Kader Abdolah - The King

Today we wandered around the Kremlin square. It is a large castle with a sturdy gate. There we ate some kind of orange that was red on the inside, which we found quite delicious.

The tsar’s wife held us by our arm and the tsar held the arm of a beautiful young woman whose name we have forgotten. We entered a large room. It was a room in which people dance, and occasionally some kind of masked parties are held there. Something like this would also please our wives.

At dinner the tsar’s wife sat next to us and the beautiful woman sat across from us. We very much wanted to speak with her, but the tsar’s wife prattled on the whole night and gave us not a moment’s peace. Her breath stank. God is punishing us for something.

The shah read this and smiled. He remembered something charming he had witnessed in Paris but had forgotten to write down. Now he added it: ‘In Paris we saw a blonde woman reflected in the mirror of our coach, as if her photograph had been framed in the mirror. No woman could ever be as beautiful as she. The coach rode on and the woman disappeared from the mirror. We were prepared to purchase her with gold, but even a king has his limitations.’

It was late at night. Normally he would be in bed by now, reading, but he couldn’t stop writing. He leafed back to the chapter he had written about his visit to Holland. His heart almost broke with longing when he read it.

We rode into the Amsterdam train station, and there waiting for us were the mayor, a couple of generals and the city’s chief of police. As soon as we emerged from the train, the musicians began playing a deafening piece on their instruments. We immediately felt welcome.

Amsterdam is a beautiful city. The streets are clean and the houses are like biscuit tins stacked on top of each other. You would think the city had been made by children. The king of Holland is ill. He has a young daughter who will succeed him when he dies. If it were up to us, we would have appointed Taj Olsultan as our successor.

We rode through the city by coach, and an enormous throng of people stood along the streets to admire us. We have seen many beautiful women. I believe there are no ugly women in that country.

The people had never seen a Persian before, let alone a Persian king. They waved at us, and some of the women blew us kisses with their hands. This made us feel uneasy, but we enjoyed ourselves.

That night we stayed in an extraordinary hotel on a canal. It was very clean and we slept well. They are refined people, the Dutch. No one brays like a donkey at night. We spent two weeks in that country. We saw a great deal, visited many factories and did business with the merchants. They are well-behaved businessmen, not as insolent as the merchants in our own bazaars.

But in Lahe, The Hague, we looked death in the eyes. We had gone to that city to pay a visit to their parliament and to meet their vizier. Here too the people were extremely happy to see us. The women were visibly delighted. They shouted slogans and welcomed us, clapping their hands. We waved to them and bowed our head slightly in their direction. All those people made the poor horses skittish and nervous. Suddenly they bolted. The coachman was unable to keep them under control. Women and children screamed, and we sat there, powerless, in the coach. The horses raced over the lawns and the doorsteps. The coach bumped against the trees and against the edge of the pavement. I could see the frightened faces. All the screaming drove the horses wild. We thought we were done for. Then the coach ran into a lamp post and got stuck. The guards hastened to assist us and pulled us out. The people looked on in shock, but we straightened our back and waved at them. For a moment there was silence. Then cheering burst forth: ‘Long live the shah!’

Our eyes were filled with tears. Lovely people.

The shah closed his diary with a smile.

The next day he lingered in bed, but he knew he had to pick up the thread of his life. This was his life, this was his country and he was the shah, the person who had to provide leadership.

He got up, ate his breakfast and summoned Eyn ed-Dowleh. His son-in-law had heard from Taj that the shah was a bit depressed. His detailed account of the arrest of the resistance group heavyweights would make the shah happy, he thought.

‘But you weren’t able to catch their leader!’

‘According to our information we have apprehended the most dangerous man in the group.’

‘Which man is that?’

‘Mirza Reza Kermani.’

At the insistence of Eyn ed-Dowleh the shah spent the next day visiting the notorious prison outside the city.

A prisoner in iron chains was pushed outside by three guards. The man put his hands over his eyes to protect them from the sunlight. Eyn ed-Dowleh walked up to him, grabbed the chain and shouted, ‘Kneel before the shah.’

The prisoner refused. Eyn ed-Dowleh struck him on the shoulder with his rifle, causing the man to fall down at the shah’s feet.

‘This is Mirza Reza Kermani!’ said Eyn ed-Dowleh.

The shah pressed Mirza Reza to the ground with his polished brown boots and said contemptuously, ‘Is this little fellow dangerous?’

Mirza Reza was no little fellow, but the lack of food and sunlight in his damp cell had weakened him considerably.

Eyn ed-Dowleh had expected the shah to say, ‘String him up!’ But the shah turned round and walked away.

Perhaps it was on account of the journey that he was no longer able to casually order someone’s hanging. Perhaps he wanted to humiliate Eyn ed-Dowleh for failing to arrest Jamal Khan. But it was also possible that fate had something else in mind for Mirza Reza.

After the fighting in and around the Jameh mosque, Eyn ed-Dowleh had put all the gates of Tehran under surveillance to prevent Jamal Khan from fleeing the city. He had searches conducted in all the houses that he suspected of being places where Jamal Khan might be holed up. The house of Ayatollah Tabatabai was passed over, however — the very place where Jamal Khan had taken shelter.

On the evening that Jamal Khan was shot in the leg, he mustered up every scrap of strength he had and managed to reach the home of Ayatollah Tabatabai. He spent his first months inside the ayatollah’s house, waiting for his leg to heal so he could walk again. He let his beard grow and, with the ayatollah’s approval, donned clerical robes, put a turban on his head and returned to daily life disguised as an imam.

He tried to convince Tabatabai that the power of the shah would have to be curtailed, and that a majles (parliament) and an edalat-khaneh (court of justice) were essential for the future of the country.

Jamal Khan then set out to gather his comrades together, but that was no easy task.

The shah had returned with a renewed sense of purpose, and he kept coming up with new ideas. The trip had gone well, he thought, but he was more convinced than ever that the developments taking place in western countries could not be implemented in his own. He stated this clearly at a meeting: ‘Adopting their way of life is out of the question, but we can ask them to build bridges for us, or perhaps a hospital. We’ve seen cannons there that are ten times stronger than what the Russians have. These are the things we need. The Germans have promised us guns. I have spoken with them, and they can make the same kinds of weapons for us that are geared especially for our army. But other changes are not advisable, especially when it comes to their way of life.’

In his own palace, however, there were a number of changes he was eager to introduce. All the western heads of state had their own private telegraph booths, for instance. In England he had discussed the possibility of installing something similar in Tehran, a hope that was realised far sooner than the shah had expected.