Alamut (12 page)

“You stinking wether,” Apama rasped. “So you’ve gotten a yen for young flesh, you castrated goat. Praise be to Allah that they clipped off your manhood while they still could, you broken-horned, black demon! Oh, how satisfying to know you couldn’t, even if you wanted.”

Adi replied amid a renewed barrage of laughter.

“Don’t you see how we scoff at you, you old baboon, absurd old loon! We could have all seven prophets at once, while you’d be falling all over yourself if some lone old dog so much as looked at you.”

Filled with impotent rage, Apama nearly lost control. She went flying to the water’s edge as though she meant to jump in and wade through it. Adi drew out one of the oars that he kept hidden behind a bush, leapt to the water, and skillfully slapped at its surface, sending a large spurt that drenched Apama.

The old woman wailed, while the eunuchs doubled over with laughter. Adi tossed the oar back into the bushes, then took off running with Mustafa. Apama waved her fists at them, swearing vengeance.

For the moment she took all her revenge on Halima. That same day she berated her in front of all her companions for being sneaky and rotten, and
she called every punishment of this world and the next down on her head. Halima felt guilty for giving in to Sara, and she really did see herself as rotten, especially now that she dared to look Miriam so innocently in the eyes right after making love with Sara. It was because of this that Apama’s accusations struck her to the quick. She lowered her eyes and blushed deeply.

But when Apama had gone, Miriam reassured her that she shouldn’t take the old woman’s reproaches too much to heart, since everyone knew she was mean and hated the eunuchs; and, moreover, that none of the girls for a minute doubted the perfect innocence of their game. This profession of trust struck Halima as so undeserved and shook her so much that she had to withdraw to a corner where she could vent her tears of self-pity. She swore then to reform and stop giving in to Sara. But giving up old habits is hard, and everything continued as it was.

The days lengthened and the evenings were full of mysterious life. Crickets chirruped in the gardens, and frogs responded from the canals. Bats swooped past the lighted windows, silently catching winged insects. On evenings like these the girls’ most delicious pleasure was to listen to the stories and fairy tales that Fatima told.

Fatima was a remarkable woman in every respect. She knew a thousand wonderful things and never seemed to be at a loss. She knew a hundred riddles, and once she had revealed the answers to all of them, she came up with new ones day after day. She knew all of the songs that were sung from the far south of Arabia to Egypt and Syria and all the way to the north of Turkestan. But she also had other talents. In the midst of a grove the eunuchs had set up for her a longish building made of glass, inside of which, on branches broken off of the mulberry trees that grew at the river’s edge like willows, she raised silkworms. She liked to say that their cocoons would provide enough silk to clothe every girl in the gardens.

The girls most enjoyed hearing her tell stories from the
Thousand and One Nights
and from Firdausi’s
Book of Kings
. She was no less inventive than Scheherazade at telling these stories. Whatever the tooth of time had chipped away from her memory she compensated for out of her own imagination. Many stories were her own creation from start to finish.

Of all the stories, the one about the sculptor Farhad and Queen Shirin seemed to affect the girls most. It made them think of Miriam, and they had Fatima tell it to them over and over. It moved them deeply, and each time Halima would dissolve in tears. Like Miriam, Shirin was also a Christian. Her beauty was so great that even flowers would hang their heads in shame and envy whenever she walked through the lawns and gardens. She became the wife of the most powerful king of Iran, Khosrow Parviz. The whole nation rebelled when they learned that their new queen was an infidel. But the king loved her so much that he subdued all his opponents. Yet Khosrow Parviz was not only a strong ruler, he was a wise man too. He knew how fleeting
earthly beauty is. And so, in order to preserve the beloved face and exquisite body of his wife forever, he summoned the most renowned sculptor of his time, Farhad, to sculpt her in marble. As the young artist gazed at the queen’s heavenly form day after day, he came to love her with an undying love. Wherever he was, whatever he did, by day and asleep, everywhere, her heavenly face was with him.

