

They were dark days on the history of Khayyam’s country. Was this the promised dawn of the Orient? From Isfahan to Kazvin, from Shiraz to Hamand, the same shouts issued blindly from thousand upon thousand of people: ‘Death! Death!’ Now one had to go into hiding in order to say the words liberty, democracy and justice. The future was no more than a forbidden dream and the Constitutionalists were hunted down on the streets, the meeting rooms of the sons of Adam were laid to waste and their books were thrown into a pile and burnt. Nowhere, throughout the whole of Persia, could the odious spread of violence be checked.

Nowhere apart from Tabriz. And when the interminable day of the coup came to an end, out of the thirty main quarters of the heroic city only one was holding out — the district called Amir-Khiz at the extreme north-west of the bazaar. That night a few dozen young partisans took turns to guard the approaches, while Fazel was sketching ambitious arrows on a crumpled map in the anjuman building in the general quarter.

There were about a dozen of us fervently following the smallest mark of his pencil which the swinging storm lamps accentuated. The deputy stood up straight.

‘The enemy is still suffering the shock of the losses which we inflicted on them. They think that we are stronger than we actually are. They have no cannons and do not know how many we have. We must profit from this without delay to extend our territory. It will not take the Shah long to send troops and they will be in Tabriz within a few weeks. By then we must have liberated the whole city. Tonight we shall attack.’

He bent over and every head — bare or turbaned — bent over too.

‘We cross the river by surprise,’ he explained. ‘We charge in the direction of the citadel and attack it from two sides, the bazaar and from the cemetery. It will be ours before evening.’

The citadel was not taken for ten days. Lethal battles raged in every street but the resisters advanced and all the clashes turned to their advantage. Some ‘sons of Adam’ occupied the bureau of the Indo-European Telegraph on the Saturday, thanks to which they were able to keep in contact with Teheran as well as with London and Bombay. The same day a police barracks went over to their side, bringing with it as a dowry a Maxim machine gun and thirty cases of ammunition. These successes gave the population its confidence back. Young and old became emboldened and flocked to the liberated quarters in their hundreds, sometimes with their weapons. Within a few weeks the enemy had been pushed back to the outskirts. It was only holding on to a thinly populated area in the north-east of the city stretching from the Quarter of the Camel-drivers to the camp of Sahib-Divan.

Toward mid-July an army of irregulars was formed, as well as a provisional administration in which Howard found himself made quartermaster. He now passed most of his time scouring the bazaar and compiling a list of food stocks. The merchants showed themselves more than willing to cooperate. He himself found his way perfectly through the Persian system of weights and measures.

‘You have to forget litres, kilos, ounces and pints,’ he told me. ‘Here they speak of jaw, miskal, syr and kharvar, which is the load of an ass.’

He tried to teach me.

‘The basic unit is the jaw, which is a medium sized grain of barley which still has its husk but which has had the little tuft of hair at each end cut off.’

‘That’s quite tortuous,’ I guffawed.

My teacher threw his student a look of rebuke. To make amends I thought I had better prove that I had been taking it in.

‘So the jaw is the smallest unit of measure.’

‘Not at all.’ said Howard indignantly.

Unruffled, he referred to his notes:

‘The weight of a grain of barley equals that of seventy grains of seneveh, or if you like, six hairs of a mule’s tail.’

In comparison, my own mission was light! Given my complete ignorance of the local dialect, my only job was to keep in contact with the foreign nationals in order to reassure them of Fazel’s intentions and to watch over their safety.

It should be mentioned that Tabriz, until the construction of the Trans-Caucasian Railway twenty years earlier, had been the gateway to Persia, the entrance point for all travellers, goods and ideas. Several European establishments had branches there, such as the German company of MMO Mossig and Schünemann, or the Eastern Trading Company, an important Austrian firm. There were also consulates, the American Presbyterian Mission and various other institutions, and I am happy to say that at no moment during the long and difficult months of the siege did the foreign nationals become targets.

Not only were they in no danger, but there was some moving fraternization. I do not wish to speak of Baskerville, myself nor of Panoff, who quickly joined the movement, but I wish to salute other people, such as Mr Moore, the correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, who, not hesitating to take up arms at the side of Fazel, was wounded in combat, or Captain Anginieur, who helped us to resolve numerous logistical problems and who, through his articles in l’Asie française, helped produce the surge of solidarity in Paris and throughout the world, which saved Tabriz from the dreadful fate threatening it. For some of the city’s clergy, the active presence of the foreigners was, I quote, ‘a motley crowd of Europeans, Armenians, Babis and infidels of all sorts’. However the population remained impervious to this propaganda and showered us with grateful affection. Every man was a brother for us and every woman a sister or a mother.

I hardly need to point out that it was the Persians themselves who gave the Resistance the most spontaneous and enormous help from the first day. First the free inhabitants of Tabriz and then the refugees who had had to flee their towns and villages for their beliefs and seek protection in the last bastion of the constitution. This was the case with hundreds of sons of Adam who had rushed from all corners of the Empire and who asked nothing more than that they be allowed to bear arms. This was also the case with several deputies, ministers and journalists from Teheran who had managed to escape the dragnet ordered by Colonel Liakhov and who often arrived in small groups, exhausted, haggard and distraught.

However the most precious recruit beyond a shadow of a doubt was Shireen who had defied the curfew to leave the capital by car without the Cossacks daring to impede her. Her landaulet was greeted enthusiastically by the populace, the more so as her chauffeur came from Tabriz and was one of the rare Persians to drive such a vehicle.

The Princess set up home in an abandoned palace which had been built by her grandfather, the old Shah who had been assassinated. He had envisaged spending a month there every year, but after the first night, as legend goes, he felt faint and his astrologers advised him never to set foot again in a place of such ill omen. For thirty years no one had lived there. It was referred to, not without a little fear, as the Empty Palace.

Shireen did not hesitate to defy bad luck and her residence became the heart of the city. Resistance leaders liked to meet in her vast gardens, which were a cool oasis during those summer nights and I was often in their company.

The Princess always seemed happy to see me. Our correspondence had caused a bond to spring up between us to which no one could become privy. Of course we were never alone, there being dozens of other people present whenever we met or dined. We debated indefatigably and sometimes we just joked but not excessively. Familiarity is never tolerated in Persia and one must be punctilious and flamboyant about being polite. In Persian there is often the tendency to say ‘I am the slave of the shadow of the greatness’ of the individual to whom one is talking and when it is a matter of mainly female highnesses, one starts if not actually kissing the ground at least doing so in the import of the most grandiose phrases.

Then came that disturbing Thursday evening. 17 September to be exact. How could I ever forget it.

For a hundred different reasons our companions had all left the palace and I was among the last to leave. Just as I went through the outer gate of the property, I realized that I had left next to my chair a briefcase into which I had the habit of placing some important papers. So I retraced my steps, but not all with the intention of seeing the princess; I was under the impression that she had retired after seeing off the last of her visitors.

Not so. She was still sitting alone in the middle of twenty empty chairs. She seemed worried and distant. Never taking my gaze from her, I picked up the briefcase as slowly as I could. Shireen was still sitting with her profile toward me, motionless and deaf to my presence. I sat down in contemplative silence and watched her for a little while. Imagining that it was twelve years earlier, I could see the two of us in Jamaladin’s sitting room in Constantinople. She looked just the same then, sitting in profile, with a blue scarf crowning her hair and trailing down to the leg of the chair. How old had she been? Seventeen? Eighteen? Today at thirty she was a mature, regal and serene woman, and just as slender as on that first day. She obviously had been able to resist the temptation of women of her rank who lay around eating and lazed their lives away on an opulent divan. Had she married? Was she a divorcee or a widow? We had never spoken of it.

I wanted to say in an unquavering voice: ‘I have loved you ever since Constantinople.’ My lips trembled and tightened but without emitting the slightest sound.

However Shireen had turned gently toward me. She observed me without surprise, as if I had neither left nor returned. Her look wavered and she spoke to me with familiarity:

‘What are you thinking about?’

The answer shot from my lips:

‘Of you. From Constantinople to Tabriz.’

A smile, which was perhaps one of embarrassment, but which resolutely did not wish to be a barrier, spread over her face. As for me, I could no more than quote her own phrase which had become almost a code between us:

‘You never know, our paths might meet!’

We were both taken up by a few seconds of silent memories. Then Shireen said:

‘I did not leave Teheran without the book.’

‘The Samarkand Manuscript?’

‘It is always on the chest of drawers near my bed. I never tire of reading it. I know the Rubaiyaat and the chronicle written in the margin by heart.’

‘I would willingly give a decade of my life for one night with that book.’

‘I would willingly give a night of my life.’

Within an instant I was bent over Shireen’s face, our eyes were shut and the only thing that existed around us was the monotony of the cicadas’ song amplified in our numbed minds and our lips touched in a long ardent kiss which transcended and broke down the barriers of years.

Lest other visitors arrive or the servants should come, we rose and I followed her down a covered path, through a small hidden door and up a broken staircase into the former Shah’s apartment which his granddaughter had taken over. Shireen closed two heavy shutters with a huge bolt and we were alone, together. Tabriz was no longer a city isolated from the world — it was the world which languished isolated from Tabriz.

By dawn I had still not opened the manuscript. I could see it on the chest of drawers on the other side of the bed, but Shireen was sleeping naked with her head on my neck and her breasts falling against my ribs and nothing in the world would have made me move. I was breathing in her breath, her smells and her night, and contemplating her eyelashes, trying desperately to guess what dream of happiness or anguish was making them quiver. When she awoke the first sounds of the city were already to be heard. I had to slip away quickly and promised myself that I would dedicate my next night of love to Khayyam’s book.

CHAPTER 40

When I came out of the palace I walked along with my shoulders hunched — dawn in Tabriz is never warm — and in this manner I made my way toward the caravansary without trying to take any short cuts. I was not in a hurry to get there. I needed some time to think things over as I had not calmed down from the exhilaration of the night and my mind was still full of images, gestures and whispered words, I could no longer tell whether I was happy. In a way I felt complete, but this feeling was tinged with the inevitable guilt which comes with clandestine affairs. Thoughts kept on coming back to me, as haunting as thoughts can be during sleepless nights. ‘After I left, did she go back to sleep with a smile? Does she have any regret? When I see her again and if we are not alone will she treat me as an accomplice or a stranger? I shall return tonight and try and look for some faith in her eyes.’

Suddenly a cannon shot rang out. I stopped and listened. Was it our brave and solitary de Bange? It was followed by a silence, then a prolonged fusillade and finally a lull. I ventured a few more steps and kept my ears peeled. There was a new roar immediately followed by a third. By this time I was starting to be worried; a single cannon cannot fire at that rate, there had to be two or even more. Two shells exploded a few streets away from me and I started to run toward the citadel.

Fazel quickly confirmed the news which I feared; the first of the Shah’s forces had arrived during the night. They had taken up position in the districts held by the religious chiefs. Other troops were on their way and were converging from all directions. The siege of Tabriz had begun.

The tirade given by Colonel Liakhov, the military governor of Teheran and the architect of the coup d’état, before his troops set off for Tabriz went along the following lines:

‘Brave Cossacks! The Shah is in danger. The people of Tabriz have rejected his authority and have declared war in an attempt to force him to recognize the constitution. The constitution would abolish your privileges and dissolve your brigade. If it triumphs, it is your women and children who will go hungry. The constitution is your worst enemy and you must fight like the furies against it. The way you destroyed the parliament has aroused the greatest admiration throughout the world. Follow this salutary action by crushing the rebel city and, on behalf of the sovereigns of Russia and Persia, I promise you money and honours. All the riches of Tabriz are yours, you only have to help yourselves!’

The command which was shouted out in Teheran and St Petersburg and murmured in London was the same: Tabriz must be destroyed, it deserves the most exemplary punishment. If it is defeated no one will dare speak of a constitution, parliament or democracy; once again the Orient will be able to sink comfortably into death.

That is how the whole world came to witness a strange and heartrending race over the following months: while the example set by Tabriz started to revive the flame of resistance in various corners of Persia, the city itself was undergoing a more and more rigorous siege. Would the Constitutionalists have enough time to pick themselves up, organize and take up arms before their bastion gave out?

In January they won their first big success: in answer to an appeal by the Bakhtiari chiefs who were Shireen’s maternal uncles, Isfahan, the former capital, rebelled and affirmed its attachment to the constitution and its solidarity with Tabriz. When the news reached the besieged city an explosion of joy erupted on the spot. The whole night long people chanted indefatigably: ‘Tabriz-Isfahan, the country is waking up!’ However, the very next day a massive attack forced the defenders to abandon several positions in the south and west. There was only one road left connecting Tabriz to the outside world and that was the one which led north, toward the Russian border.

Three weeks later the city of Rashd rebelled in turn. Like Isfahan, it rejected the tutelage of the Shah and extolled the constitution and Fazel’s resistance. There was a new eruption of joy in Tabriz, but immediately the besieging troops launched a new attack and the last road was cut: Tabriz was completely surrounded. The post could no longer get through, and nor could any food. They had to organize very strict rationing to be able to keep on feeding the two hundred thousand or so inhabitants of the city.

In February and March 1909 more towns rallied. The territory of the constitution now extended to Shiraz, Hamadan, Meshed, Astarabad, Bandar-Abbas and Bushir. In Paris the Committee for the Defence of Tabriz was formed, headed by a certain Monsieur Dieulafoy who was a distinguished orientalist; there was the same drive in London, under the presidency of Lord Lamington, and more important still, the principal Shiite clergymen who were based in Karbala in Ottoman Iraq pronounced themselves solemnly and unambiguously in favour of the constitution and disavowed the backward-looking mullahs.

Tabriz was triumphant. But it was also dying.

Unable to confront so many rebellions and so much disaffection, the Shah became utterly single-minded: Tabriz, the source of the evil, had to be brought down. When it fell the others would yield. Since he had failed to take it by assault, he decided to starve it into submission.

In spite of rationing, bread was rare. By the end of March there were already several deaths, mostly among the old and very young.

The press in London, Paris and St Petersburg was shocked and started to criticize the Powers, who, it was stated, still had in the besieged city many of their nationals whose lives were now in danger. Echoes of this stance reached us by way of telegraph.

Fazel summoned me one day to tell me:

‘The Russians and the English are going to evacuate their nationals soon so that Tabriz can be crushed without it provoking too much commotion in the rest of the world. That will be a hard blow for us, but I want you to know that I will not oppose the evacuation. I shall not hold anyone here against his will.’

He charged me to inform the people involved that everything would be done to facilitate their departure. Then the most extraordinary event of all came to pass. Having been there as a privileged witness allows me to overlook much human pettiness.

I had started my round, intending my first visit to be to the Presbyterian Mission where I felt some trepidation about seeing the Reverend Director again and having to suffer his reprimands. He who had been counting on me to reason with Howard, was he not going to reproach me for having taken an identical path? Indeed, he was quite distant with me and showed the minimum of courtesy.

However, when I had explained the reason for my visit he responded without a moment’s hesitation:

‘I shall not leave. If they can organize a convoy to evacuate the foreigners, they can just as well organize similar convoys to bring supplies to the hungry city.’

I thanked him for his viewpoint which seemed to me to conform to the religious and humanitarian ideal which drove him. Then I went off to visit three businesses which were in the vicinity and to my great surprise their response was identical. The businessmen did not wish to leave any more than the pastor. As one of them, an Italian, explained to me:

‘If I left Tabriz at this difficult moment, I would be ashamed to return later and carry on my business here. So I shall stay. Perhaps my presence will help make my government act.’

Everywhere it was as if word had gone round. I received the same immediate, clear and irrevocable reply. Mr Wratislaw, the British consul, and the staff of the Russian Consulate, with the notable exception of the consul, Mr Pokhitanoff, all gave the same reply to me and to their shattered governments: ‘We will not leave!’

In the city, the foreigner’s admirable solidarity lifted people’s spirits, but the situation was still precarious. On 18 April Wratislaw telegraphed London: ‘Bread is hard to find today, tomorrow it will be even harder.’ On the nineteenth he sent a new message: ‘The situation is desperate, there is talk here of a last attempt to break the strangle-hold.’

In fact a meeting was being held that day at the citadel at which Fazel announced that constitutionalist troops were advancing from Rashd toward Teheran, that the authorities there were on the verge of collapse and that it would not take much to make them fall and our cause triumph. But Howard spoke after him to mention that the bazaars were at present devoid of all foodstuffs.

‘People have already slaughtered domestic animals and street cats. Whole families wander around the streets, night and day, in search of a shrivelled pomegranate or a piece of Barbary bread dropped in a gutter. Soon we run the risk of seeing people turn to cannibalism.’

‘Two weeks. We only need to hold out two weeks!’

Fazel’s voice was pleading. But Howard could do nothing about it:

‘Our reserves have allowed us to survive up until now. But there is no longer anything left to distribute. Nothing. In two weeks the population will have been decimated and Tabriz will be a ghost town. In recent days there have been eight hundred deaths — from starvation and the numerous diseases which go with it.’

‘Two weeks. Just two weeks!’ Fazel repeated. ‘Even if we have to fast!’

‘We have all been fasting for several days!’

‘What else can we do? Capitulate? Let go of the huge wave of support that we have so patiently built up? Is there no means of lasting out?’

Last out. Last out. These twelve men were haggard and dizzy with hunger and exhaustion, but also drunk on the thought that victory was within grasp. They had no thought in mind other than holding out.

‘There might be a solution,’ Howard said. ‘Perhaps …’

All eyes turned towards Baskerville.

‘If we attempt to break out, by surprise. If we manage to take this position,’ he pointed to a spot on the map, ‘our forces will be able to sweep into the breach and re-establish contact with the outside world. By the time the enemy recovers, help will perhaps be in sight.’

I immediately stated my opposition to the plan; the military chiefs were of the same opinion. Everyone, without exception, considered it suicidal. The enemy was situated on a promontory at some five hundred meters from our lines. It meant having to cross that distance over flat ground and scaling a massive wall of dried mud to dislodge the defenders and then getting enough men into position to be able to resist the inevitable counter-attack.

Fazel hesitated. He was not even looking at the map, but was pondering over the political outcome of the operation. Would it allow him to gain a few days? The debate went on and became animated. Baskerville insisted and argued, often supported by Moore. The Guardian correspondent laid out his own military experience and stated that the surprise element could turn out to be decisive. Fazel brought the debate to a conclusion.

‘I am still not convinced, but, as no other action can be envisaged I will not oppose Howard’s plan.’

The attack was launched the next day, 20 April, at three in the morning. It was agreed that if by five o’clock the position had been won, operations would take place at multiple points along the front in order to prevent the enemy pulling troops back for a counterattack. However, within the first minutes the attempt seemed in jeopardy: a barrage of fire met the first sortie, led by Moore, Baskerville and some sixty other volunteers. Apparently the enemy was not all taken by surprise. Could a spy have informed them of our preparations? We will never know, but the sector was guarded, Liakhov having entrusted it to one of his most adept officers.

Fazel sensibly ordered the operation to be halted without delay and had the signal for a withdrawal given — a lengthy bird-call. The fighters rushed back. Several of them, including Moore, were wounded.

Baskerville was the only one who did not return. He had been felled by the first salvo.

For three days Tabriz would live to the rhythm of condolences. There were discreet condolences at the Presbyterian Mission and noisy, impassioned, incensed condolences in the districts held by the sons of Adam. My eyes were red as I shook hands with people whom I mostly did not know, and I listened to endless tributes.

Among the throng of visitors was the English consul. He took me aside.

‘It will perhaps be of some consolation to you to learn that six hours after your friend’s death I received a message from London informing me that the Powers had reached agreement on the question of Tabriz. Mr Baskerville will not have died in vain. An expeditionary force has already set out to relieve the city by bringing in provisions, as well as to evacuate the foreign community.’

‘A Russian expeditionary force?’

‘Of course,’ Wratislaw admitted. ‘They are the only ones who have an army in the area. However we have obtained guarantees. Constitutionalists will not be troubled and the Tsar’s troops will withdraw when their mission is completed. I am counting on you to convince Fazel to lay down his arms.’

Why did I accept? Perhaps I was overwhelmed or exhausted, or maybe a Persian sense of fatalism had worked its way into me. Whatever the reason, I did not protest and let myself be persuaded that I was the one who had to carry out this loathsome mission. However, I decided not to go to Fazel’s straight away. I preferred to escape for a few hours — to Shireen.

Since our night of love I had only met her again in public. The siege had created a new atmosphere in Tabriz. People were always speaking of enemy infiltration. They thought that they saw spies or sappers everywhere. Armed men patrolled the streets and guarded the access of the main buildings. There were often five, six, or sometimes more men at the gates of the empty palace. Although they were always ready to greet me with beaming smiles, their presence effectively prevented a visit being discreet.

That evening everyone’s vigilance was relaxed, and I managed to wend my way as far as the princess’s bedroom. The door was ajar and I pushed it noiselessly.

Shireen was sitting up in bed with the manuscript open on her knees. I slipped to her side, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip. Neither of us had any thought for caresses, but that night we loved in a different fashion, immersed in the same book. She guided my eyes and lips. She knew every word, every painting; for me it was the first time.

She would often translate into French in her own way the ends of poems which dealt with a wisdom which was so accurate or a beauty so timeless that one forgot that they had been uttered for the first time eight centuries earlier in some garden in Nishapur, Isfahan or Samarkand.

The wounded birds hide so they may die.

There were words of heartache and consolation, the touching monologue of a defeated and dignified poet:

Peace to man in the black silence of the beyond.

But there were also words of joy and sublime unconcern:

Some wine! Let it be as pink as your cheeks

And my regrets as light as your locks.

After we had read aloud the very last quatrain and gazed admiringly at each miniature, we turned back to the beginning of the book to go through the chronicles written in the margins. First of all we read the one by Vartan the Armenian which covered a good half of the work, and thanks to which that night I learnt the history of Khayyam, Jahan and the three friends. There followed the chronicles written by the librarians of Alamut — father, son and grandson — each chronicle being thirty pages long arid telling, the manuscript’s extraordinary fate after it was stolen from Merv and its influence on the Assassins as well as a concise history of the Assassins up until the invasion of the Mongol hordes.

