Samarkand (28 page)

As to the fate of the
Manuscript
, which was her purpose in writing to me, Shireen informed me in rather terse terms: ‘It was in fact amongst the murderer’s
belongings. It is now with me. You may consult it at your leisure when you return to Persia.’

Return to Persia, where I had aroused so many suspicions?

I had retained from my Persian adventure nothing but cravings. It had taken me one month to get to Teheran and three months
to get out. I had spent a few days, which were both brief and numb, in its streets, having hardly had the time to breathe
in the smells, or to get to know or see anything. Too many images were still calling me toward the forbidden land: my proud
kalyan
smoker’s sluggishness, lording it over the whisps of smoke rising from the charcoal in the copper holders; my hand closing
around Shireen’s, a promise; my lips on breasts chastely offered by my mother of an evening and more than anything else, the
Manuscript
which awaited me lying in its guardian’s arms with its pages open.

To those who may never have contracted the obsession with the Orient, I scarcely dare mention that on Saturday at dusk I took
myself out for a walk on a stretch of the Annapolis beach that I knew would be deserted, wearing a pair of Turkish slippers,
my Persian robe and a lambskin
kulah
hat. There was no one on the beach, and immersed in my daydreams on my way back I made a detour via Compromise Road which
was not at all quiet. ‘Good evening Mr Lesage,’ ‘Have a nice walk. Mr Lesage.’ ‘Good evening Mrs Baymaster, Miss Highchurch,’
the greetings rang out, ‘Good evening Reverend.’ It was the pastor’s raised eyebrows which brought me back to myself. I stopped
dead in order to look
contritely at myself from my chest to my feet, to feel my headgear and hurry on my way. I think I even ran, draped in my
aba
as if to cover my nakedness. Once home I tore off my attire, rolled it up with a gesture of finality and then tossed it angrily
to the back of a broom cupboard.

I was on my guard not to do the same again, but that one walk had labelled me an eccentric – a label which doubtless would
be with me for life. In England eccentrics have always been viewed sympathetically or even admiringly, as long as they had
the excuse of being rich. America, in those years, was hardly ready for such behaviour; the country was approaching the turn
of the century with a certain prudish reticence – perhaps not in New York or San Francisco, but certainly in my town. A French
mother and a Persian hat – that was far too exotic for Annapolis.

That was the dark side, but my moment of folly also had its bright moments. It won me, on the spot, an undeserved reputation
as a great explorer of the Orient. The director of the local newspaper, Matthias Webb, who had got wind of my walk, suggested
that I write an article about my experience in Persia.

The last time that the name of Persia had been printed on the pages of the
Annapolis Gazette and Herald
was back to 1856, I believe, when a transatlantic liner, which was the pride of Cunard and the first ever metal-framed paddle-boat,
collided with an iceberg. Seven sailors from our county perished. The unfortunate ship was called the
Persia.

Sea-faring people do not play games with the signs of destiny. I also thought it necessary to remark in the introduction to
my article that the term ‘Persia’ was incorrect, and that the Persians themselves called their country ‘Iran’ which was an
abbreviation of a very ancient expression ‘Aïrania Vaedja’, meaning ‘Land of the Aryans’.

I then mentioned Omar Khayyam, the only Persian that most of my readers might have heard of, quoting one of his quatrains
which was imbued with a deep scepticism. ‘Paradise and Hell. Might someone have visited these unique regions?’ It provided
a useful preamble before I expounded over the course of some dense paragraphs on the numerous religions which, since the dawn
of time, have prospered on Persian soil, such as Zoroastrianism, Manicheism,
Sunni and Shiite Islam, Hassan Sabbah’s Ismaili variant and nearer our time, the
babis
, the
sheikhis
and the
bahais.
I did not omit to mentioned that our word ‘paradise’ comes originally from the Persian word
‘paradaeza’
which means ‘garden’.

Matthias Webb congratulated me on my apparent erudition, but when I become encouraged by his praise and suggested making a
more regular contribution he seemed embarrassed and suddenly irritated.

