Omar Khayyam - a life

by Harold Lamb

  When they climbed to the height over which the Sultan had passed, Rahim heard a humming as of a thousand beehives. A faint clattering of metal and drumming of horses' hoofs. The sun had cleared away the last of the mist and the whole valley lay open, with multitudes of tiny horsemen moving about it. At times they paced slowly, like grazing cattle. Then they would sweep back toward the mound as if driven by some irresistible wind.

  For hours the Christian cavalry had been charging the Turks, who retired slowly, and crept back again. The arrows of the Turkish bowmen never ceased their hail. It seemed to Rahim as if these myriads of miniature riders had decided, all at once, to move down the valley.

  "Look!" cried Omar.

  Their own servants were standing up, waving at them. The regiment of Khorasanis had started to trot forward, the saddle drums muttering.

  "At last," shouted Rahim, "they will charge."

  "Allah il-allah!" shrieked a boy dragging a long spear after him, as he clutched Rahim's stirrup and tried to keep up with the horse.

  This, thought Rahim, was the moment for which he had waited. He drew his sword that sheathed it again presently because none of the others had done more than to draw on their shields. "Slay—slay!" sobbed the boy with the stolen spear, when he fell to the ground, no longer able to keep up with the charger. They were trotting across plowed earth, leaping channels of water.

  An hour later they were still racing down the valley. But here their horses swerved from bodies that lay half buried in the mud. Riderless horses were trotting by them, while Arab tribesmen snatched at the loot that lay scattered about the plain.

  "Now," exclaimed Rahim, eaten by impatience, "surely the Sultan will call for us to go into the battle."

  Instead, they came at twilight to a regiment of Turkish cavalry dismounted in an abandoned garden, and here they were ordered to wait during the night. Although the Turks found dry brush somewhere and kindled great fires, the Khorasanis had neither fire nor food, and they drowsed through sheer weariness, until the first light when the clamor of distant trumpets roused them.

  The trumpets were in the Christian camp, whither the Emperor had withdrawn the battered center of his host—the reserve in his rear had marched away during the darkness either from a misunderstanding or by treachery, and the infantry cut off upon his wings in the hills had surrendered to Alp Arslan's horsemen—and now, at dawn, the trumpets were summoning the mailed cavalry of Constantinople to a fresh charge. But Rahim and Omar knew nothing of this; they were heavy with sleep and stiff with the chill of the damp ground.

  Their followers had saddled their chargers for them, and before they realized it they were in a mass of riders shouting and plunging over the ground at a gallop.

  Omar's hands gripped the rein, and his head throbbed as if with fever. He saw the confusion about him only in glimpses of little things. A loosened turban cloth flapping about the head of a rider—a man running barefoot with his mouth open—a cart overturned, with a peasant crouching beneath it.

  Suddenly at one side appeared a man crawling upon hands and knees. A rider reined in above him and thrust a lance down at the wounded man. The lance point stuck in the armor, and then thrust deep into the man's side. As it did so blood ran from his mouth and his head drooped, although he still tried to crawl away. And Omar thought with surprise that this must be a Christian soldier.

  He turned his head, looking for Rahim. The rider with the loosened turban was holding fast to an arrow projecting from his hip. Omar heard him grunt with pain.

  Then tents appeared on either hand. There was a sound of hammering upon iron, and a screaming. Omar noticed that foam lay upon the neck of his horse, and he loosened his grasp on the rein. He laughed when he thought that he had come through a battle and had not remembered to draw his sword.

  Rahim was standing on the ground by a large tent. All around him the Khorasanis were dismounting to look for spoil. No one seemed to have ordered them to do that, but they were shouting and running about like children. Three of Rahim's followers came out of the tent with damask cloth and silver vessels in their arms. By the wrists they were leading a girl.

  She stared about her as if bewildered, a mass of gleaming hair as light as ripe wheat falling about her eyes. She wore no veil, and the girdle that bound her slim waist was cloth-of-gold. The men-at-arms looked at her curiously; they had never encountered a Christian woman before.

  "Ya, Omar," cried Rahim. "Allah hath favored us with victory."

