Swords From the Desert Read online

  Foreword vii

  Acknowledgments xi

  Introduction xiii

  The Rogue's Girl i

  The Shield 17

  The Guest of Karadak 69

  The Road to Kandahar 122

  The Light of the Palace 209

  The Way of the Girl 266

  The Eighth Wife 276

  Appendix 287

  About the Author 307

  Source Acknowledgments 309

  While researching material for his histories of the Crusades, Harold Lamb began to read Arab accounts of the time and became fascinated with their culture. In a letter printed in the appendix of this volume he wrote that "the Arab, and the saracin-folk, were more intelligent than our Croises, more courteous, and usually more daring. They had a sense of humor. ... Read side by side, the Moslem chronicles of Ibn Athir, Raschid, or Ibn Battuta are much more human, expressive, and likable than the monkish annals of the crusaders." Lamb found inspiration in these old chronicles, and before long was writing stories from the Arab point of view. First came "The Shield," a novella narrated by Khalil el Khadr,* who figures prominently in two of the Durandal stories.t

  A few years later Lamb returned to an Arabian narrator, Daril ibn Athir, a former swordsman turned physician. His three adventures form the jeweled center of this collection. The first two were published almost back to back; the third was published some seven months after and is apt to leave those who read the adventures in sequence scratching their heads. In "The Road to Kandahar," Daril allies himself with the stalwart Mahabat Khan, scion of Jahangir the Mogul, and the story's conclusion leaves Daril with Mahabat Khan and his Rajput allies to journey to Jahangir's stronghold. When "The Light of the Palace" opens, Daril is introduced to another Mahabat Khan, likewise a leader of Rajputs and scion of Jahangir. Daril neither knows him nor makes mention of having known someone very similar. Indeed, it seems clear that it is the same fellow and that Lamb has ignored the existence of the preceding story. As Mahabat Khan is a prominent character in both novellas, it is no mistake but a deliberate choice. No correspondence on the subject or notes on the story seem to have survived, so Lamb's reasoning remains a minor mystery.

  Whatever the explanation, in "The Light of the Palace" Lamb returns to the court of Jahangir the Mogul and the brilliant and lovely Nur-Mahal, mother of she for whom the Taj Mahal was erected. Nur-Mahal's astonishing ability to not only survive and rule in a male-dominated society but to rule wisely, fascinated Lamb; she appeared three times in the stories of Khlit the Cossack and Abdul Dost, and four years later, in 1932, she was the protagonist in one of Lamb's best novels, Nur-Mahal. In some ways, "The Light of the Palace" is a dry run for the later novel, or at least it was a chance for Lamb to experiment with the characters who would form its core. When Nur-Mahal and Mahabat Khan's goals bring them to loggerheads, they are so fully realized that great fiction results.

  One of this book's companion volumes, Swords From the West, would probably have been a more appropriate home for "The Rogue's Girl," one of Lamb's better stories from the post-Adventure phase of his writing career, but because it has an Arab physician as a minor viewpoint character, I placed it here to relieve a collection already groaning at the bindings. Two stories with mettlesome female protagonists round out this volume. Nadra, from "The Way of the Girl," is so capable one wonders why she desires the attention of the rock-skulled Yarouk, but apparently love can be both blind and politically incorrect.

  Lamb was treated well in the Middle East, for his writing had gained a reputation for being well researched and impartial.* The U.S. State Department valued his opinion highly enough to consult with him about the region after World War II, just as the Office of Strategic Services (oss) had employed him undercover overseas during the war. Lamb had been posted to Iran, his cover being that of a writer doing research for his books-an easy enough cover, as that's exactly what Lamb was doing. An oss superior, Gordon Loud, wrote of him in 1944 saying that "he has marvelous contacts but fails to make the best of them, having something of the feeling that reporting information gained socially is an abuse of friend ship and hospitality. This I tried to dispel, how successfully only results will show." Loud made several other points about Lamb in the briefing, among them these two:

  •Apparently [Lamb] thoroughly appreciates the reasons why he cannot write for publication on certain controversial subjects and is reconciled to this limitation, even though it hurts his idealistic conscience.

