Samarkand (15 page)

The following six chapters were devoted to the Ismailis and ended as follows: ‘I have spoken of this sect so that people can
be on their guard … My words will be remembered when these infidels manage to annihilate people close to the Sultan as well
as statesmen, when their drums sound everywhere and their designs are unveiled. In the midst of the resultant tumult the Prince
will surely know that everything I have said is the truth. May the Almighty preserve our master and the empire from an evil
fate!’

The day when a messenger arrived from the Sultan to see him
and invite him to join him on a trip to Baghdad, the Vizir had not a moment’s doubt of what was in store for him. He called
Khayyam to take his leave of him.

‘In your condition, you should not cover such distances,’ Khayyam told him.

‘In my condition nothing matters anymore, and it is not the journey which will kill me.’

Omar was lost for words. Nizam kissed him and dismissed him amicably, before going to bow before the man who had condemned
him. With supreme elegance, recklessness and perversity, the Sultan and the Vizir were both playing with death.

When they were
en route
for the place of trial, Malikshah questioned his ‘father’:

‘How long do you think you will yet live?’

Nizam replied without a hint of hesitation:

‘A long time, a very long time.’

The Sultan was distraught:

‘You can still get away with being arrogant with me, but with God! How can you be so sure. You ought to call upon His will
to be done for He is the arbiter of life!’

‘I replied thus because I had a dream last night. I saw our Prophet, God bless and preserve him. I asked him when I was going
to die and I received a reassuring response.’

Malikshah grew impatient:

‘What reply?’

‘The Prophet told me: “You are a pillar of Islam. You behave properly toward those around you, your existence is of value
to the believers and I thus am giving you the privilege of choosing when you will die.” I replied: “God forbid. What man could
choose such a day! One would always want more, and even if I determined the most distant date possible, I would live on obsessed
by its approach. On the eve of that day, whether it were in a month or a hundred year’s time, I would shake with fear. I do
not wish to choose the date. The only favour I ask, beloved Prophet, is not to outlive my master, Sultan Malikshah. I have
seen him grow up and have heard him call me “father”, and I would not wish to undergo the humiliation
and the suffering of seeing him dead.” “Granted!” the Prophet said to me. “You will die forty days before the Sultan.”’

Malikshah’s face was pale and he was trembling so much that he almost gave himself away. Nizam smiled:

‘You see, I am not showing any arrogance. I am now sure that I will live a long time.’

Was the Sultan tempted, at that moment, to forgo having his Vizir killed? He would have been well advised to do so. Even if
the dream was only a parable, Nizam in fact took formidable precautions. On the eve of his departure, the officers of his
guard, assembled at his side, had sworn one after another with their hands placed on the Book that, should he be killed, not
a single one of his enemies would live on!

In the Seljuk empire, at a time when it was the most powerful empire in the world, a woman dared to take power with her bare
hands. Seated behind her tenting, she arrayed armies from one end of Asia to the other, named kings and vizirs, governors
and
qadis
, dictated letters to the Caliph and sent emissaries off to the master of Alamut. To emirs who grumbled upon hearing her give
orders to the troops, she responded: ‘Here it is the men who make war, but it is the women who tell them against whom to fight.’

In the Sultan’s harem, she was nicknamed ‘the Chinese woman’. She had been born in Samarkand, to a family originally from
Kashgar, and, like her elder brother Nasr Khan, her face showed no intermingling of blood – neither the Semitic features of
the Arabs, nor the Aryan features of the Persians.

She was Malikshah’s oldest wife by far. When she married him he was only nine years old and she was eleven. She waited patiently
for him to mature. She had felt the first down of his beard, surprised the first spring of desire in his body and seen his
limbs grow out, and his muscles swell up as he turned into the majestic windbag whom she soon learnt to tame. She had never
ceased being the favourite wife – adulated, wooed, honoured and above all listened
to and obeyed. At the end of a day, or upon his return from a lion hunt, a tournament, a bloody clash, a stormy assembly of
the emirs or worse – a tedious work session with Nizam, Malikshah would find peace in the arms of Terken. He would peel off
her diaphanous silk covering, snuggle up to her bare skin, play about, bellow and tell her about his exploits and what was
tiring him. The Chinese woman would throw her arms around the excited lion, cocoon him, give him a hero’s welcome in the folds
of her body and hold on to him long and tight, only letting go so that she could pull him back again; he stretched himself
out with all his weight, conquering, breathless, panting, submissive and bewitched. She knew how to take him to the very limits
of pleasure.

