The Journeyer

by Gary Jennings

  I suppose I had got it into my head that the words Muslim and Arab were interchangeable, and therefore that any Muslim community must be indistinguishable—in matters of filth and vermin and beggars and stench—from the Arab cities, towns and villages I had passed through. I was agreeably surprised to find that the Persians, although their religion is Islam, are more inclined to keep their buildings and streets and garments and persons clean. That, with the abundance of flowers everywhere, and a comparative fewness of beggars, made Baghdad a most pleasant and even nice-smelling city—except, of necessity, around the waterfront and the bazàr markets.

  Although much of Baghdad’s architecture was of course peculiarly Eastern, even that was not entirely exotic to my Western eyes. I saw a great deal of that lacy filigree “arabesco” stonework which Venice has also adopted for some of its building fronts. Baghdad being still a Muslim city, even after its absorption into the Khanate—for the Mongols, unlike most conquerors, do not anywhere impose any change of religion —it was studded with those great Muslim masjid temples of worship. But their immense domes were not much different from the domes of San Marco and the other churches of Venice. Their slender manarat towers were not too dissimilar to the campanili of Venice, only being generally round instead of square in cross-section, and having little balconies at their tops, from which the muedhdhin beadles shouted at intervals to announce the hours of prayer.

  Those muedhdhin in Baghdad, incidentally, were all blind men. I inquired whether that was a necessary qualification for the post, something demanded by Islam, and was told it was not. Blind men were engaged as the prayer-calling beadles for two pragmatic reasons. Being unfit for most other employments, they could not demand much pay for the work. And they could not take sinful advantage of their literally high position: they could not look down to ogle any decent woman who ascended to her rooftop to doff her veil—or more of her coverings—for a private sunbath.

  In their interiors, the masjid temples differ notably from our Christian churches. In none of them, anywhere, is there ever to be found any statue or painting or other recognizable image. Though Islam recognizes, I think, as many angels and saints and prophets as Christianity does, it will allow no representation of them, or of any other creature alive or which ever has lived. Muslims believe that their Allah, like our Lord God, created all things living. But, unlike us Christians, they maintain that all creation, even in paint or wood or stone imitation of life, must be forever reserved to Allah. Their Quran warns them that on Judgment Day any maker of any such image will be commanded to bring that image to life; if the maker cannot do that, and of course he cannot, he will be damned to Hell for his presumption in having made it. Therefore, although a Muslim masjid—or palace or home—is always rich in decoration, those decorations are never pictures of anything; they consist only of patterns and colors and intricate arabeschi. Sometimes, though, the patterns are discernible as being woven of the Arabic fish-worm letters and spelling out some phrase or verse from the Quran.

  (I learned these several uncommonly odd things about Islam—and I learned many other uncommonly odd things besides—because, during my stay in Baghdad, I acquired first one and then another uncommonly odd teacher, and I will tell of them in their turn.)

  I was particularly taken with one form of decoration I saw in the interior rooms of every public and private building in Baghdad. I should say that I first saw it there, but afterward I saw it in other palaces, homes and temples throughout Persia and throughout much of the rest of the East. I should think it might be advantageously adopted by any people anywhere which loves a garden, and what people does not love a garden?

  What it is, is a way to bring a garden indoors, though never having to tend or weed or water it. Called in Persia a qali, it is a sort of carpet or tapicierie made to lie on a floor or hang on a wall, but it is unlike any such work we know in the West. The qali is colored in all the colors of a bounteous garden, and its figures form the shapes of multitudes of flowers, vines, trellises, leaves—everything to be found in a garden—all disposed in pleasing designs and arrangements. (In keeping with the Quran’s ban on images, however, a Persian qali is made so that the flowers are not recognizable as any known existing flowers.) At first sight of a qali, I thought the garden must be painted or embroidered upon it. But, on examination, I found that all that intricacy was woven into it. I marveled that any tapicier could contrive such a fanciful thing with mere warp and weft of dyed yarns, and it was some while before I learned the marvelous manner in which it is done.

  But I have already got ahead of my chronicle.

