Omar Khayyam - a life

by Harold Lamb

  "See how poor a wife I am," she whispered, "to lie at rest while my lord serves me. Show me some of the precious things for my wedding."

  To amuse her, he took embroidered shawls and pearl-sewn veils to her couch, and she fingered them absently. He showed her a silver tiara with a single glittering sapphire.

  "It is beautiful," she said, caressing it. "Tomorrow I will comb my hair and put it on. . . . Some time, will we have a kiosk on our river—not this one but our own—with white swans to swim around it?"

  And then, in a moment, she was delirious. The sickness gripped her swiftly, darkening her eyes. Omar summoned Jafarak, who turned his head away after one glance.

  "The plague," whispered the jester.

  "Nay, not that," cried Omar. "See, it is a fever. Pray God that it will break before morning."

  "There is nothing to do," Jafarak said, "but to pray."

  Fires were lighted about the tent, to drive off the night chill. Their red reflection covered the cloth walls, while Yasmi tossed from side to side, moaning, heedless of Omar kneeling beside her or of the hunchback crouched in a corner murmuring without cessation the holy names of God. The fires sank to embers, and the shadows no longer danced on the walls.

  Jafarak heard Omar's voice. "Light the lamp. She hath spoken, she hath touched me. The fever hath left her."

  When he stood by them, shading the flame of the lamp with his hand, Yasmi lay still, her eyes closed. One hand was touching Omar's throat, and her lips were moving.

  "My life . . . my life."

  Then she turned her head away, and Jafarak waited, shading the light. He thought that Omar was listening, and this seemed strange to him, because Yasmi was not breathing. So he put the lamp down and touched Omar upon the shoulder.

  The caravan men sat around the tent, by the ashes of the night's fires. A wind from the desert lifted the dust into a veil, through which shone the red ball of the sun. At times Jafarak came from the tent and sat with the men.

  "Still, he speaks not," the jester said. "Still he bathes her closed eyes with rose-water."

  "Barakullah," muttered a soldier, "and she dead of the plague."

  "He knows that she is dead, because he is putting the bridal jewels upon her, and wrapping the veil about her breast."

  "Better that he bellowed his grief and tore his garments as a man should in mourning."

  "Ay, that he wept. But he will not. Ai, so white she lies upon the ground. So young she was—like the desert flower that blooms after the rain and withers i' the wind the next day."

  The men moved uncomfortably. It seemed to them unwonted, to have dug so large a grave on the knoll under the wild pear tree, and to have carried the closed litter into the tent of death. Young girls died easily, in childbirth or sickness, and it was to be expected. It was written and who could alter what was written? They looked uneasily at the ferry waiting upon the shore.

  "Belike," ventured one, "he is mad. Allah shields those who are afflicted."

  "There are many girls," spoke up the communicative soldier. "Now for eighty pieces of silver at Baghdad——"

  "Dog!" cried Jafarak, springing up. "What knowest thou, in thy kennel run, of love that burns and slays?"

  He went back to the tent and disappeared within it. When he returned, it was to summon slaves to carry the litter to the grave at the hilltop.

  "Be quick," he ordered. "For the master hath placed her in the litter, and the gifts beside her, with his own hands. He believes it is time for her to depart upon a journey. Be quick—for he lieth upon the ground——"

  "We be no bearers of the dead!" cried the chavadar of the camels. "Allah—they will not take a corpse on that ferry——"

  "Nay, to the grave. The grave is dug. Be quick!"

  Driving the frightened men before him, Jafarak flung back the entrance flap of the tent. "O Master," he said, "we are ready to set out. Abide thou here for a little, until all is ready." And, whispering to the men, "Fools, make haste—he knows, he knows. Gently, or he will rouse and speak!"

  Stumbling in their fear and haste, they carried the heavy litter out of the tent and up the wind-swept knoll. There they lowered it into the grave, and began with their hands and feet to thrust the dirt back upon it. The stones they saved to pile upon the mound. Then they ran down, to cluster about the tent, while the camel men got the bales upon their beasts, and the soldiers saddled their horses.

  "Master," cried Jafarak, "we are ready. It is time."

