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particularly its public finances, into line with the accepted norms for
civilised nations.
We beseech God to guide the representatives of the nation and to
assure honour, independence and happiness for Persia.
Teheran was jubilant that day. Everyone was out in the street, singing at the
crossroads, reciting improvised poems whose words all either rhymed or were
made to rhyme with ‘Constitution’, ‘Democracy,’ or ‘Liberty’. Merchants
offered the passer-by drinks and sweetmeats, and dozens of newspapers which
had been silenced after the coup d’état brought out special editions announcing
their resurrection.
At nightfall fireworks lit up the city. Seating had been erected in the gardens
of the Baharistan. The diplomatic corps sat on the grandstand together with
members of the new government, deputies, religious dignitaries and the bazaar
guilds. As a friend of Baskerville I was entitled to sit near the front and my chair
was just behind Fazel’s. There was a stream of explosions and bangs, the sky
was lit up at times and people turned their heads and leaned to and fro smiling
like overjoyed children. Outside, sons of Adam tirelessly chanted the same
slogans for hours.
I do not know what noise or shout brought Howard back into my thoughts.
He so deserved to be at the celebration! At that very moment, Fazel turned to
me:
‘You seem sad.’
‘Sad. Certainly not! I have always wanted to hear the word ‘freedom’ ringing
out on the soil of the Orient, but some memories are bothering me.’
‘Cast them aside. Smile and rejoice. Make the most of the last moments of
exhilaration.’
Worrying words which divested me of any wish to celebrate that evening.
Was Fazel, after an interval of seven months, about to take up the difficult
discussion which set us against each other in Tabriz? Did he have new cause for
worry? I made up my mind to go and see him the following day for an
explanation, but in the end I decided against it. I avoided seeing him for a whole
year.
What were the reasons? I believe that after the arduous adventure I had just
been through, I had some nagging doubts about the wisdom of the role I had
played in Tabriz. I had come to the Orient in search of a manuscript and had it
been right for me to become so involved in a struggle which was not mine? To
begin with, by what right had I advised Howard to come to Persia?
In the language of Fazel and his friends, Baskerville was a martyr; in my eyes
he was a dead friend, a friend who had died in a foreign country for a foreign
cause, a friend whose parents would one day write to me to ask me in the most
poignantly polite of terms why I had led their son astray.
Was it remorse I was feeling over Howard? It was, to be more correct, a
certain feeling of decency. I do not know if that is the right word, but I am trying
to say that after my friends’ victory I had no desire to strut around Teheran
listening to people laud my supposed exploits during the siege of Tabriz. I had
played a minimal and quite fortuitous role. Above all I had had a friend who was
a heroic compatriot and I had no intention of exploiting his memory to obtain
privileges and respect for myself.
To tell the whole truth, I felt a great need to disappear from view, to be
forgotten and not to visit politicians,
anjuman
-members and diplomats. The only
person that I saw every day, and with a pleasure that never diminished, was
Shireen. I had talked her into going to live in one of the numerous residences
belonging to her family in the heights of Zarganda, a holiday resort outside the
capital. I myself had rented a small house in the neighbourhood, but that was for
the sake of appearances and I spent my days and nights at Shireen’s, with the
collusion of her servants.
That winter we managed to spend whole weeks without leaving her huge
bedroom. We were warmed by a magnificent copper brazier, we read the
manuscript and some other books, lazed around for hours smoking the
kalyan
,
drinking Shiraz wine and sometimes even champagne, munching Kirmani
pistachios and Isfahani nougat; my Princess could be a great lady or a little girl
at one and the same time and we felt great tenderness for each other the whole
time.
With the onset of the first warm days, Zarganda started to liven up.
Foreigners and the richest Persians had sumptuous houses there and would move
in for long months of idleness surrounded by luxuriant vegetation. It is a matter
beyond dispute that only the proximity of this paradise made the grey dullness of
Teheran bearable for innumerable diplomats. However Zarganda became a
ghost-town in the winter, with only the gardeners, some caretakers and the rare
survivors of its indigenous population staying behind. Shireen and I were badly
in need of just such a desert.
However from April on, alas, the visitors took up their summer lodgings.
There were people strolling in front to all the entrance-gates and people walking
down all the paths. After every night and every siesta, Shireen offered tea to
female visitors with roving eyes. I was always having to hide or flee down the
corridors. The gentle months of hibernation had been used up, and it was time
for me to leave.
When I informed her, my princess was sad but resigned.
‘I thought you were happy.’
‘I have experienced a rare moment of happiness. I want to put it in suspended
animation so that it will still be intact when I come back to it. I never tire of
watching you, with both astonishment and love. I do not want the invading
crowd to change the way I see you. I am going away in the summer so that I may
find you again in the winter.’
‘Summer, winter. You go away, you come back. You think that you can
dispose of the seasons, the years, your life and mine with impunity. Have you
learnt nothing from Khayyam?
“Suddenly Heaven robs you of even the moment you need to moisten your
lips.”
’
She looked deep into my eyes, as if she were reading an open book. She had
understood everything and sighed.
‘Where are you thinking of going?’
I did not know yet. I had come to Persia twice and twice I had led a besieged
existence. I still had the whole of the Orient to discover, from the Bosphorous to
the China Sea – Turkey which has just risen up at the same time as Persia, which
deposed its Sultan-Caliph and which now prides itself upon its deputies,
senators, clubs and opposition newspapers; proud Afghanistan which the British
managed to subdue, but at what cost! And of course there was all of Persia to
explore. I knew only Tabriz and Teheran. But what of Isfahan, Shiraz, Kashan
and Kirman? Nishapur and Khayyam’s tomb, a grey stone watched over for
centuries by untiring generations of petals.
Out of all the roads which lay before me, which should I take? It was the
manuscript which chose for me. I took the train to Krasnovodsk, crossed
Ashkabad and old Merv and hence to Bukhara.
Most importantly, I went to Samarkand.
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