Cry of the Peacock: A Novel (27 page)

“Come." She smiled at him like a girl. “We will have a civilized afternoon."

At the end of the year, when the Alliance recognized its best students, Zilfa the Rosewoman was awarded third place in her class. She stood before a small crowd of pupils, blushing, and when Monsieur Jean approached to hang the bronze-colored medal around her neck, she bent her head without lowering her eyes, so that their gazes locked and he had to look away, startled by the intensity other soul. That night, sitting alone in the empty school, he received a message from Zilfa: he was invited to her house, to have dinner this time, and to converse with her in the language of poets and lovers.

They spent the summer meeting regularly at Zilfa's house. They appeared together on the street, Monsieur Jean in his pressed suit and his walking stick and hat, Zilfa always unveiled, dressed in white, her sleeves transparent. He lent her his arm and walked to her left, helped her around every pothole, and carried her over every ditch. They engaged in heated conversations about poetry and art and music. Monsieur Jean was always serious and pensive, Zilfa argumentative but deferring to his judgment. At night they returned to her house for a glass of wine and a piece of bread and cheese.

On opening day in the fall, Zilfa the Rosewoman went to school with a crown of roses on her head, and announced her engagement to the principal.

She bought a diamond ring for herself, and a gold watch for Monsieur Jean. She invited her friends to the wedding. It would be a Western-style reception, she advised everyone, lest they be offended: the bride and groom would be married first by a Catholic priest and then by a rabbi. They would sit together, and their guests, men and women, would share the same room.

For a week Zilfa the Rosewoman had her house painted and prepared. She put new plaster on the walls, cleaned the rugs. She pruned the roses, ordered a small gazebo made of wood, which she then covered with white gauze. On the day of her wedding she awoke in the dark and put on her painter's gown and hat. She took a brush and painted blue stars all over her house.

And it was in this way—as they saw her from their roofs that early morning before she married Monsieur Jean—that the people of the Pit would remember Zilfa the Rosewoman.

She stood in her garden before a wall, a clean brush in her hand, and felt neither the cold nor the morning wind as she tried to capture the deep blue of dawn, the radiance of the stars in the moment before they faded. She wanted to bring the light into her house and free herself of the darkness where she had lived alone and ostracized, counting her hours and her days, waiting for the man who would arrive, she had always known, to make her queen of her dreams and give her children that she would dress in white, with roses in their hair and pockets full of candy. She wanted to salvage the sun and inhale the breath of waking angels and keep the light in her eyes through the long, endless journey of hope.

In October 1906
the first session of Parliament convened in Tehran. Composed of clergymen and nationalists, it set about the task of writing a constitution. It immediately broke down into an internal war over the nature of the new law.

The nationalists prevailed. Persia's first constitution bypassed God and his disciples. Based on the Belgian model of 1830, it granted all citizens equal rights before the law. It pledged specifically to defend the life, property, and integrity of all Persians, regardless of religion or race. It even went so far as to outlaw the existence of ghettos—the forced exile of any person to a particular place or neighborhood, the refusal of residence to anyone based on religion.

No sooner had the constitution been ratified than the mullahs declared it null and void. They had joined the nationalists only to advance their own cause, planning to dismiss them once the Shah had agreed to their demands. Instead, they found themselves written out of the country's new laws. They called upon the believers to avenge them.

On the eve of Passover the mullahs ordered the annihilation of the Kermanshah ghetto.

It was spring in Persia, but Kermanshah was always frozen. The mob killed thousands of Jews, burned the entire ghetto into dust, left the wounded to freeze on the streets. The mullahs issued a
fatwah
—holy order—barring all believers from selling food or clothing to Jews. Without food or fire, dozens starved and froze in the streets every night.

The nationalists in Tehran learned of the massacre, and appealed to the Shah for help. They were refused. The mullahs held on to their
fatwah,
and the Jews kept dying.

But then a caravan of food arrived in the Kermanshah ghetto. It was sent by a Muslim, a leader of the Kermanshah community, a man of undeniable religious faith and an unwavering belief in Islam. He had bought all the food in the bazaars of Kermanshah, called his most loyal servants, and sent them to the ghetto to feed the survivors of the massacre. The next day he sent clothes and blankets and coal, milk for the children and medication for the injured.

