The Khalifah's Mirror

by Andrew Killeen

  “Oh. I see.”

  She turned away, ignoring my protestations that that was not what I meant, I was trying to find —

  “Who is that? I know that voice. Who’s there?”

  An old man grasped at my coat. I recoiled, then composed myself, and crouched down next to him.

  “Peace be upon you. I am —”

  The old man’s eyes twitched blindly, but his voice was triumphant.

  “I know who you are. You are the boy Ismail, companion of Abu Nuwas.”

  It was only then that I recognised the poet Abbas. He was at most a couple of years older than Abu Nuwas, but his ruined, sightless face made him look ancient. He had always been emaciated, even in the days when he was considered the most handsome man in Baghdad; now his hollow cheeks and sockets cast the shadows of a skull.

  “Abbas! What happened to you?”

  Abbas shook his head.

  “God is punishing me, lad, for my sins. In His mercy he has left me alive to repent, but he has taken my sight, and my good looks. And the sickness is eating me away from inside.”

  “But how did you recognise me? It was a decade and a half ago, and my voice had barely broken then.”

  “There is not much left in my life, except my memories. I spend a lot of time with them, pondering them, polishing them. Those days are clearer to me now than many that have passed since then. I repent of my wrongdoing, but I am glad that I have the recollection of it. All those women…”

  His face contorted in a leer. I hurried to change the subject.

  “At least the prince still values your company.”

  Abbas cackled.

  “I think they keep me round as a warning, to remind them of Judgment Day. Or perhaps as a freak, to wonder at and mock.”

  “But you get to hear the gossip, eh?”

  “A blind man hears many things.”

  Without much hope I tossed out a question.

  “Have there been any strangers here tonight, Abbas? A beardless man with dark skin, perhaps?”

  Abbas turned his head as if to look at me.

  “Why? Do you have business with such a man?”

  Aware of my heart suddenly thudding in my chest. I decided that careful truth was the best course.

  “I seek to prevent a conspiracy by the enemies of the Khali-fate.”

  Abbas did not seem surprised, but smiled thinly.

  “I see. It is a wise man that can tell an enemy from a friend. You must be careful, boy. One who stands at the Righteous One’s side, is chief among those who would do him harm.”

  “Who, Abbas? Who do you mean?”

  The blind poet put a finger to his lips.

  “Take this.”

  He handed me a necklace. The pendant was a brass plate, the size of my hand, cut into the shape of an elephant. The plate was irregularly punctured with small rectangular holes. I examined it, bemused.

  “But what is this, Abbas? What does this all mean?”

  Abbas cackled like an old woman.

  “Hehehe. The man who would learn the truth, studies only what is revealed. Listen to the song. You will see. Only what is revealed…”

  He trailed away, sinking back into his private hell. I turned my attention to the music. A singing girl had joined the band, and was trilling a recently popular tune.

  “I am drawn to what hurts me, it poisons my blood,

  I shake and I sweat each time I must leave her

  My friends think I cannot have long to live

  Love is more deadly than fever….”

  I recognised the lyric. It had been written by Abbas, back when the poet was young and whole. Listening intently, I tried to find hidden secrets in the lines, chasing elusive shadows of meaning through the allusive thickets of imagery.

  “So demure, the girl with the charcoal eyes

  Like a trilling flute she flutters her lies.

  She has driven away sleep, set my liver afire,

  The night owl echoes my agonised cries.

  I relished the water that flooded my sight

  Twin globes drowned under liquid skies…”

  Somewhere nearby I could hear Abu Nuwas holding forth to Prince Ibrahim.

  “But of course a boy is to be preferred to a girl! This is not a question of inclination, but one that can be proven by rational argument. Nor is it a matter of aesthetics; for do we not use the same phrases to describe beauty in either sex? Wide eyes, full lips, slender limbs and plump buttocks: are these not the tokens of the perfection we all seek, regardless of our preferences?”

