Omar Khayyam - a life

by Harold Lamb

  After that it had been unbearable to wander in the streets of Nisapur where he had made merry with Rahim, so he had sought the house of the distinguished teacher, hoping to bury himself in fresh work.

  "And what is that work to be?" Master Ali pursued. "By what gate wilt thou leave the academy to enter the work of the world?

  "But first," he suggested, "consider how wisdom hath been brought into this small world. The great wisdom hath been revealed by Prophets, who were never taught, but who had natural insight into that other world, the Invisible.

  "The Prophets are the first among bearers of wisdom. The second are the Philosophers, who from study of the revelations of the Prophets and from acquired mastery of the sciences may explain to common men what would be otherwise hidden from them.

  "First in order of time among the supreme Prophets was Moses, second was Jesus the Nazarene, and third was our lord Muhammad. That is sure. As to the Philosophers, different opinions are held. Alas for my ignorance I can only say that Plato and Aristotle and then our master Avicenna have woven the thread of wisdom into the warp of our poor minds.

  "After the Philosophers come the Poets. Now the skill of a Poet is a dangerous skill, because his task is to excite the imagination, thereby making a great thing appear small, or a small thing great. By arousing anger or love, exultation or disgust, he causes the accomplishment of great things and petty things in this world.

  "Since he stirs the imagination and cannot clarify the understanding, the art of a Poet is baser than the ability of a Philosopher. What poet's scribbling hath outlived the life of the singer?

  "Whereas," Master Ali concluded, "the fruit of the labor of the mathematician never dies. He alone attains demonstrable truth, and he builds the solitary bridge from the unknown to the known. As algebra is the noblest branch of mathematics, I hope thou wilt devote thy skill to commenting upon the algebraic equations of the third degree."

  Omar was stirred by the interest of the aged master. "I meant——" he searched for words to make clear his thoughts—"there are other problems, if only our wisdom could solve them. If we could measure the courses of the stars——"

  "Of the stars? But that is Astrology, which seeketh to determine the influence of the planets upon human affairs."

  "Yet the problems are the same."

  "Sayest thou, O my pupil, that the problems of my book are like to the problems of the King's astrologer? That is folly—I regret to hear it spoken."

  "Yet the truth of one differs not from the truth of the other, if it could be reached."

  Master Ali sighed, and bethought him. "My son, thou art over young for such vain desires. In time thou wilt learn infallibly that what is demonstrated by one art is not the product of another. If the Kings astrologer confined himself to the truth of mathematics——" Amazingly, Master Ali's beard quivered, a guttural sound emerged from his throat, and he laughed. Instantly ashamed of his lapse, he added gravely, "I think that our minds are divided. I wished—I would have given much to have you pursue your studies through the gate of Mathematics. That is the only bridge from the known to the unknown. Well, tomorrow I will give thee a letter to take to Nisapur where, it may be, thou wilt find a patron. May thy journey be pleasant!"

  Omar lingered when he had risen. There was so much he wanted to confide in the aged master, and so little that he could say. He felt that another door had been closed to him.

  When he had gone, Master Ali took up a pen and a sheet of rare, white paper.

  "It is apparent to me," he wrote, "that my pupil Omar Khayyam is already equal in ability to Master Ustad of Baghdad. He hath a secret by which he reaches the solution of all problems, but what it is I know not. It is impossible to say what he will do with it because he is as yet the slave of his imagination.

  "I pray that this knowledge of his, fostered in my house, may be acceptable to the Patron whom thou knowest, who hath no more devoted slave than the unworthy ALI"

  After the ink dried, he folded the paper and sealed the folds carefully with melted wax upon which he pressed his seal. He addressed the missive to the Lord Tutush at the Takin gate of Nisapur.

  The alley of the sweetmeat sellers, between the Takin gate and the mosque of the Sons of Hussayn at Friday-eve before the hour of prayer.

  Omar sat on his heels in the alley. In one hand he held a small iron spit, still hot from the fire. From the spit he drew pieces of crisp broiled mutton and bits of garlic. These he wrapped up in strips of bread torn from the slab on his knee, and ate with relish.

