The Arabian Nightmare

by Robert Irwin

  An obscure pietà, a scarred Italian sailor bearing a nightmare-ridden youth, stood briefly silhouetted against the mortuary tombs. Then the sailor moved off, carrying his charge towards the caravanserai.

  13

  From the Zuweyla Gate

  to Mount Muqattam

  One can break off here as well as anywhere. I have heard stories from the West told and I have listened to them with amazement, scarcely able to grasp that they were stories, so fast was their passage as they sped towards their determined ends like flights of arrows. In the leisurely, sleeping East it is different. Consider the story you are hearing rather as a set of beds loosely strung together—I am sorry, I meant to say beads, of course—a set of beads loosely strung together, just like those rosaries which we have seen bored old men sit fingering outside cafes. No, rosary is not quite right. Better to see it as a string figure—one of those things children play with, plucking at the loops with their fingers to create transitory shapes. I have heard them called cat’s cradles. Cat’s cradles, rosaries, beds and arrows, what on earth am I talking about? The point is that you can break off here as well as anywhere. You have heard enough tonight. For God’s sake, stop! Take some rest. Sleep. What follows is hard...

  One orange goes up. Another descends. The movements of the jugglers are so very slow. An acrobat spins with almost infinite leisure over his bar. It is very late and the crowds are beginning to thin outside the Zuweyla Gate. The Father of Cats passes from booth to booth. Here is the man who does the rope trick. Here is the gnostic escapologist who wriggles free from any body he may be trapped in. Here is the fire walker who curiously rejoices not because he does not feel pain but because he feels it only in his feet. Here is the mentalist—a boy who sits on a small wooden stool and achieves orgasms in public by the sheer unaided power of thought. Here is a man in a dirty white turban with an ape on a chair: what they do is not clear. Here is the bear dancer. Here is the fakir who inflicts more pain upon the spectators than he does upon himself as he skewers his cheeks and lips with heavy weighted needles.

  And there is more—Bash Chalek, the giant in chains, the shadow theatre, the man who eats pebbles, the bottle imp, the tight-rope walker, the hermaphrodite. This is the Circus of Ordeals. The performers are mostly Mongols or Indians. Nightly they celebrate their shaman’s mysteries of death, resurrection and fertility. The girl is bisected, the boy dismembered, the rabbit clubbed to death in its bag—to emerge with the clash of cymbals, living and whole again. Nightly these professional heroes prove themselves against water, fire and steel and demonstrate man’s ability to thrive upon pain. Their audience know they are being fooled. That is what they are paying for.

  At length the Father of Cats reached the cage of Habash. The lettering over the bars reads: ‘See and question Habash, the slave who walks and talks in his sleep. Deaths predicted. Loved ones found.’ As he reached the cage the Father of Cats thrust a cup through the bars. Habash did not move. He looked exhausted and was covered in welts and bruises, injuries sustained while crashing against the bars in his sleep. For a long time they contemplated each other silently.

  Finally the Father of Cats appeared to lose his patience. ‘Well?’

  ‘The cup does not say “Drink me”.’ Habash folded his arms.

  The old man flared up. ‘I say drink it.’ His eyes bore down on Habash’s. ‘Drink it and listen to what I have to say.’

  Habash sipped at the liquid reluctantly.

  ‘I have lost a book...’

  ‘I did not take it.’ Though frightened, Habash was still bent on goading the Father of Cats, but the Father, satisfied that Habash recognized his mastery, had reverted to his customary serenity.

  ‘I did not say that you did. As a matter of fact, the book was stolen from Vane by an Italian spy, Giancristoforo Doria, on the way from Alexandria to Cairo. The book he stole contains within it the source of all stories and the revelation of the mystery of the Arabian Nightmare. Doubtless the Italian intended to sell it to the storyteller known as Dirty Yoll, or to Yoll’s patrons, but he was arrested by the Mamlukes before he could do so. The book, however, fell into the hands of a young Englishman. The Englishman’s baggage at the Ezbekiyya caravanserai has been thoroughly searched, but both he and the book have disappeared. Now, that book must not fall into the hands of my enemies. You must find it for me.’

