In eight days, that in my nightmares seemed eight years, we crossed another wasteland to the province of Tunocain, well peopled, and famous for the beauty of its women. Here we were shown a Holy Tree, the breaking of one twig therefrom being punished with death. Some said it supplied Adam his staff and Moses his rod, while the devil-ridden Nestorian Christians, not to be outdone, declared that the Cross had been cut from its mighty limbs. But these tales were probably mythical, while the story of the Old Man of the Mountains, who had lived and reigned in my own time, was based on truth.
He was the hereditary head of a sect of Ismaelians, themselves heretics outside of the Mohammedan fold, and according to their hocus-pocus, an incarnation of Divinity itself. By walling in the entrance to a beautiful valley between mountains, he laid out a magnificent garden, with palaces, fountains, and orchards, and even mechanical runnels from which milk or honey flowed when a tap was opened. When his mullahs spied a likely youth fit to be a member of the murderous band that served him, he was given a sleeping potion, brought within the garden, dressed in jeweled raiment, and wakened by sweet music. All-but-naked maidens of singular beauty brought him fragrant fruits, delicious viands, and exquisite wines; they danced or sang at his pleasure, and when a more rampant hunger came upon him, he could have one or all of the beauteous bevy at his nod.
After some days of this he was again drugged and restored to his former place. Pining for the Paradise he had lost, he was told by the mullahs that he had made a trial trip there, and could return if he took the Old Man of the Mountains for his god and ruler. Thus was recruited a troop of robbers whose raids enriched their master, and who slew all who stood in the way of his supreme power. Since they smoked or ate bhang, Indian hemp, which in Persia was called hashish, they called themselves the Hashishins. On Western lips, the name became Assassins, and as such was known in Venice.
The Old Man of the Mountains became the actual lord of a vast territory, only to be besieged and slain by an army sent by Hulagu Khan, brother of the Emperor Mangu Khan, eighteen years before. Of his band of Assassins, most were slain, but a few found eyries in mountain fastnesses, from which they still harry the land and rob the caravans.[15]
A venerable silk merchant, wearing the badge of a hadji, was pointed out to me as a former member of the murderous horde, but having made a pilgrimage to Mecca and his peace with Allah, he had the favor of the Calif and hopes of a real Paradise behind the sunset.
“Is the story true?” I asked him, after he had given me a long-stored sherbet of figs.
“The garden, with its bright pavilions and gilded palaces, was as real as yon doorpost. So were the fruits, wines, and beautiful maidens. But only the dullest lumpkin ever dreamed he was in Paradise. He pretended to do so only to enjoy its blessings.”
“What disillusioned you?”
“A melon that was served me was overripe—that alone was a flaw I did not think Allah would countenance—and it fluxed me.”
So be it with every garden and every gardener that presumes to be divine!
2
We crossed the great land of Dasht-i-Lut. The old and yellow moon that had shown us the dead face of Lazarus on the desert of death rose silver-white and full, its second or third waxing, over the great caravanserai of Meshed. The city lay near the eastern borders of Persia, below the endless sands of the Kara Kum; and ten thousand caravans passed through the gates in its ninety-foot earthen wall from year to year. Within were pleasant running streams, rich hostelries, bazaars without end, and the Brides of the Oasis.
So were called the thousand beautiful young girls whom the Imam allowed to marry travelers for as long or as short a time as they remained in Meshed. Since there was always a rush of recruits, virgins were not difficult to find, many of them belonging to well-off families; however, they expected a larger bridal gift than the many-times-widowed. We merchants and many of our followers had been looking forward to the treat for long, dusty days, and we could hardly wait for our goods to be stowed ere we went wife-hunting.[16]
I was shown the prettiest in the bevy. So a dragoman had assured me, his eyes rolled to heaven and both hands on his heart and his voice atremble with emotion, and if he had lied, by witness of my own eyes, I could cut his throat. She was a virgin in her fourteenth year. The reason that I might have her was that she had agreed to become a Bride of the Oasis only if her initiator was a presentable youth, under twenty, and of good station. And since this had straitly limited the number of candidates, her bridal gift need not be more than fifty dinars for my fortnight’s stay.
Her name was Esther and she came into her father’s rose garden to look at me through her veil. Evidently she was satisfied to take me for her mate in her bridal adventure, because the silk became caught in a rose thorn and disclosed her face. To think that I could have her for those days thrilled my flesh and, unless the Devil gulled me, exalted my soul.
She was lovely as any Venetian girl of fourteen and the slave trader Paulos Angelos would gladly have bought her for nine hundred pieces of gold.
This meeting occurred in the morning after my first night in Meshed. Abdul the dragoman promised to deliver her to my quarters in the caravanserai at sundown. All day I walked on air, but when the sun winked out of sight behind the western rocks, and the light began to dim, and the breeze off the desert blew fresh in my face, and the sand kept running through my glass, I fell hard to the ground.
Posting a boy at my door in case somebody came, I went out into the crowded square to look for Abdul. I did not find him, but before the moon was over the roof tops, I spoke with a chokoda, a kind of gate keeper, just outside the wall of Esther’s garden.
“Abdul is an underling to the serai master,” the fellow told me. “You should have dealt with the effendi himself. A great sheik looked at her, and to her great joy, she found favor in his sight. So he sent for her in a handsome hired palanquin at the fourth hour past noon.”
“But she promised to come to me.”
“I am sorry, effendi. You know the fickleness of youth.”
“You say he was a great sheik. Such are not commonly found in men under twenty.”
“She changed her mind about that condition when she saw him. But truly he is not a day over thirty.”
“Will you give me his name? I will send him a peacock plume in tribute.”
“Why, it’s no secret. He’s an ambassador to the Great Khan from Frankistan—and his name is the same as the game played on horseback by the lords of Kabul.”
“No matter. There are many fine fish in the sea.”
But I did not drop a golden hook to catch one. I would not so dance attendance on Defeat.
From Meshed, it was no great feat to get to Balkh. The distance might not be more than five hundred miles by crow flight, provided a crow could find his forage in the mountains and desert, and not stay to gorge on the melons of Shibargh. But we went on camelback and horseback and shank’s mare. We wheeled four days to pass a single well of brackish water. Then, making our way up the valley of the Upper Oxus, amid watered fields and orchards or blackened earth, we came unto Balkh, above the Hindu Kush and almost at the western gate of the mighty Pamir. This was known as the Mother of Cities. It had boasted mosques as beautiful as Samarkand’s, which were upstarts compared to the Buddhist temples and reliquaries, which were innovations compared to the shrine of Zoroaster, who had died within these walls. But only fifty years ago, the city had come into the disfavor of Genghis Khan. After promising them immunity, he caused all those who could keep pace to march onto the plain—men, women, and children to the number of fifty thousand—and slaughtered every one. The halls of the college and the towers and palaces were razed to the ground.