The ironic thing was a gallop of three hundred of the horsemen of Mamun the Great riding and each carrying a freshly-severed human head on the end of a long lance.
“You know, of course,” Mamun explained to the crowds, “that this is the custom whenever a new man rises to the Caliphate. My brother Al-Amin had three hundred horsemen riding yesterday, each with a newly-hacked human head on the end of a lance, and nobody gave it a thought. But when I use the same ancient custom (or rather, when it is used in my name, for I had forgotten about it completely), then there are those among you who would hold it against me. Perhaps I will declare the custom abolished, and yet each new Caliph should have his choice in such things. I assure you there will be no new Caliph while I live, not any duplication of this ancient custom.
“My brother Al-Amin set up a number of projects and issued a number of edicts yesterday and into the night. Many of them were good, and some of them were silly; and I will go along with all the good ones and reject all the silly ones. Yes, we will go ahead with the dredging of the canals and the draining of the swamps, and with expanding the irrigation of all the Two-Rivers area. We will go ahead with the Dromedary Express for the rapid carrying of mail and small packages from one end of the Caliphate to the other. We will continue to foster navigation from Holy Baghdad all the way to the Arabian Gulf and into the great Ocean itself. We will keep the new ‘Reanimated Department of Fisheries’ to foster better table fish from both the rivers and oceans and to restrict the depredations of alligators. But under this department we will also foster turtles and protect their eggs. We will go ahead with the ‘Reanimated Departments of Armaments’ to proceed with the casting of the big brass cannon for battering down the walls of Constantinople. What, what? Does somebody say that the Damsel Scheherazade told my brother that Constantinople will not fall to the Muslims for another six hundred and forty years? I didn't know about that. I will examine the lass privately, perhaps under torture, on this matter. In any case we will go ahead with the big brass cannon. We can always use it to batter some walls down somewhere. But I will not bring Mandarin-Orange trees from China. I have eaten Mandarin-Oranges on our own Central Asian frontier, and they are inferior to our own pomegranates.
“But as to freeing the slaves, I say let us not be too hasty with that. Well, this is the first day of freeing the slaves, and all who have slaves have freed one of them today. And all who have two or more slaves must free another one tomorrow and another one the day after tomorrow according to the edict of my brother Al-Amin. But this must not be. Only every seventh day may be a slave-freeing day. And on the seventh day, only as many slaves may be freed as those previously freed slaves who request a return to bondage. A slave can get very hungry in the seven days after he is freed. This will give a steady number of persons who want to be freed balanced by persons requesting a return to servitude and food. And it will give a sort of circulation in the body politic. And some persons will remain free and will do well.
“My brother had unfriendly words to speak against Lady Narkos, as he calls her. My brother was an unsuccessful poet, and for any Arab to be an unsuccessful poet is a very un-Arabic thing to be. I myself have neither bad nor good words for the Narkos Wench, but only ambiguous words. We need her, we need her for perhaps a thousand years yet. But it will be a happy day when we need her no longer.
“Without Wench Narkos and her opium poppycock, her hashish, her heroin, we would not see the world that we do see. We would see a much meaner world, an intolerable world. ‘By the Stones of Baghdad’ people sometimes swear, as they swore ‘By the Stones of Babylon’ an older city on the same site. But there are no stones in Baghdad, and there were none in Babylon. There is river mud here. There are a few mud bricks, poorly baked, and there is wattle of weeds and twigs. Of such things is this great city built, out of mud; and we are not able to rise above the mud. This day I come to palace after palace, all mine as Caliph, and they are nothing except over-sized mud hovels.
“Without Wench Narkos there is nothing grand here, hardly anything tolerable. The Living Water of our Fountains is mixed muddy river water and sewage, and the fountains are of ancient broken ceramic which we no longer know how to manufacture. Our roads are of desert sand and pebbles which we have brought in to cover the mud, and they sink down into the mud every day. Our arts and our songs are spun out of mud fingers and mud mouths. Our loyalties are no stronger than the mud of which they are made. So we must practice illusion, and Wench Narkos has a readiness in illusion. This is the Baghdad Mirage, Magic Baghdad. I had not been in this City for many years until today, preferring the hard country of the frontier, the rocky deserts where the ground at least solid.
