Omar Khayyam - a life

by Harold Lamb

  "Yah bint," Omar addressed her, "O girl, art thou truly the daughter of the shaikh of the banu's Safa?"

  Instinctive cunning checked the response on her lips. She glanced at Omar, as a dog looks up into the face of its master to understand what lies behind his words. "Nay, not of the chieftain," she admitted boldly. "That was a lie. But I can really sing."

  Omar smiled. And Ayesha wondered what manner of lord this could be, who desired to hear truth spoken by a fair woman.

  The garden of Kasr Kucbik, in the foothills two days ride east of Nisapur.

  Although Ayesha was surprised, naturally, when the King's star gazer did not yield at once to her charm and solace himself by sleeping with her, she understood that he might want to wait a month. That was customary. Often in the desert raids, warriors would enjoy the captive women before the heat of battle had cooled in their veins; otherwise they would wait for the month ordained by custom and religious law. When Ayesha was sent away under guard to the summer palace of her new owner, she did not feel slighted. She wasted no time, however, in satisfying her curiosity about Omar.

  Her first discovery amazed her, almost beyond belief. The palace was, as its name implied, a little one—a dwelling lovely with blue tiles, standing at the back of a hill garden overlooking the gray plain. Ayesha was given a chamber opening into a roof terrace, and in an hour she had satisfied herself that no other woman of her class resided there.

  "Nay, the master hath no wives," old Zuleika admitted. " 'Tis said that once he married one who died of the plague before her homecoming."

  Being mistress of the kitchen, old Zuleika had the gossip of the place at her tongue's end.

  "Sometimes," she added, "he brings hither dancing girls for a little while, but they weary him and he sends them away with a gift."

  Inwardly Ayesha resolved that he would not send her away so speedily, with or without a gift. True, he had bought her and he was responsible for her, but Ayesha had no illusions about the fate of young slave girls who did not please their masters. Moreover, she found Kasr Kuchik delightful.

  The garden had a stream coming out of a grotto and winding between cool cypresses down to the pool where the rugs were spread. White roses climbed everywhere, even against the high walls of dried mud. In one corner stood a fairy-like kiosk. Here Ayesha was privileged to lie on heaped-up cushions and nibble at sugar paste, while she watched the spray of a fountain and stained her nails with henna. Ayesha thought life would be very pleasant in Kasr Kuchik.

  "This place," Zuleika informed her proudly, "is only one of many. Our lord hath a palace in Nisapur and another in Merv, by the great palace of the Sultan. He hath besides a house of science which is called the House of the Stars. Wise men with long beards work there making books at his command."

  "Wah! Making books?"

  "Yes, books are as common as dates with our master. One he made for the Sultan was an algebra,"

  "A—what?"

  "An algebra. It hath to do with magical numbers. Our master in his wisdom knoweth all that has ever been, and all that will be—God willing. That is why the Sultan will do nothing without his advice, so he is as great-in-power as the aged Arranger of the World. Ay, at the royal banquets he sits above the Amir of all the armies, and our Sultan loveth nothing more than an army, unless it be his hunting."

  This Ayesha understood readily enough. War, raid, and hunt were the occupations of strong men, who looked to women for their diversion, and to bear their children. The more powerful the men, the fairer and more numerous their women.

  "And the banquets he gives!" Zuleika rambled on—having perceived from the first day that Ayesha would never interfere with her domestic supremacy, she allowed herself to gossip freely—"In an ants' house a dewdrop is a flood, but here wine flows as if for the giants. Hai the jars they empty in the garden—the roast pheasants, the gazelle steaks, the mounds of rice-and-saffron, the platters of Shah's-delight, and the camel-loads of melons cooled with snow from the upper hills! They eat and they sit and they talk until the stars fade."

  "Wah! Thy cooking is fragrant as a garden in Nejd. But what do they talk about, if they have no girls?"

  "Oh, about Cos-reagraphy and Pre-isms and such-like. My soul, they use mighty words of power and it fair blisters my brain to understand them."

  Ayesha thought it must blister one's brain. She herself could never arrive at Zuleika's comprehension of the mysteries.

  In fact, she felt the difference between herself and these Persians. All of them—from the half-blind gatekeeper, to the hunchback who came and went on a white donkey—lived on the bounty of their lord. They talked more than they slept and they slept more than they worked. There was no makaddam with a whip to see that they labored.