  Victory! It had a strange sound.

  "This must be the slave of a Christian lord," continued Rahim gleefully. "I slew a dog of an infidel back there. Let us go into the tent——"

  "Take care!" cried Yarmak suddenly. "Y'allah!"

  Down between the tents came a band of men on muddy sweating horses. They were clutching swords and axes and galloping as if tormented by devils, their faces drawn and bleak under round iron helmets. Christian riders.

  Omar caught at his rein and turned his horse, just as the riders swept upon him. The horse swerved and reared, throwing him back.

  Something struck his shoulder, and the clashing hoofs of a charger passed over his head. Dirt stung his eyes and mouth, and after he had rubbed his eyes clear, he realized that he was on the ground. Unsteadily he got to his feet.

  One of the servants twisted upon the earth, as if struggling with an invisible enemy. Close by him, Yarmak bent over Rahim, who was trying to lift himself to his knees.

  Omar ran to him and caught his arms. Rahim was smiling in a strange way.

  "Art thou hurt, O my brother?" cried Omar. "How?"

  His foster brother looked at him as if the words had no sense. Omar told Yarmak to bring a clean cloth. He let Rahim's wounded body gently down and began to raise the edge of the mail shirt to see the wound from which blood was running. It felt hot upon his hands, and a faint vapor rose from it into the damp air.

  "O master," said Yarmak at his ear, "what would you do? Harken to the death rattle in his throat."

  Standing up, Omar looked at his bloodied hands. The hot sunlight beat upon his hands and the trampled earth. Rahim's face was the color of clay, and he had ceased panting. Only that clacking sound came from his throat for a while and then ceased.

  Then the servant Yarmak grunted like an animal and drew a curved knife from his girdle cloth. His lips twisted and he threw himself suddenly at the captive girl, who had stood motionless beside them during Rahim's death.

  "Life for a life," Yarmak muttered, striking at the Christian.

  She shrank away, the knife brushing her dress. Then she flung herself down before Omar, her hands clasping his legs, her body quivering. She made no sound, but her eyes stared up at him in agony.

  "Fool!" Omar caught the servant's arm, and flung him away. Yarmak fell to the ground as if he had no strength in his limbs, and sobbed: "Aiwallah aiwallah!"

  Omar told the Roumi girl to go into the tent, but she did not understand his words. When he pointed to the tent, she went into it slowly, looking over her shoulder. With the other servants Omar carried Rahim's body in and laid it upon the carpet. Uncertainly he wiped at his hands with a cloth and then ordered them to bring clean water.

  With this he tried to wash the face of his milk-brother. After a while the girl knelt at his side and took the cloth from him. Deftly she bathed the dirt from Rahim's head and throat, as if she hoped to please Omar by doing so. Then she arranged the dead man's clothing. Omar thought that he would never have touched a dead Christian.

  It seemed to him that there were so many things to do all at once. Nothing must be omitted that was necessary for Rahim.

  Late that night the mullah with the gray beard looked at him wearily.

  "My son," he said in his dry voice, "even the water of the sacred well of Zemzem must sink into the earth. Life comes from Allah, and to Allah return the souls of the believers upon that day when men's deeds are weighed in the scales of Judgment."

  In his mind Omar saw the face of Rahim
, the color of clay, lying upon the wet earth. Now Rahim lay in a clean shroud with his feet toward the holy city of Mecca, down there in the dark ground.

  The mullah went away, having other burials upon his hands that night, and Omar sat down upon a stone. Yarmak came like a dog and sat by him, rocking gently forward and back. Now that his master was buried, Yarmak seemed satisfied. There was no help for it.

  But to Omar, who had lost the foster brother with whom he had grown up, it would be agony to go away from that place by the stone. Here Rahim must lie, washed by the rain, while the grass rose and the wheat was sown and reaped—through all the uncounted years until that day when the souls would rejoin their bodies at the Judgment seat. Behind the curtain of the Invisible, Rahim would wait for that day.

  Omar sat, his chin on his hands, until the gray apparition of the dawn. He felt a little relief in his agony of mind, from the exhaustion of the last two days and nights.

