He drew on his cigar and the smoke was scattered by a burst of laughter.
‘What the Shah did not know,’ Jamaladin continued, ‘was that his Minister of Post was one of my most faithful disciples and that I had entrusted him with distributing the newspaper as best he could.’
Jamaladin was chuckling as three visitors sporting blood-red felt fezzes arrived. He arose, greeted and kissed them and invited them to be seated and exchanged a few words with them in Arabic. I guessed that he was explaining to them who I was, and begging their forgiveness for a few moments more. He came back toward me.
‘If you are determined to set off for Teheran, I will give you some letters of introduction. Come tomorrow, they will be ready. Above all do not be afraid. No one will think of searching an American.’
The next day three brown envelopes were waiting for me. He laid them in my hand, open. The first was for the consul in Baku and the second for Mirza Reza. As he gave me that one, he made a comment:
‘I must warn you that this man is unbalanced and obsessive. Do not spend more time with him than you must. I have much affection for him, he is more sincere, more faithful and doubtless purer than all my disciples, but he is capable of the worst blunders.’
He sighed and dug his hand into the pocket of the wide pantaloons he was wearing under his white tunic.
‘Here are ten gold pounds. Give them to him from me; he no longer has anything and perhaps he is hungry, but he is too proud to beg.’
‘Where will I find him?’
‘I have not the slightest idea. He no longer has a house or a family and he roams from place to place. That is why I am giving you this third letter addressed to another quite different young man. He is the son of the richest trader in Teheran, and although he is only twenty and burns with the same fire as we all do, he is still even-tempered and ready to debate the most revolutionary ideas with the smile of a satisfied child. I sometimes reproach him for not being very oriental. You will see, beneath his Persian clothing there is English cool, French ideas and a more anti-clerical spirit than that of Monsieur Clemenceau. His name is Fazel. It is he who will take you to Mirza Reza. I have charged Fazel with keeping an eye on him, as much as possible. I do not think that he can stop him committing his acts of folly, but he will know where to find him.’
I stood up to leave. He bad me a fond farewell and kept hold of my hand in his own.
‘Rochefort tells me in his letter that you are called Benjamin Omar. In Persia only use the name Benjamin. Never say the word Omar.’
‘But it is Khayyam’s name!’
‘Since the sixteenth century, when Persia converted to Shiism, that name has been banned. It could cause you much trouble. If you try to identify with the Orient, you could find yourself caught up in its quarrels.’
I made an expression of regret and consolation, a sign of impotence. I thanked him for his advice and made to leave, but he caught hold of me:
‘One last thing. Yesterday you met a young person here as she was getting ready to leave. Did you speak to her?’
‘No. I had no occasion to.’
‘She is the Shah’s grand-daughter, Princess Shireen. If, for whatever reason, you find all the doors shut, get a message to her and remind her that you saw her here. One word from her will be enough to overcome many obstacles.’
CHAPTER 29
On board a ship to Trebizond, the Black Sea was calm, too calm. The wind blew only lightly and for hours on end one could contemplate only the same piece of coast, the same rock or the same Anatolian copse. It would have been wrong of me to complain, I needed some peace and quiet given the arduous task that I had to accomplish: to memorise the whole book of Persian-French dialogue written by Monsieur Nicolas, Khayyam’s translator. I had resolved to speak to my hosts in their own language. I was not unaware of the fact that in Persia, as in Turkey, many of the intellectuals, the merchants and the high officials spoke French. Some even knew English. However, if one wanted to move outside the restricted circle of the palaces and the legations, and travel outside the main cities or in their seedier districts, it had to be done in Persian.
The challenge stimulated and amused me. I delighted in discovering affinities with my own language, as well as with various Romance languages. Father, mother, brother, daughter in Persian were ‘pedar’, ‘madar’ ‘baradar’ and ‘dokhtar’, and the common Indo-european roots can hardly be better illustrated. Even in naming God, the Muslims of Persia say ‘Khoda’, a term much closer to the English ‘God’ or the German ‘Gott’ than to ‘Allah’. In spite of this example, the predominate influence is that of Arabic which is exercised in a curious way: many Persian words can be replaced arbitrarily by their Arabic equivalent. It is even a form of cultural snobbery, much appreciated by intellectuals, to pepper their speech with terms, or with whole phrases, in Arabic — a practice of which Jamaladin was particularly fond.
I resolved myself to apply myself to Arabic later, but for the moment I had enough on my plate trying to understand Monsieur Nicholas’ texts, which apart from a knowledge of Persian was providing me with useful information about the country. It was full of conversations such as:
‘Which products could one export from Persia?’
‘Shawls from Kirman, fine pearls, turquoise, carpets, tobacco from Shiraz, silks from Mazanderan, leeches and cherrywood pipes.’
‘When travelling, should a cook be taken along?’
‘Yes, in Persia one cannot move without a cook, a bed, carpets and servants.’
‘What foreign coins are used in Persia?’
‘Russian Imperials, Dutch carbovans and ducats, English and French coins are very rare.’
‘What is the current king called?’
‘Nasser ed-din Shah.’
‘It is said that he is an excellent king.’
‘Yes. He is extremely benevolent to foreigners and extremely generous. He is highly educated, with a knowledge of history, geography and drawing; he speaks French and is fluent in the oriental languages — Arabic, Turkish and Persian.’
Once at Trebizond I took a room in the Hotel d’ltalie, the only hotel in town, which was comfortable if one could but forget the swarms of flies which transformed every meal into an uninterrupted and exasperating gesticulation. I resigned myself to imitating the other visitors by employing for a few meagre coins a young adolescent whose job was to fan me and keep the insects away. The most difficult thing was convincing him to get them away from my table without squashing them before my eyes, in between the dolmas and the kebabs. He obeyed me for some time, but as soon as he saw a fly within reach of his fearsome instrument, the temptation was too great and he would swat.
On the fourth day I found a place on board a freight steamer running the Marseille-Constantinople-Trebizond line. It look me as far as Batum, the Russian port on the east of the Black Sea, where I took the Transcaucasian Railway to Baku on the Caspian Sea. The Persian consul there received me so warmly that I hesitated to show him Jamaladin’s letter. Would it not be better to remain an anonymous traveller and not arouse any suspicions? However, I was beset by some scruples. Perhaps the letter contained a message concerning something other than myself and I therefore did not have the right to keep it to myself. Abruptly I thus resolved to say, in any enigmatic way: