THE CHATIR
“Married?” Karim said. He looked at Rob and grinned.
“A wife! I didn’t expect you would heed my advice,” Mirdin said, beaming. “Who arranged this match?”
“No one. That is,” Rob said hastily, “there was a nuptial agreement more than a year ago, but it wasn’t acted upon until now.”
“What is her name?” Karim asked.
“Mary Cullen. She’s a Scot. I met her and her father in a caravan on my eastward journey.” He told them something of James Cullen, and of his illness and death.
Mirdin seemed scarcely to be listening. “A Scot. That is a European?”
“Yes. She comes from a place north of my own country.”
“She is a Christian?”
Rob nodded.
“I must see this European woman,” Karim said. “Is she a pretty female?”
“She’s so beautiful!” Rob blurted, and Karim laughed. “But I want you to judge for yourself.” Rob turned to include Mirdin in the invitation, but saw that his friend had walked away.
Rob didn’t relish reporting to the Shah what he had seen, but he knew he had committed his loyalty and had little choice. When he appeared at the palace and asked to see the king, Khuff smiled his hard smile.
“What is your errand?”
The Captain of the Gates hurled a glance like a stone when Rob shook his head in silence.
But Khuff bade him wait and went to tell Alā that the foreign Dhimmi Jesse wished to see him, and presently the old soldier ushered Rob in to the royal presence.
Alā smelled of drink but listened soberly enough to Rob’s report that his Vizier had sent pietist disciples to meet and confer with a party of the Shah’s enemies.
“There has been no report of attacks in Hamadhān,” Alā said slowly. “It was not a Seljuk raiding party, therefore doubtless they met to discuss treachery.” He examined Rob through veiled eyes. “To whom have you spoken of this?”
“To no man, Majesty.”
“Let it remain so.”
Instead of further talk, Alā placed the board of the Shah’s Game between them. He was visibly pleased to encounter a more difficult opponent than heretofore he had met in Rob.
“Ah, Dhimmi, you grow skilled and cunning as a Persian!”
Rob was able to hold him off for a time. In the end, Alā ground him into the dust and it was as always, shahtreng. But each recognized that their game had turned a corner. It was more of a struggle now, and Rob might have been able to hold out even longer if he were not so eager to return to his bride.
Ispahan was the most beautiful city Mary had ever seen, or perhaps it was because she was there with Rob. She was pleased with the little house in Yehuddiyyeh, although the Jewish quarter was shabby. The house wasn’t as large as the house in which she and her father had lived by the wadi in Hamadhān, but it was of sounder construction.
At her insistence Rob bought plaster and a few simple tools and she vowed to repair the house while he was gone, her first day alone. The full heat of the Persian summer was on them, and the long-sleeved black dress of bereavement soon was sodden with perspiration.
In the middle of the morning the most handsome man she had ever seen knocked at the door. He was carrying a basket of black plums, which he set down so he could reach out to touch her red hair, frightening her. He was chuckling and looked awed, dazzling her with his perfect white teeth in his tanned face. He spoke at length; it sounded eloquent and graceful and full of feeling, but it was in Persian.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“Ah.” He understood at once and touched his chest. “Karim.”
She lost her fright and was delighted. “So. You are my husband’s friend. He’s spoken of you.”
He beamed and led her, protesting in words he couldn’t understand, to a chair where she sat and ate a sweet plum while he mixed plaster to exactly the correct consistency and spread it on three cracks in the interior walls, and then replaced a windowsill. Shamelessly, she also allowed him to help her cut out the large, wicked thornbushes in the garden.
Karim was still there when Rob came home and she insisted that he share their meal, which then they had to delay until darkness had fallen, for it was Ramadan, the ninth month, the month of fasting.
“I like Karim,” she told Rob when he had gone. “When shall I meet the other one—Mirdin?”
He kissed her and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.
Ramadan seemed a most peculiar holiday to Mary. It was Rob’s second Ramadan in Ispahan, and he told her it was a somber month, supposed to be devoted to prayer and shriving, but food seemed foremost on everyone’s mind because Muslims were proscribed from taking nourishment or liquid from dawn to sunset. Vendors of food were absent from the markets and the streets, and the maidans remained dark and silent all month, though friends and families assembled at night to eat and fortify themselves for the next day’s fasting.
“We were in Anatolia last year during Ramadan,” Mary said wistfully. “Da bought lambs from a herdsman and gave a feast for our Muslim servants.”
“We could give a Ramadan dinner.”
“It would be pleasant, but I am in mourning,” she reminded him.
Indeed, she was torn by conflicting emotions, at times racked by such grief that she felt crippled by the pain of her loss, at other times giddily aware she was the most fortunate of women in her marriage.
On the few occasions when she ventured from the house, it seemed to her that people stared at her with enmity. Her black mourning dress wasn’t dissimilar from the costume of the other women of Yehuddiyyeh, but doubtless her uncovered red hair marked her as a European. She tried wearing her wide-brimmed traveling hat, but she saw women point her out in the street just the same, and their coldness toward her was unabated.
Under other circumstances she might have felt loneliness, for in the midst of a teeming city she was able to communicate with but one person; but instead of isolation she felt a privacy that was complete, as though only she and her new husband peopled the world.
In that waning month of Ramadan they were visited solely by Karim Harun, and several times she saw the young Persian physician running, running through the streets, a sight that made her catch her breath, for it was like watching a roe deer. Rob told her about the footrace, the chatir, which would be held on the first day of the three-day holiday called Bairam that celebrated the end of the long fast.
“I’ve promised to attend Karim during the running.”
“Will you be his only attendant?”
“Mirdin will be there too. But I believe he will need the two of us.” There was a question in his voice and she knew he was troubled that she might consider it a disrespect toward her father.
“Then you must,” she said firmly.
“The race itself isn’t a celebration. It could not be considered wrong for one in mourning merely to look on.”
She thought about it as Bairam approached and in the end decided her husband was right, and that she would watch the chatir.
Early on the first morning of the month of Shawwal there was a heavy mist that gave Karim hope it would be a good day, a runner’s day. He had slept fitfully but told himself that doubtless the other competitors had spent the night the same way, trying to keep their minds from dwelling on the race.
He rose and cooked himself a large pot of peas and rice, sprinkling the coarse pilah with celery seed that he measured with careful attention. He ate more than he wanted, stoking himself like a fire, and then returned to his pallet and rested while the celery seed did its work, keeping his mind blank and serene with prayer:
Allah, make me fleet and sure of foot this day.
Let my chest be like unto a bellows that does not fail
And my legs strong and supple as young trees.
Keep my mind clear and my senses sharp
And my eyes ever fixed on Thee.
He didn’t pray for victory. When he was a boy, Zaki-Omar had told him often enough: “Every yellow dog of a runner prays for victory. How confusing for Allah! It is better to ask Him to grant speed and endurance and use them to take the responsibility for victory or defeat upon oneself.”
When he felt the urge he rose and went to the bucket, squatting a long and satisfying time to move his bowels. The amount of celery seed had been correct; when he was through he was emptied but not weakened, and he would not be deterred that day by a cramp in the midst of a lap.
He warmed water and bathed from a bowl by candlelight, wiping himself dry quickly because the dwindling dark contained a coolness. Then he anointed himself with olive oil against the sun, and twice wherever friction might cause pain—nipples, armpits, loins and penis, the crease of buttocks, and finally his feet, taking care to oil the tops of his toes.
He dressed in a linen loincloth and linen shirt, light leather footman’s shoes, and a jaunty feathered cap. Around his neck he suspended a bowman’s quiver and an amulet in a small cloth bag, and threw a cloak over his shoulders to guard against chill. Then he let himself out of the house.
He walked slowly at first and then more rapidly, feeling warmth beginning to unlock his muscles and joints. There were as yet few people in the streets. No one noticed him as he entered a brushy copse to indulge in one last nervous piss. But by the time he reached the starting point by the drawbridge of the House of Paradise a crowd had gathered there, hundreds of men. He made his way carefully through it until by prearrangement he came upon Mirdin at the very rear, and it was here a short time later that Jesse ben Benjamin found them.
His friends greeted one another stiffly. Some trouble between them, Karim saw. He put it out of his mind at once. This was a time to think only of the race.
Jesse grinned at him and questioningly touched the little bag hanging from his neck.
“My luck,” Karim said. “From my lady.” But he shouldn’t talk before a race, he could not. He gave Jesse and Mirdin a quick smile to show he meant no offense and closed his eyes and brought in blankness, shutting out the loud talk and boisterous laughter all around him. It was harder to shut out the smells of oils and animal grease, body odor and sweaty clothing.
