Omar Khayyam - a life Read online

  DEDICATED TO THOSE PERSIANS

  WHO SHARED THEIR HOMES AND

  THOUGHTS WITH ME AND IN

  SO DOING MADE POSSIBLE

  THIS BOOK.

  Contents

  PART I

  The Street of the Booksellers

  in the old city of Nisapur

  PART II

  The house of the Mirror of Wisdom

  on the road to the salt desert

  PART III

  The camp of Malikshah in the ruins of Babylon

  by the swift waters of the Euphrates

  PART IV

  The selling pillar in the alley of the slave sellers

  within the great bazaar of Nisapur

  PART V

  The streets of Isfahan,

  at the end of the southern road

  Author's Note

  The Street of the Booksellers in the old city of Nisapur, in the Land of the Sun. The year 1069 by the calendar of the Christians.

  The street led from the Friday mosque down to the park. It had a grape arbor over it, to keep out the sun's glare. Half way down, where the street turned, stood a giant plane tree with a fountain beneath it.

  Here the women who came to fill their water jars liked to sit. They put down their jars and whispered together, while the men dozed in the open book stalls and the boys from the mosque academy ran by, shouting, "Wake up, O sellers of old books!"

  This shout always made Yasmi squirm. The boys never paid any attention to her, since she wore a child's white half veil. They went by with manly strides, and occasionally they threw stones at Yasmi's gray kitten. Some of them had the light hairs of beards on their chins.

  Yasmi was twelve years old and beautiful, in her own eyes. So she resented the child's veil. If she could wear a full veil and look out at the boys from the shutters of the harem part of the house, they would notice her readily enough.

  Instead of that she waited upon her father in the book stall, and he was old and irresolute because he was nearly blind with much poring over finely written manuscripts. He thought more of an illuminated page of Avicenna than he did of his daughter. And the wives of the house only noticed Yasmi when they remembered tasks she could do.

  Yasmi listened sometimes when her father read to the boys, but got little satisfaction out of it. How could she understand such matters as the shape of the Wild Geese in the night sky, or the veil that hangs before the Invisible? Wisdom of that nature belonged to men; girls, it seemed, had no souls—after life left them they would be wherever the horses and cats were.

  Yasmi swept out the stall for her father, and found for him the things he could not see, and ran errands for him back and forth into the interior of the house. Between whiles she embroidered idly on a headcloth, or played with the gray kitten, sitting where she could watch all that went up and down the Street of the Booksellers.

  Two of the older boys stopped often at the stall. The taller of them, Rahim—Rahim Zadeh, the son of the landowner—had a red and brown robe that caught Yasmi's eye; the other would bend over books until the sunset hour when the light failed and the shopkeepers came out for the evening prayer.

  The evening that Rahim bought the illuminated book, her father went to the corner and came back with a square of mastic for Yasmi. While she was eating it, gratefully—because candy was a treat in a house of poverty—her father meditated.

  "Rahim really wanted the painting on the back of the cover. It was a sultan on horseback, cutting down an infidel with his sword."

  All this belonged to the world of men, of which Yasmi knew nothing. She had a fancy that she cherished, a concept of a quiet and kingly amir who would wear velvet and damask robes, who would ride a white horse through the Street of the Booksellers, with a dozen Turkish swordsmen at his tail. This dignified prince would thereupon observe Yasmi with passionate eyes and bestow bestow gifts of silver and alabaster upon her in return for carrying her, Yasmi, away with him to his palace up the river where he would sequester her in a pavilion with white swans, and silk hangings and silver plates of sugared fruits. The rider of the white horse would always be so passionately devoted to her that he would care nothing for other wives, and her children would be his favorites. He would never laugh at her....

  "Rahim laughs so much," she observed.

  "Well—" her father considered. "He does. But why not, when he is noble-born, with body servants to run hither and yon for him?"

  That would be nice, Yasmi thought, and for a moment she considered Rahim in the role of the amir of the white horse. Still, Rahim remained Rahim. Once he had flung her a copper coin, and she had polished it until it looked almost like gold. She wondered why he always went about with his friend the son of Ibrahim.

