The Achmed Abdullah Megapack

by Achmed Abdullah

  He instructed the palace servants that hereafter his twin brother was no longer to be admitted; and when Fathouma, who had heard him give the order, argued with him, he told her:

  “You do not know my brother. Always, since his early childhood days, he has been a most lawless and sinful person, has always tried to lead me down the crooked road of temptation. He, I assure you, is not the proper companion for the like of me. And his way with the women—to kiss and ride away—shocking, shocking!”

  Hypocritical? Not really. Or if he was, he did not know it.

  Indeed, somehow, he meant what he said; began to fancy himself as a most sober and respectable citizen.

  * * * *

  No longer did his heart leap and skip like a gay little rabbit across the land whenever he beheld a new face, a young face, a pretty face. And one day when Fathouma mentioned that Timur Bek and his bride were expected home from their honeymoon—and what about entertaining them at dinner?—he shook his head.

  “No,” he said.

  “But—isn’t Timur your friend?”

  “He is. But Gotha—”

  “Yes?”

  “A toothsome morsel, I grant you. Only—inclined to be flighty.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I know. Why, the very first time I saw her, she gave me the quirk of the eye. She asked me, if you want blunt speech—”

  “Please! Not too blunt!”

  “You are quite right. It would not be fit for your ears. Anyway, I would have none of her. For by the Prophet, I have always followed the white road of honor—naturally, being what I am. Besides, was not my friend Timur Bek in love with the young person? So, as you know, I let him have my jewels, so that he might buy himself his heart’s desire.”

  He smiled benignly; went on in resonant and rather unctuous accents: “The Lord’s blessings on them both!”

  Maybe Omar the Black believed that he spoke the truth. Maybe Fathouma did likewise; and maybe, being as clever in one way as she was simple in another, she did not—though without letting on.

  For she loved her husband. She loved his very failings, and defended them, even to herself. She was happy—and happiest when, more and more frequently, he would spend the night at home and they would be alone; when he would sit by her side, pleasant and jovial and companionable, and tell her tales of his past life, his past prowess and bravery, his past motley adventures, east, north, south, west.

  The love in her brown, gold-flecked eyes would enkindle his imagination. And—oh, the clanking, stirring tales he would tell then:

  “The pick of the lads of the far wide roads I was, with ever my sword eager for a bit of strife, ever a fine thirst tickling my gullet, ever the bold, bold eyes of me giving the wink and smile at the passing girls, and they—the dears, the darlings!—giving the same wink and smile straight back at me—”

  He would interrupt himself.

  “That was,” he would add, “before I met you.”

  “Of course.”

  She would laugh. She was not jealous of the past, being wiser than most women. Also—oh, yes, she was clever—the very fact that his mind was dwelling more and more on former days and former deeds, proved to her that he was getting old and ready to settle down—which was as she wished.

  And so late one afternoon when—it happened rarely nowadays—Omar the Black had gone to split a bottle or two with a boon companion, Fathouma decided that she would surprise him, would buy him a present: the handsomest carved emerald to be had in Gulabad.

  She put on her swathing street veils and called to one of the lackeys, a Persian, who had recently been hired and who was a most conscientious servant—always present when he was needed and ready to do her bidding:

  “Hossayn!”

  He salaamed. “Heaven-born?”

  “I am going to the bazaar to do some shopping. Come with me.”

  “Listen is obey!”

  Again he salaamed. He led the way out of the palace, crying loudly:

  “Give way, Moslems! Give way for the Heaven-born, the Princess of High Tartary!”

  He stalked ahead, clearing a path with the help of a long brass-tipped stave.

  Fathouma followed. She was excited, elated. Ah, what an emerald she would buy her lord! She tripped along. And she did not know that, as they passed a dark postern, Hossayn exchanged a cough and a fleeting glance with a stranger who stood there hidden in the coiling, trooping shadows. Nor could she know that several days earlier Hossayn had been buttonholed on the street by this same stranger, who had spoken to him at whispered length and taken him to a tavern.

