Samarkand pdfdrive com

Swap your turban for some wine
And without regrets, put on a woollen hat!
Then he slipped the manuscript into its usual hiding place, between the bed
and the wall. When he woke up, he wanted to re-read his 
rubai
since one word
seemed to him out of place. He groped about and grasped the book. It was as he
opened it that he discovered the letter from Hassan Sabbah which had been
slipped between the two pages as he slept.
In an instant Omar recognized the writing and the nomenclature agreed upon
between them forty years earlier: The friend from the caravansary at Kashan.’
As he read it he could not help bursting out laughing. Vartan, who was just
waking up in his adjoining room came in to see what was amusing his master so
much after his ill feelings of the night before.
‘We have just received a generous invitation. We can be lodged, protected
and have all our expenses looked after until the end of our lives.’
‘By which great prince?’
‘The prince of Alamut.’
Vartan jumped. He felt guilty.
‘How could the letter have got here? I checked all the doors and windows
before I went to lie down!’
‘Do not try to find out. Sultans and Caliphs themselves have given up
protecting themselves. When Hassan decides to send you a message or a
dagger’s blade, you can be certain of receiving it whether your doors are wide

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open or padlocked.’
The disciple held the letter to his moustache, sniffed it noisily and then read
and re-read it.
‘That demon may well have a point,’ he concluded. ‘It is indeed at Alamut
that your safety would be best assured. After all, Hassan is your oldest friend.’
‘For the moment, my oldest friend is the new wine of Merv!’
With childish glee, Omar set to tearing up the sheet of paper into a multitude
of little pieces which he threw up in the air. As he watched them flutter down, he
started to speak again:
‘What do we have in common, this man and I? I worship life and he worships
death. I write: “If you cannot love, what use is the rising and the setting of the
sun?” Hassan demands his men to give no heed to love, music, poetry, wine or
the sun. He despises the most beautiful things in all creation, yet he dares
pronounce the name of the Creator – and to promise people paradise! Believe
you me, if his fortress were the gateway of paradise, I would renounce paradise!
I shall never set foot in that den of pious shams.’
Vartan sat down and had a good scratch of his neck before saying, in the
most exhausted of voices:
‘If that is your response then the time has come for me to reveal to you a
secret which has been kept too long. Have you never wondered why the soldiers
let us pass through so easily when we fled from Isfahan?’
‘It has always intrigued me, but since I have seen nothing but loyalty,
devotion and filial affection from you for years, I have not wished to stir up the
past.’
‘That day, the officers of the Nizamiya knew that I was going to save you and
leave with you. That was part of a strategy which I had drawn up.’
Before carrying on, he served his master, and himself, a useful glass of
grenadine wine.
‘You do know that the list of outlaws set up by Nizam al-Mulk contained the
name of one man whom we had never managed to reach – Hassan Sabbah. Was
he not the man principally responsible for the assassination? My plan was
simple: to leave with you in the hope that you would take refuge in Alamut. I
would have accompanied you, asking you not to reveal my identity and I would
have found an occasion to rid the Muslims and the entire world of that demon.
However, you have stubbornly refused to set foot in the dark fortress.’
‘Yet you stayed by my side all this time.’
‘At the beginning I thought I would just have to be patient and that when you

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had been chased out of fifteen cities in succession you would resign yourself to
taking the road to Alamut. Then, as the years passed, I grew attached to you, my
companions have been dispersed to the four corners of the empire and my
determination has wavered. See now how Omar Khayyam has saved Hassan
Sabbah’s life a second time.’
‘Do not bewail it – it may well be your life that I have saved.’
‘In truth he must be very well protected in his hideout.’
Vartan could not suppress all traces of bitterness, which amused Khayyam.
‘Having said that, if you had revealed your plan to me, doubtless I would
have led you to Alamut.’
The disciple jumped out of his seat.
‘Is that the truth?’
‘No. Sit yourself down! I only said that to give you cause for regret! In spite
of all the evil Hassan has managed to commit, if I were to see him drowning in
the River Murghab I would offer him my hand in help.’
‘Well I would shove his head down under the water! However, your attitude
gives me some comfort, and it is just because you are capable of such words and
acts that I chose to stay in your company. And I do not regret that.’
Khayyam gave his disciple a long hug.
‘I am happy that my doubts about you have been dispelled. I am old now and
need to know that I have a trusty man at my side – because of the manuscript.
That it is the most precious thing I possess. In order to take on the world Hassan
Sabbah has built Alamut, whereas I have only constructed this minuscule paper
castle, but I choose to believe that it will outlive Alamut. Nothing frightens me
more than to think that upon my death my manuscript could fall into careless or
malevolent hands.’
In an almost offhand manner he held the secret book out to Vartan:
‘You may open it, since you will be its guardian.’
The disciple was moved.
‘Would anyone else have had this privilege before me?’
‘Two people. Jahan, after a quarrel in Samarkand, and Hassan when we were
living in the same room upon our arrival in Isfahan.
‘You trusted him to that extent?’
‘To tell you the truth, I did not. However, I often wanted to write and he
ended up noticing the manuscript. I preferred to show it to him myself since,
anyhow, he could have read it behind my back. Moreover, I deemed him capable
of keeping a secret.’

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‘He really does know how to keep a secret – the better to use it against you.’
Henceforth the manuscript would spend its night in Vartan’s room. At the
slightest noise the former officer would be bolt upright, brandishing his sword,
his ears pricked up; he would check every room in the house and then go out to
make a round of the garden. Upon his return he would not always be able to fall
asleep again and so would light a lamp on his table, read a quatrain which he
would memorize and then indefatigably go over it in his head to draw out its
most profound meanings and to try and guess under what circumstances his
master had been able to write it.
At the end of a string of disturbed nights, an idea took shape in his thoughts
which received Omar’s hearty approval: to write the manuscript’s history in the
margins of the 
Rubaiyaat
and through this device the history of Khayyam
himself, his childhood in Nishapur, his youth in Samarkand, his fame in Isfahan,
his meetings with Abu Taher, Jahan, Hassan, Nizam and many others. Thus it
was, under Khayyam’s supervision, and sometimes with him dictating the
words, that the first pages of the chronicle were written. Vartan threw himself
into it, writing each phrase down ten or fifteen times on a loose sheet before
transcribing it, in a thin, angular and laborious hand – which, one day, was
brutally interrupted in the middle of a phrase.
Omar had woken up early that morning. He called Vartan who did not reply.
Another night spent writing, Khayyam said to himself in a fatherly way. He let
him rest a while longer, poured himself a morning drink, just a drop at the
bottom of the glass which he swallowed in one gulp followed by a whole
glassful which he carried with him as he went for a walk in the garden. He
walked around it, diverting himself by blowing on the dew which was still on the
flowers, then he went off to gather some juicy white mulberries which he placed
on his tongue and squashed against his palate with every sip of wine.
He was enjoying himself so much that a good hour had passed before he
decided to go back in. It was time for Vartan to get up. He did not call him
again, but went straight into his room to find him stretched out on the ground,
his throat black with blood, his mouth and eyes open and set rigid as if in a last
suffocated cry.
On his table between the lamp and the writing desk was the dagger with
which the crime had been committed. It was planted in a curled up sheet of paper
which Omar unrolled to read:
‘Your manuscript has gone on ahead of you to Alamut.’

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