Then, gently his thin fingers would start to trace her eyebrows, her eyelashes, her lips, her earlobes and the lines of her
moist neck; the lion was subdued, he was purring, growing sluggish, smiling. Terken’s words would then flow into the hollows
of his soul. She would speak of him, of herself and their children. She would tell him anecdotes, recite poems for him, whisper
parables laden with teachings. He was never bored for a second in her arms and he resolved to stay with her every evening.
In his own rough, childish and animal way he loved her and was to love her until his last breath. She knew that he could refuse
her nothing and it was she who planned his conquests of the moment, his mistresses or provinces. In the whole empire she had
no rival other than Nizam, and in this year of 1092 she was on the verge of felling him.

Was the Chinese woman exultant at this? How could she be? The moment she was alone, or with Jahan her confidante, he would
cry the tears of a mother and Sultana. She could curse her unjust fate and no one thought to blame her for it. Her eldest
son had been chosen by Malikshah as his heir and was with him on all his trips and at all his ceremonies. His father was so
proud of him that he displayed him everywhere, showing him his provinces one by one, telling him of the day when he would
succeed him. ‘No Sultan ever left such a large empire to his son!’ he would tell him. At that time Terken was indeed overjoyed
and no unhappiness soured her smile.

Then the heir died from a sudden, shattering and merciless fever. In vain the doctors prescribed bleedings and poultices but
within
two nights he passed away. It was said to be the work of the evil eye or even an undetectable poison. Terken managed to control
her tears and pull herself together. When the period of mourning was over, she had her second son designated as heir to the
throne. Malikshah took to him very quickly and showered him with surprising titles for a nine-year-old, but it was an era
of pomp and ceremony: ‘King of kings, Pillar of the State, Protector of the Prince of the Believers’ …

The curse of the evil eye did not tarry in doing away with the new heir. He died as suddenly as his brother of a fever which
was just as suspect.

The Chinese woman had a last son whom she asked the Sultan to designate as heir. The affair was trickier this time, since
the child was only a year-and-a-half old and Malikshah was the father of three other boys who were all older. Two of them
were born to a slave girl, but the eldest, named Barkiyaruk, was the son of the Sultan’s own cousin. What pretext could he
use to brush them aside? Who better than this prince, who was doubly Seljuk, to be elevated to the rank of heir to the throne?
Such was the view of Nizam, who wanted to interject some order into the Turkish squabbles, who had always been eager to institute
some form of hereditary dynasty and who had insisted, with the best arguments in the world, that Malikshah’s eldest son should
be designated heir, but with no success.

Malikshah dared not go against Terken, and as he could not nominate his son by her, he nominated no one preferring to risk
dying without an heir, like his father and all his clan.

Terken was not satisfied and would not be until her lineage was duly assured – that is to say that more than anything in the
world she desired to see Nizam, the obstacle to her ambitions, fall into disgrace. In order to obtain his death warrant, she
was ready to use intrigue or issue threats, and day after day she followed the negotiations with the Assassins. She had accompanied
the Sultan and his vizir on their journey to Baghdad. She was keen to be there for the execution.

It was Nizam’s last meal. The supper was an
iftar
, the banquet which marks the break of the fast of the tenth day of Ramadan. Dignitaries, courtiers and emirs of the army
were all unusually abstemious out of respect for the holy month. The table was laid inside a huge yurt. Slaves carried torches
to enable people to choose their food. Sixty ravenous hands stretched toward the huge silver platters, the best piece of camel
or lamb and the choicest legs of partridge, skimming off flesh and sauce. They divided the food, ripped it apart and devoured
it. If someone found himself in possession of a particularly toothsome item, he would offer it to a neighbour he wished to
honour.