  When Omar stepped from the entrance, the end of his turban was drawn across his lips. For a while he looked curiously at the whirling dust and the gray river. Then he turned to the waiting men who huddled together. "Burn this tent," he ordered, "and get ye gone. Take the goods ye carry, and go. I know your faces. I will remember them. Let not one of ye come before my eyes again."

  "Master," protested Jafarak.

  "Get thee gone. See'st not that the plague is here?"

  When the barge had poled its way across the river, and the men and beasts had disappeared over the far bank, Omar watched the smoke rising from the blackened debris of the tent. Rising in swirls, it darkened the dust veil until the red ball of the sun looked like a lantern hung in the sky.

  The lantern hung over his head, and all the sky was draped with banners. And the gray earth was empty. As far as he could see, it was empty. The caravan had departed into nothingness, and the fire that had eaten up the tent was eating into his heart. Burning, burning, into his body. . . .

  "Master," said the voice of Jafarak, "that is the river. That is death."

  The water was a flood, rushing past his feet. Bits of clay slipped into it and vanished. Jafarak's arm pulled at Omar's shoulder, and after a while he sat down to look at the flood that eddied by.

  The clong-clong-clong of camel bells came to his ears. A chain rattled and the line of a new caravan stalked down to the waiting place. The ferry barge poled back across the water. Strange men led down horses to drink.

  "Nay, it is not the plague," Jafarak's voice went on. "He hath no fever. It is in his mind—I did not know he would suffer so. Something to give him, lord? Hast thou the gift of tears?"

  Another man moved and spoke. A heavy goblet touched Omar's hand, and he looked at it. It was filled with red wine.

  "The river water," said the voice of Akroenos the merchant, "is not good to drink. But this is good."

  The hands of Akroenos held the goblet to Omar's lips, and he drank a little. When the goblet was empty, Akroenos filled it again. The wine was heavy with spice. It cooled the fire in his brain. So he drank until the curtains in the sky descended upon him and the lantern of the sun vanished behind them.

  The Pass of the Pilgrim Stones, in the mountains of the Kurds upon the road to Khorasan.

  Camel bells clonged in his ears. A shaggy pony jogged under him, and Omar dozed, nodding in the saddle, because the heat of the earth rose like a living thing to meet him.

  At night, when he could not sleep, he drank the wine of Akroenos, and he talked with the watchers of the beasts, who answered gently, believing him mad. When words failed, and the vision of Yasmi lying in her veil beneath the ground far back by the river's bank came into his mind, and the fire in his body began to burn again, he sought the wine jar and drank a little at a time until the stars wheeled across the sky.

  "He is weak," Jafarak said to the merchant Akroenos.

  "It is better to drink," responded Akroenos calmly, "than to thirst."

  "But what of tomorrow, and the morrows to come?"

  "When they come, we shall see."

  Hearing this, Omar lifted himself on his pallet and looked at them. "If it were not for yesterday and tomorrow, how easy it would be to live." For a moment he pondered this. "If we could hold the veil of oblivion over yesterday, and if we would never draw the curtain from what is to be! If today never changed into something else!"

  "Peace," murmured Jafarak. "The peace be upon thee."

  They were climbing up from the desert
floor into the red ravines of the Kurds, up the ancient road that the pilgrims had worn smooth. Late one afternoon the merchants of the caravan halted beside a cluster of gray stones, half the size of a man.

  Some of these stones had the trace of a human face upon them, and all had the corners worn round by rolling. The merchants of the caravan dismounted and went to the stones. Pushing and tugging, they rolled the stones a short way down the road.

  "Ekh," said Akroenos, "they aid the stones toward Mecca. For these are the pilgrim stones that have come from the mountains. Every Moslem helps them upon their journey. I remember, when I was a boy, that they stood in the marketplace of Shirin's Castle."

  Jafarak went to look at the great stones. They were ordinary enough; still, it was strange to find them standing patiently on end along the road. He wondered how long it would take them to reach Baghdad and if they would ever find the way across the desert to Mecca. But the merchants prayed loud and long that evening, and those who had performed the great pilgrimage displayed talismans that they wore to guard them against the knives and arrows of robbers.

  For in these hills the Kurds descended from their camps to raid the camel trains.

