Kader Abdolah - The King

His mother’s palace was a hotbed of spies, a pit of old, black, poisonous snakes, crawling with the imams’ accomplices and British informers. Stupid. How stupid he had been. He was angry with himself and furious with his mother.

‘Witch, vixen!’ he cried aloud.

Hearing a horse in the courtyard, he looked outside and saw the messenger. The shah pulled himself together. He walked to the middle of the hall and waited until the chamberlain had admitted the messenger and no one else.

‘Report!’ he said impatiently.

‘I have seen the following with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears: thirty-four Russians have perished, thirty-one of them staff members from the Russian residence and three Russian businessmen.’

The shah heard no more. The messenger saw him go pale and begin to totter. The man was about to call the chamberlain.

‘Continue reporting!’ cried the shah.

‘It is said that last night three Persian women spent the night in the Russian residence. Haj Mirza Masih, the ayatollah of Tehran, got wind of this report. He announced it during Friday prayers and has called for a jihad. An angry mob led by a young imam went today to the Russian residence. The Russians bolted the gate of the embassy and drew the curtains closed. Stones were thrown, and the windows and doors of the Russian buildings were destroyed. The young imam climbed over the embassy fences and the people followed him. Just then shots were fired from an unknown location. Although the imam was hit in the back, the people cried that the shot had been fired from the Russian residence. They pulled down the fences and stormed the embassy garden. One Russian merchant threw gold coins into the raging throng to play for time so the people inside could flee through the back door. But the people forced their way into the residence and the Russians began shooting into the air in response. This inflamed the crowd even more and everything got out of hand. Five men were killed on our side and thirty-four on the Russian side. The tarts managed to escape.’

‘Barbarians, they’re all barbarians,’ cried the shah. He was seething.

The terrified messenger remained standing until the chamberlain came to fetch him.

‘Women are witches! All of them! From queen to tart!’ cried the shah as he thundered through the palace corridors.

Late that evening the vizier came to see the shah. He found him sitting in his chair with the cat in his lap. As soon as the vizier entered the room the cat jumped down, went up to him and brushed against his leg. The vizier was tired and shaken. He reached down and stroked the cat. ‘How are you, Sharmin?’ he said.

The vizier came from a family whose men had often been through trying times like these. The incident at the Russian embassy would have serious consequences.

‘With His Majesty’s permission I would like to speak with him privately in his conference room.’

The shah stood up and the vizier followed him. They locked the door and sat down at the conference room table.

‘We’ve walked into a British trap,’ said the vizier, coming straight to the point.

The shah suspected that the vizier was aware of his secret appointment with the Russians.

‘We won’t solve anything by blaming each other. It only makes matters worse,’ continued the vizier. ‘A lackey from the British embassy went straight to the ayatollah and told him about the presence of the Persian women at the Russian residence. This ayatollah maintains good contacts with the British, who have him on their payroll. He took immediate action. Tomorrow the report of the thirty-four Russian corpses will reach Moscow. The British wanted to show the Russians in a bad light, but they never could have imagined that their scheme would end in this disaster. They’re celebrating at the British residence right now, you can be sure of it. They took a chance and won.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked the shah.

‘Now the shah has nowhere to turn,’ said the vizier. ‘But there’s one question that puzzles me: what was the appointment with the envoy all about?’

The shah stared in bewilderment and said, ‘We don’t know. And the man is dead.’

The vizier could see that the shah was hiding something. He had a feeling it had to do with Herat. He wanted to keep asking questions, but the shah was clearly in a muddle. It was not the right moment to continue the conversation.

‘It is better that Your Majesty go to bed. We do not know what tomorrow will bring,’ he said.

The vizier left. Once he was alone the shah was overcome with a sense of the vizier’s growing power and of his own powerlessness. Fear had the upper hand. He knew that many ayatollahs and princes were being paid by England, but he had never expected that the British would manipulate an ayatollah in order to carry out their plans. The vizier hadn’t said it in so many words, but he had let the shah see how he was being used. What did the vizier mean when he said he had nowhere to turn?

‘Sharmin!’ called the shah.

The cat did not come.

The shah was tired, but he couldn’t sleep. His head wouldn’t stop churning. In the hall’s gloom he looked into the mirror and raised a threatening index finger: ‘Tomorrow we will teach that ayatollah a lesson. He will hang. But what about the thirty-four corpses?’

Suddenly the light of a torch was reflected in the mirror. The shah spun round and walked to the window. It was peaceful in the courtyard, but at the gate there were more guards than usual. He watched as two of them rolled a cannon to the gate. He also saw a few guards on top of the wall, their weapons poised. His glance fell on the stable, where a number of horses had been readied. Then he walked to his study, which afforded a better view of the gate. His heart began beating faster when he saw the shadow of the vizier’s tall hat out on the wall. Something touched his foot and he jumped, but it was only Sharmin.

‘You startled us. Where were you? Come, we’ve got to go away. We cannot stay here tonight,’ he said, picking her up from the floor. ‘I believe the vizier has imprisoned us. But maybe not. Maybe he is doing all this to protect us.’

He went to the bedroom, put Sharmin on the bed and turned all the locks. He opened his closet door, unlocked the secret hatch of the hidden tunnel leading to the treasury, and set out his boots and gun in readiness.

Ever since Sheikh Aqasi had led him to the treasury by way of this hatch, the shah could often be found there. And when the vizier had reduced the allowance for the shah, his mother and the royal relatives by half, and had imposed restrictions on the expenses for the harem, the shah had come to the cellar regularly to load up on gold coins. He had them melted down and made into new coins to cover his considerable expenses. The shah had already emptied several sacks of Indian gold.

He had also had the jewel-encrusted bed of the old Indian kings made up for himself, should he ever have to stay in the cellar for prolonged periods. Every time he came to the treasury he brought non-perishable food with him.

He checked the door and the windows of his bedroom once more and went to bed.

‘As soon as you hear footsteps in the hall of mirrors you must wake us up, Sharmin. Then we will flee together.’

And with that the shah laid his tired head on the pillow and immediately fell into a deep sleep.

That night the shah dreamt that he and his cat had fled to the mountains by way of the secret tunnel and found refuge in a small cave, from which he had a view of the palace. He followed every move by means of his binoculars. The vizier entered the palace with a procession of officers. He was wearing his tall hat, but when he came back out he was wearing the shah’s golden crown.