Shireen read out the last lines as I could not make out the handwriting very easily: ‘I had to flee Alamut on the eve of its destruction, toward Kirman, my place of birth, carrying the manuscript of the incomparable Khayyam of Nishapur, which I have decide to hide this very day in the hope that it will not be found until there are men fit to hold it and for that I put my trust in the Almighty. He guides whom he wishes and leads astray whom he wishes.’ There followed a date, which according to my reckoning corresponds to 14 March 1257.

This set me thinking.

‘The manuscript ends at the thirteenth century,’ I said. ‘Janialadin was given it in the nineteenth. What happened to it in the meantime?’

‘A long sleep,’ said Shireen. ‘An interminable oriental siesta. Then it was jolted awake in the arms of that madman, Mirza Reza. Wasn’t he from Kirman, like the librarians from Alamut? Are you so shocked to find that he had an ancestor who was an Assassin?’

She had got up and gone to sit on a stool in front of her oval mirror with a comb in her hand. I could have stayed hours just watching the gracious movements of her bare arms, but she brought me back the prosaic reality of things:

‘You must get ready if you do not wish to be caught in my bed.’

In fact daylight was already flooding into the room, as the curtains were too light.

‘It is true,’ I said wearily. ‘I almost forgot your reputation.’

She turning toward me, laughing:

‘Exactly. I have my reputation to maintain. I do not want it told in all the harems of Persia that a handsome stranger was able to pass a whole night at my side without even thinking of taking his clothes off. No one would ever desire me again!’

After placing the manuscript back in its box, I placed a kiss upon my beloved’s lips, and then I ran down the corridor and through two secret doors to dive back into the turmoil of the besieged city.

CHAPTER 41

Of all those who died during those months of hardship, why have I singled out Baskerville? Because he was my friend and compatriot? Most probably. But also because his only ambition was to see liberty and democracy triumph in the rebirth of the orient, which for all that was foreign to him. Had he given his life for nothing? In ten, twenty or a hundred years would the West remember his example, or would Persia remember his action? I chose not to think about it lest I fall into the inescapable melancholy of those who live between two worlds which are equally promising and disappointing.

However if I limit myself to the events immediately after Baskerville’s death, I can make myself believe that he did not die in vain.

Foreign intervention, the lifting of the blockade and a food convoy all happened. Was it thanks to Howard? Perhaps the decision had already been taken, but my friend’s death quickened the rescue effort and thousands of gaunt townspeople owed their survival to him.

It can be imagined that the prospect of the Tsar’s soldiers arriving in the besieged city did not thrill Fazel. I did my best to talk him into accepting the situation.

‘The population is no longer in a state to resist. The only gift that you can still give them is to save them from famine and you owe them that after all the hardship they have put up with.’

‘To have fought for six months only to end up under the thumb of Tsar Nicholas, the Shah’s protector!’

‘The Russians are not acting alone, they have the mandate of the whole international community. Our friends throughout the world will applaud this operation. To resist it or to fight it would be to lose the benefit of the enormous support which has been lavished upon us so far.’

‘But to submit and lay down our weapons now that victory is in sight!’

‘Is it me that you are talking to, or are you just inveighing against fate?’

Fazel recoiled and gave me a look of deep reproach.

‘Tabriz does not deserve to be so humiliated!’

‘I can do nothing about it, and neither can you. There are some times when any decision is a bad one and we must choose the one we will regret least!’

He seemed to calm down and gave the matter serious thought.

‘What fate is in store for my friends?’

‘The British are guaranteeing their safety.’

‘Our weapons?’

‘Everyone will be able to keep his rifle. The houses will not be searched with the exception of those from which there was shooting. However, heavy weapons must be handed over.’

He did not seem in any way reassured.

‘And tomorrow who will force the Tsar to withdraw his troops?’

‘For that we have to trust Providence!’

‘Suddenly I find you extremely oriental.’

Those who knew Fazel knew that he hardly ever meant the word oriental to be a compliment — and particularly when he had a suspicious scowl on his face. I felt obliged to try a different tactic, so I stood up with a resounding sigh.

‘No doubt you are right. I was wrong to argue. I am going to tell the British Consul that I have not been able to convince you. Then I shall come back and stay with you until the end.’

Fazel took me by the shoulder to hold me back.

‘I have not accused you of anything. I have not even turned down your suggestion.’

‘My suggestion? I have only passed on a suggestion from the English, and made sure to tell you its provenance.’

‘Calm down and listen to me! I know very well that I do not have the means to prevent the Russians entering Tabriz. I also know that if I offer them the slightest resistance the whole world will condemn me, starting with my compatriots who want now to be rescued, no matter by whom. I am even aware of the fact that the end of the siege will constitute a defeat for the Shah.’

‘Was that not what you were fighting for?’

‘Not at all! You see, I may condemn the Shah, but it is not against him that I am fighting. To triumph over a despot cannot be one’s ultimate goal; I have been fighting so that Persians might be aware of being free, being sons of Adam as we say we are, so that they might have faith in themselves and their strength and be able to take their place in today’s world. That is what I wanted to see come to pass here. This city has thrown off the tutelage of the Shah and the religious chiefs, it has defied the Powers and aroused the support and admiration of well-intentioned men everywhere. The people of Tabriz are on the verge of winning, but they are not allowed to. It is feared that they would set a precedent and they must therefore be humiliated. The proud population of this city will have to bow to the Tsar’s soldiers for bread. You who were born free in a free country, ought to understand.’

I remained silent for a few strained seconds and then brought the matter to a conclusion:

‘So what do you want me to reply to the English Consul?’

Fazel forced his face to smile.

‘Tell him that I will be delighted to seek asylum once again in His Majesty’s Consulate.’

I needed some time in order to understand just how much Fazel’s bitterness was justified, for in the short term events seemed to contradict his fears. He only stayed a few days at the British Consulate before Mr Wratislaw drove him in his car across the Russian lines to the outskirts of Kazvin. There he could join the constitutionalist troops who, after a long wait, were preparing themselves to march toward Teheran.

In fact while Tabriz was in danger of being strangled, the Shah had a powerful means of dissuasion against his enemies and he could still manage to frighten and contain them. Once the siege was lifted, Fazel’s friends felt free to move and with no further delay they set off to march on to the capital which they did with two armies, one coming from Kazvin in the north and the other from Isfahan in the south. The latter, mostly made up of men from Bakhtiari tribes seized Qom on 23 June. A few days later a joint Anglo-Russian communiqué was broadcast demanding the Constitutionalists to cease their offensive immediately in order to come to an arrangement with the Shah. If not, the two Powers would find themselves obliged to intervene. However Fazel and his friends turned a deaf ear and hurried on: on 9 July their troops joined up below the walls of Teheran; on the 13th, two thousand men made their entrance into the capital by an unguarded gate in the north-west near the French legation, watched with astonishment by the correspondent of the Temps.

Only Liakhov tried to resist. With three hundred men, some old cannons and two Creusot machine guns he managed to keep control over several districts in the centre of the city. Heavy fighting went on unabated until 16 July.

On that day at eight-thirty in the morning, the Shah went to take refuge in the Russian Legation, formally accompanied by five hundred soldiers and courtiers. His action was tantamount to an act of abdication.

The commander of the Cossacks had no choice other than to lay down his arms. He swore henceforth to respect the Constitution and to place himself in the service of the victors on condition that his brigade was not dissolved, which reassurance he was duly given.

A new Shah was appointed: the youngest son of the fallen Shah, who was just twelve years old. According to Shireen, who had known him since the cradle, he was a gentle and sensitive adolescent, with neither cruelty nor perversity. When he crossed the capital the day after the fighting to go to the palace in the company of his tutor, Mr Smirnoff, he was greeted with shouts of ‘Long live the Shah!’, coming from the same people who a day earlier had been yelling, ‘Death to the Shah!’

CHAPTER 42

In public the young Shah cut a fine figure. He appeared royal, did not smile to excess and waved his pale hand in greeting to his subjects. However, once back at the palace he caused great concern to his courtiers. Having been brutally separated from his parents, he cried and cried. He even tried to run away that summer in order to join his father and mother. When he was caught he tried to hang himself from the palace ceiling, but when he started to choke he took fright, called for help and was rescued in time. That misadventure had a beneficial effect on him. He was now cured of his anxieties and would act his role of constitutional monarch in a dignified and good-natured manner.

Real power however was in the hands of Fazel and his friends. They inaugurated the new era with a purge: six supporters of the old régime were executed including the two main religious chiefs of Tabriz who had led the struggle against the sons of Adam, as well as Sheikh Fazlullah Nouri. He was accused of having given his backing to the massacres which followed the coup d’état the previous year; he therefore was convicted on a charge of collusion to murder and his death warrant was ratified by the Shiite hierarchy. However there was hardly any doubt that the sentence had symbolic value: Nouri had been responsible for decreeing that the constitution was a heresy. He was hanged in public in the Topkhaneh Square on 31 July 1909. Before he died he murmured: ‘I am not a reactionary!’ only to follow this by stating to his supporters who were dotted throughout the crowd that the constitution was contrary to their religion and that religion would have the last word.

The first task of the new leaders, however, was to rebuild the parliament: the building rose out of its ruins and elections were organized. On 15 November, the young Shah formally inaugurated the second Majlis in Persian history with these words:

In the name of God who has given us Freedom, and with the protection of his Holiness the hidden Imam, the National Consultative Assembly is hereby opened in joy and with the best omens.

Intellectual progress and the evolution of our way of thinking have rendered change inevitable. It has come about after a dreadful ordeal, but Persia has known, down the centuries, how to survive many crises, and today its people see their desires accomplished. We are happy to state that the new progressive government enjoys the support of the people, and that it is bringing peace and confidence back to the country.

In order to be able to carry out the necessary reform, it must be a priority of the government and the Parliament to bring the state, particularly its public finances, into line with the accepted norms for civilised nations.

We beseech God to guide the representatives of the nation and to assure honour, independence and happiness for Persia.

Teheran was jubilant that day. Everyone was out in the street, singing at the crossroads, reciting improvised poems whose words all either rhymed or were made to rhyme with ‘Constitution’, ‘Democracy,’ or ‘Liberty’. Merchants offered the passer-by drinks and sweetmeats, and dozens of newspapers which had been silenced after the coup d’état brought out special editions announcing their resurrection.

At nightfall fireworks lit up the city. Seating had been erected in the gardens of the Baharistan. The diplomatic corps sat on the grandstand together with members of the new government, deputies, religious dignitaries and the bazaar guilds. As a friend of Baskerville I was entitled to sit near the front and my chair was just behind Fazel’s. There was a stream of explosions and bangs, the sky was lit up at times and people turned their heads and leaned to and fro smiling like overjoyed children. Outside, sons of Adam tirelessly chanted the same slogans for hours.

I do not know what noise or shout brought Howard back into my thoughts. He so deserved to be at the celebration! At that very moment, Fazel turned to me:

‘You seem sad.’

‘Sad. Certainly not! I have always wanted to hear the word ‘freedom’ ringing out on the soil of the Orient, but some memories are bothering me.’