  "The son of Ibrahim," she suggested, restraining the gray kitten from an excursion out into the street, "is silent and fierce. I do not like him."

  This other boy had never so much as looked into her eyes. He would hasten down the street with his abba flying out from his broad shoulders and his headcloth in disarray, as if he had not taken any thought about his dress. He would hurry through strings of donkeys and under camels' necks, as if nothing could check his course. When he was in her father's shop he would read with that same intentness, taking up one book after the other, while Rahim and her father talked.

  "The son of Ibrahim?" her father muttered. "Oh, he is not silent at the school. He argues and mocks. By God's will, no good ever came of that."

  Yasmi knew well enough what mockery was—she had her share of it in the women's apartments. But the day of the stoning of the gray kitten she had something else to think about.

  The kitten had wandered out and Yasmi called "Maleki, Maleki" in vain until she discovered her pet in the branches of the small plane tree at the street turning. Maleki would not come down for good reason. A half-dozen students were flinging pebbles at her, idly at first, then savagely as the lust to slay grew upon them.

  "Stop!" Yasmi cried shrilly.

  When they did not stop the girl began to sob. Maleki was so helpless, crouching there in the branches. Yasmi pushed through the boys and stamped her foot, the tears dripping down her cheeks. Then, desperately, she rushed at the tree and scrambled up into the branches.

  She climbed until she reached the kitten. Once she had picked it up in her arms the stones ceased cutting through the branches. The boys were no longer interested. They went away, down the street.

  But when Yasmi descended to the lower branches, she felt frightened. She was so far above the ground. How she had got there she did not know. It was impossible to jump down with the kitten in her arms. The men of the shops were trooping off toward the mosque and no one paid any attention to a girl-child in a tree. Except the boy who came and stood beneath her. "Jump," he said gravely, holding out an arm.

  It was the son of Ibrahim, and Yasmi did not want to jump. "No," she shook her head.

  "Yah bint!" He leaped and caught the branches, swinging himself beside her. "Oh, girl."

  Holding her fast, he let himself go. Yasmi gasped, and the gray kitten whined and clawed at his headcloth. Then they were on the ground, and Yasmi's heart thumped against her ribs. The son of Ibrahim was smiling down at her, his dark eyes amused. He was disengaging Maleki from his clothing. "Y'allah" he said, "both of you hold tight enough!"

  Yasmi wiped her cheeks, and cried out: "Do not mock me!"

  Then she felt dismayed, and ran away into the shadows under the trellis. All that evening she thought of his eyes smiling down at her, and the restless muscles of his arms holding her.

  From that time Yasmi thought of nothing but the son of Ibrahim. Instead of watching the riders pass along the park at the foot of the street, she sat where she could see the school ga
te of the mosque enclosure and when his uncouth figure came striding down among the other youths, Yasmi turned away with her cheeks burning. None the less, she watched him from the corners of her eyes. She noticed for the first time how straight he stood and how firmly he planted his sandals on the smooth stones. His lips were full and dark, and when he smiled at her, his dark face became gentle.

  Yasmi tried various ways of attracting his attention. Once she experimented with the powder cloth of her elder sister and blackened her lids and lashes with kohl. Then she worked at a wreath of jasmine blossoms, and let it fall—she had seen her sister do that—when he came by the shop. He picked it up and put it back in her lap and went on—and Yasmi hid away from everyone for an hour, from sheer excitement and fear that she had been too forward.

  Then she studied herself in her mother's bronze mirror, and decided that she was beautiful. She imagined herself veiled and seductive, and sought by men as if she were the daughter of an amir. She confided all this to the gray kitten in the hours of the night when the women thought her asleep on her quilt in the corner. But she wanted the son of Ibrahim to speak to her.

