Kader Abdolah - The King

Taj Olsultan had put on her most festive clothing and spent most of her time with the children. Although all the women were jealous of her they knew she wasn’t happy. The shah had invited a group of female musicians to cheer her up. When the musicians entered, playing their instruments as they walked, Taj beamed. Motioning the musicians to stop, the shah turned to the women and said, ‘Ladies, soon we’re going to celebrate a great feast. Do everything that needs to be done and see that you’re beautifully dressed.’

At his sign the musicians raised their instruments once again. The shah kissed his daughter and walked with her to the pots of soup, blessing each one with a handful of fresh vegetables.

The shah sat down on his couch and was offered a glass of tea and a hookah. He put two sugar cubes in his mouth, took a sip of tea and began to smoke. A bowl of soup was handed to him. He tasted a couple of spoonfuls and let the women see how much he liked it.

In the afterglow of the tea, still a bit dizzy from the hookah and sleepy from the gentle sun, he stretched out his legs and pressed his head into the pillows, preparing to take a nap. But no sooner had he dropped off than he was jolted awake by the bang of a gun. It was Malijak, who couldn’t help disturbing the peace.

‘Oh, you little rascal!’ cried the shah, laughing.

Malijak always tried to get away with more when the shah was around. The sillier his behaviour the happier he made the shah. His main target was the women. They ran away screaming and threw sweets at him to distract him while the king roared with laughter, tears streaming down his face.

At about noon, when the shah, his wives and his children had eaten enough, the women withdrew into the harem. A group of guards brought the remaining soup out to the people. The shah watched from the roof as the crowds jostled their way forward while the guards tried in vain to get them to form a queue. In all the commotion a man in the crowd pushed one of the guards against two other guards who were holding a pot of soup. The guards lost their balance, the pot fell and all the soup spilled out.

Things got out of hand. The guards struck the people with cudgels and the people then turned on the guards, beating them over the head with pans and bowls. The big soup pots fell to the ground and suddenly flames shot up from the back of the tent. In all the chaos the head of the guards began shooting into the air. The people took to their heels and the guards chased them until peace was restored.

The shah looked down impassively at the lucky soup, which was flowing all over the ground.

The uproar that occurred during the ashpazan worried the shah. There was no question that Jamal Khan and his pals, disguised as beggars, had been part of the crowd the day before. They had caused the unrest and they were the first to come to blows with the guards. One report stated in black and white that Jamal Khan, who was being held responsible for overturning the soup pots, had been staying in Moscow at the time of the popular uprising in Russia. He was also the one who had set the tent on fire. To find out whether such agitators were active in other cities, the shah ordered a full-scale investigation.

There was no organised security service in the country that could monitor the behaviour of suspected opponents. The chiefs of the police forces in the big cities were told to keep an eye on anyone who had been abroad and to report on their activities. That, thought the shah, was where the danger lay.

When the shah received the dossiers two months later he couldn’t wait to study them. Every single chief reported on the existence of a group of young men in their respective cities who were meeting on a regular basis to scrutinise the national situation. All the reports noted that at least one or two men in the group had spent some time living abroad.

At first the shah had seen the ashpazan outburst as an isolated incident caused by poor, ignorant people, but as he read the reports he realised that this could be the prelude to a whole storm of protests. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his brow, gasping for fresh air. He did not want revolts like those in Russia to happen in his own country. He had always been afraid that the men who had studied abroad would turn against his regime. The incident of the soup pots and the recent reports only confirmed his anxiety.

He pulled out the report on the speeches of Jamal Khan that he had received earlier but had ignored because of the excitement of his daughter’s wedding. In one of the dossiers there was a sentence about Jamal Khan that might have served as a warning to him: ‘He is a rebel who maintains contact with the leaders of all the Muslim and Indian anti-British insurgent groups from Bombay to Egypt, and he corresponds with them.’

Without further delay he sent for the chief of the Tehran police. The shah could barely control his nerves, but he began by asking the man a couple of general questions about the city. Gradually he brought the conversation round to the soup incident.

‘We have read your reports, but please listen carefully now to the questions we are going to ask and give us a straightforward answer. Are you sure that Jamal Khan was there in the crowd on that particular day?’

‘Yes, Your Majesty. Actually … in the report … yes, yes, pretty sure,’ stammered the man.

‘So what you mean is no,’ barked the shah. ‘The second question: Are you sure that the man who tipped over the big pot of soup was not a beggar but a man who lived for a short time in Moscow?’

‘Actually, our informers … I’ve got it all in the report …’ said the man with a quavering voice in an attempt to explain.

‘So what you mean is no,’ repeated the shah.

The man was as white as a sheet. He waited for the next question.

‘Get this Jamal Khan!’ thundered the shah. ‘Bring him here and have him fall on the floor at our feet. Then we’ll see if your reports are correct.’

When Jamal Khan came back after spending time abroad he first moved in with his parents in Tehran. He gave speeches in the mosques, which he pretended was his only activity. But secretly he was weaving a network of contacts throughout the country. It was a tedious process because he had to travel back and forth across the country himself. It took more than a year to put the right men in touch with each other. Gradually hubs were created in the big cities where the situation in the country was discussed as well as the political changes taking place in neighbouring India and Russia.

After the order was given to arrest Jamal Khan a group of agents stormed his parents’ house in the middle of the night, but they didn’t find him there.

The chief of police issued warnings to his men in the big cities and sent them Jamal Khan’s particulars, so suspicious characters could be arrested even before they passed through the city gates. But it was difficult to tell from the vague description exactly what the man looked like, nor did they know where they could expect to find him.

Jamal Khan’s comrades organised the speeches for him. He would appear at the Jameh mosques unannounced, and as soon as the police showed up he would disappear into the congregation.

At Jamal Khan’s first talk he had told the people about developments in other countries and gave examples of present-day life in the West. He underscored how backward their homeland really was.

The people who saw and heard him for the first time were intrigued and didn’t know how to respond to his arguments. He reminded them of the prophets of ancient times who stood on hilltops and preached warnings to their people. Oddly enough many people learned fragments of his speeches by heart.