  *Is extremely sensitive to Washington [not oss] "boners" regarding Middle East policy-is repeatedly kept awake over them, and continually says "What can we do to prevent them." My only answer was to keep reporting their reactions upon the Middle East, constantly building up evidence of their detrimental effect.

  A letter written by Lamb to a superior in December 1944 reveals Loud's analysis to be an accurate assessment. Lamb mentions the drafting of articles for the Saturday Evening Post to help bolster support for Middle Eastern concerns. Here is an excerpt:

  The attitude of our PGS Command in Iran is they have one job to do, to move freight to the waiting Russians, and that in so doing they need have no tangible relationship with Iranians. Some officers, who, like Wright, had set up contacts like language study groups, etc. were discouraged in so doing. Not that Connolly and his staff do not appear at certain functions in Iran and shake hands, or entertain twosomes and threesomes of Iranians. But the general impression produced is that our officers consider Iranians an inferior lot, and have as little contact with them as possible, while building camps like Amirabad and running the railroad. You know how this impression has been strengthened by wisecracking write-ups in Time and elsewhere.

  At the same time Russian officers are in close contact with our Command in the performance of their duties. Also our Command has been throwing weekly parties for Russians with back-slapping thrown in. General impression: we want the Soviet heroes for buddies, but not the Iranians.

  Now when the Shah and his party made a tour of Khorassan the Iranian group was greeted ceremoniously by the Russkys, who turned out the guard at their inadequate posts, and arranged motion pictures of the journey. General effect: cordiality and proper appreciation shown by the Russians.

  It seemed more than obvious that unless our Command made some reciprocating gesture, its relationship with the Iranians would go from had to worse. I suggested to Cairo (Nov 18) what should have been done long since - to invite the Shah to make an inspection trip down the railroad (our section, Tehran to the Gulf) to view ournew installations, camps, hospitals, etc. The Iranian party to be received with due ceremony-perhaps we could throw in a parade or band concert, and certainly we could muster camera crews to take some footage for the Tehran and probably U.S.A. news-files.

  The trip would appeal to the youngster, Muhammad Reza, and would fit in exactly with his (and the general official Iranian) anxiety to participate in the war endeavor. Whether the trip was made or not, the gesture would send up our stock.

  The letter goes on to describe Lamb getting approval to set the plan in motion through the Iranians, which he proceeds to do through his friend and contact Muhammad Sa'id, Minister of Foreign Affairs. Later in the same letter Lamb relays that Sa'id told him he "had been the only person of late to take the pains to go to all parts of the country and to understand it from the Iranian point of view. His aide pressed me afterward as to the probable date of my return."

  I do not know whether Lamb managed in the end to arrange a tour for the shah; that would take some extensive digging through oss archives. This snapshot of his oss service, though, shows that Lamb's own sense of honor, fair play, and simple common sense was being troubled by American policies of the time.

  After the war,
Lamb's home was filled with lovely gifts from leaders throughout the Middle East, including some gorgeous illuminated Koran pages, pottery, sculpture, and so forth. The shah of Iran became a close personal friend and visited the Lambs at their home, and Harold and his wife, Ruth, spent much of the year except the summers, which they usually spent in Switzerland in parts of the Middle East. Other luminaries and movers and shakers from other fields visited them at their house, including Cecil B. DeMille, who lunched there often.

  At the time of his death, Lamb was a director of the Friends of the Middle East, Inc. It's hard to know what he would have thought of America's Middle Eastern policies in the last decades, but it seems safe to say that we could have benefited from his guidance.

  This book, though, far removed from such concerns, transports us to distant times as seen through the eyes of wanderers and heroes who rode the caravan paths. They are splendid tales and worthy additions to the libraries of those who love adventure.

  Enjoy!

