Morgan deliberated for a moment:
‘I shall respond to the only important question: no, I have not come to preach or convert, but in order to reform Persian finances which are in dire need of it. I shall add, for your information, that I am of course not a bahai and that I only learnt of the existence of these sects from Professor Browne’s book just before I arrived, and that I am still unable to differentiate between a babi and a bahai. On the matter of my servants, of whom there are a good fifteen in this huge house, everyone knows that they were here before I arrived. Their work gives me satisfaction and that is the only thing that matters. I am not accustomed to judge fellow-workmen by their faith or the colour of their tie!’
‘I can understand your attitude perfectly well. It corresponds to my own convictions. However, we are in Persia and sensibilities are sometimes different. I have just seen the new Minister of Finance. He thinks that in order to silence the slanderers, the servants concerned, or at least some of them, will have to be fired.’
‘Is the Minister of Finance worrying about this business?’
‘More than you think. He fears that it might jeopardize everything he has undertaken in his sector. He has asked me to brief him this evening on how I have got on.’
‘Don’t let me delay you. You can tell him on my behalf that no servant will be dismissed and that as far as I am concerned the matter ends there!’
He stood up. I felt compelled to keep trying.
‘I am not certain that that response will be sufficient, Morgan!’
‘No? In that case, you can add to it: “Minister of Finance, if you have nothing better to do than examine my gardener’s religion, I can supply you with more important files to pad out your time.”’
I gave the minister only the gist of his words, but I am quite certain that Morgan himself repeated them to him verbatim at the first opportunity, moreover without causing the slightest drama. In fact everyone was happy that common sense had been spoken with no beating about the bush.
‘Since Shuster has been here,’ Shireen confided in me one day, ‘the atmosphere is somewhat healthier and cleaner. When faced with a chaotic and convoluted situation, one always thinks that it will take centuries to sort it out. Suddenly a man appears and as if by magic, the tree we thought was doomed takes on new life and starts bearing leaves and fruit and giving shade. This foreigner has given me back my faith in my countrymen. He does not speak to them as natives, he does not have any respect for peoples’ sensitivities or their pettiness, but speaks to them like men and the Persians are rediscovering that they are men. Do you know that in my family the old women pray for him?’
CHAPTER 46
I am in no way departing from the truth by stating that in that year of 1911 all of Persia was living in the ‘age of the American’ and that Shuster was indisputably the most popular official and one of the most powerful. The newspapers supported his actions all the more enthusiastically when he took the trouble to invite the editors over from time to time to brief them on his projects and solicit their advice on some prickly questions.
Above all, and most importantly, his difficult mission was on the road to success. Before even reforming the fiscal system, he managed to balance the budget simply by limiting theft and waste. Previously, innumerable notables, princes, ministers or high dignitaries would send their demands to the Treasury in the form of a note scribbled on a greasy piece of paper, and the civil servants were constrained to satisfy them unless they wished to lose their job or their life. With Morgan everything had changed overnight.
I will give one example out of so many others. On 17 June at a Cabinet meeting, Shuster was presented with a pathetic request for the sum of forty-two million tumans in order to pay the salaries of the troops in Teheran.
‘Otherwise a rebellion will break out and it is the Treasurer General who will bear the entire responsibility!’ exclaimed Amir-i-Azam, the ‘Supreme Emir’, the Minister of War.
Shuster gave the following response:
‘The Minister himself took a similar sum ten days ago. What has he done with it?’
‘I have used it to pay part of the soldiers’ back-pay. Their families are hungry and the officers are all in debt. The situation is intolerable.’
‘Is the Minister certain that there is nothing left from that sum?’
‘Not the smallest coin!’
Shuster took out of his pocket a small visiting card which was covered with tiny writing and which he conspicuously consulted before stating:
‘The sum which the Treasury paid out ten days ago has been deposited in its entirety in the personal account of the Minister. Not one tuman has been spent. I have here the name of the banker and the figures.’
The supreme Emir, a huge fleshy man, stood up, bristling with rage; he placed his hand on his chest and cast a furious glance at his colleagues:
‘Is this an attempt to question my honour?’
As no one reassured him on that point, he added:
‘I swear that if such a sum is indeed in my account, I am the last to know about it.’
There were some looks of incredulity around him, it was decided to bring in the banker and Shuster asked the ministers to wait where they were. The moment it was indicated that the man had arrived, the Minister of War rushed to meet him. After an exchange of whispers the supreme Emir came back to his colleagues with an artless smile.
‘This damned banker had not understood my orders. He has not yet paid the troops. It was a misunderstanding!’
The incident was closed, albeit with some difficulty, but thereafter the State’s high officials did not dare to pillage the Treasury to their heart’s content, a centuries-old custom. There were of course malcontents, but they had to keep silent since most of the people, even amongst the ranks of the government officials, had reason to be satisfied: for the first time in history, civil servants, soldiers, and Persian diplomats abroad received their salaries on time.
Even in international financial circles people were starting to believe in the Shuster miracle. As proof: the Seligman brothers, bankers in London, decided to grant Persia a loan of four million pounds sterling without imposing any humiliating clauses of the type which were generally attached to this type of transaction — neither a levy on customs receipts, nor a mortgage of any sort. It was a normal loan to a normal, respectable and potentially solvent client. That was an important step. In the eyes of those who wanted to subjugate Persia it was a dangerous precedent. The British government intervened to block the loan.
Meanwhile, the Tsar had recourse to more brutal methods. In July it was learned that the former Shah had returned, with two of his brothers and at the head of an army of mercenaries, to try and seize power. Had he not been under house arrest in Odessa, with the Russian government’s explicit promise never to allow him to return to Persia? When questioned, the St Petersburg authorities replied that he had slipped out with a false passport and that his armaments had been transported in boxes labelled ‘mineral water’, and that they themselves bore no responsibility for his rebellion. Thus he had left his residence in Odessa and with his men crossed the few hundred miles separating the Ukraine and Persia, boarded a Russian ship with all his armaments, crossed the Caspian Sea and disembarked on the Persian side — all of that without arousing the notice of the Tsar’s government, his army nor the Okhrana, his secret police?