  I returned to their circle, and perched quietly on a carpet. Abu Nuwas and al-Jahiz were sitting on either side of the prince, and the poet accompanied his oration with extravagant gestures, like a lawyer arguing a case.

  “No, the superiority of a boy as a lover is demonstrable, and threefold. Firstly, a boy is available and desirable throughout the month. Girls, on the other hand, are unclean for days at a time, bleeding, volatile and repugnant. If I were to sell you a horse, then tell you that it could only bear you three weeks out of every four, you would call me a swindler, and rightly so.

  “Secondly, women must always be paid for, one way or another; either overtly, as one buys the time of a singing girl, or less honestly but more expensively, by taking them into your household as wife or concubine, after which you must keep them for the rest of their lives, even when they age and sag and become unattractive. When a boy loses his tender charm, he will go to earn his own living, and not hang around your neck demanding to be carried.

  “Third, and most importantly, women are spirits of the earth. Their place is the home, and their concern is for mundane issues, of the birth, procreation, and death of the physical body. Men, meanwhile, must tame fire, master the raging seas, and comprehend the heavens themselves. Granted, there are women of rare intelligence, and men of unfathomable stupidity. However there are also beasts that can talk, and count, and find their way home from anywhere in the world; and nobody is proposing that we take animals as lovers. Except, perhaps, ibn Khudayr.”

  Everyone laughed, but the reference was lost on me.

  “No, as the ancient masters knew, the purest love known to humanity is that between man and boy. The boy learns, not only the ways of love, but the ways of the world; he learns how to be a man. The man is rewarded for his tutelage with the presence of beauty and the pleasures of a strong young body. And when the boy transmutes into a man, and grows hairy, gross and unreceptive, they will part as naturally as the seed falls from the tree, and the boy who has become a man will find a lover of his own, to nurture in his turn.”

  Abu Nuwas sat back, replete with self-satisfaction. Prince Ibrahim shouted his appreciation.

  “Well said, my friend! And what say you, al-Jahiz? What is your preference, a boy or a girl? Which makes a better companion?”

  Al-Jahiz stroked his beard.

  “A difficult choice, my prince. I would have to say — neither. I would rather have a book.”

  Abu Nuwas hooted.

  “A book? Remind me never to come to one of your parties. What kind of cold fish are you?”

  If al-Jahiz was stung by the implicit reference to his former profession, he did not let it show.

  “Yes, I will take a book, if I may choose. A book is a bottle full of learning, a cup of common sense, a jar full of jokes and gravity. It will amuse you with anecdotes, dazzle you with wonders, or correct you with good counsel, according to your mood. A book prolongs your pleasure, whets your wits, adds vibrancy to your voice, makes nimble your fingers, weighty your words, and joyful your heart. What other companion, male or female, sleeps whenever you sleep, and wakes as soon as you wake? What other companion can you fit in your sleeve?

  “You mock me, Father of Locks, for choosing to spend my time with books, but to me a book is a friend, one that is never annoying, or greedy, or impatient, or dishonest. It does not interrupt when you are busy, but is always pleased to see you when you have time for it. Y
ou never have to humour a book out of courtesy, or pretend to be out when it calls. It does not become resentful if your visits are rare, but if you love it, truly love it, faithfully and honestly, it will haunt you like a shadow. And when you fall in love with a book, you need nothing else; you will be free from boredom and loneliness, and never forced to seek the company of false friends.

  “It is a small thing, and light as a whisper, yet it can carry the Word of God, and the deeds of kings. It is a teacher that never fails you, that desires nothing other than to share its knowledge with you, and that continues to instruct you when your money has all gone. When your allies turn against you it remains faithful, and when your enemies surround you it stays at your side.

  “If a book did nothing else for you, other than to save you from the company of other people; if all it did was to deliver you from their gossip, and their dull affairs, and their appalling manners, and their rotten Arabic, and their stupid ideas, and their woefully misguided opinions, and above all, from the need to be polite to them; if a book did nothing more than that, it would still be the best friend you ever had. That, prince, is why I choose the company of books.”

