Kader Abdolah - The King

At his wits’ end, the shah paced through the corridors of the palace. He even went to the second floor, where he seldom ventured. The garments and personal effects of his deceased father and the other kings were kept here. Hanging in this room was a large painting of his father. He knew the painting, which showed his father with his crown and royal robes, gloriously reclining against the throne’s gold satin cushions. But only now did he notice that his father was proudly smoking an enormous hookah. It was incomprehensible. Why had he never before seen this remarkable hookah in his father’s hand? Only now did he realise that this was not a portrait of the king, but of the hookah.

If the resistance movement’s shattering of hookahs were to reach his own palace, there was a chance that even his wives would heed the call of the aged ayatollah. The last thing the shah wanted was unrest among the people closest to him. Every day he sent Malijak into the harem to see whether any hookahs had been destroyed. Malijak always came back with a vague story.

‘Did you see the hookahs?’ the shah would ask him.

‘Yes, the hookahs,’ Malijak would say stupidly.

‘Were they intact?’

‘Intact?’ Malijak would ask.

‘Were they broken or not?’

‘No, not really broken.’

‘Are the women smoking their hookahs today?’

‘The women? Sure,’ Malijak would say.

‘Did you see it?’

He would look absently at the shah with his crossed eyes. The shah had the urge to give him a good hiding, but the pathetic spectacle of his little corpulent pet made his anger subside.

The shah could take it no longer. Late in the afternoon, when the women usually got together to smoke their hookahs, he strolled into the harem with Malijak. He greeted the servants in an unusually friendly manner and waited for Khwajeh Bashi, the harem overseer, who was always to be found in his room beside the door. But this time he wasn’t there, and his hookah was not where it ought to be, either.

‘He’s busy. He’ll come on his own,’ said the shah to Malijak, to reassure himself.

It was oddly quiet. Usually the women chattered with excitement whenever the shah was in the harem, and they fought for his attention. But today there wasn’t a woman to be seen. All the hookahs were standing against the wall.

Suddenly one hookah fell from the second floor and shattered nearby in a thousand pieces. Malijak hid behind the shah, who pretended he had seen and heard nothing. If this had happened a month ago the shah would have had the guilty party chopped to bits. But now he knew such a thing was no longer possible. He was sure the women in the harem who hated him were using the fatwa to seek revenge. If he were to punish one of them the rest would complain to the ayatollah and portray the shah as a godless man.

‘Khwajeh Bashi!’ shouted the shah.

The harem overseer crept out from behind a pile of dirty blankets and bowed awkwardly.

‘Call the women! We are going to smoke a hookah,’ said the shah.

The servants hastened to prepare the hookahs. Khwajeh Bashi walked past the women’s rooms and called out in an unsteady voice, ‘Ladies, the hookahs are ready. His Majesty would like to smoke with you.’

The shah went past the rooms with his hands behind his back. Malijak climbed up the slide, but he didn’t slide down. He felt the tension in the air and stayed at the top to keep an eye on his patron.

The women did not appear. The servants who had got the hookahs ready feared for their lives and kept a safe distance from the shah. Khwajeh Bashi went to fetch the shah’s chair and set it down next to the fountain. Handing him a hookah, he shouted, ‘Ladies, the shah has already started!’

The sound of the bolting of doors was barely audible. The shah inhaled a few times and concentrated on the red and green fish in the fountain. No one was allowed to smoke, according to the fatwa, and whoever did was unclean. The shah had now become unclean, and the women had the right, given to them by God, to ignore him and not to let him touch them.

‘Where is everyone?’ cried the shah.

The servants shrank into the dark corners. Khwajeh Bashi took cover behind the stack of dirty blankets. Although he was king the shah understood that he was not more powerful than the aged cleric. Even if he were to punish the women more severely than ever, not a single woman would consider touching a hookah or sharing her bed with him.

‘I said, where is everyone?’ roared the shah.

Malijak climbed down from the slide and approached the shah with hesitation. He took his hand and pulled him towards the door. To everyone’s relief the shah let Malijak lead him out.

The ayatollah’s fatwa had brought the country to its senses. You could see hope in everyone’s eyes. In Isfahan one of the big tobacco merchants brought his stock to the bazaar square and dramatically set the bales on fire.

The destruction of the hookahs had made everyone conscious of their power. The shah had proved vulnerable, and fear of the country’s rulers slowly ebbed away. Merchants in the bazaars of Tehran, Tabriz, Isfahan and Shiraz went en masse to the Jameh mosques in their own cities to ‘claim sanctuary’. Claiming sanctuary was a well-known way of going on strike. The demonstrators would take refuge in a place of worship and stay there until their demands were met. As long as they remained in a mosque or shrine they were safe. No one was allowed to trouble them. Even an arrest warrant from the king had no validity. Now large groups of people were entering the various mosques to support the strike.

The people behind the strike kept in contact with Jamal Khan’s committee in Tehran. All the supporters made use of the same slogans: ‘England! Hands off our tobacco!’ and ‘Give us a national telegraph network or we pull down the poles and cables!’

Some members of Jamal Khan’s group had additional demands. They wanted Persian experts to serve as inspectors at the oil wells. But the others felt it was too early for such a move. Besides, no one had enough expertise to judge the situation properly. For the time being they stuck with attainable demands that people could grasp.

The resistance grew. More and more people came to claim sanctuary with the merchants. The shah pretended to be unimpressed and said that under no circumstances would he cede to the demands of the demonstrators. To do so would jeopardise the deal he had struck with regard to his income. That agreement, and the fixed royal duties being levied on the telegraph and oil-drilling projects, covered the enormous expense of running his palace and his harem and paying for his travels. He didn’t want to put his ties with mighty England at risk, especially now that he was feeling threatened at home. In turbulent times like these the British embassy was a more dependable ally than his own ignorant people.

More than ever he was seized by doubt. So he went back to paying regular visits to his old mother, who had helped him before with her powers of discernment. Mahdolia knew her son. She talked to him and roused his flagging spirits: ‘These are moments that every king has to endure. Your subjects don’t understand what they want from life. It is the shah’s job to direct them. Don’t forget that Russia is standing right behind you. Your father and I forged a strong bond with them. Don’t take a single step backwards, my son, not even when your enemy is closing in on you. The men of our tribe have never feared death.’

His mother never hesitated to remind him of this alliance, but the shah doubted its value. The Russians were not a whit better than the rest. When it came to the crunch they too would think only of themselves. He was determined to endure to the bitter end. He wanted to show England that he was capable of defending their interests. So he gave the heads of all the country’s police forces the authority to crush the resistance with violence.