‘Cast them aside. Smile and rejoice. Make the most of the last moments of exhilaration.’

Worrying words which divested me of any wish to celebrate that evening. Was Fazel, after an interval of seven months, about to take up the difficult discussion which set us against each other in Tabriz? Did he have new cause for worry? I made up my mind to go and see him the following day for an explanation, but in the end I decided against it. I avoided seeing him for a whole year.

What were the reasons? I believe that after the arduous adventure I had just been through, I had some nagging doubts about the wisdom of the role I had played in Tabriz. I had come to the Orient in search of a manuscript and had it been right for me to become so involved in a struggle which was not mine? To begin with, by what right had I advised Howard to come to Persia?

In the language of Fazel and his friends, Baskerville was a martyr; in my eyes he was a dead friend, a friend who had died in a foreign country for a foreign cause, a friend whose parents would one day write to me to ask me in the most poignantly polite of terms why I had led their son astray.

Was it remorse I was feeling over Howard? It was, to be more correct, a certain feeling of decency. I do not know if that is the right word, but I am trying to say that after my friends’ victory I had no desire to strut around Teheran listening to people laud my supposed exploits during the siege of Tabriz. I had played a minimal and quite fortuitous role. Above all I had had a friend who was a heroic compatriot and I had no intention of exploiting his memory to obtain privileges and respect for myself.

To tell the whole truth, I felt a great need to disappear from view, to be forgotten and not to visit politicians, anjuman-members and diplomats. The only person that I saw every day, and with a pleasure that never diminished, was Shireen. I had talked her into going to live in one of the numerous residences belonging to her family in the heights of Zarganda, a holiday resort outside the capital. I myself had rented a small house in the neighbourhood, but that was for the sake of appearances and I spent my days and nights at Shireen’s, with the collusion of her servants.

That winter we managed to spend whole weeks without leaving her huge bedroom. We were warmed by a magnificent copper brazier, we read the manuscript and some other books, lazed around for hours smoking the kalyan, drinking Shiraz wine and sometimes even champagne, munching Kirmani pistachios and Isfahani nougat; my Princess could be a great lady or a little girl at one and the same time and we felt great tenderness for each other the whole time.

With the onset of the first warm days, Zarganda started to liven up. Foreigners and the richest Persians had sumptuous houses there and would move in for long months of idleness surrounded by luxuriant vegetation. It is a matter beyond dispute that only the proximity of this paradise made the grey dullness of Teheran bearable for innumerable diplomats. However Zarganda became a ghost-town in the winter, with only the gardeners, some caretakers and the rare survivors of its indigenous population staying behind. Shireen and I were badly in need of just such a desert.

However from April on, alas, the visitors took up their summer lodgings. There were people strolling in front to all the entrance-gates and people walking down all the paths. After every night and every siesta, Shireen offered tea to female visitors with roving eyes. I was always having to hide or flee down the corridors. The gentle months of hibernation had been used up, and it was time for me to leave.

When I informed her, my princess was sad but resigned.

‘I thought you were happy.’

‘I have experienced a rare moment of happiness. I want to put it in suspended animation so that it will still be intact when I come back to it. I never tire of watching you, with both astonishment and love. I do not want the invading crowd to change the way I see you. I am going away in the summer so that I may find you again in the winter.’

‘Summer, winter. You go away, you come back. You think that you can dispose of the seasons, the years, your life and mine with impunity. Have you learnt nothing from Khayyam?

“Suddenly Heaven robs you of even the moment you need to moisten your lips.”’

She looked deep into my eyes, as if she were reading an open book. She had understood everything and sighed.

‘Where are you thinking of going?’

I did not know yet. I had come to Persia twice and twice I had led a besieged existence. I still had the whole of the Orient to discover, from the Bosphorous to the China Sea — Turkey which has just risen up at the same time as Persia, which deposed its Sultan-Caliph and which now prides itself upon its deputies, senators, clubs and opposition newspapers; proud Afghanistan which the British managed to subdue, but at what cost! And of course there was all of Persia to explore. I knew only Tabriz and Teheran. But what of Isfahan, Shiraz, Kashan and Kirman? Nishapur and Khayyam’s tomb, a grey stone watched over for centuries by untiring generations of petals.

Out of all the roads which lay before me, which should I take? It was the manuscript which chose for me. I took the train to Krasnovodsk, crossed Ashkabad and old Merv and hence to Bukhara.

Most importantly, I went to Samarkand.

CHAPTER 43

I was curious to see what was left of the city where Khayyam spent the flower of his youth.

What had become of the district of Asfizar and of that belevedere in the garden where Omar had loved Jahan? Was there still some trace of the suburb of Maturid, where in the eleventh century that Jewish paper-maker was still turning white mulberry branches into pulp according to an old Chinese recipe. For weeks I went about on foot, and then on a mule; I questioned the merchants, the passers-by and the imams of the mosques, but they only replied with blank unknowing looks, amused smiles and generous invitations for me to squat on their sky-blue divans and take tea with them.

It was my luck to be in the Registan Square one morning. A caravan was passing. It was a short caravan, consisting of just six or seven thick-haired and heavy-hoofed Bactrian camels. The old camel-driver had stopped not far from me in front of a potter’s stall, holding a new-born lamb to his chest; he proposed a barter and the craftsman discussed it; without taking his hands off the jar or the wheel, he pointed with his chin toward a pile of varnished vessels. I watched the two men with their black-bordered woollen hats, their striped robes, reddish beards and their ancient gestures. Was there any detail of this scene which had not come down unchanged from the time of Khayyam?

There was a slight breeze and the sand started to swirl, their clothing billowed and the whole square was covered with an unreal haze. I cast my eyes around. At the edge of the square rose three monuments, three gigantic complexes of towers, domes, gateways and high walls completely covered with minute mosaics, arabesques studded with gold, amethyst and turquoise, and intricate calligraphy. It all retained its majesty, but the towers were leaning, the domes had gaping holes, the facades were crumbling, ravaged by time, wind and centuries of neglect; people no longer looked at these monuments, these haughty, proud and forgotten giants which provided an imposing backdrop for a derisory play.

I was retreating backwards and stepped on someone’s foot. When I turned round to apologize I was face to face with a man dressed like me in European clothing, a man who had set sail from the same distant planet. We struck up a conversation. He was Russian, an archaeologist. He also had come with a thousand questions, but he already had some answers.

‘In Samarkand, time moves from one cataclysm to the next and from one tabula rasa to the next. When the Mongols destroyed the city in the thirteenth century, its various districts were left a mass of ruins and corpses. It had to be abandoned; the survivors went to rebuild their dwellings on another site, further to the south, with the result that the whole of the old city, the Samarkand of the Seljuks, was gradually covered by layers of sand and became a raised field. There are treasures and secrets under the ground, but the surface is a pasture. One day it will all have to be opened up, the houses and the street dug up. Once freed, Samarkand will be able to tell us its history.’

He broke off.

‘Are you an archaeologist?’

‘No. This city attracts me for other reasons.’

‘Would it be impolite of me to ask what they are?’

I told him of the manuscript, the poems, the chronicle, and the paintings which evoked the lovers of Samarkand.

‘I would love to see that book! Do you know that everything from that time has been destroyed — as if by a curse. Walls, palaces, orchards, gardens, water-pipes, religious sites, books and the principal objets d’art. The monuments which we admire today were all built later by Tamerlane and his descendants. They are less than five hundred years old. From Khayyam’s era we only have potsherds and, as you have just informed me, this manuscript which has miraculously survived. It is a privilege for you to be able to hold it in your hands and read it at your leisure. It is a privilege and also a heavy responsibility.’

‘Believe me, I am quite aware of that. For years, ever since I learnt that this book existed, I have lived for nothing else. It has led me from adventure to adventure, its world has become mine and its guardian my beloved.’

‘And have you made this trip to Samarkand to discover the places it describes?’

‘I was hoping that the townspeople would be able at least to give me some indication of where the old districts lay.’

‘I am sorry to have to disappoint you,’ the Russian continued, ‘but if you are searching for something from the period for which you have a fascination, you will only gather legends, stories of jinns and divs. This city cultivates them with delight.’

‘More than other cities in Asia?’

‘I am afraid so. I wonder if the proximity of these ruins does not naturally inflame the imagination of our miserable contemporaries. Then there is the city which is buried under the ground. Over the centuries how many children have fallen down cracks never to reappear, what strange sounds people have heard or thought that they heard, apparently coming out of the entrails of the earth! That is how Samarkand’s most famous legend was born — the legend which had a lot to do with the mystery which envelops the name of the city.’

I let him tell the story.

‘It was told that a king of Samarkand wanted to make everyone’s dream come true: to escape death. He was convinced that death came from the sky and he wanted to do something so that it could never reach him, so he built an immense underground palace of iron which he made inaccessible.

‘Being fabulously rich, he also had fashioned an artificial sun, which rose in the morning and set in the evening, to warm him and indicate the passing of days.

‘Alas, the God of Death managed to foil the monarch’s vigilance and he slipped inside the palace to accomplish his job. He had to show all humans that no creature could escape death, no matter how powerful, skilful or arrogant he was. Samarkand thus became the symbol of the inescapable meeting between man and his destiny.’

And after Samarkand, where to? For me it was the furthest extremity of the Orient, the place of all wonders and unfathomable nostalgia. The moment I left the city I decided to go back home; my desire was to be back in Annapolis and to spend some sedentary years there resting from my travels and only then to set off again.

I thus drew up the most insane plan — that of going back to Persia to fetch Shireen and the Khayyam manuscript, and then to go off and disappear in some great metropolis, such as Paris, Vienna or New York. For the two of us to live in the West but to an oriental rhythm; would that not be paradise?

On my way back, I was continually alone and distracted, preoccupied solely with the arguments that I was going to present to Shireen. ‘Leave? Leave …?’ she would say wearily. ‘Is it not enough for you to be happy?’ However, I did not despair of being able to overcome her reservations.

When the convertible which I had rented at the edge of the Caspian set me down at Zarganda in front of my closed door, there was a car there already, a Jewel-40 sporting a star-spangled banner right in the middle of its hood.

The chauffeur stepped out and enquired as to my identity. I had the idiotic impression that he had been waiting for me ever since I left. He reassured me that he had only been there since the morning.

‘My master told me to stay here until you came back.’

‘I might have come back in a month, a year or perhaps never.’

My astonishment hardly upset him.

‘But you are here now!’

He handed me a note scribbled by Charles W. Russell, minister plenipotentiary of the United States.

Dear Mr Lesage,

I would be most honoured if you could come to the Legation this afternoon at four o’clock. It is a matter of great importance and urgency. I have asked my chauffeur to remain at your disposal.

CHAPTER 44

Two men were waiting for me at the legation, with the same suppressed impatience. Russel, in a grey suit, a moiré bow-tie and with a drooping moustache like Theodore Roosevelt’s but more carefully shaped; and Fazel, in his undeviating white tunic, black cape and blue turban. Naturally it was the diplomat who opened the session in hesitant but correct French.

‘The meeting taking place today is one of those that change the course of history. In our persons, two nations are meeting, defying distances and differences: the United States, which is a young nation but already an old democracy, and Persia which is an old nation, several thousand years old, but a brand-new democracy.’

