Alamut (44 page)

The last lamp had sputtered out. It was a wonderful summer night with its thousands of mysteries. Stars shone in the sky, blinking and shimmering, remote, inexplicable riddles.

Mustafa circled a torch above his head, causing it to flare. He lit the path ahead of him with it, and six eunuchs followed him to the boats.

“Let’s look in on the girls on the way,” dance master Asad suggested. “This evening was a hard test for them.”

They went to the pavilion where Fatima was asleep with her companions. Asad pushed the door open and lifted the curtain over the entrance. Mustafa entered the room holding his torch high.

The girls all lay athwart the pillows. Some of them were completely naked, others were barely covered with coats or blankets. One or the other had already managed to remove her jewelry. Most of them, however, were still wearing theirs. Their lovely, soft limbs sank lightly into the silk and brocade. Their breasts rose and fell.

“This one sure mowed them down,” Asad said in a low voice. “They’re strewn around like casualties on a battlefield.”

Mustafa shuddered. The torch practically slid out of his hand. He bounded outdoors and hurried back toward the river, wailing out loud.

“Man is a beast. O Allah! What have they done to us?”

The following morning the grand dais joined Hasan, as agreed. He told them, “I was just with the boys. They’re all still asleep. It’s time for us to rouse them.”

They entered his chambers. He pulled the curtains aside, letting sunlight pour into the room. They looked inside the lift. The youths lay on their cots sleeping peacefully, just as they had the night before. The commanders approached them. Hasan inspected them closely.

“They haven’t changed a bit on the outside since last night. What their souls are like is something we’re about to find out.”

He shook Yusuf by the shoulder.

“Yusuf, do you hear me?! It’s broad daylight outside and you’re still asleep!”

Yusuf opened his eyes in alarm. He lifted himself up on his elbows and shook his head in confusion. He stared at the commanders dully and without understanding.

Gradually things began to dawn on him. His face took on an expression of utter astonishment.

“What on earth were you up to last night that you’ve slept so late?”

Hasan smiled roguishly. Yusuf timidly raised his eyes.

“I was in paradise by your grace, Our Master.”

“Must have been quite a pleasant dream, my boy.”

“No, no, I really was in paradise.”

“Go on! Your friends are going to laugh at you if you tell them that.”

“I know what I know, Sayyiduna. I really was in paradise.”

“Then do you believe that I’ve been given the key to the gates of paradise?”

“I know it now, Sayyiduna.”

The loud talking woke Suleiman. He sat up on his cot and furrowed his brow. His eyes went from Hasan’s face to Yusuf’s.

Suddenly he remembered everything. His hands eagerly fumbled over his body, and he felt Halima’s bracelet under his robe. His face also showed tremendous amazement.

“See, now Suleiman is awake too. What on earth were you doing last night that you’ve slept so long?”

“I was in paradise by the grace of Our Master.”

“Oh, go on. Who’s going to believe that?”

“Let anybody just try to doubt me … What I mean is, I have proof that I was really there …”

“Proof? Show it to me.”

Suleiman realized too late that he had misspoken. He tried to talk his way out of it.

“I don’t even know how this got into my hand. I was feeling weak, I tried to grab onto something, and suddenly I was holding a bracelet in my hand. After that I don’t remember anything.”

“Show it to me!”

Reluctantly Suleiman handed Hasan his prize. The commander inspected at it from all sides and then handed it to the grand dais.

“Remarkable, indeed,” he said. “It appears to be a genuine heavenly bracelet.”

“Zuleika had one like it,” Yusuf interrupted. “But she told me I couldn’t bring it back with me to this world.”

“Suleiman, Suleiman,” Hasan said, shaking his head. “It seems rather strange to me how you came by this jewelry. Are you sure you didn’t rob paradise itself?”

Suleiman turned pale.

“I was afraid that Naim and Obeida wouldn’t believe me. So I kept it …”

“Do you have a reputation among your comrades for being such a liar?”

“I myself wouldn’t believe them if they ever told me anything like this.”

“In any event, I’m keeping the bracelet. The next time I send you back to paradise, I’ll give it to you to take along. You be sure to apologize to them then.”

