The rest of the trip was relatively easy. To reach the sacred well, all you had to do was scale seven tricky mountain walls. Almost everyone could manage that.
Early the next morning, when you made your way back down the mountain, girls and boys and old men climbed up part of the way to greet you. They all wanted to embrace you and to touch your eyes, because you had seen the well and the holy man in the well, reading his book by the light of an oil lamp.
The situation had got out of control. As we have seen, Reza Shah was determined to modernise the country. After he banned the use of chadors in public, his agents began snatching veiled women off the streets of Tehran and throwing them in prison. He had thousands of hats sent from Paris.
His dream had been realised: the Trans-Iranian Railway now stretched from one end of the country to the other, from north to south and from east to west. Reza Shah had no doubt. The time had finally come to do away with the imams, with all that superstitious nonsense, with all those holy men in wells reading books.
“Get rid of the well!” he ordered. “Cover it up! Fill it in and send the pilgrims packing!”
Who would dare to do such a thing? To destroy the sacred well and send the pilgrims home? No one. If you so much as lifted a finger against the pilgrims, someone would set your house on fire.
But the shah insisted. No pilgrim would be allowed to climb the mountain ever again.
The pilgrims didn’t listen. They kept coming, carrying the sick and the lame to the sacred spot, where they prayed.
Then, one day, a couple of armoured cars drove up. Dozens of gendarmes leapt out with their rifles cocked.
“Go home!” they ordered.
No one moved.
“If even one mule starts up that path, I’m going to shoot. Go home!” screamed a gendarme.
An old man began to climb. The gendarme aimed his rifle at him and fired over his head.
“La ilaha illa Allah,” someone shouted.
“La ilaha illa Allah,” hundreds of pilgrims shouted in response. Then they set off towards the well.
The gendarme fired a few more shots into the air.
The pilgrims kept climbing. Finally, another gendarme dared to fire on the crowd. Two men fell to the ground. At that point the crowd turned on the gendarmes and the terrified men raced back to their armoured cars and roared off.
The next day the holy city of Qom was in an uproar. The ayatollahs who had been thrown in jail ordered the Muslims to close the bazaars and go on strike.
Reza Shah was furious.
“Plug up that well with cement!” he ordered.
Who would dare to carry out his orders?
No one.
“Then I’ll do it myself!” he said.
Early in the morning the whistle of a special railway carriage rang out over Saffron Mountain. Everyone knew immediately that something unusual was happening. No one had ever seen such an odd-looking train before. They all went up to the rooftops to see what was going on. The funny little train slowly wound its way up the mountain and stopped at the familiar curve where the young men always jumped off the train. Reza Shah got out and, with some assistance, climbed up to the sacred well. Five trained mountain climbers plodded up after him, carrying shovels, water and cement. He took off his army muffler, laid it down on a rock and went and stood with his boots planted firmly on the edge of the well. In the thirteen centuries since Mahdi had hidden in the well, no one had ever done such a thing.
“Bring me that big stone!” he said. “Set it down right here!”
The five climbers picked up the stone and, with trembling hands, laid it over the opening of the well.
Then they plugged it up with cement.
The shah declared the area a military zone. From then on, only the royal mountain goats would be allowed in.
That same evening he flew to the holy city of Qom, arriving in the middle of the night. The striking shopkeepers had gathered in the golden mosque, where a young imam was delivering a speech against the shah. When the shah heard his inflammatory words, he issued an order: “Arrest that man.”
Everyone was arrested. Everyone, that is, except the clever young imam, who was named Khomeini. He managed to escape over the roof.
At that moment, not even the devil himself could have suspected that, fifty years later, that very same imam would destroy Reza Shah’s kingdom.
During the second World War, the Allies forced Reza Shah to leave the country. He was sent to Cairo and there he died.
Then those same Western governments helped his son (who would later be known as the shah of Iran) onto the throne.
While all this was going on, Aga Akbar was living in Saffron Village. Several years had gone by since the death of his young bride, but no one had been able to find him a suitable wife. He went back to sleeping with the young prostitute. Kazem Khan didn’t like it, but he couldn’t stop him. Then he came up with the idea of sending Aga Akbar to Isfahan.
Isfahan
We go to Isfahan with Akbar, where
we weave carpets. That and nothing more.
When night-time comes, we sit on the roof
of the Jomah Mosque and stare at the sky.
The Dutch poet P. N. van Eyck (1887–1954) believed that life was good and beautiful because it was filled with mystery and sorrow. One of his well-known poems is “Death and The Gardener”:
A Persian Nobleman:
One morning, pale with fright, my gardener
Rushed in and cried, “I beg your pardon, Sir!
“Just now, down where the roses bloom, I swear
I turned around and saw Death standing there.
“Though not another moment did I linger,
Before I fled, he raised a threatening finger.
“O Sir, lend me your horse, and if I can,
By nightfall I shall ride to Isfahan!”
Later that day, long after he had gone,
I found Death by the cedars on the lawn.
Breaking his silence in the fading light,
I asked, “Why give my gardener such a fright?”
Death smiled at me and said, “I meant no harm
This morning when I caused him such alarm.
“Imagine my surprise to see the man
I’m meant to meet tonight in Isfahan!”
A sombre poem. A sombre story. A sombre Akbar rode on horseback with Kazem Khan to a deserted station, where he left for Isfahan.
His uncle wanted him to leave Saffron Village for a few months, or even a few years. He had arranged for Akbar to stay with a friend of his in Isfahan.
Kazem Khan wanted to