  There, over glasses of potent milk-white raki, they had continued the conversation. There had been spirited haggling and bargaining. Finally with a sigh, the other had well greased the Persian’s greedy palm, giving him whatever gold and silver coins remained in his waist-shawl. He had added, for good measure, a couple of rings and a dagger.

  He had leaned across the table, had asked:

  “Do you know what I am thinking?”

  “Well?”

  “I am thinking,”—in a purring voice,—“that I have three more daggers, not as handsome as this but quite as sharp—and thinking, also, that, should you deceive me, yours might be a fine throat for slitting.”

  The Persian had turned pale.

  “Do not bristle at me, tall warrior!” he had begged. “I—deceive you? Never!”

  “Of course not.”

  “Only—”

  “Only?” threateningly.

  “I am not the only servant. Nor can I tell when the Heaven-born will—”

  “I know. And I do not demand the impossible. All I expect you to do is to be attentive to her, to make a point of hovering near, being watchful.”

  He muttered instructions; and the Persian inclined his head.

  “I understand.”

  So there was now, in passing, the glance, the cough—and once more:

  “Give way, Moslems! Give way for the Heaven-born, the Princess of High Tartary!”

  The people gave way as well as they could. But as Fathouma and the lackey approached the Street of the Western Traders, where the jewelers displayed their precious wares, the alleys and squares and marketplaces became ever more packed with milling, moiling, perspiring humanity, not to mention humanity’s wives and children and mothers-in-law and visiting country cousins.

  For today—and as it turned out, it was a lucky stroke of fortune for the stranger who had left the postern and was following the two as closely as he could—was a great Islamic festival: the day preceding the Lelet el-Kadr, the Night of Honor, the anniversary of the blessed occasion when Allah, in His mercy, revealed the Book of the Koran to His messenger Mohammed.

  A most solemn occasion, the Lelet el-Kadr—it being the night when the Sidr, which is the lotus tree and which bears as many leaves as there are human beings, is shaken in Paradise by the Archangel Israfel, and on each leaf is inscribed the name of a person who will die during the coming year, should it drop.

  * * * *

  Small wonder that strong, personal interest is behind the prayers after sunset. Small wonder, furthermore, that all lights are extinguished—lest dark and evil djinn find their way up to Paradise and nudge the Archangel, startling him and causing him to shake down the wrong leaf.

  Small wonder, finally, that on the preceding day there should be merry-making—a fit prelude to the Night of Honor, the Night of Fear, the Night of Repentance.

  So here in Gulabad as in the rest of the Islamic world, gay throngs were everywhere, people of all High Tartary, with here and there men from the farther east and south and north and west—Persians, Afghans, Chinese, Siberians, Tibetans, even men from distant Hindustan and Burma, come across mountains and plains to fatten their purses on the holiday trade.

  Doing well, making handsome profits.

  For all were ready to spend what they could—and could not—afford. All were enjoying themselves after the Orient’s immemorial fashion, r
esplendently and extravagantly and blaringly.

  The men swaggered and strutted, fingering daggers, cocking immense turbans or shaggy sheepskin bonnets at rakish devil-may-care angles. The women minced along, rolling their hips and, above their thin, coquettish face-veils,, their eyes. The little boys tried to emulate their fathers in swaggering and strutting; to emulate each other in the shouting of loud, salty abuse. The little girls rivaled the other little girls in the gay, pansy shades of their loose trousers and the consumption of greasy, poisonously pink-and-green sweetmeats.

  There were jugglers and knife-tossers, sword-swallowers and fire-eaters and painted dancing-girls.

  There were cook-shops and toy-booths and merry-go-rounds.

  There were itinerant dervish preachers chanting the glories of Allah the One, the Prophet Mohammed and the Forty-Seven True Saints.

  There were bear-leaders, ape-leaders, fortune-tellers, bards, buffoons, and Punch-and-Judy shows.

  There were large, bell-shaped tents where golden-skinned gypsy girls trilled and quavered melancholy songs to the accompaniment of guitars and tambourines. There was, of course, a great deal of love-making—the love-making of Asia, which is frank and a trifle indelicate.

