The Arabian Nightmare

by Robert Irwin

  Vane’s eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness. Eight knights in full armour, save for their helms, stood in a semicircle round the room, resting on their double-handed swords, rocking almost imperceptibly backwards and forwards. One of them, in the centre of the circle, spoke. ‘I am Jean Cornu, Grand Master of the Knights of the Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem.’

  ‘So who are you and what is that?’

  But Vane knew who he was and what they were. He had seen the Knights of Lazarus before, years ago, on the island of Rhodes, where their headquarters sheltered under the protection of the far greater Order of the Knights Hospitaller of Rhodes. The Order of Lazarus was a small brotherhood of fighting monks, less than a hundred knights certainly, and many of these knights very old. Yet they were, Vane discovered subsequently, an object of special fear to the infidel, for these were the Leper Knights who were reputed, falsely no doubt, to feel no pain in battle. Looking closely at Jean Cornu’s face, he saw now the gleaming white spots set in the skin like teeth.

  ‘Today we are assembled here to meet you, though only briefly, for we have other work to do about the city. We have something to offer you.’

  Vane kept quiet.

  ‘Fatima,’ pursued Jean Cornu smoothly, ‘and we hope that you may be able to do something for us in return.’

  ‘It is possible. Tell me, first, what has Fatima to do with you, and where is she?’

  Cornu’s eyebrows rose and he spread out his arms expressively. ‘To whom should she come, if not to the Brothers of St Lazarus? You forgot her quickly enough, but the Brotherhood has been kinder.’

  The smell and closeness of the air were making him giddy. ‘That’s not true. She left without my knowledge. I did not know, I swear it. Where is she?’

  ‘You know and we know that your oaths are valueless. She is in the next room. Our message will come through her.’

  A leprous knight moved to usher him into that room. As the door swept open, a foetid blast so thick that it seemed to make the air shimmer hit Vane in the face. He recoiled, then entered nevertheless. He had to stoop for the ceiling was very low. Fatima stood pressed against the far wall as if her flesh had been caked on its ruptured stucco.

  Vane spoke. ‘You wanted to see me?’

  ‘No, the other way around.’ Her mouth moved painfully. ‘I am an image, not an imaginer. You know I cannot see, for I exist only in the eyes of others.’

  ‘For God’s sake then, Fatima, what is it that you want? Speak.’

  ‘No. I want nothing. I cannot have desires. My sister, yes, nothing but desires, but not I. I am only a brainchild. If I were real, I would wish the death of the Father of Cats, but I am only a brainchild and how can a brainchild wish the death of its creator?’

  ‘If you are a brainchild, then you are a child of a very beautiful thought,’ said Vane, moving closer towards that pale and passionless face. ‘Let me embrace you.’

  ‘No, you would not enjoy the experience.’ Then she lowered her eyes and with her left hand she tugged at her right forefinger. ‘But you may have this as a keepsake perhaps until I come again.’

  The finger came off and she pressed it into Vane’s hand. He fainted and lay delirious under nasty dreams for what seemed a long time. When he recovered he found himself outside again, staring at the Mooress with her jug of beer. His hand was empty. He stood up rather unsteadily and walked back into the house. The flapping figure came up behind him on the stairs.

  ‘They’ve all gone, sir. You won’t find anyone here any more.’

  It was true. Vane walked back to the House of Sleep in the dark.

  There was another visitor to the House of Sleep that night...

  11

  The Government of Cairo

  I promised my audience that they should meet Fatima the Deathly and now they have. I at least have not cheated them. I am known throughout all Cairo as an honest craftsman and a sure guide to the wonders of the place. Of course, I have my failings—I must just stop for a moment to get an insect out of my ear. No, it’s just wax. See! Where, I wonder, does the stuff come from? There is certainly some admixture of dust from the streets, but the waxy stuff itself never came from the streets. It must come from inside the head, possibly from the brain. Interesting if it were from the brain... But I am rambling. As I was saying, I have my failings.

