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CLASSIC
And now the mob closes in on them, a mangy mob, scabs on humanity’s fair body, the riff-raff of the bazaars; the whips fall ; rise, steeped in crimson ; fall again. And Omar Khayyam sees his tormentors’ faces no more, nor the dim-lit torture chamber. His Soul, free of the bleeding flesh but still earthbound, runs eagerly along the paths that lead to the past where old roses pour out their fragrance from behind garden walls, and longforgotten voices sing behind closed lattices. . . .
In a room webbed with grey shadows sit three youths, while an old man with reverend beard and rheumy eyes points out the signs of the Zodiac. Of the three, one, Nizam, listens intently ; another, Hassan, adds and subtracts figures under the pretense of taking notes. The third stares hungrily at the bright sky framed in the pointed window where a bird wings across. From without comes a medley of sounds which his ear sorts out: the whoosh-whoosh of the camel drivers, the shouts o f dragomen, the silver shower of a girl's laughter
“Where are thy thoughts, Omar?’’ asks Imam sternly,
Teacher of the Holy Word.
“Wandering i n the taverns,” Hassan sneers, “following a pretty ankle in the bazaars.”
“Seeking the Answer of it all.” says the youth addressed as Omar ;
“you are very wise,
M aster, but answer me one thing :
Where did I come from and where am I going? Can all your books and globes tell me that ?”
“Tut-tut! Folly, my son. Trust Allah and harken to His word.”
The grey room, the scratch of pens and thru the open window, hot and spiced, the odor of the teeming bazaars and a throbbing voice singing of the love of women. . . .
And now, sharp and sudden as a white statue at the end of a long dark corridor, another scene. A garden with the cold fires of the moon raining down thru budding trees, the small, green moon of spring. Omar stands in the shadows with the daughter of Imam, and for the moment forgets to question, or finds
the Answer to the riddle of the Universe in the kiss of Shireen. ‘‘How long, O Moon of my Delight, have you loved me?” “From the moment I first saw thee from my high lattice, O Lord of my Heart’s Kingdom ! And with each of the poems which you sent me by my slave boy, Mahruss, I loved thee more.”
“Then unveil, that my eyes may behold thy loveliness, Shireen.” Slim fingers, trembling, lift the veil. He draws the branches away so that the white light falls upon the face in its setting of rich dark hair — a little broken cry of tenderness “ — Oh, beauty beyond all beauty I have ever dreamed.”
“Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same door where in I went”