Finally he was no longer able to conceal his passion. The statue and the queen grew more and more alike. His work, the look in his eye and the sound of his voice all betrayed the storm in his heart. One day even the king noticed. In a rage of jealousy he drew his sword, but Shirin stepped in front of the sculptor and shielded him with her body. In gratitude for his creation, Khosrow Parviz spared his life, but he banished him to the barren mountains of Bizutum forever. There, Farhad went mad with longing and unrequited love. In his pain and passion he seized his hammer and chisel and began to sculpt an enormous image of Shirin out of the mountain’s rocky ridge. To this day you can see it, a godlike queen emerging from her bath. In front of her is the king’s horse Shebdis, young and muscular.

The king then sent a messenger to the mountains of Bizutum with false news that the queen had died. Farhad had no interest in outliving her. In his unbearable agony he threw himself on an axe, splitting his chest in two. As he fell, the blade stuck in the ground, and behold, drenched in the blood of the sculptor’s heart, the axe handle turned green, blossomed, and produced fruit. That fruit is the pomegranate, which in memory of Farhad’s death is cleft like his breast was, and which bleeds when you wound and open it. And that is why to this day it is called Farhad’s apple.

The girls listened to this story dewy-eyed. Only Miriam stared at the ceiling, apparently indifferent. Her eyes were curiously dry and seemed to be staring into some remote distance. Later that night both Safiya and Jada, who slept in the same bedroom as Miriam, heard Miriam tossing and turning in her bed.

They also liked hearing stories about the ancient Iranian hero Rustam, who in a duel unwittingly killed his own son Suhrab; then the tales of Ali Baba and the forty thieves, and of Aladdin’s lamp, and the ones from the Koran, which Fatima tailored in her own unique way. If she told how Potiphar’s wife, Zuleika, fell in love with Joseph, they all automatically turned to look at their companion Zuleika and smiled at her. In Fatima’s telling the Egyptian wasn’t a wanton sinner, just a tender lover before whom the young Joseph didn’t dare to lift his eyes. Gradually, in Fatima’s stories each of the girls got her counterpart, with whom she privately compared herself or was compared by the others.

Every now and then the girls would organize a banquet, where the food and drink would be exquisite. On those days Apama would be particularly mean-spirited, while Miriam quietly beamed. Among the girls it was rumored
that Miriam had obtained Sayyiduna’s permission for these holidays as a solace to her companions. Apama was bitter that she had to do the cooking for these feasts.

On such occasions the eunuchs would bring in a catch of fish, and Moad and Mustafa made a point of leaving first thing in the morning with their bows and falcons to hunt for fowl. They would row off in their boat down a long canal until they reached a stretch of shore where the wild vegetation extended all the way to the sheer cliff faces at the foot of the Elburz. That particular spot was a hunter’s paradise.

On one such occasion Halima asked Miriam if she could join the hunters in the bush, but Miriam thought the journey too dangerous for a girl. She told her to join Adi, instead, who was planning to go to the livestock island for poultry and eggs.

Adi seated Halima in the boat and set off rowing down the canal in the hunters’ wake. Somewhere at the canal’s midpoint he veered off into a tributary and with steady oar strokes began to approach the island where they kept the domesticated and farm animals.

It was a spectacular morning. The sun had not yet reached the valley, but its rays were already gilding the mountain slopes and snow-covered peaks. Hundreds of birds chirped and sang. Others splashed themselves in the water, took flight, and dived for fish. Tall reeds grew up against the shore, as did irises and water lilies. A silver heron stood in water up to its belly and poked its long beak at the bottom. When it saw the boat peacefully gliding over the water’s surface, it straightened up proudly. Bristling its crest, it magisterially lifted its legs out of the water and headed toward the shore.

Halima gazed after it in sheer delight.

“It’s not afraid,” she said, “just angry that we’ve interrupted its breakfast.”

“Yes, all of the animals we keep in the gardens are as good as tame,” Adi agreed. “No one does them any harm.”

They came alongside the heron, but the bird ignored them as it calmly groomed itself with its beak.

Here and there a fish glinted as it snapped at a fly. Dragonflies stirred and darted over the water’s surface. Despite all this animation, the entire scene had something solemn about it.

“How beautiful all this is!” Halima exclaimed.

“Yes, it’s pretty,” Adi said dully. “But freedom is far more beautiful.”

Halima was puzzled.

“Freedom, you said? Aren’t we living in freedom here?”