  When he was in the shop she watched his every action—how he settled down in a corner of the rug in the sunlight to read, what books he favored, how he frowned and twisted his fingers over the written pages. There was one book he always looked for. Yasmi examined it when she had the shop to herself and found that it had many pictures with circles and lines and strange squares cut into parts. She could not read it, but she knew this book well, and one day she ventured to hide it among some larger manuscripts.

  When Rahim and the son of Ibrahim came in, she smiled at the tall student and both of them looked at her. "Eh, Yasmi," said Rahim, "what new moon or what houri of paradise could vie with thy beauty?"

  That, she thought, was a very pretty speech. She dropped her eyes and raised them suddenly so that Rahim could appreciate them.

  "I have no shield," he laughed, "I have no shield to ward off such destroying darts. Be merciful!"

  Yasmi smiled, but she was listening to the son of Ibrahim searching for his book. She pretended to upset the pile of manuscripts, and snatched up the red book with the drawings. In doing so she managed to tear a page across, just as she heard her father's slow steps approaching. He had not seen the tragedy—her heart thumped painfully when she remembered that this was one of his cherished volumes—but he noticed the torn page projecting from the edge.

  I have done that," said the son of Ibrahim suddenly. "So I will buy it. What is the price?"

  'The Euclid with all the diagrams?" Her father looked surprised. It was a costly manuscript, and both he and Rahim knew that the son of Ibrahim had little money to spend.

  "The library of the Nisapur school hath not such a copy with all the diagrams," began her father.

  "Oh," Rahim broke in, "I will buy it, because I meant to make a gift of it to this scatterbrain Omar, son of Ibrahim of the Tentmakers."

  Omar flushed and took the red book in his strong fingers.

  "But do not say, O Seller of Old Books," Rahim laughed, "that this was the copy of Sultan Mahmoud, the one he kept always by his golden throne. It is worth no more than fourteen dinars because it is the work of an infidel Greek a long time dead."

  "Nay," her father began to bargain, "the written text without the diagrams is worth twice that. And this binding———"

  For an hour they discussed the price, while Yasmi listened eagerly, understanding that Omar was longing to possess the book. At the end Rahim bought it for his friend, for nineteen dinars of gold and some copper coins. Nothing more was said about the torn page.

  When the two students left, Yasmi saw Omar stop and draw his pencase from his girdle cloth. It was a finely painted case. He thrust it into Rahim's hand and ran off, refusing to take back the pencase.

  That evening was a memorable one for the son of Ibrahim of the Tentmakers. He hurried through his supper, washing his hands at the fountain and wiping them carefully on a clean sheepskin. Borrowing an extra lamp and lighting it at the courtyard fire, he went to his room.

  It was a clay shed on the roof of the house, intended for drying onions and sweet grass. The boy occupied it because it cost only a few coppers a moon and because it gave him seclusion at night, with a clear view of the stars. When the night wind breathed across the plain, the bunches of grass and strings of onions rustled as if touched with life. Lying on his quilt Omar could look over the roofs to the round tower of the Sultan's palace.

  Now he sighed thankfully because there was no wind. He lighted the other lamp, and placed the two in niches in the wall. With the copy of Euclid resting on a polished board on his knees, he turned the pages slowly. This was so much better than the parrot-like repetition of the schoolroom.

  His eyes, under the strong, arched brows, became intent. His hand reached out for ink and pen, and a sheet of cotton paper from which he had erased the faded writing of years before. With ruler and compass he drew a cone, divided it swiftly into segments.

  Lines of numerals formed under his fingers, as his mind drifted into calculation. The shed, the lamps, even the book, passed from his mind as he worked . . . the familiar cadence of a voice interrupted him for a moment.

  It was the voice calling to the night prayer, and a vague unrest seized upon the boy. He ought to make the prayer—this book was the work of an infidel. He blinked at the lamps and settled down to a fresh calculation.

  Before midnight he was disturbed again. He heard shuffling feet in the street below, the snapping of torches, and a hoarse voice. Going to the parapet he saw a crowd gathered about a gaunt figure in a black headcloth.

  "O believers!" The figure spread out its arms and Omar recognized a Hanbalite, a zealot of Islam.

