by Noah Gordon
“No, Hakim.”
“Why have you not?”
“It is unnecessary to cause him further pain.” Perhaps if Rob hadn’t been thinking of the pig and wondering whether Ismail Ghazali’s body was consumed by cauliflower growths, he would not have trapped himself. “By nightfall he will be dead.”
Al-Juzjani stared.
“Why do you think this?” Ibn Sina asked.
All eyes were on Rob, but he knew better than to attempt an explanation. “I know it,” he said finally, and Fadil forgot his new dignity and guffawed.
Al-Juzjani’s face reddened with anger, but Ibn Sina raised his hand to the other physician and indicated that they should continue.
The incident drained Rob’s optimistic excitement. That evening he found study to be impossible. The school was a mistake, he told himself. There was nothing that could make him what he was not, and perhaps it was time to acknowledge he wasn’t meant to be a physician.
Yet next morning he went to the school and attended three lectures, and in the afternoon he forced himself to follow al-Juzjani on his inspection of patients. As they set off, to Rob’s anguish Ibn Sina joined them as he had on the previous day.
When they arrived at the tumor section, a stripling youth lay on the pallet closest to the door.
“Where is Ismail Ghazali?” al-Juzjani asked the nurse.
“Taken during the night, Hakim.”
Al-Juzjani made no comment. As they continued on their way, he treated Rob with the icy contempt due an alien Dhimmi who had made a fortunate guess.
But when they had completed their visitations and had been dismissed, Rob felt a hand on his arm and turned to look into the old man’s unsettling eyes.
“You will come to share my evening meal,” Ibn Sina said.
Rob was nervous and expectant that evening as he followed the Chief Physician’s directions, riding the brown horse along the Avenue of the Thousand Gardens to the lane leading to Ibn Sina’s home. It proved to be an enormous twin-towered residence of stone set among the terraced orchards and vineyards. Ibn Sina, too, had been given a “royal garment” by the Shah, but his calaat had come when he was famous and venerated, and the gift had been princely.
Rob was admitted to the walled estate by a gateman who expected him and took his horse. The path to the house was of stone crushed so fine that his footsteps sounded like whispering. As he approached the house, a side door opened and a woman emerged. Young and graceful, she wore a red velvet coat full at the waist and with tinsel edges, over a loose cotton gown of yellow-printed flowers, and although diminutive she walked like a queen. Beaded bracelets clutched her ankles where the scarlet trousers were fastened tightly and ended in woollen fringes over sweet bare heels. Ibn Sina’s daughter—if indeed that was who she was—scrutinized him with large dark eyes as curiously as he assessed her, before averting her veiled face from a male, according to Islam.
Behind her came a turbaned figure, enormous as a bad dream. The eunuch’s hand was on the jeweled hilt of the dagger in his belt, and he didn’t avert his eyes but watched Rob balefully until he saw his charge safely through a door in a garden wall.
Rob was still gazing after them when the front door, a single great stone slab, opened on oiled hinges and a manservant admitted him into spacious coolness.
“Ah, young friend. You are welcome to my house.”
Ibn Sina led the way through a series of large rooms whose tiled walls were adorned with rich woven hangings the colors of the earth and the sky. The carpets on the stone floors were thick as turf. In an atrium garden in the heart of the house, a table had been set close to a splashing fountain.
Rob felt awkward, for a servant had never before helped him to be seated. Another brought an earthen tray of flat bread and Ibn Sina sang his Islamic prayer with unmusical ease. “Do you wish your own blessing?” he asked with grace.
Rob broke one of the flat loaves and it was easily done, for he had become accustomed to the Hebrew thanksgiving: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”
“Amen,” Ibn Sina said.
The meal was simple and excellent, sliced cucumbers with mint and heavy soured milk, a light pilah prepared with bits of lean lamb and chicken, stewed cherries and apricots, and a refreshing sherbet of fruit juices.
When they had eaten, a man whose ringed nose marked him a slave brought wet cloths for their hands and faces, while other slaves cleared the table and lighted smoky torches to drive away insects.
A bowl of plump pistachios was brought and they sat and cracked the nuts with their teeth and chewed companionably.
“Now.” Ibn Sina leaned forward and his remarkable eyes, that could convey so many things, shone bright and attentive in the torchlight. “Let us speak of the reason you knew Ismail Ghazali would die.”
Rob told him how, when he was nine years old, by taking his mother’s hand he had become aware that she would die. And of how, in the same way, he had learned of his father’s impending death.
And he described the others since, the occasional person whose hand in his had brought the piercing dread and awful revelation.
Ibn Sina questioned him patiently as he reported each case, plumbing his memory and making certain that no detail was overlooked. Slowly, the reserve in the old man’s face disappeared.
“Show me what you do.”
Rob took Ibn Sina’s hands and looked into his eyes, and in a little while he smiled. “For now, you need have no fear of death.”
“Nor do you,” the physician said quietly.
A moment passed and then, Good Christ! Rob thought. “Is it truly something you can feel as well, Chief Physician?”
Ibn Sina shook his head. “Not as you feel it. In me, it manifests itself as a certainty somewhere deep inside—strong instinct that a patient will or will not die. Down through the years I have talked with other physicians who share this intuition, and we are a larger brotherhood than you may imagine. But never have I met one in whom this gift is stronger than in you. It is a responsibility, and to be equal to it you must make an excellent physician of yourself.”
It brought unpleasant reality, and Rob sighed ruefully. “I may end up no physician, for I am not a scholar. Your Muslim students have been force-fed on classical learning all their lives, and the … other Jewish clerks were weaned on the fierce scholarship of their study houses. Here in the university they build on these foundations, while I build on two paltry years of schooling, and vast ignorance.”
“Then you must build harder and faster than the others,” Ibn Sina said without sympathy.
Despair made Rob bold. “Too much is demanded in the school. And some of it I neither want nor need. Philosophy, Qu’ran—”
The old man broke in scornfully. “You make a common error. If you have not studied philosophy, how can you reject it? Science and medicine teach of the body, while philosophy teaches of the mind and the soul, and a physician requires all these as he needs food and air. As for theology, I had memorized the Qu’ran by the age of ten. It is of my faith and not of your own but it will not harm you, and memorizing ten Qu’rans would be small price if it would gain you medical knowledge.
“You have the mind, for we see you grasp a new language, and we detect your promise in a dozen other ways. But you must not fear to allow learning to become a part of you, so that it is as natural as breathing. You must stretch your mind, wide enough to take in all we can give you.”
Rob was silent and watchful.
“I’ve a gift of my own, as strong as yours, Jesse ben Benjamin. I can detect a man in whom there may be a physician, and in you I feel a need to heal, so strong that it burns. But it is not enough to have such a need. A physician is not declared by calaat, which is fortunate since there are already too many ignorant physicians. That is why we have the school, to winnow the chaff from the wheat. And when we see a clerk who is worthy, we make his testing especially severe. If our trials are too muc
h for you, then you must forget us and go back to being a barber-surgeon and selling your spurious ointments—”
“Physick,” Rob said, glaring.
“Your spurious physick, then. For to be hakim must be earned. If you desire it, you must punish yourself for the sake of learning, seek every advantage in keeping up with the other clerks and in excelling them. You must study with the fervor of the blessed or the cursed.”
Rob drew a breath, his eyes still locked hotly with Ibn Sina’s, and told himself he hadn’t struggled across the world to fail.
He rose to take his leave and was struck by a thought. “Do you own Hunayn’s Ten Treatises of the Eye, Chief Physician?”
Now Ibn Sina smiled. “I do,” he said, and hurried to fetch the book and give it to his student.
41
THE MAIDAN
Early on a hurried morning three soldiers called upon him. He tensed and readied himself for anything, but this time they were all politeness and respect and their batons remained sheathed. Their leader, whose breath revealed he had breakfasted on green onions, bowed deeply.
“We are sent to inform you, master, that there will be a formal session of the court tomorrow after Second Prayer. Recipients of a calaat are expected.”
Thus, on the following morning Rob found himself once again under the arched and gilded roofs of the Hall of Pillars.
