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 thi
ngs 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.
55. In the Bazaar
The years had left their mark on the face of the shah. Whenever he looked in the mirror he no longer dared take off his hat, he had become so grey and bald. Malijak too had visibly changed with the passing of time.
Long ago the shah had talked to his cat to lighten his heart and share his loneliness, but after Sharmin had mysteriously disappeared Malijak took over the cat’s job. The shah found him very amusing when he was still small. He never saw the need to teach Malijak to read or write, but he did impart to him the fundamentals of chess. The shah enjoyed Malijak’s foolish chessboard moves. As the boy grew older, however, the shah took less pleasure in his company. Malijak still hated to be washed, and he stank. When Malijak was a child the shah himself bathed him, cut his hair and dressed him in clean clothes. But those days were long gone.
The seasons came and went, night followed day, and the shah’s travels to Europe now seemed like something that had happened in a dream.
In retrospect he realised that the journey had not brought him happiness but had made him even less happy. His plan to intervene directly and help his subjects with their problems had been more than he could handle, and political unrest was rearing its head once again. As his ambassador in Moscow had written to him in a letter:
What the shah is suffering through in our homeland is actually a variation of the problems that the Russian tsar is struggling with.
There are several groups that want to subvert the power of the tsar. It is their belief that the elite are controlling the state and oppressing the population. These groups are trying to establish a society in which the people govern the state through their elected representatives.
It is a worrying development. They emphasise the rights of the common man, that is, the rights of the man in the street. We believe that the unrest in Russia is going to surface in our country as well, but much more strongly than before. The leaders of the Russian insurgents have spoken with the leaders of the Persian insurgents in Baku. One of them is Aga Jamal.
That evening the shah wrote this in his diary: ‘What is happening at the present time is not only our problem. The tsar is having the same difficulties. In Turkey too the sultan realises his power is being compromised. What people in Russia or Turkey do is their business. We will continue to rule in our own way. We are probably destined to go down in history as the last old-fashioned king. If that is the case, we must try to take more pleasure in life.’
Locked up in Tehran’s dreadful prison Mirza Reza spent every day applying his mental powers to keep from going mad. He was in with the violent criminals. Most prisoners lost their minds due to lack of light.
The director had been ordered by Eyn ed-Dowleh to subject Mirza Reza to a special punishment. When the guards came to bring him his food they beat him with a copy of his own statute book. At breakfast they beat him once, at around noon they beat him twice, and during dinner they beat him three times.
Mirza Reza knew he must concentrate on his great objective to keep from collapsing in such degrading circumstances. He had a big secret safely tucked away in his heart. It was a secret that burned like an oven, and he turned to it every day to warm himself.
Jamal Khan made several trips to Baku and Istanbul to meet with kindred spirits from Turkey, Iraq, India, Egypt and Russia. He provided his foreign comrades with detailed descriptions of developments in his homeland and exchanged experiences and ideas with them. Slowly he built up a strong network in his own country. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the right opportunity to strike.
Among all the contracts that the shah had signed with commercial firms, businessmen and entrepreneurs during his journey, there was one agreement that proved truly disastrous.
Over a period of twenty years the British had vastly expanded the size of their embassy. They had purchased a large parcel of land behind the embassy building where they constructed a number of houses to accommodate their British guests.
The Russians still lived in their old residence, which dated from the previous century. When the shah was in Moscow this subject came up during a dinner in the Kremlin. The shah, who had already downed two stiff Russian drinks, generously promised a sizeable piece of land to the Russians at no expense whatsoever and sealed the promise with his signet ring.
Nothing else happened. The shah forgot about the contract – until the Russians put up an enormous wooden fence round the promised property. The work was done by a group of local carpenters, and it occurred to no one that the Russians were planning on building a new embassy there. Neither the shah nor the Russians were aware that this was the site of a forgotten burial ground from the previous century.
Jamal Khan was notified of the Russian building plans by his contacts. He went to have a look and was shocked by what he saw. In preparation for the laying of the foundations at the building site all the graves had been desecrated and the bones piled up in a heap. Russian liquor bottles and other rubbish were scattered everywhere.
That evening Jamal Khan took Ayatollah Tabatabai to the cemetery, forced open a length of fence, led the ayatollah inside and cast the light from his lantern over the empty graves, the bones and the thrown-away bottles.
The ayatollah shook with rage as he said, ‘Allah, Allah, this is unacceptable. I take refuge in You.’
The shah had made a serious mistake, but what was the ayatollah to do? He had the power to send thousands of people to the Russian embassy to punish both the Russians and the shah. But the ayatollah feared that lives would be lost. So he decided to send a courteous letter to the shah containing the following words: ‘We expect the graves to be restored as soon as possible. Allah forgives and Allah punishes without mercy. Wassalam. Tabatabai.’
The shah was livid, but when it came to ayatollahs you couldn’t be careful enough. He consulted his vizier. ‘It is definitely a serious case,’ said Mostovi Almamalek, ‘and we must do something about it.’
‘It’s an old, forgotten burial ground from a hundred years ago.’
‘That argument won’t hold water. They want the Russians out of there. I’m afraid we’ll have to go along with the ayatollah’s demand. We have to ask the Russians to abandon their plans for the time being.’
‘Out of the question. They’ll see us as a weak king. Find another solution.’
‘I see no other solution, Your Majesty.’
‘Talk to the ayatollah.’
‘Talking won’t help. There can be no Russian embassy on that site.’
‘How do you know that?’ answered the shah, who was beginning to wonder whose side his vizier was on.
‘Everyone knows that, Yo
ur Majesty,’ said Mostovi Almamalek. ‘And so do you.’
The shah could not put the ayatollah in his place, the vizier knew that a compromise was impossible, and the ayatollah in turn was wrestling with whether he ought to inform the people during a sermon.
Mostovi Almamalek let the Russian embassy know that serious problems had arisen and the new embassy could not be built on that spot. But the Russians, who thought the British were behind all this, ignored the vizier’s warning and carried on with their work. Under no circumstances was the Kremlin willing to abandon its building plans.
The vizier paid a personal visit to the ayatollah at his home in order to speak with him: ‘I understand your concern, which is why I’m working so hard to find a new site for the Russians. I am asking you to be patient.’
Finally Mostovi Almamalek succeeded in finding another site for the Russian embassy. He sent his messenger to the shah so an agreement on the matter could be reached as soon as possible.
‘Not now. Later,’ the shah told his vizier. ‘We’re on our way to Mashad for a working visit. You can come to see us when we return.’
The city of Mashad lay on the Persian–Indian border. The journey alone would take the shah two weeks. It seemed the shah was refusing to acknowledge the sensitivity and gravity of the problem. An outburst could happen at any moment, especially with him away from the capital.
The ayatollah gave the vizier his support and said he was willing to wait until the shah returned from Mashad.
The shah had long ago stopped taking Malijak with him on his travels. It had become difficult for Malijak to put up with the demands of long journeys, so he stayed at home and made life difficult for everyone else. He had a nice collection of pop guns that had been given to him over the years on various occasions. The shah had bought one of the guns for him in Belgium during his European trip. When you shot it at someone the sound it produced was so authentic that the victim would become momentarily confused.