  The garden had twenty gardeners, from the planter-in-chief to the lowest sweeper. Yet seldom did they do more than sit and discuss the affairs of the garden and themselves. From her roof terrace the she-panther—the servant who had escorted her from the street of the slave sellers had brought that nickname back with him—listened to them. "O Ali, the last rain washed stones into the lily beds. It is time that the bed should be dug." . . . "Knowest not, Hussayn, that the proper time is in the moon before the equinox? Besides, it is Ahmed's work, and by God's will he lieth sick." . . . "The master will be angry if the bed is not dug." .. . "That is true. Well, I will make haste and remove the stones, and rake the leaves and dig it deep, tomorrow."

  But tomorrow Ali would wait for Ahmed's son to repair the hoe that had been broken last autumn. "It is important, O Hussayn, to fill up the holes in the gravel walk by the kiosk. Our master might stumble in those holes and then would be calamity." . . . "How can I fill the holes when I am pruning the rose vines?"

  Hussayn, however, was not actually pruning the roses. He had cut some to take to the daughter of the miller in the village, and he meant with all his heart to clip and trim and tie up all the vines—he would certainly do something about it tomorrow.

  Then if they worked a little in the morning, they would sleep in the shade of the cypresses through the noonday heat, leaving the flies to buzz about the tools in the sun. When they woke they would be too drowsy and the sun would be too hot to resume work—it could be done tomorrow.

  Still, in spite of this neglect, the garden was heavy with fragrance of roses, and its canopy of foliage made a sanctuary of shadow. Ayesha liked to drowse in it while she waited for Omar's coming.

  But when her new master at last rode into the gate—and the gatekeeper put on his best garment, and all the gardeners, even Ahmed who had complained of sickness, scurried about with their tools as if interrupted in diligent toil, while Zuleika stirred the kitchen into pandemonium—Ayesha could no longer go into the garden. A half dozen visitors accompanied Omar, and for weeks the Lord of Kasr Kuchik did nothing but entertain his guests. Some went away, but others came, and Ayesha perforce kept to her rooms and roof-top, wearing her heaviest veil the while, and wondering as the days passed if Omar had forgotten her.

  She could not speak to him while the other men filled the place, outside her harem. And, after all, she was only a new-bought slave; she did not dare send a message to him by Zuleika. He must have seen her from a distance on her roof, and perhaps he regretted buying her and meant to sell her again. Ayesha poadered the question for long hours, while she bathed and anointed herself and colored her nails carefully. She was a little afraid of Omar, but she did not want to be sold again, and she determined that if he came face to face with her only for a moment without her veil, he should not neglect her again.

  Meanwhile she listened to all the talk in the garden below, as had been a woman's privilege since Allah created Eve of blessed memory.

  When the men feasted after the hour of candle-lighting, she could stretch out in her eyrie and hear—she had the ears of a panther—all that was said, and wonder about the characters of the visitors.

  There was a grizzled Armenian merchant, Akroenos by name, of whom she approved decidedly.
He conversed, with Omar apart, of turquoises from the mines, of caravan-loads of elephants' teeth, and profits of thousands of dinars. Ayesha understood such matters very well; she realized that Akroenos was Omar's man of business and that Omar had great wealth to dispose of. The price he had paid for her had been no more than beggar's pence to him. So much the better. . . .

  Of a certain poet with oiled hair named Mu'izzi, the Glorifier, she did not approve. True, he praised Omar without stint, saying that the King's astronomer had reached threefold perfection, in a thing called mathematics and in knowledge-of-the-stars, and also—as he, Mu'izzi had heard—in the art of music. Were not the very children of Islam reading Omar's books in the schools? But Ayesha thought to herself that words were cheap.

  Once Mu'izzi was prevailed upon to recite an ode of his own:

  "Picture fair, by whose beloved presence by me here

  Seems my chamber now like Farkhar, now like far Cashmere,

  If thy darkling tresses have not sinned against thy face

  Wherefore hang they, head-dependent, downward in disgrace?

  Yet, if sin be theirs, then why do they in heaven dwell,

  Since the sinner's portion is not Paradise, but Hell?"*

  *[From the translation of Edward G. Browne.]

