The Arabian Nightmare

by Robert Irwin

  ‘Perhaps, though, the adventure is not finished yet,’ said the porter, seizing the prince’s arm. ‘Let us make haste. Perhaps we shall be in time to save the lady from the enchanter. ’ But though the porter and the prince ran through the town, when they got to where they remembered the lady, the garden and the house should have been, they had all vanished. The enchanter had been there before them. For years afterwards the prince would not admit this but walked through the streets of the town looking for the garden and lady within it, and he mourned the passing of the years of his captive bestiality.

  ‘That is the end of the story?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ replied Yoll. ‘As for the Christian enchanter and the lady, after the Christian had chastised the lady and asked her the riddle to which she was unable to supply the answer, to her surprise he left her and vanished out of the garden. And (to make a long story short), tired, disillusioned and cursed by God, he returned to the wilderness and wished first for the annihilation of the lady who had so disappointed him and of her house and garden. Then he solemnly wished for his return through the years, for all his wishes save the last to be undone, for him never to have met Iblis and for himself to have no memory of all that had taken place. All his wishes were granted. As far as the Christian was concerned, nothing had happened or, if it had, it took place in less than the blink of an eyelid. He meditated in the wilderness for another forty months before returning to Damascus and going to work in a monastery garden.

  ‘So, to conclude, I told my story and my audience were well content to let me go. I never saw again any sign of the ventriloquist and his ape.’

  ‘Was it the same story that the ape in the coffee house would have told if you had let him continue?’ asked Balian.

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose not.’

  ‘In many ways it closely resembles my own adventure.’

  ‘I told it to you to show how nature apes art,’ replied Yoll.

  ‘I don’t understand the purpose of these stories within stories.’

  Yoll affected to look surprised and replied, ‘But surely a story within a story is the model of your situation, for what is a conspiracy but a story within a story? And what is a spy but a man who seeks to penetrate to that inner plot, the hidden truth? I simply thought, therefore, that stories within stories would appeal to your temperament.’

  ‘My temperament?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Yoll fumbled and scratched himself in excitement as he spoke. ‘You were a spy by temperament long before the French picked you out as one. You do nothing but wander about, solitary, suspicious and uncertain, and people talk to you. You seem to do nothing, but those big dreamy eyes take in everything. Long before you came to spy on the Mamlukes you were spying on life. Your face is like a mask; it therefore advertises your profession—conspiracy hunter. But conspiracies are only the fantasies of simple men looking for simple explanations for events that are in truth very intricate in their causes and purposes. You will not find any one key to unlock events in this city.’

  Balian could make nothing of this. ‘To return to the story, where did you learn it, or did you make it—?’

  17

  The Interlude Concluded Continued

  Oh, to be telling quite a different tale—the tale of the Caliph Wathiq, for example! This one is longer than I remembered. However, I shall rush like the arrow towards its determined end. There shall be no more diversions, for there are still many things in this city which I wish to show you: Cairo’s famous poultry farm, for instance. The eggs are hatched on warm bricks. Every foreign visitor to our city comments on it. The scale of the enterprise is astonishing. One enters any one of a score of great sheds and immediately upon entering the eye is drawn down a vista of coops in serried lines, piled high on shelves. The din the chickens make is deafening and there are hundreds of chickens in regimented lines all laying eggs and there are thousands of eggs heating and hatching on the warm bricks. I do not believe that you can have anything like that in the West! You will see! You will be amazed!

  First, to finish the story. It may amuse you, even if I can no longer take pleasure in it. It is cold and dark down here. I sweat and salivate uncontrollably, I see dark spots, my stomach curdles, my throat is tight as if a man’s fingers pressed upon it, but we shall not pause to chart the melancholy of my anatomy. On with the entertainment...

  But here the friar cut in hastily. ‘Yes, to return to the story, how was it that a pair of monkeys were able to solve the riddle that had defeated the lady, the prince and the porter?’

  Bulbul groaned, but Yoll replied, ‘Ah, how could I have forgotten the most important part of the whole story!’ He smote his forehead and continued...

  When the adventure was over—that is, when the prince and the porter had discovered that the lady and the garden had vanished—they retraced their steps and fell to talking.

  ‘You seem like an intelligent fellow,’ said the prince. ‘How comes it that you are only a humble porter in this city of ours, where all doors are open to the intelligent citizen?’

  ‘As to that, O Prince, I now live in hopes that you will advance my fortunes,’ replied the porter. ‘But in answer to your question, let me tell you a story.’

  (‘This is, as it happens, a teaching story of the Laughing Dervishes,’ added Yoll, by way of interpolation.)

  The porter began. ‘A long time ago, a long way away, in far off Rucnabad, on a particular day, the Sultan of those lands went hunting in his forests. The hunting was poor until, towards the end of the day, the Sultan and his huntsmen cornered and killed a she-wolf near her lair. Suspecting that he might find her cubs, one of the bolder of the huntsmen searched her lair. He found no cubs. What he did find was a small boy, dirty, stunted and sharp-nailed. It seemed that the she-wolf had been rearing him. The Sultan and his courtiers marvelled, and the Sultan gave orders that the wolf child be brought back to the palace and reared with his own children.

  ‘The boy was brought back to the palace, but it proved impossible to educate him with the sons and daughters of the Sultan, for he was dirty, ill-behaved and conscienceless. He wept frequently and would not speak. Men continued to marvel at his mystery, but in the end he was kept locked up in the Sultan’s stables. Some years passed and the wolf-boy, living on scraps thrown to him by the Sultan’s grooms, was all but forgotten.

  ‘Then one night the Sultan and his court were at dinner in the great hall of the palace when the butler drew the attention of his master and the guests to a crack in the marble floor. As the Sultan stared, the crack widened and then, as soon as it was wide enough, with much puffing and heaving a djinn pulled himself up through it and hunched uncomfortably in the centre of the dining hall. Even there his head scraped against the roof. Without waiting to be asked, the djinn began to speak.

  ‘“O Sultan, you have a mystery in your palace. I speak of the boy reared by the she-wolf. No man knows his origin. He must discover it for himself. The truth is for him alone. If the boy would know the secret of his birth, he must set out on a quest. Within a month he should come out to find me. I live in a toothed cave in the mountains on the northern edge of your lands. I shall wait for him there.”

  ‘The Sultan exclaimed, but the djinn did not wait to hear what the Sultan said. He descended back into the depths of the earth, closing the crack carefully behind him.

  ‘All was consternation in the wake of the frightful apparition’s departure. The boy was fetched from the stables and told what the djinn had said. He gave no signs of understanding it, but the Sultan’s servants prodded and then kicked the obstinate and seemingly moronic boy out of the palace and pointed him towards the mountains north of Rucnabad. The boy did indeed dimly understand what the servants were telling him, only he was reluctant to leave the comfort of the stables.

  ‘However, he set off through the forests of Rucnabad, moving through the trees on all fours, since he found that he travelled faster that way. The paths in the forest bifurcated and trifurcated, ramify
ing and rejoining. The boy suspected that, though he travelled fast with his wolfs lope, he might be travelling in the wrong direction. But there was no one he could ask, until one evening a maiden stepped out from the darkness of the trees and stood in his way. The boy could not find the words to ask her where the djinn’s cave was to be found, so he drew a picture of a toothed cave on the ground. The maiden looked at it and then, misunderstanding his meaning, pulled up her skirts and drew him into her secret cave. The following morning he left the maiden sleeping and continued on his way no wiser than before.

  ‘Later that same day, though, he met a she-wolf and he found that by conversing in snarls and grunts he was able to make himself understood by her and that she was willing and able to conduct him to the cave of the djinn, high in the thin air of the mountains beyond the forest. And so she did.

  ‘The djinn’s cave was indeed toothed, for its mouth was ringed with stalactites and stalagmites. Stepping carefully between their fangs, the boy entered and confronted the djinn who lay in a great mound of bedclothes, which smouldered and smoked because of the enormous heat given out by the djinn’s body.

  ‘The djinn looked pleased to see him and produced from under the blankets a slightly scorched letter, saying, “Now you should know that there are all sorts of djinn, good and bad, learned and unlearned. Some djinn even know the Koran by heart. I am not one of those. I cannot even read. But I have here in my talons a letter which contains the truth about you and your paternity. Take it down into the village below and have it read to you. All I ask in return for the favour of handing it over to you is that you come back to me directly and tell me what it says, for your story may be interesting and there is nothing I like more than a good story.”

  ‘Then the djinn turned over painfully in his bed and the boy, after growling ruminatively to himself for a while, set off down towards the village. A night and the greater part of a day passed before the wolf-boy returned and stood before the djinn again. He was bloody and covered with bruises.

  ‘“Well, what happened?” asked the djinn, raising himself from his steaming bed. The boy grunted and gesticulated furiously. The djinn did not hide his amusement. “Ah! I had forgotten that you are incapable of speech. How frustrating! You are suffering from what we djinn call aphasia. It is an illness in which the sufferer is unable to put his thoughts and experiences into words. How should you speak, when language is something that is learnt from one’s parents? You cannot speak. Therefore you cannot solve the riddle of your paternity. On the other hand, the riddle has not yet been solved. Therefore you cannot speak. Here is a knot indeed! How shall we unravel it? Well, the truth is that you are afraid to discover your origins. The knot is within you. You are silent, and have been silent all these years, lest you should discover the whereabouts of your father and re-encounter the man who you believe left you as a baby to the mercy of the forest and the wolves. But your silence is superfluous. I can now tell you that your father is dead.”

  ‘The djinn waited to see what effect his words would have. The boy swallowed and swallowed. He seemed to be almost choking. Then the words came tumbling out. For a long time they were nothing but curses. Finally he cooled down sufficiently to tell the djinn his story and even to find some pleasure in its phrasing.

  ‘“I set off to the village as you told me. The day was hot, so I felt increasingly thirsty as I descended the mountain. I had almost reached the village when, at a crossroads, I met an old man with one eye. He had also, I noticed, a water flask strapped to his belt. I gestured that he should give me some water. He understood my meaning and replied in words, ‘Why should I?’

