Kader Abdolah - The King

The drummers beat their drums even harder and the town criers shouted, ‘Blind be the enemy, the king is approaching!’

The people tried to catch a glimpse of the shah’s cat in her royal coach. It became more and more crowded, and the officers leading the procession had to lash the people with their whips to keep them away from the shah. Hundreds of blind, disabled and deformed people, who begged for coins or bits of bread in the street or in the bazaar, tried to get as closed as they could, crying out, ‘ Javid shah, javid shah , long live the shah, long live the shah!’

The guards raised their guns and beat the beggars, but they threw themselves on the ground in front of the horses and stretched out their hands to the shah, weeping and imploring.

Deep in his heart the shah felt troubled. Recently he had complained once again to his mother, ‘We keep having the feeling that we have become king of an endless procession of indigents.’

‘You may complain, but what you say is not true,’ his mother had said to comfort him. ‘You are the king of a very special land. The king of the princes who live in mysterious palaces, the king of the enigmatic Persian women, the king of the rich carpet dealers who populate our beautiful cities, and the king of thousands of large landowners in the villages. And you are also king of your mother.’

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a handful of coins, tossing them into the crowd. The people fought for them.

‘ Javid shah, javid shah ,’ cried the multitude.

And once again Shah Naser threw out a handful of coins. The drummers beat their drums even harder and the trumpeters blew louder on their trumpets. Just like Napoleon on his horse in the painting, the shah pointed to a spot in the distance. The horsemen surrounded the shah and galloped through the city gate.

Once they reached the hills the king took the lead, hunting for wild stags. Shooting from a galloping horse was a uniquely Persian feat. No one in the world could hit their mark on horseback the way a Persian soldier could. It was a skill acquired by all the future kings during their childhood years. The little princes practised it while hunting, and Shah Naser was a master. It made him happy when he shot and the animal fell.

The shah also loved fighting. He who was sometimes so frightened in the palace proved quite courageous on the front. He had fought in two wars with his father. The first time they lost to the Russians. The second time was the battle of Herat, which ended in disaster when the British took possession of the city and handed it over to the Afghan tribal leaders. Everyone knew that the grief over the loss of Herat was what had caused the old king’s death.

Hunting was in the shah’s blood. He used to hunt in the forests of Tabriz, searching for lions and tigers. Now he had to content himself with the stags of Tehran. While he pursued the animals his guards dragged the cannon to the top of the highest hill. When they reached the summit a sergeant blew on his trumpet to announce that everything was ready. The shah rode up the slope and, covered in sweat, sprang from his horse and thrust his arm in the air. ‘This is an exceptional day! How good we feel!’

He stroked the cannon’s barrel. One of the guards handed him a cannonball. The shah kissed the ball, placed it securely in the barrel and aimed it at a target on another hill. He was handed a burning torch with which he lit the fuse. Then he bent down, his hands over his ears. The cannon went off.

After he had shot the cannon seven times an officer threw a coat around the shah to keep him from catching cold. He was handed some sweet rose water. He walked up to a table on which a large dish of delicacies had been placed and ate his fill of dates stuffed with walnuts, crisp almond biscuits and ginger cooked in butter and honey.

When the servants had loaded all the bagged game onto the cart, the shah jumped back on his horse. He would have stayed longer, but he could tell from the eyes of his cat that she preferred to lie on her own sleeping spot at home.

The vizier had ordered local officials to build large carpet factories where hundreds of weavers could be employed. In the north of the country, near the Caspian Sea, small companies packed caviar in handy transportable boxes and pots.

The vizier dreamt that his unemployed countrymen would find jobs in factories, just like British labourers. He dreamt that Persian girls would go to school, just like the girls in Moscow. He could hardly sleep for all the work that had to be done. In the meantime his enemies did everything they could to bring him down. He presented his plans to his advisors.

‘I have many dreams for this country, but we mustn’t try to do too many things at once,’ the vizier had said to the young men in his council of ministers. ‘All of you have studied abroad. But our country is not Russia, let alone England. In those countries the power is centralised. Here the majority of the population live in villages. In the countryside we have no power at all; there everything is in the hands of the large landowners.’

‘We are not losing sight of reality,’ said one of the ministers, a man named Takhi Khan. ‘That’s why we’re concentrating on the big cities, especially Tehran.’

‘Actually Tehran is more difficult than anywhere else. Everywhere we go we’re held back by the elite, who own all the property,’ argued the vizier.

‘We must work to establish a separation of powers, just like in the countries of the West,’ said Amir, the vizier’s young advisor. ‘That is essential to carrying out our plans.’

‘But we must not frighten the elite,’ said the vizier in measured tones. ‘We must move forward with caution. I will speak to the shah.’

Persia’s wealth lay in the abundance of its gold mines, rubies, diamonds, spices and something that the Portuguese called ouro negro — ‘black gold’.

The Portuguese had already tried their luck at extracting the ouro negro , or crude oil. They had drilled holes here and there in the Persian soil in search of the mysterious black liquid, but had found nothing.

Later came N.R. Darsi, an adventurer from New Zealand. His expedition was financed by a chemical company. He searched for sources of crude oil, but what he found was not worth mentioning. Darsi returned empty-handed.

It was then that people in the western countries began to understand what oil was actually worth. In a valley in Pennsylvania in America they had drilled down seventeen metres, and by the next day the well was filled with oil.

In Persia’s southern province the nasty black liquid leaked up from the ground spontaneously. The local inhabitants called it qir , or pitch — they ladled it into crates and smeared it on the wheels of their carts.

The French were asked by the vizier to set up businesses, to reform the army and to teach science. A number of them, however, had been given a secret assignment by the French government: to search for oil. The French asked permission to conduct drilling operations in addition to the mining activities they had agreed to. No one could have known that underneath the surface lay one of the largest crude-oil reserves in the world.

The drilling produced nothing and the French brought this particular sideline to a halt. Then one day they happened to see a black substance glittering in one of their wells, so they resumed drilling — with no appreciable results. They ladled the oil out of the well, put it in vats and sent it to France. It was something, but nothing in comparison with what lay ahead.

The vizier made too many demands, but the temptation of the mineral resources and the chance to gain power over the Persian army was irresistible to the French. They agreed to all the conditions, and the vizier drew up a list of projects he wanted be carried out, namely the setting up of: