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BOOK TWO
The Assassins’ Paradise
Both Paradise and Hell are in you
OMAR KHAYYAM

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CHAPTER 15
Seven years had past, seven years of plenty both for Khayyam and the empire,
the last years of peace.
On a table under an awning of vine stood a long-necked carafe for the best
Shiraz white wine with just the right hint of muskiness and all around a hundred
bowls burst into a riotous feast. Such was the ritual of a June evening on Omar’s
terrace. He recommended starting with the lightest, first of all the wine and fruit,
then the cooked dishes such as rice with vine-leaves and stuffed quince.
A soft wind from the Yellow Mountains blew through the orchards in flower.
Jahan picked up a lute and plucked one string and then another. The drawn-out
slow music accompanied the wind. Omar raised his goblet and inhaled deeply.
Jahan was watching him. She chose from the table the largest, reddest and
softest jujube and offered it to her man, which, in the language of fruit, signified
‘a kiss, straight away’. He leant over to her and their lips brushed against each
other, separated, touched again, parted and joined. Their fingers intertwined, a
serving girl arrived, and without undue haste they separated and both picked up
their goblets. Jahan smiled and murmured:
‘If I had seven lives, I would spend one coming here to stretch out every
evening on this terrace; I would lounge on this divan drinking this wine and
dangling my fingers in this bowl, for in monotony lurks happiness.’
Omar retorted:
‘One lifetime, three or seven, I would pass them all just like this one,
stretched out on this terrace with my hand in your hair.’
Together, and different. Lovers for nine years, married for four years and
their dreams still did not live under the same roof. Jahan devoured time, Omar

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sipped it. She wanted to rule the world and had the ear of the Sultana who had
the ear of the Sultan. By day she intrigued in the royal harem, intercepting
incoming and outgoing messages, alcove rumours, promises of jewels and the
stench of poison – all of which excited, agitated and inflamed her. In the evening
she would give herself up to the happiness of being loved. For Omar, life was
different. It was the pleasure of science and the science of pleasure. He would
arise late, take the traditional ‘morning glass’ on an empty stomach, then settle
down at his work table to write, calculate, draw lines and figures, write more,
and transcribe a poem in his secret book.
At night, he would go off to the observatory built on a hillock near his house.
He only had to cross a garden in order to be in the midst of the instruments
which he cherished and caressed, oiled and polished with his own hand. Often he
was accompanied by some astronomer who was passing through. The first three
years of his stay had been devoted to the Isfahan observatory. He had supervised
its construction and the manufacture of the equipment. Most importantly he had
instituted the new calendar, ceremonially inaugurated on the first day of
Favardin
458, 21 March 1079. What Persian could forget that year, when due to
Khayyam’s calculation the sacrosanct festival of Nowruz had been displaced,
and the new year which ought to have fallen in the middle of the sign of Pisces
had been held off until the first day of Aries, and that since that reform the
Persian months have conformed to the signs of the zodiac with 
Favardin
thus
becoming the month of Aries and 
Esfand
that of Pisces? In June 1081 the
inhabitants of Isfahan and the whole Empire were living out the third year of the
new era. This officially carried the name of the Sultan, but in the street, and even
in certain documents, it was enough to mention ‘such and such year in the era of
Omar Khayyam’. What other man has known such honour in his lifetime? While
Khayyam, at the age of thirty-three, was a renowned and respected personage, he
was doubtless feared by those who did not know of his profound aversion to
violence and domination.
What was it that kept him close to Jahan in spite of everything? A detail, but
a gigantic detail: neither of them wanted children. Jahan had decided, once and
for all, not to burden herself with offspring. Khayyam had made his the maxim
of Abu al-Ala, a Syrian poet he venerated: ‘My suffering is the fault of my
progenitor, let no one else’s suffering be my fault.’
Let us not be mistaken about this attitude, Khayyam had none of the makings
of a misanthropist. Was it not he who had written: ‘When unhappiness
overwhelms you, when you end up wishing for an eternal night to fall on the

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world, think of the greenery which springs up after the rain, think of the
awakening of a child.’ If he refused to father children, it was because existence
seemed to him to be too heavy to bear. ‘Happy is he who has never come into
the world,’ he never ceased proclaiming.
It was clear that the reasons both of them had for refusing to give life to a
child were not one and the same. She acted out of an excess of ambition, he out
of an excess of detachment. However, for a man and a woman to be closely
drawn together by an attitude condemned by all the men and women of Persia,
and to give free reign to rumours that one or the other was sterile without even
deigning to respond was what, at that time, forged an imperative complicity.
However, it was a complicity which had its limits. With Omar, Jahan
generally came to learn the valuable opinion of a man who coveted nought, but
she rarely took the trouble of informing him of her activities. She knew that he
disapproved of them. What good would it do to feed endless quarrels? Of course,
Khayyam was never far from the court. Even though he avoided becoming
embroiled in it, despised and fled from all the intrigues, particularly those which
had always worked against the palace doctors and astrologers, he nevertheless
had some inescapable obligations, such as being present sometimes at the Friday
banquet, examining a sick Emir and above all providing Malikshah with his
taqvim
, his monthly horoscope, the Sultan being, just like everyone else,
constrained to consult it to know what he should do or should not do every day.
‘On the 5th, a star is lying in wait for you, do not leave the palace. On the 7th,
neither be bled nor take any sort of potion. On the 10th, wind your turban the
other way. On the 13th, do not approach any of your wives …’ The Sultan never
thought to transgress these directives, and nor did Nizam, who received his
taqvim
from Omar’s hand before the end of the month, read it greedily and
followed it to the letter. Gradually, other personages acquired this privilege, the
chamberlain, the Grand Qadi of Isfahan, the treasurers, certain Emirs of the army
and some rich merchants, which ended up meaning considerable work for Omar
and took up the ten last nights of every month. People were so partial to
predictions! The luckiest consulted Omar. The others found themselves a less
prestigious astrologer, unless they went to a man of religion for every decision.
Closing his eyes, and opening the Quran at random, he would place his finger on
a verse which he would read aloud to them so that they could find therein the
answer to their worries. Some poor women, in a great hurry to make a decision,
would go out into a public square and would interpret the first phrase they heard
as a directive from Providence.

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‘Terken Khatoun asked me today if her