Samarkand pdfdrive com

CHAPTER 37
In the evening few stalls stayed open in the Tabriz bazaar, but the streets were
alive and men were sitting around talking at the crossroads, setting up circles of
wicker chairs and of 
kalyan
pipes whose smoke was gradually displacing the
thousand smells of the day. I followed close on Howard’s heels as he turned
from one alley into another without a second glance; from time to time he would
stop to greet the parent of one of his students, and the street urchins everywhere
stopped their games and scattered as he passed.
We finally arrived in front of a gate which was almost eaten away by rust.
My companion pushed it open and we went through a small overgrown garden
and up to a mud-brick house whose door, after seven raps, opened creaking on to
a huge room which was lit up by a row of storm lamps hung from the ceiling and
which a draught of air was swaying ceaselessly. The people present must have
been used to it, but I very quickly felt as if I was on board a flimsy raft. I could
no longer focus on anyone’s face and felt the need to lie down as soon as
possible and close my eyes for a few moments. Baskerville was not unknown at
the ‘sons of Adam’ meeting – he caused quite a stir when he walked in and as I
had accompanied him I also had the right to some fraternal embraces which were
duly redoubled when Howard revealed that his arrival in Persia was partly due to
me.
When I thought it was time for me to sit down against a wall, a large man
stood up at the end of the room. He had a long white cape draped over his
shoulders which set him apart from the others as the most eminent person in the
meeting. He took a step toward me:
‘Benjamin!’

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I stood up again, took two steps and rubbed my eyes. ‘Fazel!’ We fell into
each other’s arms with an oath of surprise.
‘Mr Lesage was a friend of Sayyid Jamaladin!’
Immediately I stopped being a distinguished visitor and became an historic
monument, or even a religious relic. People came up to me with awe, which was
quite embarrassing.
I presented Howard to Fazel. They knew each other only by reputation. Fazel
had not been to Tabriz for more than a year, even though it was his birthplace.
Moreover, there was something unusual and unsettling about the whole evening,
together with Fazel being there within those flaking walls and under those
dancing lights. Was he not one of the leaders of the democratic party in
parliament, a pillar of the Constitutional Revolution? Was this the moment for
him to be away from the capital? These were the questions which I put to him.
He appeared embarrassed. However, I had spoken quietly in French. He looked
furtively at the men next to him, and then by way of an answer he said, ‘Where
are you staying?’
‘In the caravansary in the Armenian quarter.’
‘I shall come to see you during the night.’
Toward midnight we met again, six of us, in my room. There were
Baskerville, myself, Fazel and three of his companions whom he introduced
hurriedly for reasons of secrecy, only by their first names.
‘You asked at the 
anjuman
why I was here and not in Teheran. Well, it is
because the capital is already lost as far as the constitution goes. I could not state
it in these terms to thirty people, I would have caused panic. But that is the
truth.’
We were all too stunned to react. He explained:
‘Two weeks ago a journalist from St Petersberg came to see me. He was the
correspondent of 
Ryesh.
His name is Panoff but he writes under the pseudonym
“Tané”.’
I had heard about him and his articles were often quoted in the London press.
‘He is a social democrat,’ Fazel continued, ‘and an enemy of Tsarism but
when he arrived in Teheran some months ago he managed to hide his beliefs,
worked his way into the Russian legation, and by some chance or other or even
by some plan, he managed to lay his hands on some compromising documents
including a project for a coup d’état which the Cossacks would carry out in order
to re-impose an absolute monarchy. It was all written down in black and white.

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The underworld was to be given free rein in the bazaar in order to sap the
merchants’ confidence in the new regime, and some religious chiefs were to
address petitions to the Shah asking him to invalidate the constitution by reason
of its being against Islam. Naturally Panoff was taking a risk in bringing me
those documents. I thanked him for them and immediately asked for an
extraordinary meeting of Parliament. Having exposed the facts in detail, I
demanded that the Shah be dismissed and replaced by one of his young sons,
that the Cossack brigade be broken up and the clerics incriminated in the
documents be arrested. Several speakers came up to the dais to express their
indignation and to support my proposals.
‘Suddenly an usher came to inform us that the ministers plenipotentiary of
Russia and England were in the building and that they had an urgent note to
convey to us. The session was suspended and the president of the 
Majlis
and the
Prime Minister went out; when they returned they looked like death. The
diplomats had come to warn them that if the Shah were deposed, the two Powers
would consider themselves regrettably obliged to intervene militarily. Not only
were they getting ready to strangle us, but we were being forbidden to defend
ourselves!’
‘Why such resolve?’ Baskerville asked, appalled.
‘The Tsar does not want a democracy within his borders. The very word
parliament makes him tremble with rage.’
‘But even so, that is not the case with Britain!’
‘No. Except that if the Persians managed to govern themselves in an adult
manner, that could give ideas to the Indians! And England would then just have
to pack its bags. Then there is oil. In 1901 a British subject, Mr Knox d’Arcy
obtained for the sum of twenty thousand pounds sterling the right to exploit oil
reserves throughout the Persian empire. So far production has been insignificant,
but a few months ago immense reserves were found in the Bakhtiari tribal areas,
doubtless you have heard talk of this already. These reserves could represent an
important source of revenue for the country. I therefore asked parliament to
revise the agreement with London so that we might obtain more equitable
conditions. Most of the deputies agreed with me. Since then the English minister
has no longer invited me to the legation.’
‘But it is in the legation’s gardens that the 
bast
is taking place,’ I said
pensively.
‘The English consider that Russian influence is currently too great, and that
Russia is only leaving them the congruent portion of the Persian cake, so they

