by Noah Gordon
There were slaves with the women and he recognized the eunuch Wasif standing behind a small figure disguised by a shapeless black dress. Her face was hidden behind the horsehair veil but he could note Despina’s eyes, and where they were turned.
Following her gaze to Karim, Rob saw something that made it difficult for him to breathe. Karim had found Despina too and held her with his glance. As he ran past her, his hand went up and touched the little bag suspended around his neck.
It seemed to Rob a naked declaration to all, but the sound of the cheering didn’t change. And although Rob tried to study the crowd for Ibn Sina’s presence, he didn’t see him among the spectators as they went past the madrassa.
Karim ran away from the pain in his side until it dwindled, and he ignored the discomfort in his feet. Now the time of attrition had begun and all along the way men in donkey-drawn wagons were busy picking up runners who couldn’t go on.
When he claimed his third arrow he allowed Mirdin to smear him with the ointment, made of oil of roses, oil of nutmeg, and cinnamon. It turned his light-brown skin yellow but was good against the sun. Jesse kneaded his legs while Mirdin applied the salve, then held a cup to his cracked lips, giving him more water than he desired.
Karim tried to protest. “Don’t want to have to piss!”
“You’re sweating too hard to piss.”
He knew it was true, and he drank. In a moment he was away again and running, running.
This time when he passed the school he was aware that she saw an apparition, the melted yellow grease streaked by rivulets of sweat and muddied dust.
Now the sun was high and hot, baking the ground so the heat of the road penetrated the leather of his shoes and seared his soles. Along the route men stood and held out containers of water, and sometimes he paused to drench his head before darting off without thanks or a blessing.
After he had collected the fourth arrow, Jesse left him, to reappear in a short time on his wife’s black mount, doubtless leaving the brown horse to water and rest in cool shade. Mirdin waited by the post containing the arrows, studying the other runners, according to their plan.
Karim kept running past men who had collapsed. Someone stood bent over at the waist in the middle of the road, weakly vomiting nothing. A muttering Indian stopped hobbling and kicked off his shoes. He ran half a dozen steps, leaving the red tracks of his bloody feet, and then stood quietly and waited for a wagon.
When Karim passed the maristan on the fifth lap Despina was no longer on the roof. Perhaps she had been frightened by his appearance. It didn’t matter, for he had seen her and now occasionally he reached up and grasped the little bag containing the thick locks of black hair he had cut from her head with his own hands.
In places the wagons and the feet of the runners and the hooves of the attendants’ animals raised a fearful dust that coated his nostrils and throat and made him cough. He began to close down his consciousness until it was small and remote somewhere deep inside, dwelling on nothing, allowing his body to continue to do what it had done so many times.
The call to Second Prayer was a shock.
All along the route, runners and spectators alike prostrated themselves toward Mecca. He lay and trembled, his body unable to believe that the demands on it had halted, however briefly. He wanted to remove his shoes but knew he wouldn’t get them back on his swollen feet. When the prayers were finished, for a moment he didn’t move.
“How many?”
“Eighteen. Now it is the race,” Jesse told him.
Karim started up again, forcing himself to run through the heat shimmer. But he knew it was not yet the race.
It was harder to climb the hills than it had been all morning but he kept to the steady rhythm of his running. This was the worst, with the sun directly overhead and the real testing before him. He thought of Zaki and knew that unless he died he would keep going until at least he had won second place.
Until now he hadn’t had the experience, and in another year perhaps his body would be too old for such punishment. It would have to be today.
The thought allowed him to reach within himself and find strength when some of the others were searching and finding nothing, and when he slid the sixth arrow into his quiver, he turned at once to Mirdin. “How many?”
“Six runners are left,” Mirdin said wonderingly, and Karim nodded and began to run again.
Now it was the race.
He saw three runners ahead and knew two of them. He was overtaking a small, finely made Indian. Perhaps eighty paces in front of the Indian was a youth whose name Karim didn’t know but whom he recognized as a soldier in the palace guard. And far ahead but close enough for him to identify was a runner of note, a man from Hamadhān named al-Harāt.
