Читать книгу Farewell Shiraz - Cyrus Kadivar - Страница 13
ОглавлениеIn the rose-scented courtyard of our house where all the family stories were told, I had no inkling of the tumultuous times that my grandparents had endured. My paternal grandfather considered himself a Shirazi even though he originated from Fasa, a town near Shiraz, the capital of Fars Province, homeland of the ancient Persians and the great kings Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes. At the time of Aminollah Khan, my paternal great-grandfather, Fasa was a spacious market town with buildings made of mud and cypress wood. It had a citadel, a moat, and four arched gates.
Within the walls lived ten thousand people, most of them engaged in working the land and animal husbandry. Water for farming and drinking in the Fasa region was supplied by the qanats, underground channels, deep wells, and a few natural springs. Aminollah Khan had made his fortune selling fruits—dates, mountain figs, pears, and almonds—and also fine horses to Jahrom and Shiraz. As a prosperous landowner he owned several of the forty nearby villages. In those days, landed notables controlled many parts of the country, and Russia and Britain were the key outside players in Persian politics, but in 1905, when Aminollah’s wife Bibi Khanoum gave birth to their youngest son Mohammad, Persia was in the throes of a revolution. The news from Tehran was that Mozaffareddin Shah, the reigning Qajar ruler, was facing a rebellion.
This was no ordinary upheaval, for it was led by progressive nobles, members of the intelligentsia, bazaar merchants, and senior clerics. Demonstrations were held demanding an end to the king’s expensive trips to Europe, foreign loans, oil concessions, and the court’s extravagance. The government’s financial crisis was made worse by acute inflation brought on by a bad harvest, nearby war, and a cholera epidemic. The spark of Iran’s 1905–1907 Constitutional Revolution was the decision by the unpopular grand vizier of Tehran to order the public flogging of three merchants accused of fixing the price of sugar. Riots spread through the bazaars. In June 1906, two of Tehran’s most respected clerics led a protest of seminary students to Qom and threatened to stop the country’s religious services unless Mozaffareddin Shah gave in to their economic demands and established a House of Justice. In the same week twelve thousand protesters took refuge from the government’s troops inside the vast garden housing the British legation in Tehran and camped in other major cities such as Tabriz, Mashhad, Isfahan, and Shiraz. Sermons, newspapers, and leaflets galvanized public opinion. On August 5, 1906, bowing to his people’s will, Mozaffareddin Shah signed the royal proclamation to hold nationwide elections for a Constituent Assembly, which subsequently drew up an electoral law for the forthcoming Majles, or parliament. The Majles opened in October 1906 and drew up the constitution, which transformed the absolute monarch into a figurehead. Mozaffareddin ratified the constitution in December 1906. He died in January 1907 at his palace in Niavaran.
When Mohammad Ali Shah mounted the throne in January 1907 he tried to restore Qajar autocracy by abolishing the constitution. He was helped by the signing of the Anglo-Russian Convention in 1907, which isolated the parliamentarians, and the backlash created by the Majles’s attempts at tax and secular reform, which angered royalists and sections of the clerical class. The shah’s contempt for the defiant parliamentarians was such that in the summer of 1908 he ordered the Russian colonel Vladimir Liakhov, the commander of the Persian Cossack Brigade, to shell the Majles building with his artillery. Many were killed and those arrested were brought in chains to the Golestan Palace. Tortured in the dungeon, they were later executed. Reports of their deaths were telegraphed to Tabriz, Mashhad, Isfahan, and Shiraz.
Soon the country was being torn apart as royalists and constitutionalists fought each other in a bitter civil war. Like many other provinces, Fars was not immune to the spreading disturbances. In Shiraz, where Aminollah Khan often did business, tensions were running high after Mohammad Reza Qavam, the governor of Shiraz, also known by his official title Qavam ol-Molk, pledged support for the shah. The Qavam family were among the most influential political and trading families in Fars, with strong links to the British. They had played a key role in the eighteenth century in ending the Zand Dynasty and bringing Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar to power. After the transfer of the capital from Shiraz to Tehran, the failing fortunes of the Qavams during the successive Qajar monarchs—Fath Ali, Nassereddin, and Mohammad—were revived, thanks to British support.