  Still the negro did not reply, but regarded him quietly. Sullenness was giving way to placidity.

  The Father of Cats pressed on. ‘Only you can help me for you dream upon your feet. The cup you drank from contained a powerful sleeping draught. You will sleep for a night and a day and perhaps another night and in that time you will search through Cairo in your dreams and surely bring my book back to me. You are already feeling very sleepy.’

  Habash did not really agree, but somehow it was easier and pleasanter not to dispute it. He allowed his eyelids to droop comfortably.

  The Father seeing that Habash, despite his will, was indeed drifting off, accelerated his speech. ‘As soon as I see that you have entered the dream state, I shall open the cage. To find the book is a simple affair. It is a matter of imposing the will on the dream. The Alam al-Mithal wishes to fulfil all men’s wishes. Just as I have imposed my will upon yours, so you must impose your will on the Alam al-Mithal. You must bring the book to me here.’

  Suddenly Habash slumped. He was sleeping. The Father waited patiently. While he waited, he drained the dregs of the sherbet, for he had sent Habash off to sleep on sugared water and suggestions. Habash’s eyeballs rolled. He was beginning to dream. As if drawn up by invisible threads, he rose from the floor of the cage. The Father turned the key, opened the door and gently guided the somnambulist out.

  Habash shambled out of the fairground, the Father following. As he reached the Bayn al-Qasreyn he broke into a run, or perhaps he broke into an imitation of a man running, for his fists and arms thrust backwards and forwards, his knees were raised high and his breath was sharply exhaled, but he moved oh so slowly. Always the same houses. There was infinite time to contemplate those houses with their crazy facades, at once makeshift and overwrought, kite-shaped doors and pell-mell roofs and those alleyways and arcades, deceitful perspectives and zigguratic staircases. The moon washed the walls in a dreadful white which showed up the dirt and cracks like plague spots.

  Habash looked back and gave a luminous, moonlit smile, for he knew that he was being pursued and he knew that, in the end, there was something reassuring about being pursued. Someone, somewhere, wanted him. The Father of Cats, running behind, caught the smile. The Father had intended to follow Habash running in his dreams, but he observed now how light and dark daubed themselves on to the buildings in thick, jagged, emotional strokes, how the town cracked and bent under pressure, how space and houses warped and buckled and formed themselves around the running figure of the black man, and he realized the force of the terrible energy that he had released and which now discharged itself uncontrollably into the streets of the city, and he knew that he dared follow the runner no further. He stopped and returned to the House of Sleep.

  Balian dreamt of tilting streets and falling towers. He continued to sleep that night and most of the following day. His sleeps grew ever longer. When he awoke the pilgrims crowded round.

  ‘Do you want a doctor? We’ll find you one in the Coptic Quarter.’

  ‘I want a priest.’

  They nodded approvingly and one of the friars thrust his way forward—that same one that Balian had heard preach on the day of his arrival on the dangers of tattooing. They withdrew into a corner of the caravanserai. The pilgrims assumed that Balian wished to be shriven lest he die, yet Balian did not really expect to die; he lived on fevered energies, and the heart pounded with heavy hammer strokes within his ghostly body. He hoped rather to be absolved from his vow to go to St Catherine’s in Sinai. Also he wished to challenge the friar.

  ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

  ‘Bless you m
y child. When did you last go to confession and attend mass?’

  ‘The time has passed and I have been sick; I cannot tell. Not since we embarked at Venice.’

  ‘And what sins have you committed since then?’

  ‘None save venial ones, but it is not for my sins that I need your counsel and the Church’s protection—’

  ‘You presume too much. I must be acquainted with the nature and frequency of sinning before we can agree whether it was venial or not.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I am threatened with great dangers, dangers not of my seeking nor my making. I am a pilgrim, vowed to Christian endeavour and good devotions this six months. But the Devil visits me with evil dreams and I have come close to the sin of despairing in God many times since I arrived in Egypt.’