  We three led our five horses across the wobbling and undulating boat bridge which spanned the Dijlah River. At the Baghdad waterfront, teeming with men of all complexions and costumes and languages, we accosted the first one we saw wearing Western clothes. He was a Genoan, but I should remark that, out East, all Westerners get along convivially enough—even Genoans and Venetians, albeit they are rivals in trade and even though their home republics may be embroiled in one of their frequent sea wars. The Genoan merchant amiably told us the name of the incumbent Shah—he gave it as “Shahinshah Zaman Mirza” —and directed us to the palace “in the Karkh quarter, which is the exclusively royal quarter of the city.”

  We rode thither, and found the palace in a gated garden, and made ourselves known to the guards at the gate. Those guards wore helmets that seemed to be of solid gold—but could not have been, or their weight would have been intolerable—and, even if only of plated wood or leather, were objects of great value. They were also objects of interest, being fashioned to give their wearers a wealth of curly golden hair and side whiskers. One of the guards went inside the gate and through the garden to the palace. When he returned and beckoned to us, another guard took charge of our horses, and we entered.

  We were led to a chamber richly hung and carpeted with brilliant qali, where the Shahinshah half-sat and half-reclined on a heap of daiwan cushions of equally vivid colors and fine fabrics. He himself was not gaudily garbed; from tulband to slippers, his dress was a uniform pale brown. That is the Persian color of mourning, and the Shah always wore pale brown now in mourning for his lost empire. We were somewhat surprised—this being a Muslim household—to see that a woman occupied another heap of pillows beside him, and there were also two other females in the room. We made the proper bows of salaam and, still bowed down, my father greeted the Shahinshah in the Farsi tongue, then raised up upon his two hands the letter of Kubilai Khan. The Shah took it and read aloud its salutation:

  “‘Most Serene, most Puissant, most High, Noble, Illustrious, Honorable, Wise and Prudent Emperors, Ilkhani, Shahi, Kings, Lords, Princes, Dukes, Earls, Barons and Knights, as also Magistrates, Officers, Justicians and Regents of all good cities and places, whether ecclesiastic or secular, who shall see these patents or hear them read …’”

  When he had perused the whole thing, the Shahinshah bade us welcome, addressing each of us as “Mirza Polo.” That was a little confusing, as I had understood Mirza to be one of his names. But I gradually gathered that he was using the word as a respectful honorific, as the Arabs use Sheikh. And eventually I realized that Mirza before a name means only what Messer does in Venice; when it is appended after the name, it signifies royalty. The Shah’s name was actually and simply Zaman, and his full title of Shahinshah meant Shah of All Shahs, and he introduced the lady beside him as his Royal First Wife, or Shahryar, by the name of Zahd.

  That was very nearly all he got to say that day, because, once she was introduced into the conversation, the Shahryar Zahd proved to be effusively and endlessly talkative. First interrupting, then overriding her husband, she gave us her own welcome to Persia and to Baghdad and to the palace, and she sent our accompanying guard back to the gate, and she hammered a little gong at her side to summon a palace maggiordomo whom she told us was called a wazir, and she instructed the wazir to prepare quarters for us in the palace and assign palace servants to us, and she introduced
us to the other two females in the room: one her mother, the other the eldest daughter of herself and the Shah Zaman, and she informed us that she herself, Zahd Mirza, was a direct descendant of the fabled Balkis, Queen of Sabaea—and, of course, so were her mother and daughter—and she reminded us that the famous encounter of Queen Balkis with the Padshah Solaiman was recorded in the annals of Islam as well as those of Judaism and Christianity (which remark enabled me to recognize the biblical Queen of Sheba and King Solomon), and she further informed us that the Sabaean Queen Balkis herself was a jinniyeh, descended from a demon named Eblis, who was chief jinni of all the demon jinn, and furthermore …

  “Tell us, Mirza Polo,” the Shah said, almost desperately, to my father, “something of your journey thus far.”