Nizam was eating little. That evening he was suffering more than usual. His chest was on fire and his insides felt as if they
were being churned by the hand of an invisible giant. He was making an effort to hold himself upright. Malikshah was at his
side, munching everything his neighbours passed to him. From time to time he was seen to look at his vizir out of the corner
of his eye, thinking that he must be afraid. Suddenly he stretched his hand toward a plate of black figs, selected the plumpest
and offered it to Nizam who accepted it politely and bit into it. What savour could figs have when one was three times condemned,
by God, the Sultan and the Assassins?

By the time the
iftar
was over, it was already night. Malikshah jumped up, in a hurry to go and join his Chinese woman and tell her about the vizir’s
grimaces. Nizam leant on his elbows and hoisted himself up with some effort. His harem’s tents were not far off and his old
female cousin would have prepared a concoction of myrobalan to provide him some ease. He only had to take a hundred steps
to be there. Around him was the inevitable confusion of royal camps with its soldiers, servants and wandering tradesmen. Now
and then he could hear the stifled laugh of a courtesan. How long the path seemed, and he was dragging himself along it alone.
Usually he was surrounded by a group of courtiers, but who now wished to be seen with an outlaw? Even the beggars had fled
– what could they hope to obtain from a disgraced old man?

However someone was approaching him, a decent-looking man clothed in a patched coat. He muttered some pious words and
Nizam felt for his purse and retrieved three pieces of gold. This unknown man who would still approach him ought to be rewarded.

There was a flash, the flash of a sword and everything happened very quickly. Hardly had Nizam seen the hand move before the
dagger pierced his clothing and skin and the point worked its way between his ribs. He had not even shouted out, but just
made a dazed movement and gasped a last breath. As he was dying, he may have seen again, in slow motion, the blade, the arm
stretching out and withdrawing and the nervous mouth which spat out: This present comes to you from Alamut!’

Then cries went up. The Assassin had run off but had been tracked from tent to tent and found. Hurriedly they slit his throat
and dragged him barefoot to be thrown on to a fire.

In the years and decades to come, innumerable messengers from Alamut would meet the same death, the only difference being
that they would not attempt to flee. ‘It is not enough to kill our enemies,’ Hassan taught them. ‘We are not murderers but
executioners. We must act in public as an example. By killing one man we terrorize a hundred thousand. However, it is not
enough to execute and terrorize, we must also know how to die, for if, by killing, we discourage our enemies from undertaking
any action against us, by dying in the most courageous fashion, we force the masses to admire us, and from their midst men
will come to join us. Dying is more important than killing. We kill to defend ourselves, but we die to convert, and to conquer.
Conquering is the aim we are seeking; defending ourselves is only a means thereto.’

Assassinations generally took place on Friday in the mosque, at the moment of solemn prayer and in front of the assembled
people. The victim, be he vizir, prince or religious dignitary, would arrive surrounded by an imposing guard. The crowd would
be impressed, submissive and admiring. The emissary from Alamut would be there somewhere in the most unexpected of disguises
– as a member of the guard, for example. At the moment when everyone’s gaze was on the victim, he would strike. The victim
would die and the executioner would not move, but would yell out a formula he had
learnt and with a smile of defiance would wait to be set upon by the furious guards and then ripped limb from limb by the
frightened crowd. The message had been delivered; the successor to the person who had been assassinated would make himself
more conciliatory toward Alamut, and there would be a score, or two score conversions amongst those present.

So unreal were these scenes that it was often said that Hassan’s men were drugged. How otherwise could it be explained that
they went to their deaths with a smile? Some credence was given to the assertion that they were acting under the influence
of hashish and it was Marco Polo who popularized this idea in the West. Their enemies in the Muslim world would contemptuously
call them
hash-ishiyun
, ‘hashish-smokers’; some Orientalists thought that this was the origin of the word ‘assassin’, which in many European languages
has become synonymous with murderer. The myth of the ‘Assassins’ was more terrifying yet.