Ollie's Cloud (58 page)

The Black Pit

The memory of the Rasul is the motivating force that keeps many of them alive—these wretched, tortured Rasulis now thrown into the
Black Pit
three stories below the ground. The foul stench is overwhelming, and the filth unbearable. Rats rule the depths of this dim and dank cesspool, chewing the eyes and feet of the dead or unconscious. These men could have saved themselves by recanting their faith, but none did, and this is the price for their belief.

The Rasulis occasionally pass time by chanting, but the guards—at least those who can bear the slime and the stink—beat them mercilessly for it. No outward expression of Rasuli belief is allowed in this dungeon of dungeons. And so the men live in their minds, repeating endlessly the words of the Rasul lest they forget, and whispering among themselves the promise of the Rasul, that within nine years of his declaration, another one would come. The One Who will become Manifest. The Promised One of all ages. The Second Blast of the trumpet.

They buoy themselves with whispered reminders that their suffering is the soil from which this other One, as yet undeclared, will arise and revitalize their faith, and bring righteousness and unity into the world.

One hundred Rasulis and nearly fifty common criminals—thieves, assassins, rapists, and highwaymen—crowd the dark pit, most of them naked and without bedding. One of them, however, has been singled out for the cruelest treatment. He sits with an enormous chain around his neck. The weight of it grinds into his flesh and forces his head and shoulders to bend painfully. This man had been a Persian nobleman, the son of the vizier of Nur, a man of such charity and character that only his popularity among the people had prevented him from execution as a Rasuli.

It was well-known that he had organized the infamous Rasuli council at Badasht and had been a confidante of Jalal and Danush. When the government was finally emboldened by its execution of the Rasul and the slaughter of twenty thousand Rasulis, the grand vizier had finally found the courage to arrest Mirza Ramin.

Of all the suffering in the Siyah Chal, this man suffers the most, and yet it is he who lifts the spirits of the others through his example and his whispered words of enlightenment.

It is now evening, and the darkness here is even darker. Only a torch at the end of a long passageway throws a sliver of light into the pit. Men cough and spit and vomit. They try to sleep, but the cold and the stench are killing. The sick moan and the new prisoners sob.

One of the men is desperately searching his memory for some small reminiscence, some remembered image that will transport him out of this hellish hole and into a happier world. A year in heavy chains and five months in the Black Pit, with no expectation of release, has shattered his memory, but one vision comes to him. It is an English manor-house surrounded by meadows and thick forests. A paradise of open air and sunshine, of glistening snow and galloping horses. He holds onto the image, and for a moment the sweet fragrance of fresh-baked bread replaces the stench of the pit, and he smiles.

His memory is now refreshed, and he remembers the beginning of the end. A dark night. A fight. Being dragged out of a moat, and facing an angry sentinel. The roar of a musket, and the biting pain of a bullet striking him in the chest. He believes that the bullet must have been guided by God, for it had struck head-on the small silver cylinder that he had worn around his neck since a child, the cylinder that contained a verse of the Qu’ran, and the bullet had shattered into pieces, painfully scattering the hot fragments into his skin, but failing to complete its fatal mission. He remembers that the sentinels had been frightened by this “miracle” and had taken him, bloody but breathing, to the local governor who had turned him over to the grand vizier, a man who believed that death was too kind a sentence for a traitorous Englishman.

Ollie remembers, too, one of the verses from the Surih of Joseph that been sealed in that silver charm.
Thou art my Protecting Guardian in the world and the Hereafter.
He cannot believe that God would have saved him for no purpose, and this belief gives him hope.

He turns his eyes toward the man drooping under the heavy chains. He wonders at how this man can now turn his eyes upward in the darkness, as if seeing a vision of his own; and how he can smile, with glistening eyes, despite the pain and illness with which he is afflicted. He watches the man’s face, which is glowing, not with light but with the radiance of certitude. He watches as this man breathes in deeply the stench-filled air as if it were the fragrance of roses, and then sigh with a knowingness like the breath of God. And as the man sighs, a refreshing breeze seems to blow over Ollie, and suddenly he knows,
he knows
.

And he remembers, many years ago, two twelve-year-old boys in the warm Bushruyih sand. He can feel the sand now, see the face of Jalal eclipsing the sun. He can remember how both of them so desperately longed to be the first to discover the Promised One, how they had seen the Prophet in the clouds, and how he had believed that his steadfast friend had been rightly blessed with the honor.

He turns with recognition to the man in the heavy chains, and understands at last that
both
boys had been blessed. Two boys, two Prophets.

Many years ago, a cloud had found Jalil.

At last, Ollie’s cloud has come to him.