The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice (48 page)

“Yours,” Khuff said. He nodded once and then went away.

Even before the sound of his horse had vanished, Rob’s knees gave way. He sank to the dirt floor, then he allowed himself to lie back and know no more than the dead mouse.

He slept for eighteen hours. When he woke he was cramped and aching, like an old man with frozen joints. He sat in the silent house and watched the dust motes in the sunlight that shone through the smoke hole in the roof. The house was in slight disrepair—there were cracks in the clay plaster of the walls and one of the windowsills was crumbling—but it was the first dwelling that had been truly his since his parents died.

In the small barn, to his horror his new horse stood waterless, unfed, and still saddled. After removing the saddle and carrying water in his hat from a nearby public well, he hurried to the stable where his mule and donkey were boarded. He bought wooden buckets, millet straw, and a basket of oats and bore them home on the donkey.

When the animals were tended, he took his new clothes and walked toward the public baths, stopping first at the inn of Salman the Lesser.

“I’ve come for my belongings,” he told the old innkeeper.

“They’ve been kept safe, though I mourned for your life when two nights passed and you didn’t return.” Salman stared at him fearfully. “A story is being told of a foreign
Dhimmi,
a European Jew, who went before the audience and won a
calaat
from the Shah of Persia.”

Rob nodded.

“It was indeed you?” Salman whispered.

Rob sat heavily. “I haven’t eaten since you fed me last.”

Salman lost no time in setting food before him. He tried his stomach gingerly on bread and goat’s milk and then, feeling nothing but famine, graduated to four boiled eggs, more bread in quantity, a small hard cheese, and a bowl of
pilah.
Strength began to steal back into his limbs.

At the baths he soaked long, soothing his bruises. When he put on his new clothing he felt like a stranger, though not so much of a stranger as he had felt the first time he put on the caftan. He managed the leg bindings with difficulty, but wrapping the turban would require instruction and for the time being he retained the leather Jew’s hat.

Back at the house, he rid himself of the dead mouse and assessed his situation. He had a modest prosperity but that wasn’t what he had requested of the Shah, and he felt a vague apprehension that was presently interrupted by the arrival of Khuff, still surly, who unrolled a flimsy parchment and proceeded to read it aloud.

Edict of the King of the World, High and Majestic Lord, Sublime and honorable beyond all comparison; magnificent in Titles, the unshakeable Basis of the Kingdom, Excellent, Noble and Magnanimous; the Lion of Persia and Most Powerful Master of the Universe. Directed to the Governor, the Intendant, and other Royal Officers of the Town of Ispahan, the Seat of the Monarchy and the Theater of Science and Medicine. They are to know that Jesse son of Benjamin, Jew and Barber-Surgeon of the Town of Leeds in Europe, has come into our Kingdoms, the best govern’d of all the Earth and a well-known refuge of the oppress’d, and has had the Facility and the Glory to appear before the Eyes of the Most High, and by humble petition beg the assistance of the true Lieutenant of the true Prophet who is in Paradise, to wit, our most Noble Majesty. They are to know that Jesse son of Benjamin of Leeds is assured of Royal Favor and Good Will and is hereby granted a Royal Garment with Honors and Beneficences and that All should treat him accordingly. You must also know that this Edict is made on rigorous Penalties and that there is no infringing it without being expos’d to Capital Punishment. Done on the third Panj Shanbah of the Month of Rejab in the name of our most high Majesty by his Pilgrim of the Noble and Sacred Holy Places, and his Chief and Superintendent of the Palace of Women of the most High, the Imam Mirza-aboul Qandrasseh, Vizier.
It is necessary to arm one’s self with the Assistance of the most High God, in all Temporal Affairs.

“But, of the
school?”
Rob could not resist asking hoarsely.

“I do not deal with the school,” the Captain of the Gates said, and departed as hurriedly as he had come.

A short time later two burly porters delivered to Rob’s door a sedan chair bearing the
hadji
Davout Hosein and a quantity of figs as a token of sweet fortune in the new house.

They sat among the ants and the bees on the ground in the ruins of the tiny apricot garden and ate the figs.

“They are still excellent apricot trees,” the
hadji
said, studying them judiciously. He explained at great length how the four trees could be brought back through assiduous pruning and irrigation and application of the horse’s manure.

Finally Hosein fell silent.

“Something?” Rob murmured.

“I have the honor to extend the greetings and felicitations of the honorable Abu Ali at-Husain ibn Abdullah ibn Sina.” The
hadji
was sweating and so pale that the
zabiba
on his forehead was especially pronounced. Rob took pity on him, but not so much that it diminished the exquisite pleasure of the moment, sweeter and richer than the dizzying fragrance of the small apricots that littered the ground beneath his trees, as Hosein rendered to Jesse son of Benjamin an invitation to enroll in the
madrassa
and study medicine at the
maristan,
where he might aspire eventually to become a physician.

PART FOUR
The Maristan

39

IBN SINA

Rob J.’s first morning as a student dawned hot, a sullen day. He dressed carefully in the new clothes but decided it was too warm for leg wrappings. He had struggled without success to learn the secret of winding the green turban and finally he gave a coin to a street youth who showed him how to strap the folded cloth tightly around the
qalansuwa
and then tuck it in neatly. But Khuff had been right about the heaviness of the cheap stuff; the green turban weighed almost a stone, and in the end he took the unfamiliar burden from his head and put on the leather Jew’s hat, a relief.

It made him instantly identifiable as he approached the Big Teat, where a group of young men in green turbans stood talking.

“Here is your Jew now, Karim,” one of them called.

A man who had been sitting on the steps rose and approached him, and he recognized the handsome, lanky student he had observed castigating a nurse during his first visit to the hospital.

