The Thief of Bagdad/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
Down in the Square the Hindu continued his sorceries.
He put a dry mango seed on the ground for all the world to see. Thrice he passed his hand over it, murmuring mysterious Indian words:
“Bhut, pret, pisach, dana,
Chee mantar, sab nikal jana,
Mane, mane, Shivka khahna…
and the mango seed burst—it grew—it shot in the air—in bloom—in fruit. Again he waves his hand and—behold!—the mango was gone.
He asked the boy to approach. He whispered a secret word and, suddenly, a glistening Khyberee sword flashed in his right hand. He lifted it high above his head. He struck with all his might. And the boy’s head rolled on the ground; blood squirted; while the onlookers were aghast, sucking in their breath like little lisping babes in the dark. Then he waves his hands again, and there was the boy, his head on his neck where it belonged, a smile on his lips.
So trick followed trick while the crowd applauded and shuddered and laughed and chattered and wondered, until finally the Hindu announced the greatest of all his tricks: the trick of the magic rope.
“A rope,” he explained, uncoiling it and whizzing it through the air with a sharp noise, “woven from the hair of a purple-faced witch of the left-handed sect! Never in all the world was there such a rope! Look, O Moslems!”
Swish!—he threw the rope into the air, straight up, and it remained there standing, without support, erect, lithe, like a slim tree, its upper end parallel with the balcony rail and directly in front of Ahmed’s eyes, who could hardly control his itching palms.
Why—he thought—to possess this magic rope! What a help for the Thief of Bagdad!
The Hindu clapped his hands.
“Hayah! Ho! Jao!” he yelled; and suddenly the boy disappeared, vanished into the nowhere, while the spectators gaped with open mouths.
“Hayah! Ho! Jao!” the sorcerer repeated; and a quivering shout of awed wonder rose from the crowd as they saw there, high up on the rope, come out of the nowhere into which he had disappeared, the boy clinging like a monkey. The next moment he had slid down and was going the round of the audience, asking for bakshish that was contributed generously; and even Ahmed was on the point of obeying the impulse and had already reached into his baggy trousers for a coin, when a throaty, guttural cry of rage caused him to turn quickly. There, like a plum-colored, obese goddess of wrath, stood the Nubian cook who had come from the interior of the palace. She saw the bowls of food; saw that impious hands had toyed with their contents; saw the munching, chewing Ahmed; and, putting two and two together, went for him, brandishing her heavy iron stirring ladle like a Sarazene battle ax.
Ahmed considered and acted at the same fraction of a second. He launched himself away from the balcony railing; leaped straight at the magic rope; clutched it; and so there he was, swinging in mid-air, the cook calling down imprecations from above, the Hindu echoing them from below. And be it mentioned—in Ahmed’s favor or to his shame, exactly as you prefer—that he replied to both, impartially, vituperatively, enthusiastically, insult for insult and curse for curse.
‘‘Come back here, O Son of a noseless Mother, and pay for what you stole!” yelled the cook.
“Come down here, O Camel-Spawn, and be grievously beaten!” demanded the sorcerer.
“I shall do neither!” laughed the Thief of Bagdad. “It is airy up here and pleasant and most exclusive! Here I am, and here I shall remain!”
But he did not.
For at last the Hindu lost his patience. He made another magic pass, whispered another secret word, and the rope gave, bent, flicked from side to side, shot down to the ground, and sent Ahmed sprawling. Almost immediately he was up again, his agile fingers clutching at the rope. But the Hindu’s hand was as quick as Ahmed’s, and so they stood there, tugging at the rope, with the crowd looking on and laughing, when suddenly from the distance, where a Mosque peaked its minaret of rosy stone overlaid half way up with a faience tiling of dusky, peacock-green sheen, a muezzin’s voice drifted out, chanting the call to mid-day prayer, stilling the tumult:
“Es salat wah es-salaam aleyk, yah auwel khulk Illah wah khatimat russul Illah—peace be with Thee and the glory, O first-born of the creatures of God, and seal of the apostles of God! Hie ye to devotion! Hie ye to salvation! Prayer is better than sleep! Prayer is better than food! Bless ye God and the Prophet! Come, all ye faithful!”
