‘I know that the time is hardly right to speak about it, but perhaps you know by some chance if an old manuscript was found in Mirza Reza’s luggage.’
Her eyes avoided mine and her voice took on a grating tone.
‘The time is indeed badly chosen. Do not utter that madman’s name again until you get to Constantinople!’
‘It is a manuscript by Khayyam!’
I was right to insist. After all, it was because of that book that I had allowed myself to be dragged into this Persian adventure. However Shireen gave a sigh of impatience.
‘I know nothing of it. I will make inquiries. Leave me your address and I will write to you. However, please do not reply to me.’
As I scribbled down ‘Annapolis, Maryland’ I had the impression that I was already far away and I had started feeling sorry that my foray into Persia had been so short and that it had gone so wrong from the start. I held the paper out to the Princess. As she was about to take it, I took hold of her hand — briefly but firmly. She also squeezed my hand, digging a finger-nail into my palm, without scratching me but leaving behind its distinct outline for a few minutes. Smiles came to both our lips and we uttered the same phrase in unison:
‘You never know, our paths might meet!’
For two months I saw nothing which resembled what I was used to calling a road. Upon leaving Shah Abdul-Azim we headed southwest in the direction of the Bakhtiaris’ tribal territory. After we had skirted the salt lake of Qom we followed its eponymous river but did not go into the city itself. My guides, who brandished their rifles permanently for battle, took care to avoid built-up areas and although Shireen’s uncle often took the trouble to inform me that we were at Amouk, Vertcha or Khomein, it was only a turn of phrase by which he meant that we were on a level with those localities whose minarets we could make out in the distance and whose contours I was happy to leave to my imagination.
In the mountains of Luristan, beyond the sources of the Qom River, my guides became less vigilant — we were in Bakhtiari territory. A feast was organised in my honour. I was given an opium pipe to smoke and I fell asleep on the spot amid general hilarity. I then had to wait two days before starting off again on the route which was still long: Shuster, Ahvaz and finally the perilous swamp crossing to Basra, the city of Ottoman Iraq which lay on the Shatt al-Arab.
At last, out of Persia and safe! There was still a long month at sea to get by sail-boat from Fao to Bahrain, then I had to sail down the Pirate coast to Aden and come back up the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to Alexandria in order finally to cross the Mediterranean in an old Turkish steamer to Constantinople.
Throughout this interminable escape, which was tiring but went without a hitch, the only leisure activity I had was to read and reread the ten manuscript pages of Mirza Reza’s cross-examination. Doubtless I would have tired of it had I any other distractions, but this forced meeting with a man condemned to death exercised an undeniable fascination over me, in that I could easily imagine him, with his gaunt limbs, his eyes racked with pain and his unlikely clothing of a devout. Sometimes I thought I could even hear this tortured voice:
‘What were the reasons that induced you to kill our beloved Shah?’
‘Those who have eyes to see with will have no difficulty in noticing that the Shah was struck down in the very same place where Jamaladin was abused. What had that saintly man done, that true descendant of the Prophet, to deserve to be dragged out of the sanctuary the way he was?’
‘Who induced you to kill the Shah, who are you accomplices?’
‘I swear by almighty and omnipotent God, by God who created Jamaladin and all other humans, that no one apart from me and the Sayyid knew anything of my plan to kill the Shah. The Sayyid is in Constantinople. Try and reach him!’
‘What instructions did Jamaladin give you?’
‘When I went to Constantinople, I told him of the tortures to which the Shah’s son had submitted me. The Sayyid ordered me to be silent, saying, “Stop whining as if you were leading a funeral service! Can you do nothing other than cry? If the Shah’s son tortured you, kill him!”’
‘Why kill the Shah rather than his son, since he is the one who wronged you and it is upon the son that Jamaladin advised you to take your revenge?’
‘I said to myself: “If I kill the son, the Shah with his vast power will kill thousands of people in reprisal.” Instead of cutting off a branch, I preferred to pull out the whole tree of tyranny by its roots in the hope that a different tree would spring up in its place. Besides the Sultan of Turkey said to Sayyid Jamaladin in private that in order to bring about the union of all Muslims we had to get rid of this Shah.’
‘How do you know what the Sultan might have said to Jamaladin in private?’
‘Sayyid Jamaladin himself told me. He trusted me and hid nothing from me. When I was in Constantinople he treated me like his own son.’
‘If you were so well treated there why did you come back to Persia where you feared being arrested and tortured?’
‘I am one of those who believe that no leaf falls from a tree unless that has been planned and inscribed, since the beginning of time, in the Book of Destiny. It was written that I would come to Persia and would be the tool for the act which has just been carried out.’
CHAPTER 32
If those men who strolled about on Yildiz Hill, all around Jamaladin’s house, had written on their fezzes ‘Sultan’s spy’, they would not have given away any more than what the most artless of visitors took in at first glance. Perhaps, however, that was their real purpose in being there: to discourage visitors. In fact, the residence, which usually swarmed with disciples, foreign correspondents and various personages who were in town, was totally deserted on that close September day. Only the servant was there, as discreet as ever. He led me to the first floor where the Master was to be found, pensive and distant and slumped deep in a cretonne and velvet armchair.
When he saw me arrive his face lit up. He came toward me with great strides and held me to him, apologizing for the trouble he had caused and saying that he was happy that I had been able to extricate myself. I described to him my escape in the smallest detail, and how the Princess had intervened, before returning to tell him of my too brief meeting with Fazel and then with Mirza Reza. The very mention of the latter’s name irritated Jamaladin.
‘I have just been informed that he was hanged last month. May God forgive him! Naturally he knew what his fate would be and could only have been surprised by the length of time it took to execute him — more than a hundred days after the Shah’s death! Doubtless they tortured him to extract a confession.’
Jamaladin spoke slowly. He seemed to have grown weak and thin; his face which was usually so serene was beset with twitches which at times disfigured him without detracting from his magnetism. One had the impression that he was suffering, particularly when he spoke of Mirza Reza.
‘I can hardly believe it of that poor boy, whom I had looked after there in Constantinople, whose hand never stopped shaking and who seemed incapable of holding a cup of tea — that he could hold a pistol and fell the Shah with one shot. Do you not think that they might be exploiting his unbalanced mind to pin someone else’s crime on him?’
I replied by handing him the cross-examination which the Princess had copied out. He put on a slim pair of pince-nez and read and re-read it with fervour, or was it terror, or, it seemed to me from time to time, a sort of inner joy. Then he folded it up, slipped it into his pocket and proceeded to pace up and down the room. There were ten minutes of silence before he uttered this curious prayer: