Amin Maalouf - Samarkand

Our second meeting was hardly more wordy than our first. The princess looked me up and down with a smile on the corner her lips. Suddenly she gave an order:

‘Tomorrow at dawn my coachman will come to fetch you. Be ready. Wear a veil and walk with your head down!’

‘I was convinced that she was going to drive me to my legation. It was at the moment when her carriage went out through the city gate that I realised my mistake. She explained:

‘I could easily have taken you to the American minister’s. You would have been safe, but no one would have had any trouble guessing how you got there. Even if I do have some influence, being a member of the Qajar family, I cannot use it to protect the apparent accomplice to the assassination of the Shah. I would have been placed in an awkward predicament and then they would have found the brave women who looked after you. Your legation, moreover, would not have been too delighted to have to protect a man accused of such a crime. Believe me, it is better for everyone if you leave Persia. I will take you to one of my maternal uncles, one of the Bakhtiari chiefs. He has come down with his tribe’s warriors for the fortieth day ceremonies. I have told him who you are and stated your innocence, but his men know nothing. He has undertaken to escort you to the Ottoman frontier by routes unknown to the caravans. He is waiting for us in Shah Abdul-Azim’s village. Do you have any money?’

‘Yes. I gave two hundred tomans to the women who saved me, but I still have almost four hundred.’

‘That is not enough. You must distribute half of what you have to the men accompanying you and keep a decent amount behind for the rest of the trip. Here are some Turkish coins, they will not be too much. Here also is a text which I would like the Master to have. You will be passing through Constantinople?’

It was difficult to say no. She continued, as she slipped some folded papers into the slit of my cloak:

‘They contain a transcript of Mirza Reza’s first cross-examination. I spent the night writing it out. You can read it, in fact you should read it. You will learn a lot. Besides, it will keep you busy during the long trip. But do not let anyone else see it.’

We were already on the outskirts of the village. The police were everywhere and searching everything down to the packs on the mules, but who would have dared hold up a royal convoy? We followed our route as far as the courtyard of a hugh saffron-coloured building. In its centre was an immense and ancient oak-tree around which warriors, with two bandoliers crossed across their chests, were bustling. The Princess could only look with disdain upon these virile ornaments which complemented their thick moustaches.

‘I am leaving you in good hands, as you see; they will protect you better than the weak women who have looked after you so far.’

‘I doubt it.’

My eyes worriedly followed the rifle barrels which were pointing in all directions.

‘I doubt it too,’ she laughed. ‘But all the same they will take you over to Turkey.’

As the moment came to say goodbye, I decided not to:

‘I know that the time is hardly right to speak about it, but perhaps you know by some chance if an old manuscript was found in Mirza Reza’s luggage.’

Her eyes avoided mine and her voice took on a grating tone.

‘The time is indeed badly chosen. Do not utter that madman’s name again until you get to Constantinople!’

‘It is a manuscript by Khayyam!’

I was right to insist. After all, it was because of that book that I had allowed myself to be dragged into this Persian adventure. However Shireen gave a sigh of impatience.

‘I know nothing of it. I will make inquiries. Leave me your address and I will write to you. However, please do not reply to me.’

As I scribbled down ‘Annapolis, Maryland’ I had the impression that I was already far away and I had started feeling sorry that my foray into Persia had been so short and that it had gone so wrong from the start. I held the paper out to the Princess. As she was about to take it, I took hold of her hand — briefly but firmly. She also squeezed my hand, digging a finger-nail into my palm, without scratching me but leaving behind its distinct outline for a few minutes. Smiles came to both our lips and we uttered the same phrase in unison:

‘You never know, our paths might meet!’

For two months I saw nothing which resembled what I was used to calling a road. Upon leaving Shah Abdul-Azim we headed southwest in the direction of the Bakhtiaris’ tribal territory. After we had skirted the salt lake of Qom we followed its eponymous river but did not go into the city itself. My guides, who brandished their rifles permanently for battle, took care to avoid built-up areas and although Shireen’s uncle often took the trouble to inform me that we were at Amouk, Vertcha or Khomein, it was only a turn of phrase by which he meant that we were on a level with those localities whose minarets we could make out in the distance and whose contours I was happy to leave to my imagination.

In the mountains of Luristan, beyond the sources of the Qom River, my guides became less vigilant — we were in Bakhtiari territory. A feast was organised in my honour. I was given an opium pipe to smoke and I fell asleep on the spot amid general hilarity. I then had to wait two days before starting off again on the route which was still long: Shuster, Ahvaz and finally the perilous swamp crossing to Basra, the city of Ottoman Iraq which lay on the Shatt al-Arab.

At last, out of Persia and safe! There was still a long month at sea to get by sail-boat from Fao to Bahrain, then I had to sail down the Pirate coast to Aden and come back up the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to Alexandria in order finally to cross the Mediterranean in an old Turkish steamer to Constantinople.

Throughout this interminable escape, which was tiring but went without a hitch, the only leisure activity I had was to read and reread the ten manuscript pages of Mirza Reza’s cross-examination. Doubtless I would have tired of it had I any other distractions, but this forced meeting with a man condemned to death exercised an undeniable fascination over me, in that I could easily imagine him, with his gaunt limbs, his eyes racked with pain and his unlikely clothing of a devout. Sometimes I thought I could even hear this tortured voice:

‘What were the reasons that induced you to kill our beloved Shah?’

‘Those who have eyes to see with will have no difficulty in noticing that the Shah was struck down in the very same place where Jamaladin was abused. What had that saintly man done, that true descendant of the Prophet, to deserve to be dragged out of the sanctuary the way he was?’

‘Who induced you to kill the Shah, who are you accomplices?’

‘I swear by almighty and omnipotent God, by God who created Jamaladin and all other humans, that no one apart from me and the Sayyid knew anything of my plan to kill the Shah. The Sayyid is in Constantinople. Try and reach him!’

‘What instructions did Jamaladin give you?’

‘When I went to Constantinople, I told him of the tortures to which the Shah’s son had submitted me. The Sayyid ordered me to be silent, saying, “Stop whining as if you were leading a funeral service! Can you do nothing other than cry? If the Shah’s son tortured you, kill him!”’

‘Why kill the Shah rather than his son, since he is the one who wronged you and it is upon the son that Jamaladin advised you to take your revenge?’

‘I said to myself: “If I kill the son, the Shah with his vast power will kill thousands of people in reprisal.” Instead of cutting off a branch, I preferred to pull out the whole tree of tyranny by its roots in the hope that a different tree would spring up in its place. Besides the Sultan of Turkey said to Sayyid Jamaladin in private that in order to bring about the union of all Muslims we had to get rid of this Shah.’