“Wah khatimat russul Illah” mumbled the crowd, turning in the direction of Mecca.
They prostrated themselves, touching the ground with palms and foreheads. The Hindu joined them, chanting fervently. So did Ahmed, though not so fervently. Indeed while, mechanically, automatically, he bowed toward the East and while his lips formed the words of the prayer, his roaming, lawless eyes noticed the magic rope, between him and the Hindu. The latter, occupied with his devotions, was paying no attention to it. A moment later, watching his chance, Ahmed had picked it up and was away, fleet-footedly, across the bent backs of the worshipers. He ran at a good clip through the wilderness of little Arab houses. He increased his speed when, not long afterwards, he heard in the distance the view-halloo of the man-chase as the Hindu, rising from his devotions, noticed that his precious rope had been stolen.
“Thief! Thief! Catch thief!” the shout rose, bloated, stabbed, spread.
He ran as fast as he could. But his pursuers gained on him steadily, and he felt afraid. Only the day before he had watched a thief being beaten in public with cruel rhinoceros-hide whips that had torn the man’s back to crimson shreds. He shuddered at the recollection. He ran till his lungs were at the bursting point, his knees ready to give way under him.
He had turned the corner of the Street of the Mutton-Butchers when his pursuers came in sight. They saw him.
“Thief! Thief!” the shouts echoed and reverberated, sharp, grim, ominous, freezing the marrow in his bones.
Where could he turn? Where hide himself? And then he saw, directly in front of him, an immense building; saw above him, thirty feet up, the invitation of an open window. How reach it? Hopeless! But, the next moment, he remembered his magic rope. He spoke the secret word. And the rope uncoiled, whizzed, stood straight like a lance at rest, and up he went hand over hand.
He reached the window, climbed in, drew the rope after him.
The house was deserted. He sped through empty rooms and corridors; came out on the roof and crossed it; leaped to a second roof and crossed that; a third; a fourth; until at last, slipping through a trap door, he found himself—for the first time in his unhallowed existence—in a Mosque of Allah, up on the ceiling rafters.
Inside, below him, a tall, gentle-eyed, green-turbaned Moslem priest was addressing a small gathering of devotees.
“There is prayer to Allah in everything,” he said, “in the buzzing of the insects, the scent of flowers, the lowing of cattle, the sighing of the breeze. But there is no prayer to be compared to the prayer of a man’s honest, plucky work. Such prayer means happiness. Honest, courageous, fearless work means the greatest happiness on earth!”
A sentiment the opposite of Ahmed’s philosophy of life.
“You lie, O priest!” he shouted from the rafters; and he slid down and faced the Holy Man with impudent eyes and arrogant gestures.
There was an angry growling, as of wild animals, among the devotees. Fists were raised to smash that blasphemous mouth. But the priest raised calm hands. He smiled upon Ahmed as he might upon a babbling child.
“You are—ah—quite sure, my friend?” he asked with gentle irony. “You know, belike, a better prayer, a greater happiness than honest, courageous work?”
“I do!” replied Ahmed. For a fleeting moment he felt embarrassed beneath the other’s steady gaze. The shadow of an uneasy premonition crept over his soul. Something akin to awe, to fear, touched his spine with clay-cold hands, and he was ashamed of this feeling of fear; spoke the more arrogantly and loudly to hide this fear from himself: “I have a different creed! What I want, I take! My reward is here, on earth! Paradise is a fool’s dream, and Allah is nothing but a myth!”
Again the angry worshippers surged toward him. Again the Holy Man held them back with a gesture of his lean hands. He called after Ahmed, who was about to leave the Mosque.
