“Why did you get so upset earlier at my sending the fedayeen into paradise? Aren’t they happy? What possible difference is there between their happiness and the happiness of somebody else who is just as ignorant of its true foundations? I know what’s bothering you. You’re bothered that the three of us know something that they don’t know. And despite that, they’re still better off—than I am, for instance. Imagine how any pleasure would be ruined for those three if they even suspected that I’d deliberately drawn them into something about which they had no knowledge. Or that I knew something more than they do about everything that’s happening to them. Or if they sensed they were just playthings, helpless chess pieces in my hands. That they were just tools being used in some unknown plan by some higher will, some higher intellect. I’ll tell you, friends, that sense, that sort of suspicion has embittered every day of my life. The sense that there could be someone over us who surveys the universe and our position in it with a clear mind, who could know all sorts of things about us—maybe even the hour of our death—that are mercilessly veiled from our intellect. Who could have his own particular designs for us, who perhaps uses us for his experiments, who toys with us, with our fates and our lives, while we, the puppets in his hands, celebrate and rejoice, imagining that we actually shape our own happiness. Why is it that higher intellects are always the ones so hopelessly dogged about discovering the secrets of natural phenomena? Why is it that wise men are always so passionately committed to science and racking their brains about the universe? Epicurus said that a wise man could enjoy perfect happiness if he didn’t have to be afraid of unknown heavenly phenomena and the mystery of death. To subdue or at least explain that fear, he devoted himself to science and the exploration of nature.”
“Very learned,” Abu Ali remarked. “But, if I understood you right, your philosophizing could be abbreviated to this assertion: you’re secretly hounded by the fact that you’re not Allah.”
Hasan and Buzurg Ummid both laughed.
“Not a bad guess,” Hasan said. He stepped up to the battlements and pointed toward the part of the sky where it was dark, from where a thousand tiny stars intensely shone.
“Look at this limitless vault of heaven! Who can count the stars scattered across it? Aristarchus said that each one of them is a sun. Where is the human intellect that can grasp that? And still, everything is efficiently arranged, as though it were governed by some conscious will. Whether that will is Allah or the blind operation of nature is irrelevant. Against this limitlessness we are ridiculous invalids. I first became aware of my smallness in comparison with the universe when I was ten years old. What haven’t I experienced and what hasn’t faded since then? Gone is my faith in Allah and the Prophet, gone is the heady spell of first love. Jasmine on a summer night no longer smells as wonderful, and tulips no longer bloom in such vivid colors. Only my amazement at the limitlessness of the universe and my fear of unknown meteorological phenomena have remained the same. The realization that our world is just a grain of dust in the universe, and that we’re just some mange, some infinitely tiny lice on it—this realization still fills me with despair.”
Abu Ali leapt up on his bowed legs and began thrashing around as though he were defending himself from invisible opponents.
“Praise be to Allah that he made me modest and spared me those concerns,” he exclaimed half in jest. “I’m more than glad to leave those things to the Batus, the Mamuns and the Abu Mashars.”
“Do you think I have any other choice?” Hasan replied with a kind of headstrong irony. “Yes, Protagoras, you were great when you spoke the maxim that man is the measure of all things! What else can we do, after all, but make peace with that double-edged wisdom? Limit ourselves to this clod of dirt and water that we live on and leave the expanses of the universe to superhuman intellects. Our domain, the place suited to our intellect and will, is down here, on this poor, little planet. ‘Man is the measure of all things.’ The louse has suddenly become a factor worthy of respect! All we need to do is to impose some limits. Exclude the universe from our field of vision and be content with the terra firma we stand on. When I grasped that intellectually—do you see, friends—I threw myself into reordering things in myself and around myself with all my might. The universe was like a huge, blank map for me. In the middle of it was a gray spot, our planet. In that spot was an infinitely tiny black dot, me, my consciousness. The only thing I know for sure. I renounced the white space. I had to delve into the gray spot, measure its size and count its numbers, and then… then gain power over it, begin to control it according to my reason, my will. Because it’s a horrible thing for someone who’s competed with Allah to end up on the bottom.”
“Now at last I understand you, ibn Sabbah!” Abu Ali exclaimed, not without some playfulness. “You want to be the same thing on earth that Allah is in heaven.”
“Praise be to Allah! At last a light has gone on in your head too,” Hasan laughed. “And high time. I was beginning to wonder whom I was going to leave my legacy to.”
“But you did finally fill in the blank space on the map,” Abu Ali said. “Where would you have found a place for your paradise otherwise?”
“You see, the difference between those of us who have seen through things and the vast masses stumbling through the dark is this: we’ve limited ourselves, while they refuse to limit themselves. They want us to get rid of the blank space of the unknown for them. They can’t tolerate any uncertainty. But since we don’t have any truth, we have to comfort them with fairy tales and fabrications.”
“The fairy tale down there is developing fast,” said Buzurg Ummid, who had been looking into the gardens from the battlements when he caught their last words. “The second youth is awake now and the girls are dancing a circle dance around him.”
“Let’s have a look,” Hasan said, and went with Abu Ali to join him.
The girls watched with bated breath as Zuleika uncovered the sleeping Yusuf. He was so tall that when the eunuchs were bringing him in, his feet had stuck out over the end of the litter. Now his powerful body appeared as the blanket was removed.
“What a giant! He could hide you under his arm, Jada,” Zofana whispered, to gather more courage.
“You wouldn’t have that much to boast about around him yourself,” Rokaya said, cutting her off.
In the meantime Zuleika had knelt down beside him and was studying him raptly.
“What do you suppose he’ll do when he wakes up?” Little Fatima worried. She covered her eyes with her hands, as though she were trying to avoid an unknown danger. She was among the most timid of the girls, and to distinguish her from the first Fatima they called her Little Fatima.
“He’ll gobble you up,” Habiba teased her.
“Don’t scare her. She’s skittish enough as it is.”
Rokaya laughed.
But Yusuf kept on sleeping. He merely turned his back on the light that was glaring in his eyes.
Zuleika got up and joined the girls.
“He’s as fast asleep as if he were unconscious,” she said. “But isn’t he a splendid hero? Let’s sing and dance for him, so that he’ll be pleased when he wakes up.”
Each girl picked up her instrument. They began playing and singing softly. Zuleika and Rokaya reached for the drums and tried dancing a leisurely step.
Jada and Little Fatima were still trembling with fear.
“Why don’t you two sing?” Zuleika asked angrily. “Do you think I don’t see you’re just moving your lips?”
“This is what Suhrab, the son of Rustam, must have been like,” Asma commented.