The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice

by Noah Gordon

  Alā-al-Dawla Shah strode onto the platform, undid a sword belt, and placed the scabbard on the floor as he took the throne. Everyone in the Hall of Pillars performed the ravi zemin while the Imam Qandrasseh invoked the favor of Allah upon those who would seek justice of the Lion of Persia.

  At once the audience began. Rob could hear clearly neither the supplicants nor the enthroned, despite the hush that suddenly fell. But whenever a principal spoke, his words were repeated in loud voices by others stationed at strategic locations in the hall, and in this way the words of the participants were faithfully brought to all.

  The first case involved two weather-beaten shepherds from the village of Ardistan, who had walked two days to reach Ispahan to bring their dispute before the Shah. They were in fierce disagreement over the ownership of a new kid. One man owned the dame, a doe that had long been barren and unreceptive. The other said he had readied the doe for successful mounting by the male goat and therefore now claimed half-ownership of the kid.

  “Did you use magic?” the Imam asked.

  “Excellency, I did but reach in with a feather and make her hot,” the man said, and the crowd roared and stamped its feet. In a moment the Imam indicated that the Shah found in favor of the feather wielder.

  It was an entertainment for most of those present. The Shah never spoke. Perhaps he conveyed his wishes to Qandrasseh by signal, but all questions and decisions appeared to come from the Imam, who did not suffer fools.

  A severe schoolteacher, with his hair oiled and his little beard cut to a perfect point, and dressed in an ornate embroidered tunic that looked like a rich man’s castoff, presented a petition for the establishment of a new school in the town of Nain.

  “Are there not already two schools in the town of Nain?” Qandrasseh asked sharply.

  “They are poor schools taught by unworthy men, Excellency,” the teacher replied smoothly. A small murmur of disapproval arose from the crowd.

  The teacher continued to read the petition, which advised the hiring of a governor for the proposed school, with such detailed, specific, and irrelevant requirements for the position that a tittering occurred, for it was obvious the description would fit only the reader himself.

  “Enough,” Qandrasseh said. “This petition is sly and self-serving, therefore an insult to the Shah. Let this man be caned twenty times by the kelonter, and may it please Allah.”

  Soldiers appeared flourishing batons, the sight of which made Rob’s bruises throb, and the teacher was led away, protesting volubly.

  There was little enjoyment in the next case—two elderly noblemen in expensive silk clothing who had a mild difference of opinion concerning grazing rights. It prompted what seemed an interminable soft-voiced discussion of ancient agreements made by men long dead, while the audience yawned and whispered complaints about the ventilation in the crowded hall and the aching in their tired legs. They showed no emotion when the verdict was reached.

  “Let Jesse ben Benjamin, a Jew of England, come forward,” someone called.

  His name hung in the air and then bounced echo-like through the hall as it was repeated again and again. He limped down the long carpeted aisle, aware of his filthy torn caftan and the battered leather Jew’s hat that matched his ill-used face.

  At last he approached the throne and performed the ravi zemin three times, as he had observed to be proper.

  When he straightened he saw the Imam in mullah black, his nose a hatchet imbedded in a willful face framed by an iron-gray beard.

  The Shah wore the white turban of a religious man who had been to Mecca, but into its folds had been slipped a thin gold coronet. His long white tunic was of smooth, light-looking stuff worked with blue and gold thread. Dark blue wrappings covered his lower legs and his pointed shoes were blue embroidered with blood-red. He appeared vacuous and unseeing, the picture of a man who was inattentive because he was bored.

  “An Inghiliz,” observed the Imam. “You are at present our only Ingbiliz, our only European. Why have you come to our Persia?”

  “As a seeker of truth.”

  “Do you wish to embrace the true religion?” asked Qandresseh, not unkindly.

  “No, for we already agree there is no Allah but He, the most merciful,” Rob said, blessing the long hours spent under the tutelage of Simon ben ha-Levi, the scholarly trader. “It is written in the Qu’ran, ‘I will not worship that which you worship, nor will you worship that which I worship … You have your religion and I my religion.’”

  He must be brief, he reminded himself.

