Samarkand (35 page)

The commander of the Cossacks had no choice other than to lay down his arms. He swore henceforth to respect the Constitution
and to place himself in the service of the victors on condition that his brigade was not dissolved, which reassurance he was
duly given.

A new Shah was appointed: the youngest son of the fallen Shah, who was just twelve years old. According to Shireen, who had
known him since the cradle, he was a gentle and sensitive adolescent, with neither cruelty nor perversity. When he crossed
the capital the day after the fighting to go to the palace in the company of his tutor, Mr Smirnoff, he was greeted with shouts
of ‘Long live
the Shah!’, coming from the same people who a day earlier had been yelling, ‘Death to the Shah!’

In public the young Shah cut a fine figure. He appeared royal, did not smile to excess and waved his pale hand in greeting
to his subjects. However, once back at the palace he caused great concern to his courtiers. Having been brutally separated
from his parents, he cried and cried. He even tried to run away that summer in order to join his father and mother. When he
was caught he tried to hang himself from the palace ceiling, but when he started to choke he took fright, called for help
and was rescued in time. That misadventure had a beneficial effect on him. He was now cured of his anxieties and would act
his role of constitutional monarch in a dignified and good-natured manner.

Real power however was in the hands of Fazel and his friends. They inaugurated the new era with a purge: six supporters of
the old régime were executed including the two main religious chiefs of Tabriz who had led the struggle against the sons of
Adam, as well as Sheikh Fazlullah Nouri. He was accused of having given his backing to the massacres which followed the coup
d’état the previous year; he therefore was convicted on a charge of collusion to murder and his death warrant was ratified
by the Shiite hierarchy. However there was hardly any doubt that the sentence had symbolic value: Nouri had been responsible
for decreeing that the constitution was a heresy. He was hanged in public in the Topkhaneh Square
on 31 July 1909. Before he died he murmured: ‘I am not a reactionary!’ only to follow this by stating to his supporters who
were dotted throughout the crowd that the constitution was contrary to their religion and that religion would have the last
word.

The first task of the new leaders, however, was to rebuild the parliament: the building rose out of its ruins and elections
were organized. On 15 November, the young Shah formally inaugurated the second Majlis in Persian history with these words:

In the name of God who has given us Freedom, and with the protection of his Holiness the hidden Imam, the National Consultative
Assembly is hereby opened in joy and with the best omens.

Intellectual progress and the evolution of our way of thinking have rendered change inevitable. It has come about after a
dreadful ordeal, but Persia has known, down the centuries, how to survive many crises, and today its people see their desires
accomplished. We are happy to state that the new progressive government enjoys the support of the people, and that it is bringing
peace and confidence back to the country.

In order to be able to carry out the necessary reform, it must be a priority of the government and the Parliament to bring
the state, 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.

I was curious to see what was left of the city where Khayyam spent the flower of his youth.

What had become of the district of Asfizar and of that belevedere in the garden where Omar had loved Jahan? Was there still
some trace of the suburb of Maturid, where in the eleventh century that Jewish paper-maker was still turning white mulberry
branches into pulp according to an old Chinese recipe. For weeks I went about on foot, and then on a mule; I questioned the
merchants, the passers-by and the imams of the mosques, but they only replied with blank unknowing looks, amused smiles and
generous invitations for me to squat on their sky-blue divans and take tea with them.

It was my luck to be in the Registan Square one morning. A caravan was passing. It was a short caravan, consisting of just
six or seven thick-haired and heavy-hoofed Bactrian camels. The old camel-driver had stopped not far from me in front of a
potter’s stall, holding a new-born lamb to his chest; he proposed a barter and the craftsman discussed it; without taking
his hands off the jar or the wheel, he pointed with his chin toward a pile of varnished vessels. I watched the two men with
their black-bordered woollen hats, their striped robes, reddish beards and their ancient gestures. Was there any detail of
this scene which had not come down unchanged from the time of Khayyam?

There was a slight breeze and the sand started to swirl, their clothing billowed and the whole square was covered with an
unreal haze. I cast my eyes around. At the edge of the square rose three monuments, three gigantic complexes of towers, domes,
gateways and high walls completely covered with minute mosaics, arabesques studded with gold, amethyst and turquoise, and
intricate calligraphy. It all retained its majesty, but the towers were leaning, the domes had gaping holes, the facades were
crumbling, ravaged by time, wind and centuries of neglect; people no longer looked at these monuments, these haughty, proud
and forgotten giants which provided an imposing backdrop for a derisory play.

I was retreating backwards and stepped on someone’s foot. When I turned round to apologize I was face to face with a man dressed
like me in European clothing, a man who had set sail from the same distant planet. We struck up a conversation. He was Russian,
an archaeologist. He also had come with a thousand questions, but he already had some answers.

‘In Samarkand, time moves from one cataclysm to the next and from one
tabula rasa
to the next. When the Mongols destroyed the city in the thirteenth century, its various districts were left a mass of ruins
and corpses. It had to be abandoned; the survivors went to rebuild their dwellings on another site, further to the south,
with the result that the whole of the old city, the Samarkand of the Seljuks, was gradually covered by layers of sand and
became a raised field. There are treasures and secrets under the ground, but the surface is a pasture. One day it will all
have to be opened up, the houses and the street dug up. Once freed, Samarkand will be able to tell us its history.’

He broke off.

‘Are you an archaeologist?’

‘No. This city attracts me for other reasons.’

‘Would it be impolite of me to ask what they are?’

I told him of the manuscript, the poems, the chronicle, and the paintings which evoked the lovers of Samarkand.

‘I would love to see that book! Do you know that everything from that time has been destroyed – as if by a curse. Walls, palaces,
orchards, gardens, water-pipes, religious sites, books and the
principal
objets d’art.
The monuments which we admire today were all built later by Tamerlane and his descendants. They are less than five hundred
years old. From Khayyam’s era we only have potsherds and, as you have just informed me, this manuscript which has miraculously
survived. It is a privilege for you to be able to hold it in your hands and read it at your leisure. It is a privilege and
also a heavy responsibility.’