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

by Noah Gordon

  He could hear Alā’s voice. We are four friends… We are four friends…

  He shook his fist. “UN-WOR-THYYYY!”

  The sound rolled toward the wall, reaching and startling the sentries.

  Their officer came down to the outermost guard. “Who is it? Can you tell?”

  “Yes. I believe it is the hakim Jesse. The Dhimmi.”

  They studied the figure on the horse, observing him shaking his fist once more, noting the wine jar and the horse’s slack reins.

  The officer knew the Jew as one who had stayed behind the returning force of Indian raiders to tend the wounds of soldiers. “His face is full of drink.” He grinned. “But he is not a bad shit, that one. Let him be,” he said, and they watched the brown horse carry the physician toward the city gates.

  66

  THE GRAY CITY

  So he was the last surviving member of the Ispahan Medical Party. To think of both Mirdin and Karim beneath the earth was to suck on an infusion of rage and regret and sadness; yet, perversely, their deaths made his days sweet as a loving kiss. He savored life’s ordinary juices. A deep breath, a long piss, a slow fart. To chew stale bread when he was hungry, sleep when he was tired. To touch his wife’s clumsy girth, listen to her snore. To bite his son’s stomach until the gurgling howl of infantile laughter brought tears to his eyes.

  This, despite the fact that Ispahan had become a somber place.

  If Allah and the Imam Qandrasseh could bring low the hero athlete of Ispahan, then what ordinary man would now dare break the Islamic rules set down by the Prophet?

  Whores disappeared and the maidans no longer were riotous at night. Mullahs patrolled the streets of the city in pairs, alert for a veil that covered too little of a woman’s face, a man slow in responding with prayer to a muezzin’s call, a refreshment-house owner stupid enough to sell wine. Even in Yehuddiyyeh, where females always were careful to cover their hair, many Jewish women began to wear the heavy Muslim veils.

  Some sighed in private, missing the music and gaiety of remembered nights, but others expressed satisfaction, and at the maristan the hadji Davout Hosein thanked Allah during a morning’s prayer. “Mosque and state were born of one womb, joined together and never to be sundered,” he said.

  Each morning more worshipers than ever came to Ibn Sina’s home and joined him in prayer, but now when he was through with worship the Prince of Physicians returned inside his house and wasn’t seen until it was time to pray again. He gave himself fully to grieving and introspection and didn’t come to the maristan to teach or to treat patients. Some who objected to being touched by a Dhimmi were treated by al-Juzjani, but these were not many and Rob was busy all the time now, tending to Ibn Sina’s patients as well as his own responsibilities.

  One morning a skinny old man with stinking breath and dirty feet wandered into the hospital. Qasim ibn Sahdi had legs like a knob-kneed crane and a moth-eaten wisp of white beard. He didn’t know his age and he had no home because for most of his life he had made his way as a menial in one caravan after another.

  “I have traveled everywhere, master.”

  “To Europe, whence I came?”

  “Almost everywhere.” He had no family, he said, but Allah watched over him. “I reached here yesterday with a caravan of wool and dates from Qum. On the route I was stricken with a pain like a wicked djinn.”

  “Where, pain?”

  Qasim, groaning, clutched at his right side.

  “Has your gorge risen?”

  “Lord, I am pukingly ill and know a terrible weakness. Yet as I dozed, Allah spoke, saying that nearby was one who would heal me. And when I awoke I asked people if there was a place of healing nearby and I was directed to this maristan.”

  He was led to a pallet, where he was bathed and fed lightly. He was the first patient with abdominal distemper whom Rob had been able to observe in an early stage of the disease. Perhaps Allah knew how to make Qasim well, but Rob did not.

  He spent hours in the library. Finally courtly Yussuf-ul-Gamal, the Keeper of the House of Wisdom, asked him what it was that he sought so assiduously.

  “The secret of abdominal illness. I am trying to find accounts of ancients who opened the human belly before it was forbidden to do so.”

  The venerable librarian blinked and nodded gently. “I shall try to help you. Let me see what I am able to find,” he said.

  Ibn Sina wasn’t available and Rob went to al-Juzjani, who didn’t have Ibn Sina’s patience.

  “Often people die of distemper,” al-Juzjani said, “but some come to the maristan complaining of pain and burning in the lower right abdomen, and the hurting goes away and the patients are sent home.”

  “Why?”

  Al-Juzjani shrugged and gave him an annoyed glance and would spend no more time on the subject.

  Qasim’s pain disappeared too after a few days, but Rob didn’t want to release him. “Where shall you go?”

  The old drover shrugged. “I shall find a caravan, Hakim, for they are my home.”

  “Not all who come here are able to leave. Some die, you understand that.”

  Qasim nodded seriously. “All men must die in the end.”

  “To wash the dead and prepare them for burial is to serve Allah. Could you do such work?”

  “Yes, Hakim. For it is God’s labor, as you say,” he said solemnly. “Allah brought me here and it may be that He wishes me to stay.”

  There was a small storeroom next to the two rooms that served as the hospital’s charnel house. They cleaned it out together and this became Qasim ibn Sahdi’s living quarters.

  “You will take your meals here after the patients are fed, and you may bathe in the maristan baths.”

  “Yes, Hakim.”

  Rob gave him a sleeping mat and a clay lamp. The old man unrolled his worn prayer rug and declared the room the finest home he had ever had.

  It was almost two weeks before Rob’s busy schedule allowed him to meet Yussuf-ul-Gamal in the House of Wisdom. He brought a gift of appreciation for the librarian’s help. All the vendors were displaying large, fat pistachios but Yussuf had few teeth for chewing nuts and instead Rob had bought a reed basket filled with soft desert dates.

  He and Yussuf sat and ate the fruit late one night in the House of Wisdom. The library was deserted.

  “I have gone back in time,” Yussuf said. “Far as I am able. Into antiquity. Even the Egyptians, whose embalming fame you know, were taught it was evil and a disfigurement of the dead to open the abdomen.”

  “But … when they made their mummies?”

  “They were hypocrites. They paid despised men called paraschistes to sin by making the forbidden initial incision. As soon as they made the cut the paraschistes fled lest they be stoned to death, an acknowledgment of guilt that allowed the respectable embalmers to empty the abdomen of organs and get on with their preservation.”

  “Did they study the organs they removed? Did they leave behind written observations?”

  “They embalmed for five thousand years, altogether eviscerating almost three-quarters of a billion human beings who had died of every ill, and they stored the viscera in vessels of clay, limestone, or alabaster, or simply threw them away. But there is no evidence that they ever studied the organs.

  “The Greeks—now that was different. And it happened in the same Nile region.” Yussuf helped himself to more dates. “Alexander the Great stormed through this Persia of ours like a beautiful, youthful god of war, nine hundred years before the birth of Mohammed. He conquered the ancient world, and at the northwestern end of the Nile River delta, on a strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and Lake Mareotis, he founded a graceful city to which he gave his own name.

  “Ten years later he was dead of a swamp fever, but Alexandria already was a center of Greek culture. In the breakup of the Alexandrian empire, Egypt and the new city fell to Ptolemy of Macedonia, one of the most scholarly of Alexander’s associates. Ptolemy established the Museum of Alexan
dria, the world’s first university, and the great Alexandria Library. All branches of knowledge prospered, but the school of medicine attracted the most promising students of the entire world. For the first and only time in man’s long history, anatomy became the keystone, and dissection of the human body was practiced on an extensive scale for the next three hundred years.”

  Rob leaned forward eagerly. “Then it is possible to read their descriptions of the diseases that afflict the internal organs?”

  Yussuf shook his head. “The books of their magnificent library were lost when Julius Caesar’s legions sacked Alexandria thirty years before the start of the Christian era. The Romans destroyed most of the writings of the Alexandrian physicians. Celsus collected what little was left and tried to preserve it in his work entitled De re medicina, but there is only one brief mention of ‘distemper seated in the large intestine principally affecting that part where I mentioned the cecum to be, accompanied by violent inflammation and vehement pains, particularly on the right side.’ ”

  Rob grunted in disappointment. “I know the quotation. Ibn Sina uses it when he teaches.”