He said his prayer.
When he opened his eyes the mist had turned pearly. Looking through it, he was able to see a perfectly round red disc, the sun. The air had changed and already was heavy. He realized with a pang that it would be a brutally hot day.
Out of his hands. Imshallah.
He removed his cloak and gave it to Jesse.
Mirdin was pale. “Allah be with you.”
“Run with God, Karim,” Jesse told him.
He didn’t answer. Now a hush had fallen. The runners and the onlookers were gazing up at the nearest minaret, the Friday Mosque, where Karim could see a tiny, dark-robed figure just entering the tower.
In a moment the haunting call to First Prayer floated to their ears and Karim prostrated himself to the southwest, the direction of Mecca.
When the praying ended everyone was screaming at the top of his lungs, runners and spectators alike. It was frightening and made him tremble. Some shouted encouragement, others called upon Allah; many simply howled, the bloodcurdling sound men might make when attacking an enemy’s wall.
Back where he was standing the movement of the front runners could only be sensed but he knew from experience how some were springing forward to be in the first rank, fighting and shoving, heedless of who was trampled and what injuries were inflicted. Even those who were not slow in rising from prayer were at risk, because in the churning maelstrom of bodies, flailing arms would strike faces, feet would kick nearby legs, ankles would be twisted and turned.
It was why he waited in the rear with contemptuous patience as wave after wave of runners moved away ahead of him, assaulting him with their noise.
But finally he was running. The chatir had begun and he was in the tail of a long serpent of men.
He was running very slowly. It would take a long time to cover the first five and one-quarter miles, but that was part of his plan. The alternative would have been to station himself in front of the crowd, then, assuming he wasn’t injured in the melee, surge forward at a pace guaranteed to move him safely ahead of the pack. But this would have used up too much energy at the outset. He had chosen the safer way.
They ran down the wide Gates of Paradise and turned left to stay for more than a mile on the Avenue of the Thousand Gardens, which dropped and then rose, giving a long hill on the first half of the lap and a short but steeper hill on the return. The course turned right onto the Street of the Apostles, which was only a quarter of a mile long; but the short street fell on the way out and was a laborious run on the return. They padded left again onto the Avenue of Ali and Fatima, and followed it all the way to the madrassa.
All kinds of people were in the pack. It was fashionable for young nobles to run for half a lap, and men in silk summer clothing ran shoulder to shoulder with runners in rags. Karim hung back, for at this point it wasn’t a race so much as a running mob, full of high spirits over the end of Ramadan. It wasn’t a bad way for him to begin, for the slow pace allowed his juices to begin to flow gradually.
There were spectators but it was too early for a dense crowd to line the streets; it was a long race and most people would come to watch later. At the madrassa he looked at once toward the long roof of the one-storied maristan, where the woman who had given him the amulet—it was a lock of her hair in the little bag—had said her husband had arranged for her to watch the chatir. She wasn’t there yet but two nurses stood on the street in front of the hospital and shouted “Hakim! Hakim!” Karim waved as he ran by, knowing they would be disappointed to see him at the end of the pack.
They wound through the madrassa grounds and on to the central maidan, where two great open tents had been raised. One for courtiers, carpeted and lined with brocades, contained tables bearing all manner of rich victuals and wines. The other tent, for runners of common birth, offered free bread and pilah and sherbet and appeared no less welcoming, so that here the race lost almost half its contestants, who made for the refreshment with glad cries.
Karim was among those who ran past the tents. They circled the stone ball-and-stick goals and then began to retrace the course to the House of Paradise.
Now they were fewer and strung along a distance, and Karim had room to set his pace.
There were choices. Some held with pushing the first few laps smartly to take advantage of the morning cool. But he had been taught by Zaki-Omar that the secret of completing long distances was to select a pace that would drain his last bit of energy at the completion, and to stay with that speed unvaryingly. He was able to fall into it with the perfect rhythm and regularity of a trotting horse. The Roman mile was one thousand five-foot paces but Karim ran about twelve hundred steps to a mile, each covering a little more than four feet. He held his spine perfectly straight, his head high. The slap-slap-slap of his feet against the ground at his chosen pace was like the voice of an old friend.
He began to pass some runners now, though he knew that most were not men in serious contention, and he was running easily when he returned to the palace gates and collected the first arrow to be dropped into his quiver.