“My purported father, the Boy-Caliph Emeritus Harun al-Rashid, he there in green clown motley riding with the body of his dead son on a lop-wheeled cart pulled by giant dogs who are indwelt by the souls of ghuls, He the Harun is a master of illusion. He is good at that, and at nothing else. He was the main creator of the Baghdad Mirage in its present form. Baghdad where the streets are paved with gold! Or perhaps with mica or fools’-gold. Baghdad where all the gold is really inferior brass, and all the brass is gray pot-metal. But all of the Great Cities have been mirages.
“Rome remains, in memory at least, a ‘Hard Mirage’. It was very often convincing, until prophetic eyes allowed some persons to see through the mirage to the reality. But in Rome they were able to create non-narcotic mirages, of men rather than of stones. Livy, and after him Plutarch, were men of the world and both of them created the illusion and mirage of ‘Great Men’. I never cease to admire that illusion. But both Livy and Plutarch knew that there were really no great men anywhere. It is true, however, that un-great men sometimes have genuine great moments in their lives. I pray that I may have several such great moments also.
“Constantinople inherits something of this quality of the ‘Hard Mirage’, which is why we so desire it and lust for it. A more solid and sustained dream is better than one that will cover you hardly at all.
“But how will we build a life-reality and a civil-reality under cover of such mirages as we can mange? This I do not know, but as Caliph it is my business to find it out and to effect it. Why am I not now avid to find and destroy the escaped devils, as I seemed to be so avid earlier in the hour? — so one of you asks. Oh, that was parable. We ourselves are the dragons, and our bellies are full of devils. I am still avid to root out those devils, but it is quite difficult.
“Thank you all. My next speech will be at the high place named Caravansary Corner which I will reach in my place in the Ovation-Parade (Oh, mirage of mirages, the Ovation-Parade!) in about thirteen minutes.”
“You are not ‘bad show’ yourself, Mamun,” Scheherazade said. “It's true that you are repulsive almost beyond bearing, but total repulsiveness was ever ‘good show’. If only they had ‘acting’ now!”
“We do have ‘acting’ now. And we have little else.”
“The year I lived in Chicago,” Scheherazade rattled and jingled in her musical voice, “I went to the ‘Old Time Classical Monster Movie House’ four times a week. My favorite ‘Monster Actor’ was always Lon Chaney. He could play any monster ever. But Mamun, you could have played him. You could have played Lon Chaney. You could have been the ‘Monsters’ Monster’.”
“I'm that good, am I, Scher?”
“Oh yes. You’re perfect. You had a lot going for you already. But now, that livid ‘Mark of Cain’ at your throat that comes through one of a dozen scarves so shockingly, there's genius in that. And your eye that's been destroyed! There is something about a black eye-patch that really gets me. I wore one myself for six weeks once, the year I lived in Albuquerque, and I was amazed at how fulfilled I felt. And those little dark flames that run along your flesh at even the best times, they’re both ‘good hell’ and ‘good theatre’.”
“I knew an old Khan in Central Asia who wore an eye-patch over each eye,” Mamun spoke in his ragged voice. “He wore a red patc
h over his left eye and a black patch over his right eye. He said that he'd always had trouble remembering which was his left hand and which was his right; but with the patches he never went wrong. The red patch was for his port side. The old Khan got around quite well considering that both of his regular eyes had been blinded. But he said that he had already seen everything anyhow. He read the Koran out loud for two hours every day. He cheated though. He'd memorized it. He'd done that, pardon me, Schertz, the year he lived in Kabul. And to silence those who said that he got around so well because he had another seeing-and-sensing center, he wore a third eye-patch, an orange-colored one, on the top of his head in the traditional location of the ‘third eye’. His wife said that not only had he always had trouble telling is left from his right, but he'd always had real trouble in telling top from bottom and up from down. But the orange-colored patch over the third eye on the top of his cured him of that. He knew that oranges grew in the tops of trees.”
