Alamut (43 page)

“Yes, he drew the best lot of the three of us.”

The girls noticed that Miriam had returned smiling. She brought in a whole armful of flowers and strewed them around ibn Tahir, who was leaning over a tablet covered with writing. They immediately felt relieved.

“Did you write the poem?”

“I tried, at least.”

“He already read us some of it,” Sit said. “Your head will spin.”

“I’m dying of curiosity.”

She picked up a pellet and held it firmly in her fist. She dropped to her knees beside ibn Tahir. She leaned up against him, looking over his shoulder at the tablet. She imperceptibly dropped the pellet into his cup.

He read:

Tears glistened in Miriam’s eyes. To hide them, she quickly kissed him. It hurt so much, she could have died.

Poor boy
, she thought.
So sincere, so good and so young. There’s no place in his heart for lies and deception. And I’m the one who has to get him ready to be Hasan’s sacrifice
.

“What’s wrong, Miriam?”

“You’re so young and so good.”

He smiled and blushed.

He had grown thirsty. He emptied his cup.

Suddenly he felt weak. His head began to spin. New vistas appeared before his eyes. He grabbed his head and fell backwards.

“I’m blind! Allah, I’m blind! Where are you, Miriam! I’m sinking. I’m flying through space.”

The girls were frightened. Miriam embraced him.

“I’m here, ibn Tahir. With you.”

“I can feel you, Miriam,” he said and smiled in exhaustion. “O Allah, everything is changed. I was just dreaming. Allah, I’m flying back the same way. Before I just dreamed I’d arrived in the holy city of Cairo. Do you hear, Miriam! I entered the caliph’s palace. It was dark all around me. Oh, the same darkness is around me now. Hold me tight, Miriam, so I can feel you! It was dark in the great hall. If I looked back toward the doors it was perfectly light again. But when I looked toward the throne, I was blinded. I heard the caliph’s voice. It was Sayyiduna’s voice. I looked toward him. I was blind. I looked back toward the entrance and the hall was brilliantly illuminated. All-merciful Allah! Such weakness! I can’t feel you anymore, Miriam! Give me a sign, bite me, bite me below my heart, hard, so I can feel you, so I know you’re still with me.”

She drew his coat aside and bit him below the heart. She felt unspeakably miserable.

“Now I can feel you again, Miriam. Oh, what vistas! Look! That city beneath me! Look at that golden cupola and those green and red rooftops! Do you see that azure tower? There’s a thousand banners fluttering around it. Nothing but long, colored flags. Oh, how they flap in the wind. Buildings and palaces are flying past me. Oh, how fast! Hold on to me, I beg you, hold on to me!”

He fell over and groaned deeply.

The girls were terrified.

“Misfortune is going to befall us,” Sit said.

“It would have been better if we’d leapt into the river,” Miriam murmured.

Ibn Tahir was in a deep state of unconsciousness.

“Cover him with his robe!”

They obeyed. Miriam lay back and stared, dry-eyed, at the ceiling.
When Abu Ali and Buzurg Ummid had been left alone atop the tower, they looked at each other questioningly. Then they looked out over the battlements for a long time.

Finally Buzurg Ummid asked, “What do you say to all of this?”

“We’re in a net from which it’s going to be hard to disentangle ourselves.”

“I say, ‘As Allah is Allah, so ibn Sabbah is insane.’ ”

“A dangerous companion, at any rate.”

“Do you think we should stand by with our arms crossed and just watch? What does a tiger do when he runs into a wolf snare?”

Abu Ali laughed.

“He bites through it.”

“Well?”

“So bite through it.”

“Aren’t you afraid he could send the two of us to some paradise like this?”

“If it’s a good one, we won’t resist.”

“We won’t resist even if it’s a bad one.”

He stepped right up to Abu Ali.

“Listen, Abu Ali. Tonight there’s still time. It’s just the three of us on top of this tower.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“May I confide in you?”

