The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice (51 page)

41

THE
MAIDAN

Early on a hurried morning three soldiers called upon him. He tensed and readied himself for anything, but this time they were all politeness and respect and their batons remained sheathed. Their leader, whose breath revealed he had breakfasted on green onions, bowed deeply.

“We are sent to inform you, master, that there will be a formal session of the court tomorrow after Second Prayer. Recipients of a
calaat
are expected.”

Thus, on the following morning Rob found himself once again under the arched and gilded roofs of the Hall of Pillars.

This time the masses of people were absent, which Rob thought a pity, for the
Shahanshah
was resplendent. Al
ā
wore a turban, a flowing tunic, and pointed shoes of purple, trousers and leg wrappings of crimson, and a heavy crown of worked gold. The Vizier, the Imam Mirza-aboul Qandrasseh, sat a smaller throne nearby, dressed as always in
mullah
black.

The
calaat
beneficiaries stood away from the thrones as observers. Rob couldn’t see Ibn Sina and recognized no one nearby save for Khuff, Captain of the Gates.

The floor surrounding Al
ā
was spread with carpets lustrous with threads of silk and gold. Seated on cushions on both sides of the throne and facing it was a host of richly caparisoned men.

Rob went to Khuff and touched his arm. “Who are they?” he whispered.

Khuff looked at the foreign Hebrew with scorn but answered patiently, as he was trained to do. “The empire is divided into fourteen provinces, in which there are five hundred and forty-four Considerable Places—cities, walled towns, and castles. These are the
mirzes, chawns, sultans,
and
beglerbegs
who govern the principalities over which Al
ā
-al-Dawla Shah holds sway.”

Perhaps the ceremonies would soon begin, for Khuff hurried away and stationed himself inside the door.

The ambassador from Armenia was the first of the envoys to ride into the hall. He was a man still young, with black hair and beard but otherwise a gray eminence, riding a gray mare and wearing silver foxes’ tails on a gray silk tunic. One hundred and fifty paces from the throne he was stopped by Khuff, who helped him dismount and conducted him to the throne for the kissing of Al
ā
’s feet.

That accomplished, the ambassador presented the Shah with lavish gifts from his own sovereign, including a large crystal lantern, nine small crystal looking-glasses set into gold frames, one hundred and twenty yards of purple cloth, twenty bottles of fine scent, and fifty sables.

Barely interested, Al
ā
welcomed the Armenian to the court and bade him thank his most gracious lord for the gifts.

Next, in rode the ambassador from the Khazars, to be met by Khuff, and the whole performance was played again, save that the gift of the Khazar king was three fine Arabian horses and a chained baby lion that was not tamed, so that in its fright the beast shat upon the gold and silk carpet.

The hall was still, awaiting the Shah’s reaction. Al
ā
did not frown or smile, but waited as slaves and servants hastened to remove the offending matter, the gifts, and the Khazar. The courtiers at the Shah’s feet sat on their cushions like inanimate statues, their eyes on the King of Kings. They were shadows, ready to move with Al
ā
’s body. At last there was an imperceptible signal and a general relaxing as the next envoy, from the Am
ī
r of Qarmatia, was announced and rode a reddish-brown horse into the hall.

Rob continued to stand and gaze respectfully, but within himself he turned from the court and began to do his lessons, silently reviewing. The four elements: earth, water, fire and air; the qualities recognized by touch: cold, heat, dryness, and moisture; the temperaments: sanguineous, phlegmatic, choleric, and saturnine; the faculties: natural, animal, and vital.

He pictured the separate parts of the eye as Hunayn listed them, named seven herbs and medications that were recommended for agues and eighteen for fevers, even recited several times the first nine stanzas of the Qu’ran’s third
sura,
entitled “The Family of ‘Imran.”

He was becoming pleased with this preoccupation when it was interrupted, and he saw that Khuff was engaged in a tight exchange of words with an imperious white-haired old man on a nervous chestnut stallion.

“I am presented last because I am of the Seljuk Turks, a deliberate slight to my people!”

“Someone must be last, Hadad Khan, and this day it is Your Excellency,” the Captain of the Gates said calmly.

In a high fury, the Seljuk attempted to move the large horse past Khuff and ride to the throne. The grizzled old soldier chose to pretend that the steed and not the rider was at fault. “Ho!” Khuff shouted. He grasped the bridle and struck the horse sharply and repeatedly across the nose with his baton, causing the animal to whinny and step back.

Soldiers controlled the chestnut as Khuff helped Hadad Khan to dismount with hands that were not overly gentle, and walked the ambassador to the throne.

The Seljuk performed the
ravi zemin
perfunctorily and in a shaking voice offered the greetings of his leader, Toghrul-beg, presenting no gifts.

Al
ā
Shah said no word to him, but dismissed him coldly with a wave of his hand, and the proceedings were done.

Save for the Seljuk ambassador and the shitting lion, Rob thought the court had been exceedingly dull.

It would have pleased him to make the little house in Yehuddiyyeh better than it had been when Al
ā
Shah bestowed it on him. The work would have taken a few days at most, but an hour had become a precious commodity, and so the windowsills went unrepaired, the cracked walls remained unplastered, the apricot trees were not pruned, and the garden was rank with weeds.

From Hinda, the woman merchant in the Jewish market, he bought three
mezuzot,
the little wooden tubes containing tiny rolled parchments of Scripture. They were part of his disguise; he affixed them to the right-hand post of each of his doors, no less than one handbreadth from the top, as he remembered
mezuzot
had been placed in the Jewish houses of Tryavna.

He described what he wanted to an Indian carpenter and drew sketches in the earth, and with no difficulty the man made him a rough-hewn olivewood table and a pine chair in the European style. He bought a few cooking utensils from a coppersmith. Otherwise, he bothered so little about the house he might have been living in a cave.

