The King

36. In the Palace

The vizier waited in Velenjak for the shah to summon him, but to his chagrin there was nothing but silence. When it seemed to him that too much time had passed he decided to go to the palace on his own initiative.

The shah was not there. Even the chamberlain, who always came to meet him, was nowhere to be seen. With great suspicion he pushed open the door. To his surprise there were no candles burning in the wall lamps. He knocked on the door of the hall of mirrors and said quietly, ‘Your Majesty, it is I, the vizier.’

There was no response.

‘Are you there, Your Majesty?’ he called, this time a bit louder. He considered going into the hall but decided against it. Instead he went outside and called the head of the guards.

‘Where is everyone?’

‘What do you mean?’ said the man.

‘There’s no one here. Where is the shah?’

‘His Majesty must be in the palace.’

The vizier went back in, walked through the empty corridors and called the chamberlain: ‘Aga Moshir!’

He tried to get into the kitchen, but it was locked. Then he opened the door to the hall of mirrors. ‘Your Majesty, are you there? Is everything all right?’

The only possible explanation was that the shah was spending the night in the harem. He could return at any moment. The vizier sat down in a chair and began massaging his complaining right leg.

Suddenly he heard a great clamour behind the building, and he went to see what was causing it. It was the shah’s wives out in the harem courtyard. Whatever was troubling them must have been serious because windows were being smashed and the women and children were screaming.

He went to the end of the corridor and stood behind the door. Should he open the door a crack and look out? Should he call to ask if he could be of any help? It was too risky. If the shah were to regard his interference as an invasion of his privacy it could have far-reaching consequences for him. So he stayed behind the door and listened. All he could hear were the women, the children and Khwajeh Bashi, the harem overseer.

The vizier understood from all the tumult that the women of the harem wanted to go out, but Khwajeh Bashi and his servants were trying to keep them in. Things were getting out of hand. The women were pounding on the door of the harem and were about to break it down. The vizier couldn’t just stand by and watch. He opened the door halfway and shouted, ‘Ladies! What’s going on?’

His voice was drowned by all the chaos.

‘Ladies! It is I, the vizier. Allow me to come and help you.’

No one heard him. Were the women so upset because something had happened to the shah? Had he dropped dead? Had he been murdered by one of his wives? Was Khwajeh Bashi trying to keep the women inside in order to prevent the dreadful report from leaking out?

The vizier could no longer control himself. With his hands held over his eyes he went in.

‘Ladies? Where is the shah? What is going on here?’

A deadly silence fell. The women were surprised by the presence of the vizier. All of them were unveiled, without their niqabs, and they were in a state of total confusion.

‘Cover your heads!’ shouted Khwajeh Bashi.

The servants of the harem went to fetch the chadors and passed them out. When the women had covered themselves the vizier pulled his hands away from his eyes and asked once more what had upset them so.

The women burst out crying as if they were seeing their older brother or father, to whom they could pour out their hearts. The shah, the queen mother and the princes all despised the vizier, but he was beloved of the shah’s wives. They knew he loved his own wife and that he wrote her letters when he was travelling. All of them knew the beginning of that one letter by heart:

My love,

Always be home when I return,

or I am forced to go from room to room,

calling your name until you come.

‘Everyone is ill, everyone in the harem is going to die,’ cried one of the women through her sobs.

‘It’s a plague,’ cried another. ‘The harem has been struck by the plague.’

‘What did you say?’ asked the vizier, who thought he hadn’t heard properly.

‘Plague has broken out in the harem.’

‘How do you know that?’ he said, refusing to believe it.

‘A woman died tonight,’ one of the women bawled. ‘She’s still lying in her bed.’

‘A plague has broken out in the city,’ cried another woman. ‘Everyone knows about it but us.’

‘It’s not true. I’ve just come from the city, and there is no plague. Don’t be afraid. They’re just trying to scare you. The woman in the harem probably died of something else.’

‘There are many women sick in bed and the shah has run away. He’s taken his mother, his cat and his daughter with him and has left us all here to die.’

The vizier was shocked. He spoke privately with Khwajeh Bashi and came to understand what may have taken place in the palace. The shah’s court physician had probably diagnosed plague among the sick women of the harem. He had then informed the shah in confidence, after which the shah had decided to go to his country house, where it was safe.

