So much has been said of the shining celebrities who set sail on the Titanic that we have almost forgotten those for whom these sea giants were built: the migrants, those millions of men, women and children no country would agree to feed any more and who dreamt of America. The steamboat had to make a lot of pick-ups: the English and Scandinavians from Southampton, the Irish from Queenstown and at Cherbourg those who came from further away, Greeks, Syrians, Armenians from Anatolia, Jews from Salonika or Bessarabia, Croats, Serbs and Persians. It was these Orientals that I was able to watch at the harbour station, clustered around their pathetic luggage, in a hurry to be somewhere else and in a state of anguish from time to time, suddenly looking for a lost form, a child who was too agile, or an unmanageable bundle which had rolled under a bench. On everyone’s face there was written adventure, bitterness or defiance. They all felt that it was a privilege, the moment they arrived in the West, to be taking part in the maiden voyage of the most powerful, the most modern and most dependable steamboat ever dreamed up by man.
My own feelings were hardly different. Having been married three weeks earlier in Paris, I put back my departure with the sole aim of offering my companion a wedding trip worthy of the oriental splendour in which she had lived. It was not a vain whim. For a long time, Shireen had seemed reticent about the idea of living in the United States and, had it not been for the fact that she was so disheartened by Persia’s failed reawakening, she would never have agreed to follow me. My ambition was to build up around her a world which was yet more magical than the one she had had to leave.
The Titanic served my purposes marvellously. It seemed to have been conceived by men who were eager to enjoy, in this floating palace, the most sumptuous pleasures of terra firma as well as some of the joys of the Orient: a Turkish bath just as indolent as those of Constantinople or Cairo; verandahs dotted with palm-trees; and in the gymnasium, between the bar and the pommel horse there was an electric camel, which, when you pressed the magic button, instilled in the rider the feeling of a jumpy ride in the desert.
However, as we explored the Titanic, we were not just trying to search out the exotic. We also managed to give ourselves over to wholly European pleasures, such as eating oysters, followed by a sauté de poulet à la lyonnaise, the speciality of Monsieur Proctor the chef, washed down by a Cos-d’Estournel 1887, as we listened to the orchestra dressed in blue tuxedos playing the Tales of Hoffman, the Geisha or the Grand Moghul by Luder.
Those moments were even more precious to Shireen and me since we had had to keep up pretences throughout our long romance in Persia. Ample and promising as my Princess’s apartments had been at Tabriz, Zarganda or Teheran, I suffered constantly from the feeling that our love was restricted within their walls, with its only witness engraved mirrors and servants with fleeting glances. Now we could take simple pleasure in being seen together, a man and a woman arm in arm, taken in by the same strange looks. We avoided going back to our cabin until late at night, even though I had chosen one of the most spacious on board.
Our final delight was the evening promenade. When we finished dinner, we would go and find an officer, always the same one, who would lead us to a safe from which we would take out the manuscript and carry it carefully on a tour across bridges and down corridors. Seated in rattan armchairs in the Parisian Cafe we would read some quatrains at random, then, taking the lift, we would go up to the walkway where, without having to worry too much as to whether we could be seen, we would exchange a passionate kiss in the open air. Late in the night we would take the manuscript to our room where it spent the night before being placed back in the safe, in the morning, with the help of the same officer. It was a ritual which enchanted Shireen. So much so that I made it a duty for myself to retain every detail in order to reproduce it exactly the next day.
That is how, on the fourth evening, I had opened the manuscript at the page where Khayyam in his day had written:
You ask what is this life so frail, so vain.
’Tis long to tell, yet will I make it plain;
’Tis but a breath blown from the vasty deeps,
And then blown back to those same deeps again!
The reference to the ocean amused me: I wanted to read it again, more slowly, but Shireen interrupted me:
‘Please don’t!’
She seemed to be suffocating; I looked at her worriedly.
‘I know that rubai by heart,’ she said in a faint voice, ‘and I suddenly had the impression that I was hearing it for the first time. It is as if …’
She would not explain, however, and got her breath back before stating in a light and serene tone of voice:
‘I wish that we had already arrived.’
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘If there is a ship in the world on which one can travel without fear, it is this one. As Captain Smith said, God Himself could not sink this ship!’
