Kader Abdolah - The King

‘You can shout through the hatch that I’m standing here at the gate,’ said the vizier, trying to control his rage.

‘His Majesty does not want to see anyone. Not anyone. He gave me this order in person,’ said the man resolutely.

The vizier saw himself standing at the gate. What was he doing there, anyway? What could the shah do about a plague that apparently had stricken the entire district? If there was anyone who could do anything at all, it was the vizier. Why come here like a mendicant, begging the shah to speak to him?

He decided to turn back and try to preserve Tehran from calamity. Perhaps he ought to ask the Russians and the British for help. He would go straight to the British ambassador to warn him. The ambassador could ask London to send British army nurses to Tehran by way of Herat. That was their only hope.

The vizier wanted to go to Tehran, but the thought of a carefree shah in his safe castle made him angry. The king had a responsibility for his people.

He began to scream, ‘Shah! The vizier has come! The vizier has come! The vizier has come!’

The guards tried to chase him away, but to no avail.

The vizier shouted even louder, ‘Shah! The vizier has come! The vizier! The vizier!’

The head of the guards picked up his rifle, but he didn’t dare aim it at the vizier. The vizier in turn picked up his own rifle and began shooting it into the air, repeating over and over again, ‘The vizier has come!’

There was chaos at the gate. The horses neighed, the watchdogs barked and the guards tried to keep the vizier from coming any further.

Inside the castle the shah was listening indecisively. He heard the tapping of his mother’s walking stick. Mahdolia stood behind him and said, ‘What are you waiting for? Kill him now. He’s become too powerful.’

At that very moment the gate of the castle opened. Taj Olsultan, the daughter of the shah, went outside with a torch in her hand. She walked calmly up to the vizier and said, ‘ Salam , Vizier. Is there something I can do for you?’

‘No, no, my daughter. I am glad the princess is in good health, that is enough for me,’ said the vizier.

‘I heard you had been wounded in the south. I was worried, but now I’m glad to see you again. How are you, Vizier? I have thought of you very often.’

Taj’s words surprised the vizier. His anger cooled. He looked at her standing there in the dark beside the gate, part of her face visible in the light of the torch. The vizier saw that Taj had grown and that, although she was still young, she acted like a real grown-up princess.

‘I thank you for your heart-warming words, my daughter. I am doing better. You have become an extraordinary princess.’

‘Thank you,’ said Taj, and she smiled.

‘Go back inside, and take good care of yourself,’ said the vizier. He tipped his hat, bowed and spurred his horse to a gallop.

Tehran was stricken by the plague, but England extended a helping hand to the vizier just in time. They sent Indian nurses to the villages around Tehran to cope with the epidemic. Russian army doctors also came over, pitching tents on the bazaar squares in the northern cities.

Thousands of people died in Tehran and the surrounding countryside. In the harem three more women succumbed. Every Friday the populace went to the Jameh mosque to ask for God’s help, under the imam’s direction. And their prayers were heard, for winter came earlier than expected and it was so cold that the rocks crumbled in the mountains. It snowed for one whole week, and the snow froze. The weather was so severe that it was impossible to know whether people were dying from the cold or the plague.

As if that weren’t enough famine caught them unawares. Experience teaches that when hunger strikes you no longer think about death. The hunger was so intense that everyone forgot about the plague.

There was no sign of the plague in the southern part of the country. The British were working on the harbour in the Persian Gulf, and in the city of Masjed Soleyman they were laying the foundation for the first major oil installation in the Middle East.

All this time the shah stayed in his castle and sent his orders to Tehran from there. Just before a thick layer of snow threatened to cut the shah off from the outside world, he returned to the palace. He avoided the harem and refused to allow anyone to talk about the tragic deaths.

On one of those cold winter nights, when the streets were deserted and everyone had their windows covered over with blankets, the shah summoned the vizier. The shah had had no personal contact with him since that one evening at the castle before the invasion of Herat. A messenger had been conveying messages back and forth between them. It was strange that the shah wanted to see him just now, in this cold and so late at night.

‘I have a bad feeling about this. It would be better if you didn’t go alone,’ said his wife, Fagri.

‘Don’t worry. I won’t be long.’

‘Listen to me. Think of something. Say you’ll drop in tomorrow.’

‘I can’t do that. The shah needs me now. Otherwise he wouldn’t have summoned me at this late hour.’

‘God help us,’ wept Fagri silently.

‘Vizier-koshan ’ was a well-known hallmark of Persian history. It meant ‘kill the vizier!’ The murder of a competent vizier was not an unusual occurence in royal circles. Each vizier was fully aware that at any unexpected moment he could be killed by the king. There were also many examples of princes who had murdered a king, and of kings who had taken the lives of their sons and brothers.

The story of Grand Vizier Hasanak was an example everyone knew about. Hasanak was popular and powerful. On one ill-fated day the sultan summoned him. Hasanak knew that he was hated among the royalty, but he never suspected that the sultan wanted to kill him. As soon as he rode into the palace grounds the gate was closed and bolted from inside. Bayhaqi, the medieval chronicler, recorded the following scene in his book:

The next day, Hasanak the grand vizier was put on a shabby nag and taken to the gallows. He had never ridden on such a small horse before.

The executioner wanted to blindfold him, but Hasanak refused.

‘Stone him!’ cried the sultan.

But no one threw a single stone.

‘Hang him!’ cried the sultan.

The executioner hung Hasanak. For seven years Hasanak hung on the gallows. The Persian sun burnt him and the east wind carried his ashes away.

Another familiar example was the death of Grand Vizier Mirza Tagi Khan. Early one morning he went to the hamam to bathe. After his bath he sat down in the barber’s chair. The barber sharpened his razor, removed the superfluous hair from the vizier’s neck, placed the razor on his artery and severed it. He did this by order of the king.

Fagri knew those stories, which is why she was afraid that her husband would meet the same fate.

‘Don’t cry,’ the vizier told his wife. He kissed her and rode to the palace.

When he got to the gate he noticed the guards were different. He had never seen this head of the guards before. It was customary that when the vizier appeared on the square, a horn would be sounded and the head of the guards would come out and salute him. This time there was silence, and the head of the guards did not move from his post.

Still seated on his horse he heard the sound of the bolt in the gate, which he suspected was being locked behind him. The branches of the trees bowed low under the frozen snow, the palace chimney smoked and the torches near the pond were burning. The shadow of the shah fell on the curtains of his study, as if he were spying on the vizier from the window.