Alamut (38 page)

“There’s no sultan that has it this good!”

“Now listen, you two! Fatima and Zainab are going to sing you a song.”

He lay back on the pillows and drew Halima toward him.

Fatima and Zainab began.

The girls laughed. But Halima was all red with shame and anger. Suleiman was grinning in satisfaction. He was already so drunk that he could barely have gotten up.

“I’ll throw these pillows at you if you don’t keep quiet!”

Halima shook her tight, little fist at them.

Then, in the distance, a horn sounded gloomily. Once, twice, three times. The girls fell silent. Fatima went pale. In secret she prepared a pellet for the wine.

Suleiman listened too. He rose with difficulty. He could barely stay on his feet.

“What does that mean?” he asked, perplexed.

He walked toward the door, as though meaning to leave the pavilion.

“One more cup, Suleiman.”

Fatima could barely conceal her worry.

The drink was ready. The girls drew Suleiman back onto some pillows.

“What are you going to tell Naim and Obeida about your experiences
in paradise?” Fatima asked, to deflect his attention from more dangerous thoughts.

“Naim and Obeida? Oh, those Turks won’t believe me. But I’ll show them. Just let them doubt! I’ll shove this in their faces.”

He showed them his clenched fist. Fatima offered him the cup to drink. He emptied it as an afterthought.

A heavy drowsiness came over him right away. He tried to resist it with the last of his strength.

“Give me something to take as a keepsake.”

“You can’t take anything with you.”

He could see he would get nowhere with Fatima. His weakening right hand instinctively felt for Halima’s wrist. A gold bracelet slipped into his palm. He hid it beneath his robe and then fell fast asleep.

Halima didn’t betray him. How could she have? She had fallen in love with him with all her heart.

There was complete quiet in the pavilion. Fatima silently took the black coverlet and spread it over the sleeping youth.

They waited.

“It’s not things in themselves that make us happy or unhappy,” Hasan told his friends in his observatory when they lay back down on their pillows. “It’s rather the thought, the conviction that we have about them. Take an example: a miser buries a treasure at a secret location. Publicly he gives the impression of a pauper, but in private he enjoys the knowledge that he’s a wealthy man. A neighbor finds out about his secret and takes his treasure away. The miser will continue enjoying his wealth until he discovers the theft. And if death comes to him before that, he’ll die in the happy knowledge that he’s a rich man. It’s the same with a man who doesn’t know that his lover is betraying him. Provided he doesn’t find out, he can live happily his whole life. Or take the opposite situation. His beloved wife could be the model of faithfulness. But if some lying tongues persuade him she’s been unfaithful, he’ll suffer the torments of hell. So you see, neither things nor actual facts decide our happiness—or unhappiness. Instead, we’re completely and exclusively dependent on our notions, on our perceptions of them. Every day reveals to us how false and error-ridden these perceptions are. What frail legs our happiness rests on! How unjustified our grief often is! Small wonder that the wise man is indifferent to both of them. Or that only simpletons and idiots can enjoy happiness!”

“Your philosophy is none too much to my liking,” Abu Ali commented. “You’re right, we’re constantly making mistakes in life and we’re often the victims of wrong beliefs. But does that mean we have to forego every pleasure
because it’s based on false assumptions? If a person were to live by your wisdom, he’d have to spend his whole life in doubt and uncertainty.”

“Why did you get so upset earlier at my sending the fedayeen into paradise? Aren’t they happy? What possible difference is there between their happiness and the happiness of somebody else who is just as ignorant of its true foundations? I know what’s bothering you. You’re bothered that the three of us know something that they don’t know. And despite that, they’re still better off—than I am, for instance. Imagine how any pleasure would be ruined for those three if they even suspected that I’d deliberately drawn them into something about which they had no knowledge. Or that I knew something more than they do about everything that’s happening to them. Or if they sensed they were just playthings, helpless chess pieces in my hands. That they were just tools being used in some unknown plan by some higher will, some higher intellect. I’ll tell you, friends, that sense, that sort of suspicion has embittered every day of my life. The sense that there could be someone over us who surveys the universe and our position in it with a clear mind, who could know all sorts of things about us—maybe even the hour of our death—that are mercilessly veiled from our intellect. Who could have his own particular designs for us, who perhaps uses us for his experiments, who toys with us, with our fates and our lives, while we, the puppets in his hands, celebrate and rejoice, imagining that we actually shape our own happiness. Why is it that higher intellects are always the ones so hopelessly dogged about discovering the secrets of natural phenomena? Why is it that wise men are always so passionately committed to science and racking their brains about the universe? Epicurus said that a wise man could enjoy perfect happiness if he didn’t have to be afraid of unknown heavenly phenomena and the mystery of death. To subdue or at least explain that fear, he devoted himself to science and the exploration of nature.”

“Very learned,” Abu Ali remarked. “But, if I understood you right, your philosophizing could be abbreviated to this assertion: you’re secretly hounded by the fact that you’re not Allah.”

Hasan and Buzurg Ummid both laughed.

“Not a bad guess,” Hasan said. He stepped up to the battlements and pointed toward the part of the sky where it was dark, from where a thousand tiny stars intensely shone.

“Look at this limitless vault of heaven! Who can count the stars scattered across it? Aristarchus said that each one of them is a sun. Where is the human intellect that can grasp that? And still, everything is efficiently arranged, as though it were governed by some conscious will. Whether that will is Allah or the blind operation of nature is irrelevant. Against this limitlessness we are ridiculous invalids. I first became aware of my smallness in comparison with the universe when I was ten years old. What haven’t I experienced and what
hasn’t faded since then? Gone is my faith in Allah and the Prophet, gone is the heady spell of first love. Jasmine on a summer night no longer smells as wonderful, and tulips no longer bloom in such vivid colors. Only my amazement at the limitlessness of the universe and my fear of unknown meteorological phenomena have remained the same. The realization that our world is just a grain of dust in the universe, and that we’re just some mange, some infinitely tiny lice on it—this realization still fills me with despair.”