  "O Rahim," he whispered, "thy body is but a tent wherein the soul abides for a little. Then when the tent is struck, the soul goes forth on its long journey. O Rahim, I shall find thee, upon that journey."

  "Aman," assented Yarmak. "Peace!"

  Within his tent Omar found a candle burning and he blinked at it, until the Roumi girl who had been sleeping among the garments thrown into a corner rose and poured a goblet of wine from a jar.

  Omar raised his hand to strike it to the ground. Then he remembered how Rahim had offered him a cup that night they had talked together in the serai on the Nisapur road. He took the goblet and drank it. A warmth crept through his chilled body. The girl filled the goblet again, and again Omar drank. He sighed and threw himself down on the rug, sinking into the stupor of exhaustion.

  The captive girl blew out the candle. Seating herself beside him, she watched the dawn lighten the sky. When she could see everything clearly she picked up a bronze mirror and began to comb out her hair, looking reflectively into the mirror. It was not the first time that she had changed masters overnight.

  Far down the valley the tent of the Sultan Alp Arslan had been pitched at last.

  Turkish amirs thronged the entrance, on both sides of the carpet, straining for a sight of the three men at the head of the carpet. Jafarak, a privileged person, perched himself on a chest from which he could see the three—Romanus Diogenes, the Emperor of the Romans, and the mean little Moslem slave who had found the Emperor lying unconscious on the field and had brought him to the feet of Alp Arslan.

  At first the spectators had watched Romanus, still in his armor, forced to kneel before the Sultan. Alp Arslan had set his foot once on the neck of the imperial captive, and then had lifted Romanus to a seat on the cushions at his right.

  The listeners waited for the first word to be spoken between the commanders of the East and the West.

  "Tell me," Alp Arslan asked casually, "what thou wouldst have done to me had I been brought captive thus before thee."

  Romanus raised his head and thought for a moment, when the speech had been interpreted to him.

  "I would have dealt with thee harshly," he said.

  A smile lightened the dark face of the Sultan. "And what," he demanded, "dost thou expect from my hand?"

  The captive Emperor looked at the intent faces of his enemies, and considered. "It may be that thou wilt slay me here, or place me in chains to be carried about thy kingdom. Or thou wilt accept ransom for me."

  Alp Arslan found in his heart a liking for this Christian monarch who did not lack courage. He was filled with exultation at his victory, and at having placed his foot upon the neck of a Caesar of Rome.

  "Know," he said after a moment, "that I have decided what is to be done with thee."

  From his place behind his father, the Lion Cub leaned forward, his hands clenched in his lap. He had not forgotten the prophecy that victory would come to the Moslems and that both the kings would die.

  "From thee," Alp Arslan went on, "I shall take ransom, and a yearly tribute from thy people. And I will escort thee back to thy country with honor."

  The Lion Cub breathed deep and settled back in his place. If Romanus had been slain here by the scimitar of an executioner, the Lion Cub would have expected the fulfilment of the prediction of a young student of Nisapur.

  Omar could not sleep. In spite of the exhaustion of his body, his mind would not be quiet for long. The face of Rahim, smiling that strange smile, came before the eyes of his mind and would not go away. Then Rahim had still been Rahim; but after that he had become a thing like a wooden chest, to be lifted about on the tent floor and carried away. Try as he would, Omar could not keep from thinking of how they had carried Rahim, and how he had been wrapped up, in fold after fold of white cloth.

  It was not easy to give orders in Rahim's place. As far back as he could remember, they had shared everything, being in this respect more like twins than ordinary brothers. Rahim had always seen to such things as food and servants and horses, and now, naturally, the men looked to Omar for orders.

  It was time to start the journey back to Nisapur. Only the Seljuk Turks would remain in these mountains; already the Arabs and irregulars were on the march homeward, laden with spoil and captives.

  When Yarmak and his surviving fellows had struck Omar's tent and packed it on the led horses, Omar saw that each man had large sacks that did not belong to the baggage. They had spent these last days in gathering plunder, and in trading things they did not want. Now they were quite ready to go home with their new riches. But the son of Ibrahim had not so much as a dagger from the battlefield. He did not want anything to remind him of that.

