Saffron Village was famous not only for its ancient cuneiform inscription, but also for its beautiful carpets, its genuine Persian rugs. Americans and Europeans who have a Persian carpet in the living room don’t realise that it might have been made in Saffron Village. You can tell by the pattern. If it has a strange bird with an odd-looking tail, it no doubt comes from the village where Aga Akbar grew up.
In the middle of winter, hundreds of strange birds suddenly flew in from the other side of Saffron Mountain, from the former Soviet Union. Since it was cold, the birds were hungry and thirsty. The villagers always knew when the birds were about to arrive: early in the morning, on one of the first days after the full moon had appeared to the left of the mountain peak. The women leaned their ladders against the walls in expectation.
At the first sign of the birds, the women climbed up onto the rooftops and set out bowls of warm water and bits of leftover food.
The strange birds landed on the roofs. The women and children watched from the windows and saw the birds walk across the roofs with their strange long tails, bobbing their heads in thanks. The birds rested for a few hours, then flew off. And the women, who spent the whole day, the whole month, the whole year, the whole of their lives in the village, weaving rugs, the women who never got a chance to leave Saffron Mountain, wove those birds into the patterns of the carpets.
Another motif that made its way into their carpets was the cuneiform script.
The illiterate women of Saffron Village used the secret language of the cave’s relief to weave their hopes and longings into their carpets.
Sometimes the carpets depicted a foreigner in a hat riding to the cave on a mule and holding a sheet of paper filled with cuneiform.
At the end of the 1930s the women suddenly began weaving a completely new pattern into their carpets—a train. A train trailing smoke as it snaked its way up Saffron Mountain.
Nowadays the carpets show a bomber flying over the village, dropping its deadly cargo.
Though the women didn’t realise it, the train and its trail of smoke symbolised a shift in power. In those days Reza Khan, the father of the last shah of Iran, had the country firmly in his grip. There was a centralised dictatorship. Reza Khan was a simple private who had worked his way up to general. What he lacked in education, he made up for in ambition.
In 1921 he staged a coup. Announcing that the Qajar dynasty had come to an end, he declared himself the new king of Persia. From then on, it was to be known as the Pahlavi kingdom.
Reza Shah wanted to weave the country into a new pattern. He wanted to transform the archaic kingdom of Persia into a modern nation orientated towards the West. That meant new businesses, modern schools, printing presses, theatres, steel bridges, roads, buses and taxis, not to mention radios and radio stations that would broadcast, for the first time in Persian history, the magical voice of a singer:
Yawash, yawash, yawash, yawash
amadam dar khane-tan.
Yek shakh-e gol dar dastam
sar-e rahat benshastam.
Be khoda’ yadat narawad az nazram.
Softly, softly, ever so softly,
I walked past your house and
Sat on the roadside with a flower
In my hand as you passed by.
God knows I shall never forget you.
Reza Shah wanted more. He wanted to change women’s lives overnight. From one day to the next, women were forbidden to wear chadors. Whenever they went out, they were expected to wear hats and coats instead.
He wanted everything to happen quickly, which is why he governed the country with an iron hand and stifled all opposition. On his orders, the poet Farokhi had his lips sewn shut because he’d recited a poem about women who stumbled and couldn’t walk without their chadors. During Reza Shah’s reign, many writers, intellectuals and political leaders were thrown in jail or murdered, and others simply disappeared.
According to the opposition, Reza Shah was a lackey of the British Embassy in Tehran and had been ordered to modernise the country for the benefit of the West. In the eyes of the imperialists, he was merely a soldier, a pawn to be used in the struggle against the Soviet Union.
Whether or not he was a British puppet, one thing is certain: he wanted things to change. In his own way, he was determined to radically reform the country, but he was a soldier, a brute. Everyone was terrified of him.
Reza Shah hoped that his most important projects would be finished before his son succeeded him.
The train was one of his pet projects.
During the twenty-five hundred years in which various kings, sultans and emirs had ruled the Persian Empire, no government official had ever come to the mountains to take a census of the inhabitants. Now that Reza Khan was shah, however, he wanted his subjects to carry identity cards.
Throughout the ages the imams had controlled the mountains and the countryside. Now the populace had to contend with a gendarme, a man in a military cap emblazoned with one of Reza Shah’s slogans, a man who answered to no one but His Majesty.
Reza Shah needed an army that obeyed him unquestioningly. And that army needed soldiers whose names and dates of birth were listed on identity cards. So, for the first time in history, the exact number of boys in Saffron Village was recorded. The vital statistics were entered in a book, which the gendarme kept in his cupboard.
Thanks to Reza Shah, Aga Akbar also was issued with an identity card. At last, his full name was officially on record.
• • •
To realise his great dream, Reza Shah ordered that a railway be built from the southernmost part of the country to its northeastern border. Right up to the ear of the giant Russian bear, to be exact. He knew that the Europeans had the most to gain from this route, but he also knew that the rails would be left behind long after those Europeans were gone.
The railway tracks crept through the desert, over the rivers, up the mountains, down the valleys and through the towns and villages until they finally reached Saffron Mountain.