  Ayesha thought this pretty enough. When Mu'izzi asked anxiously for Omar's opinion, the lord of Kasr Kuchik said:

  "I see now why thou art the King's poet."

  Mu'izzi drank too much that night, and disputed with a Sufi whether he should have said 'curling' instead of 'darkling in his ode. The Sufi was full of strange words like Being and Not-being, and universal love. Ayesha paid little attention to him, but she listened readily enough when Mu'izzi cried out that he would tell a secret of a party of his own.

  " 'Twas a jest, O my cup companions, and such a jest! To my house and my poor garden—only the shadow of this moon-adorned paradise—I summoned young nobles from the polo field. When we had eaten and drunk a little—not such spirit-exalting wine as this—I clapped my hands to fetch in the dancing girls. But they were not girls. I had hired boys fair as the new moon and dressed them in the garments of dancing girls, even to the anklets and veils. So, behold, they danced, and then ran away, while I whispered to my guests to catch them if they could. They all vanished into the darkness, and I waited for my guests to run back crying out at the jest I had devised for them. Behold they did not come—it was an hour ere the first one came!"

  And Mu'izzi laughed, throwing back his head. Ayesha looked at Omar who gave no sign, either of amusement or dislike.

  The Arab girl grew hot with indignation. So many Moslems, amusing themselves with boys, lost all desire for women. She remembered that she had found this harem of Kasr Kuchik deserted, and Zuleika had assured her that its master soon tired of singing girls from the city. But there was no trace anywhere of a beardless boy. Still, she hated Mu'izzi and devised names for him that would have startled the King's poet.

  There was a Hindu, silent as a shadow, who whispered to a companion that Omar's secret knowledge was remembered from a previous life, without Omar's knowing that he remembered.

  Ayesha could make nothing of that, but she understood vaguely that this Hindu was kindred in spirit to a youth with fearless eyes who wore only a camelhair abba and who came to the palace alone and barefoot. They called him Ghazali, the mystic.

  When Ghazali talked with Omar, they paced the garden together, so that the girl could not catch all they said, and she understood even less. Odd snatches of words about the veil of the Invisible that men could not draw aside. Omar: "If we could see the heavens as they are, we would behold a new universe. Ah, we would do away with the old and find our heart's desire in the new." Ghazali: "That veil may not be lifted until we have perfected ourselves in love of God. . . ."

  Once when Omar raised a goblet of wine to his lips, the mystic cried:

  "That is accursed."

  Omar drank, and set the goblet down empty, smiling a little. "Do not blaspheme wine. It is bitter only because it is my life."

  His life! Ayesha, who was already jealous of Ghazali, wondered what would come next. But Ghazali merely argued that while there were many religions, there was but one God.

  "Islam itself is a house divided, for we have the orthodox believers, and the Sufis who rebel against orthodoxy, and the Alyites who follow the tradition of Ali, and also those who await the coming of the Mahdi. All believe, and yet they follow different paths. Listen now to the story of the Elephant. ... In Hind it was that the keepers of the Elephant desired to show the Elephant to curious ones. Yet it was in a dark room. The seekers came and felt of it, since they could not see. One, laying his hand on its trunk, said, This creature is like a water-pipe.' Another, feeling its ear, said, 'Verily, it is a fan.' A third came upon its leg, and he said, 'Nay, beyond doubt it is a pillar.' Had any one brought a candle to the room, all would have seen the same."

  "And where," Omar asked, "will you find a candle to enlighten the world?"

  "In the dreams of the mystics," cried Ghazali. "For they can see what lieth behind darkness."

  "And who are they?" Omar shook his head. "I have sought them, but where are they? They have not taken a step from their couches into the darkness of the Universe. They have told an old tale, and have gone back to sleep again."

  For one thing Ayesha was grateful to Ghazali. After the mystic had departed on his wanderings, Omar wearied of Mu'izzi and the other cup companions. One evening when they were in deepest dispute, he led in Jafarak's white donkey, and when at length the guests fell silent, he assured them gravely that the donkey bade them take warning by its example—in a former life it had been a professor of an academy.

  All the guests left after that, and Omar was pacing the starlit garden when Ayesha at last dared to approach him. She knelt beside him, pressing his hand to her forehead.

