Omar Khayyam - a life (15 page)

The selling pillar in the alley of the slave sellers within the great bazaar of Nisapur, the seventh year of the new calendar of Sultan Malikshab.

The crier stood up and beat upon a brass basin.

"Bism'allah ar-rahman ar-rahim"
he called, "In the name of God the Kind, the Compassionate, the door of bidding is opened. Give heed, ye buyers!"

They sat crowded together, nobles, merchants, gentlemen farmers seeking stalwart plowmen, and pious Nisapuris who desired new handmaidens. For word had got about that new caravans of slave-stuff had come in from Syria where the glorious Sultan Malikshah had made fresh conquests.

So large was the crowd that the
dallal
had to clear a space about the stone pillar, to place his first offering on the slab before the pillar.

"Behold, O educated lords," he announced, "here is a Greek boy of some fourteen years, strong and with all his teeth, without sores or sickness of any nature, trained to play the lute and already circumcised as a Musliman. Who will say thirty dinars?" He looked about him. "Five and twenty dinars? Then make haste and say twenty, for that is less than the price of a Kurdish horse."

Lifting an arm of the motionless boy, who had been stripped to the waist, the
dallal
turned him about slowly, to show his fair skin unblemished. But the vast quantities of young slaves brought into the markets recently had forced down prices. These captives must be sold to make way for others now on the road. The ribs of the Greek showed through his skin. He was half-starved, and wished only for food.

"Verily," cried a stout Persian, "a horse is worth more. His strength is as water, he understands no word, and he will not serve at his age for a eunuch. Eleven dinars I will pay."

"Eleven! By Allah, this infid——this young Moslem hath gentle blood in him. Say, is his price no more than the price of a cow? No more than eleven?"

"Such a Greek as this will never bear spear-and-shield," cried another merchant. "Twelve."

"Twelve and two dirhems."

"Is this bidding or alms-giving?" shouted the
dallal
, who did not want the first offering to go at such prices.

"Yes, it is charity," responded the stout Persian, "for these boys are selling in the Baghdad
souk
at less than ten. I say twelve and four."

The boy was bought by a merchant for thirteen dinars and three silver dirhems. And an Abyssinian woman covered with bangles whispered to the girl who sat by her that they would go cheap.

"Ai,"
she mourned, "and once a Sayyid bid three hundred gold for me."

"O many-times-a-mother," the girl whispered back, "that must have been long ago."

"The Turks are better than these," the Abyssinian went on, "who are merchants and palm lickers.
Thou
wilt never hear a hundred bid for thee, Ayesha."

The girl Ayesha hugged her knees and considered. She had good teeth and a fine body, a bit too thin for the Persians' liking—she was an Arab of the
banu's Safa
from the black tents of the Hauran—and her skin was not as light as that of the Persian women, although not as dark as the Abyssinian's. If the merchants had only kept her for the private auction, some young noble might have fancied her.

Unlike the experienced Abyssinian, Ayesha was not reconciled to her fate. The thought of being sold to a shopkeeper who would expect her to bake his bread and caress him at the same time filled her with silent fury. "O God," she prayed half-aloud, "may it not come upon my head!"

" 'What? Well, you'll be sold for what you are. You don't get fruit from a willow tree." The Abyssinian combed the short hair over her forehead and smirked into a hand-mirror. "Listen now! Those two pockmarked Yamenites sold to a Jew for twenty dinars. What times—what times!"

Ayesha had been sold once in Baghdad, and the fierce independence of the desert-born tormented her. From the edge of her veil she scanned the faces of the buyers and inwardly cursed them for street-born hagglers. Then she became utterly still.

A horseman had drawn rein at the edge of the crowd—a man indifferent to the crowd. In the clasp of his turban's plume a great emerald gleamed. Evidently he was well-known, because heads craned toward him, and a guard muttered to another that here was the King's star gazer wandering after his wont.

So, Ayesha thought, the newcomer must be an officer, a man of authority. True, he had a stern face with eyes like an eagle's under tufted brows; but he could not be much over thirty. Ayesha drew a long breath and rose to her knees.

"Sit, woman," muttered the guard. "Thy turn is not yet."

Instead Ayesha darted under his arm, and thrust her way through the nearest men. Swiftly as a frightened gazelle, she ran to the horseman and clutched his stirrup.

"Protector of the Poor," she gasped, "give aid. I am from the high tent of a shaikh—my father was chieftain of the
banu's Safa
—" this was a lie— "and now, behold, O Amir of Amirs, they sell me with boys and drabs at the public post"

Omar glanced down into dark eyes passionate with entreaty. He noticed the strength in her slim young shoulders, the curve of a fair throat. Ayesha had let her veil fall, and her lips moved imploringly. Inwardly she was praying that he understood her Arabic.

Omar understood, but he was looking into eyes that made him think of Yasmi, after ten years.

