Samarkand pdfdrive com

CHAPTER 43
I was curious to see what was left of the city where Khayyam spent the flower of
his youth.
What had become of the district of Asfizar and of that belevedere in the
garden where Omar had loved Jahan? Was there still some trace of the suburb of
Maturid, where in the eleventh century that Jewish paper-maker was still turning
white mulberry branches into pulp according to an old Chinese recipe. For
weeks I went about on foot, and then on a mule; I questioned the merchants, the
passers-by and the imams of the mosques, but they only replied with blank
unknowing looks, amused smiles and generous invitations for me to squat on
their sky-blue divans and take tea with them.
It was my luck to be in the Registan Square one morning. A caravan was
passing. It was a short caravan, consisting of just six or seven thick-haired and
heavy-hoofed Bactrian camels. The old camel-driver had stopped not far from
me in front of a potter’s stall, holding a new-born lamb to his chest; he proposed
a barter and the craftsman discussed it; without taking his hands off the jar or the
wheel, he pointed with his chin toward a pile of varnished vessels. I watched the
two men with their black-bordered woollen hats, their striped robes, reddish
beards and their ancient gestures. Was there any detail of this scene which had
not come down unchanged from the time of Khayyam?
There was a slight breeze and the sand started to swirl, their clothing
billowed and the whole square was covered with an unreal haze. I cast my eyes
around. At the edge of the square rose three monuments, three gigantic
complexes of towers, domes, gateways and high walls completely covered with
minute mosaics, arabesques studded with gold, amethyst and turquoise, and

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intricate calligraphy. It all retained its majesty, but the towers were leaning, the
domes had gaping holes, the facades were crumbling, ravaged by time, wind and
centuries of neglect; people no longer looked at these monuments, these
haughty, proud and forgotten giants which provided an imposing backdrop for a
derisory play.
I was retreating backwards and stepped on someone’s foot. When I turned
round to apologize I was face to face with a man dressed like me in European
clothing, a man who had set sail from the same distant planet. We struck up a
conversation. He was Russian, an archaeologist. He also had come with a
thousand questions, but he already had some answers.
‘In Samarkand, time moves from one cataclysm to the next and from one
tabula rasa
to the next. When the Mongols destroyed the city in the thirteenth
century, its various districts were left a mass of ruins and corpses. It had to be
abandoned; the survivors went to rebuild their dwellings on another site, further
to the south, with the result that the whole of the old city, the Samarkand of the
Seljuks, was gradually covered by layers of sand and became a raised field.
There are treasures and secrets under the ground, but the surface is a pasture.
One day it will all have to be opened up, the houses and the street dug up. Once
freed, Samarkand will be able to tell us its history.’
He broke off.
‘Are you an archaeologist?’
‘No. This city attracts me for other reasons.’
‘Would it be impolite of me to ask what they are?’
I told him of the manuscript, the poems, the chronicle, and the paintings
which evoked the lovers of Samarkand.
‘I would love to see that book! Do you know that everything from that time
has been destroyed – as if by a curse. Walls, palaces, orchards, gardens, water-
pipes, religious sites, books and the principal 
objets d’art.
The monuments
which we admire today were all built later by Tamerlane and his descendants.
They are less than five hundred years old. From Khayyam’s era we only have
potsherds and, as you have just informed me, this manuscript which has
miraculously survived. It is a privilege for you to be able to hold it in your hands
and read it at your leisure. It is a privilege and also a heavy responsibility.’
‘Believe me, I am quite aware of that. For years, ever since I learnt that this
book existed, I have lived for nothing else. It has led me from adventure to
adventure, its world has become mine and its guardian my beloved.’
‘And have you made this trip to Samarkand to discover the places it

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describes?’
‘I was hoping that the townspeople would be able at least to give me some
indication of where the old districts lay.’
‘I am sorry to have to disappoint you,’ the Russian continued, ‘but if you are
searching for something from the period for which you have a fascination, you
will only gather legends, stories of jinns and divs. This city cultivates them with
delight.’
‘More than other cities in Asia?’
‘I am afraid so. I wonder if the proximity of these ruins does not naturally
inflame the imagination of our miserable contemporaries. Then there is the city
which is buried under the ground. Over the centuries how many children have
fallen down cracks never to reappear, what strange sounds people have heard or
thought that they heard, apparently coming out of the entrails of the earth! That
is how Samarkand’s most famous legend was born – the legend which had a lot
to do with the mystery which envelops the name of the city.’
I let him tell the story.
‘It was told that a king of Samarkand wanted to make everyone’s dream
come true: to escape death. He was convinced that death came from the sky and
he wanted to do something so that it could never reach him, so he built an
immense underground palace of iron which he made inaccessible.
‘Being fabulously rich, he also had fashioned an artificial sun, which rose in
the morning and set in the evening, to warm him and indicate the passing of
days.
‘Alas, the God of Death managed to foil the monarch’s vigilance and he
slipped inside the palace to accomplish his job. He had to show all humans that
no creature could escape death, no matter how powerful, skilful or arrogant he
was. Samarkand thus became the symbol of the inescapable meeting between
man and his destiny.’
And after Samarkand, where to? For me it was the furthest extremity of the
Orient, the place of all wonders and unfathomable nostalgia. The moment I left
the city I decided to go back home; my desire was to be back in Annapolis and
to spend some sedentary years there resting from my travels and only then to set
off again.
I thus drew up the most insane plan – that of going back to Persia to fetch
Shireen and the Khayyam manuscript, and then to go off and disappear in some
great metropolis, such as Paris, Vienna or New York. For the two of us to live in

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the West but to an oriental rhythm; would that not be paradise?
On my way back, I was continually alone and distracted, preoccupied solely
with the arguments that I was going to present to Shireen. ‘Leave? Leave …?’
she would say wearily. ‘Is it not enough for you to be happy?’ However, I did
not despair of being able to overcome her reservations.
When the convertible which I had rented at the edge of the Caspian set me
down at Zarganda in front of my closed door, there was a car there already, a
Jewel-40 sporting a star-spangled banner right in the middle of its hood.
The chauffeur stepped out and enquired as to my identity. I had the idiotic
impression that he had been waiting for me ever since I left. He reassured me
that he had only been there since the morning.
‘My master told me to stay here until you came back.’
‘I might have come back in a month, a year or perhaps never.’
My astonishment hardly upset him.
‘But you are here now!’
He handed me a note scribbled by Charles W. Russell, minister
plenipotentiary of the United States.
Dear Mr Lesage
,
I would be most honoured if you could come to the Legation this afternoon at
four o’clock. It is a matter of great importance and urgency. I have asked my
chauffeur to remain at your disposal.

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