by Harold Lamb
"That's right," Din agreed, after considering. "But you're out of water, and probably out of money, Scheherazade. What are you going to do about it?”
For the first time at that table, the girl’s dark eyes turned up to him. Din was aware that the men stirred.
"Please,” Scheherazade cried, "l am going to ask you to bring the water down the river, here, to us!”
"That’s pretty near impossible,” Din reflected aloud.
"Yes, it is. But you are an American officer.” She looked frightened. "Will you do it?”
After he had watched the flies on his plate a while. Din said, “I can try.”
Clapping her hands, Scheherazade spoke swiftly to the men who knew no English. Imperceptibly their faces changed, in relief.
"Can you get the day off tomorrow?” Din asked thoughtfully. "It would help if you could do some talking for me up the river.”
Scheherazade seemed startled. "I? A woman? Why . . . yes.” And she smiled with the mystical satisfaction of a woman who knows that a man is so attracted to her that he would dare the impossible for her.
"You are so quiet,” she exclaimed happily. "The Americans I have seen pictured in the cinemas everywhere slapped people on the back and shot villains and kissed women.”
"They were Yankees you saw,” said Din.
But when it came time to leave, he noticed with satisfaction that the moon had blacked out behind clouds.
Surely, he thought, Iranian girls would tell a man good night in the car, like American girls, and that would be worth something in the case of Scheherazade. However, it happened otherwise.
The servant ran and carried out the lamp. Shams-i-Daulat and Iz-id-Din escorted them out to the jeep like a guard of honor, and Scheherazade only gave him a wonderful smile, as if sending her knight out to the road to encounter a dragon. Din went to sleep that night tenderly reconstructing that smile, without the least notion how he was going to make the Zendeh River flow past Isfahan.
In the morning he devoted some time to planning that difficult operation. First he telephoned the gendarmerie post to assemble his band, issue rifles with cartridge clips to his bandsmen and load them into a truck. Then he spent a half hour selecting and marking carefully with small dots of purple ink ten much-worn ten-toman bank notes.
This done to his satisfaction, he mounted the jeep and toured Isfahan, making some purchases—of paraffin, insulated wire, dry batteries and kindred electrical appliances. At every place he observed that a crowd gathered to watch him.
Lastly, he wangled two lengths of serviceable dynamite from the stores at the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company depot, where the manager eyed him quizzically. "I understand, major, that you have undertaken to bring rain water to Isfahan today?”
"Who says so?”
"Everyone. In particular, the servant of Shams-i-Daulat swears to it.”
Din sighed and prayed inwardly that it might rain. The clouds were certainly banking low around the mountains, but they stayed there and not a drop of moisture fell in the city by the time he had picked up Scheherazade and had driven out the river road to the last turn before the dam, with his truckload of seventeen rifle-toting musicians following.
When he stopped, Scheherazade looked worried. " Please, major, go back before you do such a dangerous thing!”
Squinting into the gray overcast, Din thought fleetingly of crawling over mud under such a gray sky toward a motor highway out of Naples with forty pounds of plastic explosives strapped to him. That had been two years before. Now, with her shoulder touching his, Scheherazade actually worried about him.
He laughed. "Listen, Scheherazade, to what you are going to do.”
And she did it perfectly, no longer worried, because the American officer had made a joke of this tremendous undertaking. She played her part, walking alone from the concealed vehicles out to the dam where she had bargained for water before. Going to the same pock-marked, forlorn gendarme, she slipped the ten soiled bank notes Din had given her into his hand, explaining that the water cart would arrive presently to be filled. While she waited, just as before, but with her heart pounding now, the man in the uniform of an army sergeant loitered up to talk to the pock-marked gendarme on the dam.
No sooner had this happened than the two vehicles appeared around the turn and halted on the road above the lake. The musicians strolled down toward the water and gathered around the gendarme sergeant with the horn. Toots and rumbles sounded as they tuned their instruments, apparently for a rehearsal. With interest, the half dozen idling soldiers and the pair of gendarmes on duty edged over to watch this performance.