  ‘“I showed him my parched tongue and acted out my distress. ‘What is that to me? Still there is something about you. I will give you the water, but first you must answer me this riddle:

  I ask thee for the seven already named.

  They err not, cannot be forgotten, are both old and new.

  Whoever walks in them walks in both life and death.’”

  ‘The djinn snorted. “I imagine that even with his one eye he saw that you have the appearance of an idiot, and he must have calculated that even if, by some extraordinary chance, you knew the answer, you would not be able to utter it. Go on. What happened next?”

  ‘The boy scowled before continuing. “I stared at him in despair. Then it occurred to me that even if I could not get him to give me some water, he still might save me a walk into the village. So I thrust the letter you gave me into his hands and looked at him hopefully. He scanned the letter and returned it to me. He was furious. ‘You have answered the riddle,’ he said. Then he looked crafty. ‘I promised you the water, but I did not promise you the cup.’ And with that he poured the water on to the ground before my feet, where it trickled away into the dust. Enraged, I flew at him and tried to tear his throat out with my teeth. Then, discovering that my teeth were neither long enough nor sharp enough, I strangled him instead.

  ‘“I looked, appalled, on the first man I had ever killed. Then I went over his body to discover if there was anything of any value on it. There was nothing but a letter. Taking that and my own letter, which I had shown him, I proceeded to the village.

  ‘“There I made it understood that I wanted to be taken to a man who could read what I had in my hand. I was taken to the professional letter writer who wrote and read all letters in the village. ‘Show me,’ he said. Then, after he had been reading silently a while, he said, ‘This is very interesting.’ Then he went away and gathered half the village around him. Then when he was satisfied that he had a large enough audience, he began to read to us all.”’

  Mektoub. It is written. This is a tale about destiny and its strangeness... I never knew my parents. I was a foundling and, as far as my earliest memories stretch, I was raised among the apes of the forest. Then one day, while still a small child, I was discovered sitting on the edge of the forest by humans and I was taken by them to a nearby town. There was a school teacher in the town, attached to the service of the great mosque, and I was entrusted to his care. Insofar as it was within my limited abilities, I learnt from this man the manners and speech of humankind. Eventually the time came for me to be apprenticed to a craft or profession. However it proved difficult to find a master to take me, for my mysterious ancestry weighed against me and I was in truth surly and apparently slow in my wits. But one day my teacher and I were walking in the bazaar in search of a suitable master, when we were approached by a man who said that he was looking for crew for his ship, which he proposed to sail to trade with the islands east of Sumatra.

  The school teacher and he readily agreed that I, who stood there sullenly, should be enrolled amongst its crew. The contract was signed and the captain paid the teacher some money. My new master conducted me to the docks. If only I had known then what I was to learn later, I should have turned and fled back to the forests, there to live in savage contentment on nuts and fruits, but I was young, I thought that my wearisome education was over and I welcomed the prospect of adventure! I followed the captain onto the ship. The captain was fairly pleased with the bargain he had struck with the school teacher. Since it was clear that the captain was not rich and it was suspected that his obscure enterprise was dangerous, he had found it difficult to raise a crew. The crew that he had succeeded in collecting consisted, for the most part, of the criminal, the maimed and (like myself) the slow witted.

  The captain was an old man, grim and embittered. He was possessed, as I was subsequently to learn, by a consciousness of past sin and a present purpose, though both alike were hidden from me then. The crew served him reluctantly. It was notorious among the crew and indeed widely noised in the town that the captain had no interest in trade with the islands east of Sumatra or anywhere else. Instead, it was rumoured, he proposed to sail the ship to the end of the Earth in pursuit of a secret purpose of his own.

  He told us as much on the day we weighed anchor. He addressed us from the poop deck. ‘I am on a quest,’ he said.


  Oaf that I was, I did not know the word (I certainly know its meaning now), so I asked, ‘What is a quest?’

  ‘A quest is to ask a question while in motion, that is all, ’ he replied.

  ‘What questions are you asking?’ asked another of the crew, but he became angry and would reveal no more to us deckhands. The only man he really confided in was the ship’s mate.

  We weighed anchor. What a voyage that was! For me it passed like a dream. I was appointed to watch from the crow’s nest and I would sit there day after day looking rapturously out or down. Outwards I looked on pure and limitless blue. There was no horizon. The air in those equatorial parts was warm and jelled. It had a natural tendency to congeal and form images, just as the earth forms stones in the ground through its natural generative powers; so at least my master at the mosque had taught me. Education is a wonderful thing. So I saw mirages—trains of camels and castles in the air, floating islands, ships sailing upside down on the underside of the sky, looming chromatic haloes and distended leviathans. Once in the distance I thought I saw our own ship, labouring in the winds, sailing back towards our port of departure. Doubtless it was my expectancy anticipating the reality. It was difficult to see clearly.

  Downwards, I would let my eye play following the complexity of the rigging with its tangles and drapes descending to the deck where the poor crew of bestial half men toiled under the eye of the captain. Marked out by my simian agility to live among the spars and ropes, I could look down on them and contemplate wider vistas. Those labouring animals below, could they and I be ennobled by our captain’s mysterious purpose?