This time the masses of people were absent, which Rob thought a pity, for the Shahanshah was resplendent. Alā wore a turban, a flowing tunic, and pointed shoes of purple, trousers and leg wrappings of crimson, and a heavy crown of worked gold. The Vizier, the Imam Mirza-aboul Qandrasseh, sat a smaller throne nearby, dressed as always in mullah black.
The calaat beneficiaries stood away from the thrones as observers. Rob couldn’t see Ibn Sina and recognized no one nearby save for Khuff, Captain of the Gates.
The floor surrounding Alā was spread with carpets lustrous with threads of silk and gold. Seated on cushions on both sides of the throne and facing it was a host of richly caparisoned men.
Rob went to Khuff and touched his arm. “Who are they?” he whispered.
Khuff looked at the foreign Hebrew with scorn but answered patiently, as he was trained to do. “The empire is divided into fourteen provinces, in which there are five hundred and forty-four Considerable Places—cities, walled towns, and castles. These are the mirzes, chawns, sultans, and beglerbegs who govern the principalities over which Alā-al-Dawla Shah holds sway.”
Perhaps the ceremonies would soon begin, for Khuff hurried away and stationed himself inside the door.
The ambassador from Armenia was the first of the envoys to ride into the hall. He was a man still young, with black hair and beard but otherwise a gray eminence, riding a gray mare and wearing silver foxes’ tails on a gray silk tunic. One hundred and fifty paces from the throne he was stopped by Khuff, who helped him dismount and conducted him to the throne for the kissing of Alā’s feet.
That accomplished, the ambassador presented the Shah with lavish gifts from his own sovereign, including a large crystal lantern, nine small crystal looking-glasses set into gold frames, one hundred and twenty yards of purple cloth, twenty bottles of fine scent, and fifty sables.
Barely interested, Alā welcomed the Armenian to the court and bade him thank his most gracious lord for the gifts.
Next, in rode the ambassador from the Khazars, to be met by Khuff, and the whole performance was played again, save that the gift of the Khazar king was three fine Arabian horses and a chained baby lion that was not tamed, so that in its fright the beast shat upon the gold and silk carpet.
The hall was still, awaiting the Shah’s reaction. Alā did not frown or smile, but waited as slaves and servants hastened to remove the offending matter, the gifts, and the Khazar. The courtiers at the Shah’s feet sat on their cushions like inanimate statues, their eyes on the King of Kings. They were shadows, ready to move with Alā’s body. At last there was an imperceptible signal and a general relaxing as the next envoy, from the Amīr of Qarmatia, was announced and rode a reddish-brown horse into the hall.
Rob continued to stand and gaze respectfully, but within himself he turned from the court and began to do his lessons, silently reviewing. The four elements: earth, water, fire and air; the qualities recognized by touch: cold, heat, dryness, and moisture; the temperaments: sanguineous, phlegmatic, choleric, and saturnine; the faculties: natural, animal, and vital.
He pictured the separate parts of the eye as Hunayn listed them, named seven herbs and medications that were recommended for agues and eighteen for fevers, even recited several times the first nine stanzas of the Qu’ran’s third sura, entitled “The Family of ‘Imran.”
He was becoming pleased with this preoccupation when it was interrupted, and he saw that Khuff was engaged in a tight exchange of words with an imperious white-haired old man on a nervous chestnut stallion.
“I am presented last because I am of the Seljuk Turks, a deliberate slight to my people!”
“Someone must be last, Hadad Khan, and this day it is Your Excellency,” the Captain of the Gates said calmly.
In a high fury, the Seljuk attempted to move the large horse past Khuff and ride to the throne. The grizzled old soldier chose to pretend that the steed and not the rider was at fault. “Ho!” Khuff shouted. He grasped the bridle and struck the horse sharply and repeatedly across the nose with his baton, causing the animal to whinny and step back.
Soldiers controlled the chestnut as Khuff helped Hadad Khan to dismount with hands that were not overly gentle, and walked the ambassador to the throne.
The Seljuk performed the ravi zemin perfunctorily and in a shaking voice offered the greetings of his leader, Toghrul-beg, presenting no gifts.
