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This chapter presents Dehkhodās final column before he and his newspaper had to flee Iran. Dehkhodā predicts the June 1908 coup, while maintaining a sense of levity. On June 4 the shah, accompanied by the Cossack Brigade, decamped to his garden Bāgh-e Shāh, outside the city gates. People in Tehran panicked. Soon a thousand supporters of the Majlis surrounded the building, and negotiations with the royalists began. Many supporters slept on the roof of the Majlis to shield it from an ambush. Sayyid Hasan Taqizādeh, a leading member of the First Majlis, continued to negotiate with the shah, who refused to back down. On June 20, the day this column appeared, Mohammad-Ali Shah issued his conditions for ending the siege, a list that amounted to an end of the constitutional order. On June 23 the shah's Russian troops bombarded the Majlis, and the constitution was suspended. A number of constitutionalists were arrested while Dehkhodā took sanctuary at the British legation and eventually fled the country.

This chapter presents a column published on February 6, 1909, which can be read as a satire of Dehkhodā's cohort, young social democrats who could not make sense of their “scientific” understanding of modern political economy and did not understand why what they read in The Wealth of the Nations, The Communist Manifesto, and Das Kapital could not be applied to their Eastern nation. Iranian social democrats had recently been introduced to the field of political economy and were busy making sense of works by Adam Smith and Karl Marx. The problem they faced was how to fit these new theoretical concepts to the reality in Iran. Socialists including Dehkhodā debated whether precapitalist Iranian society had to go through a capitalist stage of production before it could reach a utopian socialist order.

This chapter presents a column published on March 8, 1909, featuring a draft of a royal letter to the Swiss Parliament. Unlike the shah's letter in Sur-e Esrāfil (SE), series 2, no. 1, this specimen is undoubtedly attributable to Dehkhodā. The bastinado was a peculiarly Iranian form of discipline, designed to inflict severe pain without breaking a limb. The two essential implements mentioned here are the switch or cane (chub) and the falak or falakeh. In its basic form, the latter is a wooden pole with a slackened cord tied at each end to make a loop; the victim is laid on his back with his legs stretched out in front, and the cord is looped over his ankles and tightened by twisting the pole, which is held by two men so that his legs are immobilized while a third canes the soles of his feet. The author's final potshot at the pādshāh implies that the shah's ruinous policies may have left him without even the postage to mail his gift package to Bern.

This chapter presents a column published on May 5, 1908, on the life of Hajji Abbās (the continuation of a column published in SE no. 27, April 29, 1908). This column differs substantially from all other Charand-o Parand items in being less diffuse and more focused and having in every way the makings of a serialized short story or novella. Social criticism—of the ulama and the situation of women—is firmly lodged in the subtext, and the authorial voice-over begins and punctuates the tale at intervals. The life of Hajji Abbās to date is seen in flashback, a retrospective reverie triggered at the end of the first episode by the sight of the hajji's attractive neighbor Roqiyeh.

This chapter presents a column published on June 11, 1908, featuring a piece on women's education. Elite and upper-middle-class women of Tehran and several other cities became involved in the nationalist movement to form women's anjomans and schools. In March 1908, the Majlis debated the right of women to form anjomans and whether these were in accordance with the laws of shari'a. Initially some deputies deemed the subject inappropriate for parliamentary debate. In the end, however, women were allowed to keep their anjomans, though without any financial or institutional support from the Majlis. In recounting this episode and criticizing the deputies for their lackluster support of women, Dehkhodā blames Iranian culture for clinging to old traditions and holding on to archaic social hierarchies of class, seniority, and gender—divisions that he believed held back both men and women.

This chapter presents a column published on August 22, 1907, featuring a letter where Dehkhodā does not merely show off his knowledge of Persian folklore and popular superstition but also demonstrates his sympathetic understanding of the dimensions of the social straitjacket imposed on Iranian women. However loving and caring of their children and intuitively in tune with adolescent psychology, these veiled “captives of the sack” were denied free access to education and support in the public sphere (by financial and patriarchal restrictions sanctioned by long social tradition and reinforced by religious rulings). The column also includes a reply to the letter; a piece on domestic politics; and another on Razi-ye Ghaznavi and other Indian mystics.

