The King

54. Cable Complaints

After the fighting in and around the Jameh mosque, Eyn ed-Dowleh had put all the gates of Tehran under surveillance to prevent Jamal Khan from fleeing the city. He had searches conducted in all the houses that he suspected of being places where Jamal Khan might be holed up. The house of Ayatollah Tabatabai was passed over, however — the very place where Jamal Khan had taken shelter.

On the evening that Jamal Khan was shot in the leg, he mustered up every scrap of strength he had and managed to reach the home of Ayatollah Tabatabai. He spent his first months inside the ayatollah’s house, waiting for his leg to heal so he could walk again. He let his beard grow and, with the ayatollah’s approval, donned clerical robes, put a turban on his head and returned to daily life disguised as an imam.

He tried to convince Tabatabai that the power of the shah would have to be curtailed, and that a majles (parliament) and an edalat-khaneh (court of justice) were essential for the future of the country.

Jamal Khan then set out to gather his comrades together, but that was no easy task.

The shah had returned with a renewed sense of purpose, and he kept coming up with new ideas. The trip had gone well, he thought, but he was more convinced than ever that the developments taking place in western countries could not be implemented in his own. He stated this clearly at a meeting: ‘Adopting their way of life is out of the question, but we can ask them to build bridges for us, or perhaps a hospital. We’ve seen cannons there that are ten times stronger than what the Russians have. These are the things we need. The Germans have promised us guns. I have spoken with them, and they can make the same kinds of weapons for us that are geared especially for our army. But other changes are not advisable, especially when it comes to their way of life.’

In his own palace, however, there were a number of changes he was eager to introduce. All the western heads of state had their own private telegraph booths, for instance. In England he had discussed the possibility of installing something similar in Tehran, a hope that was realised far sooner than the shah had expected.

Six months after the shah’s return Sir James Moore, a young British engineer, appeared at the palace to install a telegraph booth so the shah would be able to receive and send his own telegrams. The engineer gave the shah a letter that said that England was pleased to give him the necessary equipment as a memento. The gift was then brought in encased in a large box. The engineer prised the planks loose with an iron bar and unpacked the contents. The telegraph was a beautifully designed, golden device that glistened in the light.

Two poles, decorated with Persian motifs, were then erected in the palace. Cables ran gracefully from one pole to the other. When everything was ready a booth was built in one of the side rooms off the hall of mirrors.

Assisted by a British telegraph operator the shah sent a test message to the Persian ambassador in London. When the shah was in the English capital he had read a poem in a British newspaper and had thought how extraordinary it was to introduce people to poetry in this way. The shah asked the telegraph operator if he would send one of his poems to the Persian ambassador in London.

As the moon from the saddened sea doth go,

My love has left me filled with woe.

One difference stands: love left no trace,

While the moon has left us with her face.

The ambassador answered with a telegram: ‘It was a masterpiece. If Your Majesty agrees, we will have the poem translated into English for our business relations in London.’

Delighted, the shah responded immediately: ‘We give our consent!’

Now that the shah had direct contact with all the big cities he sent daily telegrams to Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Mashad and Bandar Abbas and asked them for updates. He felt that the country was more firmly under his control. Every day he received reports from local officials, and he read everything with great attention.

He also received more and more reports that he referred to as ‘cable complaints’. The merchants sent him endless telegrams expressing their displeasure with local rulers and the bribes they were constantly demanding. They begged the shah to do something about these abuses.

He also received reports from families complaining about police officials, men who had taken their daughters against their will and without the consent of their parents and were holding them captive in their harems.

Cable complaints came in daily by the hundreds, and the shah gave serious attention to them all. It made him feel good to have contact with his subjects. Questions were answered without delay. He sent brief, blunt orders to the officials and helped the families deal with their difficulties: ‘Let the girl go or we will come ourselves!’

Every morning he left his bed with fresh resolve and went to the telegraph operator to see if any new reports had come in. He washed and dressed with haste and studied the stacks of requests as he ate his breakfast. Sometimes he would travel to a city unannounced to see whether his orders had actually been carried out. It did him a world of good and he took pleasure in the fairness of his decisions.