The
dallal
, pushing through the throng, caught her shoulder angrily. "Cease thy clamor—back to thy place, she-panther." To Omar he salaamed profoundly. "Do not take it ill, Khwaja. 'Tis a girl with the temper of one possessed."

Ayesha still held fast to the stirrup, her cheek against his knee.

"What is her price?" asked Omar. "No matter—I will pay a hundred gold."

Scenting a good profit, the
dallal
turned to the crowd that had forsaken the dais to gather about them. "O believers, a hundred dinars is bid for this matchless girl with a waist slender as a cypress and a temper as gentle as a fawn's, who sings like a bulbul and banishes care from troubled minds." He caught the eye of a helper who had been placed among the merchants for just such a cue. "Who will bid more?"

"A hundred and ten," cried the disguised helper.

"Two hundred," said Omar. "I will take her with me now,
dallal
, and the money will be paid thee at my house."

"The praise be to Allah," cried the startled auctioneer, who had not expected to get more than seventy pieces for a girl like this Arab. "O believers, what an open hand hath this
chelabi
, our revered master! What splendid taste! What munificence! Now is the singing slave Ayesha sold to Khwaja Omar for two hundred, and——" he decided that, the attention of the crowd being focussed on Omar, a little more gain could be had—"a poor twenty dinars, my commission, with only five for the mosque of the market. What generosity! Wilt have a litter, to carry hence this lovely singer? Wilt buy an African eunuch to guard her, for such a little price?"

But Omar signed to the servant who followed him to dismount. Ayesha scrambled up into the vacated saddle with a gasp of relief—she had feared that something might make this lord repent of his bargain at the final moment. Obediently she bent her head, for Omar to draw the veil across her face. Now she was his.

As the horses moved away she cast one triumphant glance over her shoulder at the Abyssinian slave with the bangles.

"Yah bint,"
Omar addressed her, "O girl, art thou truly the daughter of the shaikh of the
banu's Safa?
"

Instinctive cunning checked the response on her lips. She glanced at Omar, as a dog looks up into the face of its master to understand what lies behind his words. "Nay, not of the chieftain," she admitted boldly. "That was a lie. But I can really sing."

Omar smiled. And Ayesha wondered what manner of lord this could be, who desired to hear truth spoken by a fair woman.

The garden of Kasr Kucbik, in the foothills two days ride east of Nisapur.

Although Ayesha was surprised, naturally, when the King's star gazer did not yield at once to her charm and solace himself by sleeping with her, she understood that he might want to wait a month. That was customary. Often in the desert raids, warriors would enjoy the captive women before the heat of battle had cooled in their veins; otherwise they would wait for the month ordained by custom and religious law. When Ayesha was sent away under guard to the summer palace of her new owner, she did not feel slighted. She wasted no time, however, in satisfying her curiosity about Omar.

Her first discovery amazed her, almost beyond belief. The palace was, as its name implied, a little one—a dwelling lovely with blue tiles, standing at the back of a hill garden overlooking the gray plain. Ayesha was given a chamber opening into a roof terrace, and in an hour she had satisfied herself that no other woman of her class resided there.

"Nay, the master hath no wives," old Zuleika admitted. " 'Tis said that once he married one who died of the plague before her homecoming."

Being mistress of the kitchen, old Zuleika had the gossip of the place at her tongue's end.

"Sometimes," she added, "he brings hither dancing girls for a little while, but they weary him and he sends them away with a gift."

Inwardly Ayesha resolved that he would not send her away so speedily, with or without a gift. True, he had bought her and he was responsible for her, but Ayesha had no illusions about the fate of young slave girls who did not please their masters. Moreover, she found Kasr Kuchik delightful.

The garden had a stream coming out of a grotto and winding between cool cypresses down to the pool where the rugs were spread. White roses climbed everywhere, even against the high walls of dried mud. In one corner stood a fairy-like kiosk. Here Ayesha was privileged to lie on heaped-up cushions and nibble at sugar paste, while she watched the spray of a fountain and stained her nails with henna. Ayesha thought life would be very pleasant in Kasr Kuchik.

"This place," Zuleika informed her proudly, "is only one of many. Our lord hath a palace in Nisapur and another in Merv, by the great palace of the Sultan. He hath besides a house of science which is called the House of the Stars. Wise men with long beards work there making books at his command."

"
Wah!
Making books?"

"Yes, books are as common as dates with our master. One he made for the Sultan was an algebra,"

"A—what?"

"An algebra. It hath to do with magical numbers. Our master in his wisdom knoweth all that has ever been, and all that will be—God willing. That is why the Sultan will do nothing without his advice, so he is as great-in-power as the aged Arranger of the World. Ay, at the royal banquets he sits above the Amir of all the armies, and our Sultan loveth nothing more than an army, unless it be his hunting."

This Ayesha understood readily enough. War, raid, and hunt were the occupations of strong men, who looked to women for their diversion, and to bear their children. The more powerful the men, the fairer and more numerous their women.

