The Thief of Bagdad/Chapter 11

the wind blew the tiny yellow seeds about, wherever they struck the ground other Moslem warriors popped out of the nowhere with a little puff of smoke as the only warning that they were coming. They were mostly on horseback. But some were on foot, and there was a splendid troop of desertmen riding upon dromedaries, nodding in their lofty, peaked, crimson saddles to the deep gait of their animals, with a cold glisten of iron and black song of war.

“Allah akbar!” they cried. “''Allah akbar! Din! Din! Fateh Mohammed!''”

They came like the whirlwind; hacking at the gate with their battle-axes and splintering it; horses and camels prancing and rearing, weapons glittering in the sun, burnooses of all colors floating in the breeze.

“On!” they cried. “Ride on for the Faith! Allah is most great! Kill—kill—in the name of the Prophet!”

Crusaders, they. Warriors for Islam. Men of great courage. Noble souls.

Noble souls?

Here is a disputable point.

For the ancient Arab chronicle from which we derive the tale of the Thief of Bagdad interrupts the narrative here to make the following rather interesting comment:

“To this day the descendants of these warriors live in Bagdad, Damascus, and throughout Arabistan. Many of them use the family names of Ibn Kubbut and Ibn Zura, which means “Son of the Seed,” in proof of their extraordinary paternal ancestry. Those who entered Bagdad with Ahmed filled the places of the men killed by the Mongol horde. But while they made good soldiers and later on good husbands and fathers, the Moslem priests and theologians have never been quite sure if they or their descendants can lay claim to having a soul.

“For consider how Allah, so as to prepare for the future mission of Mohammed, created Adam!

“Adam was created out of God’s will. Some traditions say that the head of Adam when first shaped reached the sky, and they also say that Adam was so named because his color was red, like wheat; for wheat is called ‘adameh’ in the classic Arabic, the which is the language of the One God. The creation of Adam occurred on Friday, the tenth of the month Mohurrun, at the eleventh hour, at the rising of the first degree of Aries, Saturn being in the same constellation, and Mars in Capricorn. God then asked the Angels to kneel before Adam, and all obeyed except Iblis, who thus became Shaitan, the Devil, the Fallen Angel. Then God created Eve. But Iblis, seeing that for one crime he had forfeited all the merit of his former obedience, determined to do Adam any injury in his power. Now Adam was in Paradise, where Iblis could not enter. At length, however, as is detailed in history and tradition, by art and the assistance of a peacock stationed on the walls of Paradise as a guardian and a serpent who was the sentinel at the northern gate, Iblis entered. It is furthermore related how Iblis tempted Adam and Eve—as all the world knows—and how Adam, driven out of the garden of Eden, exclaimed: ‘O Allah! Why didst Thou endow me with a soul? For had I been without a soul, Thou couldst have neither blamed nor punished me for giving way to temptation!’ And then Adam wept—this happened on a mountain in Hindustan, where Adam and Eve, after the Fall, were driven from Paradise, on Friday, the fifth of the month Nisan—and from the tears he shed sprang up pepper, cardamums, and cinnamon, while from the grief in his soul sprang the clouds, the weeds, the desert jackals, and the scavenger crows.

“Not on all these points do the wise theologians agree. But there is no argument about God having given a soul to Adam, nor that, for the sake of the salvation of his soul, He later on sent Mohammed amongst the mortals as His Messenger.

“But the warriors who rode with Ahmed into Bagdad were not the descendants of Adam, but the descendants of seeds. Thus riseth the question—had they souls, or were they merely realized segments, materialized fractions of Ahmed’s imagination? Here is the moot point in the controversy; and we repeat that to this day many respectable Moslem theologians refuse to admit that the descendants of these seeds, the members of the families of Ibn Kubbut and Ibn Zura, are endowed with Allah’s excellent and blessed spirit. …

So the ancient Arabic chronicle goes on for a number of pages. Not that the Mongol captain cared about their souls either way, as, open-mouthed, frightened, he watched the terrible miracle of their appearance from the battlements.

He jumped down; ran away as fast as he could, spreading the alarm throughout Bagdad, shouting loudly:

“Fly for your lives, O Mongols! A great magician has come! He summons armies, invincible fightingmen, from the very bowels of the earth!”

