Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  “My lord, I love Narisa as I love my own life.”

  “Do you, indeed? That is fortunate.”

  His odd choice of words distracted me from my plea. I hesitated still longer as I watched the two hooded men carry on poles an iron charcoal brazier that shimmered with heat and sent up a thin plume of smoke to curl across the black and white tiles on the ceiling. They set the brazier on its tripod before me. Through the iron grill that covered it, embers glowed with the redness of hellfire, and I felt their scorch against my cheeks and lips.

  As I took a step backward, the book fell from beneath my arm. The king noted it with mild interest.

  “What is that?”

  “Nothing, my lord. A book of my studies.”

  “Bring it here.”

  The tall Jew came forward, and eyeing me with profound distaste, bent at the knees and retrieved the book without removing his gaze from my face. He carried it to the king, who flipped its pages carelessly. In wonder I watched his lips move as he read. He glanced up and caught my eye.

  “You did not know I could read Hebrew? There are many sides of my nature you have never seen.”

  My legs trembled so violently that I could barely stand. I had no control over the muscles in my thighs and calves. I felt my bowels begin to open, but fortunately they were empty and nothing came forth. One of the hooded men returned to the room behind the king while the other busied himself in front of me with the iron implements on the table. For the first time I noticed that Prince Yanni was not present in the audience chamber. I realized that he must know nothing of his sister’s miscarriage, or he would certainly have tried to kill me in the garden. His father had not bothered to inform him of the proceedings, either to spare his feelings, or simply in contempt for his opinion.

  “Dodee said you were a sorcerer,” the king murmured, studying the page before him. “I did not believe him. I have greatly misjudged you, Abdul.”

  A protest died in my throat. What could I say that would make any difference to the outcome? Events moved forward with the slow inexorability of a nightmare from which there is no escape.

  The hooded man returned bearing a silver tray covered with a silver lid. He stood beside the brazier, slightly to one side so as not to obstruct the king’s view.

  “I understand you have not yet eaten breakfast. You must be hungry.”

  Balancing the tray upon one hand, the man lifted the lid and exposed its contents. My heart quailed with a mingled horror and sadness. The bloody fruit of Narisa’s womb, harvested before its ripeness, lay before me, impaled upon an iron skewer. It resembled a skinned rabbit on a spit. The other aproned man picked the fetus from the tray by the ring at the end of the skewer and laid it upon the grill of the brazier. A hiss and crackle of white smoke arose, and the air filled with a sweet scent.

  Unable to restrain her curiosity, Narisa pushed herself up to her knees and looked at the grill. She began to shriek in a high keening and struck herself repeatedly in the face with her fingernails so that her cheeks bled, unable to turn away. At the king’s harsh command, Dodee caught her arms and held them at her sides, preventing her from further injuring herself. He did not attempt to turn her face from the horror that sizzled on the coals. There was madness in her eyes as her shrieks mounted unceasing.

  To my surprise, I felt nothing. My body quaked in terror, yet this fear was so deep, so far removed from my center of thought, its effect was entirely of the flesh, and almost seemed to be the affliction of some other unfortunate man.

  The hooded figure with the empty tray replaced the lid and bore it away through the doorway behind the king. The other used the skewer to turn the meat, exposing a side that had become golden in the heat of the fire. His silent companion returned and took up a place behind me, but as yet refrained from touching me. A knife and prick were used to cut out a section of flesh from the fetus. I stared in fascination at its tiny hands, so human. A piece of steaming flesh was raised on the point of the iron prick to my lips, and its savor filled my nostrils, making the gorge rise in my throat.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” the king roared, for the first time revealing anger in his voice. “Eat!”

  A strange calm came over me and stilled the racing of my heart. I drew a slow breath and accepted my mortality.

  “No, I will not eat.”