  Unemotionally and keeping his language spare, he recounted how he had been in the jungle of western Persia when a beast had sprung upon him.

  The Shah seemed to begin to listen.

  “In the place of my birth, panthers do not exist. I had no weapon, nor did I know how to fight such a creature.”

  He told how his life had been saved by Alā-al-Dawla Shah, hunter of wildcats like his father Abdallah Shah who had slain the lion of Kashan. The people closest to the throne began to applaud their ruler with sharp little cries of approbation. Murmurs rippled through the hall as the repeaters passed the story out into the crowds who were too far from the throne to have heard it.

  Qandrasseh sat motionless but Rob thought from his eyes that the Imam was not pleased with the story nor the reaction it drew from the crowd.

  “Now hasten, Inghiliz,” he said coolly, “and declare what it is that you request at the feet of the one true Shah.”

  Rob took a steadying breath. “Since it is also written that one who saves a life is responsible for it, I ask the Shah’s help in making my life as valuable as possible.” He recounted his futile attempt to be accepted as a student in Ibn Sina’s school for physicians.

  The story of the panther had now spread to the far corners of the hall, and the great auditorium shook under the steady thunder of stamping feet.

  Doubtless Alā Shah was accustomed to fear and obedience but perhaps it had been a long time since he had been spontaneously cheered. From the look of his face, the sound came to him like the sweetest music.

  “Hah!” The one true Shah leaned forward, his eyes shining, and Rob knew he was remembered in the incident of the killing of the panther.

  His eyes held Rob’s for a moment and then he turned to the Imam and spoke for the first time since the beginning of the audience.

  “Give the Hebrew a calaat,” he said.

  For some reason, people laughed.

  “You shall come with me,” the grizzled officer said. He would be an old man before many years, but for now he was still powerful and strong. He wore a short helm of polished metal, a leather doublet over a brown military tunic, and sandals with leather thongs. His wounds spoke for him: the ridges of healed sword cuts stood out whitely on both massive brown arms, his left ear was flattened, and his mouth was permanently crooked because of an old piercing wound below his right cheekbone.

  “I am Khuff,” he said. “Captain of the Gates. I inherit chores such as yourself.” His eyes went to Rob’s raw neck and he smiled. “The carcan?”

  “Yes.”

  “The carcan is a bastard,” Khuff said admiringly.

  They left the Hall of Pillars and walked toward the stables. Now on the long green field men galloped their horses at one another, wheeling and brandishing long shafts like reversed shepherd’s crooks, but no one fell.

  “They seek to strike each other?”

  “They seek to strike a ball. It is ball-and-stick, a horsemen’s game.” Khuff studied him. “There is much you don’t know. Do you understand about the calaat?”

  Rob shook his head.

  “In ancient times when someone found favor in the eyes of a Persian king, the monarch would remove a calaat, an item of his own clothing, and bestow it as a token of his pleasure. The custom has come down through the ages as a sign of royal favor. Now the ‘royal garment’ consists of a living, a suit of clothes, a house, and a horse.”

  Rob felt numb
. “Then am I rich?”

  Khuff grinned at him as though he were a fool. “A calaat is a singular honor but varies widely in its sumptuousness. An ambassador from a nation that has been Persia’s close ally in war would be given the most costly raiment, a palace close in splendor to the House of Paradise, and a remarkable steed whose harness and trappings are encrusted with precious stones. But you are not an ambassador.”

  Behind the stables was a vast stock pen that enclosed a swirling sea of horses. Barber had always said that in selecting a horse one should look for an animal with a head like a princess and a hind like a fat whore. Rob saw a gray that fit the description perfectly and had additional regality in the eyes.

  “Can I have that mare?” he asked, pointing it out. Khuff didn’t bother to answer that it was a horse for a prince, but a wry smile did strange things to his twisted mouth. The Captain of the Gates unhitched a saddled horse and mounted. He rode into the milling mass and skillfully separated from the herd an adequate but dispirited brown gelding with short, sturdy legs and strong shoulders.