He said all this with a touch of mystery, a whiff of formality and a glance toward Fazel to make sure that his words were not upsetting him. He continued:

‘Some days ago I was a guest of the Democratic Club of Teheran. I expressed to my audience the great sympathy which I feel for the Constitutional Revolution. This feeling is shared by President Taft and Mr Knox, our Secretary of State. I must add that the latter is aware of our meeting today and he is waiting for me to apprise him, by telegraph, of the conclusions which we reach.’

He left it to Fazel to explain to me:

‘Do you remember the day when you tried to convince me not to resist the Tsar’s troups?’

‘What a job that was!’

‘I have never held it against you. You did what you had to do and in one sense you were correct. However, what I feared has unfortunately not died away. The Russians still have not left Tabriz, and the populace is subjected to daily torments. The Cossacks snatch the veils off women in the street, and sons of Adam are imprisoned upon the least pretext.

‘Yet there is something more serious. More serious than the occupation of Tabriz and more serious than the fate of my companions. It is our democracy that is at risk of floundering. When Mr Russel said “young”, he should have added “fragile” and “under threat”. To all appearances everything is going well, the people are happier, the bazaar is is prospering and the religious appear to be conciliatory. However, it would need a miracle to stop the edifice from crumbling. Why? Because our coffers are empty, as in the past. The old régime had a very strange way of collecting taxes. It farmed each province out to some money-grubber who bled the population and kept the money for himself, deducting a small part to buy the Court’s protection. That is what has caused all our difficulties. As the Treasury was bare, they borrowed from the Russians and the English, who, in order to be reimbursed, obtained concessions and privileges. That is how the Tsar became involved in our affairs and how we sold off all our wealth. The new government finds itself with the same dilemma as the old leaders: if it cannot manage to collect taxes the way modern countries do, it will have to accept the tutelage of the Powers. Our most urgent priority is to get our finances into order. The modernization of Persia will follow on from that: such is the cost of Persia’s freedom.’

‘If the remedy is so obvious, why the delay in implementing it?’

‘There is no Persian today who is up to undertaking such a task. It is sad to say, for a nation of ten million, but the weight of ignorance should not be underestimated. Only a handful of us here have received a modern education similar to that of the top-ranking civil servants in the advanced nations. The only area in which we have numerous competent people is the field of diplomacy. As for the rest, by which I mean the army, communications and above all finance, there is nothing. If our régime can last twenty or thirty years, doubtless it will produce a generation capable of looking after all these sectors but while we wait, the best solution available to us is to call upon honest and competent foreigners for help. It is not easy to find them, I know. In the past, we have had the worst experiences with Naus, Liakhov and many others, but I do not despair. I have spoken on this subject with some of my colleagues in Parliament and the government, and we think that the United States might help.

‘I am flattered,’ I said spontaneously, ‘but why my country?’

Charles Russel reacted to my remark with a movement of surprise and worry. Fazel’s response quickly calmed him down.

‘We have reviewed all the Powers, one by one. The Russians and the British are only too happy to push us towards bankruptcy so they can have more control over us. The French are too preoccupied with their relations with the Tsar to be worried about our fate. On a more general level, the whole of Europe is beset by a game of alliances and counter-alliances in which Persia is only small change — a pawn on the chequer-board. Only the United States could take an interest without trying to invade us. I therefore turned to Mr Russel and asked him if he knew an American capable of taking on such a heavy task. I must acknowledge that it is he who mentioned your name. I had completely forgotten that you had studied finance.’

‘I am flattered by your faith,’ I replied, ‘but I am certainly not the man you need. In spite of my degree, I have only middling skill in finance and I have never had the opportunity to put my knowledge to the test. It is my father who is to blame, since he built so many ships that I have not had to work. I have only ever busied myself with the essential — that is to say, the futile: travelling and reading, loving and believing, doubting and fighting, and sometimes writing.’

There were embarrassed laughs and an exchange of perplexed looks. I carried on:

‘When you find your man, I can be at his side, give him unlimited advice and provide him with small services, but it is from him that you must demand competence and hard work. I am brimming over with good will but I am ignorant and lazy.’

Fazel chose not to insist, but replied to me in the same tone:

‘It is true, I can testify to it. But you also have other faults which are even greater. You are my friend as the whole world knows, and my political adversaries would have only one aim: to stop you succeeding.’

Russel listened in silence with a rigid smile on his face, as if he had been left out. Our banter was certainly not to his taste, but he did not lose his composure. Fazel turned to him:

‘I am sorry about Benjamin’s defection, but it does not change anything as far as we are concerned. Perhaps it is better to entrust this type of responsibility to a man who has never been mixed up in Persian affairs, neither from near nor afar.’

‘Are you thinking of someone in particular?’

‘I have no one’s name in mind. I would like him to be someone rigorous, honest and with an independent spirit. There are some of that race amongst you, I know. I can see the person clearly and can almost tell you that I can see him before me; an elegant, neat man who holds himself upright and looks straight ahead, and who speaks to the point. A man like Baskerville.’

The message of the Persian government to its legation in Washington on 25 December, 1910, a Sunday and Christmas Day, was cabled in these terms:

‘Request the Secretary of State immediately to put you in contact with the American financial authorities with a view to engaging a disinterested American expert for the post of Treasurer General on the basis of a preliminary contract for three years, subject to ratification by the Parliament. He will be charged with reorganizing the state’s resources and the collection of revenues and their disbursement with the help of an independent auditor who will supervise tax collection in the provinces.

‘The Minister of the United States in Teheran informs us that the Secretary of State is in agreement. Contact him directly and avoid using intermediaries. Transmit the whole text of this message to him and act according to the suggestions he makes to you.’

On the following 2 February, the Majlis approved the nomination of the American experts with an overwhelming majority and to thunderous applause.

A few days later, the Minister of Finance, who had presented the plan to the deputies, was assassinated in broad daylight by two Georgians. That very evening, the dragoman of the Russian Legation went to the Persian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to demand that the murderers, subjects of the Tsar, be handed over to him with no further ado. In Teheran everyone knew that this act was St Petersburg’s response to the vote in Parliament, but the authorities preferred to give in so as not to poison their relations with their powerful neighbour. The assassins therefore were led off to the legation and thence to the border; once over it they were free.

In protest, the bazaar closed its doors, ‘sons of Adam’ called for a boycott of Russian goods and there were even reports of acts of vengeance against the numerous Georgian nationals, the Gordji, in the country. However the government, backed up by the press, preached patience; the real reforms were going to begin, they said, experts were going to arrive and soon the State’s coffers would be full, they would pay off their debts and throw off all tutelage, they would have schools and hospitals as well as a modern army — which would force the Tsar to leave Tabriz and stop him threatening them.

Persia was waiting for miracles, and, in fact, miracles were going to come to pass.

CHAPTER 45

It was Fazel who announced the first miracle to me, triumphantly albeit in a whisper:

‘Look at him! I told you that he would look like Baskerville!’

‘He’ was Morgan Shuster, the new General Treasurer of Persia who was coming over to greet us. We had gone to meet him on the Kazvin road. He arrived, with his men, in dilapidated poste-chaises pulled by feeble horses. It was strange how much he looked like Howard: the same eyes, the same nose, the same clean-shaven face which was perhaps a little rounder, the same light hair parted the same way, the same polite but firm hand-shake. The way we looked at him must have irritated him, but he did not show it; it is true that he must have expected to be the object of sustained curiosity, coming to a foreign country in this way and in such exceptional circumstances. Throughout his stay, he would be watched, examined and followed — sometimes with malice. Each of his actions, and every one of his omissions would be reported and commented on, praised or damned.

A week after his arrival the first crisis broke out. Amongst the hundreds of people who came every day to welcome the Americans, some asked Shuster when he was planning to visit the English and Russian delegations. His response was evasive, but the questions became insistent and the affair leaked out and gave rise to animated discussions in the bazaar: should the American pay courtesy calls to the legations or not? The legations let it be known that they had been belittled and the climate became strained. Given the role that he had played in bringing Shuster, Fazel was particularly embarrassed by this diplomatic hitch which was threatening to put his whole mission at stake. He asked me to intervene.

I therefore went to see my compatriot at the Atabak Palace, a white stone building, the fine columns of which were reflected in a pond and which consisted of thirty huge rooms, some furnished in the oriental and some in the European manner, filled with carpets and objets d’art. All around was an immense park crossed by streams and peppered with man-made lakes — a real Persian paradise where the noises of the city were filtered out by the song of the cicadas. It was one of the most beautiful residences in Teheran. It had belonged to a former prime minister before being bought up by a rich Zoroastrian merchant who was a fervant supporter of the constitution and who had graciously placed it at the American’s disposal.

Shuster received me on the steps. Having recovered from the exhaustion of the journey, he seemed to me quite young. He was only thirty-four years old and did not look it. And I had thought that Washington would send over someone who looked like Father Time!

‘I have come to speak to you about this business with the legations.’

‘You too!’

He pretended to be amused.

‘I do not know,’ I stated, ‘whether you are aware of just how serious this question of protocol has become. Don’t forget, we are in the country of intrigue!’

‘No one enjoys intrigue more than I do!’

He laughed again but stopped suddenly and became as serious as his position demanded of him.

‘Mr Lesage, it is not just a question of protocol. It is a question of principles. Before I accepted this post, I briefed myself thoroughly on the dozens of foreign experts who came to this country before me. Some of them lacked neither competance nor goodwill, but they all failed. Do you know why? Because they fell into the trap I am being asked to fall into today. I have been named Treasurer General of Persia by the Parliament of Persia. It is thus normal for me to signal my arrival to the Shah, the regent and the government. I am an American and can thus also go to visit the charming Mr Russel. But why am I being demanded to make courtesy calls to the Russians, the English, the Belgians and the Austrian?

‘I will tell you: because they want to show to everyone, to the Persian people who expect so much from the Americans, to the Parliament which took us on inspite of all pressure put on it, that Morgan Shuster is a foreigner like all foreigners, a farangi. Once I have made my first visits, the invitations will come pouring in; diplomats are courteous, welcoming and cultivated people, they speak the languages I know and they play the same games. I could live happily here, Mr Lesage, between games of bridge, tea, tennis, horse-riding and masked balls and when I go home in three years’ time I would be rich, happy, tanned and in the best of health. However, that is not why I came, Mr Lesage.’

He was almost shouting. An unseen hand, perhaps his wife’s, discretely shut the door to the sitting-room. He seemed not to have noticed and carried on:

‘I came with a very precise mission: to modernise Persia’s finances. These men have called upon us because they have faith in our institutions and the way we handle affairs. I have no intention of disappointing them. Nor of misleading them. I come from a Christian nation, Mr Lesage, and that means something for me. What image do the Persians have of the Christian nations today? Ultra-Christian England which appropriates their petrol and ultra-Christian Russia which imposes its will on them according to the cynical law of the survival of the fittest? Who are these Christians who have frequented here? Swindlers, arrogant, godless men and Cossacks. What idea do you want them to have of us? In what world are we going to live together? Do we have no choice to offer other than to be our slaves or our enemies? Could they not be our partners and equals? Some of them fortunately continue to believe in us and our values, but how much longer will they be able to muzzle the thousands who liken Europeans to demons?

