Alamut

CHAPTER ELEVEN

By evening, preparations in the gardens had been completed. The girls dispersed just as the supreme commander had determined. Miriam and her companions remained on the central island. The eunuchs rowed Fatima and Zuleika and their entourages to their designated gardens. Viewed from the castle, Fatima was to the left and Zuleika to the right of their permanent residence. Canals separated the three areas. Shah Rud embraced them at their circumference, drowning out voices in its roar, so that sounds from one island didn’t carry over to the others.

With the girls’ help, the eunuchs strung cords from shrub to shrub and from tree to tree around the pavilion, and then hung from them the lanterns that had been fashioned that morning. They were all sizes and shapes, and of varying designs and colors. When night fell, they set about lighting them. The surroundings came to life in a thoroughly new light, in new shapes and shadows. Everything was changed. The girls stared in amazement. They looked at each other. As they strolled down the paths, their faces and bodies glowed first in one color, then another. Spider-like shadows danced over them. Everything was quite wonderful and unreal. It was as though an image that they normally only saw in dreams had materialized. All around, where the band of light ended, everything was dense, impenetrable darkness. Neither the mountains nor the castle nor the stars could be seen.

The pavilions were practically buried in flowers. A fountain gurgled in the center of each of them, its streams of water falling to all sides and glinting in thousands of rainbow-like pearls. Food sat out on low, gilt tables, arranged on silver and gold trays. Braised fowl, baked fish, exquisitely prepared desserts and whole stacks of assorted fruit—figs, melons, oranges, apples, pears and grapes. Each table was surrounded with six jugs of wine. Off to the sides were dishes of milk and honey.

At the time of the fifth prayer Adi rowed Apama from garden to garden one last time. She inspected everything closely and then issued final instructions. She handed Miriam, Fatima and Zuleika two little balls each, for putting the visitors to sleep—the second in case the first wasn’t fully effective. As she left she spoke to them.

“Don’t give the boys a chance to ask too many questions. Keep them busy. Above all, get them drunk, because Sayyiduna is just and strict.”

Once she had left, the girls knew that the decisive moment was approaching. Their leaders told them to drink a cup of wine to bolster their courage.

Fatima’s pavilion was the most lively one. The girls stifled their nervous impatience by shouting and laughing. The magical lighting and the wine did their job. In numbers their fear dissipated. The pending visit roused no more than the shivering excitement of an unfamiliar adventure.

“His name is Suleiman and Sayyiduna said that he’s handsome,” Leila remarked.

“I think you’re already out to get him,” Sara sniffed at her.

“Look who’s talking, the horniest one in the bunch.”

“Let’s have Halima start,” Khanum suggested.

But Halima was nerve-wracked.

“No, no, I for sure won’t.”

“Don’t be afraid, Halima,” Fatima comforted her. “I’m responsible for our success, and I’ll tell each of you what to do.”

“Which of us is he going to fall in love with?” Aisha asked.

“Your wiles aren’t going to help you much,” Sara belittled her.

“And your black skin even less.”

“Stop arguing,” Fatima pacified them. “It doesn’t matter whom he falls in love with. We serve Sayyiduna, and our only duty is to carry out his orders.”

“I think he’s going to fall in love with Zainab,” Halima said.

“Why do you think that?” Sara asked angrily.

“Because she has such pretty golden hair and such blue eyes.”

Zainab laughed at this.

“Do you think he’ll be more handsome than Sayyiduna?” Halima persisted.

“Look at this little monkey,” Fatima exclaimed. “Now she’s gone and fallen in love with Sayyiduna.”

“I think he’s handsome.”

“Halima, at least for tonight don’t be stubborn. Sayyiduna isn’t for us. You mustn’t talk about him like that.”

“But he’s fallen in love with Miriam.”

Sara was furious.

“And have you fallen in love with Miriam?”

“Don’t you ever blurt out anything like that again!” Fatima scolded her too.

“How is he going to be dressed?” Aisha wondered.

Sara grinned broadly.

“Dressed? He’ll be naked, of course.”

Halima put her hands out in front of herself.

“I won’t look at him if he is.”

“Listen!” Shehera suggested. “Let’s compose a poem for him.”

“Good idea! Fatima, go ahead.”

“But we haven’t even seen him yet.”

“Fatima is afraid he won’t be handsome enough,” Sara laughed.

“Don’t push me, Sara. I’ll give it a try. How about this: Handsome fellow Suleiman—came to paradise…”

“Silly!” Zainab exclaimed. “Suleiman is a hero who fought the Turks. It would be better to say: Fearless warrior Suleiman—came to paradise…”

“Now isn’t that poetic!” Fatima bristled. “Funny you didn’t sprain your tongue… Now listen to this: Bold gray falcon Suleiman—came to paradise. Caught sight of lovely Halima—could not believe his eyes.”

“No! Don’t put me in the poem!”

Halima was terrified.

“Silly child! Don’t be so serious. We’re just playing around.”

The girls around Zuleika were more preoccupied. Jada could barely stay on her feet, and Little Fatima retreated to the farthest corner, as though she would be safer there. Asma asked lots of silly questions, while Hanafiya and Zofana were arguing over nothing. Only Rokaya and Habiba maintained some degree of composure.

Zuleika was full of impatient anticipation. The honor of leading her section had gone to her head. She daydreamed about how the unknown, handsome Yusuf would fall in love with her and her alone, disdaining all the others. Among so many maidens, she would be the chosen one. And she deserved it, after all. Wasn’t she the most beautiful, the most voluptuous of them all?

When she had drunk her cup of wine, she grew mellow in a very particular way. She was blind to everything around her. She took up her harp and began to pluck the strings. In her imagination she saw herself as loved and desired. She charmed, she conquered, and without realizing it, she gradually fell in love with the stranger they were awaiting.

Despite all the luxury, everything was bleak and grim around Miriam. The girls in her pavilion were among the shyest and least independent. They would have liked to press close to Miriam and seek support from her. But Miriam was distant from them with her thoughts.

She hadn’t thought that the realization Hasan didn’t love her would affect her so much. And maybe that wasn’t even the real cause of her pain. Worst of all she knew that she was just a means for Hasan, a tool that would help him attain some goal that had nothing to do with love. Calmly, without jealousy, he was handing her over to another for the night.

She knew men. Moses, her husband, had been old and disgusting. But without her ever having articulated it, it was clear to her that he would rather die than allow another man to touch her. Mohammed, her love, had risked and lost his life to get her. When they later sold her in Basra, she never lost sight of the fact that any master who bought her wouldn’t let another man near her, even though she was a slave. She still preserved this faith in herself when she became Hasan’s property. His decision today had shaken the foundations of her self-confidence and humiliated her to the core.

She would have cried if she could have. But it was as though her eyes were no longer capable of tears. Did she hate Hasan? Her feelings were strangely complex. At first it had been clear that she had no choice but to throw herself into Shah Rud. Then she decided to take revenge. That desire faded too, and gave way to profound sorrow. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that Hasan’s behavior had been utterly consistent. His views, full of contempt for everything the masses held sacred and indisputable, his ambivalence about all received knowledge, his absolute freedom of thought and action—hadn’t all these things charmed and irritated her countless times? Those had been words. She herself was too weak to either dare or be able to turn them into actions. Likewise, she hadn’t assumed that he was that powerful.

Now she was beginning to understand this side of him too. In some way he had been inclined toward her, and perhaps he even liked her. She felt she had to respect him. For him, understanding something intellectually was at the same time a commandment to make it happen. His intellectual conclusions were also obligations. How many times had she told him that she was no longer capable of truly loving anyone, that she couldn’t believe in anything, and that she didn’t recognize the existence of universally applicable laws of behavior? She had acted as though she had long since shaken off any prejudices. With his last decision, hadn’t he shown that he believed her? That he respected her?

Nothing was clear to her anymore. No matter what she thought, no matter how much she tried to understand it all, ultimately she was left with the pain, with the knowledge that she had been humiliated, and that for Hasan she was just an object that he could move around however his interests dictated.