Alā Shah said no word to him, but dismissed him coldly with a wave of his hand, and the proceedings were done.
Save for the Seljuk ambassador and the shitting lion, Rob thought the court had been exceedingly dull.
It would have pleased him to make the little house in Yehuddiyyeh better than it had been when Alā Shah bestowed it on him. The work would have taken a few days at most, but an hour had become a precious commodity, and so the windowsills went unrepaired, the cracked walls remained unplastered, the apricot trees were not pruned, and the garden was rank with weeds.
From Hinda, the woman merchant in the Jewish market, he bought three mezuzot, the little wooden tubes containing tiny rolled parchments of Scripture. They were part of his disguise; he affixed them to the right-hand post of each of his doors, no less than one handbreadth from the top, as he remembered mezuzot had been placed in the Jewish houses of Tryavna.
He described what he wanted to an Indian carpenter and drew sketches in the earth, and with no difficulty the man made him a rough-hewn olivewood table and a pine chair in the European style. He bought a few cooking utensils from a coppersmith. Otherwise, he bothered so little about the house he might have been living in a cave.
Winter was coming. The afternoons were still hot but the night air that drifted through the windows turned raw, announcing the change in season. He found several inexpensive sheepskins in the Armenian market and bedded in them gratefully.
On a Friday evening, his neighbor Yaakob ben Rashi the shoemaker prevailed upon Rob to come to his home for the Sabbath meal. It was a modest but comfortable house, and at first Rob enjoyed the hospitality. Naoma, Yaakob’s wife, covered her face and said the blessing over the tapers. The buxom daughter, Lea, served the good meal of river fish, stewed fowl, pilah, and wine. Lea mostly kept her eyes modestly downcast, but several times she smiled at Rob. She was of marriageable age and twice during the dinner her father made careful hints about a sizable dowry. There seemed to be general disappointment when Rob thanked them and left early to return to his books.
His life developed a pattern. Daily religious observance was compulsory for madrassa students but Jews were allowed to attend their own services, so each morning he went to the House of Peace
Synagogue. The Hebrew of the shaharit prayers had become familiar but many of them were still as untranslatable as nonsense syllables; nonetheless, the swaying and chanting was a soothing way to begin his day.
Mornings were taken up by lectures in philosophy and religion that he attended with grim purposefulness, and a host of medical courses.
He was getting better at the Persian language, but there were times during a lecture when he was forced to ask the meaning of a word or an idiom. Sometimes the other students explained but often they didn’t.
One morning Sayyid Sa’di, the philosophy teacher, mentioned the gashtagh-daftaran.
Rob leaned toward Abbas Sefi, who sat next to him. “What is gashtagh-daftaran?”
But the plump medical clerk merely cast him an annoyed look and shook his head.
Rob felt a poke in his back. When he turned he saw Karim Harun on the stone tier behind and above him. Karim grinned. “An order of ancient scribes,” he whispered. “They recorded the history of astrology and early Persian science.” The seat next to him was empty and he pointed to it.
Rob moved. From then on, when he attended a lecture he looked about; if Karim was there, they sat together.
The best part of his day was the afternoon, when he worked in the maristan. This became even better in his third month at the school, when it was his turn to examine new patients. The admission process amazed him with its complexity. Al-Juzjani showed him how it was done.
“Listen well, for this is an important task.”
“Yes, Hakim.” He had learned always to listen well to al-Juzjani, for almost at once he had known that, next to Ibn Sina, al-Juzjani was the best physician in the maristan. Half a dozen people had told him al-Juzjani had been Ibn Sina’s assistant and lieutenant most of their lives, but al-Juzjani spoke with his own authority.
“You must make note of the patient’s entire history, and at first opportunity you will review it in detail with a senior physician.”
Each ill person was asked about his occupation, habits, exposure to contagious diseases, and chest, stomach, and urinary complaints. All clothing was removed and a physical scrutiny was done, including appropriate inspection of sputum, vomit, urine, and feces, an assessment of the pulse, and an attempt to detect fever by the warmth of the skin.