Winter was coming. The afternoons were still hot but the night air that drifted through the windows turned raw, announcing the change in season. He found several inexpensive sheepskins in the Armenian market and bedded in them gratefully.

On a Friday evening, his neighbor Yaakob ben Rashi the shoemaker prevailed upon Rob to come to his home for the Sabbath meal. It was a
modest but comfortable house, and at first Rob enjoyed the hospitality. Naoma, Yaakob’s wife, covered her face and said the blessing over the tapers. The buxom daughter, Lea, served the good meal of river fish, stewed fowl,
pilah,
and wine. Lea mostly kept her eyes modestly downcast, but several times she smiled at Rob. She was of marriageable age and twice during the dinner her father made careful hints about a sizable dowry. There seemed to be general disappointment when Rob thanked them and left early to return to his books.

His life developed a pattern. Daily religious observance was compulsory for
madrassa
students but Jews were allowed to attend their own services, so each morning he went to the House of Peace Synagogue. The Hebrew of the
shaharit
prayers had become familiar but many of them were still as untranslatable as nonsense syllables; nonetheless, the swaying and chanting was a soothing way to begin his day.

Mornings were taken up by lectures in philosophy and religion that he attended with grim purposefulness, and a host of medical courses.

He was getting better at the Persian language, but there were times during a lecture when he was forced to ask the meaning of a word or an idiom. Sometimes the other students explained but often they didn’t.

One morning Sayyid Sa’di, the philosophy teacher, mentioned the
gashtagh-daftaran.

Rob leaned toward Abbas Sefi, who sat next to him. “What is
gashtagh-daftaran?”

But the plump medical clerk merely cast him an annoyed look and shook his head.

Rob felt a poke in his back. When he turned he saw Karim Harun on the stone tier behind and above him. Karim grinned. “An order of ancient scribes,” he whispered. “They recorded the history of astrology and early Persian science.” The seat next to him was empty and he pointed to it.

Rob moved. From then on, when he attended a lecture he looked about; if Karim was there, they sat together.

The best part of his day was the afternoon, when he worked in the
maristan.
This became even better in his third month at the school, when it was his turn to examine new patients. The admission process amazed him with its complexity. Al-Juzjani showed him how it was done.

“Listen well, for this is an important task.”

“Yes,
Hakim.
” He had learned always to listen well to al-Juzjani, for almost at once he had known that, next to Ibn Sina, al-Juzjani was the best physician in the
maristan.
Half a dozen people had told him al-Juzjani had
been Ibn Sina’s assistant and lieutenant most of their lives, but al-Juzjani spoke with his own authority.

“You must make note of the patient’s entire history, and at first opportunity you will review it in detail with a senior physician.”

Each ill person was asked about his occupation, habits, exposure to contagious diseases, and chest, stomach, and urinary complaints. All clothing was removed and a physical scrutiny was done, including appropriate inspection of sputum, vomit, urine, and feces, an assessment of the pulse, and an attempt to detect fever by the warmth of the skin.

Al-Juzjani showed him how to run his hands over both the patient’s arms at the same time, then both legs, then each side of the body together, so that any defect, swelling, or other irregularity would be revealed because it felt different from the normal limb or side. And how to strike the patient’s body with sharp, short blows of the fingertips in an attempt to discover illness by hearing an abnormal sound. Much of this was new and strange to Rob, but he quickly became familiar with the routine and found it easy because he had worked with patients for years.

His difficult time began early in the evening, after he had arrived back in his house in Yehuddiyyeh, for that is when the battle began between the need to study and the need to sleep. Aristotle proved to be a sapient old Greek and Rob learned that if a subject was captivating, studying changed from a chore to a pleasure. It was a momentous discovery, perhaps the single thing that allowed him to work as doggedly as necessary, for Sayyid Sa’di quickly assigned him readings from Plato and Heraclitus; and al-Juzjani, as casually as if he were requesting another log on the fire, asked him to read the twelve books dealing with medicine in Pliny’s
Historia naturalis
—“as preparation for reading all of Galen next year”!

There was constantly Qu’ran to memorize. The more he consigned to his memory, the more resentful he became. Qu’ran was the official compilation of the preachings of the Prophet, and Muhammed’s message had been essentially the same for years on end. The book was repetition upon repetition, and filled with calumny against Jews and Christians.

But he persevered. He sold the donkey and the mule so he wouldn’t have to spend time tending and feeding them. He ate his meals quickly and without pleasure, and frivolity had no place in his life. Each night he read until he could read no more, and he learned to put minuscule amounts of oil in his lamps, so they would burn themselves out after his head dropped into his arms and he slept over his books at the table. Now he knew why God had given him a great, strong body and good eyes, for he taxed himself to the limit of his endurance as he sought to make himself a scholar.

* * *

One evening, aware only that he could study no more and must escape, he fled the little house in Yehuddiyyeh and plunged into the night life of the
maidans.

He had grown accustomed to the great municipal squares as they were during the day, sunbaked open spaces with a few people strolling or curled asleep in a patch of shade. But he found that by night the squares became seamy and alive, riotous celebrations jam-packed with the males of common-class Persia.

Everyone appeared to be talking and laughing at once, producing a clamor louder than several Glastonbury Fairs. A group of singing jugglers used five balls and were droll and adept, making him want to join them. Muscular wrestlers, their heavy bodies gleaming with animal grease to make it difficult for opponents to gain a hold, struggled while onlookers screamed advice at them and made wagers. Puppeteers performed a lewd play, acrobats leaped and somersaulted, hucksters of a variety of food and wares vied for the passing trade.