  Yussuf shrugged. “So my delving into the past leaves you exactly where you were when I began. The descriptions you are seeking do not exist.”

  Rob nodded gloomily. “Why do you suppose that the only brief moment in history when physicians opened human beings came with the Greeks?”

  “They did not have the advantage of a single strong God who forbade them to desecrate the work of His creation. Instead, they had all those fornicators, those weak and squabbling gods and goddesses.” The librarian spat a mouthful of date seeds into his cupped palm and smiled sweetly. “They could dissect because they were, after all, only barbarians, Hakim,” he said.

  67

  TWO ARRIVALS

  Her pregnancy was too far advanced to permit her to ride, but Mary went on foot in order to buy the foodstuffs needed for her family, leading the donkey which bore her purchases and Rob J., who rode in a sling on the animal’s back. The burden of her unborn child tired her and vexed her back, and she moved slowly from one marketplace to another. As she generally did when she attended the Armenian market, she stopped in the leather shop to share a sherbet and a hot loaf of thin Persian bread with Prisca.

  Prisca always appeared happy to see her former employer and the baby she had suckled, but today she was especially voluble. Mary had been trying hard to learn the Persian tongue, but she could make out only a few words.

  Stranger. From afar. Same as the hakim. Like you.

  It was with no enlightenment and mutual frustration that the two women parted, and that evening Mary was irked as she reported the incident to her husband.

  He knew what Prisca had been trying to tell her, for the rumor had quickly reached the maristan. “A European is newly arrived in Ispahan.”

  “From what country?”

  “England. He’s a merchant.”

  “An Englishman?” She stared. Her face was flushed, and he noted the interest and excitement in her eyes and the way her hand remained unnoticed at her breast.

  “Why have you not gone to him at once?”

  “Mary …”

  “But you must! Do you know where he is staying?”

  “He’s in the Armenian quarter, that’s why Prisca knew of him. It’s said that at first he would consent to stay only with Christians.” Rob smiled. “But when he saw the hovels in which the few, poor Armenian Christians live, he quickly rented a finer house from a Muslim.”

  “You must write a message. Ask him to come to us for an evening meal.”

  “I don’t even know his name.”

  “What matter? Hire a messenger. Anyone in the Armenian quarter will direct him,” she said. “Rob! He will have tidings.”

  The last thing he wanted was dangerous contact with an English Christian. But he knew he couldn’t deny her this opportunity to hear of places closer to her heart than Persia, so he sat and wrote the letter.

  “I am Bostock. Charles Bostock.”

  At a glance, Rob remembered. On his first return to London after becoming the barber-surgeon’s boy, he and Barber had ridden for two days in the protection of Bostock’s long line of packhorses laden with salt from the brine works at Arundel. In camp they had juggled and the merchant had given Rob tuppence to spend when he reached London.

  “Jesse ben Benjamin. Physician of this place.”

  “Your invitation was writ in English. And you speak my language.”

  The answer could only be the one Rob had established in Ispahan. “I was reared in the town of Leeds.” He was more amused than concerned. Fourteen years had passed. The puppy he had once been had grown into a strange sort of a dog, he told himself, and there was little likelihood that Bostock could connect that juggling boy with this over-tall Jewish physician to whose Persian home Bostock had been drawn.

  “And this is my wife Mary, who is a Scot from the north country.”

  “Mistress.”

  Mary had ached for finery but her ponderous belly had made her best blue dress an impossibility and she wore a loose, tentlike black gown. But her scrubbed red hair gleamed richly. She wore an embroidered headband and her only piece of jewelry, a little crochet of seed pearls that hung between her brows.

  Bostock still had long hair held back with bows and ribbons, but now his hair was more gray than yellow. The ornate red velvet suit he wore, complete with soiled embroidery, was too warm for the clime and too costly for the occasion. Never were eyes so sharply weighing, Rob thought, so obviously calculating the worth of every animal, the house, their raiment, each piece of furniture. And with a mixture of curiosity and distaste assessing the swarthy and bearded Jew, the Celtic red-haired wife so perfectly ripe with child, and the sleeping baby who was further proof of the shameful union of this mixed pair.

