Equal of the Sun A Novel - By Anita Amirrezvani Page 0,70
loved you so much, would have permitted you that.”
Pari sat up until she and Isma‘il appeared to be of equal height.
“I don’t want two governments,” she said. “I only wish to ensure our success in governing. Brother of mine, you were young once, and I think you felt as I do. When you were sent away to the fortress at Qahqaheh, it was because of your great zeal. Your mother told me that you wanted to score such a decisive victory against the Ottomans that they would leave us alone for generations. You took it upon yourself to raise an army for the good of your country, though some called it a rebellion.”
“That is true.”
“With zeal similar to your own, I instructed Ali Khan Shamlu to enforce the Treaty of Amasiyeh, and I spent my own money with the sole purpose of protecting our land. Isn’t it almost the same as what you did? Don’t we share the same royal blood?”
She opened her palms to the ceiling to emphasize her point, and it was as if she were offering her open heart at the same time.
“The same blood—but not the same purpose. It was stupid of our father to sign that treaty when I could have led us to victory.”
“But that’s all in the past now!” Pari protested. “Brother, I beg you to let me help you,” she added in a pleading tone that made me hope for the best. “I advised our father for years, and I could be as useful to you as I was to him.”
“You didn’t move a muscle without his approval,” he replied. “Yet you have tried to move a fighting force without my say. I am a military man, while you have never even seen a battlefield. The fact that you dare to employ such grandiose tactics can be explained by only one thing: pride.”
He tapped two fingers against his box of confections to emphasize his last few words.
“Pride? But this is what I have trained for all my life,” Pari protested. “I didn’t learn by my father’s side for so many years for nothing.”
“I differ from our father on this point,” Isma‘il replied. “He didn’t wish you to marry and leave him.”
“Nor did I wish to marry.”
“I suspect you didn’t know who you were getting when I became shah,” he said. “If you had wanted to rule through someone, you should have thrown yourself behind Haydar.”
“Haydar didn’t have the makings of a shah,” Pari said. “But if for some reason he and his soldiers had won, my support for you would have meant my death at his hands. You have shown courage on the battlefield, and I have tried to show my mettle here at the palace. I thought—I hoped—you would be pleased by my fealty.”
The edges of Pari’s silk robe trembled.
“Your fealty?” His laugh sounded as ghastly as the howl of jackals at night. “Whatever do you mean? You once said that as a child you loved me, but where is the truth in that?”
Pari stared at him, perplexed. “You doubt the love that I bore you as a little girl? Surely you must have felt how I wanted to burst with joy when you spent time with me.”
“And I loved you as if you were my own daughter,” he said, and the truth of his feelings clouded his eyes. “I would have done anything for you.”
“And I for you,” Pari replied.
He laughed again. “If only I could believe that were true.”
“What makes you doubt it?”
“If you loved me so much, what did you do to release me from prison when you had our father’s ear?”
“Release you from prison? I was a child of eight when you were taken away!”
“You weren’t a child forever. You could have urged our father to set me free. Did you ever speak in my favor?”
“You don’t understand. Our father turned yellow at the very mention of your name, sometimes even at the mention of another man with the same name as yours. I remember that when one of the nobles referred to his own father as a donkey, the Shah reached over and struck him in the face. The man was lucky to escape with his life. Another time, he asked his children to recite poetry to him, and I began reciting a tale from the Shahnameh about how two of the sons of the legendary king Fereydoon had rebelled against him and tried to destroy him, although he had given them most of his kingdom.