  ‘What dreams are these?’

  Balian tried to see the friar’s face properly before he spoke again but, having failed: ‘I dream of entering a city that looks like Cairo, yet is utterly false. I dream of leaving it or trying to, but I am impeded by two agents of Satan called the Father of Cats and Michael Vane. I dream I am awake and I am not and I dream of a temptress, a woman called Zuleyka, who seduces me from chastity, and when I awake from these dreams my face courses with blood.’

  ‘So you dream of fornicating with Zuleyka... and is there any emission of semen during or after these dreams?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘I see. And have you nothing more of gravity that weighs on your conscience?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well that is good.’ A long silence, then, ‘St Augustine has it that the possible origin of a dream is threefold. First, there are dreams that come from God and are sent to guide us; second, dreams which come from the Devil with which that wily Prince seeks to seduce us, though he never can succeed in tempting even the soul of a man that is asleep, unless there be in that man’s soul a predisposition to corruption; third, dreams that are called natural, which come from the vapours of the inner fantasy and which are swayed by where a man lies and what he has eaten and many things besides, and they signify nothing at all.’

  ‘So God is tormenting me, or I am predisposed to corruption, or I have been eating the wrong foods. Which is it?’ Balian could not keep the irritation from his voice.

  A sigh. ‘You must know, my son, that none of the fathers and doctors of the Church condemns the dream in itself. We are taught that when at night the temperature falls, then man’s animal spirit retires into the innermost part of the body, to the seat of fantasy whence arise dreams. Such a dream therefore is a thing of nature and cannot be condemned in itself. Yet, being natural, it is not perfect. Close study of the Scripture teaches us, I believe, that Jesus, who was Perfect Man as well as God, never dreamt.

  ‘There are several grounds for believing this. First, Jesus never slept, and how can a man who never sleeps have dreams? That Jesus never slept we may adduce from the fact that while the Gospels give us frequent reports of the sleep of his disciples, he is never mentioned sleeping. And did not Jesus commune with Moses and Elias on Mount Tabor while Peter, James and John slept? And, secondly, on the question as to whether Our Lord ever dreamt, must we not suppose that his Divine Nature and Perfect Virtue made him proof against the discomforts and agues of the body and the poisons of bad food? And how should he who came to bring the Truth that shall set us free himself fall prey to dreaming, which is delusion, even supposing that he ever slept, when the best opinion is that he did not? Moreover, whereas as Proverbs has it, ‘Drowsiness shall clothe a man in rags,’ did he not come to bring us the wealth of the Eternal Kingdom?’

  Balian muttered that, yes, he supposed it was so.

  ‘Now, to return to your case, I must tell you two problems present themselves: first, whether your dreams are natural or diabolic in origin; secondly, having determined them to be the one or the other, if they are diabolic in origin we must ask why you have been elected by Satan for the visits of his ministers, whereas if they are natural in origin we must still determine whether you have not in these dreams (though it is admitted that on the moral plane they are meaningless in themselves), whether you have not yielded to some temptations that have presented themselves, not by design but per accidens, and then, if this were not the case and if the dreams were not shown to be diabolic in origin, then I might shrive you, assuming all the other appropriate conditions to be fulfilled. But if by any chance—’

  Balian groaned and then started hastily coughing. ‘Father, there is another matter I wish to raise with you also. I wish to be absolved of my vow to go to St Catherine’s in Sinai.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘On the grounds that I have already visited her in my dreams.’ Then Balian described to the friar the nightmare he had had about the martyrdom of St Catherine. ‘Well, Father, is that not sufficient?’ It was impudent but worth trying. The friar hesitated, then raised his hand with the fingers fanned out.