The Indian had slowed but picked up the pace when Karim drew even, and they went on together, matching stride for stride. He had very dark skin, almost ebony, under which long, flat muscles gleamed in the sun as he moved.
Zaki’s skin had been dark, an advantage under a hot sun. Karim’s skin needed the yellow salve; it was the color of light leather, the result, Zaki always said, of a female ancestor being fucked by one of Alexander’s fair Greeks. Karim thought something like that probably was true. There had been a number of Greek invasions and he knew light-skinned Persian men, and women with snowy breasts.
A little spotted dog had come from nowhere and was pacing them, barking.
When they passed the estates on the Avenue of the Thousand Gardens people held out melon slices and cups of sherbet but Karim didn’t take any, being fearful of cramps. He accepted water, which he put into his cap before setting it back on his head and reaping momentary relief until the hat dried in the sun with remarkable swiftness.
The Indian grabbed green melon and gobbled as he ran, discarding the rind over his shoulder.
Together they passed the young soldier. He was already out of contention, a full lap behind, for there were only five arrows in his quiver. Two dark red lines ran down the front of his shirt from nipples rubbed raw. Every time he took a step his legs buckled slightly at the knees and it was clear he wouldn’t be running much longer.
The Indian looked at Karim and gave a white-toothed grin.
Karim was dismayed to see that the Indian was running easily and his face was alert but relatively unstrained. Runner’s intuition said that the man was stronger than Karim and less tired. Perhaps faster, too, if it should come to that.
The spotted dog that had run with them for miles suddenly swerved and cut across their path. Karim jumped to avoid him and felt the brush of the warm fur, but the dog smashed solidly into the other runner’s legs and the Indian fell to the ground.
He started up as Karim turned to him, then he sat back in the road. His right foot was twisted crazily and he gazed at his ankle in disbelief, unable to comprehend that his race was done.
“Go!” Jesse shouted to Karim. “I will take care of him. You go!” And Karim turned and ran as if the Indian’s strength were transferred to his own limbs, as if Allah had spoken with the Dhimmīs voice, because he was beginning truly to believe that now might be the time.
He trailed al-Harāt most of the lap. Once, on the Street of the Apostles, he came up close behind and the other runner glanced back. They had known one another in Hamadhān and he saw recognition in al-Harāt’s eyes, and an old familiar contempt: Ah, it is Zaki-Omar’s bum boy.
Al-Harāt increased his pace and soon led him again by 200 paces.
Karim took the seventh arrow and Mirdin told him of the other runners as he gave water and smeared the yellow ointment.
“You are fourth. In first place is an Afghan whose name I don’t know. A man from al-Rayy is second, name of Mahdavi. Then al-Harāt and you.”
For a lap and one-half he trailed al-Harāt like one who knew his place, sometimes wondering about the two who were so far ahead they weren’t in his sight. In Ghazna, a place of towering mountains, Afghan men ran trails so high the air was thin, and it
was said that when they ran at lower altitudes they didn’t tire. And he had heard that Mahdavi of al-Rayy also was a good runner.
But while descending the short, steep hill on the Avenue of the Thousand Gardens he saw a dazed runner at the edge of the road, holding his right side and weeping. They passed him by, but soon Jesse brought the news that it had been Mahdavi.
Karim’s own side had begun to hurt again and both his feet gave him pain. Call to Third Prayer caught him just beginning the ninth lap. Third Prayer was a time that had worried him, for the sun was no longer high and he feared his muscles would stiffen. But the heat was unrelenting and pressed down like a heavy blanket as he lay and prayed, and he was still sweating when he rose and began to run again.