  When I was taught my trade as a storyteller I was taught never to play games with my audience. Winks and suggestive gestures were unethical. The Qasasyoon, the Masters of the Guild of Storytellers, were strict. Starting out as apprentices in the art we lived in constant terror as we fumblingly told our stories, for it was an occasional practice among the Qasasyoon to insert themselves, heavily muffled and incognito, among the audiences of beginners, and if they judged that the luckless apprentice in question was tormenting the audience with his own cleverness or, worse, drawing attention to his own person in order to seduce, then the Qasasyoon would rise from the audience and, throwing off their burnouses, beat it out of the youth with sticks.

  I never agreed with them on that. If my audience is dumb I will call out to them. I like to break off to talk to individuals in my audience, whereas my fellow Qasasyoon will point out that this is

  not only an error of style but it irritates the audience. People in the audience hate to be singled out in this way. They prefer to imagine themselves as invisible to the narrator. Now, the Qasasyoon were prepared to indulge them in that, but I have no patience with the fantasies of the audience. I am always acutely aware of my audience, and even at the risk of alienating them I will call out to them to bring them back to everyday reality—and me, Dirty Yoll.

  The Qasasyoon and I agreed on very little and I had a hard training. I started out in the Tartar Ruins. I had no rebec player then, no boy to pass round coffee and collect the money, no throne to talk from—just a circle drawn in the dust. When the Ape was there I used him to attract an audience and, as I told my stories, I kept a sharp eye out for the Qasasyoon. I could usually spot them, even in their shrouds, from the way they tried to keep their eyes looking dopey and uncritical. Even so I was beaten many times in my youth as I struggled to refine the art of interpolation.

  But enough of me. In the section which now follows I do not appear at all...

  Qaitbay, the Sultan of Egypt, had a fear of falling asleep. Watched over by his khassakiya guards and his physician, he would lie there with his eyes closed, willing himself to go to sleep, determined not to move a muscle, but sick with fear inside.

  Often on such nights he would rise from his couch of horror and, flinging on a jallaba for concealment, he would sally out from the Citadel, attended only by his poison taster and the black eunuch, Masrur. This was such a night. He emerged from the postern gate, sniffed the air and decided that he wished to visit the Father of Cats, and so the trio purposed northwards towards the older Fatimid part of the city. The Sultan eagerly drank in the squalor and the turmoil. Just outside the postern gate, their ways crossed with a leper carrying a sword. A little further on in the Tartar Ruins the Sultan and his attendants passed a young beggar sleeping on a wall and they noted that his mouth was rimmed with blood. Just outside the old part of the city at the Place of the Zuweyla Gate, they paused to watch a negro dancing in his cage.

  Here near the Zuweyla Gate, it was crowded all through the night. The Sultan scrutinized the faces of the crowd quite closely, for he remembered that the Dawadar had told him the other day that he believed that for every face that it was possible to imagine God had created an individual to fit it. ‘Yes,’ the Sultan muttered to himself under his hood, ‘there had to be someone with that sort of face.’ The Dawadar’s observation had impressed him; he found it oddly comforting.

  Thinking upon this and similar lines, Qaitbay came to the House of Sleep, knocked and entered, unaware as he did so, that he was watched, as everyone in Cairo was, by some diseased old beggars.

  The porter made deep obeisance to the Sultan as he and his companions swept throu
gh the gates of the House of Sleep. Then those gates swung shut behind them, for the Father of Cats would receive no more visitors that night. The Father came up from the cellars to receive them. He attempted to kiss the Sultan’s foot, but the Sultan drew it under his robe and raised him up. The Sultan was ushered over to the colonnade on the far side of the courtyard where cushions were spread out for them, but the Sultan’s attendants settled on mats near the gateway where they would spend the rest of the night quietly gossiping. Lit not for heat but for light, a brazier was brought out and placed in the centre of the courtyard. The night was breathlessly hot and the Sultan’s companions sweated gently into their robes. The Father of Cats and the Sultan eased themselves down and silently regarded one another for a few moments. They were curiously similar—two lean and scraggy white-bearded old men, each accustomed to the exercise of absolute power.