  When the night had passed without disturbance, the merchants gave thanks to Allah and pushed the pilgrim stones again a little way. Then they demanded that the one who had wine in his camel bales remain behind the train that day.

  "Let him follow, out of sight and hearing, for his trade is accursed and will bring evil upon us. Let him follow behind our dust."

  In their zeal they sought out Akroenos. "Thou art a Greek, an unbeliever. Stay thou with the wine merchant."

  "There is danger upon the road this day," the grizzled Akroenos protested, "and two men apart from the train may be set upon and slain for their horses. Besides, I am an Armenian and not a Greek."

  "It is all the same. Wallahi, hast thou no shame—eater of pig's flesh? Wilt bring calamity upon us?"

  Akroenos went off without another word—for the merchants of Baghdad were armed and they had their guards. When they mounted, and the camel strings started up the road, Omar remained seated on one of the pilgrim stones by his pony.

  "Come, Khwaja Omar," they called to him.

  "Nay, ye go without the wine. But I will not."

  " 'Tis folly," added Jafarak, "to linger behind. So that is the place for a fool. Ride on, ye of the pilgrimage performed!"

  The wine merchant, a sallow man who complained much, did not protest when the caravan left him. He bade his men wait until it was out of sight. "What will befall this day is written," he said dully, "and what is written will come to pass.

  It hath come upon my head that I shall travel with a fool, a drunkard, and an Armenian."

  When the last of the main caravan had disappeared over the head of the gorge, the wine merchant got his camels up, his servants picked up their staffs, and Jafarak mounted his donkey. They toiled up to the pass under a glaring sun.

  While they were winding through the slopes on the summit, the camel men stopped the beasts. "Listen!" they exclaimed.

  Echoes of clattering hoofs filled the gully. Somewhere men shouted, and the wine merchant cried that now the Kurds would come and slay them.

  "Let us hide the beasts," said Akroenos. "We cannot escape by fleeing."

  "No man," groaned the merchant, "can escape his kismet."

  The herders, babbling with fright, forced the laden camels into a small gully, up the dry bed of a stream. The riders took shelter behind a growth of tamarisk.

  On the skyline above them they beheld horsemen with lances moving at a trot. Shouting came from near at hand, with a scattering of gravel and a clatter of falling stones.

  "Verily," whispered Jafarak, "these hills have given birth to men."

  The Kurds seemed to be surrounding them, and exulting at the prospect of spoil. Akroenos shrugged his shoulders and waited impassively, until silence fell.

  "They did not see us," cried the jester.

  When quiet prevailed for another hour, the merchant consented to return to the trail. Apparently the Kurds had departed.

  But at the first turning they reined in, amazed. Before them, in a level space, lay the remnants of the main caravan. Ropes, sacks and torn bales littered the ground. Except for a lame donkey and a few dogs all the animals of the Baghdad merchants had vanished, with the merchants themselves. A handful of camel men squatted disconsolately in the débris. That was all.

  Not a weapon remained, and the armed guards had vanished into the air.

  Akroenos, who had seen more than one raid of the hill tribes, shook his head moodily, "Eh," he said, "the Kurds have attacked our brothers of Baghdad, and the caravan hath been plucked away like a plucked bird leaving these feathers behind. Perhaps a few of our friends escaped by the speed of their horses, but the rest are being taken for ransom—we heard the Kurds taking them away. Ay, and their guards served not to guard them—now they are slaves of the Kurds."

  He had lost a valuable load of cloth in the raid, but at least he was free.

  "Verily," said the wine merchant, sighing, "it was written." But Omar laughed. "We have the wine. What did the merchants lose one half so precious as the stuff we bear?"

  With the survivors of the caravan, and the dogs trailing behind, they hastened across the uplands. The fear of the Kurds drove them on, and they did not stop to make camp that night. Under the scimitar of a tired old moon they pressed along the shoulders of the mountains, and Jafarak said to Akroenos that they looked like dead men seeking their graves.

  "Yet is the Tentmaker pleased with this windy wasteland."

  "Tell me," answered the Armenian, "one thing. Thou hast said that at his house, three years ago, thou didst seek him with tidings of this girl Yasmi. Yet Omar saith that he heard naught of her until he found thee among the dervishes at Aleppo."