Furtively she was drinking more wine than she should and emptying cup after cup. But she felt she was just getting more and more sober. Suddenly she realized that she was actually waiting for someone. Strangely, all that time she hadn’t once thought of ibn Tahir. Hasan had told her that he was exceptionally bright and a poet. Something strange came over her, as though she had been brushed by an invisible wing. She shuddered, sensing the nearness of fate.

She picked up her harp and pulled her fingers across the strings. It groaned, plaintively and longingly.

“How beautiful she is tonight,” Safiya whispered. She glanced toward Miriam.

“When ibn Tahir sees her, he’ll fall in love right away,” Khadija commented.

“How nice that will be,” Safiya grew excited. “Let’s compose a poem for them.”

“Would you like for him to fall in love with her that much?”

“Absolutely.”

Wordlessly the grand dais accompanied Hasan to the top of the tower. Once out on the platform, they noticed a dull glow that attenuated the starlight on the side where the gardens were located. They went with Hasan up to the battlements and looked over the edge.

The three pavilions were awash in a sea of light. They were illuminated both inside and out. Through their glass towers and walls, everything moving inside them could be seen, infinitely reduced in size.

“You’re a master without equal,” Abu Ali said. “I’d say you’ve sworn to take us from one surprise to the next.”

“It’s like magic from the Thousand and One Nights,” Buzurg Ummid murmured. “Even the most serious doubts fade in the face of your abilities.”

“Wait, don’t praise me too soon,” Hasan laughed. “Apparently our youths are still sleeping down there. The curtain hasn’t even gone up yet. We won’t see if the work was worth it until that happens.”

He described the arrangement of the gardens to them, and which of the threesome was in which pavilion.

“It’s completely incomprehensible to me,” Abu Ali said, “how you were able to come up with the idea for this plan. The only explanation I can think of is that you must have been inspired by some spirit. But not by Allah.”

“Oh, for sure it wasn’t Allah,” Hasan replied, smiling. “More like our old friend Omar Khayyam.”

He told his friends about how he had visited him twenty years before in Nishapur, and how he had unwittingly provided him with the inspiration for his experiment of this evening.

Abu Ali was astonished.

“You mean to say you’ve had this plan since then? And you didn’t lose your mind? By the beard of the martyr Ali! I couldn’t have held out for a month if I’d come up with anything so superb. I’d throw myself into making it happen, and I wouldn’t give up until I either succeeded or failed.”

“I decided I would do everything humanly possible to make sure I didn’t fail. An idea like this grows and develops in the human soul like a baby in its mother’s body. At first it’s utterly helpless, it lacks a clear shape, it just provokes a passionate longing that drives you to persist. It has a tremendous power. It gradually haunts and possesses its bearer, so that he doesn’t see or think of anything else but it. His only desire is to embody it, to bring this wonderful monster into the world. With a thought like that in your gut, you really are like a madman. You don’t ask if it’s right or wrong, if it’s good or bad. You act on some invisible command. All you know is that you’re a means, in thrall to something more powerful than yourself. Whether that power is heaven, or whether it’s hell, you don’t care!”

“So all twenty years you didn’t even try to realize your plan? You didn’t even have a soul to share it with?”

Abu Ali couldn’t comprehend this. Hasan just laughed.

“If I had shared my plan with you or any of my friends, you would have thought I was a fool. I won’t deny that I did try, in my impatience, to realize it. Prematurely realize it, to be sure. Because subsequently I always realized that the obstacles that came across my path kept me from making irrevocable missteps. The first attempt to carry out my plan came shortly after Omar Khayyam provided it to me. You see, he had advised me to appeal to the grand vizier to fulfill his youthful vow and help me advance, as he’d already done for Omar. Nizam al-Mulk obliged me, as I’d expected. He recommended me to the sultan as his friend, and I was accepted into the court. You can imagine I was a more entertaining courtier than the grand vizier. I soon won the sultan’s favor, and he began advancing me ahead of the others. Of course, this was just grist for my mill. I was waiting for an opportunity to ask the sultan for the command of units in some military campaign. But I was still so naive that I didn’t reckon with the bitter jealousy that my successes aroused in my former schoolmate. I found it perfectly natural for the two of us to compete. But he took it as a great humiliation. This came out when the sultan wanted to have an account of all the income and expenses of his enormous empire. He asked Nizam al-Mulk how soon he could pull all the necessary numbers together. ‘I need at least two years to complete the task,’ the vizier estimated. ‘What? Two years?’ I exclaimed. ‘Give me forty days and I’ll have a meticulous list covering the whole land. Just give me your officials to work with.’ My classmate went pale and left the room without a word. The sultan accepted my proposal, and I was happy to have the chance to prove my abilities. I recruited all of my confidants throughout the empire for the job, and with their help and that of the sultan’s officials, I actually managed to collect the numbers on all the revenues and outlays in the country within forty days. When the deadline came, I appeared before the sultan with the records. I started to read, but I had barely gotten through a few pages when I realized that someone had substituted the wrong lists. I started stammering and tried to supply the missing information from memory. But the sultan had already noticed my confusion. He lost his temper and his lips began to tremble with rage. Then the grand vizier said to him, ‘Wise men have calculated that it would take at least two years to complete this task. So how else is a frivolous idiot who boasted he would complete it in forty days to answer, but with incoherent prattle?’ I could feel him laughing maliciously inside. I knew he had played this trick on me. But there was no joking with the sultan. I had to leave the court in disgrace and head for Egypt. In the sultan’s eyes I remained a shameless buffoon. Since then the grand vizier has been living in fear of my revenge, and he’s done everything to try to destroy me. That’s how the first chance to realize my plan fell through. And I don’t regret it. Because I greatly fear the birth would have been premature…”

“I’ve heard about your dispute with the grand vizier,” Abu Ali said. “But the story takes on a whole different aspect when you learn all its details. Now I understand why Nizam al-Mulk is such a mortal enemy of the Ismailis.”

“I encountered more favorable conditions in Egypt. Caliph Mustansir Billah dispatched Badr al-Jamali, the commander of his bodyguard, to meet me at the border. In Cairo I was greeted with highest honors as a martyr for the cause of Ali. Soon the whole situation was clear to me. Two parties had formed around the caliph’s two sons, each wanting to secure the succession for its protégé. The elder son, Nizar, was also the weaker one, like the caliph himself. The law was in his favor. I soon managed to get both him and his father under my influence. But I didn’t reckon with the determination of Badr al-Jamali. He was champion of the younger son, al-Mustali. When he realized I was beginning to overshadow him, he had me arrested. The caliph was frightened. I quickly realized this was no joking matter. I cast aside all the high-flying dreams I’d been nurturing for Egypt and agreed to board some Frankish ship. My fate was finally sealed on that boat. Out at sea I noticed that we weren’t sailing for Syria, as Badr al-Jamali had promised, but far out west along the coast of Africa. I knew everything would be lost if they put me ashore anyplace near Kairouan. Then one of the storms that are typical for that part of the ocean started up. I had secretly received several bags of gold pieces from the caliph. I offered one of them to the captain if he would change course and put me ashore on the coast of Syria. He would have the perfect excuse that the storm had carried him off course. The gold tempted him. The storm kept getting worse and worse. The passengers, almost all of them Franks, began to despair. They prayed out loud and commended their souls to God. I, on the other hand, was so satisfied with the deal I’d made that I sat down in a corner and calmly ate some dried figs. They were amazed at my composure. They didn’t know we’d turned about and were heading in the other direction. In response to their questions I told them that Allah had told me we were going to land on the coast of Syria and nothing bad would happen to us along the way. That ‘prophecy’ came to pass, and overnight they saw me as a great prophet. They all wanted me to accept them as adherents of my faith. I was terrified by that unexpected success. I had just vividly demonstrated to myself what a tremendous force faith is, and how easy it is to awaken. You just need to know a little bit more than the ones who are supposed to believe. Then it’s easy to work miracles. These are the fertile grounds out of which the noble blossom of faith grows. Suddenly, everything was clear to me. Like Archimedes, in order to carry out my plan I would need a single fixed point, and the world would come unhinged. No honors, no influence over the masters of the world! Just a fortified castle and the means to alter it according to my concept. Then the grand vizier and the mighty of the world had better look out!”