“I am Karim Harun. And you are Jesse ben Benjamin.”

“Yes.”

“The
hadji
has assigned me to show you around the school and the hospital and to answer your questions.”

“You will wish you were back in the
carcan,
Hebrew!” somebody called, and the students laughed.

Rob smiled. “I do not think so,” he said. It was obvious that the entire school had heard of the European Jew who had gone to jail and then won admittance to the medical school on the intervention of the Shah.

They began with the
maristan,
but Karim walked much too fast, a cranky and perfunctory guide who evidently wished to complete an unwelcome task as quickly as possible. But Rob J. was able to learn that the hospital was divided into male and female sections. Men had male nurses, women had female nurses and female porters. Physicians and a patient’s husband were the only men allowed to approach the women.

There were two rooms devoted to surgery, and a long, low-ceilinged chamber filled with shelves of neatly labeled jars and flasks. “This is the
khazanat-ul-sharaf,
the ‘treasure house of drugs,’” Karim said. “On Mondays and Thursdays, physicians hold a clinic at the school. After patients are examined and treated, the druggists make up physick prescribed by the physicians.
Maristan
druggists are accurate to the smallest grain, and honest. Most druggists in the town are whores who will sell a bottle of piss and swear it is rose water.”

In the school building next door, Karim showed him examining rooms, lecture halls and laboratories, a kitchen and a refectory, and a large bath for use of faculty and students. “There are forty-eight physicians and surgeons, but not all are lecturers. Including yourself, there are twenty-seven students of medicine. Each clerk is apprenticed to a series of different physicians. The apprenticeships vary in length for different individuals, and so does the entire clerkship. You become a candidate for oral examination whenever the bastardly faculty decides you are ready. If you pass, they address you as
Hakim.
If you fail, you remain a student and must work toward another chance.”

“How long have you been here?”

Karim glowered, and Rob knew he had asked the wrong question.

“Seven years. I’ve taken examinations twice. Last year, I failed the section on philosophy. My second attempt was three weeks ago, when I made a poor thing of questions on jurisprudence. What should I care about the history of logic or the precedents of the law? I’m already a good physician.” He sighed bitterly. “In addition to classes in medicine you must attend lectures in law, theology, and philosophy. You may choose your own classes. It’s best to return often to the same lecturers,” he disclosed grudgingly, “for some of them are merciful during the oral examinations if they’ve become familiar with you.

“Everyone in the
madrassa
must attend morning lectures in each discipline. But in the afternoon, law students prepare briefs or attend the courts, would-be theologians hie themselves to mosques, future philosophers read or write, and medical students serve as clerks at the hospital. Physicians visit the hospital in the afternoon and students attach themselves to these men, who permit them to examine patients and propose treatment. The physicians ask endless instructive questions. It’s a splendid opportunity to learn or”—he smiled sourly—“to make yourself a complete arsehole.”

Rob studied the handsome, unhappy face. Seven years, he thought numbly, and nothing but uncertain prospects ahead. And this man no doubt had entered the study of medicine with far better preparation than his own sketchy background!

But fears and negative feelings vanished when they entered the library, which was called the House of Wisdom. Rob had never imagined so many books in one place. Some manuscripts were scribed on animalskin vellums, but most were made of the same lighter material on which his
calaat
had been written. “Persia has a poor parchment,” he observed.

Karim snorted. “Not parchment at all. It is called paper, an invention of the slanted-eyes to the east, who are very clever infidels. You don’t have paper in Europe?”

“I’ve never seen it there.”

“Paper is but old rags beaten and sized with animal glue and then pressed. It is inexpensive, afforded even by students.”

The House of Wisdom dazzled Rob as no other sight he had ever seen. He walked quietly about the room and touched the books, noting the authors, only a few of them names he knew.

Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Ardigenes, Rufas of Ephesus, the immortal Galen … Oribasius, Philagrios, Alexander of Tralles, Paul of Aegina …

“How many books are here?”

“The
madrassa
owns almost one hundred thousand books,” Karim said proudly. He smiled at the disbelief in Rob’s eyes. “Most of them were translated into Persian in Baghdad. In the university at Baghdad is a school for translators, where books are transcribed onto paper in all the languages of the Eastern Caliphate. Baghdad has an enormous university with six hundred thousand books in its library, and more than six thousand students and famous teachers. But there is one thing our little
madrassa
has that they lack.”

“What is that?” Rob asked, and the senior student led him to a wall in the House of Wisdom entirely devoted to the works of one author.

“Him,” Karim said.

That afternoon in the
maristan
Rob saw the man the Persians called the Chief of Princes. At first glimpse, Ibn Sina was a disappointment. His red physician’s turban was faded and carelessly wound and his
durra
was shabby and plain. Short and balding, he had a bulbous, veined nose and the beginning of dewlaps beneath his white beard. He looked like any aging Arab until Rob noted his keen brown eyes, sad and observant, stern and curiously alive, and felt at once that Ibn Sina saw things not visible to ordinary men.

Rob was one of seven students who, with four physicians, trailed behind Ibn Sina as he made his way through the hospital. That day the Chief Physician paused not far from the pallet of a wizened man with skinny limbs.

“Who is student clerk of this section?”

“I, Master. Mirdin Askari.”

So this was Aryeh’s cousin, Rob told himself. He looked with interest at the swarthy young Jew whose long jaw and square white teeth gave him a homely, likable face, like that of an intelligent horse.

Ibn Sina nodded toward the patient. “Tell us of that one, Askari.”

“He is Amahl Rahin, a camel driver who came to the hospital three weeks ago with intense pain in the lower back. At first we suspected he had injured his spine while drunk but the pain soon extended into his right testicle and right thigh.”