‘It’s going to be all right, ladies. I’ll take care of everything,’ said the vizier, and he turned to Khwajeh Bashi. ‘Remove the dead woman from the harem and gather all the sick women together in the big room on the other side of the palace. I’ll notify the doctor immediately.’ Then he said to the women, ‘The doors of the harem will be kept open. You may go to the garden for fresh air. Clean everything in the bathrooms and in all the other chambers. Wash your children and yourselves.’

The vizier’s fatherly advice did the women good. Peace and quiet were restored. The body of the dead woman was taken away immediately and the sick women were examined by the doctor. The women launched a major clean-up operation in the harem, and the children began running freely through the palace gardens again.

The vizier was disappointed by the shah’s irresponsible behaviour. He didn’t believe that plague had broken out in Tehran, and he suspected that the resulting panic had caused the women of the harem to imagine things to be worse than they really were. He mounted his horse and rode towards the city of Qazvin, to a small village in the mountains where the shah had gone to stay.

The country air was good for him. His anger cooled and he even began to sympathise with the shah for going away. Something quite serious must be going on.

He left the last hills behind him and rode through the open fields. At one point he noticed people lying on a path along the riverbank. At first he thought they were farmers resting in the grass, but when he got closer he couldn’t believe his eyes. They were sick people who had been left there to die, thrown out of the village by others who were afraid of the plague.

The vizier was dumbfounded. Everywhere, men and women were lying on the ground like dead beasts. He saw mothers wrap their dead children in shrouds. He saw parents fleeing with their children to the mountains. Powerless to do anything he walked past three dead women whose bodies lay half in the river, their legs bare. The gravediggers tossed quicklime over the corpses to keep the wild dogs away.

Darkness had just fallen when he rode into the village and reached the castle. He rode straight to the gate but was stopped by the guards.

‘His Majesty is not receiving anyone,’ said the head of the guards.

‘Will you please tell the shah that the vizier is standing at the gate?’

‘Even the guards aren’t allowed in,’ declared the man.

‘You can shout through the hatch that I’m standing here at the gate,’ said the vizier, trying to control his rage.

‘His Majesty does not want to see anyone. Not anyone. He gave me this order in person,’ said the man resolutely.

The vizier saw himself standing at the gate. What was he doing there, anyway? What could the shah do about a plague that apparently had stricken the entire district? If there was anyone who could do anything at all, it was the vizier. Why come here like a mendicant, begging the shah to speak to him?

He decided to turn back and try to preserve Tehran from calamity. Perhaps he ought to ask the Russians and the British for help. He would go straight to the British ambassador to warn him. The ambassador could ask London to send British army nurses to Tehran by way of Herat. That was their only hope.

The vizier wanted to go to Tehran, but the thought of a carefree shah in his safe castle made him angry. The king had a responsibility for his people.

He began to scream, ‘Shah! The vizier has come! The vizier has come! The vizier has come!’

The guards tried to chase him away, but to no avail.

The vizier shouted even louder, ‘Shah! The vizier has come! The vizier! The vizier!’

The head of the guards picked up his rifle, but he didn’t dare aim it at the vizier. The vizier in turn picked up his own rifle and began shooting it into the air, repeating over and over again, ‘The vizier has come!’

There was chaos at the gate. The horses neighed, the watchdogs barked and the guards tried to keep the vizier from coming any further.

Inside the castle the shah was listening indecisively. He heard the tapping of his mother’s walking stick. Mahdolia stood behind him and said, ‘What are you waiting for? Kill him now. He’s become too powerful.’

At that very moment the gate of the castle opened. Taj Olsultan, the daughter of the shah, went outside with a torch in her hand. She walked calmly up to the vizier and said, ‘Salam, Vizier. Is there something I can do for you?’

‘No, no, my daughter. I am glad the princess is in good health, that is enough for me,’ said the vizier.

‘I heard you had been wounded in the south. I was worried, but now I’m glad to see you again. How are you, Vizier? I have thought of you very often.’

Taj’s words surprised the vizier. His anger cooled. He looked at her standing there in the dark beside the gate, part of her face visible in the light of the torch. The vizier saw that Taj had grown and that, although she was still young, she acted like a real grown-up princess.

‘I thank you for your heart-warming words, my daughter. I am doing better. You have become an extraordinary princess.’

‘Thank you,’ said Taj, and she smiled.

‘Go back inside, and take good care of yourself,’ said the vizier. He tipped his hat, bowed and spurred his horse to a gallop.