  I would like to thank Bill Prather of the Thacher School for his continued support. This volume would not have been possible without the aid of Bruce Nordstrom, who long ago provided Lamb's Collier's texts and other research notes. I also would like to express my appreciation for research assistance from Roland Popp and the advice of Victor Dreger, Jan van Heinegen, Alfred Lybeck, and James Pfundstein, gentlemen and scholars. Lastly I wish again to thank my father, the late Victor Jones, who helped me locate various Adventure magazines, and Dr. John Drury Clark, whose lovingly preserved collection of Lamb stories is the chief source of seventyfive percent of my Adventure manuscripts.

  SCOTT ODEN

  In 1959 explorer Wilfred Thesiger wrote that once a man left the deserts of the Middle East he would "have within him the yearning to return ... for this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match." * Such a sentiment finds resonance in the life and work of Harold Lamb.

  We most often remember Lamb as the premiere adventure writer of the Pulp Era, as the creator of such memorable characters as Khlit the Cossack, Kirdy and Ayub, Daril ibn Athir and Khalil el Khadr. Indeed, he was all of this and more. Born in 1892, Harold Albert Lamb was a contemporary of T. E. Lawrence, the famed Lawrence of Arabia; while no evidence exists that the two men ever met or corresponded, their lives nevertheless followed a similar arc. Apart from their more glaring differences-that Lamb was a native New Yorker and Lawrence the illegitimate son of Irish gentry-at a young age both men poured prodigious energy into the study of the old Orient, what today we call the Middle East, and especially into the era of the Crusades. But, while Lawrence's initial interests were archaeological, Lamb fashioned the rewards of his Eastern passion into stories. In Lamb's own words:

  I wrote all the time-set up my stories in the attic at school [Columbia University] and printed them on a hand press and then carried on with the Columbian literary magazine.

  In 1914 my father broke down and I found a job as a make-up man on a motor trade weekly, then tried to do financial statistics for the New York Times and write stories at the same time. The stories were gleaned from the oriental digging, and Adventure printed them. An understanding editor, Arthur Sullivan Hoffman, allowed me to write anything I wanted.t

  While the Great War (1914-i8) formed a watershed moment in the life of Lawrence, the moment where his name became legend, it was no less significant to Lamb. When America entered World War I in 1917, Lamb joined the Io7th Infantry (formerly the Seventh New York) as a private but did not see any fighting; a month after his enlistment he married Ruth Barbour-she who would be his constant companion till the end of his days.

  Lamb continued writing and selling, with the prestigious Adventure being his primary market. By 1927 he had also branched out into nonfiction with the publication of a critically acclaimed biography of Genghis Khan; more would follow. Still, Lamb wrote a staggering array of fiction for Adventure: tales of Cossacks and Mongols, crusaders and Moslems-from intricately plotted epics cast on a grand scale to romantic interludes worthy of Scheherazade. Adding to the verisimilitude of his work was Lamb's skill with languages. He was fluent in Latin and French, the language of Near Eastern exploration since the days of Napoleon, as well as ancient Persian, some Arabic, and a bit of Turkish ... not to mention Manchu-Tatar and medieval Ukrainian. He assembled his own personal library of research material, with special emphasis on "the medieval travelers, Persian and Russian chronicles, [and the] histories of elder China."*

  Lamb bolstered his scholarship with a propensity for travel. Not content to study the Orient from afar, he and his wife journeyed extensively through the lands he wrote about. Thus, when Daril ibn Athir, narrator of "The Road to Kandahar," sees "a wide and lofty plain, set with fruit gardens and water ditches and the yellow walls of villages. Lines of vineyards rose against the nearest hills, and pomegranate bushes with their dark, shining leaves nearly hid the water ditches," one can be certain it was a vista Lamb himself beheld while traveling in southern Afghanistan.

  The roar of the'2os gave way to the dour'3os. Lamb weathered the Great Depression better than most, balancing the needs of writing, travel, and study with the demands of a growing family; he sought new outlets for his work as the pulps withered on the vine. More and more he focused on his histories and biographies, books whose even-handedness and popularity elevated him out of the pulp ghetto and into the role of serious historian-a role that earned him an excellent reputation in the Middle East.