Mirdin offered balm to be rubbed into his skin against the sun, which he refused, and water, which he took gratefully but sparingly.
“You are forty-second,” Jesse said, and he nodded and sprang away.
Now he ran in the full light of day and the sun was low but already strong, clearly signaling the heat to come. It wasn’t unexpected. Sometimes Allah was kind to runners but most chatirs were ordeals through the Persian heat. The high points of Zaki-Omar’s athletic career had been to win second place in two chatirs, once when Karim was twelve years old and again the year he was fourteen. He remembered his terror at seeing the exhaustion in Zaki’s red face and popping eyes. Zaki had run as long and as far as he had been able, but in both races there had been one runner who could run longer and farther.
Grimly, Karim removed the thought from his mind.
The hills seemed no worse than they had on the first lap and he ascended them almost without thought. The crowds began to be thicker everywhere, for it was a fine sunny morning and Ispahan was enjoying a holiday. Most businesses were closed and people stood or sat along the route in groups—Armenians together, Indians together, Jews together, learned societies and religious organizations en masse.
When Karim came to the hospital again and still couldn’t see the woman who had promised to be there, he felt a pang. Perhaps, after all, her husband had forbidden her to come.
There was a solid clump of spectators in front of the school and they cheered and waved him on.
As he approached the maidan he saw it was already as frenzied as if it were a Thursday evening. Musicians, jugglers, fencers, acrobats, dancers, and magicians played to large audiences, while the runners made their way around the outside of the square almost unnoticed.
Karim began to pass spent contenders lying or sitting by the side of the road.
When he collected his second arrow Mirdin again tried to give him an ointment to protect his skin from the sun but he refused it, though he knew with a private shame it was because the ointment was unsightly and he wanted her to see him without it. It would be available if needed since, by prearrangement, on this lap Jesse would begin to follow him on the brown horse. Karim knew himself; the first testing of his soul was coming, for he invariably felt distress after 25 Roman miles.
Problems came almost on schedule. Halfway up the hill on the Avenue of the Thousand Gardens he became aware of a raw place on the heel of his right foot. It was impossible to run such a long race without damaging his feet and he knew he must ignore the discomfort, but soon it was joined by a sticking pain in his right side that grew until he gasped whenever his right foot jarred against the road.
He signaled to Jesse, who was carrying a goatskin of water behind his saddle, but a warm drink tasting of goaty leather did little to ease his discomfort.
But when he drew close to the madrassa, at once he spotted on the hospital roof the woman for whom he’d been looking, and it was as if everything that had been troubling him fell away.
Rob, riding behind Karim like a squire trailing his knight, saw Mary as they approached the maristan and they smiled at each other. Dressed in her mourning black, she would have been inconspicuous were her face not unadorned, but every other female in sight wore the heavy black street veil. The others on the roof stood slightly apart from his wife, as if afraid lest they be corrupted by her European ways.
There were slaves with the women and he recognized the eunuch Wasif standing behind a small figure disguised by a shapeless black dress. Her face was hidden behind the horsehair veil but he could note Despina’s eyes, and where they were turned.
Following her gaze to Karim, Rob saw something that made it difficult for him to breathe. Karim had found Despina too and held her with his glance. As he ran past her, his hand went up and touched the little bag suspended around his neck.
It seemed to Rob a naked declaration to all, but the sound of the cheering didn’t change. And although Rob tried to study the crowd for Ibn Sina’s presence, he didn’t see him among the spectators as they went past the madrassa.
Karim ran away from the pain in his side until it dwindled, and he ignored the discomfort in his feet. Now the time of attrition had begun and all along the way men in donkey-drawn wagons were busy picking up runners who couldn’t go on.
When he claimed his third arrow he allowed Mirdin to smear him with the ointment, made of oil of roses, oil of nutmeg, and cinnamon. It turned his light-brown skin yellow but was good against the sun. Jesse kneaded his legs while Mirdin applied the salve, then held a cup to his cracked lips, giving him more water than he desired.
Karim tried to protest. “Don’t want to have to piss!”
“You’re sweating too hard to piss.”
He knew it was true, and he drank. In a moment he was away again and running, running.
This time when he passed the school he was aware that she saw an apparition, the melted yellow grease streaked by rivulets of sweat and muddied dust.
Now the sun was high and hot, baking the ground so the heat of the road penetrated the leather of his shoes and seared his soles. Along the route men stood and held out containers of water, and sometimes he paused to drench his head before darting off without thanks or a blessing.
