Authors: Amin Maalouf
We were already on the outskirts of the village. The police were everywhere and searching everything down to the packs on
the mules, but who would have dared hold up a royal convoy? We followed our route as far as the courtyard of a hugh saffron-coloured
building. In its centre was an immense and ancient oak-tree around which warriors, with two bandoliers crossed across their
chests, were bustling. The Princess could only look with disdain upon these virile ornaments which complemented their thick
moustaches.
‘I am leaving you in good hands, as you see; they will protect you better than the weak women who have looked after you so
far.’
‘I doubt it.’
My eyes worriedly followed the rifle barrels which were pointing in all directions.
‘I doubt it too,’ she laughed. ‘But all the same they will take you over to Turkey.’
As the moment came to say goodbye, I decided not to:
‘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.’
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:
‘Mirza Reza, lost child of Persia! Would that you had simply been mad, would that you had just been wise! If only you had
been content to betray me or to remain faithful to me, to inspire tenderness or revulsion! How can we love or hate you? And
God Himself, what will He do with you? Will He raise you up to the victims’ Paradise or relegate you to hangman’s hell?’
He came and sat down again, exhausted, with his face buried in his hands. I remained silent, and even made myself breathe
more quietly. Jamaladin sat up. His voice seemed calmer and his mood more lucid.
‘The words I read are indeed Mirza Reza’s. Until now I still had my doubts, but I do not any more. He is definitely the assassin.
He probably thought he was acting to avenge me. Perhaps he thought he was obeying me. However, contrary to what he believes,
I never gave him an order to murder. When he came to Constantinople to tell me how he had been tortured by the Shah’s son
and his cohorts his tears were flowing. Wanting to shake him out of it, I told him: “Now stop whining! People will say that
you just want them to feel sorry for you, that you would even mutilate yourself so that they
will feel sorry for you!” I told him an old legend: when the armies of Darius confronted those of Alexander the Great, the
Greek’s counsellors brought to his attention that the troups of the Persians were much more numerous than his. Alexander kept
his poise and shrugged. “My men,” he said, “fight to win. The men of Darius fight to die!”’
Jamaladin seemed to be racking his memory.
‘That is when I told Mirza Reza: “If the Shah’s son is persecuting you, destroy him, instead of destroying yourself!” Was
that really a call to murder? Do you, who know Mirza Reza, really think that I could have entrusted such a mission to a madman
whom a thousand people may have met here in this very house?’
I wanted to be honest.
‘You are not capable of the crime they are attributing to you, but your moral responsibility cannot be denied.’
He was touched by my frankness.
‘That I admit. Just as I admit that daily I wished that the Shah would die. But what use is it for me to defend myself. I
am a condemned man.’
He went over to a small chest and took out a sheet with some fine calligraphy on it.
‘This morning I wrote my will.’
He placed the text in my hands and I read it with emotion:
‘I do not suffer from being kept prisoner. I have no fear of death being near. My only source of sorrow is having to state
that I have not seen blossom the seeds I have sown. Tyranny continues to oppress the peoples of the Orient and obscurantism
still stifles their freedom cry. Perhaps I would have been more successful if I had planted my seeds in the fertile soil of
the people rather than in the arid soil of royal courts. And you, people of Persia, in whom I placed my greatest hopes, do
not think that by eliminating a man you can win your freedom. It is the weight of secular tradition that you must dare to
shake.’
‘Keep a copy of it and translate it for Henri Rochefort.
L’lntransigeant
is the only newspaper which still holds me innocent. The others treat me as an assassin. The whole world wants my death.
Let them be reassured – I have cancer. Cancer of the jaw.’
As with every time that his resolve weakened and he complained, he tried to make up for it on the spot by giving a forced
laugh of unconcern and making a learned jest.
‘Cancer, cancer, cancer,’ he repeated as if in warning. ‘In the past doctors attributed illnesses to the conjunctions of the
stars, but only cancer has kept its astrological name, in all languages. The fear is still there.’
He remained pensive and melancholy for a few moments, but then hurried to carry on, in a happier vein which was blatantly
affected but, for all that, more poignant.
‘I curse this cancer. Yet nothing says that it is the cancer which will kill me. The Shah is demanding my extradition: the
Sultan cannot hand me over since I am still his guest, but be cannot let a regicide go unpunished. He has hated the Shah and
his dynasty to no avail, plotted against him every day, but members of the brother-hood of the great of this world bolster
each other against an intruder like Jamaladin. What is the solution? The Sultan will have me kill myself, and the new Shah
will be comforted, since, in spite of his repeated requests for my extradition, he has no wish to stain his hands with my
blood at the outset of his reign. Who will kill me? The cancer? The Shah? The Sultan? Perhaps I will never have the time to
know. But you, my friend, you will know.’
He then had the gall to laugh!
In fact I never knew. The circumstances surrounding the death of the great reformer of the Orient remained a mystery. I heard
the news a few months after my return to Annapolis. A notice in the 12 March 1897 edition of
l’Intransigeant
informed me of his death three days earlier. It was only towards the end of the summer, when the promised letter from Shireen
arrived, that I heard the version of Jamaladin’s death which was current among his disciples. ‘For some months he had been
suffering from raging tooth-ache,’ she wrote, ‘no doubt caused by his cancer. That day, as the pain had become unbearable,
he sent his servant to the Sultan who sent over his own dentist who listened to Jamaladin’s chest, unwrapped a syringe which
he had already prepared and gave him an injection
in the gums while explaining that the pain would soon die down. Hardly a few seconds passed before the Master’s jaw swelled
up. Seeing him suffocating, the servant ran off to bring back the dentist, who had not yet left the house, but instead of
coming back the man started to run as fast as he could towards the carriage which was waiting for him. Sayyid Jamaladin died
a few minutes later. In the evening, agents of the Sultan came to take away his body, which was hurriedly washed and buried.’
The princess’s account finished, without any transition, by quoting words from Khayyam which she had carefully translated:
‘Those who have amassed so much information, who have guided us towards knowledge, are they themselves not swamped by doubt?
They tell a story and then go to bed.’