Meanwhile the tall American wandered away from his band to survey the placid lake, which seemed much higher than the day before. On his arm he bore a light canvas carryall. Moving out along the earth dam, he inspected the wooden sluice gate, and sat down with his bag between his knees. Scheherazade watched, fascinated, as he washed his hands in the cool clean water. So did the army sergeant, who retraced his steps toward the American.
After a moment, the American rose and returned along the dam, letting out behind him from the bag two lengths of what seemed to be fish line or wire. The sergeant quickened his pace and said something, to which the officer paid no attention.
"All right, Scheherazade!" he called to her. “Get going!"
Obediently she started to walk away toward the jeep, but slowly, looking over her shoulder. The officer was moving his hands over the coat of the sergeant, who looked surprised. Then the American knelt as if to put something into his bag. Toward him the circle of the band was moving, and from the gardens and house of General Yendikhast up the elope other men were hastening.
Water heaved and cascaded over the middle of the dam. Scheherazade heard a thud and a roar, and she screamed. Because from his garden gate, in a flaming dressing gown, the dread figure of General Yendikhast raced down toward the scene of the explosion.
Carefully, Din sorted out in one hand the ten bank notes marked with his own purple ink that he had taken from the pocket of the reluctant sergeant. Quickly he took a look back at the dam. The damage was extensive, and growing. A ten-foot gap showed where the gate had been. Through this, water raced with surprising force. The torrent tore into the loose earth and stones of the dam, flooding the stagnant river bed below.
Assured of this, Din turned to face the medley of voices in Persian. Behind him, at the end of the dam, his bandsmen were closing in as he had directed them through Scheherazade, dropping their instruments and unslinging their rifles. They looked serious.
Toward Din, Yendikhast's dressing gown charged with the momentum of the steep slope and intense anger. A score of servants and orderlies followed faithfully.
"Come on, Tamerlane!” called Din, taking a rifle from Sergeant Farrash, who stood nearest him. What the general was shouting he did not understand. "Whoa, Huey Long!" he barked. And the general’s momentum diminished.
"Y'allah, Al Capone!” yelled Din, clashing down the rifle bolt.
At this ominous sound General Yendikhast stopped. He eyed the captive sergeant, the bank notes gripped in Din’s left fist, and then Din, who was shoving a cartridge into the chamber. Then with dignity he gathered his dressing gown around him and began to walk back to his house. Behind him, as in duty bound, followed the orderlies and servants. Din waited until the last had vanished into the gardens.
By then, most of the dam had vanished, also, downstream. Observing this, Din started rapid action by hand signals. The pock-marked sentry and the other gendarme on duty he left at the dam’s end. They looked more cheerful now. Motioning Sergeant Farrash to bring the army sergeant along, Din took his bandsmen back to the vehicles at the double. With his bag he climbed into the jeep beside Scheherazade, who looked awed.
"The river's on its way,” he said, "and let us go."
He raced the rush of water down, through many obstacles. The road had come alive with humans and animals stampeding toward the brown flood, sweeping over its anci
ent bed. Din piloted the jeep through sheep and around shouting villagers. When the jeep was stopped, farmers dropped their water jars and embraced its dusty sides.
"They say, 'The water comes'” cried Scheherazade.
"Tell them not to head off the wash into the ditches!” yelled Din. "Tell them there's more coming ... we hope. Tell that sergeant of mine to drop a man at each village to see they do it.”
Miraculously, the head of water kept coming on. At the Isfahan bridge, it was still racing abreast the jeep. And at this bridge waited the massed citizenry of the town. At sight of the flowing water, the crowd roared. Hastily, Din motioned the truck and the remaining gendarmes to stop and keep this crowd out of the river. On down the road he had taken the night before, he hurried the jeep.
The water reached the poplar grove at Scheherazade’s home, and flowed on, and Din went with it. The jeep now had the road to itself. Out of the corner of his eye he observed that Scheherazade looked unhappy. The unpredictable girl was crying quietly, wiping at her eyes.
Suddenly Din pulled up. "Well,” he asked, "what is it?”