This time, though he kept his pace, he seemed to overtake al-Harāt as if the Hamadhān man were walking. When he drew abreast, al-Harāt tried to make a race of it but soon his breathing was loud and desperate and he was lurching. The heat had him; as a physician, Karim knew that the man could die if it was the kind of heat sickness that brought on a red face and dry skin, but al-Harāt’s face was pale and wet.
Nevertheless he stopped when the other staggered to a halt.
Al-Harāt still had enough contempt in him to glare, but he wanted a Persian to win. “Run, bastard.”
Karim left him gladly.
From the high slope of the first descent, gazing down the straight stretch of white road, he caught sight of a small figure moving up the long hill in the distance.
As he watched, the Afghan fell and then got to his feet and began to run again, finally turning out of sight onto the Street of the Apostles. It was hard for Karim to hold himself in rein but he kept to his pace and didn’t see the other runner again until he had achieved the Avenue of Ali and Fatima.
They were much closer. The Afghan fell again and got up to run raggedly; he may have been accustomed to thin air but the mountains of Ghazna were cool and the Ispahan heat served Karim, who kept closing the distance.
When they ran past the maristan he didn’t see or hear the people he knew because he was concentrating on the other runner.
Karim reached him after the fourth and final fall. They had brought the Afghan water and were applying wet cloths as he lay gasping like a landed fish, a squat man with broad shoulders and dark skin. He had slightly slanted brown eyes that were calm as they watched Karim pass him.
Victory brought more anguish than triumph, for now there had to be a decision. He had won the day; did he have it in him to try for the Shah’s calaat? The “royal garment,” five hundred gold pieces, and the honorary but well-paid appointment as Chief of the Chatirs would go to any man who completed the entire course of 126 miles in less than twelve hours.
Rounding the maidan, Karim faced the sun and studied it. He had run all through the day, almost 95 miles. It should be enough and he ached to turn in his nine arrows and collect the prize of coins, then to join other runners now splashing in the River of Life. He needed to soak in their envy and admiration and in the river itself, a sinking into green waters that was more than earned.
The sun hovered above the horizon. Was there time? Was there strength in his body still? Was it Allah’s wish? It would be very close, and perhaps he could not complete another 31 miles before the call to Fourth Prayer signaled the setting of the sun.
Yet he knew that total victory might banish Zaki-Omar from his bad dreams more completely than lying with all the women of the world.
And thus when he had collected another arrow, instead of turning toward the officials’ tent he started around for the tenth time. The white dust road before him was vacant, and now he was running against the dark djinn of the man to whom he had yearned to be a son and who had made him, instead, a whore.
* * *
When the race had dwindled to the last man and the chatir was won, the spectators had begun to disperse; but now all along the way, people saw Karim coming alone and they flocked to regather as they realized he was trying to gain the Shah’s calaat.
They were sophisticated in matters of the annual chatir and knew the toll exacted by running through a day of crippling heat, and they raised such a hoarse roar of love that the sound seemed to pull him around the course, a lap he almost enjoyed. At the hospital he was able to pick out faces beaming with pride, al-Juzjani, the nurse Rūmī, Yussuf the librarian, the hadji Davout Hosein, even Ibn Sina. When he sighted the old man his eyes went at once to the roof of the hospital and he saw that she was back and knew that when he was alone with her again, she would be the real prize.
But he began to experience his gravest trouble on the second half of the lap. He was accepting water often and pouring it over his head, and now fatigue made him careless and some of the water splashed onto his left shoe, where almost immediately the wet leather began to abrade the abused skin from his foot. Perhaps it made a tiny alteration in his stride, for soon he developed a cramp in the right hamstring.
Worse, when he came down toward the Gates of Paradise the sun was lower than he expected. It was directly over the far hills, and as he started on what he prayed was the last lap but one, weakening swiftly and fearful that there was insufficient time, he was taken by the deepest melancholy.
Everything became heavy. He stayed with the pace but his feet were transformed into stones, the quiver full of arrows struck him a ponderous blow in the back with every step, and even the little bag containing her locks of hair pushed against him as he ran. He threw water on his head more often and felt himself fading.