In 1907, attempts by the Qavam ol-Molk to enforce his authority in Shiraz led to a revolt, with his opponents taking refuge in the Shah Cheraq Mosque and attacking the Karim Khan Zand Citadel with several thousand Lur tribesmen armed with muskets. That October, the prince governor-general of Fars, Nezam-es-Saltaneh, fled to Isfahan. The following year the Qavam tried to broker a truce with his enemies at his Narenjestan Palace. While strolling among the sour-orange trees and palms, Qavam was shot four times by a constitutionalist, who later turned the revolver on himself. The Qavam’s assassination led to more unrest and bloodshed. Major landowners, like Aminollah Khan, my paternal great-grandfather, feared the loss of their lands and privileges if the constitutionalists won. My great-grandfather was careful not to take sides. But when law and order broke down, Aminollah Khan was forced to raise a private militia to protect his family and estates.
His brave wife Bibi Khanoum was equal to any man when it came to handling a rifle. She was reputed to have shot four bandits during a raid on the family ranch in Fasa. She was also a fortuneteller. What she saw in the coffee cup filled her with dread. In 1908, Prince Zil-es-Sultan, the shah’s cruel and vain uncle and ruler of Isfahan, added Fars to his domain with Shiraz under his protection. Hundreds of captured constitutionalists were paraded through the bazaar to the main square. Some were flogged to death. Others had their eyes gouged out. There were beheadings and amputations. Many were executed by hanging or firing squad, hurled from the citadel’s tower, or blown away with cannon shots.
In July 1910, when my grandfather was five, constitutionalist forces, led by the powerful Bakhtiari khans and other tribal chieftains, rode from the south, west, and north of Tehran and captured the capital. Mohammad Ali Shah fled to Odessa. The constitution was restored, and Mohammad Ali Shah’s twelve-year-old son, Ahmad Shah, was put on the throne. Ahmad Shah’s uncle, Azod ol-Molk, was named regent. When the Second Majles convened in late 1910, the weak central government was still in serious financial straits, but it lacked the means to collect tax revenue or impose order outside the country’s urban centers.
From early childhood my grandfather was aware that beyond the sheltered life provided by his parents was a dangerous world. He was nine when the First World War broke out, turning Fars into a battleground between Germany and Great Britain. During this period one of the Kaiser’s agents, Wilhelm Wassmuss, ousted Habibollah Qavam ol-Molk, the new governor of Shiraz, and took Sir Frederick O’Connor, the British consul, and the Shiraz colony hostage. His attempts to stir up the Qashqai and Tangestani tribesmen in southwest Persia against the British was a failure.
Armed by the British, the Qavam ol-Molk was about to capture Shiraz with a hundred men when along the way he was killed after falling off his horse. Upon his death, his son Ebrahim Khan Qavam ol-Molk assumed the leadership of the Khamseh Confederation, which was made up of Persian, Turkic, and Arabic-speaking tribes, and entered the city as the new kalantar, or governor, of Shiraz. In the summer of 1918, while visiting Shiraz, Aminollah Khan witnessed a fierce power struggle between Sowlat Khan, the supreme chief of the powerful Turkish-speaking Qashqai clan, and Ebrahim Khan Qavam ol-Molk, then installed at his Narenjestan Palace and protected by his loyal tribesmen. Fighting had broken out when three thousand Qashqais invaded the town. For two days, a small British and Indian force known as the South Persia Rifles under the command of Colonel Percy Sykes put up a stiff fight against the Qashqais with Lewis guns. Qavam’s decision to send two thousand of his Khamseh warriors into the fray won the battle, leaving seven hundred Qashqai tribesmen dead and wounded. A defeated Sowlat Khan fled to the mountains.
The battle for Shiraz highlighted the volatile situation in Fars, which increased the pressure on Aminollah Khan. Each day life in Fasa became harder, and the instability in the country and the economic hardships took their toll. As he aged, my great-grandfather leaned more on his sons. Unfortunately, he couldn’t rely on his youngest offspring. Compared to Aminollah Khan, a tall, domineering man with piercing green eyes, my grandfather was short and pudgy with dark brown eyes. As a boy, his parents and three older brothers teased him incessantly by calling him kouchik, ‘small’ in Farsi. Mohammad was not cut out for the challenges of rural life. He adored his sister, who protected him from bullies.
A sensitive lad, Mohammad detested hunting. Although he liked riding horses, he was a poor shot on account of his bad eyesight. He could never watch the slaughtering of sheep, and the sight of blood made him ill. Nor did he show any interest in toiling on the farm or in poppy fields. Once, while picking dates at the top of a palm tree in his father’s plantation, my grandfather was attacked by wasps and nearly died after falling off. In a country of illiterates, his father was a self-taught man who had ensured his sons and even his daughter a solid education. All of his children were tutored at home instead of attending the madresseh, schools run by the mullahs. Mohammad enjoyed studying. He was always carrying a book under his arm, sitting in the garden memorizing classical poems, and dreaming of another life.
As he grew older, my grandfather fumed at the daily injustices and the brutal suppression of the peasantry by the feudal khans and landlords. Although the people of Fasa had once enjoyed a reputation for being open-minded and honest, they seemed steeped in ignorance and superstition. They were religious folks who resorted to special charms and magic verses to ward off the jinns, who were blamed for everything bad that happened to them, from sickness to natural disaster.
When my grandfather told his father that he planned to leave Fasa for Shiraz, Aminollah Khan did not object. He gave him money, the names of several people he knew, and his full blessing. That spring as the white blossoms appeared, the sixteen-year-old Mohammad went to a local shrine, or emamzadeh, and prayed for a safe journey. Hiring a horse cart and a coachman, he and a relative traveled over120 kilometers west along bumpy dirt roads, passing ravines and negotiating mountain passes in a land ravaged by famine, earthquakes, and bandits.
Along the route, my grandfather was shocked by what he witnessed: starving farmers and their families, burnt-out wheat and opium fields, damaged telegraph poles, and vultures picking at the animal carcasses rotting in the sun. A sense of relief came over him as his two-day journey came to an end. “Allahu akbar!” (“God is greater!”), the coachman cried out as the horses neared the city gates. Nestled at the bottom of a green valley and cradled by purple-brown mountains lay a city bathed in a hazy light. Mohammad stayed the night in a battered caravanserai. At daybreak he woke up to the sound of a bulbul, the Persian nightingale. After washing, he performed his namaz, or prayers, on a silk rug that his mother had given him.
Finishing his breakfast and tea, my grandfather and his cousin explored the town by foot. The young man from Fasa was instantly enchanted by the town with its patrician mansions, famous gardens, blue-tiled and bulbous mosques. He walked down a long avenue leading to a brick fortress and then toward the bazaar named after Karim Khan Zand, the benevolent despot who brought forty years of peace, tranquillity, and prosperity to large parts of Persia and his capital, Shiraz, where he was fondly remembered. As my grandfather progressed through a jumble of crooked streets the air reeked of dung, jasmine, and tuberoses. Behind the façade was a grim reality.
At his aunt’s house he learned that thousands of people in Shiraz had died in an influenza epidemic. Few people ventured out at night in case they were attacked by thugs and packs of wild dogs. Shirazis still lived in fear of the powerful warlords fighting for dominance. Once he had settled at the home of a relative, my grandfather enrolled at the Soltani High School. The town and the rest of the province were still unruly. The weakness and indolence of the Qajar shahs had led to corruption and stagnation. The central government was powerless, unable to collect taxes or impose order outside the capital, and manipulated by rapacious foreigners. The country’s wartime travails had also included bad harvests and epidemics, leading to starvation and death. Persia was ripe for a savior.
In February 1921 Reza Khan, a tough soldier who had fought in many wars against rebellious tribes and been promoted to colonel and later general as commander of the Persian Cossack Brigade, led a detachment of two thousand cavalrymen from Qazvin and seized Tehran in a military coup. Great Britain, eager to protect its oil assets in Khuzestan and the route to India, secretly welcomed a strong hand in a crumbling Persia to halt the spread of Bolshevism.
With the connivance and logistical support of General Edmund Ironside, the head of the British Expeditionary Force in Persia, Reza Khan moved boldly, dismissed the unpopular cabinet, and formed a new government under Seyyed Zia Tabatabaie, a Shirazi journalist and Anglophile. The young Ahmad Shah Qajar had no choice but to promote Reza Khan to minister of war and commander of the Persian Army, and by the following year, after the fall of Seyyed Zia, to prime minister. In 1924 the Fars Brigade, led by General Fazlollah Zahedi, arrived in Shiraz and established a base at Bagh-e Shah.
One spring day, as my grandfather made his way to the Dar al-Fonoon, or ‘House of Sciences,’ where he was studying law, he was almost run over by a speeding vehicle. In a flash he recognized the unmistakable figure of Reza Khan wearing his kepi and navy blue uniform, tapping his whip against the window. Persia’s strongman had come all the way from Tehran via Isfahan to inspect his officers and recruits. In the coffeehouses people whispered that Ahmad Shah Qajar had left his capital for the French Riviera. Soon afterward Reza Khan ordered General Fazlollah Zahedi and the well-equipped Fars Brigade to subdue the Qashqai, Bakhtiari, Lurs, and Arab tribes. The tribes fought bravely, but their Enfield rifles and horses were no match for the Maxim guns and armored cars of the Persian Army.
The powerful warlords, Sowlat Khan in Fars and Sheikh Khazal in Khuzestan, were captured and taken to Tehran as hostages. After an uneasy interregnum during which Reza Khan toyed with the idea of republicanism, Ahmad Shah was deposed by parliamentary vote in October 1925. The decision to keep the monarchy was supported by the elite, the powerful clergy, and the majority of Iranians, who feared a republic might provide grounds for further strife and disunity. On April 25, 1926, Reza Khan was crowned the new Shahanshah (King of Kings) in the Golestan Palace.
In a brief sermon, the imposing new king, with his six-year-old heir Mohammad Reza watching, vowed to rebuild the country and reawaken the noble Persian nation. To symbolize his desire both to associate himself with Persia’s past glories and to give a sense of legitimacy to his rule, Reza Shah chose the name Pahlavi, derived from the language spoken by the Achaemenids and the Sasanids. Thus, from now on the country would be ruled by a king of true Persian origin, unlike his Turkic predecessor. While all this was taking place, my grandfather was busy keeping up with his studies at law school. About this time Reza Shah appointed a new justice minister, Ali Akbar Davar.
My grandfather would later praise Davar, a European-educated man, for having set up a modern judicial system based on the French civil code. Lawyers, not mullahs, were in charge of registering all legal contracts and documents. Barbaric practices of amputating the hands of thieves and the stoning and lashing of women accused of adultery were banned. By 1927, when, at the age of twenty-one, my grandfather received his diploma, the country appeared to be enjoying a degree of stability.
In Fars, the newly formed gendarmerie, once under the control of Swedish officers, was in the hands of trained, patriotic Persian officers whose men had put an end to brigandage and lawlessness. Tiny white forts staffed by gendarmes were erected along the main roads, offering protection to travelers. With the countryside pacified, caravans bearing goods from the strategic port city of Bushehr on the Persian Gulf to Kazerun and Shiraz traveled unmolested. People credited Reza Shah with having set up a centralized government and an efficient bureaucracy. He attacked foreign influences but imported modern ways.
There was also now a major police force in every city, town, and village, and a highly disciplined army guarding the unstable and porous borders. Modernity and the past went hand in hand. Outside Shiraz, European and American archaeologists were busy digging up Persia’s forgotten empire. In 1928, Reza Shah and his nationalist officers visited the ancient ruins around Fars. Surveying the tomb of Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae and the colossal monuments at Persepolis, the hardened Pahlavi monarch was moved to tears. Turning to Ernst Herzfeld, a young German archaeologist excavating the Achaemenid sites, Reza Shah vowed to restore Persia to its former imperial glory.