  "Allah be my witness, I sought him at the House of the Stars as thou sayest. He was gone from there. I left a token and a message."

  "But it seems he had no message. How is that? Come, and tell him."

  "Nay he broods upon the girl, and I am afraid."

  "Of what? Come thou!" Akroenos urged his pony forward, pulling at the halter of the jester's donkey until they were beside Omar. "Jafarak saith," he observed, "that three years ago he left a token and a message from Yasmi at your house. Hast thou forgotten?"

  Omar reined in his horse and looked at them.

  "I wondered, master," cried Jafarak, "why thou didst delay to send or seek, for month after month."

  "What token was it? What message?"

  "A silver armlet, set with turquoises. And the message was that Yasmi sickened; she was being carried to the west, to Aleppo."

  . The day that he had clasped that armlet on Yasmi's arm was clear in Omar's mind, and his hands clenched upon the reins. "I knew it not. To whom didst thou speak—to the servant? To the Khwaja Mai'mun?"

  Jafarak shook his head. "It was a stout man; he wore a turban of sky-blue silk—a little man with a voice like a bell. He asked me if Yasmi were afflicted with a great sickness, and I said, yea—Allah kerim—that she wasted——"

  "Be silent!" Omar turned his head away. "It was Tutush, and he lied to me. He lied."

  When he said nothing more, Jafarak dropped back, and when they were out of hearing, he turned to the Armenian. "What was the worth of that? What gain to thee, master? Now he is like one with a blood feud."

  "And that is worth a few camel loads of cloth."

  Akroenos smiled but he would not explain his words, and Jafarak wondered in vain why the merchant should wish to have Omar at dagger's point with Tutush, the chief of Nizam's spies.

  The House of the Stars by the river of Nisapur.

  Khwaja Mai'mun ibn Najib Al-Wasitt sat with his hands tucked in his sleeves in the audience room of the tower. Beside him sat Muzafar al Isfizari, from the observatory of Urghand. And along the wall sat their six assistants who had labored with them for a year.

  On
low tables before them lay sheets of paper with columns of figures, the fruit of their labor. In his dry voice Khwaja Mai'mun was explaining what they had accomplished, while he wrestled with inward misgivings. Certainly, the sunburned young King's astronomer who had just returned from the west and who lay outstretched on cushions appeared to be drunk. At least his eyes wandered and he hummed gently to himself a song.

  Moreover, behind Omar reclined a tattered jester and a dour graybeard in a black skullcap. Khwaja Mai'mun felt that he was losing dignity before his fellow mathematicians. A jester among scientists!

  So he broke off his ceremonious report and observed with cold disapproval, "The sunrise of the vernal equinox failed to meet our established time by three hours and nine minutes."

  "Three hours," responded Omar, "and nine minutes."

  Mai'mun lowered his eyes. Secretly, he had hoped to strike so close to the sun's time in Omar's absence that credit for the calculation would be given him.

  "Take a hammer," said Omar, "and break up the water clock."

  "Nay, Excellency," put in Isfizari who had the observation of the clock in his hands, "it varies no more than seventeen minutes from the sun. Perhaps a little more, but——"

  "O God," cried Omar, sitting up, "the clock is as true as that?"

  "Inshallah"

  "And still, you are out with the sun six hours and eighteen minutes in the full year?"

  "It was our fate——"

  "Go! Find me boys from the bazzaar to watch the instruments, and fair dancing girls of Isfahan to set down the hours! And ye were masters of mathematics! Oh, get ye gone, and teach school."

  The assistants rose and left the chamber with Isfizari, only the aged Mai'mun remaining motionless.

  "Master," observed Jafarak timidly, "six hours is little enough. Why, I would doze that long after eating a melon, and never think of it again."

  "Then you should be an astronomer." Omar clapped his hands. "Bring wine—the dark wine of Shiraz from the sealed jar."

  When the frightened servant had filled his goblet, he drank slowly. It seemed to Mai'mun that a devil had entered the Tentmaker. But he would not leave his place without justifying himself. Akroenos looked on impassively. Omar sighed and took up one of the papers.