“I shall be here, little brother,” he said, “and waiting for you—in case you need my help—the help of my faith in God and the Prophet!”
“I—need you?” mocked Ahmed. “Never, priest! Hayah! Can a frog catch cold?”
And, with a ringing laugh, he was out of the Mosque.
Ten minutes later, he reached the dwelling place which he shared with Hassan el-Toork, nicknamed Bird-of-Evil, his pal and partner. A snug, cosy, secret little dwelling it was, in the bottom of an abandoned well, and there he spread his loot before the other’s delighted eyes.
“I love you, my little butter-ball, my little sprig of sweet-scented sassafras!” mumbled Bird-of-Evil, caressing Ahmed’s cheek with his clawlike old hands. “Never was there as clever a thief as you! You could steal food from between my lips, and my belly would be none the wiser! Gold—Jewels—purses …” he toyed with the loot—“and this magic rope! Why, in the future there will be no wall too high for us, no roof too steep, and …” he slurred, interrupted himself as—for the abandoned well was only a stone’s throw from Bagdad’s outer gate—a loud voice called to the warden to open it:
“Open wide the gates of Bagdad! We are porters bringing precious things for the adornment of the Palace! For tomorrow suitors come to woo our royal Princess!”
The Caliph in those days was Shirzad Kemal-ud-Dowlah, twelfth and greatest of the glorious Ghaznavide dynasty. Lord he was from Bagdad to Stambul, and from Mecca to Jerusalem. His pride was immense, and, beside his Arabic title of Caliph, he gloried in such splendid Turkish titles as: Imam-ul-Muslemin—Pontiff of all Moslems; Alem Penah—Refuge of the World; Hunkiar—Man-Slayer; Ali-Osman Padishahi—King of the Descendants of Osman; Shahin Shahi Alem—King of the Sovereigns of the Universe; Hudavendighar—Attached to God; Shahin Shahi Movazem ve-Hillulah—High King of Kings and shadow of God upon Earth.
Zobeid was his daughter, his only child, and heir to his great kingdom.
As to Zobeid’s beauty and charm and surpassing witchery, there have come down to us, through the grey, swinging centuries, a baker’s dozen of reports. To believe them all one would have to conclude that, compared to her, Helen of Troy for the sake of whose face a thousand ships were launched, was only an ugly duckling. We choose therefore, with full deliberation, the simplest and least florid of these contemporary accounts, as contained in the letter of a certain Abu’l Hamed el-Andalusi, an Arab poet who, visiting for reasons of his own a young Circassian slave girl in the Caliph’s harem, happened to glance through a slit in the brocaded curtain which separated the slave’s room from the apartment of the Princess, and saw her there. He wrote his impressions to a brother-poet in Damascus; wrote as follows:
“Her face is as wondrous as the moon on the fourteenth day; her black locks are female cobras; her waist is the waist of the she-lion; her eyes are violets drenched in dew; her mouth is like a crimson sword wound; her skin is like the sweetly scented champaka flower; her narrow feet are twin lilies.”
The letter continues with slight Oriental exaggeration that Zobeid was the Light of the writer’s Eyes, the Soul of his Soul, the Breath of his Nostrils, and—than which there is no praise more ardent in the Arabic language—the Blood of his Liver; it mentions such rather personal items that the Circassian slave girl when she saw the desire eddy up in the poet’s eyes, was for scratching them out on the spot; and comes down to earth again by saying:
“Never in all the seven worlds of Allah’s creation lived there a woman to touch the shadow of Zobeid’s feet. Brother mine!—as a garment she is white and gold; as a season, the spring; as a flower, the Persian jasmine; as a speaker, the nightingale, as a perfume, musk blended with amber and sandalwood; as a being, love incarnate. …”
So the letter, today yellow and brittle and pathetic with age, goes on for several pages. Small wonder, therefore, that throughout the Orient Zobeid’s fame spread like powder under spark, and that there were many suitors for her small, pretty hand—not to mention the great kingdom which she would inherit on her father’s death—and chiefly Asia’s three mightiest monarchs.