But the people of the city had caught a strange fever. Each of them had become Karim Harun. Women screamed as he passed. Men made a thousand vows, shouted his praises, called upon Allah, implored the Prophet and the twelve martyred Imams. Anticipating him by the approaching cheers, they watered the street before he came, scattered flowers in his path, ran alongside and fanned him or sprinkled scented water on his face, his thighs, his arms, his legs.
He felt them enter his blood and bones and he caught their fire. His stride strengthened and steadied.
His feet rose and fell, rose and fell. He kept the pace, but now he didn’t hide from the hurt, seeking instead to pierce the smothering fatigue by concentrating on the pain in his side, the pain in his feet, the pain in his legs.
When he took the eleventh arrow, the sun had begun its slide behind the hills and had the shape of half a coin.
He ran through the deepening light, his last dance, up the first short incline, down the steep drop to the Avenue of the Thousand Gardens, through the flat, up the long climb, his heart pounding.
When he attained the Avenue of Ali and Fatima he threw water on his head and couldn’t feel it.
Pain ebbed along with every response as he ran on. When he reached the school he didn’t look for friends, more concerned with the fact that he had lost the sensory experience of his limbs.
Yet the feet he couldn’t feel kept on with their rise and fall, propelling him forward, slap-slap-slap.
This time at the maidan no one watched the entertainments but Karim didn’t hear the roar or see them, running in his silent world to the end of a fully ripened and dwindling day.
When he entered the Avenue of the Thousand Gardens again, he saw a shapeless dying red light on the hills. It seemed to him that he moved slowly, so slowly, across the flat and up the hill—the last hill he must climb!
He swept downward, the most dangerous time, for if his senseless legs made him stumble and sprawl, he wouldn’t get up again.
When he made the turn and entered the Gates of Paradise there was no sun. He watched blurred people now who seemed to float above the ground, silently urging him on, but in his mind his vision was clear as a mullah entered the narrow, winding stairway of the mosque, climbed to the little platform in the high tower, waited for the last ray’s dying …
He knew he had only moments.
He tried to will dead legs to longer strides, straining to quicken the ingrained pace.
Ahead o
f him, a small boy left his father’s side and ran out into the road; he froze, staring at the giant who lumbered down on him.
Karim swept the child up and lifted him to his shoulders as he ran, and the roar shook the earth. When he reached the posts with the boy, Alā was waiting, and as he grasped the twelfth arrow the Shah took off his own turban and exchanged it for the runner’s feathered cap.
The surge of the crowd was checked by the call of the muezzins from minarets all over the city. The people turned toward Mecca and dropped into prayer. The child he still held began to wail and Karim released him. Then the prayer was over, and when he rose, king and nobles were at him like nattering puppies. Beyond, the common people began to scream again and pushed forward to claim him, and it was as if Karim Harun suddenly owned Persia.
PART FIVE
The War Surgeon
51
THE CONFIDENCE
“Why do they dislike me so?” Mary asked Rob.
“I don’t know.” He made no attempt to deny it; she wasn’t a fool. When the smallest Halevi daughter toddled toward them from the house next door, her mother Yudit, who no longer brought gifts of warm bread for the foreign Jew, ran to snatch up her daughter wordlessly, fleeing as from corruption. Rob took Mary to the Jewish market and discovered he was no longer smiled upon as the Jew of the calaat, no longer the favorite customer of Hinda the woman merchant. They passed their other neighbors Naoma and her stout daughter Lea and the two women looked away coldly, as if Yaakob ben Rashi hadn’t hinted to Rob over a Sabbath meal that he might become part of the shoemaker’s family.
Wherever Rob walked in Yehuddiyyeh he saw conversing Jews fall silent and stare. He noted the meaningful nudge, the burning resentment in an occasional glance, even a muttered curse on the lips of old Reb Asher Jacobi the Circumciser, bitterness directed against one of their own who had partaken of forbidden fruit.