Omar Khayyam - a life (11 page)

Hassan touched Omar upon the arm. "Few have beheld these words since they were placed there; fewer have read them—and who has understood them? But thou wilt remember, and thou wilt understand, perhaps."

Then, as if growing impatient of the crowd that gathered around him, Hassan led the Tentmaker through the narrow streets of the city, pointing out things that would have escaped another's notice. The other man followed them silently, buried in his own thoughts.

"Here," explained Hassan, "is the arch and the window from which a Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, spoke to the priests of the Jews, when that same Nazarene—upon whom be peace—was delivered to the soldiery to be slain on a cross. Now the rock upon which that cross stood has been forgotten by the Christians."

Pushing past groups of armed Turks, arguing over piles of spoil in the streets, he smiled. "Thus it has always been with Jerusalem—its walls broken down, its people slain by the soldiers of the kings. Yea, in one lifetime during the last years of our lord Muhammad—upon whom be peace—the Persian Chosroes, egged on by the Jews, laid it waste, and the swords of the Roman emperor, Heraclitus, took it again. Then the Christians made great slaughter of the Jews. Our Kalif, Omar, entered the city in truce and shed no blood; he cleared the dung and rubbish from the rock—thou hast seen it—of the Haram which is the true rock of the temple of Solomon and David. But now these Turks have shed blood, in ignorance. Their day will be short, for the city will be taken from them by new enemies."

"By whom?" asked the other man.

Impatiently Hassan shook his head. "That lies behind the curtain of the Invisible. I say only that the Moslems will lose Jerusalem—ay, at the hand of a new and terrible foe—because they could not dwell here in peace.
'Believe in God and his messengers, and do not say that there are three Gods; forbear, and it will be better for you.'
But who will heed the written word of truth?"

Omar thought of Nizam weaving his fabric of empire, and of Malikshah. Neither of them had seen the bare-headed people burying their dead, or the blackened walls of monasteries. He felt stirred by Hassan's passionate words.

"We know," said the other man calmly, "that there are three Gods in the minds of men. One is the Yahweh of the Jews, one is the God of the Christians, one is the Allah of the Koran."

"Thrice," replied Hassan, "thou hast said 'one.' What if there be but one? What if the Jews, the Christians, and the Moslems have each a little insight toward the truth, that there is One greater than Allah——"

He broke off, with a quick glance about him, and motioned them to follow.

This time he led them back toward the Haram, but turned aside to go out through the gate that opened to the east. They walked through the tombstones of the Moslem cemetery that pressed against the very wall of the city.

The path wound down into a ravine of clay and bare stones where along the dry bed of a stream mounted archers were driving sheep and black goats pillaged from the countryside. Seeing that Omar wished to pass through the sheep, the two Cathayans opened up a way, the archers hastening to aid them, at sight of the uniforms of the Sultan's guard.

"It seems," observed Hassan's companion, smiling, "that the cohorts of war are your servants."

He was a heavy man, who moved slowly upon his feet. His eyes were veined, wearied, and always guarded. His words, few and penetrating, revealed nothing of himself. Hassan called him Akroenos and said that he was grandfather of all the merchants.

"And why not?" Hassan inquired, "when the soldiers obey the Sultan's will, and Master Omar shapes the Sultan's will? He is not only court astrologer, he is prophet-in-particular to the beardless Seljuk emperor."

Akroenos looked at Omar without expression, as if weighing him in the scales of his mind. They were climbing a gravel slope, past a grove of gnarled olive trees. Almost hidden in the trees lay the body of a monk in its black robe with its arms outstretched in the form of a cross. The shaven head made a white spot against the gray stones.

" 'Tis some sanctuary of the Christians," Hassan remarked. "This that we climb, they call the Mount of Olives."

The level sun of the late afternoon beat against the bare hill. On the summit the three men sat in silence, while miniature human beings pressed up and down the ravine below them, and the setting sun gilded the distant Dome of the Rock.

Omar knew the name of this valley, the Wadi Jehannem, the Valley of the Damned. Here, the mullahs of Islam taught, the souls of the condemned would pass at the Judgment day when all souls would be weighed in the balance. There were queer-looking tombs on the slope beneath him, already dark in shadow. The sun had become a ball of fire, deepening into red, suspended above the domes of the holy city.