“Fly for your lives! Fly for your lives!” came echoing shouts as the Moslem warriors, Ahmed at their head, rode through the gates.

They darted on like winged phantoms; old and young; Arabs and Turks, Egyptians and Moors and Turkomans; men of colossal proportions, strange and terrible figures erect in their square silver stirrups, with heads thrown hack, hair streaming loose in the wind, sabres waved aloft, lances at the carry; and small, beardless youngsters, perched like monkeys on their high saddles, but using their weapons with the same swish and sweep and surge as their elders. Over their shining silver armor their burnooses, red and purple and green and yellow and blue, mingled into a gorgeous rainbow as the cavalcade crossed the Square of the One-Eyed Jew; then dissolved to form fresh, audacious color combinations as the riders split into smaller groups, galloping down side streets and alleys in the pursuit of the flying, panic-stricken Mongols, cutting down stragglers, rounding up whole companies of the yellow skinned, iron-capped horde, putting them to the sword for the Faith.

“Kill! Kill—in the name of the Prophet!”

The savage war cry was everywhere. Enormously peaking, bloating, spreading, it reverberated from streets to Mosques, from Mosques to houses, from houses to cellars and cisterns where the citizens of Bagdad were hiding in fear and trembling before the Scourge of God. They heard; wondered; came cautiously out of their hiding-places; looked. Then, beholding the triumphant advance of the liberators, they picked up weapons at random and rushed out.

Here and there they killed a lonely Mongol. Ten minutes later they were convinced, every last one of them, that it was their own bravery which was bringing victory, and they flatly discounted the fact that, without Ahmed’s splendid miracle, they would have continued to submit to the Mongol yoke as sheepishly as the night before.

The chronicle goes on to say how the citizens of Bagdad scurried in the wake of the liberators, killing wounded Mongols, nor risking their precious lives overmuch.

Loudly they shouted:

“Kill! Kill the Mongols! Reduce them to ashes! Cut them in two! Hash them to pulp! Drive them away! Drink their blood! Destroy them root and branch! Annihilate them utterly!”

And it is interesting to observe that those who gave the loudest and most blood-curdling shouts were the men who, on the night before, when the Mongols had attacked, had left their very women and children to the invaders’ mercy in their haste to bore like rats into subterranean hiding-places.

Ahmed rode at the head of his army.

“Allah akbar!” he cried. “God is great!”

And as he galloped up the broad avenue that led to the palace of the Caliph, again and again he dipped his hand into the silver box, sprinkling the little yellow seeds on the ground; again and again warriors rose, until their numbers were like the stars in the Milky Way, and there was no hope for the Mongols, though here and there they rallied and gave battle with all their ferocious Mongol courage.

A few escaped the carnage. Quickly they ran to the palace and brought the news. It spread like powder under spark.

Down in the dungeon where the Caliph of the Faithful and the Princes of Persia and Hindustan were kept prisoners, was rejoicing.

“I always knew,” said the Prince of India, “that my divine ancestors would not let me perish! When I return to Hindustan I shall sacrifice seventeen thousand youths of excellent family to Doorga, the Great Mother!”

“And I,” said the Persian, “as soon as I leave this cell, shall dine on a roasted peacock, stuffed with white grapes, and three bottles of foreign wine. Incidentally”—turning to the Caliph—“now that the Mongol is out of the way, or at least about to be out of the way, I wish to reaffirm my claims to your daughter’s hand…

“Not at all!” interrupted the Prince of India. “Not at all! It is I who. …”

“Do shut up, both of you!” exclaimed the Caliph, for once in his life forgetting what he owed to his kingly breeding. “I would not have either one of you as son-in-law. My daughter shall marry the man who has reconquered Bagdad, and I care not if he be Moslem or Jew, Christian or Buddhist, nor if he he white or green, thief or emperor!’*

Thus spoke the voices of Asia’s mighty potentates down in the cellar, while up in the tower room of the palace, not far from Zobeid’s apartment, Wong K’ai asked his master to escape while there still was a chance. But the Mongol Prince shook his head stubbornly. He pointed at his ancestral tablets.

“My race is eternal, invincible!” he pronounced with somber, grim dignity. “I flee from neither gods nor devils.”