After he had collected the fourth arrow, Jesse left him, to reappear in a short time on his wife’s black mount, doubtless leaving the brown horse to water and rest in cool shade. Mirdin waited by the post containing the arrows, studying the other runners, according to their plan.
Karim kept running past men who had collapsed. Someone stood bent over at the waist in the middle of the road, weakly vomiting nothing. A muttering Indian stopped hobbling and kicked off his shoes. He ran half a dozen steps, leaving the red tracks of his bloody feet, and then stood quietly and waited for a wagon.
When Karim passed the maristan on the fifth lap Despina was no longer on the roof. Perhaps she had been frightened by his appearance. It didn’t matter, for he had seen her and now occasionally he reached up and grasped the little bag containing the thick locks of black hair he had cut from her head with his own hands.
In places the wagons and the feet of the runners and the hooves of the attendants’ animals raised a fearful dust that coated his nostrils and throat and made him cough. He began to close down his consciousness until it was small and remote somewhere deep inside, dwelling on nothing, allowing his body to continue to do what it had done so many times.
The call to Second Prayer was a shock.
All along the route, runners and spectators alike prostrated themselves toward Mecca. He lay and trembled, his body unable to believe that the demands on it had halted, however briefly. He wanted to remove his shoes but knew he wouldn’t get them back on his swollen feet. When the prayers were finished, for a moment he didn’t move.
“How many?”
“Eighteen. Now it is the race,” Jesse told him.
Karim started up again, forcing himself to run through the heat shimmer. But he knew it was not yet the race.
It was harder to climb the hills than it had been all morning but he kept to the steady rhythm of his running. This was the worst, with the sun directly overhead and the real testing before him. He thought of Zaki and knew that unless he died he would keep going until at least he had won second place.
Until now he hadn’t had the experience, and in another year perhaps his body would be too old for such punishment. It would have to be today.
The thought allowed him to reach within himself and find strength when some of the others were searching and finding nothing, and when he slid the sixth arrow into his quiver, he turned at once to Mirdin. “How many?”
“Six runners are left,” Mirdin said wonderingly, and Karim nodded and began to run again.
Now it was the race.
He saw three runners ahead and knew two of them. He was overtaking a small, finely made Indian. Perhaps eighty paces in front of the Indian was a youth whose name Karim didn’t know but whom he recognized as a soldier in the palace guard. And far ahead but close enough for him to identify was a runner of note, a man from Hamadhān named al-Harāt.
The Indian had slowed but picked up the pace when Karim drew even, and they went on together, matching stride for stride. He had very dark skin, almost ebony, under which long, flat muscles gleamed in the sun as he moved.
Zaki’s skin had been dark, an advantage under a hot sun. Karim’s skin needed the yellow salve; it was the color of light leather, the result, Zaki always said, of a female ancestor being fucked by one of Alexander’s fair Greeks. Karim thought something like that probably was true. There had been a number of Greek invasions and he knew light-skinned Persian men, and women with snowy breasts.
A little spotted dog had come from nowhere and was pacing them, barking.
When they passed the estates on the Avenue of the Thousand Gardens people held out melon slices and cups of sherbet but Karim didn’t take any, being fearful of cramps. He accepted water, which he put into his cap before setting it back on his head and reaping momentary relief until the hat dried in the sun with remarkable swiftness.
The Indian grabbed green melon and gobbled as he ran, discarding the rind over his shoulder.
Together they passed the young soldier. He was already out of contention, a full lap behind, for there were only five arrows in his quiver. Two dark red lines ran down the front of his shirt from nipples rubbed raw. Every time he took a step his legs buckled slightly at the knees and it was clear he wouldn’t be running much longer.
The Indian looked at Karim and gave a white-toothed grin.
Karim was dismayed to see that the Indian was running easily and his face was alert but relatively unstrained. Runner’s intuition said that the man was stronger than Karim and less tired. Perhaps faster, too, if it should come to that.
The spotted dog that had run with them for miles suddenly swerved and cut across their path. Karim jumped to avoid him and felt the brush of the warm fur, but the dog smashed solidly into the other runner’s legs and the Indian fell to the ground.
He started up as Karim turned to him, then he sat back in the road. His right foot was twisted crazily and he gazed at his ankle in disbelief, unable to comprehend that his race was done.