  There were the many street-cries.

  “Sugared water! Sugared water here—and sweeten your breath!” would come the call of the lemonade-seller as he clanked his metal cups, while the vendor of parched grain, rattling the wares in his basket, would chime in with: “Pips! O pips! Roasted and ripe and rare! To sharpen your teeth—your stomach—your mind!”

  “Trade with me, O Moslems! I am the father and mother of all cut-rates!”

  “Look! Look! A handsome fowl from the Khan’s chicken coop!”

  “And stolen—most likely!”

  Laughter then—swallowed, a moment later, by more and louder cries.

  “Out of the way—and say, ‘There is but One God!’”—the long, quivering yell of the water-carrier, lugging the lukewarm fluid in a goat’s-skin bag, immensely heavy, fit burden for a buffalo.

  “My supper is in Allah’s hands, O True Believers! My supper is in Allah’s hands! Whatever you give, that will return to you through Allah!”—the whine of a ragged old vagrant whose wallet perhaps contained more provision than the larder of many a respectable housewife.

  “The grave is darkness—and good deeds are its lamps!”—the shriek of a blind beggarwoman, rapping two dry sticks together.

  “In your protection, O honorable gentleman!”—the hiccoughy moan of a peasant, drunk with hasheesh, whom a constable was dragging by the ear in the direction of the jail, the peasant’s wife trailing on behind with throaty plaints of: “O calamity! O great and stinking shame! O most decidedly not father to our sons!”—her balled fists meanwhile ably assisting the policeman.

  There was more laughter; and Fathouma, too, laughed as she followed Hossayn.

  Only rarely she left the palace; and everything amused her. She decided she would tell Omar the Black all about it tonight when she saw him—and she progressed slowly through the throng, with the stranger still in back; then she stopped, a little nervous, as there was a brawl between a Persian merchant and a Turkoman nomad who disputed the right of way.

  Neither would budge. They glared at one another. Presently they became angry, and anger gave way to rage—and then a stream of abuse, of that vitriolic and picturesque vituperation in which Central Asia excels.

  “Owl! Donkey! Jew! Christian! Leper! Seller of pigs’ tripe!” This from the lips of the elderly Persian whose carefully trimmed, snow-white whiskers gave him air aspect of patriarchal Old Testament dignity in ludicrous contrast with the foul invective which he was using. “Uncouth and swinish creature! Eater of filth! Wearer of a verminous turban!”

  The reply was prompt: “Basest of hyenas! Goat of a smell most goatish! Now, by my honor, you shall eat stick!”

  The stick, swinging by a leather thong from the Turkoman’s wrist, was two pounds of tough blackthorn. It was raised and brought down with full force—the Persian moving away just in time and drawing a curved dagger.

  People rushed up, closed in, took sides.

  It was the beginning of a full-fledged battle royal—and Fathouma cried:

  “Hossayn! Hossayn! Get me out of here!”

  But Hossayn was not near her. All she saw of him, some yards away, was his red fez bobbing up and down in the mob, as if he were drowning.

  “Hossayn! Oh, Hossayn!”

  Farther and farther floated the fez; the mob seemed to be carrying the man away; and Fathouma became terribly frightened—jostled and pushed about—and everywhere the striking fists, the glistening weapons—everywhere the shrieks of rage and pain.

  She wept helplessly, hopelessly. Almost she fainted.

  Then she felt a firm grip on her elbow; heard a reassuring voice in her ear: “This way, Heaven-born!”

  A moment later, a man, tall and broad-shouldered, tucked her under one arm as if she were a child, while with the other, wielding a sword, he carved a path through the crowd. They turned a corner; reached a back alley; his knee pushed open a door; and she found herself in the shed of a provision merchant’s shop.

  There, in the dim light that drifted through a window high on the wall, she saw her rescuer: a man with an eagle’s beak of a nose, thin lips, small, greenish eyes. A man—she thought with a start—as like to her husband as peas in a pod, except that his beard was red and not black.…

  She knew at once who he was:

  “You—you are Omar the Red! Ah, the lucky, lucky day for me!”