”It’s me," sobbed Scheherazade. "I followed you and lured you to irrigate our farm. I tempted you and——Oh,it hurts me.”
"I know you did,” said Din, "but it doesn't hurt me.”
His arm closed around her tightly, his hand held her fast and he kissed her, feeling the warmth of her lips open to him and the tears on her cheek wet his nose. He felt her heart pounding, and then her arms straining at his shoulders, pulling him toward her. When he let her go, she hid her face. And Din had trouble breathing. Then a voice hailed them, and Shams-i-Daulat panted up, shouting that the water had come.
Din touched her shoulder and asked if she would come to the mosque at sunset.
As he was making his way to the seclusion of the mosque of the Mother of Shah Hussein, the stalwart British consul dismounted from a bicycle in his path.
"I have to warn you, major,” said the careful British voice, "that charges have been laid against you for trespassing, and threatening General Yendikhast with gendarmerie rifles.”
Din considered.
"Why, we went up there to serenade the general,” he said, "the band and I. And I went fishing.”
The consul rubbed his chin. "You blew up the dam with dynamite, to go fishing? ”
"That’s the way we do in the Wild West of America. Fast.”
The Britisher’s brows went up. "Do you expect anyone to believe that, major?”
"No,” said Din truthfully, "but try to disprove it.”
"Ah.” The big man began to look cheerful. “It was very fortunate for you that it rained heavily in the mountains last night and today.” Mounting his bicycle, he paused. "Not bad,” he chuckled, "not too bad at all, you know.”
Din was not so sure of that. Sitting on the marble bench inside the empty courtyard, he wondered if Scheherazade felt as confused as he did. A thing like this did not stop with a kiss in a car.
When he heard light footsteps behind him, his pulse jumped. He beheld, hurrying up to him, the schoolgirl companion of the first meeting. Something white was in her hand. Giggling, she held it out to Din and ran away.
Sitting down on the bench alone. Din did not stir for a long time. From the Chahar Bagh came the strains of music, followed by cheers, where Sergeant Farrash paraded his band before an appreciative audience at sunset.
In Din’s hand lay the lovely head of Scheherazade, painted in miniature upon ivory. And with it reposed a card which read; "To my American officer. From Scheherazade (Mrs. Iz-id-Din).”
For a moment the empty courtyard and the pool slowly filling with muddy water were touched, for Major Alford, with the romance of The Thousand and One Nights.
Live Target
NO clocks chimed the hour of one o’clock in Isfahan and no factory whistles blew in the sprawling half-ruined city that had once been the glory of Persia. Instead, an irresistible drowsiness crept through the lanky body of Maj. John D. Alford, of the United States Army, one of the small group of officers who had devoted their efforts to training the imperial Iranian gendarmery to be something it had never been in the past, a dependable state police. Straightway the major ceased his activity of packing and prepared to sleep.
Glancing at the shutters and windows of his hotel room to make sure they were closed against the midsummer-aftemoon heat, he stripped off his sweat-soaked O.D. shirt and breeches. Hoisting the water jar with the deftness of long experience, he drank copiously and sloshed the remainder over the tiled floor to make the air breathable if not endurable. Then looking over his bed sheet for insect life and finding none, he stretched out to gaze fondly at the chair upon which he had draped his musty civilian attire, complete to black shoes and rainbow-hued tie. When he rose again from the bed he would put on that suit to attend his last party in Iran. Exactly twenty-four hours after that, his last day of service being ended, he would take his place in the British courier car bound for Teheran, and a plane to undiluted bliss. For Major Alford was going home.
Home, to the twenty-five-year-old officer, was the hill region of Tazewell County, Virginia, the best if not the richest spot in God’s country. Since departing from West Point, Din—as they christened him, from his middle name "Dinwiddie,” to which he never referred—had spent what he hoped had been the worst years of his life, going to the 5th Army, and from the Bowling Alley at Anzio to rest in Iran—Persia for four long years under the mistaken idea that Iran might be as carefree as Virginia. He closed his eyes to sleep, imagining himself already seated at a counter over a cup of coffee, reading the day’s baseball scores in the evening paper.