‘What will the Persia of tomorrow be like? That depends on how we behave and on the example which we offer. Baskerville’s sacrifice has made people forget the greed of many other Europeans. I have the greatest esteem for him, but I assure you I have no intention of dying; quite simply, I wish to be honest. I shall serve Persia as I would serve an American company. I shall not despoil Persia but I will make every effort to clean it up and make it prosper, and shall respect its government but without bowing and scraping.’

Stupidly, tears had started to pour down my face. Shuster fell silent and watched me warily and a little confused.

‘Would you please excuse me if I have hurt you, without meaning to, by my tone of voice or my words.’

I stood up and held out my hand.

‘You have not hurt me, Mr Shuster, I am simply shattered. I am going to report your words to my Persian friends and their reaction will not be any different from mine.’

When I left I ran to the Baharistan; I knew that I would find Fazel there. The moment I saw him in the distance I shouted out:

‘Fazel. There has been another miracle!’

On 13 June, the Persian Parliament decided, by an unprecedented vote, to confer full powers on Morgan Shuster to reorganize the country’s finances. Henceforth he would be invited regularly to be present at Cabinet meetings.

In the meantime, another incident had become the topic of conversation in bazaar and chancellery alike. A rumour, whose origin was unknown but which could be easily guessed, accused Morgan Shuster of belonging to a Persian sect. The whole thing may seem absurd but the people spreading the rumour had distilled their venom well enough to be able to give the gossip an air of plausibility. Overnight the Americans became suspect in the eyes of the crowd. Once again I was charged to speak about it to the Treasurer General. Our relations had become closer since our first meeting. I called him Morgan and he called me Ben. I explained to him the subject of the offence.

‘They are saying that amongst your servants there are babis or acknowledged bahais, which fact Fazel has confirmed to me. They are also saying that the bahais have just founded a very active branch in the United States. They have deduced that all Americans in the legation are in fact bahais who, under the pretext of cleaning up the country’s finances, have come to win converts.’

Morgan deliberated for a moment:

‘I shall respond to the only important question: no, I have not come to preach or convert, but in order to reform Persian finances which are in dire need of it. I shall add, for your information, that I am of course not a bahai and that I only learnt of the existence of these sects from Professor Browne’s book just before I arrived, and that I am still unable to differentiate between a babi and a bahai. On the matter of my servants, of whom there are a good fifteen in this huge house, everyone knows that they were here before I arrived. Their work gives me satisfaction and that is the only thing that matters. I am not accustomed to judge fellow-workmen by their faith or the colour of their tie!’

‘I can understand your attitude perfectly well. It corresponds to my own convictions. However, we are in Persia and sensibilities are sometimes different. I have just seen the new Minister of Finance. He thinks that in order to silence the slanderers, the servants concerned, or at least some of them, will have to be fired.’

‘Is the Minister of Finance worrying about this business?’

‘More than you think. He fears that it might jeopardize everything he has undertaken in his sector. He has asked me to brief him this evening on how I have got on.’

‘Don’t let me delay you. You can tell him on my behalf that no servant will be dismissed and that as far as I am concerned the matter ends there!’

He stood up. I felt compelled to keep trying.

‘I am not certain that that response will be sufficient, Morgan!’

‘No? In that case, you can add to it: “Minister of Finance, if you have nothing better to do than examine my gardener’s religion, I can supply you with more important files to pad out your time.”’

I gave the minister only the gist of his words, but I am quite certain that Morgan himself repeated them to him verbatim at the first opportunity, moreover without causing the slightest drama. In fact everyone was happy that common sense had been spoken with no beating about the bush.

‘Since Shuster has been here,’ Shireen confided in me one day, ‘the atmosphere is somewhat healthier and cleaner. When faced with a chaotic and convoluted situation, one always thinks that it will take centuries to sort it out. Suddenly a man appears and as if by magic, the tree we thought was doomed takes on new life and starts bearing leaves and fruit and giving shade. This foreigner has given me back my faith in my countrymen. He does not speak to them as natives, he does not have any respect for peoples’ sensitivities or their pettiness, but speaks to them like men and the Persians are rediscovering that they are men. Do you know that in my family the old women pray for him?’

CHAPTER 46

I am in no way departing from the truth by stating that in that year of 1911 all of Persia was living in the ‘age of the American’ and that Shuster was indisputably the most popular official and one of the most powerful. The newspapers supported his actions all the more enthusiastically when he took the trouble to invite the editors over from time to time to brief them on his projects and solicit their advice on some prickly questions.

Above all, and most importantly, his difficult mission was on the road to success. Before even reforming the fiscal system, he managed to balance the budget simply by limiting theft and waste. Previously, innumerable notables, princes, ministers or high dignitaries would send their demands to the Treasury in the form of a note scribbled on a greasy piece of paper, and the civil servants were constrained to satisfy them unless they wished to lose their job or their life. With Morgan everything had changed overnight.

I will give one example out of so many others. On 17 June at a Cabinet meeting, Shuster was presented with a pathetic request for the sum of forty-two million tumans in order to pay the salaries of the troops in Teheran.

‘Otherwise a rebellion will break out and it is the Treasurer General who will bear the entire responsibility!’ exclaimed Amir-i-Azam, the ‘Supreme Emir’, the Minister of War.

Shuster gave the following response:

‘The Minister himself took a similar sum ten days ago. What has he done with it?’

‘I have used it to pay part of the soldiers’ back-pay. Their families are hungry and the officers are all in debt. The situation is intolerable.’

‘Is the Minister certain that there is nothing left from that sum?’

‘Not the smallest coin!’

Shuster took out of his pocket a small visiting card which was covered with tiny writing and which he conspicuously consulted before stating:

‘The sum which the Treasury paid out ten days ago has been deposited in its entirety in the personal account of the Minister. Not one tuman has been spent. I have here the name of the banker and the figures.’

The supreme Emir, a huge fleshy man, stood up, bristling with rage; he placed his hand on his chest and cast a furious glance at his colleagues:

‘Is this an attempt to question my honour?’

As no one reassured him on that point, he added:

‘I swear that if such a sum is indeed in my account, I am the last to know about it.’

There were some looks of incredulity around him, it was decided to bring in the banker and Shuster asked the ministers to wait where they were. The moment it was indicated that the man had arrived, the Minister of War rushed to meet him. After an exchange of whispers the supreme Emir came back to his colleagues with an artless smile.

‘This damned banker had not understood my orders. He has not yet paid the troops. It was a misunderstanding!’

The incident was closed, albeit with some difficulty, but thereafter the State’s high officials did not dare to pillage the Treasury to their heart’s content, a centuries-old custom. There were of course malcontents, but they had to keep silent since most of the people, even amongst the ranks of the government officials, had reason to be satisfied: for the first time in history, civil servants, soldiers, and Persian diplomats abroad received their salaries on time.

Even in international financial circles people were starting to believe in the Shuster miracle. As proof: the Seligman brothers, bankers in London, decided to grant Persia a loan of four million pounds sterling without imposing any humiliating clauses of the type which were generally attached to this type of transaction — neither a levy on customs receipts, nor a mortgage of any sort. It was a normal loan to a normal, respectable and potentially solvent client. That was an important step. In the eyes of those who wanted to subjugate Persia it was a dangerous precedent. The British government intervened to block the loan.

Meanwhile, the Tsar had recourse to more brutal methods. In July it was learned that the former Shah had returned, with two of his brothers and at the head of an army of mercenaries, to try and seize power. Had he not been under house arrest in Odessa, with the Russian government’s explicit promise never to allow him to return to Persia? When questioned, the St Petersburg authorities replied that he had slipped out with a false passport and that his armaments had been transported in boxes labelled ‘mineral water’, and that they themselves bore no responsibility for his rebellion. Thus he had left his residence in Odessa and with his men crossed the few hundred miles separating the Ukraine and Persia, boarded a Russian ship with all his armaments, crossed the Caspian Sea and disembarked on the Persian side — all of that without arousing the notice of the Tsar’s government, his army nor the Okhrana, his secret police?

But what use was it to discuss the matter? Above all the fragile Persian democracy had to be prevented from crumbling. Parliament asked Shuster for credit and this time the American did not argue. On the contrary he saw to it that an army was raised within a few days, with the best available equipment and abundant ammunition. He himself suggested that it should be commanded by Ephraim Khan, a brilliant Armenian officer who within three months would succeed in crushing the ex-Shah and pushing him back across the border.

In chancelleries throughout the world it could hardly be believed: had Persia become a modern state? Such rebellions generally dragged on for years. For most observers, both in Teheran and abroad, the response was summed up in a single magic word: Shuster. His role now went far beyond that of simply being Treasurer General. It was he who suggested to parliament that they outlaw the former Shah and plaster ‘Wanted’ posters, as in the Wild West, on the walls of all the cities in the country, offering significant sums to anyone who helped to capture the imperial rebel and his brothers, all of which succeeded in discrediting the deposed monarch in the eyes of the population.

The Tsar was still in a rage. It was now clear to him that his ambitions in Persia would not be satisfied while Shuster was there. He had to be made to leave! An incident had to be created, a large incident. A man was charged with this mission: Pokhitanoff, former Consul in Tabriz and now Consul General in Teheran.

Mission is an unassuming word, for what was, in that context, a plot which was carefully carried out, although without much finesse. Parliament had decided to confiscate the property of the ex-Shah’s two brothers who were leading the rebellion at his side. Commissioned to carry out the sentence, as Treasurer General, Shuster wanted to do everything with the utmost legality. The principal property concerned, situated not far from the Atabak Palace, belonged to the Imperial Prince who went by the name ‘Radiance of the Sultanate’; the American sent a detachment of the police and civil servants there, armed with warrants. They found themselves face to face with Cossacks accompanied by Russian consular officers who forbade the police to enter the property, threatening to use force if they did not speedily retrace their steps.

When told of the outcome, Shuster sent one of his aides over to the Russian legation. He was received by Pokhitanoff who, in an aggressive tone of voice, gave him the following explanation: The mother of Prince ‘Radiance of the Sultanate’ had written to the Tsar and Tsarina to claim their protection, which was generously accorded.

The American could not believe his ears: It was unjust that foreigners, he said, should enjoy the privilege of immunity in Persia and that the assassins of a Persian minister could not be judged because they were the Tsar’s subjects — but it was a time-honoured rule and difficult to change; however Persians overnight could place their property under the protection of a foreign monarch to deflect the laws of their own country — that was a novel and extraordinary process. Shuster did not want to resign himself to that. He gave an order to the police to go and take possession of the properties in question, without the use of violence but with determination. This time Pokhitanoff allowed it. He had created the incident. His mission was accomplished.

The reaction was not slow in coming. A communiqué was published in St Petersburg stating that what had happened amounted to an act of aggression against Russia and an insult to the Tsar and Tsarina. They were demanding an official apology from the Teheran government. In a panic, the Persian Prime Minister asked the British for advice; the Foreign Office replied that the Tsar was not playing games, that he had amassed troops in Baku, that he was preparing to invade Persia and that it would be wise to accept the ultimatum.