In the meantime ibn Tahir had also awakened. He shook off his dizziness. He listened to the conversation wide-eyed.

Gradually his memory of the evening’s events also returned. Suddenly he felt his chest under his heart. He shuddered. He felt the impression of Miriam’s teeth.

Hasan turned toward him.

“I’ve been hearing some remarkable things from your comrades. Last night I left them in this room alongside you, and now they’re trying to make me believe that they didn’t spend the night here at all, but traveled straight into the beyond. At least you have always been a deliberate, cool thinker. Rescue me from the obligation of believing them. Otherwise I’ll be terrified of staying in this place, knowing that night phantoms can grab you by the arms and legs any minute and carry you off into God knows what unknown lands.”

“I know you’re joking, Sayyiduna. You yourself know full well who caused our nighttime journey, and now you want to put me to a test.”

“What? Ibn Tahir, even you claim you didn’t spend the night here? Then would that mean it’s not just symbolic that I hold the key to paradise in my hands?”

“Forgive me, Sayyiduna. Doubt will never creep into my heart again.”

“Fine. Well, friends, what will you tell your comrades if they ask you where you spent the night?”

“We’ll tell them that we were in paradise by the grace of Our Master.”

“Very good. I hope that from now on your faith will remain firm and unshaken. That it will be that kind of faith about which it has been said that it can move mountains. Go back to your comrades now.”

He called a guard and ordered him to lead them out of the tower.

When he was left alone with the grand dais, he relaxed visibly.

“That turned out the way I expected.”

Abu Ali leapt toward him.

“On my word,” he exclaimed. “You’ve found the Archimedean point.”

Both of them embraced him.

“I was skeptical about your success right up to the last minute,” Buzurg Ummid confessed. “Now I think you’ve actually succeeded in changing human nature. You’ve forged a terrible new weapon in these ashashin!”

“The third act is now at a close,” Hasan said and laughed. “We could give it the title ‘Awakening’ or perhaps ‘Return from Paradise.’ ”

The invitation to the three comrades to meet the supreme commander, and even more their absence overnight, caused the fedayeen to engage in some lively speculation and discussion. They talked about it in their sleeping quarters until late in the night, expecting the invitees would return and satisfy their curiosity.

“At last we’ll hear what Sayyiduna is like,” Obeida said.

“Why on earth do you suppose he summoned them?” Naim wondered.

“Why? Probably so he can scold them for seizing the Turks’ flag this morning.”

Obeida grinned.

“I wasn’t asking you. I was hoping to hear some more intelligent opinions.”

“You can’t be thinking he was going to send them off to heaven?” Abdullah mocked. “He called them so they could join the commanders for the banquet as a reward.”

“You could be right,” Jafar said.

“So why are they taking so long to come back?” Obeida speculated. “Maybe he gave them some special assignment and they’ve already left the castle?”

“Why hash through all this over and over?” Abdur Ahman commented. “Until they come back and tell us themselves where they’ve been and what they’ve seen, we can’t guess a thing. So it’s better that we go to sleep and get a well-deserved night’s rest.”

The next morning they had already been on their feet for a long time when the three absentees suddenly reappeared. They ran toward them as they approached, and surrounded them.

“Let’s head into our quarters,” Suleiman said. “We’ll talk there. I’m hungry and my arms and legs feel like they’ve been ground up in a mortar. I can barely stay on my feet.”

They entered their quarters and the three of them collapsed on their beds. They brought them some milk and bread.

Suleiman asked, “Who wants to speak?”

“You go ahead and start,” Yusuf replied. “I’m too impatient. I don’t think I could get it across to them. If I saw they weren’t following me, I’d get angry. And that wouldn’t be right either.”

They crowded together around their beds.

“Do you believe in miracles?” Suleiman asked.

The fedayeen looked at each other.

“The ancient ones, sure,” Naim said. “The Prophet forbids us to believe in new ones.”

“Oh, you spoil-sport! What does Sayyiduna teach?”

“I’m not aware he’s said anything about miracles.”

As Suleiman kept questioning them, Naim grew cautious.

“Haven’t you learned that Allah delivered the key to the gates of paradise into Sayyiduna’s hands?”