“One crow doesn’t attack the other. Better the two of them take on the eagle.”

“Let’s wait at the entrance for when he comes back. I’ll strike him over the head from behind with my sword handle, to knock him out. Then we can throw him over the battlements into Shah Rud.”

“And the faithful?”

“We’ll make them believe he never returned from the gardens.”

“But the eunuchs will know that he did. We won’t get out of here alive.”

“By the time the truth comes out, you and I will already be God knows where.”

“There isn’t a believer who wouldn’t risk his life to avenge him. The net really is drawn around us tight.”

“All action requires risk.”

“It would be less risky for us to wait for the succession.”

“Hasan is insane.”

“Not so insane he couldn’t guess what we’re thinking.”

“Are you afraid?”

“You aren’t?”

“It’s exactly why I’d like to be able to breathe easy again.”

“I know he already senses our thoughts. Keep as quiet as a tomb. The eunuchs are a terrible weapon.”

“The fedayeen could be even worse.”

“All the more reason for us to keep quiet. They’ll be a weapon in our hands, as well as his.”

“You could be right, Abu Ali. Hasan is a fearsome master. There’s no going back for us. We’ve been initiated into his secret, and any deviation could mean death.”

“Let’s just follow nicely in his footsteps.”

“Listen! He’s coming back. I’ll admit, this experiment of his tonight is really unusual.”

“More than that. It’s extraordinary.”

At that moment Hasan came gasping to the top. He cast a quick glance at the grand dais and smiled.

“I hope you haven’t been too bored, my friends. You had quite a bit to talk about, and I trust you didn’t lose any time.”

“We were worried about how things were progressing in the gardens, ibn Sabbah. What did Apama call you for?”

“Feminine jealousy. The old and the new philosophies of love had come into conflict down there. The dangerous question of how best to seduce a man had to be decided.”

The grand dais burst into laughter. They felt a pleasant relief. The crisis was over.

“I think you prefer the new theories to the old ones,” Abu Ali said.

“What can we do. The world is constantly evolving and we have to give up the old to make way for the new.”

“I assume ibn Tahir fell into the grip of the new theory?”

“Well, look at you, Abu Ali. You’ll become a great psychologist yet!”

“You’re an odd lover, by the beard of the Prophet! If I cared as much for a woman as I do for a torn robe, I’d sooner kill her as let another have her.”

“You’ve already demonstrated that, dear Abu Ali. Which is now why you have neither the old nor the new ‘theory.’ As far as my case is concerned, you must bear in mind that I’m a philosopher and value above all what’s tangible. And that is not going to change in the slightest in one night.”

Abu Ali laughed.

“Also a good point,” he said. “But I believe that principle holds for you only in matters of love. Didn’t somebody say this morning that he planned to build his institution on pure reason?”

“You’re after me like a hound after game,” Hasan heartily laughed. “Do you really think those two opposites are irreconcilable? How could body and spirit go hand in hand otherwise?”

“If hell knew any saints, then you’d be such a saint.”

“By all the martyrs! My princess is of the same opinion.”

“A happy coincidence, indeed.”

Abu Ali winked at Buzurg Ummid. Hasan lit a torch and gave a sign to the trumpeters in the gardens.

“Enough heavenly pleasures for tonight. Now let’s see what results we’ve gotten.”

He received a response from the gardens, then extinguished his torch and set it aside. “Yes, yes, they’ve got it easy down there,” he said, half to himself. “They’ve got somebody over them to think and make decisions for them. But who’s going to relieve us of our sense of responsibility and our agonizing internal conflicts? Who will drive away our sleepless nights, when every second that brings you closer to morning resembles a hammer stroke to your heart? Who will save us from the terror of death, which we know ushers in the great nothing? Now the night sky with its thousands of stars still reflects in our eyes. We still feel, we still think. But when the great moment comes, who’s going to provide balm for the pain we have from knowing that we’re setting out into the eternal dark of nothingness? Yes, they have it easy down there. We’ve created paradise for them and given them confidence that eternal luxuries await them after death there. So they really do deserve our envy.”