‘I really would like to put you to the test, if you will promise to drop this annoying habit of peppering your text with barbarian
words!’

My face betrayed my surprise and incredulity. Webb had his reasons.

‘The
Gazette
does not have the means to take on, permanently, a Persian specialist. However, if you agree to take charge of all the foreign
news, and if you think you are capable of making distant countries accessible to our compatriots, there is a place for you
on this newspaper. What your articles lose in profundity they will gain in range.’

We both managed to smile again; he offered me a peace cigar before continuing:

‘Just yesterday, abroad did not exist for us. The Orient stopped at Cape Cod. Now suddenly, under the pretext of the end of
one century and the start of another, our peaceful city has been laid hold of by the world’s troubles.’

I must point out that our discussion was taking place in 1899, a little after the Spanish-American war which took our troops
not only to Cuba and Puerto Rico but also the Philippines. Never before had the United States exercised its authority so far
from its shores. Our victory over the dilapidated Spanish empire had cost us only two thousand four hundred dead, but in Annapolis,
seat of the Naval Academy, every loss could have been that of a relative, a friend or an actual or potential fiancé; the most
conservative of my fellow citizens saw in President MacKinley a dangerous adventurer.

That was not Webb’s opinion at all, but he had to pander to his readers’ phobias. To get the point over to me, this serious
and
greying pater-familias stood up, uttered a roar, pulled a hilarious face and curled his fingers up as if they were the claws
of a monster.

‘The tough world outside is striding towards Annapolis, and your mission, Benjamin Lesage, is to reassure your compatriots.’

It was a heavy responsibility, of which I acquitted myself without too much ado. My sources of information were articles in
newspapers from Paris, London and of course New York, Washington and Baltimore. Out of everything I wrote about the Boer War,
the 1904-5 conflict between the Tsar and the Mikado or the troubles in Russia, I am afraid that not a single line deserves
to go down in history.

It was only on the subject of Persia that my career as a journalist can be mentioned. I am proud to say that the
Gazette
was the first American newspaper to foresee the explosion which was going to take place and news of which was going to occupy
much column space in the last months of 1906 in all the world’s newspapers. For the first, and probably the last, time articles
from the
Annapolis Gazette and Herald
were quoted, often even reproduced verbatim in more than sixty newspapers in the South and on the East Coast.

My town and newspaper owe that much to me. And I owe it to Shireen. It was in fact thanks to her, and not to my meagre experience
in Persia that I was able to understand the full extent of the events which were brewing.

I had not received anything from my princess for over seven years. If she owed me a response on the matter of the
Manuscript
, she had supplied me with one which was frustrating but precise. I did not expect to hear anything more from her, which does
not mean that I was not hoping to. With every mail delivery the idea ran through my mind and I looked over the envelopes for
her handwriting, for a stamp with Persian writing, a number five which was shaped like a heart. I did not dread my daily disappointment,
but experienced it as a homage to dreams which were still haunting me.

I have to say that at that time my family had just left Annapolis and settled in Baltimore where my father’s most important
business was to be concentrated. He envisaged founding his own bank along with two of his young brothers. As for me, I had
decided to stay
in the house where I was born, with our old half-deaf cook, in a city where I had few good friends. I do not doubt that my
solitude amplified the fervour of my waiting.

Then, one day, Shireen finally wrote to me. There was not a word about the
Samarkand Manuscript
and nothing personal in the long letter, except perhaps the fact that she began it with ‘Dear distant friend’. There followed
a day-by-day report of the events unfolding around her. Her account abounded in painstaking details, none of which was superfluous,
even when they seemed so to my vulgar eyes. I was in love with her wonderful intellect and flattered that she had chosen to
direct the fruit of her thoughts to me of all men.

From that moment I lived to the rhythm of her monthly letters, which were a vibrant chronicle and which I would have published
as they were if she had not demanded absolute discretion from me. She did authorize me, however, to use the information contained
in them, which I did shamelessly, drawing on them and sometimes translating and using whole passages with neither italics
nor quotation marks.