The first of these was Cham Sheng, Prince of the Mongols, King of Ho Sho, Governor of Wah Hoo and the sacred Island of Wak, Khan of the golden Horde, Khan of the Silver Horde, who traced his descent in a straight line back to Gengiz Khan, the great conqueror out of the Central Asian plains, and who had brought under his spurred heel all the North and East, from Lake Baikal to Pekin, from the frozen Arctic tundras to the moist, malarial warmth of Tonkin’s rice paddies.
The second was Khalaf Mansur Nasir-ud-din Nadir Khan Kuli Khan Durani, Prince and King of Persia, Shah-in-Shah of Khorassan and Azerbaian, Khan of the Kizilbashis and Outer Tartars, Chief of the Shia Moslems, Ever-Victorious Lion of Allah, Conqueror of Russia and of Germany as far as the Oder, Warrior for the Faith of Islam, Attabeg over all the Cossacks, and descendant of the Prophet Mohammed.
The third was Bhartari-hari Vijramukut, Prince of Hindustan and the South from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, descendant of Ganesha, the elephant-headed God of Wisdom, on his father’s side and on his mother’s—slightly more modestly—descendant of an illegitimate union between the Flame and the Moon.
All three were due to arrive in Bagdad on the morrow; so the slaves and servants and majordomos and eunuchs of the Caliph’s palace were hustling and bustling and yelling and rushing about and perspiring and swearing and appealing to Allah in a fever of preparations for the princely visitors; and loud was the clamoring at Bagdad’s outer gate:
“Open up! Open up, O Warden of the Walls! We are porters bringing rare food and rarer wines for tomorrow’s feasting!”
Ahmed heard the tumult and turned to Bird-of-Evil.
“Come, O ancient and malodorous parrot of my heart!” he said, climbing up the rope ladder that led to the mouth of the abandoned well.
“Where to?”
“To the palace!”
“The palace?”
“Yes,” replied the Thief of Bagdad. “Often and greatly have I desired to see it—from the inside. I wager there is loot in there worthy of my agile fingers and cunning brain.”
“Doubtless! But they will not let you in!”
“They may!”
“How?”
“I have an idea, Bird-of-Evil!” And, when the other commenced asking and arguing: “I have no time to explain now. Come. And don’t forget your black camel’s-hair cloak.”
“It is not cold today.”
“I know. But we shall need the cloak.”
“Why?”
“Wait and see, O son of an impatient father.”
They were out of the well, ran down the street, and just beyond the corner caught up with the tail-end of the procession of porters that moved through the broad, tree-lined avenue toward the Caliph’s palace. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. Most of them were gigantic, plum-colored, frizzy, tattooed Central Africian slaves, and they stepped along with the tireless lope, the swaying hips and long body-pull of their jungly breed, balancing bundles and bales and baskets and jars on their kinky polls, with Arab overseers trotting on either side and driving on the lagging with knotted, rawhide whips. At the end of the avenue, surrounded by a huge garden ablaze with flowers, the palace closed the vista like an enormous seal of marble and granite. Rising high in even tiers, curving inward like a bay of darkness dammed by the stony sweep of the crenellated, wing-like battlements, soaring North and South into two cube-shaped granite towers, topped by a forest of turrets and spires and domes, it descended beyond the horizon in a bold avalanche of square-clouted, fantastically painted masonry. The frontal gateway was covered by a door—rather a diphanous, but strong, almost unbreakable net—of closely woven iron-and-silver chains, that rattled down into a groove as the captain of the gate wardens saw the porters approaching and motioned to his armed, turbaned assistants.
The porters passed in singly and by twos and threes. The last was a tall negro who carried an earthen jar filled with golden, flower-scented Shiraz wine. But—wait!—here came still another porter. Not a negro he, but a lithe young Arab, naked to the waist, his legs covered by silken, baggy breeches, and balancing on his head a squat bundle that was hidden by a black camel’s-hair cloak.