The iron monster started to climb the mountain, but was forced to stop halfway, when it came to the historic cave with the cuneiform inscription. The building of the railway had disturbed the cave’s eternal rest. More importantly, the engineers were afraid that if they blasted through the rock with dynamite, the cave would collapse.
The cuneiform inscription, their ancient cultural heirloom, was in danger. The engineers feared it would crack. They panicked. The chief engineer didn’t know what to do. He didn’t dare take a single risk. He knew the shah would have him beheaded if anything went wrong.
With trembling hands, he sent a telegram to the capital: CANNOT PROCEED WITH RAILS. CUNEIFORM BLOCKING ROUTE.
The shah read the telegram, hopped into his jeep and had himself driven to Saffron Mountain. After a long night’s drive, the jeep stopped at the foot of the mountain. The local gendarme offered the shah a mule, but he refused. He wanted to climb the mountain himself. Early in the morning, before the sun had struck the mountain peak, Reza Shah stood at the entrance to the cave. Wearing a military tunic and carrying a field marshal’s baton under his arm, he checked on the progress of his dream.
• • •
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
“Your Majesty—” the chief engineer began, trembling. He didn’t dare go any further.
“Explain it to me!”
“Th-th-th-the rails have to go past here. I’m afraid that … that … that …”
“Yes?”
“I-I-I would like Your Majesty’s permission to … to … to relocate the cuneiform relief.”
“Relocate it? Shut up, you stupid engineer! Find another solution!”
“We’ve done all the cal-cal-cal-culations, checked out all the options. No matter how we do it, the dynamite could destroy the cave.”
“Find another route!”
“We’ve explored every alternative. This is the best route. The others are virtually impossible. We could m
ake a huge detour, but …”
“But what?”
“It’ll take longer.”
“How much longer?”
“A number of months, Your Majesty. Six or seven months.”
“We haven’t got that much time. We can’t lose a day. Or even an hour. As for you—get out of my sight, you idiot! ‘Impossible’— is that the only word you engineers know? Six or seven months? You must be joking!”
Furious, the shah marched into the dark cave. Outside, no one dared to move. After a while he came out again. He looked down at the hordes of peasants—young men who’d climbed up the mountain to catch a glimpse of Reza Shah. When they saw him emerge from the cave, they leapt onto the rocks and began to shout, “Jawid shah! Jawid shah! Jawid shah!”
The shah thrust his field marshal’s baton under his arm and slowly made his way down the mountain. Just as the gendarmes were about to chase away the peasants at the bottom, a group of elders from the surrounding villages appeared. Dressed in their most festive garments, they walked towards Reza Shah, carrying a bowl of water, a mirror and the Koran. When they were a hundred yards away, the oldest man threw the water in the direction of the shah and the other men bowed their heads.
“Salaam, sultan of Persia!” the man exclaimed. “Salaam, God’s earthly shadow!”
He knelt and kissed the ground.
“Come forward!” commanded the shah, pointing his baton at the place where he wanted the old man to stand.
“Listen, graybeard! I don’t need your prayers. Use your head and give me some advice. That idiot of an engineer doesn’t know how to route the railway track. How can I get the train past the cave without doing any permanent damage?”
The old man turned and went back to confer with the others.
After a while he came back.
“Well?”
“For centuries our fathers have built houses here on Saffron Mountain, using only a pick-axe and spikes. No one has ever damaged the mountain. They chipped away the rock only in places where it was absolutely necessary. If Your Majesty wishes, I will call together all of the young men in the village. They will clear a path for your train.”
A look of relief spread over the shah’s face. Then it clouded over again.
“No, it’ll take too long. I don’t have that much time. I want it done fast.”
“As Your Majesty wishes. In that case, I will call all of the young men on Saffron Mountain and, if necessary, all of the young men from the neighbouring mountains. We have experience, we know the mountain. Give our men the opportunity to prove themselves.”
The shah was silent.
“Give us the strongest pick-axes in the country.”
“And then?”
“Then we will clear a path, so the train can go around the cave and reach the other side of the mountain.”
That evening the muezzins from all the villages called from the roofs of their mosques, “Allahu akbar. La ilaha illa Allah. In the name of Allah, our forefathers and Reza Shah, we call on all strong men. Hurry, hurry, hurry to the mosque. Whatever you’re doing, stop right now and hurry to the mosque.”
All evening and all night young men from the neighbouring villages poured into the mosque in Saffron Village.
Early the next morning hundreds of men walked behind the village elder and stood in the designated spot at the foot of the mountain. One of those men was the seventeen-year-old Aga Akbar. He didn’t have the faintest idea who Reza Shah was or what he had in mind, much less what his plans for the country were. Like the other men, he had no idea why the railway tracks had to reach the other side of the mountain so quickly. All he knew was that a train had to go around the cave and that it was their job to save the cuneiform inscription.
Reza Shah stood high on a rock and looked down at the men. The villagers had heard the legends about the shah.
In those days the people in the towns and villages thought of him as a saviour. A powerful man. A champion of the poor. A reformer who wanted to give the country a face-lift.