“But even you, O Great Dragon,” implored Wong K’ai, “cannot fight against miracles! Look!”—pointing from the window—“ever more warriors arise from the ground! Come! There is still time to …”

“No!”

“Please, please, O Great Dragon!”

And when at last the Prince decided to take Wong K’ai’s advice, it was too late. Already the Moslems had overrun the palace grounds, cleaving their way through the serried ranks of the Manchu shock troops who resisted brave ly. But there was no hope for the latter. Most of the Mongol and Tartar guards stationed in the palace—only a few, really the Prince’s body servants, remained behind—reinforced the Manchus. But foot by foot, second by second, the forest of spears fell before the forest of Moslem swords, Ahmed always in the van, spurring his horse into the thick of the fight, his sabre whirling like a flail.

The Mongol Prince watched from the window. He shrugged his shoulders. He turned to his ancestral tablets. He kowtowed deeply.

“Accept, O spirits of my ancestors,” he said solemnly, “mine own spirit. Today I leap the Dragon Gate. I accept defeat. Yet”—and his voice rose proudly—“I know that others of my race will come after me, that again and again the world will quail and fall before the Mongol scourge!”

Calmly, unhurriedly, he bared his neck and knelt on the ground.

“Wong K’ai,” he went on, “it is now your elegant and respectable duty to cut off my head!”

“No, no, O Great Dragon!”

“I command it!”

Wong K’ai sighed.

“Listen is obey!” he murmured.

Already he had unsheathed his curved sword and was about to bring it down with a full swing, when the door opened and, followed by half a dozen guards, Fount-in-the-Forest rushed in, shouting excitedly:

“Oh—listen—listen! There is a way! You can escape! The magic flying carpet!”

“By the Buddha!” exclaimed Cham Sheng. “You are right!” He rose. He turned to the guards. “Bring me the magic rug!” And to Wong K’ai: “I shall take Zobeid with me. Together she and I will fly away to the far North, to Mongolia, my own country, where not even these miraculous warriors will dare follow!”

What was ultimately destined to save Zobeid was the fact that this was a palace of the Orient, a Moslem house where there is no privacy for laughter nor for grief, not even for despair, where there is a peep-hole in every wall and door and curtain and ceiling, where in every room there are invisible, watching eyes and invisible, listening ears. So, had not the steely clank of the battle outside drowned all other sounds, the Prince might have heard a rustle of silken garments and the noise of bare feet pattering away as Zemzem, who had overheard the plot from an adjoining alcove, ran to her mistress and told her.

The latter was alone in her apartment. For a few seconds earlier, looking from the window and seeing their comrades go down before the Moslem scimitars, the soldiers detailed to watch her had joined their countrymen in their last stand.

“Come!” cried Zemzem. “Down the staircase and through the back door into the garden—I know the way—follow me, Heaven-Born!”

She was out of the room and down the stairs. Zobeid was a few feet behind her. Zemzem had already reached the corner of the lower staircase when from the opposite direction came Cham Sheng with Wong K’ai and the Mongols who carried the magic carpet. They stepped directly between Zobeid and Zemzem. The latter was on the point of retracing her steps, of helping her mistress with whatever strength she had—and there was more than one young Arab soldier and servant about the palace who, romantically inclined, could tell tales about Zemzem’s scratching, clawing finger-nails—when Zobeid motioned to her to continue on her way to the garden.

Zemzem understood the silent message. A battle-axe whizzed past her head, missed her by less than an inch, buried itself in a wall, the heavy palm-wood handle jerking crazily from side to side like an ill-regulated pendulum. By this time she had ducked, had run down the remaining flight of stairs, and, through the back door, into the garden.

She made straight for the crimson, clanking turmoil that was coiling everywhere, straight for the thick of the fight where the Mongols were desperately trying to stem the Arab attack, with the wicked whine of spears cutting through the air, with dagger points nosing for the chinks in body armor, and shield crashing against shield in charge and parry. She raised her voice high above the savage, guttural war cries and the shrieks of the dying as swords and lances struck home:

“Ahmed! O Ahmed! Thief of Bagdad!”

She saw him, fighting on foot now. She tried to slip through the forest of forged iron, to reach his side.