A tense silence followed. Suleiman looked victoriously from one face to the next. When at last he had sated himself on their curiosity, he continued.

“Fedayeen, last night Sayyiduna was gracious and opened the gates of paradise to us.”

They looked at each other. Nobody said a word.

Suddenly Obeida burst out in a loud guffaw. Then all the others became convulsed in laughter too. Only the three nocturnal travelers remained serious.

“They’ve made a plot to pull the wool over our eyes,” Abdur Ahman said.

“Suleiman’s making a fool of us as he always has,” Naim added.

“Let’s leave them alone,” ibn Vakas suggested haughtily. “They got drunk last night and then had to sleep it off in a barn somewhere. You can see it in their faces. They’re ashamed now and they’re trying to turn it all into a joke.”

“I knew it would be this way,” Suleiman growled angrily. “Ibn Tahir, you tell them. They’re most likely to believe you.”

“Enough of this game already,” Obeida said, growing angry. “I want to know if you had a chance to see Sayyiduna.”

Now it was ibn Tahir’s turn.

“Friends, it’s hard to talk about such incredible things as the three of us experienced last night. I understand you completely if you laugh at us. But everything Suleiman said is the absolute truth. So please, be patient and listen. He’ll continue now.”

His face was utterly serious. There was no trace of humor in his voice. Even so, the fedayeen wondered if the threesome might not be playing some practical joke.

“I’d accuse my own father of lying,” Jafar said, “if he made claims like that. But it seems strange to me that you, ibn Tahir, would join in this kind of nonsense. Go ahead and speak, Suleiman. At least we’ll hear what you were planning to tell us.”

Suleiman sat up on his bed. He looked around menacingly, then he began to speak.

He started at the very beginning, with their ascent of the tower, their encounter with the mace-bearing giants, and Abu Ali ushering them in to meet Sayyiduna. Whenever he missed a detail, Yusuf jumped in to supply it. In this way they described the supreme commander and their strange conversation with him in detail.

The fedayeen followed their narrative with mounting suspense. Yusuf’s interruptions were the best involuntary confirmation of the accuracy of their unusual report.

When Suleiman reached the point where Sayyiduna ordered the three of them to enter the cell containing the three cots, his listeners held their breath. Their eyes were glued to his lips.

Even ibn Tahir listened to him carefully. Instinctively he fingered his chest where Miriam’s tooth marks remained. Now, when he was back in the midst of his everyday life, he became seized by a horror at the memory of
that inexplicable nighttime event. For the first time he felt moved by true faith, the kind of faith that experience and reason deny.

Then Suleiman told them how Sayyiduna had given them miraculous pellets that gave them the sense of flying through unknown landscapes. He told them what he had dreamed then, until he had completely lost consciousness.

He reached the point where he woke up in paradise. The faces of the fedayeen glowed and their eyes shone feverishly. They shifted restlessly on their seats. He told them what he had first seen around him. He described the pavilion precisely, without leaving a single detail out. Then he came to a description of the girls.

“Maybe you just dreamt all of this.”

Obeida was trying to relax his extremely taut nerves.

The others were also finding this intense strain on their imaginations to be unbearable. They exchanged glances, breathing heavily. Naim crouched at the head of ibn Tahir’s bed, hunched over and pale with delectable horror. He was getting shivers down his spine in broad daylight, as though he were listening to gruesome ghost stories.

“I’m sure that everything I saw in that place was just as real as you are, sitting around me,” Suleiman continued. “You couldn’t imagine a more beautiful hall. Everything gold and silver. The couches are covered with rugs that are softer than moss. Strewn with pillows that you just sink into. As many choice foods as you could want. Sweet wine that cheers you up and doesn’t rob you of your reason. Everything exactly as it’s written in the Koran. And guys, the houris! Skin like milk and satin. Big, clear eyes. And their breasts, O Allah! Just thinking about them, I start to feel like there’s fire inside of me.”

He described his amorous adventures in detail.

“Oh, if only I could have been there”—the words came from the bottom of Obeida’s heart.

“If you’d so much as touched one of them, I would have ripped your guts out with my bare hands.”

Suleiman’s eyes flashed like a madman’s.

Obeida instinctively drew away.