Beside them a line of old men moved slowly down into the valley. Each one grasped the garment or the shoulder of the one before him, as they shuffled and stumbled along, some with faces upraised, some with drooping heads, for they were blind.

"Look," cried Hassan suddenly, "there go we. Ay, we peer at the sky, we search the earth with blind eyes. If we could know the truth!"

"We know," murmured Akroenos, "enough."

Hassan stretched out his arms toward the setting sun, his eyes kindling. "Nay, we are the blind. We know only what is behind us. What do we hold sacred, but old stones and buried bones? What if there be a higher God than the Allah of the Koran?"

Rubbing his fingers through his beard, Akroenos was silent.

Omar watched the ball of the sun take shape in the sunset fire. But a passion of speech had come upon the son of Sabah.

He believed in a new God, inaccessible to human reason. All religions in the past, he said, had been successive steps toward this final understanding. All, to a certain extent, had enlightened men. So with the six prophets—Adam, Noah, Abraham and Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. In time—no one could say when—there would appear a seventh, to reveal the final truth.

"And how," asked Akroenos calmly, "will he be known?"

"He will be known, because he hath been among us in the past, when the time was not arrived. He was the seventh imam of the race of Ali, heritor of the soul of Ali. To some he is known as the seventh imam, to others as the Veiled One. What matter the name? He is the Mahdi, whom we await, unknowing."

Behind the gray wall and the domes of the holy city, the ball of the sun sank out of sight. Akroenos sighed gently.

"The Mahdi," Hassan repeated. "He was here when the white hand of Moses stretched from the bough, and again when the breath of Jesus passed over this land. But he will come again."

A step sounded behind them. One of the Cathayan archers who had been dozing while the wise men talked, said diffidently that it was time to return to the camp. Hassan smiled, his mood changing.

"The soldier always has the last word—whether Roman or Turk."

That twilight upon the Mount of Olives remained fixed in Omar's mind long after he had washed and supped in his own tent. While he was musing, the merchant Akroenos appeared, followed by a boy who laid a roll of white floss silk at the feet of the Tentmaker.

"A small gift," Akroenos said, "as remembrance of our meeting. If a merchant can aid your Excellency——"

"What think ye of Hassan?"

Akroenos rubbed his grizzled beard. "Eh, he may be mad, yet he knows more than any other man I have met. There be many who believe in his message. Now I have heard that your Excellency seeks tidings—some word of it came to me in the caravanserai."

"Yes."

"It was told me that several months ago Abu'l Zaid, the cloth-merchant of Meshed who took another wife in Nisapur——" he glanced inquiringly at Omar.

"What of him?"

"He abode a while in Aleppo, and then departed to the north. It was several months ago."

Omar drew a deep breath. At least Yasmi had been at Aleppo, and he might come upon some trace of her.

"Thou hast brought me two gifts," he said gravely. "What wilt thou have, from my hand?"

"For myself, nothing," Akroenos hesitated. "But think kindly of Hassan, who would be your friend. A time may come when he will lay the hand of supplication upon the skirt of your generosity."

When the merchant had made his salaam and departed, a vagrant memory tugged at Omar's mind. Going to the box of Nizam's letters, he drew out one and reread it carefully. It contained a warning against a new sect of
mulahid
, impious ones. "They preach," the Minister had written in his precise hand, "the coming of a new Mahdi who will overthrow the thrones and the laws of Islam, and they assert that their religion will be the seventh and last of the world. They have been making secret appeals to the followers of the accursed one who called himself the Veiled One of Khorasan. These heretics wear white when they preach their abominable falsehoods—may Allah send them to everlasting torment."

Omar glanced at the roll of white silk, and smiled. No doubt Nizam would have cast it on the fire in righteous wrath, but he intended to have a cloak made out of it.

The court of the dervishes beside the tank of the Jami mosque of Aleppo, toward the hour of evening prayer.

Wrapped in wool, they sat at the edge of the water, six dervishes and one hunchback in rags. Leaning on a staff, the hunchback held out crooked hands to the passersby coming with swishing robes, carrying filled saddlebags or boxes. Veiled women chattered, their heads close together as they passed on, discussing what they had bought. Girls, stumbling, lugged infant brothers on their slender backs. A rich Arab astride a belled mule counted coins from one hand to the other.