"And the banquets he gives!" Zuleika rambled on—having perceived from the first day that Ayesha would never interfere with her domestic supremacy, she allowed herself to gossip freely—"In an ants' house a dewdrop is a flood, but here wine flows as if for the giants.
Hai
the jars they empty in the garden—the roast pheasants, the gazelle steaks, the mounds of rice-and-saffron, the platters of Shah's-delight, and the camel-loads of melons cooled with snow from the upper hills! They eat and they sit and they talk until the stars fade."

"
Wah!
Thy cooking is fragrant as a garden in Nejd. But what do they talk about, if they have no girls?"

"Oh, about Cos-reagraphy and Pre-isms and such-like. My soul, they use mighty words of power and it fair blisters my brain to understand them."

Ayesha thought it must blister one's brain. She herself could never arrive at Zuleika's comprehension of the mysteries.

In fact, she felt the difference between herself and these Persians. All of them—from the half-blind gatekeeper, to the hunchback who came and went on a white donkey—lived on the bounty of their lord. They talked more than they slept and they slept more than they worked. There was no
makaddam
with a whip to see that they labored.

The garden had twenty gardeners, from the planter-in-chief to the lowest sweeper. Yet seldom did they do more than sit and discuss the affairs of the garden and themselves. From her roof terrace the she-panther—the servant who had escorted her from the street of the slave sellers had brought that nickname back with him—listened to them. "O Ali, the last rain washed stones into the lily beds. It is time that the bed should be dug." . . . "Knowest not, Hussayn, that the proper time is in the moon before the equinox? Besides, it is Ahmed's work, and by God's will he lieth sick." . . . "The master will be angry if the bed is not dug." .. . "That is true. Well, I will make haste and remove the stones, and rake the leaves and dig it deep, tomorrow."

But tomorrow Ali would wait for Ahmed's son to repair the hoe that had been broken last autumn. "It is important, O Hussayn, to fill up the holes in the gravel walk by the kiosk. Our master might stumble in those holes and then would be calamity." . . . "How can I fill the holes when I am pruning the rose vines?"

Hussayn, however, was not actually pruning the roses. He had cut some to take to the daughter of the miller in the village, and he meant with all his heart to clip and trim and tie up all the vines—he would certainly do something about it tomorrow.

Then if they worked a little in the morning, they would sleep in the shade of the cypresses through the noonday heat, leaving the flies to buzz about the tools in the sun. When they woke they would be too drowsy and the sun would be too hot to resume work—it could be done tomorrow.

Still, in spite of this neglect, the garden was heavy with fragrance of roses, and its canopy of foliage made a sanctuary of shadow. Ayesha liked to drowse in it while she waited for Omar's coming.

But when her new master at last rode into the gate—and the gatekeeper put on his best garment, and all the gardeners, even Ahmed who had complained of sickness, scurried about with their tools as if interrupted in diligent toil, while Zuleika stirred the kitchen into pandemonium—Ayesha could no longer go into the garden. A half dozen visitors accompanied Omar, and for weeks the Lord of Kasr Kuchik did nothing but entertain his guests. Some went away, but others came, and Ayesha perforce kept to her rooms and roof-top, wearing her heaviest veil the while, and wondering as the days passed if Omar had forgotten her.

She could not speak to him while the other men filled the place, outside her harem. And, after all, she was only a new-bought slave; she did not dare send a message to him by Zuleika. He must have seen her from a distance on her roof, and perhaps he regretted buying her and meant to sell her again. Ayesha poadered the question for long hours, while she bathed and anointed herself and colored her nails carefully. She was a little afraid of Omar, but she did not want to be sold again, and she determined that if he came face to face with her only for a moment without her veil, he should not neglect her again.

Meanwhile she listened to all the talk in the garden below, as had been a woman's privilege since Allah created Eve of blessed memory.

When the men feasted after the hour of candle-lighting, she could stretch out in her eyrie and hear—she had the ears of a panther—all that was said, and wonder about the characters of the visitors.

There was a grizzled Armenian merchant, Akroenos by name, of whom she approved decidedly. He conversed, with Omar apart, of turquoises from the mines, of caravan-loads of elephants' teeth, and profits of thousands of dinars. Ayesha understood such matters very well; she realized that Akroenos was Omar's man of business and that Omar had great wealth to dispose of. The price he had paid for her had been no more than beggar's pence to him. So much the better. . . .

Of a certain poet with oiled hair named Mu'izzi, the Glorifier, she did not approve. True, he praised Omar without stint, saying that the King's astronomer had reached threefold perfection, in a thing called mathematics and in knowledge-of-the-stars, and also—as he, Mu'izzi had heard—in the art of music. Were not the very children of Islam reading Omar's books in the schools? But Ayesha thought to herself that words were cheap.

Once Mu'izzi was prevailed upon to recite an ode of his own: