The Thief of Bagdad. Achmed Abdullah

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СКАЧАТЬ apartment of the Princess, and saw her there. He wrote his impressions to a brother-poet in Damascus; wrote as follows:

      “Her face is as wondrous as the moon on the fourteenth day; her black locks are female cobras; her waist is the waist of the she-lion; her eyes are violets drenched in dew; her mouth is like a crimson sword wound; her skin is like the sweetly scented champaka flower; her narrow feet are twin lilies.”

      The letter continues with slight Oriental exaggeration that Zobeid was the Light of the writer’s Eyes, the Soul of his Soul, the Breath of his Nostrils, and—than which there is no praise more ardent in the Arabic language—the Blood of his Liver; it mentions such rather personal items that the Circassian slave girl when she saw the desire eddy up in the poet’s eyes, was for scratching them out on the spot; and comes down to earth again by saying:

      “Never in all the seven worlds of Allah’s creation lived there a woman to touch the shadow of Zobeid’s feet. Brother mine!—as a garment she is white and gold; as a season, the spring; as a flower, the Persian jasmine; as a speaker, the nightingale, as a perfume, musk blended with amber and sandalwood; as a being, love incarnate. …”

      So the letter, today yellow and brittle and pathetic with age, goes on for several pages. Small wonder, therefore, that throughout the Orient Zobeid’s fame spread like powder under spark, and that there were many suitors for her small, pretty hand—not to mention the great kingdom which she would inherit on her father’s death—and chiefly Asia’s three mightiest monarchs.

      The first of these was Cham Sheng, Prince of the Mongols, King of Ho Sho, Governor of Wah Hoo and the sacred Island of Wak, Khan of the golden Horde, Khan of the Silver Horde, who traced his descent in a straight line back to Gengiz Khan, the great conqueror out of the Central Asian plains, and who had brought under his spurred heel all the North and East, from Lake Baikal to Pekin, from the frozen Arctic tundras to the moist, malarial warmth of Tonkin’s rice paddies.

      The second was Khalaf Mansur Nasir-ud-din Nadir Khan Kuli Khan Durani, Prince and King of Persia, Shah-in-Shah of Khorassan and Azerbaian, Khan of the Kizilbashis and Outer Tartars, Chief of the Shia Moslems, Ever-Victorious Lion of Allah, Conqueror of Russia and of Germany as far as the Oder, Warrior for the Faith of Islam, Attabeg over all the Cossacks, and descendant of the Prophet Mohammed.

      The third was Bhartari-hari Vijramukut, Prince of Hindustan and the South from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, descendant of Ganesha, the elephant-headed God of Wisdom, on his father’s side and on his mother’s—slightly more modestly—descendant of an illegitimate union between the Flame and the Moon.

      All three were due to arrive in Bagdad on the morrow; so the slaves and servants and majordomos and eunuchs of the Caliph’s palace were hustling and bustling and yelling and rushing about and perspiring and swearing and appealing to Allah in a fever of preparations for the princely visitors; and loud was the clamoring at Bagdad’s outer gate:

      “Open up! Open up, O Warden of the Walls! We are porters bringing rare food and rarer wines for tomorrow’s feasting!”

      Ahmed heard the tumult and turned to Bird-of-Evil.

      “Come, O ancient and malodorous parrot of my heart!” he said, climbing up the rope ladder that led to the mouth of the abandoned well.

      “Where to?”

      “To the palace!”

      “The palace?”

      “Yes,” replied the Thief of Bagdad. “Often and greatly have I desired to see it—from the inside. I wager there is loot in there worthy of my agile fingers and cunning brain.”

      “Doubtless! But they will not let you in!”

      “They may!”

      “How?”

      “I have an idea, Bird-of-Evil!” And, when the other commenced asking and arguing: “I have no time to explain now. Come. And don’t forget your black camel’s-hair cloak.”

      “It is not cold today.”

      “I know. But we shall need the cloak.”

      “Why?”

      “Wait and see, O son of an impatient father.”

      They were out of the well, ran down the street, and just beyond the corner caught up with the tail-end of the procession of porters that moved through the broad, tree-lined avenue toward the Caliph’s palace. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. Most of them were gigantic, plum-colored, frizzy, tattooed Central Africian slaves, and they stepped along with the tireless lope, the swaying hips and long body-pull of their jungly breed, balancing bundles and bales and baskets and jars on their kinky polls, with Arab overseers trotting on either side and driving on the lagging with knotted, rawhide whips. At the end of the avenue, surrounded by a huge garden ablaze with flowers, the palace closed the vista like an enormous seal of marble and granite. Rising high in even tiers, curving inward like a bay of darkness dammed by the stony sweep of the crenellated, wing-like battlements, soaring North and South into two cube-shaped granite towers, topped by a forest of turrets and spires and domes, it descended beyond the horizon in a bold avalanche of square-clouted, fantastically painted masonry. The frontal gateway was covered by a door—rather a diphanous, but strong, almost unbreakable net—of closely woven iron-and-silver chains, that rattled down into a groove as the captain of the gate wardens saw the porters approaching and motioned to his armed, turbaned assistants.

      The porters passed in singly and by twos and threes. The last was a tall negro who carried an earthen jar filled with golden, flower-scented Shiraz wine. But—wait!—here came still another porter. Not a negro he, but a lithe young Arab, naked to the waist, his legs covered by silken, baggy breeches, and balancing on his head a squat bundle that was hidden by a black camel’s-hair cloak.

      Just as the man was about to cross the threshold, the captain’s narrow eyes contracted into slits. Quickly he motioned to his assistants who raised the chain door.

      “Let me in!” demanded the young porter. “Let me in!”

      “No, no!” laughed the red-bearded, pot-bellied captain. “No, no, my clever bazar hound!”

      “Let me in!” repeated the other. “Let me in, O gross mountain of pig’s flesh. I am bringing a hundred-weight of precious Bokhara grapes for the morrow’s feasting!”

      Again the captain laughed.

      “Soul of my soul,” he said, “these grapes of yours are curious grapes! Behold! They move—as if they were alive! Hayah! Hayah!”—raising his lance and pricking the bundle which thereupon squirmed, squeaked, squealed loudly—“a bunch of grapes with a human voice! Precious grapes, indeed! Most wondrous and unique grapes of Allah’s creation!”

      “Pah!” The Thief of Bagdad spat disgustedly. He let drop the bundle which, the camel’s-hair cloak dropping away, disclosed Bird-of-Evil, vigorously rubbing his haunches where they had struck the pavement and wailing noisily.

      “My darling,” continued the captain, nor unkindly, “the Caliph’s palace is not a healthy place for robbers.”

      “How dare you. …”

      “I can see it in your eyes,” the other interrupted. “They are humorous eyes—yes! Likable eyes—yes, yes! But not honest eyes! And so——” СКАЧАТЬ