Just as the man was about to cross the threshold, the captain’s narrow eyes contracted into slits. Quickly he motioned to his assistants who raised the chain door.
“Let me in!” demanded the young porter. “Let me in!”
“No, no!” laughed the red-bearded, pot-bellied captain. “No, no, my clever bazar hound!”
“Let me in!” repeated the other. “Let me in, O gross mountain of pig’s flesh. I am bringing a hundred-weight of precious Bokhara grapes for the morrow’s feasting!”
Again the captain laughed.
“Soul of my soul,” he said, “these grapes of yours are curious grapes! Behold! They move—as if they were alive! Hayah! Hayah!”—raising his lance and pricking the bundle which thereupon squirmed, squeaked, squealed loudly—“a bunch of grapes with a human voice! Precious grapes, indeed! Most wondrous and unique grapes of Allah’s creation!”
“Pah!” The Thief of Bagdad spat disgustedly. He let drop the bundle which, the camel’s-hair cloak dropping away, disclosed Bird-of-Evil, vigorously rubbing his haunches where they had struck the pavement and wailing noisily.
“My darling,” continued the captain, nor unkindly, “the Caliph’s palace is not a healthy place for robbers.”
“How dare you. …”
“I can see it in your eyes,” the other interrupted. “They are humorous eyes—yes! Likable eyes—yes, yes! But not honest eyes! And so” came the cryptic warning—“be pleased to consider the fate of the donkey?”
“What donkey, O swag-bellied ruffian?”
“The donkey who traveled abroad looking for horns—and lost its ears! Beware, my friend! All day the place is watched by the Caliph’s soldiers. And all night—look!”—he pointed through the iron mesh of the door—“do you see these traps, these grooves and grottoes and cages? They contain the warden’s of the night: man-eating striped tigers from Bengal, black-maned Nubian lions, and long-armed, dog-toothed gorillas from the far forests! Take heed, my clever bazar hound!”
“It was your fault, Bird-of-Evil!” Ahmed turned to his friend when the captain had walked away. “Why did you move just as I was crossing the threshold?”
“I could not help it! A flea bit me!”
“And now a mule will kick you!” Ahmed raised his right foot.
Bird-of-Evil squirmed rapidly away.
“Wait! Wait!” he implored. “Wait until tonight! Then we shall climb the walls!”
“Impossible, fool! They are too steep!”
“You forget the magic rope!”
“Right—by the Prophet’s toe-nails!”
And so when night came, closing in overhead like an opaque dome of dark-green jade encrusted with a shimmering net of stars, dropping over sleeping Bagdad with a brown, clogging pall of silence, Ahmed and Bird-of-Evil went quietly on their way, the magic rope coiled about the former’s left arm. They reached the palace. It stabbed up to the sky’s dark tent with fantastic, purple outlines pierced here and their, where the slaves were still about some late duty, by glittering pencils of light. They stopped in the shadow-blotch of the outer wall that, at a height of twenty-odd feet, was crowned with an elaborate balustrade of carved, fretted, pink marble. They waited; listened, sucking in their breath. They could hear a captain of the night watch going the rounds, the steady tramp-tramp-tramp of his booted feet, a faint crackling of steel, the swish of his curved sabre scraping across stone flags. The sounds died away. Came other sounds—the voices of the savage beasts that guarded the palace, prowling and slinking about the garden: the vibrant growl of the lions beginning in a deep basso and ending in a shrill, stabbing treble; the angry hissing and spitting, as of enormous cats, of the great, ruddy Bengal tigers; the chirp and whistle—ludicrously in contrast to their size—of the long-armed gorillas.
Ahmed uncoiled his rope.
“Can you make it?” whispered Bird-of-Evil.
“Easily.”