My way of presenting the facts to my readers, however, differed greatly from hers. For example, the princess never would have
thought of writing:

‘The Persian revolution was triggered when a Belgian minister had the disastrous idea of disguising himself as a
mullah.’

That, however, was not so far from the truth, although for Shireen the beginnings of the revolt were discernible at the time
of the Shah’s course of treatment at Contrexéville in 1900. Wanting to go there with his retinue, the Shah needed money. His
treasury was empty as usual and he had asked the Tsar for a loan and was granted 22.5 million roubles.

There was almost never such a poisoned gift. In order to make sure that their neighbour to the south, who was permanently
on the brink of bankruptcy, would be able to pay back such a large sum, the St Petersburg authorities demanded and succeeded
in gaining control of the Persian customs whose receipts were now to be paid directly to them. For a period of seventy-five
years! Aware of the
enormity of this privilege and fearing lest the other European powers take umbrage at this complete control over the foreign
trade of Persia, the Tsar avoided entrusting the customs to his own subjects and preferred to have King Leopold II take charge
of them on his behalf. That is how thirty or so Belgian functionaries came to the Shah’s court and their influence was to
grow to dizzy heights. The most eminent of them, namely a certain Monsieur Naus, managed to haul himself up to the highest
spheres of power. On the eve of the revolution, he was a member of the Supreme Council of the Kingdom, Minister of Post and
Telegraph, General Treasurer of Persia, Head of the Passport Department and Director General of the Customs. Amongst other
things, his job was to reorganize the whole fiscal system and it was to him that the new tax on freight carried by mule was
attributed.

It goes without saying that by that time Monsieur Naus had become the most hated man in Persia, the symbol of foreign control.
From time to time a voice would arise to demand his recall, a demand which seemed the more justified as he had neither a reputation
for incorruptibility nor the alibi of competence. However he stayed in place, supported by the Tsar, or rather by the retrograde
and fearsome
camarilla
who surrounded the latter and whose political objectives were now being expressed aloud in the official press of St Petersburg
– the exercise of undivided tutelage over Persia and the Persian Gulf.

Monsieur Naus’s position seemed unshakeable and it remained so until the moment his protector was shaken. That happened more
quickly than anyone in Persia had dreamt and it was precipitated by two major events. First, the war with Japan, which to
the whole world’s surprise ended with the defeat of the Tsar and the destruction of this fleet. Then the anger of the Russians
which was fuelled by the humiliation inflicted upon them because of incompetent leaders: the
Potemkin
rebellion, the Cronstadt mutiny, the Sebastopol uprising and the events in Moscow. I shall not discuss in detail these facts
which no one has yet forgotten, but I shall content myself by emphasising the devastating effect that they had on Persia,
in particularly in April 1906 when Nicolas II was forced to convene a parliament, the Duma.

It was in this atmosphere that the most banal event occurred. A masked ball was held at the residence of a Belgian functionary
which Monsieur Naus decided to attend dressed up as a
mullah.
There were chuckles, laughs and applause; people gathered around him to congratulate him and posed for photographs with him.
A few days later hundreds of copies of this picture were being distributed in the Teheran bazaar.

Shireen had sent me a copy of this document. I still have it and sometimes I still cast a nostalgic and amused glance at it.
It shows, seated on a carpet spread out amongst the trees of a garden, about forty men and women dressed in Turkish, Japanese
or Austrian garb. In the centre foreground appears Monsieur Naus, so well disguised that with his white beard and salt-and-pepper
moustache he could easily be taken for a pious patriarch. Shireen had written on the back of the photograph: ‘Unpunished for
so many crimes, penalized for a trifle.’

It assuredly was not Monsieur Naus’s intention to mock the religious. On that occasion he could only be found guilty of naïveté,
of a lack of tact and a touch of bad taste. His real mistake, since he was acting as the Tsar’s Trojan horse, was not understanding
that, for a while, he should allow himself to lie low.