  Much of the fair-mindedness in Lamb's work extended from a genuine affection for the peoples and cultures of the Orient: he respected their history, found their chronicles to be much more accessible-more human-than those of the Europeans, and found much to admire in their courtesy and their humor. This esteem manifested itself in his well-rounded portrayals of fictional characters and in the objective treatment of biographical subjects. This is not to say Lamb turned a blind eye to the faults and foibles of the Moslems. Far from it. But neither did he play to the stereotype. Lamb purposefully eschewed the Western caricature of Arabs as childish zealots and instead presented them as possessing in equal measures nobility and pettiness, piety and profanity, charity and greed, mercy and cruelty. In short, he allowed them their humanity.

  Though one can only speculate, it is easy to imagine how the men and women Lamb met on the road must have provided him with a deep pool of inspiration: from jests and maledictions to gestures and expressions; from the cut and texture of a rich merchant's khalat to the fork of a camel driver's hennaed beard. Such miniscule details, when woven amid the threads of history, served to resurrect the dead in the eyes of his readers. But Harold Lamb's greatest gift, and surely this is beyond speculation, was his ability to restore to the past its epic sense of blood and thunder, its grandeur and its drama.

  Apart from his work, Lamb does not seem to be the sort of man who courted drama; he appeared reserved by nature, quiet and devoid of that sense of personal flamboyance that has become the hallmark of the modern author. He said of himself, "When study oppresses I go straight to the Northern lumber camps or the decks of a schooner. My relaxations are chess, tennis, and gardening. I am six feet one inch in height, weigh rho pounds, and have prematurely gray hair."`

  But the outbreak of World War II brought a new wrinkle to Lamb's life as this learned, lean, and active family man was tapped by the oss to advise and gather intelligence-incidentally, the same task the British Foreign Office recruited Lawrence for in 1914-against Axis interests in Iran. In his foreword to this volume, series editor Howard Andrew Jones has much to say regarding this phase of Lamb's life, and there is obviously much more that remains to be discovered. Suffice it to say, Lamb's lifelong interest in the region's history, culture, and politics-coupled with his reputation as an author and historian-afforded him rare insight into how the Allies could best benefit from Persian involvement ... and how the Persians could best benefit from Western interests. It is not known how seriously the Allied Command took Lamb's recommendations (though i
f history is any indicator, not very seriously at all), but he emerged from the war with both his honor and his reputation intact.

  Lamb spent the remainder of his life on familiar ground, engaged in travel and study. He maintained a close friendship with Muhammad Reza, the shah of Iran, and continued writing histories and biographies, as well as articles and stories for the likes of Collier's, the Saturday Evening Post, and National Geographic. He also turned his hand to writing screenplays for a burgeoning Hollywood.

  As all things must, the end came in 1962 when, at the age of seventy, Harold Albert Lamb passed away. He left behind a legacy of impeccable scholarship, stories, and books that would excite and inform his readers for generations to come.

  I fell under Harold Lamb's spell in the early 198os, after reading Alexander of Macedon for a school project. While my teachers were competent, they lacked Lamb's flair for bringing history to life; I remember checking the book out from my school's library time and time again, noticing after each reading some small facet I had missed before. Later, I came across an original edition of The Crusades: The Flame of Islam, and my esteem for Lamb increased a thousandfold.

  Like that book, the stories collected here represent the perfect blending of storytelling and history. You'll meet men and women who must have surely existed, like Daril ibn Athir, a swordsman-turned-physician whose voice, to my ear at least, sounds curiously like Lamb's own; the far-wandering Bedouin Khalil el Khadr, lover of horses; wily Alai, who dwells in the house of Genghis Khan; and many more besides. Listen and you'll hear sounds from a time long past: tent poles creaking in a desert breeze, the silver chime of bells woven into a camel's halter, steel rasping on steel, and the splintering of lances ...

  Welcome to the old Orient as Harold Lamb knew it.

  The sun was going down behind the roofs of Paris. A chill wind came up from the river, whispering over the bridge of Notre Dame. One after the other, far-off bells clanged and chimed for vespers, and Jeanne put away her fiddle. That is, she tied a cloth'round it and started homeward-a slight, ragged girl with slim legs thrust into muddy slippers.