  He was very hungry because he had come afoot since sunrise from the edge of the salt desert, without stopping. Most of the way he had sat on a donkey belonging to the men of a camel train bringing in baskets of salt. Talking with the camel men and listening to their songs, he had not minded the glare of the sun.

  Such a day's journey, pressing against the wind, always filled the son of Ibrahim with exultation. From his seat in the alley he could watch the last arrivals from the plain passing through the Takin archway—a trotting cavalcade of donkeys, two dervishes followed by a stray sheep, a creaking cart weighed down with wet clay for the potters' wheels, and a train of stately dromedaries, their heads swaying in unison with the massive bales they carried on either side.

  "Eh," observed the keeper of the kebab shop, "from Samarkand. Every day now more and more come in from the Samarkand road."

  "And what," asked Omar, "do they bring?"

  "Only Allah knoweth! Elephant ivory, silk for our looms, musk, ambergris, the new clear glass, fine bronze, rhubarb. There is nothing they do not bring."

  "Except such kebabs as this." Omar smiled, handing back the empty spit. He felt in his girdle and brought out three copper coins.

  "Mashallah! The praise to Allah, that our sheep are fat." The shopkeeper was pleased. "Hi, son of a worthless father— sleepy one, seest not that the young master is athirst? Bring water!"

  A boy stood by them with a large brass urn strapped to his shoulder. He had been listening to the voice of a teller of tales seated in front of a fruit shop. Now he turned and drew a china cup from his girdle. Tilting the urn, he filled the cup and handed it to Omar who drank gratefully. When the cup had been filled a second time he poured water over his fingers and wiped them on a cloth the boy offered him.

  "In the name of God," the boy muttered.

  Omar gave him a small coin and the kebab seller exclaimed aloud upon the greed of the water sellers who would not quench a believer's thirst without money.

  "And what of a believer's hunger?" asked Omar, amused.

  "Oho, find me a man who will give me a sheep for alms—ay, and charcoal for the fire, and a boy to turn the irons, then could I give meat with an open hand." He wagged his head sagely. "But perhaps thou art a pilgrim, going to the shrine at Meshed?" Feeling for the three copper coins, he hesitated. The young student looked like an Arab of both pride and temper, but he wore a single camel-hair abba and he carried a small woven saddle bag. None the less, his words——

  "I know not," said Omar, "whither I go."

  He was content to feel himself part of the throng passing through the alley of the sweetmeat sellers to the entrance of the adjoining mosque. It being the eve of Friday, many were on their way to pray.

  The heat of the sun had left the alley. Half-naked boys with waterskins sprinkled the dust. The voice of the blind teller of tales rose above the shuffling of slippered feet—something about lovers who sickened when they were snatched from their enchanted garden.

  A slender figure paused before Omar, and moved on more slowly. He looked up into a girl's dark eyes, above the folds of a veil. There was something familiar about the slant of the eyes at the corners, and a brown curl that escaped the veil. Omar started, thinking of Zoë. Hastily he got to his feet with his package of papers and books, and followed the girl who had looked back.

  The kebab seller loosed his coins with a sigh of relief. "He is no pilgrim," he muttered, and then aloud, "Ahai, who hungers? Who wo
uld have clean meat, no gristle or leavings? Here are kebabs!"

  The distant voice of the caller-to-prayer floated down from the minaret. "Come to prayer. Come to prayer ... to the house of praise. . . . there is no God but God . . ."

  Kneeling and rising and kneeling again, Omar went through the familiar motions. Lights glimmered from the glass sconces just over his head, and a strange echo came down from the roof of the mosque. All about him garments rustled and voices murmured in unison.

  When he rose to go out with the crowd, his eyes searched the group of women. The girl of the blue head veil was behind the others, walking beside the bulky figure of a servant. Out in the courtyard she put on her slippers carelessly, so that after a few paces one of them fell off.

  She ran back and stooped to put the slipper on, within arm's reach of Omar. Above the shuffling of feet he heard her whisper.