“We may have to change places, and thou'lt be the story-teller and I will be the Caliph,” Scheherazade said.
“I doubt me not that I could be a good story-teller,” the Monsters’ Monster Mamun the Great rasped in his ragged voice. “I was always a good camp-fire story-teller, especially on the night before and the night after a battle. I doubt me only that Thyself would be sufficient as Caliph. We will not change places today. Tomorrow perhaps we will, Scheherazade.
“But this is the place where the dogs turn off. I myself will continue on my Ovation-Parade. And then I will throw a bash around the water-clock, in my main palace, and it will overflow into thirteen other palaces. People, I can really throw a bash. Come with me all who love a high time. And let those who prefer it go to the dogs.”
I, Essindibad Copperbottom, went with Mamun the Great, of course, as did my wife the Grand Dame, and most of my new friends. But that yawkish kid, the False Sindbad, John Thunderson went to the dogs along with his mechanical wife Blue Moon. And, strangely enough, the damsel Scheherazade went with them also. I here insert some of the ramblings of the kid Thunderson, because there is a certain interest in the dog episode, and it contains the death of Harun al-Rashid. Here it is in Thunderson's wobble-tongued words:
Thunderson here. And my wife Blue Moon. And Damsel Scheherazade.
We went down Dog Alley and through the Dog Gate. Somebody gave dog masks to Myself, to Blue Moon, to Scheherazade, and to the ever-boy, ever-Caliph Harun al-Rashid. The dog mask of Harun was green. We would never have been allowed down Dog Alley or through the Dog Gate without the dog masks.
Outside the Dog Gate is a whole dog landscape. Humans who do not go out the Dog Gate can never see this, for there is no other way on earth into this region. None of the Famous Travelers has ever been here. It is Dog Country. It is not Human Country.
It had been misty and drizzly down Dog Lane. In truth the more ancient and more accurate name for the little roadway was ‘Wet Dog Lane’. And in Dog Country itself it was not always damp, but it was also colorless. It was a black and white and gray world. This is the only sort of world that dogs can see anyhow, and there was no sense in providing colors for the very few colorvision creatures who would come there.
Oh, Oh, Oh, they did not love the Boy-Caliph Harun al-Rashid in Dog Country. But the most livid hatred against him seemed to be mounted by the dogs who were not really dogs.
“You False-Caliph, you Joker-Caliph!” one of the dogs cried angrily at him in a human voice. “A practical joke that doesn't have an end isn't funny. It is an open horror, a crawling eternity of sick giggles. You changed myself and many others into dogs for the amusement of your raffish friends. But you didn't change us back again when the joke should have been over. Change us back now, or we will kill you and gnaw your bones.”
“You must never gnaw my bones, for the bones of one who has been Caliph are holy,” Harun stated with cracked dignity. He still wore his green shoes with the turned-up toes. He still wore his suit of green clown motley. He wore his green-fuzz dog mask, and his green wig was atop that. “You are wrong to say that a practical joke that doesn't end isn't funny,” he spoke in his Bozo-the-Clown voice. “The joke on your dog faces is the funniest ever. I often wake up laughing at it. I hear your shrill voices ‘We are not really dogs! We are citizens of Baghdad! We are prisoned in dog bodies by the Boy-Caliph and forgotten by him. Get a magician! Get an old spell-woman! Get us out of here!’ But I will tell you something, slobbering dogs. The spell that I had put on you is a permanent spell. It cannot be rescinded. You can seek any remedy you wish, but it will not work. You will still be dogs forever and aye. You don't think that is funny? It seems to me it's one of the funniest practical jokes I ever pulled. It belongs to the let-me-out-of-here sort of jokes that can go on forever.”
There was indeed a throne for a Dog Caliph there, and a curious figure already sat on that throne. It was but a skeleton with only scanty remnants of leathery flesh left on it. It had been a black man, and it still wore manacles on its bone-wrists and links of chain dangling from them.