  "Upon my lord be the peace."

  "And upon thee, the peace."

  "My lord, I watched. There was one who came creeping, and spied upon you. He hid there, behind the roses, and crept away again. I saw his face."

  "Was it Ahmed, the gardener?"

  "Ay, Ahmed. Let him be scourged!"

  To the girl who had been weaned among the desert clans a spy was an enemy, to be struck down as one would strike a snake.

  Omar was silent a moment. "Nay, let him go to those who sent him and tell of the donkey. If I beat him and cast him out they might send one more dangerous than Ahmed."

  Ayesha wondered at this. Her master, then, had been aware of Ahmed's spying, even as he had known when he saw her first that she was not the daughter of the chief of the Safa clan. How great was his magic! Surely, he could read her thoughts, as she knelt beside him, while he stroked her tresses.

  But Omar was following his own thoughts. "They talk of paradise, yet what is paradise but a moment's peace?"

  Ayesha did not know, so she was silent.

  "Here is a garden, and quiet. Yet even here the seekers come, and the talkers, and the watchers intrude. . . . Are my servants kind to thee, Ayesha?"

  "Verily, they are. Will—will my lord be pleased to have me take my lute and sing?"

  "It is late—in an hour it will be the light before the dawn. Go thou and sleep, Ayesha."

  The girl returned to her quarters, obedient but resentful. With all these goings-on, how would the master ever notice her? He had stroked her head as if she had been one of the horses of the stable, and had sent her off to sleep like a child.

  Omar sat by the pool, musing. Ghazali was no older than he had been when he rode to the wax with Rahim, and Yasmi gave him a rose. In Ghazali was the unreasoning sureness of youth. Why must the book of youth be closed? He himself was no more than thirty-four, but he felt that youth had deserted him. Who knew how, or whence? The book was closed, a new book opened.

  Life, that was so assured to Ghazali, had become uncertain to Omar. To the ascetic, it lay open like a map, awaiting his coming. To the astronom
er, it offered barriers within barriers.

  "He will be a fine teacher," he thought. "And I could not teach."

  Upon an impulse he clapped his hands. A servant came running from the house and paused respectfully at a little distance. "Bring me," Omar requested, "the case of my cameos and older coins. It is in the blue tiled chamber beside the pile of Chinese rugs—" he glanced up at the man's face for the first time—"Ahmed."

  When the case lay upon his knees, he unlocked it with a key taken from the wallet in his girdle. It was necessary to keep this case locked because, while his servants would never steal the box itself, Zuleika or the maids would be tempted to pilfer the gold coins if it were open for their curiosity to pry into. Their fingers could never resist the soft touch of gold, although they would weep their hearts out if the master ever dared scold them for thieving.

  "Is there something more, O master?"

  "Nothing—thou hast leave to go, Ahmed."

  For a few moments he took up the rare coins and inspected them. Here was a Byzantine piece, with the image of an emperor and his wife seated beneath a cross. Omar could make out the Greek letters—it was Justinian, in the sixth year of his reign, but the name of the woman was not there. And here lay a clay stamp, with the hollowed image of a flying bird, that he had picked up in the ruins of the desert city of Palmyra, where Zenobia had defied Rome not so long ago. What stories of human ambition these tokens had to tell!

  Justinian had restored much of the power of Rome, but he had died upon a fruitless quest into Asia. Zenobia—Omar remembered that this queen of a caravan empire had been forced to yield at last to a Roman army and had been carried off captive to grace with her beauty a Roman triumph.

  It was strange to hold in his hands the clear-cut heads of these long buried Caesars. Only the other day Nizam had announced that the latest Caesar of Constantinople had sent tribute to Malikshah. So the wheel of fortune had turned, until the west lay in chains before the triumphant march of Islam. . . . Ghazali thought that he, Omar, sought his ease. Yet for seventeen years he had not ceased doing the labor of three men, and now Nizam made greater demands upon him than before. . . . He wished that somebody else had brought him his coin case. Ahmed's impassive face reminded him of the secret supervision from which he could not free himself because it was carried out by Nizam's officers, and by Nizam's enemies. If he rid himself of the one, he would still have the other, and, after all, he had nothing to conceal. Still, they might have left him his rose garden with its solitude undisturbed.