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encouraged us to protest and opened their gardens to us. It is even said that they
were the ones who printed the photograph which compromised Monsieur Naus.
When our movement triumphed, London managed to obtain an agreement from
the Tsar to share the country. The north of Persia would be the Russian zone of
influence and the south would be the private property of England. Once the
British got what they wanted, our democracy suddenly ceased to interest them.
Like the Tsar they can only see it as an inconvenience and would prefer to see it
disappear.’
‘By what right!’ Baskerville exploded.
Fazel gave him a paternal smile before carrying on with his account:
‘After the visit of the two diplomats, the deputies were disheartened. They
were unable to confront so many enemies at the same time and could do no
better than to lay the blame on the unfortunate Panoff. Several speakers accused
him of being a forger and an anarchist whose sole aim was to provoke a war
between Persia and Russia. The journalist had come with me to parliament and I
had left him in an office near the door to the great hall so that he could give his
testimony should it be necessary. Now the deputies were asking for him to be
arrested and delivered to the Tsar’s legation and a motion had been put forward
to that effect.
‘This man who had helped us against his own government was going to be
handed over to the executioners! I who am so calm by nature, could no longer
hold myself back. I jumped up on to a chair and shouted like one possessed: “I
swear, by the soil which covers my father, that if this man is arrested I will call
the ‘sons of Adam’ to arms and set this parliament awash in blood. No one who
votes for this motion will leave here alive!” They could have lifted my immunity
and arrested me too, but they did not dare. They suspended the session until the
next day. That very night I left the capital for my birthplace, where I arrived
today. Panoff came with me and is now hiding somewhere in Tabriz while
waiting to leave the country.’
We talked and talked and soon dawn surprised us. The first calls to prayer
sounded and the light became brighter. We debated and constructed a thousand
gloomy futures and then debated again, too exhausted to stop. Baskerville
stretched out, stopped in full flight, consulted his watch and stood up again like a
sleep-walker and gave his neck a thorough scratch:
‘My God, it’s already six o’clock, a night with no sleep, how can I face my
pupils? And what will the Reverend say seeing me come back at this hour?’
‘You can always pretend that you spent the night with a woman!’

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Howard, however, was no longer in the mood to smile.
I do not want to speak of coincidence, since chance did not play a large role
in the affair, but I am duty bound to point out that, just as Fazel finished his
description of the plot being hatched against the young Persian democracy based
on the documents which had been spirited away by Panoff, the coup d’état had
already begun.
In fact, as I later learnt, it was toward four o’clock in the morning of that
Wednesday, 23 June 1908, that a contingent of one thousand Cossacks,
commanded by Colonel Liakhov, set off toward the Baharistan, the seat of the
parliament, in the heart of Teheran. The building was surrounded and its exits
under guard. Members of a local 
anjuman
, who had noticed the troop
movements, ran over to a neighbouring college, where a telephone had recently
been installed, in order to call some deputies and certain religious democrats
such as Ayatollah Behbahani and Ayatollah Tabatabai. They all came there
before dawn to indicate by their presence their attachment to the constitution.
Curiously the Cossacks let them through. Their orders had been to prevent
anyone leaving, not entering.
The crowd of protesters kept swelling and at day-break there were several
hundreds of them, including numerous ‘sons of Adam’. They had rifles, but not
much ammunition – about sixty cartridges each, certainly not enough to enable
them to withstand a siege. Moreover they were hesitant about using their arms
and ammunition. They effectively took up position on roof-tops and behind
windows but they did not know whether they should fire the first shots, thereby
giving the signal for an inevitable massacre, or whether they should wait
passively while the preparations for the coup were carried out.
It was precisely that which delayed the Cossack’s assault even longer.
Liakhov, surrounded by Russian and Persian officers, was busy stationing his
troops as well as his cannons, of which six were counted that day, the most lethal
one being installed on Topkhaneh Square. On several occasions the Colonel rode
within the defenders’ line of sight, but the personalities present prevented the
‘sons of Adam’ from opening fire lest the Tsar use such an incident as a pretext
for invading Persia.
It was toward the middle of the afternoon that the order to attack was given.
Although the sides were unequal, the fighting raged for six or seven hours. By a
series of bold strokes, the resisters managed to put three cannons out of action.
However this was the heroism of despair. By nightfall the white flag of defeat

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was raised over the first parliament in Persian history, but several minutes after
the last shot Liakhov ordered his artillery to fire again. The Tsar’s directives
were clear; it was not enough to abolish the parliament, they also had orders to
destroy the building which had accommodated it, so the inhabitants of Teheran
would see its ruins and it would be forever a lesson to all.

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