  Khuff showed him a large tulip brand on the horse’s near thigh. “Alā Shah is the only horse breeder in Persia, and this is his mark. This horse may be traded for another bearing the tulip but must never be sold. If he should die, cut off the skin with the mark on it and I will exchange it for another horse.”

  Khuff gave him a purse containing fewer coins than Rob might earn by selling the Specific at a single entertainment. In a nearby warehouse the Captain of the Gates searched until he found a serviceable saddle from the army’s stores. The clothing he issued was similarly well made but plain, consisting of loose trousers that fastened at the waist with a drawstring; linen wrappings that went around each leg outside the pants, like bandages worn from ankle to knee; a loose shirt called a khamisa that hung over the trousers, knee-length; a tunic called a durra; two coats for the different seasons, one short and light, the other long and lined with sheepskin; a cone-shaped turban support called a qalansuwa; and a brown turban.

  “Do you have green?”

  “This is better. The green turban is poor, heavy stuff, worn by students and the poorest of the poor.”

  “Nevertheless I want it,” Rob insisted, and Khuff gave him the cheap green turban and a hard look of scorn.

  Minions with watchful eyes leaped to do the captain’s bidding when he called for his personal horse, which turned out to be an Arab stallion bearing resemblance to the gray mare Rob had coveted. Riding the placid brown gelding and carrying a cloth bag laden with his new garments, he rode behind Khuff like a squire, all the way to Yehuddiyyeh. For a long time they wended the narrow streets of the Jewish quarter, until finally Khuff reined up at a small house of old, dark-red brick. There was a small stable, merely a roof on four poles, and a tiny garden in which a lizard blinked at Rob and then vanished into a crack in the stone wall. Four overgrown apricot trees cast their shade on thornbushes that would have to be cut out. Inside the house were three rooms, one with an earthen floor and two with floors of the same red brick as the walls, worn into shallow troughs by the feet of many generations. The dried mummy of a mouse lay in a corner of the dirt-floored room and the faint, cloying stink of its decay hung in the air.

  “Yours,” Khuff said. He nodded once and then went away.

  Even before the sound of his horse had vanished, Rob’s knees gave way. He sank to the dirt floor, then he allowed himself to lie back and know no more than the dead mouse.

  He slept for eighteen hours. When he woke he was cramped and aching, like an old man with frozen joints. He sat in the silent house and watched the dust motes in the sunlight that shone through the smoke hole in the roof. The house was in slight disrepair—there were cracks in the clay plaster of the walls and one of the windowsills was crumbling—but it was the first dwelling that had been truly his since his parents died.

  In the small barn, to his horror his new horse stood waterless, unfed, and still saddled. After removing the saddle and carrying water in his hat from a nearby public well, he hurried to the stable where his mule and donkey were boarded. He bought wooden buckets, millet straw, and a basket of oats and bore them home on the donkey.

  When the animals were tended, he took his new clothes and walked toward the public baths, stopping first at the inn of Salman the Lesser.

  “I’ve come for my belongings,” he told the old innkeeper.

  “They’ve been kept safe, though I mourned for your life when two nights passed and you didn’t return.” Salman stared at him fearfully. “A story is being told of a foreign Dhimmi, a European Jew, who went before the audience and won a calaat from the Shah of Persia.”

  Rob nodded.

  “It was indeed you?” Salman whispered.

  Rob sat heavily. “I haven’t eaten since you fed me last.”

  Salman lost no time in setting food before him. He tried his stomach gingerly on bread and goat’s milk and then, feeling nothing but famine, graduated to four boiled eggs, more bread in quantity, a small hard cheese, and a bowl of pilah. Strength began to steal back into his limbs.

  At the baths he soaked long, soothing his bruises. When he put on his new clothing he felt like a stranger, though not so much of a stranger as he had felt the first time he put on the caftan. He managed the leg bindings with difficulty, but wrapping the turban would require instruction and for the time being he retained the leather Jew’s hat.

  Back at the house, he rid himself of the dead mouse and assessed his situation. He had a modest prosperity but that wasn’t what he had requested of the Shah, and he felt a vague apprehension that was presently interrupted by the arrival of Khuff, still surly, who unrolled a flimsy parchment and proceeded to read it aloud.