  ‘No. For five reasons. First, because it is more correct to say that she visited you than that you visited her. Second, because we have not been guaranteed that this was a veridical dream, and demons may impersonate saints as easily as serpents. Third, even granted that it was St Catherine who visited you, you were asleep when she came knocking and this showed a lack of respect towards her; all the more reason that you should fulfil your vow properly. Fourth, if one grants that the merits of good works may be earned in dreams, so also then may the wages of sin, and you tell me that since then you have fornicated in your dreams, so cleanse yourself in pilgrimage. Fifth, I do not have the authority to absolve you of your vow; only his Holiness the Pope has that.’

  ‘The last reason alone would have been sufficient,’ murmured Balian faintly.

  ‘Not so. Every moral act requires four effective causes and a fifth cause which is teleological, just as the Bible may be read in its entirety on four levels; tropological, anagogical—’

  But here Balian cut in. ‘Well, Father, you cannot absolve me from my pilgrimage but, tell me, am I guilty of any sin, awake or asleep?’

  ‘It is good of you, my son, to bring me back to the matter in hand. The extent to which concupiscence and its guilt can be imputed to a man who has taken pleasure in vice, asleep or even awake in his mind’s eye, as it were, is a vexed one.’

  ‘If I am to be judged guilty of every sin I have committed in my bed, then I am damned indeed. ’ A wave of melancholy swept over Balian.

  The learned friar continued. ‘Certainly I should not say that your chastity was weakened by your being seduced, while you slept, by a phantasm of Zuleyka, and the fact that you experienced no emission of semen is probably also a point in your favour, although I can conceive it might be argued that the discharges of blood you mention might be characterized as another type of nocturnal emission (medical evidence of the passion of ira rather than of voluptas), yet this, I imagine, would be difficult to sustain, for, as Galen teaches us, while blood is numbered as one of the fluids of life, yet it does not contain within it the seeds of life themselves.’

  ‘So I am free of sin?’

  ‘Ah, I did not say that. I suggested that there might be grounds for arguing that you have not sinned in your sleep, but you yourself are eaten up by sin. We have noted that since you were brought back to the caravanserai you have slept a day, a night and half a day. We have noted also, with regret, your desire to discontinue your pilgrimage. Sloth has you in his hellish grip, and sloth is the deadliest of all the sins, for, I remind you, Christ set us all an example by never sleeping. Did he not say, ‘The fox has his lair, the birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’? Now, to return to the question of repetition and the related one of the multiplicity of causes, why is it that an account of the same incident in Our Lord’s ministry may be given two, three, even four times in the narrative of the Gospels? It is because sufficient cause—’

  ‘Father, please. I am afraid. Have you ever heard of the Arabian Nightmare?’

 
A look of dislike crossed the friar’s face. ‘Everybody talks about that now in Cairo. It has become in their mouths just another of the Egyptian fairytales.’

  ‘It is a fairytale?’

  ‘No, well, perhaps not. I have heard some priests talk of the Arabian Nightmare in different and Christian terms. According to some of these, it is the ordained punishment for the Unforgivable Sin against the Holy Ghost.’

  ‘Father, I have never understood what the Unforgivable Sin against the Holy Ghost was. Surely no man knows?’

  ‘Yes, and no man knows for sure what the Arabian Nightmare is. There is a certain symmetry in the arrangement,’ said the friar wrily.

  ‘But you do not accept this view?’

  ‘I do not. In any event it is nothing for a Christian to be afraid of. It is only pain. There is nothing in infinite suffering that hinders the practice of a devout Christian life.’

  ‘But what is the Arabian Nightmare?’

  ‘A truer story relates its origins to Lazarus. You are familiar with the history of the Knights of Lazarus?’

  ‘I have never even heard of them.’

  ‘All that a good Christian needs to know is that they are a holy order of knights who, though grievously stricken with leprosy, war for our Faith against Mahometanism. What we learn from this is that their example—’

  ‘What should a bad or an indifferent Christian know about them?’

  ‘My son, take an example from their devotion and forget your little aches and pains. The example ‘What have they to do with the Nightmare?’

  ‘The Nightmare is infinite. According to Niko—’

  ‘What has the order to do with Lazarus?’

  ‘He founded the order of leper knights. If I may return to Niko—’