Thus, on 24 November 1911, the Persian Minister for Foreign Affairs, with a heavy heart, presented himself at the Russian Delegation and shook hands fawningly with the Minister Plenipotentiary as he pronounced these words:

‘Your Excellency, my government has charged me with presenting to you, on its behalf, apologies for the insult which consular officials of your government have suffered.’

Still shaking the minister’s hand, the Tsar’s representative retorted:

‘Your apologies are accepted as a response to our first ultimatum, however I must inform you that a second ultimatum is in preparation at St Petersburg. I will advise you of its contents as soon as it reaches me.’

He kept his promise. Five days later, on 29 November at mid-day, the diplomat presented the Minister of Foreign Affairs with the text of the new ultimatum, adding orally that it had already received London’s approval and that it had to be satisfied within forty-eight hours.

Point one: dismiss Morgan Shuster.

Point two: never again employ a foreign expert without obtaining beforehand the consent of the Russian and British legations.

CHAPTER 47

In the Parliament building the seventy-six deputies were waiting, some of them wearing turbans, others fezzes or hats; some of the most militant ‘sons of Adam’ were even dressed in European style. At eleven o’clock the Prime Minister mounted the dais, as if it were a scaffold, and with a stifled voice he read out the text of the ultimatum and then mentioned London’s support for the Tsar before announcing his government’s decision not to resist but to accept the ultimatum and to dismiss the American — in a word, to return to the tutelage of the Powers rather than to be crushed underfoot by them. In order to try and avoid the worst he needed a clear mandate; he therefore asked for a show of confidence, reminding the deputies that the ultimatum would expire at mid-day, that they had a finite amount of time and that discussions could not drag on. During the whole of his speech he had kept glancing worriedly towards the visitors’ gallery where sat enthroned Mr Pokhitanoff whom none had dared to forbid entering.

When the Prime Minister went back to his seat, there were neither boos nor applause but only a deafening, overwhelming and oppressive silence. Then a venerable sayyid arose, a descendant of the Prophet and modernist from the outset who had always given enthusiastic support to Shuster’s mission. His speech was short:

‘Perhaps it is the will of God that our freedom and sovereignty should be snatched away by force. But we will not abandon those principles of our own accord.’

There was silence again. Then another speech in the same vein and just as short. Mr Pokhitanoff made a great show of looking at his watch. The Prime Minister saw him and in his turn he pulled out his fob watch and held it up to read the time. It was twenty to twelve. He became panicky and tapped the ground with his cane, demanding that they move on to a vote. Four deputies hurriedly withdrew on various pretexts: the seventy-two remaining all said ‘no’. No to the Tsar’s ultimatum. No to Shuster’s departure and no to the government’s stance. By this fact, the Prime Minister was considered to have resigned and he withdrew with his whole cabinet. Pokhitanoff also arose; the text he had to cable to St Petersburg had already been drafted.

The great door was slammed and the echo reverberated a long time in the silence of the hall. The deputies were alone. They had won but they did not feel like celebrating their victory. Power was in their hands: the fate of the country and its young constitution depended on them. What could they do with the power? What did they want to do with it? They had no idea. It was an unreal, pathetic and chaotic session, and in some respects it was childish too. From time to time someone came up with an idea, only to have it dismissed:

‘And if we asked the United States to send us troops?’

‘Why would they come, they are Russia’s friends. Was it not President Roosevelt who brought about a reconciliation between the Tsar and the Mikado?’

‘But there is Shuster. Would they want to help him?’

‘Shuster is very popular in Persia; but at home he is hardly known. The American leaders will not be able to appreciate why he has got on the wrong side of London and St Petersburg.’

‘We could suggest to them building a railway. Perhaps they would be enticed to come to our help.’

‘Perhaps, but not for six months, and the Tsar will be here within two weeks.’

‘And the Turks? The Germans? And why not the Japanese? Did they not crush the Russians in Manchuria?’ Suddenly a young deputy from Kirman suggested, with a hint of a smile, that the throne of Persia should be offered to the Mikado, at which Fazel exploded:

‘We must be aware, once and for all, that we can not even make an appeal to the people of Isfahan! If we join battle, it will be in Teheran, with the people of Teheran and with arms which are currently in the capital. Just as in Tabriz three years ago. And it is not a thousand Cossacks that will be sent to fight us but fifty thousand. We must know that we will fight without the slightest chance of winning.

Coming from anyone else, this disheartening speech would have aroused a torrent of accusations. Coming from the hero of Tabriz, the most eminent ‘son of Adam’, the words were taken for what they were — an expression of cruel reality. After that it was difficult to preach resistance, but that however was just what Fazel did.

‘If we are ready to fight, it is solely in order to safeguard the future. Does Persia not still live in the memory of the Imam Hussein? Yet this martyr did no more than lead a lost battle. He was defeated, crushed and massacred and it is he whom we honour. Persia needs blood in order to believe. There are seventy-two of us, the same number as Hussein’s companions. If we die, this Parliament will become a place of pilgrimage and democracy will be anchored for centuries in the ground of the Orient.

They all declared themselves ready to die, but they did not die. Not that they weakened or betrayed their cause. Exactly the opposite — they tried to organise the city’s defences and volunteers, particularly ‘sons of Adam’, presented themselves in great numbers, just as in Tabriz. However it was to no avail. After invading the north of the country, the Tsar’s troops were now advancing in the direction of the capital. Only the snow slowed down their progress a little.

On 24 December the fallen Prime Minister decided to take power again by force. Aided by Cossacks, Bakhtiari tribes and an important section of the army and the police, he made himself master of the capital and had the dissolution of Parliament proclaimed. Several deputies were arrested. Those who had been most active, with Fazel at the head of the list, were condemned to exile.

The first act of the new regime was officially to accept the terms of the Tsar’s ultimatum. A polite letter informed Morgan Shuster that an end had been put to his functions as Treasurer General. He had only been in Persia for eight months, albeit eight hectic and dizzying months, which all but changed the face of the Orient.

On 11 January 1912, Shuster was seen off with honours. The young Shah placed his own car at his disposal, along with his French chauffeur Monsieur Varlet, to drive him to the port of Enzeli. There were a lot of us, foreigners and Persians, who came to bid him farewell, some in front of his residence and others along the road. There were of course no cheers, just the discreet gestures of thousands of hands, the tears of men and women and a crowd of strangers who were crying like abandoned lovers. Along the whole route there was only one insignificant incident: as the convoy went past, a Cossack picked up a stone and made as if to throw it in the direction of the American; I do not believe that he even carried through his action.

When the car had disappeared beyond the Kazvin Gate, I walked a little in the company of Charles Russel. Then I made my way alone, by foot, to Shireen’s palace.

‘You seem rather crestfallen,’ she said as she received me.

‘I have just come from bidding farewell to Shuster.’

‘Ah! He has finally gone!’

I was not certain whether I had understood the tone of her exclamation. She explained herself.

‘Today I have been wondering whether it would not have been better if he had never set foot in this country.’

I looked at her with horror.

‘It is you who are saying that to me!’

‘Yes, it is I, Shireen, who am saying that. I, who applauded the American’s arrival, I who approved every one of his actions, I who saw him as a redeemer. Now I regret the fact that he did not stay in far-off America.’

‘But what did he do wrong?’

‘Nothing. And that is precisely the proof that he did not understand Persia.’

I really was not following her.

‘If a minister is right and the king mistaken, a wife is right when her husband is wrong or a soldier correct and his officer off course, are they not punished doubly? In the eyes of the weak, it is wrong to be right. Compared to the Russians and the English, Persia is weak and should have known how to behave like a weak person.’

‘Until the end of time? Should Persia not recover one day and construct a modern state, educate its people and enter into the concert of prosperous and respected nations? That is what Shuster was trying to do.’

‘For that I grant him the greatest admiration. However I cannot help thinking that if he had succeeded a little less we would not be in this lamentable situation today with our democracy destroyed and our territory invaded.’

‘The Tsar’s ambitions being what they are, that would have happened sooner or later.’

‘It is always better for a misfortune to happen later. Do you know the story of Mullah Nasruddin’s talking ass?’

Mullah Nasruddin was the semi-legendary hero of all the anecdotes and parables of Persia, Transoxania and Asia Minor. Shireen told the story:

‘It was said that a half-mad king had condemned Nasruddin to death for having stolen an ass. Just as he was about to be led off for execution he exclaimed: “That beast is in reality my brother. A magician made him look like that, but if he were entrusted to me for a year I would teach him to speak like us again!” Intrigued, the monarch made the accused repeat his promise before decreeing: “Very well! But if within one year from today the ass does not speak, you will be executed.” As he went out, Nasruddin was accosted by his wife: “How can you make a promise like that? You know very well that this ass will not speak.” “Of course I know,” replied Nasruddin, “but during the year the king might die, the ass might or even I might.”’

The princess went on:

‘If we had been able to gain some time, Russia might have got bogged down in the Balkans or in China. What’s more, the Tsar is not eternal, he could die or be shaken by riots or revolts, as happened six years ago. We should have been patient and waited, used tricks, procrastinated, yielded, told lies and given promises. That has always been the wisdom of the Orient; Shuster wanted to make us move to the rhythm of the Occident, he steered us straight to shipwreck.’

She seemed to be suffering from having said that, so I avoided contradicting her. She added:

‘Persia makes me think of an unlucky sailing boat. The sailors constantly complain that there is not enough wind to move, and suddenly, as if to punish them, Heaven sends them a tornado.’

We stayed silent for a long time, weighed down in thought. Then I put my arm around her affectionately.

‘Shireen!’

Was it the way I uttered her name? She gave a start and then pushed me away as she gave me a suspicious look.

‘You are leaving.’

‘Yes, but differently.’

‘How can one leave “differently”?’

‘I am leaving with you.’

CHAPTER 48

Cherbourg. 10 April, 1912

The English Channel stretched as far as the eye could see, its surface flecked with silver. By my side was Shireen. We had the Manuscript in our luggage. We were surrounded by an unlikely crowd, completely oriental.

So much has been said of the shining celebrities who set sail on the Titanic that we have almost forgotten those for whom these sea giants were built: the migrants, those millions of men, women and children no country would agree to feed any more and who dreamt of America. The steamboat had to make a lot of pick-ups: the English and Scandinavians from Southampton, the Irish from Queenstown and at Cherbourg those who came from further away, Greeks, Syrians, Armenians from Anatolia, Jews from Salonika or Bessarabia, Croats, Serbs and Persians. It was these Orientals that I was able to watch at the harbour station, clustered around their pathetic luggage, in a hurry to be somewhere else and in a state of anguish from time to time, suddenly looking for a lost form, a child who was too agile, or an unmanageable bundle which had rolled under a bench. On everyone’s face there was written adventure, bitterness or defiance. They all felt that it was a privilege, the moment they arrived in the West, to be taking part in the maiden voyage of the most powerful, the most modern and most dependable steamboat ever dreamed up by man.

My own feelings were hardly different. Having been married three weeks earlier in Paris, I put back my departure with the sole aim of offering my companion a wedding trip worthy of the oriental splendour in which she had lived. It was not a vain whim. For a long time, Shireen had seemed reticent about the idea of living in the United States and, had it not been for the fact that she was so disheartened by Persia’s failed reawakening, she would never have agreed to follow me. My ambition was to build up around her a world which was yet more magical than the one she had had to leave.

