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CHAPTER 39
They were dark days on the history of Khayyam’s country. Was this the
promised dawn of the Orient? From Isfahan to Kazvin, from Shiraz to Hamand,
the same shouts issued blindly from thousand upon thousand of people: ‘Death!
Death!’ Now one had to go into hiding in order to say the words liberty,
democracy and justice. The future was no more than a forbidden dream and the
Constitutionalists were hunted down on the streets, the meeting rooms of the
sons of Adam were laid to waste and their books were thrown into a pile and
burnt. Nowhere, throughout the whole of Persia, could the odious spread of
violence be checked.
Nowhere apart from Tabriz. And when the interminable day of the coup
came to an end, out of the thirty main quarters of the heroic city only one was
holding out – the district called Amir-Khiz at the extreme north-west of the
bazaar. That night a few dozen young partisans took turns to guard the
approaches, while Fazel was sketching ambitious arrows on a crumpled map in
the 
anjuman
building in the general quarter.
There were about a dozen of us fervently following the smallest mark of his
pencil which the swinging storm lamps accentuated. The deputy stood up
straight.
‘The enemy is still suffering the shock of the losses which we inflicted on
them. They think that we are stronger than we actually are. They have no
cannons and do not know how many we have. We must profit from this without
delay to extend our territory. It will not take the Shah long to send troops and
they will be in Tabriz within a few weeks. By then we must have liberated the
whole city. Tonight we shall attack.’

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He bent over and every head – bare or turbaned – bent over too.
‘We cross the river by surprise,’ he explained. ‘We charge in the direction of
the citadel and attack it from two sides, the bazaar and from the cemetery. It will
be ours before evening.’
The citadel was not taken for ten days. Lethal battles raged in every street but
the resisters advanced and all the clashes turned to their advantage. Some ‘sons
of Adam’ occupied the bureau of the Indo-European Telegraph on the Saturday,
thanks to which they were able to keep in contact with Teheran as well as with
London and Bombay. The same day a police barracks went over to their side,
bringing with it as a dowry a Maxim machine gun and thirty cases of
ammunition. These successes gave the population its confidence back. Young
and old became emboldened and flocked to the liberated quarters in their
hundreds, sometimes with their weapons. Within a few weeks the enemy had
been pushed back to the outskirts. It was only holding on to a thinly populated
area in the north-east of the city stretching from the Quarter of the Camel-drivers
to the camp of Sahib-Divan.
Toward mid-July an army of irregulars was formed, as well as a provisional
administration in which Howard found himself made quartermaster. He now
passed most of his time scouring the bazaar and compiling a list of food stocks.
The merchants showed themselves more than willing to cooperate. He himself
found his way perfectly through the Persian system of weights and measures.
‘You have to forget litres, kilos, ounces and pints,’ he told me. ‘Here they
speak of 
jaw, miskal, syr
and 
kharvar
, which is the load of an ass.’
He tried to teach me.
‘The basic unit is the 
jaw
, which is a medium sized grain of barley which still
has its husk but which has had the little tuft of hair at each end cut off.’
‘That’s quite tortuous,’ I guffawed.
My teacher threw his student a look of rebuke. To make amends I thought I
had better prove that I had been taking it in.
‘So the 
jaw
is the smallest unit of measure.’
‘Not at all.’ said Howard indignantly.
Unruffled, he referred to his notes:
‘The weight of a grain of barley equals that of seventy grains of 
seneveh
, or if
you like, six hairs of a mule’s tail.’
In comparison, my own mission was light! Given my complete ignorance of
the local dialect, my only job was to keep in contact with the foreign nationals in

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order to reassure them of Fazel’s intentions and to watch over their safety.
It should be mentioned that Tabriz, until the construction of the Trans-
Caucasian Railway twenty years earlier, had been the gateway to Persia, the
entrance point for all travellers, goods and ideas. Several European
establishments had branches there, such as the German company of MMO
Mossig and Schünemann, or the Eastern Trading Company, an important
Austrian firm. There were also consulates, the American Presbyterian Mission
and various other institutions, and I am happy to say that at no moment during
the long and difficult months of the siege did the foreign nationals become
targets.
Not only were they in no danger, but there was some moving fraternization. I
do not wish to speak of Baskerville, myself nor of Panoff, who quickly joined
the movement, but I wish to salute other people, such as Mr Moore, the
correspondent of the