Hasan’s eyes flashed in a strangely threatening way. Abu Ali had the feeling that he was in the presence of a dangerous beast that could strike at any instant.

“Now you have that fixed point,” he said somewhat reassuringly, yet with faint distrust.

“Yes,” Hasan replied. He stepped away from the battlements and lay down on some pillows spread out on the roof. He invited his friends to join him. Pieces of cold roast and platters and jugs full of wine were waiting for them. They started eating.

“I have no hesitation about deceiving an enemy. But I don’t like to trick a friend,” Buzurg Ummid suddenly spoke up. He had been quiet and thoughtful the entire time. Now the thoughts unexpectedly poured out of him.

“If I understood you right, ibn Sabbah,” he continued, “the strength of your institution would be built on our deception of the fedayeen, our most exceptional and devoted followers. We would be responsible for that deception in the most cold-blooded and premeditated way. To achieve it, we would have to make use of unprecedented trickery. Your concept is magnificent, indeed, but the means for realizing it are living human beings, our friends.”

As though expecting this objection, Hasan calmly responded.

“Essentially, the power of any institution is predicated on followers who have been deceived. People vary according to their powers of perception. Whoever wants to lead them has to take this range of abilities into consideration. The masses wanted miracles from the prophets. They had to perform them if they wanted to keep their respect. The lower the level of consciousness, the greater the fervor. So I divide humanity into two fundamentally different layers: the handful that knows what really is, and the vast multitudes that don’t know. The former are called to lead, the latter to be led. The former are like parents, the latter like children. The former know that truth is unattainable, while the latter reach their arms out for it. What else can the former do, but feed them fairy tales and fabrications? What else are those but lies and deceptions? And yet, they’re moved to do this out of pity. So if deception and trickery are inevitable for leading the masses toward some goal that you see and they don’t understand, then why shouldn’t you be able to use that deception and trickery to build a deliberate system? As an example I could name the Greek philosopher Empedocles, who during his lifetime enjoyed the practically divine veneration of his students. When he sensed his last hour approaching, he climbed to the top of a volcano and threw himself into its jaws. You see, he had predicted he would be taken up into heaven alive. But by accident he lost a sandal at the edge of the chasm. If they hadn’t discovered it, the world might still believe today that he had passed into the beyond alive. If we think about this carefully, he couldn’t have committed this act out of self-interest. What use would it have been to him if when he was dead his students believed in his divine assumption? Let’s rather assume that he was so sensitive that he didn’t want to smash his faithful students’ vision of his immortality. He sensed they expected lies from him, and he didn’t want to disappoint them.”

“That kind of lie is essentially innocent,” Buzurg Ummid replied after some consideration. “But this trick that you’re setting out for the fedayeen is a matter of life and death.”

“Earlier I promised I would share the philosophical basis of my plan in detail with both of you,” Hasan resumed. “For that we need to be completely clear about what’s in fact happening in the gardens. Let’s separate this anticipated event into its elements. We have three youths who might believe that we’ve opened the gates to paradise for them. If they were really convinced of that, what would they experience? Are you aware of that, friends? A bliss, the likes of which no mortal has ever known.”

“But how totally wrong they’d be,” Abu Ali laughed, “is something only the three of us would know.”

“And what do they care if we know?” Hasan replied. “Do you perhaps know what will happen to you tomorrow? Do I perhaps know what fate has in store for me? Does Buzurg Ummid know when he will die? And yet these things have been decided for millennia in the composition of the universe. Protagoras said that man was the measure of everything. What he perceives, is; what he doesn’t perceive, is not. The threesome down there are going to experience and know paradise with their souls, their bodies and all of their senses. So it becomes paradise for them. You, Buzurg Ummid, were shocked by the delusion I’ve drawn the fedayeen into. But you forget that we ourselves are the victims of the delusions of our own senses every day. In that sense I would be no worse than that supposed being above us, which various faiths claim has created us. That we were given undependable senses in the process is something that Democritus already recognized. For him there are no colors, no sounds, no sweetness or bitterness, no cold or warmth, just atoms and space. Empedocles guessed that all our knowledge is channeled to us by our senses. What isn’t contained in them isn’t contained in our thoughts. So if our senses lie, how can our knowledge be accurate if it has its origins in them? Look at those eunuchs in the gardens. We’ve given them the most beautiful girls to guard. They have the same eyes as we do, the same ears and the same senses. And yet! A small incision in their bodies was all it took for their image of the world to be changed entirely. What is the intoxicating scent of a young girl’s skin to them? The repulsive evaporation of sweat. And the touch of firm, maidenly breasts? Unpleasant contact with an alien, fatty body part. And the hidden entrance to the summit of human desire? A dirty waste passage. So much, then, for the reliability of our senses. A blind man doesn’t care about the radiance of a garden in bloom. A deaf man is impervious to a nightingale’s song. A eunuch is indifferent to the charms of a maiden, and an idiot thumbs his nose at all the wisdom of the world.”

Abu Ali and Buzurg Ummid couldn’t help laughing. They felt as though Hasan had taken them by the arm and was leading them down a steep, winding stairway into a deep, dark abyss which they had never even dared look into before. They sensed that he must have thoroughly thought through everything he was telling them now.

“You see, if someone—like me, for instance—has truly realized,” Hasan continued, “that nothing he sees, feels or perceives around him is dependable; if he’s had that flash of awareness that he’s surrounded on all sides by nothing but uncertainties and obscurity, and that he’s constantly the victim of delusions, then he no longer feels these to be anything inimical to man, but more like a kind of life necessity that sooner or later he’ll have to make peace with. Delusion as one of the elements of all life, as something that’s not our enemy, as one of a number of means by which we can still act and push forward at all—I see this is as the only possible view of those who have attained some higher knowledge. Heraclitus saw the universe as a sort of dumping ground heaped up without any plan and regulated by time. Time is like a child playing with colored pebbles, stacking them up and then scattering them again. What a lofty simile! Time is like a ruler, like an artist. Their passion for building and creating mirrors the purposeless will that governs worlds. It calls them to life and then shoves them back into nothingness. But while they last, they are unique and self-contained and submissive to their own strict laws. That’s the kind of world we’re in. We’re subject to the laws that rule in it. We’re part of it and we can’t get out. It’s a world in which error and delusion are important factors.”

“All-merciful Allah!” Abu Ali exclaimed. “I’d say you’ve also built a world ruled by unique laws, Hasan! You’ve built your own world, colorful, strange and awful. Alamut, that’s your creation, ibn Sabbah.”

He laughed and forced a smile from Hasan too. Buzurg Ummid looked at the commander and listened to him, thinking about the things he said and being amazed. He was gradually sliding into areas that were completely unknown and alien to him.

“There’s a fair amount of truth in your joke, Abu Ali,” Hasan continued, with his earlier smile. “I told you down below already that I had crept into the creator’s workshop and watched him at work. Supposedly out of pity he has concealed our future and the day of our deaths from us. We do the same thing. Where the devil is it written that our life on this planet isn’t just such a delusion?! Only our consciousness decides whether something is ‘for real’ or just a dream. When the fedayeen wake up again, if they learn that they’ve been in paradise, then they’ll have been in paradise! Because there’s no difference between a real and an unreal paradise, in effect. Wherever you’re aware of having been, that’s where you’ve been! Won’t their pleasures, their joys be just as great as if they’d been in the real heaven? Epicurus wisely said that the avoidance of pain and suffering and the quest for pleasure and personal comfort were the only models for human life. Who will have experienced a greater share of happiness than our fedayeen, whom we’ve transported to paradise? Seriously! What I’d give to be in their place! To be conscious just once of enjoying the delights of heaven!”

“What a sophist!” Abu Ali exclaimed. “If you put me on a rack and tried to persuade me, as you’re doing now, that I was cozier there than if I were lying on a soft feather bed, by the beard of Ismail, I’d laugh myself silly.”

Hasan and Buzurg Ummid burst out laughing.

“It’s time to have a look at what our heroes are doing,” Hasan said at last.

They rose and stepped up to the battlements.