The Titanic served my purposes marvellously. It seemed to have been conceived by men who were eager to enjoy, in this floating palace, the most sumptuous pleasures of terra firma as well as some of the joys of the Orient: a Turkish bath just as indolent as those of Constantinople or Cairo; verandahs dotted with palm-trees; and in the gymnasium, between the bar and the pommel horse there was an electric camel, which, when you pressed the magic button, instilled in the rider the feeling of a jumpy ride in the desert.

However, as we explored the Titanic, we were not just trying to search out the exotic. We also managed to give ourselves over to wholly European pleasures, such as eating oysters, followed by a sauté de poulet à la lyonnaise, the speciality of Monsieur Proctor the chef, washed down by a Cos-d’Estournel 1887, as we listened to the orchestra dressed in blue tuxedos playing the Tales of Hoffman, the Geisha or the Grand Moghul by Luder.

Those moments were even more precious to Shireen and me since we had had to keep up pretences throughout our long romance in Persia. Ample and promising as my Princess’s apartments had been at Tabriz, Zarganda or Teheran, I suffered constantly from the feeling that our love was restricted within their walls, with its only witness engraved mirrors and servants with fleeting glances. Now we could take simple pleasure in being seen together, a man and a woman arm in arm, taken in by the same strange looks. We avoided going back to our cabin until late at night, even though I had chosen one of the most spacious on board.

Our final delight was the evening promenade. When we finished dinner, we would go and find an officer, always the same one, who would lead us to a safe from which we would take out the manuscript and carry it carefully on a tour across bridges and down corridors. Seated in rattan armchairs in the Parisian Cafe we would read some quatrains at random, then, taking the lift, we would go up to the walkway where, without having to worry too much as to whether we could be seen, we would exchange a passionate kiss in the open air. Late in the night we would take the manuscript to our room where it spent the night before being placed back in the safe, in the morning, with the help of the same officer. It was a ritual which enchanted Shireen. So much so that I made it a duty for myself to retain every detail in order to reproduce it exactly the next day.

That is how, on the fourth evening, I had opened the manuscript at the page where Khayyam in his day had written:

You ask what is this life so frail, so vain.

’Tis long to tell, yet will I make it plain;

’Tis but a breath blown from the vasty deeps,

And then blown back to those same deeps again!

The reference to the ocean amused me: I wanted to read it again, more slowly, but Shireen interrupted me:

‘Please don’t!’

She seemed to be suffocating; I looked at her worriedly.

‘I know that rubai by heart,’ she said in a faint voice, ‘and I suddenly had the impression that I was hearing it for the first time. It is as if …’

She would not explain, however, and got her breath back before stating in a light and serene tone of voice:

‘I wish that we had already arrived.’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘If there is a ship in the world on which one can travel without fear, it is this one. As Captain Smith said, God Himself could not sink this ship!’

If I had thought to reassure her with those words and my happy tone, it was in fact the opposite which I effected. She clutched my arm, murmuring:

‘Never say that again! Never!’

‘Why are you getting so worked up? You know very well that it was only a joke.’

‘Where I come from even an atheist would not dare use such a phrase.’

She was trembling. I could not understand why she was reacting so violently. I suggested that we go back to the cabin and had to support her so that she would not stumble on the way.

The next day she seemed to be herself again. In order to occupy her mind, I took her off to discover the wonders of the ship. I even mounted the jerky electric camel, at the risk of putting up with the laughs of Henry Sleeper Harper, the editor of the eponymous weekly, who stayed for a moment in our company, offered us tea and told us about his trips in the Orient, before introducing to us, most ceremoniously, his Pekinese dog which he thought acceptable to call Sun Yat Sen, in ambiguous homage to the emancipator of China. However nothing managed to cheer Shireen up.

That evening, at dinner, she was taciturn; she seemed to have become weak. I thought it best not to go on our ritual promenade and left the manuscript in the safe. We went back to our cabin to go to bed. She immediately fell into a disturbed sleep. I, on the other hand, was worried about her, and unused as I was to sleeping so early I spent a good part of the night watching her.

Why should I lie? When the ship hit the iceberg I was not aware of anything. It was after the collision, when I was told at exactly what moment it had taken place, that I thought I could remember having heard a noise like a sheet being torn in a nearby cabin shortly before midnight. Nothing else. I do not remember feeling any impact and managed to doze off, only to wake up with a start when someone rapped on the door, shouting a phrase which I could not make out. I looked at my watch. It was ten to one. I put on my dressing gown and opened the door. The corridor was empty, but from afar I could hear loud conversation, something unusual for so late at night. Without actually being worried, I decided to go and see what was happening, of course making no move to wake Shireen.

On the stairway I came across a steward who spoke lightly of ‘a few little problems’ which had just cropped up. He said that the captain wanted all the first class passengers to assemble on the Sun Bridge, at the top of the ship.

‘Must I wake my wife? She has been a little unwell during the day.’

‘The captain said everyone,’ the steward retorted with the look of a sceptic.

Back in the cabin, I woke Shireen with the necessary tenderness, stroking her forehead and then her eyebrows, pronouncing her name with my lips fast to her ear. When she gave out a little groan I whispered:

‘You must get up. We have to go up on the bridge.’

‘Not tonight, I am too cold.’

‘It is not for a promenade, they are the captain’s orders.’

The last two words had a magical effect; she jumped out of bed shouting:

‘Khodaya! My God!’

She got dressed quickly and in a state of disorder. I had to keep her calm, tell her to slow down, that we were not in such a hurry. However when we arrived on the bridge there was an atmosphere of turmoil and passengers were being directed toward the life-boats.

The steward I had met earlier was there. I went over to him. He had lost none of his cheeriness.

‘Women and children first,’ he said, in a tone that poked fun at the phrase.

I took Shireen by the hand, to try and lead her over to the boats, but she refused to move.

‘The manuscript’, she pleaded.

‘We would run the risk of losing it in all the crush! It is better off in the safe!’

‘I will not leave without it!’

‘There is no question of leaving,’ the steward interjected. ‘We are getting the passengers off the ship for an hour or two. If you want my advice, even that is not necessary. But the captain is the master of the ship …’

I would not say that she was convinced by that, but she simply let herself be pulled along by the hand without putting up any resistance — as far as the forecastle where an officer called me.

‘Sir, over here, we need you.’

I went up to him.

‘This life-boat needs a man. Can you row?’

‘I have rowed for years in Chesapeake Bay.’

Satisfied by that, he invited me to get into the boat and helped Shireen to clamber in. There were about thirty people in it; with as many places still empty, but the orders were only to load the women — and some experienced rowers.

We were winched down to the ocean somewhat abruptly to my taste, but I managed to keep the boat steady and began to row. But where to, or toward what point in this black void? I did not have the least idea and neither did the men handling the evacuation. I decided just to get away from the ship and to wait at a distance of half a mile for some signal to call me back.

During the first minutes everyone’s concern was how we could all protect ourselves against the cold. There was an icy breeze blowing which prevented us hearing the tune which the ship’s orchestra was still playing. However, when we stopped, at what seemed to me an adequate distance, the truth suddenly dawned on us: the Titanic was leaning distinctly forwards and her lights were gradually fading. We were all dumbfounded. Suddenly there was a call from a man who was swimming; I manoeuvered the life-boat towards him; Shireen and another passenger helped me to drag him on board. Soon other survivors were making signs to us and we went to haul them out. While we were occupied with this task, Shireen gave out a cry. The Titanic was now in a vertical position and its lights had dimmed. She stayed like that for five endless minutes and then solemnly plunged towards her destiny.

We were flat out, exhausted and surrounded by forlorn faces when the sun surprised us on 15 April. We were on board the Carpathia, which on receiving a distress call had rushed over to pick up the survivors from the wreck. Shireen was at my side, silent. Since we had seen the Titanic go down she had not spoken a word, and her eyes were avoiding me. I wanted to shake her, to remind her that we had been saved miraculously, that most of the passengers had perished, and that there were around us on this bridge women who had just lost their husbands and children who were now orphans.

However I stopped myself preaching to her. I knew that the manuscript was for her, as it was for me, more than a jewel, more than a precious antique — that it was, to some extent, our reason for being together. Its disappearance, come after so many misfortunes, had to have a serious effect on Shireen. I felt it would be wiser to let time heal.

As we drew close to the port of New York, late on the evening of 18 April, a noisy reception was awaiting us: reporters had come to meet us on rented boats, and, with the aid of megaphones, they shouted questions over to us and some of the passengers cupped their hands to their mouths and tried to shout back answers.

When the Carpathia had berthed, other journalists hurried over to the survivors, all trying to guess which might be the truest, or most sensational, account. It was a very young writer from the Evening Sun who chose me. He was particularly interested in Captain Smith’s behaviour as well as that of crew members at the time of the catastrophe. Had they succumbed to panic? In their exchanges with the passengers, had they covered up the truth? Was it true that the first class passengers had been saved first? Each of his questions made me think back and rack my memory; we spoke for a long time, first as we were disembarking, then standing up on the quay. Shireen had stayed for a moment at my side, still not saying a word, then she slipped away. I had no reason to worry, she could not really have gone far, surely she was somewhere nearby, hidden behind this photographer who was focusing a blinding flash at me.

As he left me, the journalist complimented me on the quality of my account and took my address in order to get in touch with me later. Then I looked all around, and called out louder and louder. Shireen was no longer there. I decided not to move from the spot where she had left me so that she would be able to find me again. I waited for an hour, for two hours. The quay gradually emptied.

Where should I look? First of all I went to the office of White Star, the company to which the Titanic belonged. Then I checked all the hotels where the survivors had been lodged for the night. However, yet again I found no sign of my wife. I returned to the quays. They were deserted.

Then I decided to set off for the only place whose address she knew, and where, once she had calmed down, she would know to find me: my house in Annapolis.

I waited for some sign of Shireen for a long time, but she never came. She did not write to me. No one mentioned her name any more in front of me.

Today I wonder: Did she exist? Was she anything other than the fruit of my oriental obsessions? At night, in the solitude of my overlarge bedroom, when doubt rises up in me, when my memory clouds over and I feel my reason waver, I get up and turn on all the lights. I rush and take out the letters of yesteryear which I pretend to open as if I had just received them. I breathe in their perfume and re-read some pages; the very coldness of the letters’ tone comforts me, and gives me the illusion that I am experiencing anew the birth of love. Then alone, and soothed, I put them in order and dive back into the dark, ready to give myself over without fright to the dazzling sights of the past: a phrase uttered in a Constantinople sitting-room, two sleepless nights in Tabriz, a brazier in the winter in Zarganda. And this scene from our last trip: we had gone up on to the walkway, into a dark and deserted corner where we had exchanged a long kiss. In order to take her face in my hands, I had placed the manuscript flat on a bollard. When she noticed it, Shireen burst out laughing. She stepped away from me and with a theatrical gesture she shouted to the sky:

‘The Rubaiyaat on the Titanic! The flower of the Orient borne by the jewel of the Occident! Khayyam, if you could only see what a beautiful moment has been granted to us!’