  "O son of Ibrahim, there were no roses on my birthday."

  Before he could answer she had slipped away, to walk sedately by the servant again, her eyes on the ground. Then he remembered Yasmi the child who had given him a rose three years before.

  When he left the alley of the sweetmeat sellers, he found the Takin gate closed and some Turkish spearmen standing guard. Dusk had settled down, and men were lighting the lamps in the shops.

  "My soul! Khayyam, you make haste slowly."

  The speaker, a round man in brilliant saffron silk, moved toward him on a sleek pony. Omar recognized Tutush, and drew out the letter Master Ali had given him to deliver. The plump stranger opened it at once, and leaned closer to a lamp to read it.

  Tutush refolded the letter and tucked it into his girdle. He held out a silver dirhem to Omar. No one could have told if the missive pleased him or not. Yet Master Ali had hinted that this man who had visited the House of Wisdom might befriend Omar.

  "Where is your home in Nisapur?" Tutush asked, fingering the beads of his rosary.

  "I have no place, now, O friend of Khwaja Ali."

  Tutush considered the youth's worn abba and the bag he carried. "Perhaps," he said as idly as if he were tossing a bit of bread to a dog, "I could find you protection in the house of a saddlemaker, if you could teach his eight children to read the Koran, that blessed book. Eh?"

  The tone and the glance were sheer insolence, and Omar's temper rose.

  "Give that protection to some khoja's lad who hath a bit of schooling, O Protector of the Poor. Have I leave to go?"

  "Assuredly." Tutush reined his horse away indifferently, pausing presently to toss a coin into the bowl of a pockmarked beggar who stirred in his rags to croak "Ya hu ya hak."

  "Follow that youth in the brown cloak," he whispered, so that none but the beggar could hear. "Watch what he does, and leave him not until thou knowest his abiding place."

  "I obey," the answering whisper came. The beggar took up the coin, yawned noisily and shuffled off as if his day had ended with the largesse from the noble.

  Omar, a shadow moving through loitering shadows, snuffed the odors of wood smoke and dung and wet cotton cloth and frying onions with a relish. What if that fat Tutush had looked down his nose at him? He had a couple of dirhems in his girdle, and for a while he would be his own master. He would go back to his old lodging and sleep in the roof shed with the sweet grass. Surely, if he told them some news of the world, the good people there would set food before him. If only Rahim were here!

  In the Street of the Booksellers he stopped by the familiar fountain. The girl, who had been standing there idly with a water jar, bent over the basin holding the mouth of the jar under the trickle of water. Omar seated himself on the rock beside her, although now that he had come, she seemed to take no notice of him.

  "Yasmi," he whispered.

  In the near-darkness beneath the plane tree her eyes, from between the edges of the veil, sought his. Impatiently she brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead, and he heard her swift light breathing. Yasmi was there in the darkness, a new Yasmi, veiled and silent and scented with rose-water. The water ran from the jar's lip down the side, and she did not stir. She had grown taller and her bare arm gleamed white beside him.

  "Yasmi," he whispered clumsily, "for whom art thou waiting here?"

  She started as if he had struck her. "O fool," she cried, "great, ponderous fool—I wait for no one!"

  Letting the jar slip from her fingers she turned and vanished up the street. She ran madly, because she had waited for every day of three years, watching and assuring herself that Omar would return.

  From the trunk of the plane tree a figure in rags limped closer, peering into the face of the man on the rock.

  "In the name of the Compassionate," the beggar whined, "give to the poor!"

  Noon on the river by the cypresses of the burying place above Nisapur.

  Even among the tumbled graves of the cemetery the flowers had pushed their way, making a magic carpet above the bones of the dead. And the sun, the warm sun, shone upon the yellow headstones leaning this way and that, some of them bearing the round turbans of men carved in the stone, others bearing a knot of flowers or nothing at all—these were the graves of women.

  Under the dark cypress trees gathered the veiled women, their heads close together, their lips moving in talk. They sat about the graves in circles, only half-heeding the young children sprawled in the grass.