A knock sounded on his door.
"K'ist?” he asked reluctantly, meaning who in tarnation was there.
A persuasive voice answered, "Sulaiman, the friend. In the bazaar the women are fighting over cotton cloth.”
"Let them,” responded Din with annoyance:
Women were always starting trouble in the bazaar over prices—now that the workers in the cotton mills had struck for more pay, and the mill owners had put up the price of cloth, while the dealers smuggled in cheaper cotton and silk from India and tried to charge the women the top prices prevailing in Isfahan.
But Din, listening to the retreating footsteps of Sulaiman, the friend, knew that the antique dealer’s real objective was to sell him the khanjar—the knife with the carved-ivory handle for which Din had once, in his enthusiasm for souvenirs, offered twenty-five tomans. Now that Din was about to depart from Isfahan, Sulaiman had come down in his price and was aggrieved because the Virginian would not pay it.
Drowsily, Din eyed the one souvenir too large to be packed in his foot locker—the head of a mountain sheep, shot with the old Springfield that had served him for a sporting rifle. Again a diffident rap sounded on the door. "If it please your honor,” a strange voice exclaimed, "your honor should know the people are rioting fiercely outside the bazaar in the Maidan.”
"Neh mi-danam,” Din growled. "Khoda mi-danad,” meaning that he didn’t know; only God knew. During these last days of furnace heat and strikes and the month of Ramadan when devout Persians fasted from dawn to dark, riots started only too easily. As long as no rifle-toting tribesmen were involved, they ended easily. And Din prayed silently that no tribesmen would appear in Isfahan.
A blessed silence followed. And Din, encouraged, added a clause to his prayer. Let there be no real trouble in Isfahan for twenty-eight hours. Perhaps because the group of American officers had done a good job in renovating the backward gendarmes, the Iranians fancied they could perform other miracles outside the line of duty. Din himself had been called on to perform the chore of restoring a full flow of water to a dried-up river just when he had been due to return home on leave. His duty in Isfahan would have ended months before had not the Gashghai tribesmen taken to stripping travelers on the highways to their undies, thus necessitating Din’s intervention. He was now not only highly resolved but determined to involve
himself in no trouble of whatsoever nature for the next twenty-eight hours.
At twenty-four minutes after one o’clock, the Maidan, or great square, of Isfahan lay almost deserted in the noonday heat. Since the Maidan had been originally a polo ground of long-dead shahs—an oversize field measuring five hundred and sixty yards by one hundred and seventy—the populace habitually shunned its expanse of baked clay and kept to the shaded arches of the ancient buildings ranged around it like a ghostly civic center. But now, at one end of the square, shopkeepers and customers emerging from the entrance of the great bazaar rioted with sticks and knives in a rising cloud of dust. In the center of the riot a knot of women tore at a bolt of cotton, while men tore the black veils from the women.
From the other end, beneath the blue mass of the Mosque of the Shah, an American jeep headed toward the trouble. Speeding across the empty space, past the former grandstand, the covered roof of the Ali Kapu Palace, the jeep reached the ancient stone goal posts and stopped at the edge of the crowd. Seen from the height of the Ali Kapu, it resembled a mechanical green beetle. The two figures on its front seat wore the smart new khaki uniforms of the gendarmes.
One of them stood up on the seat, a tall colonel distinguished by decorations and hand-tailored boots. The colonel raised his hand and shouted over the uproar, "Animals! Listen to me!”
Then, to the surprise of the driver beside him, the colonel sprawled down over the driver’s knees and slid outward to the ground. The driver was aware of a sharp sound like a handclap, and of the fact that his colonel looked dead.
At sunset, bathed, shaved and clad in his neatly pressed civilian suit, Major Alford emerged from his hotel and felt immediately that something in Isfahan had changed for the worse. And he felt that he had never before attracted so much attention. When he drove in a droshky to his farewell party, heads turned to follow him down the tree-lined avenue. A line of shirt-sleeved strikers squatting in the shade jeered at him.