This chapter presents a column published on November 14, 1907, where once again, using the epistolary form, Dakhow mocks the convoluted writing style of the clerics—a mixture of Persian and Arabic—which was often incomprehensible to the ordinary reader. He captures the clerics' impatience with any perceived criticism of their actions, and in the shaykh's garbled Persian version of the threatening missive fulminates against this column's recent aside on clerics' sexual indiscretions in their seminaries.

This chapter presents a column published on July 4, 1907, featuring a miniature first-person bildungsroman that may be Dehkhodā's most daring departure from verisimilitude among the many elastic near-fantasies in the Charand-o Parand narratives. Here the naïve young Kerendi, or Candide, makes his mystified way after a perfunctory religious “education” through a selfish and corrupt society where “religion” eludes him, as it seems to elude so many others. The column also includes a criticism of Habl al-Matin (The firm cable), the most influential Tehran daily in 1907–08; a short piece about the Ministry of the Interior; and another on a workers's strike at Shah Abd al-Azim.

This chapter presents a column published on September 19, 1907, in the wake of the outrage sparked by the editorial in Sur-e Esrāfil's (SE) issue no. 12. Many clerics of Tehran were outraged by the editorial which was devoted to the controversial subject of human liberty. A group of seminarians attacked the offices of SE and called for the death of its writers. The column deals with the very real threat the writers faced in this period. It ends with Dakhow's conclusion that the high clerics did not necessarily deem the paper's ruminations on human liberty and freedom of thought antireligious. They only wanted these discussions limited to elite circles and not shared with ordinary people.

This chapter presents a column published on June 13, 1907, where Dehkhodā introduces another of his specialized types, Meddler, shown here in a first-person composite of the self-interested fixer who, for a consideration, will offer his services to provide a foreigner, the government, or other interested individuals with privileged information or access. His incidental gossip, social contacts, and pious self-justification provide further pretexts for broad social and political satire. The column also includes a piece about an Austrian doctor who invented a steel shield to protect the teeth from falling out, and a reply to a letter dated June 6.

This chapter presents a column published on November 5, 1907, that seems to have in mind a fictitious anjoman affiliated with the newspaper Sur-e Esrāfil's (SE), here serving in effect as the managerial board. In the dramatic sketch provided by the verbatim reading of the minutes (a new format for Dehkhodā's satire) they meet under their same Dickensian names to discuss the independence of the press. As the anonymous chairman of the board mentions, the members need no introduction; we already know them as characters in previous Charand-o Parand columns. Totally out of character, though, are Āzād Khan, formerly a confused Kurdish youth from Kerend; Owyār-qoli, a peasant awed by the big city; and Mulla Inek-Ali, mentioned in passing by Dakhow as “a rowzeh-khwān with a sense of humor”.

This chapter presents the first of a two-part column published on April 23, 1908, which reviews events the occurred over the past year. The column and its continuation (in SE no. 27) are couched in the style of Qajar chronicles, those dynastic histories (such as Fārsnāmeh-ye Nāseri and Montazem-e Nāseri) that record events in strict chronological order, year by year and even month by month. They are characterized by the sometimes incongruous juxtaposition of affairs of state, court trivia, and snippets of news from abroad.

This chapter presents a column published on May 13, 1908, featuring a piece entitled Sani' al-Dowleh's Dream. Mortazā-qoli Sani' al-Dowleh (“Artisan of the state”) had studied mineralogy in Berlin and Brussels, and reportedly had been interested in building a railroad system in Iran from an early age. In 1910, he began negotiating with the German Deutsche Orient Bank in Iran to raise funds for the railroad project, much to the consternation of the British and Russian governments. On February 6, 1911, he was assassinated by two of his Georgian employees in Tehran. The public blamed the Russian government, and anti-Russian sentiment dramatically increased, whereupon the Russian legation arranged for the transfer of the assassins to Transcaucasia. The anonymous author of this piece includes a prologue arguing tongue in cheek for an idealistic view of progress and spins a fanciful alternative explanation for the debacle, in which international humanitarian motives trump the hero's initiative.

