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Manuscript
, she had supplied me with
one which was frustrating but precise. I did not expect to hear anything more
from her, which does not mean that I was not hoping to. With every mail
delivery the idea ran through my mind and I looked over the envelopes for her
handwriting, for a stamp with Persian writing, a number five which was shaped
like a heart. I did not dread my daily disappointment, but experienced it as a
homage to dreams which were still haunting me.
I have to say that at that time my family had just left Annapolis and settled in
Baltimore where my father’s most important business was to be concentrated.
He envisaged founding his own bank along with two of his young brothers. As
for me, I had decided to stay in the house where I was born, with our old half-
deaf cook, in a city where I had few good friends. I do not doubt that my solitude
amplified the fervour of my waiting.
Then, one day, Shireen finally wrote to me. There was not a word about the
Samarkand Manuscript
and nothing personal in the long letter, except perhaps
the fact that she began it with ‘Dear distant friend’. There followed a day-by-day
report of the events unfolding around her. Her account abounded in painstaking
details, none of which was superfluous, even when they seemed so to my vulgar
eyes. I was in love with her wonderful intellect and flattered that she had chosen
to direct the fruit of her thoughts to me of all men.
From that moment I lived to the rhythm of her monthly letters, which were a
vibrant chronicle and which I would have published as they were if she had not
demanded absolute discretion from me. She did authorize me, however, to use
the information contained in them, which I did shamelessly, drawing on them
and sometimes translating and using whole passages with neither italics nor
quotation marks.
My way of presenting the facts to my readers, however, differed greatly from
hers. For example, the princess never would have thought of writing:
‘The Persian revolution was triggered when a Belgian minister had the
disastrous idea of disguising himself as a
mullah.’
That, however, was not so far from the truth, although for Shireen the
beginnings of the revolt were discernible at the time of the Shah’s course of
treatment at Contrexéville in 1900. Wanting to go there with his retinue, the
Shah needed money. His treasury was empty as usual and he had asked the Tsar
for a loan and was granted 22.5 million roubles.
There was almost never such a poisoned gift. In order to make sure that their
neighbour to the south, who was permanently on the brink of bankruptcy, would
be able to pay back such a large sum, the St Petersburg authorities demanded
and succeeded in gaining control of the Persian customs whose receipts were
now to be paid directly to them. For a period of seventy-five years! Aware of the
enormity of this privilege and fearing lest the other European powers take
umbrage at this complete control over the foreign trade of Persia, the Tsar
avoided entrusting the customs to his own subjects and preferred to have King
Leopold II take charge of them on his behalf. That is how thirty or so Belgian
functionaries came to the Shah’s court and their influence was to grow to dizzy
heights. The most eminent of them, namely a certain Monsieur Naus, managed
to haul himself up to the highest spheres of power. On the eve of the revolution,
he was a member of the Supreme Council of the Kingdom, Minister of Post and
Telegraph, General Treasurer of Persia, Head of the Passport Department and
Director General of the Customs. Amongst other things, his job was to
reorganize the whole fiscal system and it was to him that the new tax on freight
carried by mule was attributed.
It goes without saying that by that time Monsieur Naus had become the most
hated man in Persia, the symbol of foreign control. From time to time a voice
would arise to demand his recall, a demand which seemed the more justified as
he had neither a reputation for incorruptibility nor the alibi of competence.
However he stayed in place, supported by the Tsar, or rather by the retrograde
and fearsome
camarilla
who surrounded the latter and whose political objectives
were now being expressed aloud in the official press of St Petersburg – the
exercise of undivided tutelage over Persia and the Persian Gulf.
Monsieur Naus’s position seemed unshakeable and it remained so until the
moment his protector was shaken. That happened more quickly than anyone in
Persia had dreamt and it was precipitated by two major events. First, the war
with Japan, which to the whole world’s surprise ended with the defeat of the
Tsar and the destruction of this fleet. Then the anger of the Russians which was
fuelled by the humiliation inflicted upon them because of incompetent leaders:
the
Potemkin
rebellion, the Cronstadt mutiny, the Sebastopol uprising and the
events in Moscow. I shall not discuss in detail these facts which no one has yet
forgotten, but I shall content myself by emphasising the devastating effect that
they had on Persia, in particularly in April 1906 when Nicolas II was forced to
convene a parliament, the Duma.
It was in this atmosphere that the most banal event occurred. A masked ball
was held at the residence of a Belgian functionary which Monsieur Naus decided
to attend dressed up as a
mullah.
There were chuckles, laughs and applause;
people gathered around him to congratulate him and posed for photographs with
him. A few days later hundreds of copies of this picture were being distributed in
the Teheran bazaar.
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