  Despite his unhidden displeasure the visitor yearned to hear English as eagerly as they, and all three soon were chattering. Rob and Mary could not restrain themselves and their questions poured forth.

  “Have you intelligence of Scots’ lands?”

  “Was it good times or bad when you departed London?”

  “Was it peace there?”

  “Was Canute still the king?”

  Bostock was made to sing for his supper, though the latest news was almost two years old. He knew naught of the lands of the Scots nor of the north of England. Times had remained prosperous and London was growing apace, with more dwellings being raised each year and the ships straining the facilities of the Thames. Two months before he had left England, Bostock reported, King Canute had died a natural death, and the day he had landed in Calais he learned of the death of Robert I, Duke of Normandy.

  “Bastards now rule on both sides of the Channel. In Normandy, Robert’s illegitimate son William, although he is still a boy, has become Duke of Normandy with the help of his dead father’s friends and kinsmen.

  “In England, succession rightfully belonged to Harthacnut, the son of Canute and Queen Emma, but for years Harthacnut has made an un-British life in Denmark and so the throne has been usurped by his younger half-brother. Harold Harefoot, whom Canute had acknowledged to be his bastard son out of a little-known Northampton woman named Aelfgifu, is now the King of England.”

  “Where are Edward and Alfred, the two princes Emma bore by King Aethelred before her marriage to King Canute?” Rob asked.

  “They are in Normandy under the protection of Duke William’s court, and it may be presumed that they are gazing across the Channel with great interest,” Bostock said.

  Starved as they were for details of home, by now the smells of Mary’s meal had made all three hungry for food as well, and the merchant’s eyes warmed somewhat when he saw what she had prepared in his honor.

  A brace of pheasants, well oiled and frequently basted, stuffed in the Persian manner with rice and grapes, and pot-cooked slowly and long. A summer salad. Sweet melons. An apricot-and-honey tart. Not least, a skin of good pink
ish wine, bought at expense and peril. Mary had gone with Rob to the Jewish market, where at first Hinda had vehemently denied she had wine, glancing about fearfully to see who had overheard their request. After much pleading and the exchange of three times the ordinary cost, a wineskin had been dug from the middle of a bag of grain and Mary had carried it home hidden from the mullahs in the sling next to her sleeping child.

  Bostock devoted himself to the meal but presently, after a great belch, declared that he would be leaving for Europe in a few days’ time.

  “Reaching Constantinople on churchly business, I couldn’t resist continuing eastward. Know you that the King of England will elevate to thane any merchant-adventurer who dares to make three trips to open foreign parts to English trade? Well, that is true, and it’s a fine way for a free man to attain noble rank and at the same time gain high profits. ‘Silks,’ I thought. If I might follow the Silk Road I could bring back cargo that would allow me to buy London! I was happy to reach Persia, where I have bought, instead of silks, rugs and fine weavings. But I shall never return here, for there’s little profit in it—I must pay a small army to get them back to England.”

  When Rob sought to find similarity in their eastward routes of travel, Bostock revealed that from England he had gone first to Rome. “Combining business with an errand for Aethelnoth, the Archbishop of Canterbury. At the Lateran Palace, Pope Benedict IX promised me ample reward for expeditiones in terra et mari and commanded me in the name of Christ Jesus to ply my merchant’s way to Constantinople, there to deliver papal letters to Patriarch Alexius.”

  “A papal legate!” Mary exclaimed.

  Less a legate than a messenger, Rob surmised drily, though it was plain Bostock enjoyed Mary’s wonder.

  “For six hundred years, Eastern Church has disputed Western Church,” the merchant said, thick with importance. “In Constantinople Alexius is viewed as the Pope’s equal, to Holy Rome’s aversion. The Patriarch’s damned bearded priests marry—they marry! And they neither pray to Jesus and Mary nor treat the Trinity with sufficient awe. Thus the letters of complaint are carried to and fro.”