If I had thought to reassure her with those words and my happy tone, it was in fact the opposite which I effected. She clutched my arm, murmuring:
‘Never say that again! Never!’
‘Why are you getting so worked up? You know very well that it was only a joke.’
‘Where I come from even an atheist would not dare use such a phrase.’
She was trembling. I could not understand why she was reacting so violently. I suggested that we go back to the cabin and had to support her so that she would not stumble on the way.
The next day she seemed to be herself again. In order to occupy her mind, I took her off to discover the wonders of the ship. I even mounted the jerky electric camel, at the risk of putting up with the laughs of Henry Sleeper Harper, the editor of the eponymous weekly, who stayed for a moment in our company, offered us tea and told us about his trips in the Orient, before introducing to us, most ceremoniously, his Pekinese dog which he thought acceptable to call Sun Yat Sen, in ambiguous homage to the emancipator of China. However nothing managed to cheer Shireen up.
That evening, at dinner, she was taciturn; she seemed to have become weak. I thought it best not to go on our ritual promenade and left the manuscript in the safe. We went back to our cabin to go to bed. She immediately fell into a disturbed sleep. I, on the other hand, was worried about her, and unused as I was to sleeping so early I spent a good part of the night watching her.
Why should I lie? When the ship hit the iceberg I was not aware of anything. It was after the collision, when I was told at exactly what moment it had taken place, that I thought I could remember having heard a noise like a sheet being torn in a nearby cabin shortly before midnight. Nothing else. I do not remember feeling any impact and managed to doze off, only to wake up with a start when someone rapped on the door, shouting a phrase which I could not make out. I looked at my watch. It was ten to one. I put on my dressing gown and opened the door. The corridor was empty, but from afar I could hear loud conversation, something unusual for so late at night. Without actually being worried, I decided to go and see what was happening, of course making no move to wake Shireen.
On the stairway I came across a steward who spoke lightly of ‘a few little problems’ which had just cropped up. He said that the captain wanted all the first class passengers to assemble on the Sun Bridge, at the top of the ship.
‘Must I wake my wife? She has been a little unwell during the day.’
‘The captain said everyone,’ the steward retorted with the look of a sceptic.
Back in the cabin, I woke Shireen with the necessary tenderness, stroking her forehead and then her eyebrows, pronouncing her name with my lips fast to her ear. When she gave out a little groan I whispered:
‘You must get up. We have to go up on the bridge.’
‘Not tonight, I am too cold.’
‘It is not for a promenade, they are the captain’s orders.’
The last two words had a magical effect; she jumped out of bed shouting:
‘Khodaya! My God!’
She got dressed quickly and in a state
of disorder. I had to keep her calm, tell her to slow down, that we were not in such a hurry. However when we arrived on the bridge there was an atmosphere of turmoil and passengers were being directed toward the life-boats.
The steward I had met earlier was there. I went over to him. He had lost none of his cheeriness.
‘Women and children first,’ he said, in a tone that poked fun at the phrase.
I took Shireen by the hand, to try and lead her over to the boats, but she refused to move.
‘The manuscript’, she pleaded.
‘We would run the risk of losing it in all the crush! It is better off in the safe!’
‘I will not leave without it!’
‘There is no question of leaving,’ the steward interjected. ‘We are getting the passengers off the ship for an hour or two. If you want my advice, even that is not necessary. But the captain is the master of the ship …’
I would not say that she was convinced by that, but she simply let herself be pulled along by the hand without putting up any resistance – as far as the forecastle where an officer called me.
‘Sir, over here, we need you.’
I went up to him.
‘This life-boat needs a man. Can you row?’
‘I have rowed for years in Chesapeake Bay.’
Satisfied by that, he invited me to get into the boat and helped Shireen to clamber in. There were about thirty people in it; with as many places still empty, but the orders were only to load the women – and some experienced rowers.
We were winched down to the ocean somewhat abruptly to my taste, but I managed to keep the boat steady and began to row. But where to, or toward what point in this black void? I did not have the least idea and neither did the men handling the evacuation. I decided just to get away from the ship and to wait at a distance of half a mile for some signal to call me back.