This chapter presents a column published on September 12, 1907, featuring a fictional letter describing hostilities with the Turks over lands on the Persian side of the mountains between Salmas and Margawar, west of Urmiya. In the course of the previous four centuries, frontier disputes with the Ottomans over the extensive pasturelands bordering Anatolia and northern Iraq (inhabited mainly by Kurds) had contributed to numerous wars. Between 1843 and 1865, international boundary commissions were convened, and surveys produced a detailed map of the whole frontier area, but no lasting agreement was signed until 1914. The hostilities referred in the letter resumed in early 1906 and continued through 1908. In his reply, Dehkhodā suggests that either the Shah or the Atābak had quietly colluded with the Ottomans to get rid of constitutionalists' forces in Urumiyeh.

This chapter presents a column published on January 23, 1909, featuring a piece entitled “The Speech of Kings Is the King of Speeches.” Safe in Switzerland, having narrowly avoided the same fate as his murdered colleague Mirza Jahāngir Khan, and still grieving, Dehkhodā in his last three satirical columns feels no compunction about mocking the ruler and the Qajar family in frankly insulting terms. Now he freely refers to the royal family's supposed sexual indiscretions, statements that prudence had tempered in his earlier publications. The column also includes a piece on the response of Mohammad-Ali Shah to the clerics of Najaf.

This chapter presents a column published on June 6, 1907, that features a letter from a supposed friend in Tehran, as well as Dakhow's reply to it—both of which target the indiscriminate sale of high-sounding titles to personalities, functionaries, or nonentities under the Qajar monarchy. Nominally conferred by the sovereign, many such honorifics were in fact obtained by bribes from the honoree or his associates. Dakhow's mock-indignant reply, extolling the virtues of an arguably even less patriotic functionary, Arfa' al-Dowleh (“Highest in the state”), shows that already possessing a title did not disqualify one from adding more.

This chapter presents a column published on June 20, 1907, referring to two incidents in Quchān district in Khorasan, near the Russian frontier, in 1905. The first incident involves the sale of young girls to Turkman traffickers; the second involves Turkman raiders's killing of peasants and taking of some sixty captives, including a number of young girls. Dehkhodā's ironic response is cast as a cabaret performance supposedly given by the captive girls for the amusement of their captors and their confederates. Their tasnif (akin to the revolutionary ballads composed by poets such as 'Āref) enables Dehkhodā to highlight the impotence and complacency of Persia's rulers in the face of domestic and foreign oppression.

This chapter presents a column published on June 27, 1907, where Dakhow mocks the overzealous journalists who abandoned their newspapers in the midst the Constitutional Revolution. He also reports on the atrocities committed by tribal brigands loyal to the king; the financial corruption, forgery, and theft of the supporters of the shah; and attempts by parliamentarians to limit democratic reforms to Tehran and major urban centers. The column also includes a pseudotelegram where the conservative Shaykh Fazlollāh Nuri, who joined Mohammad-Ali Shah in opposing the new order, proposes additions to the Supplementary Constitutional Law that would give five top-tiered mojtaheds veto power over the deliberations of the Majlis.

This chapter presents a column published on November 21, 1907, featuring a poem by Dehkhodā, a mokhammas—a five-hemistich strophic form generally used for popular songs. The heading “Literature” (Adabiyāt) for this and a few other sections of Charand-o Parand columns is probably tongue in cheek, since these are all examples of verse in a vernacular style. The Kablā'i addressed here most likely refers to the poet, in character as a contributor to Sur-e Esrāfil, the obvious target of the various subjects of Charand-o Parand's satire, and a frustrated advocate for popular mobilization. The column also includes a piece on the victimization of journalists.

This chapter presents a column published on December 5, 1907, featuring a letter to Russian diplomat Shāpshāl Seraya Ben Mordechai. Shāpshāl became a personal tutor of the future Mohammad-Ali Shah Qajar. After the shah's coronation, Shāpshāl became his court minister and close adviser and supported the shah in his efforts to crush the Constitutional Revolution. He went on to become an influential Jewish leader and a proponent of the theory that the first Karaite Jews were Khazars who had converted to Judaism in the ninth century CE. The incident from Shāpshāl's earlier career that earned him this acidly polite open letter from Dehkhodā is described by the writer (after considerable digression) in the body of the letter.