  “Luckier for myself!”

  “My husband will be so grateful.”

  “Doubtless. But this time, knowing my brother, I shall make sure, quite sure, of his gratitude.” A smile like milk curdling flitted across his face. “Tell me,” he asked, “how good are you at the riding?”

  “The—riding?”

  “Yes. On a horse. A horse, swift and powerful, to carry the two of us, and you on the saddle in front of me, and with one of my arms—wah! there have been plenty women in the past who liked the strength of it—around your waist to hold you steady.”

  She looked at him.

  “Oh,” she faltered, “but—”

  “Listen!”

  He spoke at length. And, he wondered, was that a laugh trembling on her lips? No, no! it must be the beginning of a cry of fear; and, at once, there was his sword to the fore.

  “Be quiet!” he warned her. “Or else—and you the woman and I the tough ruffian—here is the point of my blade for the whitest breast!”

  So she was quiet; and he went on:

  “Come! My horse is waiting for us—and so are the steppes of High Tartary.”

  He led her out of the shed, walking close to her. A loving couple, people would have thought; and none to know that, hidden by the folds of the man’s cloak, a dagger was pressed against the small of the woman’s back.

  By this time, the merry-making had ceased. There came the booming of the sunset gun from the great Mosque where, in the west, it raised its minaret of rosy marble. There came, immediately afterwards, the muezzin’s throaty chant that the Night of Honor, the Night of Fear and Repentance, was near; and then lights were extinguished everywhere against the malign flitting of the dark and evil djinns, and the places of worship were filled with the Faithful, the streets and alleys became deserted.

  Not a wayfarer anywhere. Hardly a sound.

  Only, as a sturdy stallion with two in the saddle rode through the northern gate, a sleepy sentinel’s challenge:

  “Who goes there?”

  “A merchant and his wife.”

  “Travel in peace, O Moslems!”

  So Fathouma and Omar the Red were off at a gallop; while at just about the same time, when Omar the Black returned to the palace, there was a Persian lackey telling him a terrible tale—a tale of heroism, showing, in proof, various bruises and even a bandaged shoulder and explaining how he had been attacked by a shoda, a
rough customer, had been kicked, cuffed, knocked down, sliced and stabbed with a number of sharp weapons.

  With a great throng of men, each intent on his own brawl, all about him, he had been helpless; and—Allah!—the cruel, brutal strength of this red-bearded scoundrel.…

  “Eh?” interrupted Omar the Black. “You—you said red-bearded?”

  “Superbly, silkily red-bearded. And hook-nosed. And armed to the teeth.…”

  “And with an evil glint in his eyes?”

  “Most evil!”

  * * * *

  The Persian went on to relate that here he was, prone on the ground, grievously wounded. And there was the other, with the Heaven-born in a faint and slung across his shoulders as if she were a bag of turnips; and the man’s parting words had been:

  “Take a message to Omar the Black. Tell him to come quickly, and alone, and with a queen’s ransom in his breeches. Let him take the Darb-i-Sultani, the King’s Highway, straight north into High Tartary. And, presently, at a place of my own choosing, I shall have word with him.”

  Such was the lackey’s story; and Omar the Black did not doubt it, since he knew his brother.

  What puzzled him later on—and what, indeed, he cannot understand to this day, though frequently he has asked his wife about it—was what she did or, rather, what she did not do.

  Why—he wondered—did she not resist? Why did she neither struggle nor cry out?

  “How could I?” she would explain. “At first I thought he had come to rescue me. I was grateful.”

  “Still—after you discovered that he…?”

  “I was helpless. I am a weak woman—and there was the point of his dagger pressed against my spine.”

  “Even so—when you passed, on the saddle in front of him, through the gate—a word to the sentinel…”

  “It would have been my last. The dagger…”

  “Omar the Red would not have carried out his threat.”

  “How was I to know? Such a scoundrel, this brother of yours—you yourself used to tell me—and not at all to be trusted.”

  * * * *

  So, afterwards, was Fathouma’s explanation; and we repeat that Omar the Black—and small blame to him—was puzzled.