"Affliction," wailed the hunchback, "affliction cries to mercy. Give—give in the name of God."

"Weeper!" muttered the Arab, dropping the coins into a stout sack, and stowing the sack in his girdle.

"
Ya hu ya hak!
Oh, mercy! Give, in Allah's name, to the sick."

"Then get thee to the mosque," muttered a mullah, whose skirts swept the dirt.

" 'Tis for another, who must have bread."

The mullah passed on, but a woman stopped, fumbling at the bundle she carried. "Here," she whispered, pulling out a slab of bread, "is it for a holy dervish who weeps mightily?" (The woman knew that all dervishes mourned the sins of the world.)

"It is for one," the cripple assented, taking the bread, "who hath wept tears of blood."

Mounted on a thoroughbred horse, and wearing a robe of honor heavy with silver thread, Omar the Tentmaker came by, from his afternoon audience with the Sultan.

"O Master!" cried the hunchback, running forward. His fingers trembled as they caught at the stirrup. "Stop. For two years and ten moons I sought your Excellency."

Looking down into the anxious face, Omar remembered the King's fool who had wept over the reflection of another moon, drowned in another pool. "Jafarak!" he cried, wondering at the rags of the man and the absence of the white donkey.

"Ay, Jafarak, who holds court with beggars and dervishes now. Why didst thou delay to send for me?"

"To send?"

"Verily, after I brought the silver armlet to thy house—I came back to Aleppo and I waited while moon followed moon. At first she grew stronger and at times she laughed. I would have taken her to thy house, but how can a fool travel with a beautiful girl upon the road? We had no money, and she said surely, surely you would come. Hast thou forgotten Yasmi?"

Omar caught his thin arm. "Is she here—now?"

"I beg for her." Jafarak held up the slab of bread. "Every evening she asks if perhaps there was some word of your Excellency's coming."

"Take me to her."

Tugging at the rein, Jafarak led the horse out of the throng into an alley. He hobbled along, still clutching the bread. "
Ai
, the demon of sickness hath gnawed at her," he said over his shoulder. "Will your nobility wait, just a little, while I tell her what Allah hath brought to pass?"

When Jafarak vanished into a doorway beside a coppersmith's forge, Omar dismounted, leaning his head against the shoulder of the horse, saying to himself that Yasmi was here in a room above this street. When Jafarak came down at last, the jester brushed a hand across his eyes, smiling and grimacing.

"Eh, eh, what a tempest. All this time she hath been like a dove, and now she flutters and cries for incense and henna stain and kohl blacking for her eyes, and bids me warn your Excellency that she hath no silk to wear——"

"Is she ready to see me? Can I go up?"

Feeling his way up dark stone stairs, he passed landings where dim figures peered at him and reached the roof where oranges and wet garments were piled. Beneath a shelter in one corner Yasmi lay on a stained quilt. He saw only her eyes.

"O heart of my heart," he whispered, kneeling beside her.

"How magnificent my lord—
ai
, I have not even a rug to offer—" her breath caught in her throat, until she threw her arms about his neck. He felt tears upon her hot cheeks.

When she grew quiet, pressed close to him, he saw how her face had thinned and paled. Only the scent of her hair and the dark eyes aswoon with love remained the same.

"I watched the stars come up and go down, when I was ill," she whispered, "because they were the same that stood over the House of the Stars. ... Is the dragon still on the screen? Nay, life of my life, I can see all that is in the room—is it still the same?"

"It is the same. It is waiting."

Yasmi stirred and sighed contentedly. "I thought so. But I could not remember the names of the stars, except for Orion and Aldebaran. Jafarak told me some more; he said thou hast become great in the council of our lord the Sultan . . . how pretty the silver is on thy sleeve."

"I will find thee a robe of Cathayan silk, and embroidered slippers."

"And sugared ginger," she laughed "Nay, we must have a feast, with sherbet to drink."

"The wine of thy lips!"

She touched his cheek shyly, and looked eagerly at his fine shagreen riding boots. "If only I were strong. My heart hurts when it pounds so.
Aiwallah
, thy slave hath lost her beauty!"

