Samarkand pdfdrive com

CHAPTER 6
A woman and a man. The anonymous painter imagined them in profile, stretched
out and intertwined. He took away the walls of the pavilion, gave them a bed of
grass with a border of roses and made a silvery brook flow at their feet. He gave
Jahan the shapely breasts of a Hindu deity. Omar caresses her hair with one hand
and holds a goblet in the other.
Every day at the palace their paths would cross, but they avoided looking at
each other lest they give themselves away. Every evening Khayyam would dash
back to the pavilion to await his beloved. How many nights had fate granted
them? Everything depended on the sovereign. When he decamped Jahan would
follow. He never announced anything in advance. One morning this nomad’s son
would jump up onto his charger and set out for Bukhara, Kish or Panjikent and
the court would be thrown into panic trying to catch up with him. Omar and
Jahan dreaded this moment and their every kiss carried with it a taste of farewell,
their every embrace a breathless flight.
On one of the most oppressive summer nights, Khayyam had gone out to wait
on the terrace of the belvedere, when he heard the 
qadi’s
guards laughing from
what seemed very close by and he became uneasy, but for no reason, since Jahan
arrived and reassured him that no one had noticed her. They exchanged a first
furtive kiss, followed by another more intense. That was how they rounded off a
day during which they belonged to others and started off on a night which
belonged to them.
‘In this city how many lovers do you think there are who at this very moment
are being united like us?’ Jahan whispered impishly. Omar adjusted his nightcap
learnedly and puffed out his cheeks and spoke wistfully:

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‘Let us consider this carefully: if we exclude bored spouses, obedient slaves,
street girls selling or hiring themselves out and sighing virgins, how many
woman are there left, how many women are there being united with the man
they have chosen? In the same fashion, how many men will sleep next to a
woman they love, a woman who gives herself to them for some reason other
than that they have no choice? Who knows, tonight in Samarkand there is
perhaps only one such man and one such woman. Why you and why me, you
will say? Because God has made us fall in love just as he has made certain
flowers poisonous.’
He laughed and she let her tears flow.
‘Let us go in and shut the door. They will be able to hear our happiness.’
Many caresses later, Jahan sat up, half covered herself and gently extricated
herself from her lover’s embrace.
‘I must pass on to you a secret which I have from the Khan’s senior wife. Do
you know why he is in Samarkand?’
Omar stopped her, thinking it would be some harem tittle-tattle.
‘The secrets of princes do not interest me. They burn the ears of those who
listen to them.’
‘Just hear me out. This secret affects us too, since it can disrupt our lives.
Nasr Khan has come to inspect the fortifications. At the end of the summer,
when the intense heat has subsided, he is expecting an attack by the Seljuk
army.’
The Seljuks, Khayyam knew them. They peopled his first memories of
childhood. Well before they became the masters of Muslim Asia, they had laid
into the city of his birth and left behind, for generations, the memory of the
Great Fear.
That had taken place ten years before he was born. The people of Nishapur
had woken up one morning to find their city completely encircled by the Turkish
warriors, headed by two brothers, Tughrul Beg the Falcon and his brother
Tchagri Beg the Hawk, sons of Mikhael son of Seljuk, at the time obscure
nomadic chieftains who had only recently been converted to Islam. A message
came to the city’s notables: ‘It is told that your men are proud and that you have
sweet water running in underground canals. If you attempt to resist us, your
canals will soon be open to the heavens and your men will be in the ground.’
This was the type of bragging which was frequent at the time of a siege. The
notables of Nishapur nevertheless made speed to capitulate in return for a
promise that the inhabitants’ lives would be spared and that their goods, houses

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and canals would be safe. But of what value are the promises of a conqueror?
When the horde entered the city, Tchagri wanted to loose his men in the streets
and the bazaar. Tughrul was of a different opinion, wanting the month of
Ramadan to be honoured, during which period of fasting a city of Islam could
not be pillaged. This argument won the day, but Tchagri was not disarmed and
he resigned himself to waiting until the population was no longer in a state of
grace.
When the citizens got wind of the dispute between the two brothers and
realized that at the beginning of the coming month they would be handed over to
be pillaged, raped and massacred, that was start of the Great Fear. Worse than
rape is the announcement of impending rape, combined with a passive and
humiliating wait for the unavoidable. The stalls emptied, men went to ground
and their wives and daughters saw them bewail their impotence. What could
they do, how could they flee, by what route? The occupier was everywhere.
Soldiers with braided hair lurked in the bazaar of the Grand Square, the various
districts of the city and its suburbs, the area around the Burnt Gate. They were
constantly drunk and on the lookout for ransom or plunder, and their disorderly
hordes infested the neighbouring countryside.
Does one not usually desire the fast to come to an end and the feast day to
arrive? That year they wanted the fast to go on forever and hoped that the Feast
of Breaking would never come. When the crescent moon of the new month was
spotted, no one thought to rejoice or to slit the throat of a lamb. The whole city
felt like a gigantic lamb fattened for slaughter.
The night before the feast, this night when every wish is granted, was a night
of agony, tears and prayers spent by thousands of families in the precarious
shelter of mosques, and the mausoleums of saints.
In the citadel, there was now a stormy discussion raging between the Seljuk
brothers. Tchagri shouted that his men had not been paid for months, and that
they had only agreed to fight because they had been promised a free hand in this
opulent city, that they were on the verge of revolt and that he, Tchagri, could no
longer hold them back.
Tughrul spoke another language:
‘We are only at the start of our conquests. There are so many cities to take,
Isfahjan, Shiraz, Ray, Tabriz and others further on. If we pillage Nishapur after it
has surrendered, after all our promises, no other gate will open for us, no other
garrison will show any weakness.’
‘How will we be able to conquer all those cities of which you are dreaming if

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we lose our army and our men abandon us? The most loyal are already
complaining and threatening.’
The two brothers were surrounded by their lieutenants and the elders of the
clan who unanimously confirmed Tchagri’s words. Encouraged by this, he rose
and decided to bring things to a conclusion:
‘We have spoken too much. I am going to tell my men to do as they wish
with the city. If you wish to restrain your men, do so. To each of us his own
troops.’
Caught on the horns of a dilemma, he did not move. Suddenly he sprang
away from them and grabbed a dagger.
Tchagri, for his part, had also unsheathed his sword. No one knew whether to
intervene or, as was the custom, let the Seljuk brothers settle their difference
with blood, when Tughrul called out:
‘Brother, I cannot force you to obey me. I cannot restrain your men, but if
you set them on the city I will plant this dagger in my heart.’
As he said that he clutched the handle of the dagger with both hands and
pointed the blade down toward his chest. His brother hesitated little, but walked
toward him with his arms open and gave him a long embrace, promising not to
go against his will. Nishapur was saved, but it would never forget the Great Fear
of Ramadan.

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