  Abu Nuwas was smart enough to know when it was time to be a good loser.

  “You have quite converted me, man of Basrah. It is as though I have chanced upon an old flame, of whom I have been shamefully neglectful, and been mortified to discover that I am still in love.”

  Prince Ibrahim beamed.

  “This is how it should be! Two great warriors of wit, duelling with words as weapons and learning as their armour. The Father of Locks asks for quarter, al-Jahiz. Will you grant it, or skewer him with an epithet?”

  A servant appeared at my elbow with a silver platter, bearing goblets and a jug of wine. He held out a drink, but I waved it away.

  “No, thank you.”

  The servant turned toward the prince, but on seeing Abu Nuwas he started, causing the goblets to rattle on the tray. I looked up. The man’s face was round and soft, with skin the colour of chestnuts, and neither beard nor moustache. Without thinking, I cried out.

  “Al-Sifr!”

  The servant dropped the platter and fled. I jumped to my feet, but my shout and the crash of metal had drawn the attention of Prince Ibrahim, whose face showed his displeasure at the interruption.

  “Who is this man? Is he drunk? Why is he throwing wine around?”

  Abu Nuwas waved an elegant hand.

  “You must forgive him, my prince. He is a congenital idiot. I feed him as an act of charity, and keep him around to amuse me with his babblings. Excuse us, my lords, I shall punish him for his effrontery.”

  He hustled me away to a quiet corner of the chamber.

  “What do you think you are doing? The prince will —”

  “Al-Sifr. He was here. Dressed as a servant.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “He matched the description al-Mithaq gave us. And why else would he have run away, when I spoke his name? We must go after him, quickly. If we —”

  “No.”

  Abu Nuwas placed calming hands on my shoulders.

  “At best, he will have disappeared into the night. At worst, he is lying in ambush, waiting for us to pursue him. We know now that we are following the right trail. We must be patient, and careful.

  “Besides, Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi may play at being a poet, but he is a prince of the house of Abbas, half-brother to the Khalifah himself. One cannot pump him for information, then leave once satisfied as though he were a whore. We go only when he dismisses us, or retires to his bed; which, knowing his habits as I do, will not be much before dawn.”

  Dawn. The Cloaked Man. The Fig Tree. The Spider.

  “Have you found anything out about the City of Stone?”

  “No, but I know now where to find the Cloaked Man. In truth, I am a fool for not working it out sooner; he is an old friend, not only of mine, but of many here, although he does not move in these circles any more.”

  “Where then? Where will we find him?”

  “A dark place. A dark place, on a cold morning.”

  ***

  The watery winter dawn was seeping into the city, but no brightness reached the square in which we stood. A menacing hulk eclipsed the sun, and filled the place with shadows. On the east side of the square the Matbaq prison squatted grim and silent, a warning to the citizens of Baghdad that their masters’ tolerance was not to be abused.

  In the square which lay before the prison gate, a man crouched in the dirt, swathed in a plain cloak of brown wool. When the call to morning prayer had faded in the air, he sang alone, a strange and unearthly song, in which the words were protracted and ornamented so that it was some time before I realised he was simply intoning the name of God, over and over again. Abu Nuwas nodded.

  “The Cloaked Man. He is as renowned a landmark as the Gilded Gate, here every dawn sure as the sun.”

  The cloaked man now ended his song, and got to his feet. He threw his head back, and finally I recognised him.

  “The Father of Madness.”

  Abu’l-Atahiyya, the Father of Madness, called out to the world, his eyes fixed on the heavens.

  “Brothers and sisters, awake! Hear the word of God, spoken to his Prophet through the Angel Jibril:

  “’By the Moon I swear, and by the Night as it flees, and by the Dawn as it glows, this is of the utmost importance: a warning to all mankind, whether they choose to press forward or hold back, that every soul is held as bond for its deeds; except those of the virtuous, who will dwell in gardens and ask of the sinners, ‘What brought you to the fires of Jahannam?’And they will answer, ‘We did not pray, or feed the poor, but spent our time in empty talk with empty talkers, and lived in denial of the Day of Judgement, until the inevitable overwhelmed us.’ Then no intercession will save them.”