  ALLAH

  Edict of the King of the World, High and Majestic Lord, Sublime and honorable beyond all comparison; magnificent in Titles, the unshakeable Basis of the Kingdom, Excellent, Noble and Magnanimous; the Lion of Persia and Most Powerful Master of the Universe. Directed to the Governor, the Intendant, and other Royal Officers of the Town of Ispahan, the Seat of the Monarchy and the Theater of Science and Medicine. They are to know that Jesse son of Benjamin, Jew and Barber-Surgeon of the Town of Leeds in Europe, has come into our Kingdoms, the best govern’d of all the Earth and a well-known refuge of the oppress’d, and has had the Facility and the Glory to appear before the Eyes of the Most High, and by humble petition beg the assistance of the true Lieutenant of the true Prophet who is in Paradise, to wit, our most Noble Majesty. They are to know that Jesse son of Benjamin of Leeds is assured of Royal Favor and Good Will and is hereby granted a Royal Garment with Honors and Beneficences and that All should treat him accordingly. You must also know that this Edict is made on rigorous Penalties and that there is no infringing it without being expos’d to Capital Punishment. Done on the third Panj Shanbah of the Month of Rejab in the name of our most high Majesty by his Pilgrim of the Noble and Sacred Holy Places, and his Chief and Superintendent of the Palace of Women of the most High, the Imam Mirza-aboul Qandrasseh, Vizier. It is necessary to arm one’s self with the Assistance of the most High God, in all Temporal Affairs.

  “But, of the school?” Rob could not resist asking hoarsely.

  “I do not deal with the school,” the Captain of the Gates said, and departed as hurriedly as he had come.

  A short time later two burly porters delivered to Rob’s door a sedan chair bearing the hadji Davout Hosein and a quantity of figs as a token of sweet fortune in the new house.

  They sat among the ants and the bees on the ground in the ruins of the tiny apricot garden and ate the figs.

  “They are still excellent apricot trees,” the hadji said, studying them judiciously. He explained at great length how the four trees could be brought back through assiduous pruning and irrigation and application of the horse’s manure.

  Finally Hosein fell silent.

  “Something?” Rob murmured.

  “I have the honor to extend the greetings and fel
icitations of the honorable Abu Ali at-Husain ibn Abdullah ibn Sina.” The hadji was sweating and so pale that the zabiba on his forehead was especially pronounced. Rob took pity on him, but not so much that it diminished the exquisite pleasure of the moment, sweeter and richer than the dizzying fragrance of the small apricots that littered the ground beneath his trees, as Hosein rendered to Jesse son of Benjamin an invitation to enroll in the madrassa and study medicine at the maristan, where he might aspire eventually to become a physician.

  PART FOUR

  The Maristan

  39

  IBN SINA

  Rob J.’s first morning as a student dawned hot, a sullen day. He dressed carefully in the new clothes but decided it was too warm for leg wrappings. He had struggled without success to learn the secret of winding the green turban and finally he gave a coin to a street youth who showed him how to strap the folded cloth tightly around the qalansuwa and then tuck it in neatly. But Khuff had been right about the heaviness of the cheap stuff; the green turban weighed almost a stone, and in the end he took the unfamiliar burden from his head and put on the leather Jew’s hat, a relief.

  It made him instantly identifiable as he approached the Big Teat, where a group of young men in green turbans stood talking.

  “Here is your Jew now, Karim,” one of them called.

  A man who had been sitting on the steps rose and approached him, and he recognized the handsome, lanky student he had observed castigating a nurse during his first visit to the hospital.

  “I am Karim Harun. And you are Jesse ben Benjamin.”

  “Yes.”

  “The hadji has assigned me to show you around the school and the hospital and to answer your questions.”

  “You will wish you were back in the carcan, Hebrew!” somebody called, and the students laughed.

  Rob smiled. “I do not think so,” he said. It was obvious that the entire school had heard of the European Jew who had gone to jail and then won admittance to the medical school on the intervention of the Shah.