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 ou
r 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?
r /> 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.