“Did you hear, Buzurg Ummid? Hasan could be right.”

“So, has it begun to make sense to the two of you? We know that we’re masters of an infinitely tiny point of the known, and slaves to the infinite mass of the unknown. I’d compare us to some vermin that glimpses the sky overhead. ‘I’m going to climb up this stalk,’ it says. ‘It looks tall enough that I should get there.’ It starts in the morning and climbs until evening. Then it reaches the top and realizes that all of its efforts were in vain. The earth is just a few inches below. And above it the starry sky arches just as immeasurably high as it did when it was on the ground. Except that now it doesn’t see any path leading farther upward, as it did before it started to climb. It loses its faith and realizes that it’s nothing against the inexplicable vastness of the universe. It is robbed of its hope and its happiness forever.”

He nodded to the grand dais.

“Let’s go! We need to welcome the first believers ever to return to earth from paradise.”

The girls around Fatima noticed through the glass that the eunuchs were approaching with the litter.

“Like three gravediggers,” Sara said.

“Fatima! Uncover Suleiman so we can take one more look at him,” Zainab asked.

Fatima exposed the sleeping youth’s face. He lay peacefully,
breathing almost imperceptibly. There was something childlike to his appearance now.

The girls stared at him wide-eyed. Halima put her fingers in her mouth and bit down on them. She felt unbearably miserable.

Fatima quickly covered him up again.

The eunuchs entered and wordlessly lifted him onto the litter. They left just as silently.

The curtain had barely dropped behind them when the girls burst into tears. Halima shrieked with pain and fell to the floor like a stone.

When the Moors carried Yusuf away, only Jada and Little Fatima cried. Zuleika mutely followed their arrival and departure with her eyes. Pride didn’t permit her to give free rein to her emotions.

“Now your fame is over too,” Hanafiya prodded her when they were alone again. “You had a husband for one night. Now you’ve lost him forever. Those of us who didn’t have him at all are better off.”

Zuleika tried to say something nonchalant in reply. But the pain was so much for her that she rolled up on the floor and buried her head in some pillows.

“You’re heartless, Hanafiya,” Asma said angrily.

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

She went over to where Zuleika was and stroked her hair. Others also came and tried to comfort her. But Zuleika kept crying until she fell asleep.

When the eunuchs walked out with ibn Tahir, Miriam called on the girls to go to their bedrooms. There were few of them that night, because the ones who had been with Fatima and Zuleika stayed in their pavilions.

Miriam also slept alone. But tonight, of all nights, she wished Halima were there, with her lively talkativeness. Who knows how she made it through this fateful night? What had happened with the other girls? She worried about them. If only morning would come!

Oppressive thoughts stayed with her all the way to dawn.

The eunuchs brought their live burden into the cellar. Hasan asked them, “Is everything all right?”

“Everything is fine, Sayyiduna.”

They set the litters down inside the cage. The three commanders went in behind them. In silence they waited for the invisible arms of the Moors to lift them to the top of the tower.

Once there, Hasan uncovered the sleeping youths.

“They look exhausted,” Buzurg Ummid whispered.

Hasan smiled.

“They’ll sleep until well into the morning. Then comes the awakening, and then we’ll see if we succeeded.”

He left the curtain over the entrance to the cell raised, so that the youths would have enough air. He posted a guard to the door. Then he dismissed his two friends.

“This brings us to the end of the second act of our tragedy. I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night.”

Down in the gardens the eunuchs were extinguishing and removing the lanterns. Some of them had already burnt out. Here and there a flame still flickered in the night. One light after the other sputtered out. It grew darker and darker all around. Startled moths fluttered over the men’s heads. Bats swooped after the night’s last vermin. An owl hooted from a thicket. The snarl of a leopard answered it.