  It was Friday, the day of peace, when the women came in long processions to the cemetery, to mourn. They found it more interesting to talk. Some of the older girls moved restlessly from circle to circle, and slipped away into the cypresses when they were not noticed. No men ventured within the cemetery during this time of the women's mourning. Still, there were paths near by along the river, and friendly clumps of willows where lovers awaited them.

  Yasmi had wandered far off. She lay outstretched on a hillock, watching the pigeons that circled over her head. These pigeons had their home in the half-ruined wall that surrounded the girl. The wall had no roof, because it was only a barrier about the great tower that rose within it.

  The tower had been built originally for a watch post to overlook the river and the plain beyond the cemetery; but in these last years of peace the tower had been abandoned to the pigeons and to chance wanderers like Omar who had frequented it at night to study the stars.

  "Ai-a" Yasmi murmured, "why did I come?"

  Her thoughts darted forth heedlessly as the pigeons that circled against the sun. She had planned very carefully what she would do at such a time, copying her sister in casting bewitching glances and speaking provocative words to the man at her side—until the man would lose his very senses in desire for her. But her hands trembled in the long sleeves of the Friday gown, and her words tumbled out without meaning.

  And the man at her side had been silent such a long time. There was a hunger in his eyes.

  "Eh, say," she insisted.

  'What shall I say, little Yasmi?" Omar did not so much as turn his head, but he was conscious of the girl's white throat, the darkness of her lips and shadowed eyes.

  "Have you not been to the war and seen the Sultan? And— and many other girls in many towns? What else did you see? Tell me!"

  Fleetingly Omar thought of Zoë and the long Khorasan road.

  "It was nothing," he said suddenly. "W'allah, we moved about like pawns upon a chessboard, and then we were back in our boxes again. Who can tell anything about a battle?"

  Yasmi remembered as if from a great age the conquering amir of the white horse with swordsmen at his tail who would take her away to the pleasure kiosk with its swans.

  "What will you do in Nisapur?" she asked curiously.

  "Who knows?"

  "Are you going away again?"

  Omar shook his head. He did not want to go away, or to think about anything except Yasmi who had changed in these years from a grave child to a lovely and disturbing woman. And yet she had not changed. With his chin on his arm, his dark face intent, he watched the tiny people moving back from the cypresses
of the cemetery to the distant gates of the city.

  "They say," persisted the girl, "you were the favored disciple of the Mirror of Wisdom, and now you are like to be a master."

  It did not surprise Omar that she had heard such talk, for the Street of the Booksellers knew the gossip of the Academy.

  "And I say," he smiled, "that I have no place to work, no protector, nor anything of my own. The dervish hath his tricks and the teacher hath his living, but what have I?"

  Yasmi snuggled down into the grass pleasantly. If he were really a beggar, then he would not be taken away from her. So much the better. "Instead of being wise—" the words slipped from her lips—"thou art more foolish than Ahmed the soothsayer who gets much silver for reading the stars. He has an abba of silk and a black slave. . . . Look, the last of the women are turning back. Surely, I must go!"

  But when he laid his hand upon her wrist she did not rise. The pigeons were perched in crannies of the tower, leaving the sky empty. "There is the moon," she said, pointing, "and now I must go."

  "Soon there will be a star between the horns of that new moon."

  "Nay, I shall not see it." A laugh rippled from her. "Thou alone, perched in this great tower of thine, wilt see it—and all the other stars. Are you not afraid of the ghosts that come up from the burying place, to sit in their shrouds?"

  "Nay, they are friendly ghosts. They bring me astrolabes and star lanterns and teach me what the Chaldeans knew."

  Her eyes widened in sudden fright. Men had said that Omar possessed a strange wisdom, by which mysteries were revealed to him, and perhaps he did talk with the spirits of the dead.

  "But how dost thou speak—in the speech of the Chaldeans?"

  "Nay, Yasmi, there is an angel of the Invisible who cometh to sit upon the wall. He explains all that is said, because the angels know all the tongues of the earth."

  "That is a jest! It is wicked to jest about an angel. Do the ghosts really come?"