  "O believers! The day cometh swiftly when ye who have tasted of ease shall be summoned by a warner. The day cometh when ye shall take up the sword against unbelievers. When that day is at hand, ye will hear a blast of trumpets bidding you rise from the beds of ease and take up the sword, to drive the unbelievers as a great wind drives sand before it. Give heed to the warning!"

  The ragged Hanbalite beat his chest, driving his voice out into the night, and the idlers who followed him muttered among themselves. Omar listened with appreciation, for the man was eloquent. But, war! Was the Sultan not always at war?

  When the Hanbalite had passed on and the "O believers!" dwindled into the vagrant sounds of the roof-tops, Omar stared up at the star groups. Suddenly he yawned. Stretching his long arms, he blew out the lamps; he flung himself down on his quilt, pulling the camel's hair blanket over his shoulders. In another moment he was asleep.

  Chance gave to Yasmi the opportunity for which she had longed. Her mother had sent her up the street to fill a jar at the fountain. It was easy to carry the empty jar to the trickle of water under the plane tree; when the jar was filled, Yasmi dawdled about before struggling to raise it to her small head.

  Presently Omar appeared and stopped to drink from his hand. He had no books, he was arguing with no friends, and he saluted Yasmi gravely.

  "Eh, say," she remarked instantly, before he could pass.

  'What shall I say?"

  She considered, fearful that he would go on his way. "My father says you are a mocker. Why do you come to a bad end?"

  Omar looked at her as if she had been a parrot that had suddenly given tongue.

  "It is much better," she hurried on, "to be sweet to people, and not to mock them—then they give you candy at times. How old are you? What do you do when you are not at the school, or thinking, or sitting with Rahim?"

  "Well," Omar smiled, "I am seventeen years old. Sometimes I visit the shop of my father, who was of the tentmakers' guild. Now he is dead. But Rahim—Rahim is going away."

  Yasmi wriggled with interest. She looked up at the boy shyly and made room for him to sit on the rock beside her. "Tell me," she said impulsively, "what you would like to do? What you do in your mind, when you aren't car
rying water or children, or washing cloths——— "

  With dismay she realized that a student who contradicted masters at the school and chanted verses from the Koran that he knew by heart had other occupations than her humble self. But her mistake proved fortunate because Omar sat down.

  "I would like," he meditated, "to have an observatory."

  She did not know what this might be, but she was careful not to make a second slip. "And then what?"

  "Oh, a globe of the sky-sphere, and a copy of Ptolemy's star tables."

  There was a lot more, it seemed, needed to complete an observatory. Yasmi perceived that what Omar longed for was a tower of seclusion that would belong to him—something like the pavilion with the white swans of her own dreams.

  "I know!" she nodded. You want to be a conjurer like Sidi Ahmed, and read fate in the stars."

  The older women of her house patronized Sidi Ahmed, the soothsayer.

  Omar was not pleased. His brows drew together and he gritted his teeth. "The father of fools, the braying donkey—with his abracadabra mumblings, and his horoscopes!"

  It appeared that Omar did not believe in soothsayers. What he wanted to do was vague in Yasmi's agile mind. He wanted to use his observatory to measure Time. Yasmi's notion of Time began with sunrise and the first of the five prayers, and it ended with starlight. There was the moon, of course, to mark the months.

  Omar, however, was not content with the moon. The moon went on its way and left many hours of Time behind each year. Why should men lose these hours from the year? The moon was to blame, but they would not forsake the moon to make a true count of the hours.

  Yasmi nodded wisely, thinking of other things. If Omar could have his observatory, and if—and if he could love her a little, she would sweep it out and wash his turban cloths for him, and embroider his slippers. The two of them would live all their hours in the observatory.

  Because Yasmi no longer wanted to go home. She wanted to listen to the voice of the son of Ibrahim, to watch the shadows flecking his smooth skin, while his eyes flashed and darkened. Without Omar, she would be empty and nothing—nothing would please her, ever. She edged a little closer to him, clutching the rose that she had picked to try in her hair.