Samarkand pdfdrive com

CHAPTER 34
Shireen had sent me a copy of this document. I still have it and sometimes I still
cast a nostalgic and amused glance at it. It shows, seated on a carpet spread out
amongst the trees of a garden, about forty men and women dressed in Turkish,
Japanese or Austrian garb. In the centre foreground appears Monsieur Naus, so
well disguised that with his white beard and salt-and-pepper moustache he could
easily be taken for a pious patriarch. Shireen had written on the back of the
photograph: ‘Unpunished for so many crimes, penalized for a trifle.’
It assuredly was not Monsieur Naus’s intention to mock the religious. On that
occasion he could only be found guilty of naïveté, of a lack of tact and a touch of
bad taste. His real mistake, since he was acting as the Tsar’s Trojan horse, was
not understanding that, for a while, he should allow himself to lie low.
The distribution of the picture caused some angry gatherings and some
incidents. The bazaar shut its gates. First of all Naus’s departure was demanded,
then that of the whole government. Tracts were handed out demanding the
institution of a parliament, as in Russia. For years secret societies had been at
work amongst the population, invoking the name of Jamaladin and sometimes
even that of Mirza Reza, and were now transformed by circumstances into a
symbol of the struggle against absolutism.
The Cossacks surrounded the districts in the centre of the city. Certain
rumours, propagated by the authorities, gave out that unprecedented repression
was about to fall upon the protesters and that the bazaar would be opened by the
armed forces and left for the troops to pillage – a menace which had terrified the
merchants for centuries.
That is why, on 19 July 1906, a delegation of tradesman and money-changers

---

from the bazaar went to see the British chargé d’affaires on a matter or urgency:
if people in danger of being arrested were to come and take refuge in the
legation, would they be afforded protection? The response was positive. The
visitors retired showing expressions of gratitude and making solemn bows.
That very evening, my friend Fazel presented himself at the legation with a
group of friends and was enthusiastically received. Although he was hardly
thirty years old, he was, as his father’s heir, already one of the richest merchants
in the bazaar. However, his rank was even more elevated by his vast culture and
his influence was great amongst his peers. To a man of his status, the British
diplomats had to offer one of the rooms reserved for visitors of distinction.
However, he turned down the offer and, mentioning the heat, expressed his
desire to install himself in the legation’s vast garden. He said that he had brought
with him a tent for that purpose, along with a small carpet and a few books.
Tight-lipped and frowning, his hosts watched as all these items were unpacked.
The next day thirty other merchants came in the same way to profit from the
right of asylum. Three days later, on 23 July, there were eight hundred and sixty.
By 26 July there were five thousand – and twelve thousand by 1 August.
This Persian town planted in an English garden was a strange sight. There
were tents all around, clustered together by guild. Life there had been speedily
organized with a kitchen being set up behind the guards pavilion from which
enormous cauldrons were sent around to the different ‘districts’, each sitting
lasting three hours.
There was no disorder and very little noise. Taking refuge, or taking 
bast
as
the Persians say, means giving oneself over to a strictly passive resistance in the
shelter of a sanctuary of which there were several in the area of Teheran: the
mausoleum of Shah Adbul-Azim, the royal stables, and the smallest 
bast
of all,
the wheeled cannon in Topkhane Square – if a fugitive clung to it, the forces of
order no longer had any right to lay hands on him. However, Jamaladin’s
experience had shown that the powers that be would not tolerate this form of
protest for long. The only immunity that they recognised was that of the foreign
legations.
To the English, every refugee had brought his 
kalyan
and his dreams. From
tent to tent there was a world of difference. Around Fazel was the modernist
elite; they were not just a handful but hundreds of young and old men, organized
into 
anjuman –
which were more or less secret societies. Their debates raged
ceaselessly around the topics of Japan, Russia and particularly France whose
language they spoke and whose books and newspapers they assiduously read –

---

the France of Saint-Simon, Robespierre, Rousseau and Waldeck-Rousseau.
Fazel had carefully cut out the section of the law on the separation of church and
state which had been voted on a year earlier in Paris. He had translated it and
handed it out to his friends and they were now debating it heatedly albeit in
hushed tones, for not far from their circle there was a gathering of 
mullahs.
The clergy itself was divided. One party rejected everything which came
from Europe including the very idea of democracy, parliament and modernity.
‘How,’ they said, ‘could we need a constitution when we have the Quran?’ To
which the modernists replied that the Book had left to men the task of governing
themselves democratically since it declared, ‘Let your affairs be a matter of
mutual consent.’ Cunningly they added that if, upon the death of the Prophet, the
Muslims had a constitution organizing the institutions of their embryonic state,
they would not have seen the bloody struggles for succession which led to the
ousting of the Imam Ali.
Beyond the debate on doctrine, the majority of the 
mullahs
nevertheless
accepted the idea of a constitution to put an end to the arbitrary nature of royal
rule. Having come in their hundreds to take 
bast
, they delighted in comparing
their act to the Prophet’s migration to Medina and the sufferings of the people to
those of Hussein, the son of Imam Ali, whose passion is the closest Muslim
equivalent to that of Christ. In the legation’s gardens, professional mourners, the
rozeh-khwan
, recounted to their audience the sufferings of Hussein. People
cried, flagellated themselves, and grieved unrestrainedly for Hussein, for
themselves and for a Persia which was astray in a hostile world and had sunk
over the centuries into unending decadence.
Fazel’s friends distanced themselves from these displays. Jamaladin had
taught them to feel disdain for the 
rozeh-khwan.
They could only listen to them
with worried condescension.
I was struck by a cold reflection written by Shireen in one of her letters.
‘Persia is ill,’ she wrote. ‘There are several doctors at her bedside, some modern
and some traditional and each one offers his own remedies. The future belongs
to him who can effect a cure. If this revolution triumphs, the 
mullahs
will have
to turn themselves into democrats; if it fails, the democrats will have to turn
themselves into 
mullahs.’
For the moment they were all in the same trench, in the same garden. On 7
August, the legation counted sixteen thousand 
bastis
, the streets of the city were
empty and any merchant of renown had ‘emigrated’. The Shah had to give in.
On 15 August, less than a month from the start of the 
bast
, he announced that

---

elections would be organized to elect a national consultative assembly by direct
suffrage in Teheran and indirect suffrage in the provinces.
The first parliament in the history of Persia met on 7 October. To read out the
Shah’s speech, he judiciously sent a veteran opponent, Prince Malkom Khan, an
Armenian from Isfahan and a companion of Jamaladin, the very same man who
had put him up during his stay in London. He was a magnificent old man in the
British mould who had dreamt throughout his whole life of standing in front of
Parliament as he read out the speech of a constitutional sovereign to the
representatives of the people.
Those who wish to examine this page of history more closely should not look
for the name of Malkom Khan in documents of the time. Today, as in the time of
Khayyam, Persia does not remember its leaders by their names, but by their
titles, such as ‘Sun of the Kingdom’, ‘Pillar of the Religion’ or ‘Shadow of the
Sultan’. To the man who had the honour of inaugurating the era of democracy
the most prestigious title of all was given: Nizam al-Mulk. Disconcerting Persia,
so immutable in its convulsions but how unchanged after so many
metamorphoses!

---