“But—the lions and tigers. …?”
“Beyond the outerwall—I noticed it this afternoon—at a distance of a few feet is a second wall, a broad ledge with a door set in. Once on top of the outer wall, I can leap across to the ledge and fool those jungly pets. Then through the door and—for the rest—I shall rely on my nose, my fingers, and my luck.”
“May Allah the One protect you!” mumbled Bird-of-Evil piously.
“Allah? Bah!” sneered the Thief of Bagdad. “It is mine own strength and cleverness that will protect me! Wait down here, O ancient goat of my soul. Within the hour I shall be back with a king’s ransom tucked away in my breeches.”
He tossed the rope into the air. He spoke the secret word. The rope obeyed. It stood straight. A minute later, climbing hand over hand, Ahmed was on top of the outer wall. He looked down into the flat, emerald-green eyes of a tiger that crouched below, swishing its tail from side to side and doubtless thinking that here was a late supper provided by Fate itself. Then, measuring the distance to the ledge with his eyes, he fooled both tiger and Fate by leaping across, neatly, lithely, and safely. He opened the door that gave unto the ledge; and found himself in an empty hall. So, softly, warily, on naked, silent feet, he walked on through rooms and rooms and again rooms. All were empty of life. Some of them, beneath swinging ceiling lamps, lay ablaze with raw, clashing colors, others were in dull, somber shades which melted into each other; on, through corridors supported by pillars whose capitals were shaped into pendant lotus forms or crowned with fantastic, lateral struts carved into the likeness of horsemen or war-girt elephants.
Finally he came to a great, oblong room. There was no furniture here except a tall incense burner on a twisted gold stand giving out spirals of scented, opalescent smoke, a number of large, iron-bound chests and boxes, and a profusion of silken pillows where three enormous palace eunuchs, dressed in yellow gauze that gave a generous glimpse of the brown flesh beneath, were snoring loud enough to rouse the dead.
“By the itching of his palms as well as by the sight of the boxes, the Thief of Bagdad knew that he had arrived in the Caliph’s treasure chamber. And, while the three eunuchs continued to sleep the sleep of both the just and the unjust, he crept over to one of the chests; found it locked; found, furthermore, that the key to it was fastened so tightly to one of the eunuchs’ waist shawls that it was impossible to remove it; then, softly, slowly, inch by inch, he slid the chest along the floor until, without waking the sleeper, he was able to lift the key to the lock.
He turned it. The lock opened. He raised the lid; looked; suppressed a cry of pleasurable excitement.
For there, in a shimmering heap, were jewels from all the corners of Asia: jasper from the Punjaub, rubies from Burma, turquoises from Thibet, star-sapphires and alexandrites from Ceylon, flawless emeralds from Afghanistan, purple amethysts from Tartary, white crystal from Malwa, onyx from Persia, green jade and white jade from Amoy and from Turkestan, garnets from Bundelkhand, red corals from Socotra, pearls from Ramesvaram, lapis lazuli from Jaffra, yellow diamonds from Poonah, pink diamonds from Hydarabad, violet diamonds from Kafiristan, black, fire-veined agate from Dynbulpore.
“If my breeches were only large enough to hold them all!” thought the Thief of Bagdad. “What shall I take first?”
And he had just decided to start with a gorgeous string of evenly matched black pearls, had it already in his hand, when suddenly he sat up and listened. For, from not very far away, he heard the plaintive, minor cadences of a one-stringed Mongol lute; heard a high, soft voice lilting a Mongol song:
{{block center|“In the pagoda of exquisite purity
I hear each day the tinkle-tinkle
Of my lost love's jade girdle gems.
Looking from the carved' broad window
Of the pagoda of exquisite purity,
I see the unsullied waters of my grief
Flow on in bleak undulation.
I see a stray cloud of my Mongol home land
Above the spire of the pagoda of exquisite purity,
And the wild geese of Tartary flying over the river dunes …”