But his reputation in Tehran was very different. There he was known for his brutal treatment of the opposition.
The shah had ordered that all the opium, tea and sugar be removed from the house of an important mullah, and had kept him under house arrest for three weeks. To the mullah this was tantamount to the death penalty. The shah had ordered the imams to remove their turbans and appear in public with their heads bare. His policemen went through the streets plucking chadors off the women who were still wearing them. When the imams in the holy city of Qom rose up in revolt, Reza Shah ordered that a cannon be placed at the gates of the golden mosque. Then he taunted the leader of the Shiites: “Come out of your hole, you black rat!”
A rat? A black rat? What did he mean by that? He just called our great spiritual leader a black rat! Suddenly hundreds of young imams with rifles appeared on the roof of the golden mosque.
“Fire!” the shah screamed at his officers.
Dozens of imams were killed and dozens arrested. The sacred shrine was partially destroyed. A wave of shock ran through the Islamic world. Shopkeepers turned off their lights. The bazaar closed. People wore black. But the shah wouldn’t listen to reason.
“Are there any more out there?”
No, not a soul was left on the streets and rooftops. Everyone was sitting inside, behind locked doors.
Aga Akbar knew none of these stories. He thought the shah was simply a high-ranking military officer. A general in a strange-looking tunic, with a stick under his arm.
The village elder walked over to the shah, bowed and said, “The men are prepared to sacrifice themselves to realise Your Majesty’s dream.”
Reza Shah didn’t answer. He looked at the peasants. His face was filled with doubt. Would they really be able to solve his problem?
Just then a pair of armoured cars drove up and stopped near the men. Two generals leapt out and raced over to the shah, each holding his cap in one hand and his rifle in the other.
“Everything is ready, Your Majesty!” called one of the generals.
“Unload them!” ordered the shah.
The generals hurried back to the armoured cars.
The soldiers threw open the doors and unloaded hundreds of English pick-axes.
“You!” the shah yelled at the village elder standing before him. “Here are the pick-axes you asked for! If any of your men are lazy, I’ll put a bullet through your head!”
He wheeled around. “Don’t just stand there,” he said to the chief engineer. “Get started!”
The shah headed for his jeep. Suddenly he stopped, as if he’d forgotten something. He returned to his elevated position on the rock and beckoned one of the generals with his baton. In turn, the general beckoned seven soldiers, who were lined up with seven bulging bags in their arms. The soldiers marched over to the shah, deposited the bags on the ground in front of him and snapped back to attention.
“Open them!” he commanded one of the soldiers.
The soldier opened the bags, one by one. The shah took out a handful of brand-new bills.
He turned to the peasants. “Start smashing those rocks!” he ordered. “This money will be your reward. I’ll be back next week!”
“Jawid shah … Long live the shah!” the men shouted three times.
The shah climbed down again and went over to his jeep.
The engineer quickly led the peasants, each equipped with a pick-axe, to the place where the work on the tracks had come to a halt. The peasants made jokes, flexed their muscles and swore they would reduce even the hardest rocks on Saffron Mountain to rubble. They had no idea what was in store.
Years later, a faded black-and-white photograph proudly displayed on Aga Akbar’s mantle showed him with a pick-axe resting on his right shoulder and a spike—as thick as a tent stake—between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.
Akbar is turned at a slight angle. The photographer had focused on the pick-axe and spike, but the young Aga Akbar
had flexed his muscles, so that your eye is drawn to his bulging biceps rather than to the tools.
When Ishmael was little, Aga Akbar told him a long story about the picture. A story that was actually about his biceps and about the money—the large sum of money—he had earned.
“Come here!” he gestured to his son. “Tell me! Who’s the man in the picture?”
And he launched into a story. “I, Akbar, was very strong. I—and only I—could break that rock with the pick-axe. Can you see the rock? There, in the background. No, you can’t see it, the picture’s no good, it’s old. But there, behind me. Sure you can’t see it? Never mind. That rock had to go, all the rocks had to go. They couldn’t use those exploding things. They were bad for the cuneiform inscription.
“One day I’ll take you to the cave. Wait a minute. Don’t you have a … where’s your schoolbook? Have you ever seen a picture in your schoolbook of an officer, a man in a military tunic with a crown on his head? Isn’t there one in your schoolbook? … Seven, yes, seven potato sacks full of money. And that money was for us. Because of the train.”
Did Ishmael understand what his father was talking about in his rudimentary sign language?
One thing little Ishmael did know was that his life was interwoven with that of his father. Everyone—his mother, his uncles, his aunts, the village imam, the neighbours, the children— made him sit, stand and walk beside his father. His job was to be his father’s mouthpiece.
Later the missing bits of information would be supplied by his aunts and uncles, or by the old men of Saffron Mountain. Or he himself would look up the facts in history books and novels.
More often, however, he would go and visit his father’s elderly uncle. He would sit down by Kazem Khan and listen as he filled in the missing parts of the stories. “Your father was strong. I told him that a railway track was being built. Personally, I’ve never cared for aristocrats and generals and shahs, but I’d heard a lot about Reza Shah. Though I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the man, I didn’t see him.”