  Yarmak had saddled Rahim's black charger, and had made a bundle of his dead master's armor and weapons which he had tied behind the saddle. Omar looked at the black horse, and felt that he could not have it trotting beside him with an empty saddle all the way. On the other hand it must be taken back to Rahim's father.

  "Perhaps," suggested Yarmak, "master, we could let the Roumi girl ride the charger. We have no litter for her."

  The captive girl had to be taken along. She was Rahim's property and might be sold for a good price in the Nisapur slave market because she was young, with fine, silk-like hair. Omar, who had picked up a good many Greek words in his study of Plato's dialogues at the academy, had managed to find out a little about the girl.

  Her name was Zoë, and she had no other because she had always been a slave, in Constantinople. She had been brought on the campaign by an officer who believed, like his Emperor, that the Moslems would be scattered and driven eastward without trouble.

  "I will ride the charger," he said. "Give Zoë—give the Roumi girl my horse."

  Although she wore a veil and rode behind Omar with the pack animals everyone who passed them on the road knew by her garments and light hair that she was a Christian captive, belonging to the young Khorasani warrior who rode alone and in silence.

  It was hard for Omar at the first halting place. The caravanserai was so crowded that they had to set up the tent near a well occupied by the camp of an amir with a large following. The servants did nothing without being told—Omar had to show them where to picket the horses, and to bargain for barley and bread with the amir's men. He did not mind that because it kept him occupied, but when everything was done the memory of Rahim filled his mind.

  So he sat upon his sleeping quilt until the fire by the tent pole died to embers. He remembered the wine that had brought forgetfulness for a few hours that first morning, but the wine was all used up and only the cup remained. Omar examined the sack to make sure, and held the silver vessel in his hand. Rahim had drained the cup of life so swiftly, and now he lay in the embrace of death.

  Beside him the girl stirred in her sleeping robes, and sighed. Omar bent down and brushed the hair back from her eyes. They were dark and wet. Zoë had been crying to herself, for some reason of her own.

  "Eh, what?" he asked gently.

  Zoë's lips parted and she smiled. Evidently she did not want him to
see her tears. For the first time he wondered what she was thinking about, in this long journey away from her own land. A slave had feelings as well as a sultan, but was not permitted to complain.

  When he stroked the hair that tangled about her throat, it gave way softly under his fingers. Zoë glanced up at him curiously. She was no longer crying, and she moved away a little as if to make room for him beside her. The faint pulse in her throat quickened under his touch.

  He took her into his arms and drew the covering over both of them, and lay looking up at the tent top from which the glow of the embers was slowly fading. He wondered if the trodden clay and the night wind and Rahim's strange smile would go from his mind now.

  The girl stirred against him. When she raised herself to draw the heavy coils of her hair from beneath her shoulders, his lips brushed her throat. The warmth of her body, the scent of her hair soothed him, and then he felt her arms tighten about him. The warmth became a fever that drained the weariness from him and filled him with an intoxication that grew upon him with every motion of the girl.

  In Zoë s arms that night he forgot death and the trodden clay, and he slept, breathing quietly, oblivious of the world.

  The House of of the Mirror of Wisdom on the road to the salt desert. The year after the victory of Sultan Alp Arslan over the Christians.

  Master Ali was seventy-three years old. Next to the Koran which he knew by heart, he lived for mathematics. Everything in his household transpired with the regularity of the water clock that dripped in the courtyard by the fish pool'

  His assistants would say, "Now the master is washing his feet and wrists; it is nearly time for the noon prayer." Or they would say, "Now it is the third hour of the day, our master will be copying the pages of his book."

  The water clock, the five prayers, the two meals, the twelve hours of work—all these moved in rotation with the regularity of the constellations in the sky. Invariably the same food appeared at each meal. No one had the temerity to suggest to Master Ali, whose title was The Mirror of Wisdom, that younger assistants might desire dates and walnuts or pomegranates. So they bought pomegranates secretly from the neighboring farmers and gorged, themselves, out of sight of the house.