  Those few people who were passing through the square in the early light paid no attention to the cloaked man, or hastened their steps as they passed him. Undeterred, Abu’l-Atahiyya pressed on with his recitation.

  “’What is wrong with them, that they run away from admonition, as if they were frightened donkeys, fleeing from a lion? Indeed, every man wants it set out on a scroll for him. Indeed, they do not fear what is to come. Indeed, this is a true warning, so let he who wishes keep it in remembrance. But none will keep it in remembrance unless God wills, for He is the source of all fear, and the source of forgiveness.’

  “Brothers and sisters, do you hear how God sees you, and knows what is in your heart? Do you not marvel at these words, spoken to his Apostle nearly two centuries ago, but which describe you with a precision that puts poets to shame? You — yes, you, brother, scurrying away — are you not like the donkey fleeing from the lion, as you run in terror from the truth?

  “But the truth will find you in the end, however fast you run. On the day when the Angel of Death comes for you, then you will know, then you will understand; but then it will be too late. Time is short, brothers and sisters. If God wills, you must keep the remembrance of these words in your heart. You must keep the remembrance of God in your heart, at every moment of every day. Only then will you be saved from the fire.”

  “A little fire would be welcome on this chilly morning, would you not agree?”

  Abu’l-Atahiyya started at this interruption, then frowned as he saw Abu Nuwas strolling towards him.

  “Ah, here comes the Father of Locks. Will blasphemy leap so lightly to your lips when you are screaming in Jahannam, my friend?”

  “And peace be upon you too. Much as I enjoy our little chats about religion, I must defer that pleasure to another day. I am seeking a man, whom I believe to have business here, at dawn. A beardless man, with dark skin, like a Hindi…”

  “What mischief are you engaged in now? I will play no part in the scheming of spies. If you do not wish to join me in prayer, then I must ask you to let me be.”

  Abu Nuwas dropped his mask of nonchalance.

  “My friend, t
his is no time for banter or sparring. I am in great peril, and if I do not find this man, then the Angel of Death will surely find me instead.”

  “Then you would be better off spending your time in prayer and repentance. God willing, you may yet be saved. Is it not wiser to aim at eternal bliss, than try to eke out this existence of suffering and fear? Why must you dance with your enemy?”

  “What do you know about my enemy?”

  “I know him well, for he is my enemy too, although you like to boast that he is your friend. The devil Iblis, the great Shaitan, is the Enemy of all mankind.”

  Abu Nuwas rolled his eyes.

  “Listen, Jug Seller, this is not a game. There are men all around, and women too no doubt, and children for all I know, coming at me from every direction with sharp pieces of metal to push into my flesh, and heavy clubs to bash my brains, and cords to choke my breath, and toxins to boil my guts.

  “I am not asking you to commit any sin. I am not asking you to fight for me, nor to drink wine, make stupid jokes and stick your zabb in the arses of pretty boys like in the old days. But for the sake of our friendship, I beg you, please help me. This time, I am serious.”

  Abu’l-Atahiyya fixed him with a fierce gaze.

  “And so am I, Father of Locks. So am I.”

  Abu Nuwas stamped his foot in exasperation.

  “But you can’t really believe all that rubbish!”

  This seemed to me unlikely to be a successful line of argument, but Abu Nuwas persisted, heedless.

  “You are an intelligent man, my friend, a man of learning and experience. Surely you cannot accept it all without question? Are there not parts of it that worry you, parts of what you are asked to believe?”

  Abu’l-Atahiyya muttered prayers under his breath.

  “Do you see why people speak of you as a devil? You will not deflect me from the service of God with your sophistry.”

  “And are the devils not also part of God’s plan? Iblis was given permission by God to tempt men into damnation. If God loves us, why would he create our Enemy?”

  “Because unlike angels, men have the gift of free will. They can choose their own path, for good or evil.”