  ‘Peace be upon you, O Sultan.’

  ‘And upon you, O Father of Cats.’

  ‘Peace be upon your house.’

  ‘And upon yours also.’

  ‘How is your health?’

  ‘Good. It is good, praise be to God.’

  ‘Thanks be to God.’

  ‘And how is your health?’

  ‘Good, very good, praise be to God.’

  ‘Thanks be to God.’

  ‘And your house also?’

  ‘All is well in my house, praise be to God.’

  ‘Praises and thanks be to God.’

  ‘And your house? How is it with your house?’

  ‘Good as you can see. You honour it by your presence, praise be to God.’

  ‘Thanks be to God. It is said, and truly said, that the hospitality offered in your house is so lavish and unstinting that the guest of the house forgets indeed that he is its guest and not its owner.’

  ‘The Sultan is pleased to jest. The hospitality of my house, such as it is, is only the palest of the reflections of the reflections of the reflections of the hospitality and generosity of the Sultan, whose reputation in these respects extends to the limits of the known world and whose munificence is talked of even among the animals and djinn.’

  ‘God has blessed me with many things, not least a reputation I have done all too little to deserve, but surely the greatest of all the blessings that he has showered upon me is the friendship of the Father of Cats?’

  ‘I fear that the excellence of the Sultan’s character is such that he will never acquire the companions that his countless merits deserve.’

  ‘Such words of praise, from one so learned and wise, are already more than I deserve.’

  ‘It is the times that make men wise. Under your benevolent rule, O Sultan, God has blessed Egypt and all men may become wise or rich as they choose.’

  ‘It is said that the wise and the rich are the pillars of the virtuous state.’

  ‘And it is said that a thorough knowledge of sound maxims is nine-tenths of wisdom.’

  ‘Thanks be to God.’

  ‘Thanks be to God.’

  A couple of sighs and an uneasy silence.

  ‘The hospitality of my house is yours. Would the Sultan be agreeable to my preparing for him that same drink that he has sampled here on previous visits?’

  Another pause. A pair of cats came forward to be stroked. The Sultan knew that the Father was referring to the opiate sleeping draught that he always took when he came to stay the night at the Father’s house.

  ‘I should he delighted to receive some of your excellent hospitality.’

  The Father clapped his hands and gave orders for the preparation of the compound before the Sultan’s eyes. While this was going on, the Sultan gave a little cough and said, ‘All things are well with me and my house, thanks to the blessings and protection of God, the most merciful and all wise.’ He hesitated. ‘Yet of late, I must confess, some trivial things, which at another time I should certainly have found amusing, are irritating me ever so slightly.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘There is the arrival in my town of the Laughing Dervishes, from whose childish tricks no man is immune. Where do these foolish men come from?’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Then some days ago my officers told me that they had arrested a man who was in all respects my double, with my face, my eyes and even my clothes.’

  ‘Your double? They found your double? Be at peace my Sultan. Every human personality exists in two parts. I too have my double. There is the part of me that is sitting here talking with you and there is the part which I am not and of which you know nothing. It is very rare for one to become aware of the other, yet in a sense your life is only half a life without your double. I wonder if you know or have heard of Shikk?’

  ‘The name is certainly familiar, but I cannot recall his having been presented to me.’

  ‘Shikk is a half man. He has one eye, one ear, one arm and one leg.’

  ‘I should like to meet this prodigy.’

  ‘Alas. He is not one of your subjects. He and his fellow Saatih inhabit the Alam al-Mithal. But perhaps you will meet him. The Alam al-Mithal has come very close to earth. Shikk’s case is extreme, yet even so it can be said that the man who is shadow-free has little to keep him on this earth.’

  The Sultan did not conceal his mystification. ‘But this man who looked like me, are you saying that I should not have had him executed for his impudent impersonation?’

  ‘Oh, you had him executed!’ (The Sultan did not perceive that the wicked old man was laughing in his beard at him.) ‘As you know, the affairs of waking life are not my concern. I am not your Vizier or Dawadar. I am not the man to hold the power of life and death over your subjects. I am only a humble inquirer into life’s mysteries.’