He sent help every day, ignoring his friends' warnings, insisting that Islam was a compassionate religion, that the prophet Muhammad had preached humanity and benevolence, that the Qoran, correctly interpreted, taught peace and progress. For weeks he fed and housed the Jews until, faced with his unshaking resolve, the mullahs of Kermanshah backed down. The ban was lifted, and merchants were allowed to end the boycott.

It was this, Zilfa the Rosewoman told Peacock in the days after the Kermanshah massacre—the change the constitution had brought: it had given force to the cries of human compassion that the mullahs had choked in their own flock. It had conveyed to the believers the true meaning of Islam, and celebrated the greatness of a religion that at the height of its glory built a civilization larger and more merciful than any other of its time.

Two months
after the creation of the first Parliament, Muzaffar-ed-Din Shah died. His heir, Muhammad Ali Shah, took the throne swearing to crush the Constitutional Revolution. He gave his prime minister the specific task of infiltrating Parliament, widening the rift between the mullahs and the nationalists, and conquering both groups. Then he made a deal with the Russians and the British: in return for their help against the rebels, Muhammad Ali Shah allowed the signing of the Tripartite Agreement of 1907, in which he gave the northern half of Persia to the Russians, and let their forces occupy her soil. He gave the south to the British, and kept the center as a neutral buffer. In 1908, encouraged by the rebels' infighting and confident of Russian support, the Shah made his final move.

He called to the palace General Lyakhov, the Cossack commander, and ordered that he surround the house of Parliament on a day when it was in full session and the members were all gathered inside. When the cannons were in place and the Cossacks at their guns, Muhammad Ali Shah ordered that they bombard Parliament.

In the massacre that followed, hundreds of unarmed men lay throbbing in their own blood, begging for mercy and receiving none until Parliament was destroyed and the Cossacks had run out of lead. Pleased with his accomplishment, Muhammad Ali Shah placed Tehran under martial law, appointed Lyakhov military commander, and dared his opposition to respond.

Tehran died. The rebels surrendered without a word. That night, Arash the Rebel deserted the Cossacks.

It was an early evening in June 1908, and Solomon the Man sat in his mansion at Saltanatabad. He was reviewing his accounts on an abacus when he looked up and saw his son.

"I have come to say farewell.”

Solomon the Man felt his hand tremble on the abacus. He had known, he had always known, that Arash would leave. Now he saw him in the half-darkness of the room, pale and afraid but determined, and he understood.

“Where will you go?” Solomon asked.

"To Tabriz." Arash saw the devastation in Solomon's eyes. "To join Sattar Khan."

Solomon the Man realized that Arash was a man, that Solomon had never seen him grow, that he had lost the child he brought from Esfahan and would never know the man who was leaving him. All at once he wished he could undo the years of his life.

"The Cossacks," he sighed, "execute deserters."

They stood facing each other in the silence. Solomon the Man remembered the day, long ago in Juyy Bar, when Arash had been born in their house—the midwife running to Solomon with her face flushed and her hands full of blood, grabbing for the gold Solomon gave anyone who brought good news.

"A boy," she had cried. "You have a son."

Arash the Rebel kissed his father's ring.

"Forgive me," he asked. Solomon grasped his son's hands.

"It is you," he said, "who must forgive."

He saw Arash leave, and never saw him again.

In the city
of Tabriz, home of Qamar the Gypsy, where the Great Massacre of 1830 had come to pass, Sattar Khan went to war. News of the shelling of Parliament had reached every major province in Persia, and caused rebels to surrender. In Tabriz, it ignited a fire that would burn the monarchy to its roots.

For many years now Sattar Khan had been leading the rebel forces of the north and the northwest. They called themselves Mujaheds—fighters for the cause—but they never knew the exact nature of their war. They had been rebels all their lives—bandits and horsemen and mountain riders, raised in the harsh environment of Azerbaijan, with the wind on their backs and shadows all around them. Removed from the influence of the mullahs by the physical contours of their homeland, they were known for their courage and independence.