“Everything is still quiet,” Buzurg Ummid summed up. “Let’s get back to our conversation. Ibn Sabbah, you said you would like to be conscious of having been in paradise. What will the fedayeen experience out of the ordinary, even if they do have that awareness? They’ll eat food they could have elsewhere and enjoy girls like thousands of others under the sun.”

“Don’t!” Hasan replied. “It isn’t all the same to an ordinary mortal whether he’s a guest in a king’s palace or in a simple caravanserai, even if they serve him the same food in both places. He also knows how to distinguish between a princess and a milkmaid, however much alike they may look otherwise. Because our pleasures don’t just depend on our physical senses. They’re a highly complex phenomenon, influenced by a whole range of circumstances. The maiden you see as a perpetually virginal houri will give you a completely different kind of pleasure than one you see as a bought slave.”

“Just now you’ve reminded me of a certain detail,” Abu Ali said, interrupting him. “It’s written in the Koran that the maidens of paradise will never lose their innocence. Have you accounted for that? Be careful that your entire plan doesn’t collapse over a detail like that.”

Hasan laughed uproariously.

“There’s not all that much virginity down there to begin with,” he replied, “which is part of the reason why I sent for Apama to come from Kabul. Believe me, her reputation as the finest lover from Kabul to Samarkand was well deserved. Let me tell you, after a dozen lovers she was still just as delicate as a sixteen-year-old maiden. She knew a secret of love which seems perfectly simple when it’s explained to you. But if you don’t know about it, you could well believe in perpetual, self-renewing virginity. It’s a mineral compound which, when properly applied in solution, contracts the skin and could easily lead a beginner to the wrong assumption that he’s dealing with an untouched virgin.”

“If you’ve thought of that too, then you’re Satan incarnate,” Abu Ali said, laughing.

“Look! One of the fedayeen is awake!” Buzurg Ummid exclaimed.

All three of them held their breath. Through the glass roof they could see the girls surrounding the youth, who was apparently telling them something.

“That’s Suleiman,” Hasan said, instinctively lowering his voice, as though fearing he could be heard from the gardens. “He’s the first mortal who has ever awakened in paradise.”

A deathly silence fell around Fatima when the eunuchs brought Suleiman into the pavilion. Wordlessly, they took him by the feet and shoulders and laid him down on some pillows. Then, just as noiselessly, they left with the empty litter.

The girls barely dared to breathe. They stared at the body, which was draped in a black coverlet. Zainab whispered to Fatima that she should uncover their sleeping guest.

Fatima approached him on tiptoe, bent over him to pull the coverlet off and remained there, motionless. However much she had expected, she hadn’t imagined Suleiman would be this handsome. He had rosy cheeks like a girl’s, and just barely covered by a light down. His cherry-red lips were slightly open, and a row of pearl-white teeth shone through them. His eyelashes were long and thick and cast finely articulated shadows on his cheeks. He lay on his side, with one arm under his body and the other hand lightly clasping the pillows.

“How do you like him, Halima?” Khanum asked in a subdued voice.

“I already don’t care for him.”

“Careful! The two of you are about to devour him with your eyes.”

Sara quietly grinned.

“You would have already, if only you could,” Zainab teased her.

“Look who’s talking!”

Fatima picked up her harp and began plucking its strings. When she saw that Suleiman was still asleep, she grew bolder and began singing half-aloud.

“Go ahead and talk as if you were alone,” Fatima said. “We may have to wait a long time yet before he wakes up.”

Being able to converse in a normal voice put the girls at ease. They started joking, teasing one another and laughing at each other.

Suddenly Suleiman began to stir.

“Look, he’s about to wake up!” Zainab called out.

Halima covered her eyes.

“No, he’s just having a dream,” Sara sighed with relief.

Halima looked again.

“Just don’t you cause me any trouble,” Fatima threatened her.

Then Suleiman rose up on his arms, opened his eyes for a moment and then shut them again. Then he opened them up wide again and stared dully at the girls’ half-frightened, half-curious faces. Then he shook his head, murmured something unintelligible, and lay back down where he had been.

“Do you suppose he thought he was dreaming?” Aisha whispered.

“Go to him, Fatima, caress him,” Zainab advised. “Maybe that will rouse him.”

Fatima noiselessly sat down on the pillows beside him. She hesitated for a few moments, then very gently stroked his cheek.

Suleiman twitched. He turned over and his arm slapped against Fatima’s thigh. It stung as though a flame had touched her. She held her breath and listened in shivering anticipation.

Once more Suleiman sat up. He forced his eyes open and stared at Fatima, who was trembling in front of him. Without a word, like a machine, he put his arms around her and pressed her close. Just as unconsciously and dully, he took possession of her.

Fatima wasn’t sure what had happened to her. Just as absently, she asked him, “Do you love me, Suleiman?”

Suleiman was bent over her. He gazed impassively at her face. He murmured, “Go on. You’re beautiful, but I know this is just a dream. Damn, if even these have to get spoiled.”

Fatima flinched and shook off her rapture. Embarrassed, she looked at her companions.

Suddenly she became aware of her duties. She envisioned the horrible punishment that the supreme commander had promised if the experiment failed. She pushed Suleiman away from her and spoke reproachfully.

“Aren’t you ashamed, Suleiman? You’re in paradise and yet you swear!”

“Paradise?”

He hurriedly rubbed his eyes. Then he looked around. His eyes widened in amazement.

“What, what is this?” he stammered.

He began to touch himself and the things around him. He picked up a pillow and fearfully touched Fatima.

Then he got up. He stared at the splashing fountain, walked up to the pool, and dipped a hand into it.

“Oh, praise be to heaven!” he whispered. “I really am in paradise.”

The girls watched him timidly and with bated breath. What if he saw through it? They’d lose their heads. But would they be able to deceive him all night?

Fatima was the first to get her bearings.

“You’ve come a long way. Are you thirsty?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m thirsty,” he whispered.

She nodded and Sara brought a dish of cold milk. He took it out of her hands and greedily emptied it.

“I feel reborn,” he said, and a smile passed across his face.

“Come. Let’s bathe you,” Fatima said.

“All right. But look away.”

They obeyed him. Sara and Zainab giggled furtively.

“What are you laughing at?” he asked mistrustfully as he undressed.

“It’s the custom here!”

He slid into the water.

“How nice and warm it is,” he reveled.

His dizziness had passed. He was still amazed, but at the same time felt more relaxed.

“Give me a towel,” he asked out loud.

In an instant he had what he wanted.

“I’d like to see you bathe too.”

Fatima nodded. They unwound themselves from their veils and climbed into the water. Halima hid, but Sara led her to the pool. They began splashing each other. Shouts and laughter began echoing through the pavilion.

Suleiman pulled on his robe and lay down on the pillows.

“This place is really fun,” he said, smiling.

He felt weak and enormously hungry. He looked with covetous eyes at the food waiting on the tables in the corner.

Fatima dressed and approached him.

“Are you hungry, Suleiman?” she asked with angelic charm.

“I’ll say.”

They served him quickly.

He lit into the food like a starved wolf. His strength visibly began to return.

“Pour him some wine!” Fatima whispered.

He drank it in huge gulps. He looked at the beauties who were serving him. Their skin gleamed through their veils. He started getting dizzy with desire.

“Is all this mine?” he asked.

As a test he seized Aisha by the hand and pulled her toward him. She didn’t resist.

Right after her, Leila snuggled up to him.

“Get him drunk, charm, seduce him,” Fatima was telling the girls in a whisper.

The wine gradually went to his head.

“By the beard of the martyr Ali!” he exclaimed. “Sayyiduna was telling the truth. He really does have the key to the gates of paradise.”

He hugged and kissed them all, one after the other.

“I just hope I haven’t died,” he suddenly worried.

“Don’t be afraid,” Fatima reassured him. “Tomorrow you’ll be back at Alamut serving Sayyiduna.”

“Do you know him too?”

“We’re in paradise!”

“Then you also know that we gave it to the infidels this morning?”

“Of course we know. You pursued the Turks and ibn Tahir seized the enemy flag.”

“Allah is great! If I told this to Naim or Obeida, they’d laugh in my face.”

“Is their faith so weak?”

“By the beard of the Prophet, I wouldn’t believe it either, if the two of them told me something like this. Where are ibn Tahir and Yusuf?”

“Also in paradise, like you. Once you’re back in the other world, you can meet and tell each other what you’ve seen and experienced.”

“It’s true, in Allah’s name. Strange things can happen to an honest Muslim.”

Feeling pleasantly tipsy, he began to tell them about Alamut, about his teachers and comrades and about that morning’s battle with the Turks.

The girls sat around and listened to him, their hearts smitten. His was the first manhood they had felt in these gardens, and he was a magnificent boy, on top of it all. One after the other, they each fell in love with him.

Fatima sat down with her harp and began plucking the strings and humming softly. Now and then she cast a loving glance at him.

“Fatima is composing a poem,” Khanum whispered.

Halima was hiding behind her. She had her fingers over Khanum’s shoulders and stole a glance at Suleiman from time to time. She liked him very much. His confident storytelling, his forthright, hearty laughter, his boldness—all of this charmed her. She was angry at herself for it, but she was already quite bedazzled.

From time to time as he spoke, he caught the admiring look of her eyes. Besides that and the fingers on Khanum’s shoulders, he couldn’t see a thing. He thought for a moment and realized he hadn’t touched her yet. He already knew Fatima, Sara, Zainab, Aisha and Leila by name.

“Who’s the little one hiding behind your back?” he asked Khanum.

“Halima.”

They all laughed.

Suleiman looked around in confusion. The fingers and big eyes had suddenly disappeared behind Khanum.

“Come closer, Halima,” he said. “I haven’t even seen you yet.”

Khanum, Shehera and some others grabbed her and pushed her toward Suleiman. Convulsively, she clung onto carpets and pillows and dragged them all with her.

“Is the little scamp still so shy?”

“Yes, she is. She’s even afraid of lizards and snakes.”

“But you won’t be afraid of me, will you? I’m not a Turk or some other infidel. They’re usually the ones who are afraid of me.”

He tried to kiss her. But she slipped away from him and stubbornly hung her head.

“What does that mean?” he was perplexed.

Fatima made some noise in the corner. Halima at once put her arms around his neck and hid her face on his chest.

“I can’t stand having them around me,” she whispered.

“All of you go join Fatima,” he ordered.

How wonderfully alluring she is, he thought.

Her arms clasped onto him tighter and tighter. Her face was as hot as forged iron.

“O Allah, how sweet she is,” he whispered and pressed her close.

Then Sara offered him wine. While he drank, Zainab quickly changed the pillows.

“It’s strange, none of them has been this lovely or this sweet,” he murmured.

Halima crept off into a corner and buried her face in some pillows. She dropped off to sleep immediately.

Fatima cleared her throat.

“I’m going to sing a song about this evening,” she said with a charming smile. Dimples showed in her cheeks.

“Excellent!” Suleiman approved. He stretched back on the pillows, cradling his head in his hands.

“Now listen!”

Fatima began, to the accompaniment of her harp.

Shouts, laughter and loud acclaim greeted Fatima’s song. The girls drew Suleiman toward the center and began dancing around him. They called out to him and cheered him.

He was barely able to get away from them. He ran over to Fatima and hugged her exuberantly.

“What an excellent song!” he said, smiling. “You have to write it down for me. Will Naim and Obeida ever be impressed.”

“But you can’t take anything with you from paradise,” Fatima cautioned. “You’ll have to learn it by heart.”

The noise finally woke Halima. She looked around, puzzled.

“What happened?”

“Fatima composed a song,” Sara replied. “And you were in it.”

“Then it must be silly.”

She burrowed into the pillows again and tried to go to sleep.

Then Suleiman spotted her. He came up and shook her by the shoulder.

“How can you sleep when there’s a guest in the house?”

He sat down beside her and she snuggled up to him. He could feel the pleasant warmth of her breath, and its rhythmic regularity soon put him to sleep.

“How adorable they are,” Aisha said.

“Let’s let them rest.”

Fatima called to Zainab.

“Let’s compose a song about them,” she suggested quietly.

The other girls drank up and continued having fun. They danced, jumped into the pool, cracked jokes, and laughed.

The song was ready, and Fatima told the girls to wake Halima and Suleiman. Both of them opened their eyes at the same time, saw each other, and laughed.

“Boy, if old Yusuf could see me now!”

Suleiman was enormously happy. The girls offered him more wine. He refused a cup and drank straight out of the jug.

“There’s no sultan that has it this good!”

“Now listen, you two! Fatima and Zainab are going to sing you a song.”

He lay back on the pillows and drew Halima toward him.

Fatima and Zainab began.

The girls laughed. But Halima was all red with shame and anger. Suleiman was grinning in satisfaction. He was already so drunk that he could barely have gotten up.

“I’ll throw these pillows at you if you don’t keep quiet!”

Halima shook her tight, little fist at them.

Then, in the distance, a horn sounded gloomily. Once, twice, three times. The girls fell silent. Fatima went pale. In secret she prepared a pellet for the wine.

Suleiman listened too. He rose with difficulty. He could barely stay on his feet.

“What does that mean?” he asked, perplexed.

He walked toward the door, as though meaning to leave the pavilion.

“One more cup, Suleiman.”

Fatima could barely conceal her worry.

The drink was ready. The girls drew Suleiman back onto some pillows.

“What are you going to tell Naim and Obeida about your experiences in paradise?” Fatima asked, to deflect his attention from more dangerous thoughts.

“Naim and Obeida? Oh, those Turks won’t believe me. But I’ll show them. Just let them doubt! I’ll shove this in their faces.”

He showed them his clenched fist. Fatima offered him the cup to drink. He emptied it as an afterthought.

A heavy drowsiness came over him right away. He tried to resist it with the last of his strength.

“Give me something to take as a keepsake.”

“You can’t take anything with you.”

He could see he would get nowhere with Fatima. His weakening right hand instinctively felt for Halima’s wrist. A gold bracelet slipped into his palm. He hid it beneath his robe and then fell fast asleep.

Halima didn’t betray him. How could she have? She had fallen in love with him with all her heart.

There was complete quiet in the pavilion. Fatima silently took the black coverlet and spread it over the sleeping youth.

They waited.

“It’s not things in themselves that make us happy or unhappy,” Hasan told his friends in his observatory when they lay back down on their pillows. “It’s rather the thought, the conviction that we have about them. Take an example: a miser buries a treasure at a secret location. Publicly he gives the impression of a pauper, but in private he enjoys the knowledge that he’s a wealthy man. A neighbor finds out about his secret and takes his treasure away. The miser will continue enjoying his wealth until he discovers the theft. And if death comes to him before that, he’ll die in the happy knowledge that he’s a rich man. It’s the same with a man who doesn’t know that his lover is betraying him. Provided he doesn’t find out, he can live happily his whole life. Or take the opposite situation. His beloved wife could be the model of faithfulness. But if some lying tongues persuade him she’s been unfaithful, he’ll suffer the torments of hell. So you see, neither things nor actual facts decide our happiness—or unhappiness. Instead, we’re completely and exclusively dependent on our notions, on our perceptions of them. Every day reveals to us how false and error-ridden these perceptions are. What frail legs our happiness rests on! How unjustified our grief often is! Small wonder that the wise man is indifferent to both of them. Or that only simpletons and idiots can enjoy happiness!”

“Your philosophy is none too much to my liking,” Abu Ali commented. “You’re right, we’re constantly making mistakes in life and we’re often the victims of wrong beliefs. But does that mean we have to forego every pleasure because it’s based on false assumptions? If a person were to live by your wisdom, he’d have to spend his whole life in doubt and uncertainty.”

“Why did you get so upset earlier at my sending the fedayeen into paradise? Aren’t they happy? What possible difference is there between their happiness and the happiness of somebody else who is just as ignorant of its true foundations? I know what’s bothering you. You’re bothered that the three of us know something that they don’t know. And despite that, they’re still better off—than I am, for instance. Imagine how any pleasure would be ruined for those three if they even suspected that I’d deliberately drawn them into something about which they had no knowledge. Or that I knew something more than they do about everything that’s happening to them. Or if they sensed they were just playthings, helpless chess pieces in my hands. That they were just tools being used in some unknown plan by some higher will, some higher intellect. I’ll tell you, friends, that sense, that sort of suspicion has embittered every day of my life. The sense that there could be someone over us who surveys the universe and our position in it with a clear mind, who could know all sorts of things about us—maybe even the hour of our death—that are mercilessly veiled from our intellect. Who could have his own particular designs for us, who perhaps uses us for his experiments, who toys with us, with our fates and our lives, while we, the puppets in his hands, celebrate and rejoice, imagining that we actually shape our own happiness. Why is it that higher intellects are always the ones so hopelessly dogged about discovering the secrets of natural phenomena? Why is it that wise men are always so passionately committed to science and racking their brains about the universe? Epicurus said that a wise man could enjoy perfect happiness if he didn’t have to be afraid of unknown heavenly phenomena and the mystery of death. To subdue or at least explain that fear, he devoted himself to science and the exploration of nature.”

“Very learned,” Abu Ali remarked. “But, if I understood you right, your philosophizing could be abbreviated to this assertion: you’re secretly hounded by the fact that you’re not Allah.”

Hasan and Buzurg Ummid both laughed.

“Not a bad guess,” Hasan said. He stepped up to the battlements and pointed toward the part of the sky where it was dark, from where a thousand tiny stars intensely shone.

“Look at this limitless vault of heaven! Who can count the stars scattered across it? Aristarchus said that each one of them is a sun. Where is the human intellect that can grasp that? And still, everything is efficiently arranged, as though it were governed by some conscious will. Whether that will is Allah or the blind operation of nature is irrelevant. Against this limitlessness we are ridiculous invalids. I first became aware of my smallness in comparison with the universe when I was ten years old. What haven’t I experienced and what hasn’t faded since then? Gone is my faith in Allah and the Prophet, gone is the heady spell of first love. Jasmine on a summer night no longer smells as wonderful, and tulips no longer bloom in such vivid colors. Only my amazement at the limitlessness of the universe and my fear of unknown meteorological phenomena have remained the same. The realization that our world is just a grain of dust in the universe, and that we’re just some mange, some infinitely tiny lice on it—this realization still fills me with despair.”

Abu Ali leapt up on his bowed legs and began thrashing around as though he were defending himself from invisible opponents.

“Praise be to Allah that he made me modest and spared me those concerns,” he exclaimed half in jest. “I’m more than glad to leave those things to the Batus, the Mamuns and the Abu Mashars.”

“Do you think I have any other choice?” Hasan replied with a kind of headstrong irony. “Yes, Protagoras, you were great when you spoke the maxim that man is the measure of all things! What else can we do, after all, but make peace with that double-edged wisdom? Limit ourselves to this clod of dirt and water that we live on and leave the expanses of the universe to superhuman intellects. Our domain, the place suited to our intellect and will, is down here, on this poor, little planet. ‘Man is the measure of all things.’ The louse has suddenly become a factor worthy of respect! All we need to do is to impose some limits. Exclude the universe from our field of vision and be content with the terra firma we stand on. When I grasped that intellectually—do you see, friends—I threw myself into reordering things in myself and around myself with all my might. The universe was like a huge, blank map for me. In the middle of it was a gray spot, our planet. In that spot was an infinitely tiny black dot, me, my consciousness. The only thing I know for sure. I renounced the white space. I had to delve into the gray spot, measure its size and count its numbers, and then… then gain power over it, begin to control it according to my reason, my will. Because it’s a horrible thing for someone who’s competed with Allah to end up on the bottom.”

“Now at last I understand you, ibn Sabbah!” Abu Ali exclaimed, not without some playfulness. “You want to be the same thing on earth that Allah is in heaven.”

“Praise be to Allah! At last a light has gone on in your head too,” Hasan laughed. “And high time. I was beginning to wonder whom I was going to leave my legacy to.”

“But you did finally fill in the blank space on the map,” Abu Ali said. “Where would you have found a place for your paradise otherwise?”

“You see, the difference between those of us who have seen through things and the vast masses stumbling through the dark is this: we’ve limited ourselves, while they refuse to limit themselves. They want us to get rid of the blank space of the unknown for them. They can’t tolerate any uncertainty. But since we don’t have any truth, we have to comfort them with fairy tales and fabrications.”

“The fairy tale down there is developing fast,” said Buzurg Ummid, who had been looking into the gardens from the battlements when he caught their last words. “The second youth is awake now and the girls are dancing a circle dance around him.”

“Let’s have a look,” Hasan said, and went with Abu Ali to join him.

The girls watched with bated breath as Zuleika uncovered the sleeping Yusuf. He was so tall that when the eunuchs were bringing him in, his feet had stuck out over the end of the litter. Now his powerful body appeared as the blanket was removed.

“What a giant! He could hide you under his arm, Jada,” Zofana whispered, to gather more courage.

“You wouldn’t have that much to boast about around him yourself,” Rokaya said, cutting her off.

In the meantime Zuleika had knelt down beside him and was studying him raptly.

“What do you suppose he’ll do when he wakes up?” Little Fatima worried. She covered her eyes with her hands, as though she were trying to avoid an unknown danger. She was among the most timid of the girls, and to distinguish her from the first Fatima they called her Little Fatima.

“He’ll gobble you up,” Habiba teased her.

“Don’t scare her. She’s skittish enough as it is.”

Rokaya laughed.

But Yusuf kept on sleeping. He merely turned his back on the light that was glaring in his eyes.

Zuleika got up and joined the girls.

“He’s as fast asleep as if he were unconscious,” she said. “But isn’t he a splendid hero? Let’s sing and dance for him, so that he’ll be pleased when he wakes up.”

Each girl picked up her instrument. They began playing and singing softly. Zuleika and Rokaya reached for the drums and tried dancing a leisurely step.

Jada and Little Fatima were still trembling with fear.

“Why don’t you two sing?” Zuleika asked angrily. “Do you think I don’t see you’re just moving your lips?”

“This is what Suhrab, the son of Rustam, must have been like,” Asma commented.

“Don’t tell me you see yourself as the lovely Gurdafarid?”

Zuleika laughed.

“Don’t laugh, Zuleika. You’re no Gurdafarid yourself.”

In response, Zuleika began writhing and provocatively displaying her charms.

“Look, Zuleika has already started trying to seduce him,” Asma laughed. “But her hero is asleep and doesn’t notice her.”

“Just like Yusuf of Egypt, who didn’t care for Potiphar’s Zuleika!” Rokaya exclaimed.

“That’s right! Yusuf and Zuleika! How perfect it is.”

Jada was delighted at this discovery.

“Let’s write a song for them,” she suggested.

They set their instruments down and put their heads together. They began crafting verses. Eventually there was a fight, and Zuleika intervened.

Then Yusuf raised himself up on his arms and looked around. Suddenly he began laughing heartily.

The girls shrieked in terror.

“Oh, no! We’ve been discovered! He’s heard everything!”

Zuleika grabbed her head and stared at the girls in despair.

Yusuf shuddered, shook his head, closed his eyes, and then opened them again. Then he began staring at the girls with an expression of utter amazement.

“Allah is great! This isn’t a dream!”

At this point Zuleika found her bearings. Gently swaying, she approached and sat down on the pillows beside him.

“Of course it’s not a dream, Yusuf. You’ve come to paradise. We’re the houris who have been waiting for you.”

Yusuf touched her cautiously. He got up, walked around the pool, and with an uncertain look examined the girls, who followed him with their eyes. When he got back to Zuleika, he exclaimed, half to himself, “By all the martyrs! Sayyiduna was right. And I didn’t believe him!”

Then he slumped down onto his cot. He felt weak and had a bitter taste in his mouth.

“Where are Suleiman and ibn Tahir?”

“Also in paradise, just like you.”

“I’m thirsty.”

“Bring him some milk,” Zuleika ordered.

He emptied a dishful of it.

“Do you feel better now, you weary traveler?”

“I feel better.”

“What were you laughing at when you woke up?”

Yusuf tried to think back. Suddenly he was overcome with laughter again.

“Oh, nothing. Just some stupid dream.”

“We’d like to hear about it.”

“You’ll laugh at me. Sayyiduna gave me this little ball, and suddenly I felt I was flying upward. If I thought about it, I realized I was still lying in the same place. Oh, by the seven prophets! How did I get here then? I couldn’t have really been flying, could I?”

“Of course you were flying, Yusuf. We saw you float through the air and into our home.”

“All-merciful Allah! Is that true? Wait, let me tell you what I dreamed after that, if I was even dreaming at all. You see, I’m flying over these vast landscapes and I come to a huge desert. Beneath me in the sand I catch sight of the shadow of a hawk that’s moving just like me. ‘A bird of prey is hunting you, Yusuf,’ I say to myself. I look up, I look down, then left and right. No trace of a bird. I wave with my left arm, I wave with my right. The shadow beneath me repeats the same movements with its wings. (I have to tell you that as a boy tending my father’s herd, I often saw shadows like that sweep over the ground. The animals would get scared and run away from them. So I know something about these things.) ‘You can’t have changed into an eagle, Yusuf?’ I think. Then I’m above a huge city. I’ve never seen anything like it. Palaces like mountains, with squares, mosques with different-colored cupolas, minarets and towers like an army of lances. ‘Could this be Baghdad or even Cairo down there?’ I say to myself. I come flying over a huge bazaar. Lots of commotion coming from down there. I come to a stop in front of a tall, slender minaret. Some caliph or other is standing on it, shouting and endlessly waving his arms. It seems like he’s hailing someone and bowing to him. The minaret bows down with him. I look around to see who the bowing is for. But I don’t see anyone. ‘Now there, Yusuf,’ I say to myself. ‘You’ve come pretty far up to have caliphs and minarets bowing to you.’ Then I realize that the caliph is Sayyiduna. I’m terror-struck. I look around for a way to escape. But Sayyiduna jumps from the top of the minaret like a monkey and starts dancing strangely on one leg. He’s surrounded by flute players, like the ones who come from India and tame snakes, and Sayyiduna begins to twist in a circle to their music like a madman. What can I do? I start laughing out loud. Then I see all of you around me. Really, really strange! Reality outdid my dream.”

The girls laughed.

“That really was an odd dream,” Zuleika said. “It accompanied you as invisible wings brought you to us.”

Then he noticed the tables on which food had been set out. He felt ravenous. He inhaled the smell of the food and his eyes sparkled.

“Would you like to eat?” Zuleika asked. “It’s written that you have to wash first. Look, water, nice and warm, all ready for you.”

She kneeled down beside him and began undoing his sandals. The others tried to remove his robe. He resisted.

“Don’t resist, Yusuf,” Zuleika said. “You’re in paradise, and everything we do here is decent.”

She took him by the hand and drew him along after her toward the pool. He threw aside the cloth he had wrapped around his hips and slipped into the water. Zuleika unwound her veils and followed him. She removed the fez from his head and handed it to her companions for safekeeping. She helped him wash and splashed him in fun.

After he stepped out of the pool and dried himself with a towel, they offered the food to him. He attacked the many delicacies, devouring everything within arm’s reach. “Allah is great,” he said. “Now I know I really am in paradise.”

They offered him wine.

“Didn’t the Prophet forbid it?”

“Don’t you know the Koran says that Allah permits it in paradise? It won’t go to your head.”

Zuleika compelled him to drink. He was very thirsty and emptied a full jug in one draught.

He stretched back onto the pillows, feeling pleasantly tipsy. Zuleika snuggled up to him and placed his head in her lap.

“Boy, if only Suleiman and ibn Tahir could see me now!”

He felt like a god. He couldn’t resist starting to tell them about his heroic exploits of that morning. Rokaya kneeled in front of him and continued to serve him food and wine. When he had finished, the girls picked up their instruments and began playing and singing the song they had just composed. Yusuf listened to them. His heart melted with tenderness and swelled with pride.

Zuleika wrapped her arms around Yusuf’s neck and drew his head close to hers. Gently, caressingly, she kissed him on the lips.

His head spun with delight. Before he knew it, she had risen again and given the girls a signal. They reached for their instruments and began playing a dance melody.

She raised her arms so that her breasts became taut, and she began bending at the waist. At first she danced lightly, barely moving, solemnly and with great dignity. Yusuf watched her with aching eyes. He was overcome with a languorousness that made it impossible for him to think. All he saw was the beautiful body twisting and dancing before him.

“Allah is great,” he whispered to himself.

Zuleika’s dance became more and more animated and expressive. She gyrated her waist faster and faster, undulating from top to bottom like a waterfall, with artful quivers animating each of her limbs in succession. Finally she began spinning wildly around her axis, ten times, twenty times, and then, like an arrow out of a bow, she went flying into Yusuf’s arms. Instinctively he embraced her, pressed close to her, and forgot about the rest of the world. Rokaya approached the pair on tiptoe and spread a coverlet over them.

A while later, when Yusuf awoke from a pleasant slumber, he was again amazed. In his half-sleep he had become afraid that he would be back at Alamut when he woke up, and that it would turn out he had just dreamt everything. But now, not far away from himself, he saw the seven girls surrounding Zuleika. In itself, paradise didn’t seem all that mysterious to him. He felt rather comfortable around these girls, so that it was a real pleasure to be with them. Their beautiful limbs shone white through their veils. He saw Zuleika’s taut breasts, and he felt a dull twinge of desire. His face flushed red, and the recollection of the moments of pleasure made his thoughts spin.

“Will anyone in the fortress ever believe me when I tell them about all this?” he wondered.

Meanwhile, the girls were discussing something among themselves. “Now let us have some fun with him,” Rokaya whispered to Zuleika.

“You’ve got no business barging in on my affairs. I’m in charge, and I’ll tell you when I need you.”

“Well, what an egotist! Does she think Sayyiduna sent us here just to watch?”

Rokaya was red with anger.

“Let Zuleika make the decisions,” Jada said, trying to pacify her.

“Be quiet, you little dwarf. She’d like to have him all to herself.”

“Be glad he hasn’t noticed you. Otherwise he’d start doubting he’s really in paradise.”

Zuleika looked down her nose at her.

Rokaya was about to fly into a rage. At that moment they noticed that Yusuf was awake again and watching them. Zuleika’s eyes glinted angrily. They quickly picked up the platters and jugs and began serving him. She herself got down on one knee beside him and, with the loveliest of smiles, asked him, “Did you rest well, my dearest?”

Instead of responding, he wrapped a heavy arm around her belly and pulled her tightly toward himself. As he did this, though, his eyes slipped over her shoulder to take in the other girls. He noticed Jada and Little Fatima, who were kneeling on pillows up against the wall and half-timidly, half-admiringly staring at him. He winked at them encouragingly and thought, Nothing wrong with those two turtledoves.

“What are you looking at, dear?”

Zuleika could sense that his thoughts were elsewhere.

“Out the windows. I just now noticed how light it is out there. I’d like to go have a look at paradise.”

“I’ll take you, Yusuf.”

“Let’s take the others along, so they don’t get lonely.”

He nodded to Jada and Little Fatima.

“Why don’t you go with them if you prefer their company. I can wait here.”

This almost frightened Yusuf. He could hear a stern accusation in Zuleika’s voice.

“Zuleika, that’s not what I meant. I just felt sorry about leaving them here alone.”

“Be quiet. I can see through that. You’ve gotten tired of me.”

“As the Prophet and the martyrs are my witnesses, I’m not lying.”

“You’re in paradise and you swear?”

“Why won’t you listen to me, Zuleika?”

“Admit it. You like Little Fatima and Jada.”

Yusuf didn’t know how else to excuse himself.

“All right, let’s go, Zuleika. The others can do whatever they want.”

The tears gleaming in her eyes were subdued by a victorious smile.

“Follow along behind us. So that you’re close by if we need anything.”

They left the pavilion.

Yusuf looked at the strange lighting and shook his head.

“Nobody at Alamut is going to believe that I really saw all this with my own eyes.”

“Do they have so little trust in you, Yusuf?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll throw anybody who refuses to believe up against a wall.”

They walked on the paths through the fragrant gardens. Yusuf and Zuleika, arm in arm, walked in front, and behind them came the seven other girls.

“What a magical night!” Jada gasped. “It keeps seeming more and more like the real paradise.”

“How do you suppose Yusuf must feel, if he believes it really is!” Rokaya observed.

“Would you believe, if you suddenly woke up in these gardens like he did?” Asma wondered.

“I don’t know. Maybe, if I hadn’t seen anything of the world yet.”

“Our Master is an unusual man. Do you think that Allah really commanded him to create these gardens?”

“Don’t ask questions like that, Asma. He’s a powerful master, maybe even a magician. You have no idea if maybe he isn’t listening to us now.”

“I’m scared, Rokaya.”

Jada clung onto her tightly.

“Sayyiduna said I would spend only this night in paradise. Do you think he’ll send me here again?” Yusuf asked.

Zuleika flinched. How should she answer him?

“I don’t know, Yusuf. I just know that when you leave that world forever, you’ll be our master and we’ll serve you eternally.”

Yusuf felt a strange anxiety. He held onto Zuleika more tightly.

“Are you sorry you’ll have to leave us?”

“Of course I am, Zuleika.”

“Will you think of me?”

“I’ll never forget you.”

They embraced.

A chilly breeze roused them.

They returned to the pavilion.

They began to drink. Yusuf, who had sobered up in the cool air, was soon tipsy again. He had new courage. While Zuleika was busy pouring wine, he drew Jada close and kissed her.

“Will you be mine when I come here for good?”

In response she wrapped her delicate arms around his neck. The wine had given her courage too.

Zuleika looked back at them. Her eyes flashed angrily.

Jada pulled away from Yusuf and timidly crept away.

Yusuf began laughing. Red with embarrassment, he went over to Zuleika and whispered to her.

“Didn’t you see, I was just joking?”

“Don’t lie to me. It’s just good I’ve found out who you are in time.”

He tried to embrace her.

“Leave me alone! Go, follow your heart.”

She turned her back on him. Then through the glass she saw Apama’s face looking at her threateningly. Another instant and she was gone.

But Zuleika was suddenly sober.

“Oh, Yusuf, Yusuf! Don’t you realize I was just teasing you? You’re master over me and all of us.”

She took him by the hand and gently led him over to the girls.

“You reign here and can choose as you wish.”

They gave him more to drink, and his heart melted with pride and delight. Now he really was a true ruler, master over the souls and bodies of these seven girls, owner of magnificent gardens and a fabulous pavilion. Only here and there through the drunkenness he had a flashing realization that he would have to leave soon. But a new jug of wine helped to drown the sorrow that threatened to overtake him.

The signal reverberated, and Zuleika prepared the drink. Her hand shook as she dropped the ball into the cup. Little Fatima covered her eyes. Jada fought back a sigh. Yusuf drank the wine, oblivious to everything. Soon he dropped back onto the pillows and fell fast asleep. The girls covered him. A chill blew over him, as though the sun had been blotted out.

“Actually, it’s still not clear to me,” Abu Ali said atop the tower, “what benefit you’re expecting from these ‘ashashin’ if your experiment succeeds tonight. Do you really think you’ll build the strength and power of the institution on them?”

“Absolutely. I’ve scrupulously studied all types of rule known to history. I’ve tried to discern their strengths and weaknesses. No ruler has ever been wholly independent. The chief obstacles to his sway have always been time and space. Alexander of Macedon swooped down on half the world with his armies and subjugated it. But he hadn’t yet attained the apogee of his potential when death took him. The rulers of Rome expanded their power, generation by generation. They had to conquer every inch of ground by the sword. If space didn’t thwart them, it was time that clipped their wings. Mohammed and his heirs settled on a better method. They sent out missionaries to enslave spirits. This way they softened up the resistance, and lands fell into their laps like ripe apples. But wherever the spirit was strong—among the Christians, for instance—their advance broke down. The church in Rome employs an even better system. Its succession isn’t dependent on kinship and blood, as it is for the Muslim caliphs, but on nobility of intellect. Only the best mind ascends to the position of leadership. Intellect is also what binds the faithful together in such a strong system. So it appears that the church has overcome the slavery of time. But it’s still dependent on space. Wherever its influence doesn’t extend, it has no power and it has to make do with that. It has to negotiate and compromise with its opponents and seek out powerful allies.

“I’ve conceived of an institution that’s powerful enough in itself that it won’t need any allies. Until now, rulers have fought with each other through their armies. They’ve also used their armies to conquer new lands and subdue powerful opponents. Thousands of soldiers have fallen for an inch of land. The rulers, however, have rarely had to fear for their own heads, but they are the ones our blows are meant for. Strike the head, and the body will fall. A ruler who fears for his own head is ready to make concessions. So the greatest power would belong to whoever can keep the rulers of the world in fear. But in order for fear to be effective, it has to have a real basis. Rulers are well protected and guarded. Only beings who not only do not fear death, but who passionately desire it can really threaten them in these circumstances. Tonight’s experiment is about creating such beings. My plan is to fashion them into my living daggers, able to overcome time and space. They’re to spread fear and awe, not among the masses, but among the crowned and anointed heads of the world. Let every potentate who opposes them live in mortal terror.”

There was a long silence on top of the tower. The grand dais didn’t dare look at Hasan or each other. Finally, Buzurg Ummid broke the silence.

“Everything you’ve told us so far, ibn Sabbah, is perfectly clear and simple on the one hand, yet so unprecedented and horrible on the other, that I almost have to think that this plan couldn’t have been concocted in a mind dealing with the actual laws of the known world. I’d sooner ascribe it to one of those grim loners who confuse dreams with reality.”

Hasan smiled.

“Apparently you too think I’m a madman, like Abul Fazel once did. But that’s only because you’re seeing reality from a well-worn path. Indeed, that’s the reality of mediocrity. How much more realistic is the person who crafts a plan that’s never been tried before—and still realizes it. Take Mohammed, for instance. Everyone in his district of Mecca laughed at him at first when he told them his idea. All they saw in him was a half-crazy dreamer. His ultimate success showed that his calculations were more realistic than the hesitations of all the doubters. I’ll submit my plan to the same test.”

“All these consequences would be obvious to me, if I could believe that the change you’ve predicted is really going to take place in the fedayeen,” Abu Ali said. “But how can I believe that a living person would ever long for death, no matter how convinced he is that paradise is waiting for him in the beyond?”

“My assumption isn’t just founded on my knowledge of the human soul, but also on my knowledge of how the human body functions. I’ve traveled through more than half the world, either on horseback, or on donkeys or camels, on foot or by boat, and I’ve gotten to know countless peoples, their ways and traditions. I’ve experimented with all kinds of human behaviors, and today I can tell you that the entire human organism, spiritual and physical, lies before me like an open book. When the fedayeen wake up again in Alamut, their first feeling will be regret that they’re no longer in paradise. They’ll be able to mitigate that regret by talking about the experience with their colleagues. In the meantime, the poison of the hashash will be at work in their bodies, awakening an irrepressible desire to enjoy it again. That desire will be inseparable from their assumptions of heavenly bliss. In their mind’s eye they’ll see their beloved girls and virtually die longing for them. The erotic humors will regenerate in their systems and awaken new passion verging on madness. Eventually this condition will become unbearable. Their fantasies, their stories and visions will infect their surroundings completely. Their churning blood will blot out their reason. They’ll no longer reflect, they’ll no longer make judgments, they’ll just pine away with desire. We’ll provide them with comfort. And when the time comes, we’ll give them their assignment and promise them that paradise will be open to them if they carry it out and perish. They’ll look for death and they’ll die with a blissful smile on their lips…”

At that moment a eunuch called him from the tower entrance.

“Sayyiduna! Apama asks that you come to the central garden immediately.”

“All right.”

Hasan dismissed him.

When he returned to the platform, he spoke excitedly.

“Apparently something is not right with ibn Tahir. Wait for me here.”

He wrapped his cape more tightly around himself and from his room descended to the base of the tower.