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CHAPTER 27
To say that this revelation immediately turned my life upside down would be
inexact. I do not believe that I reacted the way Rochefort had presumed I would.
I was both abundantly surprised and intrigued, but I was still sceptical. The man
did not inspire me with unlimited confidence. How could he know that the
manuscript he had leafed through was the authentic work of Khayyam? He did
not know Persian and the wool might have been pulled over his eyes. For what
incongruous reason would this book have been in Paris without a single
orientalist reporting the fact? I did no more than utter a polite but sincere
‘Incredible!’, since it showed both the enthusiasm of the man I was speaking to
and my own doubts for I was not yet ready to believe in it.
Rochefort went on:
‘I had the chance to meet an extraordinary personality, one of those beings
who cross History determined to leave their imprint on the generations to come.
The Sultan of Turkey fears and courts him, the Shah of Persia trembles at the
mere mention of his name. He is a descendant of Muhammad, but was
nonetheless chased out of Constantinople for having said, at a public conference
in the presence of the greatest religious dignitaries, that the profession of the
philosopher was as indispensable to humanity as that of the prophet. He is called
Jamaladin. Have you heard of him?’
I could only confess my total ignorance.
‘When Egypt rose up against the English,’ Rochefort continued, ‘it was at
this man’s call. All the intellectuals of the Nile Valley take their inspiration from
him. They call him ‘Master’ and revere his name. However, he is not an
Egyptian and has only made a short stay in that country. He was exiled to India
where he managed to arouse a considerable movement of opinion. Under his
influence newspapers were established and associations were formed. The
Viceroy became alarmed and had Jamaladin expelled, whence he decided to
settle down in Europe and he continued his incredible activity in London and
then in France.’
‘He worked regularly on l’
Intransigeant
and we used to meet often. He
presented his disciples to me – Muslims from India, Jews from Egypt and
Maronites from Syria. I believe that I was his closest French friend, but certainly
not the only one. Ernest Renan and Georges Clemenceau knew him well, and in
England his friends were people like Lord Salisbury, Randolph Churchill or
Wilfrid Blunt. A little before his death, Victor Hugo met him too.’
‘This very morning, I was in the middle of going over some notes about him
which I am thinking of inserting in my memoirs.’
Rochefort took some sheets covered in minuscule writing out of a drawer and
read: ‘I was introduced to an outlaw, a man famous throughout all of Islam as a
reformer and a revolutionary – Sheikh Jamaladin, a man with the head of a saint.
His beautiful black eyes, so gentle and yet fiery and his deep tawny beard which
reached his chest gave him a particularly majestic air. He looked like a born
leader. He understood French more or less although he could hardly speak it, but
his ever alert intelligence easily made up for what he lacked of our language.
Behind his calm and serene appearance his activity was frenetic. We soon
became good friends for my spirit is instinctively that of a revolutionary and I
am attracted to all freedom-fighters …’
He quickly put the sheets of paper away and then continued:
‘Jamaladin had rented a small room on the top floor of a hotel in Rue de Sèze
near the Madeleine. That modest space was enough for him to edit a newspaper
which went off by the bundle to India and Arabia. I only managed to wheedle
my way into his den once, being curious to see what it could look like. I had
invited Jamaladin to dine
chez
Durand and promised to go by and pick him up. I
went straight up to his room. It was difficult to move around in it because of all
the newspapers and books piled up to the ceiling there, some of them even
covering the bed. There was a suffocating smell of cigar smoke.’
In spite of his admiration for him, he had pronounced this last phrase with a
hint of distaste, which induced me to extinguish on the spot my own cigar which
was an elegant Havana I had just lit. Rochefort thanked me for that with a smile
and carried on:
‘After apologizing for the mess in which he was receiving me, and which, he
said, was unbefitting for someone of my rank, Jamaladin showed me that day
some books he was fond of – particularly that of Khayyam which was full of
exquisite miniatures. He explained to me that this work was called the
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