Abu Ali leapt up on his bowed legs and began thrashing around as though he were defending himself from invisible opponents.

“Praise be to Allah that he made me modest and spared me those concerns,” he exclaimed half in jest. “I’m more than glad to leave those things to the Batus, the Mamuns and the Abu Mashars.”

“Do you think I have any other choice?” Hasan replied with a kind of headstrong irony. “Yes, Protagoras, you were great when you spoke the maxim that man is the measure of all things! What else can we do, after all, but make peace with that double-edged wisdom? Limit ourselves to this clod of dirt and water that we live on and leave the expanses of the universe to superhuman intellects. Our domain, the place suited to our intellect and will, is down here, on this poor, little planet. ‘Man is the measure of all things.’ The louse has suddenly become a factor worthy of respect! All we need to do is to impose some limits. Exclude the universe from our field of vision and be content with the terra firma we stand on. When I grasped that intellectually—do you see, friends—I threw myself into reordering things in myself and around myself with all my might. The universe was like a huge, blank map for me. In the middle of it was a gray spot, our planet. In that spot was an infinitely tiny black dot, me, my consciousness. The only thing I know for sure. I renounced the white space. I had to delve into the gray spot, measure its size and count its numbers, and then … then gain power over it, begin to control it according to my reason, my will. Because it’s a horrible thing for someone who’s competed with Allah to end up on the bottom.”

“Now at last I understand you, ibn Sabbah!” Abu Ali exclaimed, not without some playfulness. “You want to be the same thing on earth that Allah is in heaven.”

“Praise be to Allah! At last a light has gone on in your head too,” Hasan laughed. “And high time. I was beginning to wonder whom I was going to leave my legacy to.”

“But you did finally fill in the blank space on the map,” Abu Ali said. “Where would you have found a place for your paradise otherwise?”

“You see, the difference between those of us who have seen through things and the vast masses stumbling through the dark is this: we’ve limited ourselves, while they refuse to limit themselves. They want us to get rid of the blank space of the unknown for them. They can’t tolerate any uncertainty.
But since we don’t have any truth, we have to comfort them with fairy tales and fabrications.”

“The fairy tale down there is developing fast,” said Buzurg Ummid, who had been looking into the gardens from the battlements when he caught their last words. “The second youth is awake now and the girls are dancing a circle dance around him.”

“Let’s have a look,” Hasan said, and went with Abu Ali to join him.

The girls watched with bated breath as Zuleika uncovered the sleeping Yusuf. He was so tall that when the eunuchs were bringing him in, his feet had stuck out over the end of the litter. Now his powerful body appeared as the blanket was removed.

“What a giant! He could hide you under his arm, Jada,” Zofana whispered, to gather more courage.

“You wouldn’t have that much to boast about around him yourself,” Rokaya said, cutting her off.

In the meantime Zuleika had knelt down beside him and was studying him raptly.

“What do you suppose he’ll do when he wakes up?” Little Fatima worried. She covered her eyes with her hands, as though she were trying to avoid an unknown danger. She was among the most timid of the girls, and to distinguish her from the first Fatima they called her Little Fatima.

“He’ll gobble you up,” Habiba teased her.

“Don’t scare her. She’s skittish enough as it is.”

Rokaya laughed.

But Yusuf kept on sleeping. He merely turned his back on the light that was glaring in his eyes.

Zuleika got up and joined the girls.

“He’s as fast asleep as if he were unconscious,” she said. “But isn’t he a splendid hero? Let’s sing and dance for him, so that he’ll be pleased when he wakes up.”

Each girl picked up her instrument. They began playing and singing softly. Zuleika and Rokaya reached for the drums and tried dancing a leisurely step.

Jada and Little Fatima were still trembling with fear.

“Why don’t you two sing?” Zuleika asked angrily. “Do you think I don’t see you’re just moving your lips?”

“This is what Suhrab, the son of Rustam, must have been like,” Asma commented.

“Don’t tell me you see yourself as the lovely Gurdafarid?”

Zuleika laughed.

“Don’t laugh, Zuleika. You’re no Gurdafarid yourself.”

In response, Zuleika began writhing and provocatively displaying her charms.

“Look, Zuleika has already started trying to seduce him,” Asma laughed. “But her hero is asleep and doesn’t notice her.”

“Just like Yusuf of Egypt, who didn’t care for Potiphar’s Zuleika!” Rokaya exclaimed.

“That’s right! Yusuf and Zuleika! How perfect it is.”

Jada was delighted at this discovery.

“Let’s write a song for them,” she suggested.

They set their instruments down and put their heads together. They began crafting verses. Eventually there was a fight, and Zuleika intervened.

Then Yusuf raised himself up on his arms and looked around. Suddenly he began laughing heartily.

The girls shrieked in terror.

“Oh, no! We’ve been discovered! He’s heard everything!”

Zuleika grabbed her head and stared at the girls in despair.

Yusuf shuddered, shook his head, closed his eyes, and then opened them again. Then he began staring at the girls with an expression of utter amazement.

“Allah is great! This isn’t a dream!”

At this point Zuleika found her bearings. Gently swaying, she approached and sat down on the pillows beside him.

“Of course it’s not a dream, Yusuf. You’ve come to paradise. We’re the houris who have been waiting for you.”