Recently he had received a few cable complaints from the Tehran bazaar. A group of shopkeepers had protested to the shah that Malijak was constantly coming to the bazaar to annoy them. It made the shah laugh to see that even Malijak’s name was appearing in the reports. He showed it to him and said with a smile, ‘Malijak, you’ve become important, too. Your name has made its way through the cable.’

The rumour that the shah was dealing with the complaints of his subjects by cable spread throughout the country. Villagers travelled long distances by donkey to get to the big cities and jostled their way into the telegraph offices. They sometimes had to wait several days and nights before they could send their complaint or question to the shah. Because the shah’s equipment could no longer process the huge number of messages coming in, they were now being sent to the main office in Tehran. The staff at the main office put all the complaints in a sack, which was handed over to the palace guards every morning.

Gradually the shah’s unbridled commitment began to waver and turned into a crushing burden. He no longer knew how to deal with all the complaints. People who were oppressed, who were ill, who had seen their harvests wither away, who had been robbed, women whose husbands were sitting out long prison sentences, people who no longer felt safe in their own neighbourhoods, the sick, the blind, the deaf, the lame: all of them kept asking him for help.

The shah became frightened by all the misery in his kingdom. He had done his very best, but he realised he could not help everyone. Slowly his enthusiasm dwindled. He stopped reading the messages, piled the sacks of telegrams in the corner of his study, sent the telegraph operator away and put a lock on the door of the booth.

One afternoon, deeply dejected, he rode to his mother’s palace. The late afternoon sun was shining yellow and red against the palace walls when the shah arrived. Mahdolia had been ill for quite some time. Even before dismounting he could see her shuffling along the length of the wall with her walking stick. She still walked with the dignity of a queen, despite her illness. She wore a gold tiara that reflected the light.

The shah had mixed feelings about his mother. Sometimes his love for her was boundless and sometimes he hated her. Now he was fonder of her than ever. He realised he was losing her, that every meeting could be their last. It was his mother, after all, who had made a shah out of him. She was a powerful woman who had hit every possible low point. She was the personification of all Persian women, the embodiment of all the queens before her, a woman who had learned to be as strong as a draught horse, a woman who had been forced to save her own life and that of her son in order to survive in the jungle of corruption.

Her husband had been a weak king, but she had always stood by him. It was she who had forced him to take the necessary decisions. Back when she was a nonentity she would often look in her bedroom mirror and say, ‘Someday they’ll know who I am. I know all the women of Persia, those who are among the living, who still exist, and those who no longer exist. All the power and all the rights that have been taken from women are now mine.’

She saw in her son both his weak father and his powerful grandfather. Now he was trapped in the cogwheels of change.

‘Our greetings to the queen of queens,’ the shah called out. The queen mother looked up and smiled.

‘The shah has frightened this old woman,’ she said.

He got off his horse, walked up to her, kissed her hand, put his arm through hers and guided her along the wall.

‘The shah is sad,’ she remarked.

He walked beside her in silence.

‘Tell me what’s wrong.’

‘Mother, Mother, I can’t go on. People are crying. People are begging. People are dying. People are being robbed. The farmers have been struck by a plague of locusts, the women are being raped, the children are going blind from smallpox, the hair of young boys is falling out. Mother, we feel powerless. Terrible things are happening in the palace. They’ve made Malijak so fat that the poor boy can no longer walk. I don’t know who is doing this to us.’

‘Do not distress yourself, my son,’ said Mahdolia, and she gripped his arm. ‘You are heir to an ancient civilisation. At times we have plunged from the tallest peaks to the deepest valleys. I lived through the reigns of both your father and your grandfather. You rule the land ten times better than your father ever did. It is not your fault, my son. Life is more difficult for you than it was for the other kings. Have patience. I will pray to my God for you. I will go to Him in tears. He will help you.’

‘Thank you, Mother. Please don’t leave us alone.’

‘I am not about to die, my son,’ she said. ‘I will keep on living until the shah says, Mother, you may go now.’

‘You’re going to outlive us?’ asked the shah with a laugh.

‘I’m not going to outlive you. I’m going to stand by you as long as necessary.’

‘That’s a beautiful promise, Mother,’ said the shah.

‘Help me, boy. I can no longer climb the stairs by myself.’

He picked her up off the ground and carried her up the stairs in his arms.

‘Put me back on the ground,’ she laughed, threatening him with her walking stick.

The shah put her down gently and planted a kiss on her crown.