"Thou are more lovely, beloved."

Suddenly she laid her fingers on his lips, and heeded not that he kissed them. "Tell me—nay, look at me, do not speak— is there another wife who sleeps in my room in the House of the Stars?"

Omar shook his head and she relaxed. "I wondered many times. When my marriage was made a fire came into my brain and I tried to run away. When—when Abu'l Zaid took me in his arms, I grew sick. And then the fever came. . . . They made me travel in closed camel hampers, and sometimes I did not know where I went. It was in a serai among the mountains that I saw the cripple Jafarak, who pitied me. Then quickly I gave him the silver armlet with the turquoises, and bade him take the message to thee at Nisapur whither he was going. But here, in Aleppo my husband grew angry, saying that I mocked him. He went out and cried to witnesses that he divorced me, because I was ill, and evil minded. Then he went away——"

"I knew nothing of the armlet and the message," Omar whispered.

"But now I am a wife outcast——"

"Nay," Omar laughed, "thou art a wife to be. Shall I wait another hour before making thee mine, O houri?"

"This houri hath neither beauty nor dowry."

Still, the warm blood flooded her cheeks, and her eyes brightened. Not until Omar had departed did she lie back upon the quilt, curled up to ease the pain that gnawed at her.

In the street below Omar took the rein from Jafarak. "I go to fetch a
kadi
and witnesses," he said, "for I take Yasmi to wife now, this evening. Go thou to the confectioners—take this purse—bring trays of sweet cakes and rice paste, bring sugared jellies, and sherbet and red wine. Call out to the people in this street to share in the festival. Fetch a lute player—find candles. Light up the roof, and by Allah stint not!"

He swung himself into the saddle and rode away, hardly seeing the curious faces and the outstretched hands of beggars.

"O believers!" cried Jafarak, lifting high the wallet. "O believers, the door of festivity is open. Come ye!"

Aware only of Yasmi in her veil, Omar heard the dry voice of the kadi who sat beside him on the carpet. ". . . daughter of a bookseller. And what is agreed as to her dowry? I said, what property doth she put into your hands?"

Behind the judge, a scribe wrote down the terms of the marriage.

"Property?" Omar smiled. "Hair dark as the storm wind, a waist slender as a young cypress, and a heart that knoweth naught but love. She needs no more. Make haste!"

"Write, 'Nothing of tangible value,'" the kadi instructed the scribe. "And now, what property doth your Excellency bestow upon her?"

"Everything—all that I have."

The kadi folded his arms doggedly. "Will your Excellency please consider that we must place reasonable terms on record? 'Everything' will not stand before the law. We must have itemization: how much land and where situate, what dwellings upon it, and water rights, rights of fishery, and assessed valuation. Then, furthermore, must we have some account of goods, whether rolls of cloth, kantaras of musk, white falcons, black fur, fish teeth suitable for ivory carving, how many camels and where, how many slaves and their approximate value "

"Write 'Everything of tangible value,'" Omar instructed the scribe, over his shoulder.

The kadi lifted indignant hands. "By the beard of my father, and the holy Kiblah, who ever heard such words as these in a marriage contract? First, and before all, such a declaration infringes upon the dower rights of other wives, of whom it is written in the Book-to-be-read that the first four shall—"

Reaching behind him, Omar took a fistful of gold from the tray brought hither by one of his slaves. A coin at a time, he stuffed it between the bearded lips of the judge, then tossed a double handful of silver into the laps of the attentive witnesses. Taking the roll of paper from the scribe, he bade the witnesses sign, while Jafarak poured out a goblet of wine for the scribe. Into the wine Omar dropped a ring from his fingers, amid exclamations from the crowd watching the scene upon the carpet.

'Thy words are golden," he said to the kadi, who was coughing and bowing like a puppet in a show. "Never were such words. Now is the marriage finished. Let the lute be heard, ay, and the harp. And ye, watchers of blessedness, forget not Omar the Tentmaker who took his bride this night."

Rising, he strode to the parapet of the roof and looked down into the lighted street where the beggars, the dervishes and the children of the quarter had gathered. The lutist wailed a song of love, and the harp twanged.

"O men," he cried, "eat and be full! If the cakes fail, eat the confectioner! Is there one among ye who is not merry?"

