The other game was similar, in that it was played by many men on horseback. But in that sport it did not matter how many, for there were no teams; each rider played for himself, against all the others. It was called bous-kashia, and I think that is a Tazhik term, but the game was not the specialty of any one people or tribe, and all the men joined in it on one occasion or another. Instead of a pulu, the central object in bous-kashia was the cadaver of a goat from which the head had just been severed.
The newly dead thing was simply tossed onto the ground among the horses’ legs, and the many riders all spurred close around it and wrestled and shoved and pummeled one another, each striving to reach down and snatch up the goat from the ground. He who finally succeeded in that, next had to gallop and carry it across a line at the end of the field. But of course he was pursued by all the others, snatching at his trophy and trying to trip or swerve his horse or knock him out of the saddle. And whoever did seize the contested cadaver himself became the prey of all the other riders. So the game really amounted to not much more than a wrestling and grabbing match on horseback and at the gallop. It was furious and exciting, and few players emerged from it in good health, and many a spectator got trodden on by the herd of horses, or got knocked insensible by a flying goat, or a ripped-loose bloody haunch of it.
During those long winter months on the Roof of the World, besides the time I spent watching games and dances, and in the hindora bed with Chiv, and in other diversions, I also spent some less frivolous whiles in conversation with the Hakim Mimdad.
Uncle Mafìo invited no comment on his ailment or the other troubles it had brought upon him. He was taking the powdered stibium as prescribed, and we could see that he was putting on the weight he had lost, and getting stronger day by day, but we restrained any curiosity we might have had as to exactly when the medicine turned him into a eunuch, and he did not volunteer the information. Since I never encountered him in company with a boy or any other sort of partner while we stayed in Buzai Gumbad, I could not say when he may finally have desisted from such partnerships. Anyway, the hakim still called on us at regular intervals, to make a routine examination of Uncle Mafio’s progress and to increase or decrease by minute amounts the stibium he was taking. After the physician’s sessions with the patient, he and I would often sit and talk together, for I found him to be a most interesting old fellow.
Like every other mèdego I have ever known, Mimdad regarded his everyday medical practice only as a necessary drudgery by which he had to earn his living, and preferred to concentrate most of his energies and devotions on his private studies. Like every other mèdego, he dreamed of discovering something new and medically miraculous, to astound the world and to enshrine his name forever alongside those of physician deities like Asklepios and Hippocrates and ibn Sina. However, most doctors of my acquaintance—in Venice, anyway—pursue studies sanctioned or at least tolerated by Mother Church, such as the seeking of new ways to expel or expunge the demons of disease. Mimdad’s studies and experiments, I learned, were less in the realm of the healing arts than in the realm of Hermes Trismegistus, which arts verge on sorcery.
Because the Hermetic arts were originally and for so long practiced by pagans like Greeks and Arabs and Alexandrians, Christians are naturally forbidden to delve into them. But every Christian has heard of them. I, for one, knew that the Hermetics ancient and modern—the adepts, as they like to be called—have almost always and to a man been seeking to discover one of two arcane secrets: the Elixir of Life or the Universal Touchstone that will change base metals into gold. So I was surprised when the Hakim Mimdad scoffed at both of those aims as “unrealistic prospects.”
He admitted that yes, he too was an adept of the age-old and occult art. He called it al-kimia, and claimed that Allah had first taught it to the prophets Musa and Haroun, meaning Moses and Aaron, whence it had been passed down through the years to such other famous experimenters as the great Arab sage Jabir. And Mimdad admitted that yes, like every other adept, he was chasing an elusive quarry, but one less grandiose than immortality or untold wealth. All he hoped to discover—or rediscover, rather—was what he called “the philter of Majnun and Laila.” One day when the upland winter had begun to ease its clamp, and the karwan leaders were studying the sky to decide when they would start downhill from the Roof of the World, Mimdad told me the history of that remarkable philter.
“Majnun was a poet and Laila a poetess, and they lived long ago and far away. No one knows where or when. Except for the poems that have survived them, all that is known about Majnun and Laila is this: they had the power of changing their forms at will. They could become younger or older, more handsome or more ugly, and of whichever sex they chose. Or they could change their persons entirely, becoming giant rukh birds or mighty lions or terrible mardkhora. Or, in a lighter mood, they could become gentle deer or beautiful horses or pretty butterflies … .”
“A useful talent,” I said. “Their poetry then could depict those alien ways of life more accurately than any other poet had done.”
“No doubt,” said Mimdad. “But they never sought to make capital or renown of their peculiar power. They used it only for sport—and their favorite sport was love. The physical act of making love.”
“Dio me varda! They liked making love to horses and such? Why, our slave must have the blood of a poet in his veins!”
“No, no, no. Majnun and Laila made love only to each other. Consider, Marco. What need had they of anyone or anything else?”
“Hm … yes,” I mused.
“Imagine the variety of experiences available to them. She could become the male and he the female. Or she could be Laila and he could mount her as a lion. Or he could be Majnun and she a delicate qazèl. Or they could both be other people entirely. Or they could both be dewy children, or both men, or both women, or one an adult and the other a child. Or both of them freaks of grotesque configuration.”
“Gèsu …”
“When they tired of making human love, however various or capricious, they could sample the even more different pleasures that must be known to beasts and serpents and the demon jinn and the fair peri. They could be two birds, doing it in midair, or two butterflies, doing it within the embrace of a fragrant flower.”
“What a pleasant thought.”
“Or they could even take the form of hermaphrodite humans, and both Majnun and Laila could be simultaneously al-fa‘il and al-mafa’ul to each other. The possibilities would have been infinite, and they must have tried every one, for that was their lifelong occupation—except when they were momentarily sated, and paused to write a poem or two.”
“And you hope to emulate them.”
“I? Oh, no, I am old, and long past all venereal yearning. Also, an adept must not do al-kimia for his own advantage. I hope to make the philter and its power accessible to all men and women.”
“How do you know it was a philter they employed? Suppose it was a spell or a poem they recited before each change.”
“In that case, I am confounded. I cannot write a poem, or even recite one with any eloquence. Please do not make discouraging suggestions, Marco. A philter I can concoct, with liquids and powders and incantations.”