  They forced me to my knees and pried open my mouth with iron hooks, loosening some of my teeth in their violence and filling my mouth with the salt taste of blood. The flesh of the dead thing was thrust down my throat, then another sliver, and another, until only bones remained on the brazier. Narisa had fallen silent. Abruptly she did what my burned and swollen throat would not allow me to do. Her vomit stained her shift as it gushed from her lips and splashed on her bare foot.

  “Was the meal to your liking?” The king’s eyes held a glitter that I had never before seen.

  So damaged was my mouth, I could not have spoken had I wished. I tried to catch Narisa’s gaze, but her face held the vacancy of a newborn infant, and I realized that she no longer saw what transpired before her.

  “It was a meager feast. I think you must still hunger.”

  One of the hooded torturers held my arms folded behind my back in such a way that I could not twist loose. The other grasped my left ear between his thumb and forefinger, and with a deft stroke of a knife severed it from my head, then tossed it onto the grill. The other ear followed. He used iron pincers to hold my nose while he cut it off, presumably to safeguard his fingers from the blade. These bits of my body were forced between my teeth and down my throat, so that I was compelled to swallow to keep from choking. My stomach made no effort to reject the meat. My ear-holes filled with blood, so that it became difficult to hear the king’s words.

  “What? Are you still hungry? Very well, you shall be satisfied.”

  They tore my blood-stained thawb and surwal from my body, leaving me naked save for my leather stockings and slippers. The torturer drew my prick and testicles out from between my thighs with the pincers and prepared to apply his knife.

  “No. Use the shears.”

  For the first time, I screamed. Why the shears struck me with greater horror than the knife remains mysterious. It may have been the anticipation of having my tightly stretched prick snipped off like a lock of hair by their chill iron edges. Gratification filled the face of the king. He had been waiting for my scream. After I screamed the first time, it was easy to scream again and again. He remained until my prick and balls had been roasted and fed to me, then left with his advisor and his spy, taking Narisa with him. I do not believe she saw me as she was led out from the chamber. Her mind was elsewhere.

  They cauterized my wounds with heated irons to stop the flow of blood. Then they burned off all the hair from my body, including my eyebrows and eyelashes, slashed open my cheeks so that I might have thrust my tongue through the holes had I wished, and branded me with the blunt points of the irons all across my chest and back. This continued for several hours, until the coals in the brazier had almost extinguished themselves. I passed in and out of a dreaming state, so that I knew only part of what was done to my body.

  At some later time I awoke naked in a cell. Even my feet were bare. It was a part of the palace I had never seen. A thin layer of dirty straw covered the rough stone floor. The only light came through a slit high in the wall, for the iron-bound door of the cell lacked a window or other opening. In one corner rested a wooden bucket, and beside it a clay pitcher. Too weakened and racked with pain to sit up, I lay with my cheek against the coolness of the stone, peering around and feeling the fullness in my stomach. Though I tried to vomit, my perverse flesh refused to give up its nourishment. Hours later, when I could crawl, I found that the pitcher was filled with water. The bucket stood empty, but the stink of its former contents conveyed its intended use.

  Three days and nigh
ts passed, marked by the fall of darkness and the coming of the light through the slot in the wall. My jailer brought no food, but the pitcher was refilled each morning, and the bucket emptied. The first time I pissed, I could not stifle a scream of agony. White pus spurted out before the urine. After that, the pain was less. On the second day my bowels emptied the remnant of the obscene food I had been forced to eat, and it was silently taken away and discarded. I began to believe that the king intended I should starve to death in the cell, but he had another purpose.

  Around noon of the fourth day the bolt of the door clicked, and crown prince Yanni entered bearing a brass oil lamp in his hand. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the stench.

  “Abdul? Come forward to the light where I can see you.”

  Someone laughed, a ghostly sound. Abdul? Who was Abdul? I knew no one of that name. Even so, I shuffled forward until the glow of the lamp fall across my face.

  Yanni’s eyes narrowed. He began to draw back, then caught himself and continued to stare with an expression of revulsion, and something more that I could not define.

  “I knew nothing of what my father planned for you.”

  His words lacked meaning. I struggled to suppress the giggle that rose in my throat.

  “You are to be exiled from Yemen. Never return to this land, or you will surely be put to death.”

  There was something I must ask. Desperately I searched for the thought. It eluded me like a fish in the shallows. At last I caught it.

  “The princess?” The burned tissues of my throat turned the words into a croak.

  Anger drove the uncharacteristic softness from his expression. I thought he would not reply, but finally he spoke.

  “She will not be harmed.”

  He turned, and the door slammed shut behind him, leaving me once again in the dimness.

  The hunger gnawed at me as I sat in the straw. Not since childhood had my stomach been so empty for so long. In the beam of light that slanted through the wall slit, I watched black beetles crawl around the rim of the bucket, feeding on the dregs of my waste. Unable to resist the temptation, I caught one and crunched it between my teeth. The taste was foul. I spat it out. Later, I chewed another, and sucked upon the mass of its body until it was dry, then let the hard parts of its shell and legs fall from my lips. I ate them all.

  Someone was to be released. But who, and from where? The question did not seem important. I slept.

  The sand dunes of the desert stretched like silver waves to the horizon beneath the light of the full moon. I walked along the crest of a dune, my bare feet sinking into the soft sand. The quiet of the night filled with a chittering, such as might be made by the wings of a thousand insects. It was all around me. I stood and turned in a circle but could see nothing. In the distance a shadow moved upon the sand. I walked toward it, straining my eyes to discern its shape. The chittering intensified. As I drew nearer, the shadow became the figure of a man shrouded in a long black cloak, the hood of his monkish robe pulled over his head. He walked with a slow pace, his face averted, and seemed lost in meditation. When I stood almost near enough to touch his shoulder, he turned and regarded me.

  He was taller than any man I had ever seen, and exceedingly slender. A caul of thin black silk covered his face, hiding his features but not obstructing his vision, for it is possible to see through the weave of silk when it is held close to the eye.

  He raised his arm and pointed into the desert, the skin of his hand so black that it appeared to be gloved. Upon his bony fingers gleamed the jewels of several rings.

  “What do you see?” His hollow voice held a slight sibilance, like the hiss of a serpent.

  Staring into the distance, I tried to discern the thing he pointed at, but could see nothing apart from the moonlit dunes.

  “A wasteland.”

  “Your eyes are open but you do not see.”

  I made no attempt to dispute the statement.

  “What do you hear?”

  The sound of insects filled the night.

  “The chirping of beetles.”

  “Your ears are open but you do not hear.”

  The thought came to me that I should strangle him and steal his cloak to cover my nakedness. Echoing laughter filled the night. Suddenly, he stood behind me. I had not seen him move. He laid his hand on my shoulder, his fingers impossibly long and slender, and I felt a burning cold.

  “This is my kingdom,” he whispered into my ear.

  He was gone. I turned around bewildered and saw him standing on the summit of a high dune some distance away. With labored steps I ascended the sand. He waited until I stood before him.

  “What do you seek?”

  “Knowledge.”

  His bony hand unhooked his caul at the side and let the black silk fall away. Fear and wonder filled my heart. He had no face, but only a darkness that was like the shadow in the depths of a deep well.

  “What is your name?”

  I hesitated, my mind filled with confusion. Once, I had known the answer to this riddle, but I had forgotten it. The beetles tried to tell me with their chirps and buzzing. I almost understood, but still the name eluded me.

  “You are Alhazred,” he said in his hollow voice.

  In fascination I continued to stare into the emptiness that was his face. Something flickered in the depths. Stars. His face was filled with distant stars. I reached out my hand to touch them.

  The rattle and bang of the door awoke me from my nightmare. I blinked and shielded my eyes from the glare of the oil lamp held in the hand of my jailer, who stepped back to scratch his bald head as two men I had never seen before entered my cell. They wore the loose cream-colored garb of Bedouins and had faces like hawks beneath the hanging folds of their ghutras. At their waists, short straight swords dangled in worn scabbards from baldrics that looped over their shoulders.

  Wordlessly, they took me by each arm and raised me to my feet, then dragged me out of the cell and along a corridor. My legs were stiff and would not carry my weight, but my captors did not pause. They carried me up a flight of stone steps and into a courtyard, where a two-wheeled cart drawn by a horse waited in the darkness. A chain with locking iron bands at its ends was put on my legs, and I was thrown without gentleness into the open cart. The chain was fixed at its middle with a padlock to an iron ring in the bed of the cart so that I could not escape.

  They walked on either side of the horse, leading it by its bridle out the archway of the courtyard and through the deserted streets of Sana’a, silent save for the creaking of the wheels and the distant barking of dogs. Not a single word passed between them. I felt no impulse to speak or question where they might be taking me. Wherever the cart was going, it lay beyond my power to help or hinder. A fatalism, so absolute it almost stifled the urge to breathe, gripped my heart. What thing could they do to me more horrible than the indignities I had already endured?

  The gatekeeper regarded me curiously as we passed beyond the wall of the city, but he did not challenge my silent hosts. Evidently he had received orders not to obstruct their exit or question their purpose. We continued along the road toward the east at a walking pace. As the light of dawn cast its pearl glow across the horizon, we came upon the encampment of a ragged caravan that was preparing for its departure. It consisted of no more than a dozen wagons and twice that many camels. The men of the caravan were dressed in the same desert thawbs as my captors. They ignored me as they went about loading their goods upon the backs of their animals. The women, shrouded about the shoulders in black abayas and head scarves and veiled in black boshiyas up to their eyes, cast me occasional glances, but did not speak. Only the children who ran about between the campfires pointed and laughed behind their hands.

  The cart in which I rode was heavily laden with sacks and bales. This was a band of desert traders, and to them I wa
s no more than an object they had been paid to transport from one place to another. I realized that I would find scant compassion among them. They had doubtlessly been told that I was a criminal sent into exile. To what strange city or port would they carry me? I wondered if they would sell me into slavery at the oar of a galley, or digging at the end of a pick in a salt mine. I would bring a poor price as a household servant, but I could still do work in spite of my disfigurement.

  We traveled east along a little-used caravan road, beyond the border of Yemen and into the great wasteland that is known only as the Empty Space. Never in my life had I gone beyond the bounds of Yemen. I recognized the rolling sand dunes, higher than the tallest building, from my strange dream, but saw with a shock of wonder that beneath the light of the sun the sand was a most delicate pink, like the blush of a virgin’s cheek. The heat became unbearable. The Bedouins stretched a canopy over the cart in which I rode, and I lay beneath its shade in a daze, watching the miles of desert unwind beneath the turning wooden wheels that shrieked at each rotation. The axle of the cart needed grease, but its protest went unheeded.

  The Bedouins conserved their strength just as jealously as they husbanded their water. They never walked when they were able to ride, and seldom spoke unless to convey necessary information. Women and children they ignored, but they paid close attention to the health of their animals. After five or six days, I lost track of the passage of time. I was given just enough food and water to survive, but nothing more, not even a rag to cover my nakedness. My daily meal was a single piece of flat bread, which I gnawed greedily with my chipped and aching teeth. My wounds began to heal without infection in the open air. The slits in my cheeks closed and scabs covered them. My hair and beard began to grow back, and even my eyebrows.

  The ruin of my manhood was absolute. When the dried blood began to flake away, I saw that everything was gone. All that remained was a wrinkled hole akin to a second anus. One night, lying in the cart and unable to sleep due to the biting of the flies that followed the beasts of the caravan like their shadows, I chanced to glance down between my legs, and what I saw illuminated in the flicker of a nearby campfire made me weep silently so that my chest heaved and tears ran down my cheeks. It was the first true sorrow over my condition that I had felt. I thought of Narisa, but strangely could not remember her face. In place of her features there was only a black shadow.