"Nay, Master Omar. Merry we be."

"Is there one who is not full of rice and sweetmeats and sherbet?"

"By Allah, not one."

"Yet are ye ragged and woeful. This night ye may not be rich as the Tentmaker, for he is rich beyond all counting—nor intoxicated as the Tentmaker, for he hath tasted the wine of Paradise. Still, ye shall not want. Throw out the tray," he ordered his money bearer.

"Master—the tray?"

Taking the great brass salver from him, Omar emptied it into the alley. A roar of satisfaction rose from the crowd, while boys scrambled in the dust and women knelt down to clutch the bright coins.

Omar picked up Yasmi in his arms. She held to his neck, trembling. He carried her down to the street where a palanquin stood—borrowed in haste with two eunuchs to lend it prestige from his friend the Amir Aziz—and lowered her gently to the cushions.

"O my bride," he whispered, "never wilt thou know other arms than mine."

The eunuchs closed the lattice doors, and the crowd which had rubbed elbows with Yasmi for months when she had been an outcast among them, seeking food like themselves, fell back from the guarded chair of the bride of a great noble.

"Ilhamdillah!"
they cried. "The praise be to God! . . . Praise for the Lord of Wisdom, who giveth gold! Praise for the Tentmaker!"

"Is there," cried a dervish, "a lord like to the Lord Omar, from the Gates to Cathay?"

"Not one!" shouted another. "Peace be upon him."

"May his road be smooth!"

A little girl darted out from the crowd with a basket of rose petals which she strewed about the hoofs of Omar's charger.

"Whither," asked one of the eunuchs, "will the Favored of the Throne direct his steps?"

"To the bazaar."

"But the bazaar is closed. Since the late afternoon prayer, it hath been closed."

"Good," assented Omar. "Now, make haste."

Trotting beside the palanquin, which was borne on swiftly by the stalwart black slaves, the eunuch whispered to Jafarak that the Lord appeared to be drunk.

"Thou," grinned the jester, "wilt never be drunk with such wine."

At the closed gate of the nearest bazaar street they found a Turkish
onbashi
with a half-dozen spearmen and a round Chinese lantern. The officer stared at the imposing sedan and the robed eunuchs, and saluted Omar respectfully.

"Nay, lord," he objected, "this entrance is closed during the hours of darkness by order of the Sultan."

"By favor of the Sultan," Omar smiled, "nothing is closed to me this night. Take this ring as token that I grant thee permission to open. Be quick!"

"Wilt thou keep the royal astrologer waiting?" cried Jafarak.

The commander-of-ten took the ring and shook his head >dubiously. Still muttering, he swung open one half of the double gate, bidding his men stand back. As he did so, a form topped by a black skull cap sidled forward and entered the vaulted bazaar street behind the palanquin.

Once inside, the man with a beard ran forward eagerly to grasp Omar's stirrup. "
Ya khwaja
," he said softly, "this way, this way. Come to Zurrak's shop, to behold silks of Khoten and jade pendants from the temple troves. Zurrak hath Balas rubies set in pure gold, to match the hue of a houri's lips. Or will the Lord of Wisdom have lapis lazuli set in silver gilt? Alabaster cups, or crystal basins——"

A second bearded form hastened up, panting with hard running. "O Protector of the Poor, not that way! Zurrak's wares are made here, in the back shops of Aleppo. He knoweth not jade from soapstone. Come this way to the place of thy slave, Sholem of Antioch. This very week I have had a caravan of silks woven with gold thread, and damask sewn with pearls——"

Omar's stirrup was shaken by a third panting merchant. "What words are these, O infidel dogs? O dung from a dunghill, see'st not that the noble lord desires precious stones for the white throat of his bride? This way, Master, to the shop of thy slave Bastam the true-believer, the grandson of a Sayyid——"

"O ye thieves of the night," cried Omar, "I will buy everything, and the Sultan himself shall pay, for this night will never come again."

The hours of that night had passed like minutes. Lying near the entrance of his tent—for the midsummer heat was upon them—Omar played with Yasmi's hair, winding it about his fingers. Now, at last, he felt alive again. The sounds of the night had meaning. All the long hours of the last three years had vanished, like a vision rising from the sea and sinking into the sea.