Upstairs, Zobeid was cornered. She stood erect and proud. The Prince of the Mongols bowed ironically, spoke ironically:

“It is—alas!—necessary that you accompany me without the proper marriage ceremonies. They shall be performed as soon as we arrive in my country.” He stepped on the rug and extended a slim yellow hand: “Be pleased to join me, Zobeid!”

“No!” she exclaimed. “No!”

“Ah!” he smiled, “can it be, indeed, that you do not love me?”

“I hate you!”

“Hate, too, spices the sauce of passion. Come!” His voice grew stern, and as she receded a step: “It is useless to resist, Crusher of Hearts. For consider the ancient proverb: On the egg combating with the stone, the yolk came out.”

“No, no, no!” she cried again.

“I regret,” he rejoined, “that I shall have to use force.”

He gave an order to the Mongol soldiers. Zobeid resisted. But she was helpless. They lifted her on the rug. They held her there. Already the Prince had spoken to the rug: “O magic flying carpet, carry us to …” when suddenly his words were cut off in midair.

For there came a shrill, high, triumphant war cry:

“''Allah akbar! Allah akbar!''” and, the next moment, invisible hands came out of the nowhere; invisible hands sent the Mongol soldiers spinning in all directions; invisible hands struck Cham Sheng square between the eyes; invisible hands picked up the Princess Zobeid and carried her away, out of the room, up the staircase; while invisible lips gave again the shrill, mocking war cry:

“''Allah akbar! Allah akbar!''”

Invisible hands and lips. The hands and lips of Ahmed, the Thief of Bagdad.

For a minute earlier, down in the garden, Zemzem had reached his side through the torrid, clanking forest of weapons. From beneath the dropping, swishing, crimson blades she had cried out to him, and it had not needed more than her first words: “Zobeid—the flying carpet—hurry—O hurry!” to make him understand what was happening.

He catapulted himself toward the palace gate. A giant Tartar captain stepped square into his path. Lance then against lance. Thrust and cut against thrust and cut. Skill and strength against skill and strength. The lance jerking up, skidding from the ground with a dry rasp of its bamboo shaft, lunging viciously. The Thief of Bagdad wheeling nimbly out of harm’s way while his sword, thrice whirled round the head, descended like lightning in a slanting direction. Forged steel biting through flesh and muscle and tissue and bone. A darkening blotch of blood spreading grotesque arabesques over dragon-embroidered tunic. A choked death gurgle. And Ahmed leaping over the fallen man; Zemzem by his side, leaping parallel, like a small terrier by the side of a lean-flanked greyhound.

On the threshold of the palace was a wall of steel-bossed arm shields, topped by a wall of yellow, high-cheeked faces, a wall of glittering, oval-bladed lances: Cham Sheng’s picked Manchu bodyguard, here to fight for their master to their last drop of blood.

They were too many for one man to attack and defeat.

Ahmed stopped for a moment. Then he remembered the Cloak of Invisibility which he had found at the bottom of the Midnight Sea, wrapped about the magic silver box: the cloak to guard him against the jealousies and envies of the unrighteous.

He tore it from his waist shawl. He flung it quickly about his shoulders. He could still see the Manchu warriors. But could they see him?

He wondered. The very next second he knew. For one of them, who had been on the point of thrusting at him with his lance, dropped the weapon and stared in open-mouthed, rather ludicrous astonishment.

“Where—why—how” he stammered. “Where has he gone to?”

He moved away from the threshold to search for this man who had so miraculously vanished into thin air; and Ahmed used the opportunity to slip through, into the palace, and up the stairs where—as we related before—he sent the Mongols spinning, smote Cham Sheng across the face, picked up Zobeid where she stood on the flying carpet, and ran away with her, carrying her high in his arms.

She did not see him. The cloak hid him so completely. But love needs no eyes. Somehow, by the thrill and tumult in her heart, she felt who he was; she knew; and she laughed, happily, while the Mongols, led by their Prince—their first surprise and stupor over—dashed after them, following the sound of Ahmed’s rushing feet, the sound of Zobeid’s high laughter.