  My father obligingly began an account of our travels, but he had not even got us out of the Venice lagoon when the Shahryar Zahd pounced in with a lyrical description of some pieces of Murano glass she had recently bought from a Venetian merchant in downtown Baghdad, and that reminded her of an old but little-known Persian tale of a glassblower who, once upon a time, fashioned a horse of blown glass and persuaded a jinni to make some magic by which the horse was enabled to fly like a bird, and …

  The tale was interesting enough, but unbelievable, so I let my attention wander to the other two females in the room. The women’s very presence in a meeting of men—not to mention the Shahryar’s unquenchable garrulity—was evidence that the Persians did not shield and sequester and stifle their womenfolk as most other Muslims do. Each woman’s eyes were visible above a mere half-veil of chador, which was diaphanous anyway and did not conceal her nose and mouth and chin. On their upper bodies they wore blouse and waistcoat, and on their lower limbs the voluminous pai-jamah. However, those garments were not thick and many-layered as on Arab women, but gossamer light and translucent, so the shapes of their bodies could be easily discerned and appreciated.

  I gave only one look at the aged grandmother: wrinkled, bony, hunched, almost bald, toothlessly champing her granulated lips, her eyes red and gummy, her withered paps flapping against slatted ribs. One look at the crone was enough for me. But her daughter, the Shahryar Zahd Mirza, was an exceptionally handsome woman, anyway when she was not talking, and her daughter was a superbly beautiful and shapely girl about my own age. She was the Crown Princess or Shahzrad, and named Magas, which means Moth, and subtitled with the royal Mirza. I have neglected to say that the Persians are not, like Arabs, of dark and muddy complexion. Though they all have blue-black hair, and the men wear blue-black beards like Uncle Mafìo’s, their skin is as fair as any Venetian’s, and many have eyes of lighter color than brown. The Shahzrad Magas Mirza was at that moment taking my measure with eyes of emerald green.

  “Speaking of horses,” said the Shah, seizing on the tail of the flying-horse tale, before his wife could be reminded of some other story. “You gentlemen should consider trading your horses for camels before you leave Baghdad. Eastward of here you must cross the Dasht-e-Kavir, a vast and terrible desert. Horses cannot endure the—”

  “The Mongols’ horses did,” his wife sharply contradicted him. “A Mongol goes everywhere on a horse, and no Mongol would ever bestride a camel. I will tell you how they despise and mistreat camels. While they were besieging this city, the Mongols captured a herd of camels somewhere, and they loaded them with bales of dry grass, and set that hay afire, and stampeded the poor beasts into our streets. The camels, their own fur and humps of fat burning as well, ran mad in agony and could not be caught. So they careered up and down our streets, setting fire to much of Baghdad, before the flames ate into them and reached their vitals, and they collapsed and died.”

  “Or,” said the Shah to us, when the Shahryar paused to take a breath, “your journey could be much shortened if you went part way by sea. You might wish to go southeast from here, to Basra—or even farther down the Gulf, to Hormuz—and take passage on some ship sailing to India.”

  “In Hormuz,” said the Shahryar Zahd, “every man has only a thumb and the two outer fingers on his right hand. I will tell you why. That seaport city has for ages treasured its importance and its independence, so its every adult male citizen has always been trained as an archer to defend it. When the Mongols under the Ilkhan Hulagu laid seige to Hormuz, the Ilkhan made an offer to the city fathers. Hulagu said he would let Hormuz stand, and retain its independence, and keep its citizen archers, if only the city fathers would lend him those bowmen for long enough to help him conquer Baghdad. Then, he promised, he would let the men come home to Hormuz and be its staunch defense again. The city fathers agreed to that proposal, and all its men—however reluctantly—joined Hulagu in his siege of this city, and fought well for him, and eventually our beloved Baghdad fell.”

  She and the Shah both sighed deeply.

  “Well,” she went on, “Hulagu had been so impressed by the valor and prowess of the Hormuz men that he then sent them to bed with all the young Mongol women who always accompany the Mongol armies. Hulagu wished to add the potency of the Hormuz seed to the Mongol birthlines, you see. After a few nights of that enforced cohabitation, when Hulagu presumed his females had been sufficiently impregnated, he kept his promise and freed the archers to go home to Hormuz. But before he let them depart, he had every man’s two bowstring fingers amputated. In effect, Hulagu took the fruit from the trees and then felled the trees. Those mutilated men could make no defense of Hormuz at all, and of course that city soon became, like our dear defeated Baghdad, a possession of the Mongol Khanate.”