  The drink was now ready and was brought in a brass beaker to the Sultan. Some cakes arrived on a dish. The Sultan snapped his fingers and the poison taster came from across the courtyard, tasted a couple of the cakes, then sipped from the cup. He made a face and passed it to the Sultan. The Sultan drank it, grimacing all the time. The stuff tasted foul. The poison taster returned to his place.

  ‘Then there is likely to be trouble over our grazing rights on the Anatolian frontier. The Ottomans will dispute...’ The Father rudely cut him off. ‘I tell you, I am not interested in all this. I am your sleep teacher. Tell me about your sleep and your dreams.’

  Qaitbay sank back on one elbow. He was beginning to feel a little more relaxed.

  ‘Father, I have been afraid to sleep for fear that I have the Arabian Nightmare.’

  ‘You don’t have it.’

  ‘I don’t?’ The Sultan’s voice was suspicious.

  ‘I can tell. There is a look about its victim. The suffering it brings hollows a man out. Rest in peace. The Arabian Nightmare has not touched you yet.’

  ‘There is something else in my dreams.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It does not concern me directly save as your friend. I dreamt that I saw you from a great distance, coming out of the House of Sleep. You had seen me too and you were approaching to greet me. But another man came out of the House of Sleep and came creeping on behind you until there was only a handspan between him and you. I saw that he had a knife clenched in his fists, but I stood paralysed and powerless to save you as the man closed in to bury his knife in your back. So I counsel you, dear friend, take care. You have many enemies and I may not always be able to protect you...’

  The Father stopped him there. He was furious. ‘The poor old man! Why did you not save him? Why didn’t you warn him? You can’t afford to let friends die like that. What did you think you were doing?’

  Qaitbay was offended. ‘I told you. I was paralysed and, besides, it was a dream, an omen from the spirit that watches over us.’

  ‘Tcha! What nonsense! In any case dreams are not omens. They do not predict events.’

  But inwardly the Father was disturbed, for he knew that while dreams could not predict events, they could and did generate them. (Vane, listening concealed in the shadow
s, was also disturbed by the Sultan’s dream.) The Father allowed no uneasiness to show, made an angry gesture and went on. ‘But that dream was not about what you thought it was about. The old man you saw murdered was you, not me.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. You. You only ever dream about yourself, however you disguise yourself. I stand for you in your dreams. I have that honour.’

  ‘So I dreamed my own assassination?’

  ‘No. You were dreaming about what you want. You only ever dream about what you want, however disguised. In this case death stands for sleep, death’s elder brother, deep dreamless sleep. It is your desire for this that has brought you here tonight. Nothing signifies what it seems to signify; everything points to something else. However, if you can remember dreams like that, you cannot possibly have the Arabian Nightmare, for happy oblivion invariably follows its tortures. What is more...’

  ‘There is more?’ The Sultan’s eyes were beginning to fog over though he still sat erect.

  ‘Of course there is more! To what purpose has my teaching been, if in your dreams you sit there, paralysed, watching your friends murdered, your wives raped and your palaces fall down? No. You must intervene, my lord, and intervene successfully. We shall try again tonight.’

  Qaitbay had slumped right back on the cushions. He was too tired to respond to his teacher’s fury. He wondered if it wasn’t the truth that the Father was offended at being murdered in someone else’s dream.

  ‘You have not entirely resolved my doubts, O Father of Cats, concerning the Arabian Nightmare. Of course, when I am awake I know that God would never suffer the Protector of the Faithful to become its victim. It is only in my dreams that I have this fear, and in my dreams I am so confused that I can never quite succeed in demonstrating to myself that I have not got it.’

  ‘It is only in your dreams that you are afraid that you have the Arabian Nightmare?’ The Father looked pleased. ‘That at last is a sign of progress. It is a sign that you are beginning to attain some faint degree of lucidity in your dreams. Now relax, close your eyes and remember, awake or asleep, you are the Sultan.’