But by this time their comrades down in the garden had died to the last man beneath the Moslem swords. The Arabs came charging into the palace. There was a play and counterplay of bare blades and many individual heroic deeds, by both Mongols and Arabs, of which the ancient chronicle makes much, until at last—though Arab and Mongol historians, while both admitting the same result, differ as to the cause, the former claiming that it was due to their bravery and their faith in Islam, while the latter say they were outnumbered ten to one and demand with rather pertinent irony what would have happened to their enemies had it not been for Ahmed's miraculous seeds—until at last the Arabs were victorious and all the Mongols were dead.

All except two: Cham Sheng and Wong K’ai, who protected his master with his body.

Already swords were raised to cut them down when a high voice—it was that of Bird-of-Evil, Ahmed’s old partner in knavery and thievery, who had just arrived on the scene—declared shrilly that such a death was too good for them.

“String them up!” he yelled.

“A splendid idea—by Allah and by Allah!”

So through one of the windows in an upper room they stuck a tall, stout pole, fastening it securely; and, a few minutes later, Cham Sheng and Wong K’ai were hanging by their necks, slowly strangling to death.

Such was the end of the Prince of the Mongols. But even at the very moment of final oblivion, while his soul was already leaping the Dragon Gate to join the souls of his ancestors near the Seven Yellow Springs, his lips, blue and twisted and tortured into a painful grimace, uttered the proud boast of his race:

“Others of my race will come after me! Again and again the world will quail and fall before the Mongol scourge!”

The boast was not heard—would have been ridiculed had it been heard.

“Tiger!”—a little, golden-skinned Arab slave girl cried down in the garden, looking up at the Mongol Prince’s dangling corpse. “Pah! Paper tiger with paper teeth!”

“God be praised!” chanted the priests.

“God be praised!” shouted the warriors.

“God be praised indeed!” echoed the Caliph of Bagdad, who had been released from his dungeon, as had the Princes of Persia and India. He turned to a majordomo. “Where is this mighty hero who freed us from the Mongol scourge?”

“He is with your daughter, Heaven-Born. Up there—in the throne room.”

“Tell him to come to me and accept my kingly thanks. By the way—who is he?”

The majordomo bowed deeply, stammered in embarrassment:

“May the Heaven-Born forgive the lowest of his slaves. But the man who freed us from the Mongol yoke is none other than the Thief of Bagdad!”

“No longer Thief of Bagdad!” laughed the Caliph. “But heir to the throne of Bagdad and, after my death, by the token of his marriage to my daughter, caliph of all the Faithful, Shadow of Allah upon Earth, King of the Sovereigns of the Universe, and Supreme Ruler in Islam!”

And “Heir to the throne of Bagdad!” he greeted Ahmed when the latter, side by side with Zobeid, came into the room.

He overwhelmed him with his gratitude, kissing him on both cheeks, elevating him on the spot to various ranks, titles, and splendid emoluments. The courtiers and soldiers, the priests and the Princes of India and Persia followed suit, kissing him, embracing him, shaking his hands, until Ahmed, blushing with confusion, stepped on the magic flying rug, his arm still about Zobeid’s waist.

“I am awfully sorry,” he said, “but I shall have to leave you. You see, a few moments ago this worthy”—pointing at a green-turbaned priest, the very priest who had first sent him on his journey in the search of life’s happiness—“united Zobeid and me in holy matrimony. And now, with the permission of all of you or without it, we are going on our honeymoon.” He turned to the magic rug. “Fly!” he ordered. “Fly away, O rug!”

“Where to?” asked the Caliph.

“Up to the moon! Up to the land of happiness and laughter and sweetness and love and little children!”

“Drop in on me on your way,” cried the Prince of Persia, his heart warming with generosity as the rug rose into the air, “and I shall have such a feast prepared for you that it will go down in history!”

“Visit me at Puri!” shouted the Prince of India, not to be outdone by the Persian in generosity, craning his neck as the rug rose still higher, “and I shall introduce you to my divine cousin, the goddess Doorga!”

Ahmed did not reply. He waved his left arm—his right was still about Zobeid’s waist—and so the flying rug carried them out of the palace, out of the garden, out of Bagdad, high through the air, up to the moon, on their wedding journey, where many fantastic and extraordinary adventures befell them.

“But this,” says the ancient Arab chronicle, “is another story…

THE END