During the first minutes everyone’s concern was how we could all protect ourselves against the cold. There was an icy breeze blowing which prevented us hearing the tune which the ship’s orchestra was still playing. However, when we stopped, at what seemed to me an adequate distance, the truth suddenly dawned on us: the Titanic was leaning distinctly forwards and her lights were gradually fading. We were all dumbfounded. Suddenly there was a call from a man who was swimming; I manoeuvered the life-boat towards him; Shireen and another passenger helped me to drag him on board. Soon other survivors were making signs to us and we went to haul them out. While we were occupied with this task, Shireen gave out a cry. The Titanic was now in a vertical position and its lights had dimmed. She stayed like that for five endless minutes and then solemnly plunged towards her destiny.
We were flat out, exhausted and surrounded by forlorn faces when the sun surprised us on 15 April. We were on board the Carpathia, which on receiving a distress call had rushed over to pick up the survivors from the wreck. Shireen was at my side, silent. Since we had seen the Titanic go down she had not spoken a word, and her eyes were avoiding me. I wanted to shake her, to remind her that we had been saved miraculously, that most of the passengers had perished, and that there were around us on this bridge women who had just lost their husbands and children who were now orphans.
However I stopped myself preaching to her. I knew that the manuscript was for her, as it was for me, more than a jewel, more than a precious antique – that it was, to some extent, our reason for being together. Its disappearance, come after so many misfortunes, had to have a serious effect on Shireen. I felt it would be wiser to let time heal.
As we drew close to the port of New York, late on the evening of 18 April, a noisy reception was awaiting us: reporters had come to meet us on rented boats, and, with the aid of megaphones, they shouted questions over to us and some of the passengers cupped their hands to their mouths and tried to shout back answers.
When the Carpathia had berthed, other journalists hurried over to the survivors, all trying to guess which might be the truest, or most sensational, account. It was a very young writer from the Evening Sun who chose me. He was particularly interested in Captain Smith’s behaviour as well as that of crew members at the time of the catastrophe. Had they succumbed to panic? In their exchanges with the passengers, had they covered up the truth? Was it true that the first class passengers had been saved first? Each of his questions made me think back and rack my memory; we spoke for a long time, first as we were disembarking, then standing up on the quay. Shireen had stayed for a moment at my side, still not saying a word, then she slipped away. I had no reason to worry, she could not really have gone far, surely she was somewhere nearby, hidden behind this photographer who was focusing a blinding flash at me.
As he left me, the journalist complimented me on the quality of my account and took my address in order to get in touch with me later. Then I looked all around, and called out louder and louder. Shireen was no longer there. I decided not to move from the spot where she had left me so that she would be able to find me again. I waited for an hour, for two hours. The quay gradually emptied.
Where should I look? First of all I went to the office of White Star, the company to which the Titanic belonged. Then I checked all the hotels where the survivors had been lodged for the night. However, yet again I found no sign of my wife. I returned to the quays. They were deserted.
Then I decided to set off for the only place whose address she knew, and where, once she had calmed down, she would know to find me: my house in Annapolis.
I waited for some sign of Shireen for a long time, but she never came. She did not write to me. No one mentioned her name any more in front of me.
Today I wonder: Did she exist? Was she anything other than the fruit of my oriental obsessions? At night, in the solitude of my overlarge bedroom, when doubt rises up in me, when my memory clouds over and I feel my reason waver, I get up and turn on all the lights. I rush and take out the letters of yesteryear which I pretend to open as if I had just received them. I breathe in their perfume and re-read some pages; the very coldness of the letters’ tone comforts me, and gives me the illusion that I am experiencing anew the birth of love. Then alone, and soothed, I put them in order and dive back into the dark, ready to give myself over without fright to the dazzling sights of the past: a phrase uttered in a Constantinople sitting-room, two sleepless nights in Tabriz, a brazier in the winter in Zarganda. And this scene from our last trip: we had gone up on to the walkway, into a dark and deserted corner where we had exchanged a long kiss. In order to take her face in my hands, I had placed the manuscript flat on a bollard. When she noticed it, Shireen burst out laughing. She stepped away from me and with a theatrical gesture she shouted to the sky:
‘The Rubaiyaat on the Titanic! The flower of the Orient borne by the jewel of the Occident! Khayyam, if you could only see what a beautiful moment has been granted to us!’
Amin Maalouf, Samarkand
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