“He was the leader of a slave revolt,” one of the dogs told us conversationally in a human voice. “What? No, no, I am not a human imprisoned in a dog body. I am as doggy as one can get, a dog all the way. Oh, we practice the speech of all the different creatures here. It makes the eternity pass faster. I'm learning meadow lark talk now. That Dog Caliph was a very great man. He came from the Mountains of Africa, and he led a million slaves in revolt. And when the slave revolt was broken, the reigning Caliph had the dead body of the leader brought here so he could be ‘King of the Dogs’ who had been the ‘King of the Slaves’. But now he will be relieved of his reign which he had begun to find irksome. The Dog Magician will help him to walk from his throne to his new-dug grave. And then he will have his rest. And the One-Day Caliph Al-Amin will sit on the Dog Throne and reign in his place.”
And indeed the Dog Magician had taken charge of things, and he went to the skeletal King of Slaves on his throne.
“It is time for you to rise and walk for the last time, Old King,” the Dog Magician said (he looked something like a snow-white fox). “It will not be very hard. A walking spirit will enter into you for a very brief period and will help you to walk.”
“Where will I walk?” the dead King of the Slaves asked.
“To your grave new-digged over there in the mud. Will that please you?”
“Yes. I'll sleep in the ancestral mud then, and I ask you not to disturb me again. I'd rather lie in the black mud of Africa than in the yellow mud of this place between the rivers. But I can rest in mud of whatever color.”
The King of Slaves, aided by the walking spirit that entered him briefly, moved jerkily to his new-dug grave and fell down in it. And two dogs with shovels covered him up.
“Now it is time for You to rise and walk to your Dog Throne, Al-Amin Caliph of Dogs,” the Dog Magician said. “A rise-and-walk spirit will enter into you briefly and aid you to walk.”
Dead Al-Amin sat up with a wheezing effort. He fell clumsily off the dog cart, and then he rose with an agony of effort and staggered to the Dog Throne. Scheherazade came and walked beside him to the throne and helped him to ascend it and to sit on it. The Dog Caliph throne had never been easy for a human to sit on. It was made first of all to accommodate a sitting dog. Then it was made to accommodate three other sitting creatures. And only after that was it made to accommodate a sitting human.
“What is he to you?” the Dog Magician asked Scheherazade.
“He is my husband of one day only,” Scheherazade said. “I am Scheherazade the story-teller and I am almost always the wife of the reigning Caliph.”
“Story-teller, you haven't heard stories till you have heard the deep dog stories that are sometimes told in this place. They are grotesque, they are ridiculous, they are incongruous, they are lopsidedly funny beyond anything that a human story-teller knows, they are everything that a good story should be.”
“Maybe I'll hear some of them whil
e I'm here,” Scheherazade said.
“Scheherazade, you cannot stay here,” the battered and worried body of the dead Caliph Al-Amin said. “There is nothing for you here. I being dead and set up here as a sort of mockery am an impediment to any healthy relationship.”
“Oh, I'll go back at midnight, Al-Amin,” she said. “And I’ve enjoyed your company in the few moments I’ve had of it out of the few hours that we’ve been married. What is it like to be dead, Al-Amin, can you tell me?”
“You are always the story-teller, damsel,” Al-Amin croaked in a borrowed voice, “and you are always in search for strange informations and strange sensations. But there is none of either in me. What is it like to be dead? It is dull, Scheherazade, dull, dull, and again dull.”
“I want the body of my son Al-Amin,” the Boy-Caliph Harun al-Rashid piped up in his clown's voice. “I want to play tricks and jokes with it. One can play a lot of good practical jokes with a dead body.”
“Not with this one, Harun,” Scheherazade said. “Look to your own body, Dwarf-Caliph. You have it for only a few more short minutes.”
The Dog Magician came and talked to several of us who had left the Ovation-Parade of Mamun the Great to go down Dog Alley and through the Dog Gate.
“You will notice the fountain yonder,” the Dog Magician said. “It was made of bright and shining ceramic of colors so bright and vivid that they sometimes produced pleasant aching in human eyes. Once the whole Valley of the Two Rivers was made of such magic and colorful and brilliant ceramic, but now most of the valley has reverted to mud, and the colors could not be seen here in any case, now that this has become Dog Country.
Sindbad, The Thirteenth Voyage Page 16