“You don’t understand because you’re a woman. I’m telling you, a jackal starving in the desert is happier than a well-fed lion in a cage.”

Halima shook her head, not understanding.

“Are we in a cage?” she asked.

Adi smiled.

“I was just talking,” he said. “Let’s forget about it now. We’re there.”

The boat brushed up against the shore and they stepped out onto dry land. A barely discernible footpath led through the thick undergrowth of willows and poplars. They reached a rocky ridge where a variety of strange grasses and rare flowers grew. Then they headed across a broad meadow that ended in a coppice of trees from which crowing, squealing and wild snarling sounds seemed to emanate.

Halima timidly took hold of Adi’s hand. At the edge of the coppice she could see large cages with fluttering birds and pacing animals. When they drew close, some of the birds started flying at the bars in panic, and two large wild leopards charged at them with a furious snort.

This left Halima shaking. Adi set down the big basket he had brought along and began feeding the beasts. Gradually the animals calmed down, each one consuming its food.

“Normally Moad and Mustafa take care of this,” Adi said. “But they’ve gone hunting today, so the work has fallen to me.”

Hidden behind some shrubs was a long, low-slung coop for poultry. Adi crawled into it and began collecting eggs and putting them into a small basket.

“Now go away from here,” he said, smiling awkwardly. “I’ve got some work to do that you shouldn’t see.”

Halima hurried away toward the cages. In the meantime Adi strangled several chickens, ducks and geese. The shrieking of the birds struck Halima to the marrow. In terrible fright she clasped her hands to her ears.

Adi came back from the henhouse. He threw a rag over the dead fowl and then showed Halima some of the animals.

“If those two leopards were free like Ahriman, they’d tear me to pieces, wouldn’t they?” Halima wondered aloud.

“Maybe. Or they might run away. Leopards are afraid of people.”

“Then why do you keep them in cages?”

“Sayyiduna needs them for their offspring. They’re mates, and Sayyiduna wants us to raise him some hunting animals. He has lots of friends who are princes, and those are the people he’ll give them to.”

“Is it true that young leopards are like kittens?”

“Yes, it is. Only they’re cuter and a lot funnier.”

“I’d like to have one.”

“If you’re good, I’ll bring you one to keep while he’s still young.”

“Do you really think Sayyiduna would allow it?”

Adi smiled.

“You have powerful friends.”

Halima blushed. She knew that he meant Miriam.

“Why does Apama hate you?” she asked.

“Oh, she hates the whole world. She fears Sayyiduna, though. But she especially hates me because once I … how can I say this.”

“Tell me, Adi, tell me!”

“It’s stupid. Only please, don’t blab to anyone about this. You see, when Apama first came to the gardens she would constantly drop hints about how she and Sayyiduna had been close years before, and how he had given her his heart in Kabul. She wanted to make it clear to us that, now that Sayyiduna had become powerful, he had summoned her to the castle for those same reasons. She behaved arrogantly, dressed up in silks, decked herself out in jewelry, painted her face, walked around with this mysterious smile, and constantly sneered at everybody else. Even me, who had known Sayyiduna since his days in Egypt, when I guarded him from his enemies with my own body. Completely by accident I caught her one day in the midst of some very human business. She was even more ludicrous and repulsive than usual. I burst out laughing, and from that moment not a day has passed that she hasn’t cursed me to no end. She suspects that I revealed her shame to the others, so it would suit her fine if we all dropped dead. And if she weren’t so afraid of Sayyiduna, she’d have poisoned us all by now.”

“Is she really so mean?”

“She’s mean because she’s a slave to her arrogance, even though she suffers so much. She doesn’t want to be old, but she knows she is.”

They walked still farther into the woods, where they came upon a cage of monkeys. Halima shouted with joy as she watched them chase each other across the bars, swing on ropes, perform gymnastics, and pinch each other.

“We used to have a bear too,” Adi said. “But he ate too much, so Sayyiduna ordered us to kill him. We also have some cattle, a she-camel, four horses and several donkeys on the island. And we have the only dogs and cats. But nobody can come to our island except us. That’s Apama’s doing, through Sayyiduna.”

“Does Sayyiduna ever visit the gardens?”

“I can’t tell you that, dear child.”