“Go!” Jesse shouted to Karim. “I will take care of him. You go!” And Karim turned and ran as if the Indian’s strength were transferred to his own limbs, as if Allah had spoken with the Dhimmīs voice, because he was beginning truly to believe that now might be the time.
He trailed al-Harāt most of the lap. Once, on the Street of the Apostles, he came up close behind and the other runner glanced back. They had known one another in Hamadhān and he saw recognition in al-Harāt’s eyes, and an old familiar contempt: Ah, it is Zaki-Omar’s bum boy.
Al-Harāt increased his pace and soon led him again by 200 paces.
Karim took the seventh arrow and Mirdin told him of the other runners as he gave water and smeared the yellow ointment.
“You are fourth. In first place is an Afghan whose name I don’t know. A man from al-Rayy is second, name of Mahdavi. Then al-Harāt and you.”
For a lap and one-half he trailed al-Harāt like one who knew his place, sometimes wondering about the two who were so far ahead they weren’t in his sight. In Ghazna, a place of towering mountains, Afghan men ran trails so high the air was thin, and it was said that when they ran at lower altitudes they didn’t tire. And he had heard that Mahdavi of al-Rayy also was a good runner.
But while descending the short, steep hill on the Avenue of the Thousand Gardens he saw a dazed runner at the edge of the road, holding his right side and weeping. They passed him by, but soon Jesse brought the news that it had been Mahdavi.
Karim’s own side had begun to hurt again and both his feet gave him pain. Call to Third Prayer caught him just beginning the ninth lap. Third Prayer was a time that had worried him, for the sun was no longer high and he feared his muscles would stiffen. But the heat was unrelenting and pressed down like a heavy blanket as he lay and prayed, and he was still sweating when he rose and began to run again.
This time, though he kept his pace, he seemed to overtake al-Harāt as if the Hamadhān man were walking. When he drew abreast, al-Harāt tried to make a race of it but soon his breathing was loud and desperate and he was lurching. The heat had him; as a physician, Karim knew that the man could die if it was the kind of heat sickness that brought on a red face and dry skin, but al-Harāt’s face was pale and wet.
Nevertheless he stopped when the other staggered to a halt.
Al-Harāt still had enough contempt in him to glare, but he wanted a Persian to win. “Run, bastard.”
Karim left him gladly.
From the high slope of the first descent, gazing down the straight stretch of white road, he caught sight of a small figure moving up the long hill in the distance.
As he watched, the Afghan fell and then got to his feet and began to run again, finally turning out of sight onto the Street of the Apostles. It was hard for Karim to hold himself in rein but he kept to his pace and didn’t see the other runner again until he had achieved the Avenue of Ali and Fatima.
They were much closer. The Afghan fell again and got up to run raggedly; he may have been accustomed to thin air but the mountains of Ghazna were cool and the Ispahan heat served Karim, who kept closing the distance.
When they ran past the maristan he didn’t see or hear the people he knew because he was concentrating on the other runner.
Karim reached him after the fourth and final fall. They had brought the Afghan water and were applying wet cloths as he lay gasping like a landed fish, a squat man with broad shoulders and dark skin. He had slightly slanted brown eyes that were calm as they watched Karim pass him.
Victory brought more anguish than triumph, for now there had to be a decision. He had won the day; did he have it in him to try for the Shah’s calaat? The “royal garment,” five hundred gold pieces, and the honorary but well-paid appointment as Chief of the Chatirs would go to any man who completed the entire course of 126 miles in less than twelve hours.
Rounding the maidan, Karim faced the sun and studied it. He had run all through the day, almost 95 miles. It should be enough and he ached to turn in his nine arrows and collect the prize of coins, then to join other runners now splashing in the River of Life. He needed to soak in their envy and admiration and in the river itself, a sinking into green waters that was more than earned.
The sun hovered above the horizon. Was there time? Was there strength in his body still? Was it Allah’s wish? It would be very close, and perhaps he could not complete another 31 miles before the call to Fourth Prayer signaled the setting of the sun.
Yet he knew that total victory might banish Zaki-Omar from his bad dreams more completely than lying with all the women of the world.
And thus when he had collected another arrow, instead of turning toward the officials’ tent he started around for the tenth time. The white dust road before him was vacant, and now he was running against the dark djinn of the man to whom he had yearned to be a son and who had made him, instead, a whore.
* * *
When the race had dwindled to the last man and the chatir was won, the spectators had begun to disperse; but now all along the way, people saw Karim coming alone and they flocked to regather as they realized he was trying to gain the Shah’s calaat.
They were sophisticated in matters of the annual chatir and knew the toll exacted by running through a day of crippling heat, and they raised such a hoarse roar of love that the sound seemed to pull him around the course, a lap he almost enjoyed. At the hospital he was able to pick out faces beaming with pride, al-Juzjani, the nurse Rūmī, Yussuf the librarian, the hadji Davout Hosein, even Ibn Sina. When he sighted the old man his eyes went at once to the roof of the hospital and he saw that she was back and knew that when he was alone with her again, she would be the real prize.
But he began to experience his gravest trouble on the second half of the lap. He was accepting water often and pouring it over his head, and now fatigue made him careless and some of the water splashed onto his left shoe, where almost immediately the wet leather began to abrade the abused skin from his foot. Perhaps it made a tiny alteration in his stride, for soon he developed a cramp in the right hamstring.
Worse, when he came down toward the Gates of Paradise the sun was lower than he expected. It was directly over the far hills, and as he started on what he prayed was the last lap but one, weakening swiftly and fearful that there was insufficient time, he was taken by the deepest melancholy.
Everything became heavy. He stayed with the pace but his feet were transformed into stones, the quiver full of arrows struck him a ponderous blow in the back with every step, and even the little bag containing her locks of hair pushed against him as he ran. He threw water on his head more often and felt himself fading.
But the people of the city had caught a strange fever. Each of them had become Karim Harun. Women screamed as he passed. Men made a thousand vows, shouted his praises, called upon Allah, implored the Prophet and the twelve martyred Imams. Anticipating him by the approaching cheers, they watered the street before he came, scattered flowers in his path, ran alongside and fanned him or sprinkled scented water on his face, his thighs, his arms, his legs.
He felt them enter his blood and bones and he caught their fire. His stride strengthened and steadied.
His feet rose and fell, rose and fell. He kept the pace, but now he didn’t hide from the hurt, seeking instead to pierce the smothering fatigue by concentrating on the pain in his side, the pain in his feet, the pain in his legs.
When he took the eleventh arrow, the sun had begun its slide behind the hills and had the shape of half a coin.
He ran through the deepening light, his last dance, up the first short incline, down the steep drop to the Avenue of the Thousand Gardens, through the flat, up the long climb, his heart pounding.
When he attained the Avenue of Ali and Fatima he threw water on his head and couldn’t feel it.
Pain ebbed along with every response as he ran on. When he reached the school he didn’t look for friends, more concerned with the fact that he had lost the sensory experience of his limbs.
Yet the feet he couldn’t feel kept on with their rise and fall, propelling him forward, slap-slap-slap.
This time at the maidan no one watched the entertainments but Karim didn’t hear the roar or see them, running in his silent world to the end of a fully ripened and dwindling day.
When he entered the Avenue of the Thousand Gardens again, he saw a shapeless dying red light on the hills. It seemed to him that he moved slowly, so slowly, across the flat and up the hill—the last hill he must climb!
He swept downward, the most dangerous time, for if his senseless legs made him stumble and sprawl, he wouldn’t get up again.
When he made the turn and entered the Gates of Paradise there was no sun. He watched blurred people now who seemed to float above the ground, silently urging him on, but in his mind his vision was clear as a mullah entered the narrow, winding stairway of the mosque, climbed to the little platform in the high tower, waited for the last ray’s dying …
He knew he had only moments.
He tried to will dead legs to longer strides, straining to quicken the ingrained pace.
Ahead of him, a small boy left his father’s side and ran out into the road; he froze, staring at the giant who lumbered down on him.
Karim swept the child up and lifted him to his shoulders as he ran, and the roar shook the earth. When he reached the posts with the boy, Alā was waiting, and as he grasped the twelfth arrow the Shah took off his own turban and exchanged it for the runner’s feathered cap.
The surge of the crowd was checked by the call of the muezzins from minarets all over the city. The people turned toward Mecca and dropped into prayer. The child he still held began to wail and Karim released him. Then the prayer was over, and when he rose, king and nobles were at him like nattering puppies. Beyond, the common people began to scream again and pushed forward to claim him, and it was as if Karim Harun suddenly owned Persia.