  “My dear,” said the Shah, looking flustered. “These gentlemen are emissaries of that Khanate. The letter they showed me is a ferman from the Khakhan Kubilai himself. I very much doubt that they are amused to hear tales of the Mongols’—er—misbehavior.”

  “Oh, you can freely say atrocities, Shah Zaman,” my uncle boomed heartily. “We are still Venetians, not adoptive Mongols nor apologists for them.”

  “Then I should tell you,” said the Shahryar, again leaning eagerly forward, “the ghastly way Hulagu treated our Qalif al-Mustasim Billah, the holiest man of Islam.” The Shah breathed another sigh, and fixed his gaze on a remote corner of the room. “As perhaps you know, Mirza Polo, Baghdad was to Islam what Rome is to Christianity. And the Qalif of Baghdad was to Muslims what your Pope is to you Christians. So, when Hulagu laid siege here, it was to the Qalif Mustasim that he proposed surrender terms, not to the Shah Zaman.” She flicked a disparaging glance at her husband. “Hulagu offered to lift the siege if the Qalif acceded to certain demands, among them the handing over of much gold. The Qalif refused, saying, ‘Our gold sustains our Holy Islam.’ And the reigning Shah did not overrule that decision.”

  “How could I?” that Shah said weakly, as if it was an argument much argued previously. “The spiritual leader outranks the temporal.”

  His wife went implacably on. “Baghdad might have withstood the Mongols and their Hormuz allies, but it could not withstand the hunger imposed by a siege. Our people ate everything edible, even the city rats, but the people got weaker and weaker, and many died and the rest could fight no longer. When the city inevitably fell, Hulagu imprisoned the Qalif Mustasim in solitary confinement, and let him get even hungrier. At last the holy old man had to beg for food. Hulagu with his ówn hands gave him a plate full of gold coins, and the Qalif whimpered, ‘No man can eat gold.’ And Hulagu said, ‘You called it sustenance when I asked for it. Did it sustain your holy city? Pray, then, that it will sustain you.’ And he had the gold melted, and he poured that glowing-hot liquid metal down the old man’s throat, killing him horribly. Mustasim was the last of the Qalifate, which had endured for more than five hundred years, and Baghdad is no longer the capital either of Persia or of Islam.”

  We dutifully shook our heads in commiseration, which encouraged the Shahryar to add:

  “As an illustration of how low the Shahnate has been brought: this my husband, Shah Zaman, who was once Shahinshah of all the Empire of
Persia, is now a pigeon keeper and cherry picker!”

  “My dear … ,” said the Shah.

  “It is true. One of the lesser Khans—somewhere to the eastward; we have never even met this Ilkhan—has a taste for ripe cherries. He is also a fancier of pigeons, and his pigeons are trained always to fly home to him from wherever they may be transported. So there are now some hundred of those feathered rats in a dovecote behind the palace stables, and for each there is a tiny silken bag. My Emperor husband has instructions. Next summer when our orchards ripen, we are to pick the cherries, put one or two of them into each of those little bags, fasten the bags to the legs of the pigeons and let the birds free. Like the rukh bird carrying off men and lions and princesses, the pigeons will carry our cherries to the waiting Ilkhan. If we do not pay that humiliating tribute, he will doubtless come rampaging from out of the east and lay our city waste again.”

  “My dear, I am sure the gentlemen are now weary of—of traveling hither,” said the Shah, sounding weary himself. He struck the gong to summon the wazir once more, and said to us, “You will wish to rest and refresh yourselves. Then, if you will do me the honor, we will foregather again at the evening meal.”

  The wazir, a middle-aged and melancholy man named Jamshid, showed us to our chambers, a suite of three rooms with doors between. They were well furnished, with many qali on the floors and walls, and windows of stone tracery inset with glass, and soft beds of quilts and pillows. Our packs had already been removed from our horses and brought there.