Sattar Khan had been raised on horseback, a rifle in his hand since he was a child. As a youth he had been famous in Tabriz for his marksmanship and his unfearing heart. He had been drafted by the Royal Guard into Muzaffar-ed-Din Shah's army, and he had served proudly until the Shah killed his brother. Accused of stealing food from the royal kitchen, Sattar's brother had in vain sworn innocence. He had been executed by direct orders from the Shah.

“Avenge my son," Sattar's father called to him when they received news of the death. “Avenge your blood and my name."

Sattar Khan escaped the Royal Guard and gathered a band of friends. They rode from town to town, looking for trouble that would end in a confrontation with the Shah's forces. They stole from the rich and gave to the poor, attacked soldiers everywhere they found them. There was no war they sought to win, only a cry of anger they wanted the Shah to hear.

Many times in those years, Sattar Khan was caught and imprisoned. He was tortured and beaten and starved, interrogated and locked in solitary confinement until he had forgotten how to speak. But his name had become famous across Azerbaijan, and the Shah did not wish to make a martyr of him. Sattar emerged from prison emaciated and pale, and for a while resigned himself to an ordinary life. He worked as an appraiser of horses, or served as a guide on hunting expeditions. Then again he sought his friends, and rode through the open country in search of a fight. At the turn of the century, Sattar Khan heard of the constitutional movement and found his cause.

And so, the day Muhammad Ali Shah bombed Parliament in Tehran, Sattar Khan's forces moved to occupy Azerbaijan. By the time Arash the Rebel joined him in Tabriz, Sattar Khan was fighting not only the Shah's soldiers but also Russian troops; Muhammad Ali Shah wanted Tabriz back; the Czar, fearing that a revolution in Persia would feed the flames of discontent in his own falling empire, had sent troops to aid the Shah.

Arash the Rebel enlisted on the side of Sattar Khan, and fought against his own Cossack friends. Fresh troops arrived from Russia and Tehran. Tabriz was surrounded and placed under siege. The rebels were cut off, and all lines of supply severed.

For weeks in the winter of 1908, Arash the Rebel watched his new allies die of famine and disease as they resisted the Shah's drive. The cold paralyzed everyone. Defeat seemed inevitable. Faced with the end, Arash the Rebel asked himself why he had joined the battle, and never found an answer. Was he fighting for Persia, he wondered, or against Tala? Was he inspired by a sense of justice—like the man, Mirza Reza of Kerman, who had given his life to take Nasser-ed-Din Shah's—or was he prompted only by vengeance?

"Your
son,'' he imagined Tala screaming at Solomon the Man through the halls of the Palace of Joy, where they gathered to follow news of the war.
"Your
son has betrayed my blood.''

The siege broke in Tabriz. Sattar Khan had sacrificed almost all of his men, but he emerged victorious, and led his forces toward the capital. Throughout Persia his triumph inspired rebels to take up the fight once again. In the south, Samsam the Bakhtiari united his forces, took Esfahan, and rode north to join Sattar. Suddenly, Muhammad Ali Shah wanted a truce.

Sattar Khan joined Samsam the Bakhtiari, and together they rode on the capital. Running to save his life, Muhammad Ali Shah abandoned his palace and took refuge in the house of the Russian ambassador in Tehran.

"Your
son,” Tala sobbed before Solomon the Man. "
Your
son destroyed us all."

She packed her bags and joined the Shah at the Russian embassy. Solomon the Man did not go with her. He was a Persian, he said, and he would not seek help from the enemy. It was early morning, July 1908, and a kingdom had been lost.

Arash the Rebel
was appointed by the National Council to negotiate the terms of Muhammad Ali Shah's departure from Persia. He went to the Russian embassy, where the Qajars had taken refuge, and found the Queen sobbing amid her suitcases and servants. She did not recognize Arash; she was too busy cursing the British. They had promised the Shah their support against the rebels, tricked him in this way only to secure the Tripartite Agreement of 1907. Now that they owned a third of Persia, they had abandoned Muhammad Ali Shah and caused his demise.

Muhammad Ali Shah was pale and confused, dressed entirely in black—like a woman in mourning—and walked around with the dejected air of a houseboy punished by his master. He did not receive Arash; he would not negotiate with traitors. They communicated through an intermediary.