The Thief of Bagdad - Achmed Abdullah

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and children, he saw an Indian sorcerer swinging with a majestic stride. The man was immensely tall, emaciated, bearded, and naked but for a scarlet loin-cloth. By his side tripped a young boy, while two attendants followed, one carrying a grass-woven basket and a bundle of swords, the other a coiled rope.

      Arrived just below the balcony, the Hindu stopped and addressed the crowd.

      “Moslems,” he said, “permit me to introduce myself. I am,” he announced without the slightest diffidence, “Vikramavata, the Swami, the Yogi, the greatest miracle-worker out of Hindustan! There is none in the Seven Known Worlds who approaches me in the mastery of either white or black magic! I am a vast sea of most excellent qualities! I am—so I have been assured by truth-telling and disinterested persons in China and Tartary and the lands of the doe-faced Mongols—a jewel of pure gold, a handful of powdered rubies, an exquisite tonic for the human brain, the father and mother of hidden wisdom!” He motioned to his attendants who put basket, swords, and rope on the ground, and went on: “If you like my sorcery, stay not the generosity of your hands! For”—in flat and shameless contradiction to his previous statement—“I am but a poor and humble man, with seven wives and seven times seventeen children, all clamoring for food!”

      He bent; opened the basket.

      “Ho!” he shouted at the young boy who thereupon jumped into the basket, where he curled up like a kitten. The Hindu closed it, picked up the swords and thrust them through every part of the basket with all his strength, while the crowd looked on, utterly fascinated.

      Up on the balcony Ahmed, too, watched. He was pleased more than ever with himself and the world at large. Why, he had money, a few choice jewels, an abundance of food—here he helped himself to another liberal fistful—and now a show: all free of charge, all for the asking and taking!

      “Hayah!” he said to himself, sitting on the balcony rail and chewing luxuriously, “life is pleasant—and he who works and strives is a fool!”

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      Down in the Square the Hindu continued his sorceries.

      He put a dry mango seed on the ground for all the world to see. Thrice he passed his hand over it, murmuring mysterious Indian words:

      “Bhut, pret, pisach, dana,

       Chee mantar, sab nikal jana,

       Mane, mane, Shivka khahna …

      and the mango seed burst—it grew—it shot in the air—in bloom—in fruit. Again he waves his hand and—behold!—the mango was gone.

      He asked the boy to approach. He whispered a secret word and, suddenly, a glistening Khyberee sword flashed in his right hand. He lifted it high above his head. He struck with all his might. And the boy’s head rolled on the ground; blood squirted; while the onlookers were aghast, sucking in their breath like little lisping babes in the dark. Then he waves his hands again, and there was the boy, his head on his neck where it belonged, a smile on his lips.

      So trick followed trick while the crowd applauded and shuddered and laughed and chattered and wondered, until finally the Hindu announced the greatest of all his tricks: the trick of the magic rope.

      “A rope,” he explained, uncoiling it and whizzing it through the air with a sharp noise, “woven from the hair of a purple-faced witch of the left-handed sect! Never in all the world was there such a rope! Look, O Moslems!”

      Swish!—he threw the rope into the air, straight up, and it remained there standing, without support, erect, lithe, like a slim tree, its upper end parallel with the balcony rail and directly in front of Ahmed’s eyes, who could hardly control his itching palms.

      Why—he thought—to possess this magic rope! What a help for the Thief of Bagdad!

      The Hindu clapped his hands.

      “Hayah! Ho! Jao!” he yelled; and suddenly the boy disappeared, vanished into the nowhere, while the spectators gaped with open mouths.

      “Hayah! Ho! Jao!” the sorcerer repeated; and a quivering shout of awed wonder rose from the crowd as they saw there, high up on the rope, come out of the nowhere into which he had disappeared, the boy clinging like a monkey. The next moment he had slid down and was going the round of the audience, asking for bakshish that was contributed generously; and even Ahmed was on the point of obeying the impulse and had already reached into his baggy trousers for a coin, when a throaty, guttural cry of rage caused him to turn quickly. There, like a plum-colored, obese goddess of wrath, stood the Nubian cook who had come from the interior of the palace. She saw the bowls of food; saw that impious hands had toyed with their contents; saw the munching, chewing Ahmed; and, putting two and two together, went for him, brandishing her heavy iron stirring ladle like a Sarazene battle ax.

      Ahmed considered and acted at the same fraction of a second. He launched himself away from the balcony railing; leaped straight at the magic rope; clutched it; and so there he was, swinging in mid-air, the cook calling down imprecations from above, the Hindu echoing them from below. And be it mentioned—in Ahmed’s favor or to his shame, exactly as you prefer—that he replied to both, impartially, vituperatively, enthusiastically, insult for insult and curse for curse.

      ‘‘Come back here, O Son of a noseless Mother, and pay for what you stole!” yelled the cook.

      “Come down here, O Camel-Spawn, and be grievously beaten!” demanded the sorcerer.

      “I shall do neither!” laughed the Thief of Bagdad. “It is airy up here and pleasant and most exclusive! Here I am, and here I shall remain!”

      But he did not.

      For at last the Hindu lost his patience. He made another magic pass, whispered another secret word, and the rope gave, bent, flicked from side to side, shot down to the ground, and sent Ahmed sprawling. Almost immediately he was up again, his agile fingers clutching at the rope. But the Hindu’s hand was as quick as Ahmed’s, and so they stood there, tugging at the rope, with the crowd looking on and laughing, when suddenly from the distance, where a Mosque peaked its minaret of rosy stone overlaid half way up with a faience tiling of dusky, peacock-green sheen, a muezzin’s voice drifted out, chanting the call to mid-day prayer, stilling the tumult:

      “Es salat wah es-salaam aleyk, yah auwel khulk Illah wah khatimat russul Illah—peace be with Thee and the glory, O first-born of the creatures of God, and seal of the apostles of God! Hie ye to devotion! Hie ye to salvation! Prayer is better than sleep! Prayer is better than food! Bless ye God and the Prophet! Come, all ye faithful!”

      “Wah khatimat russul Illah——” mumbled the crowd, turning in the direction of Mecca.

      They prostrated themselves, touching the ground with palms and foreheads. The Hindu joined them, chanting fervently. So did Ahmed, though not so fervently. Indeed while, mechanically, automatically, he bowed toward the East and while his lips formed the words of the prayer, his roaming, lawless eyes noticed the magic rope, between him and the Hindu. The latter, occupied with his devotions, was paying no attention to it. A moment later, watching his chance, Ahmed had picked it up and was away, fleet-footedly, across the bent backs of the worshipers. He ran at a good clip through the wilderness of little Arab houses. He increased his speed when, not long afterwards, he heard in the distance the view-halloo of the man-chase as the Hindu, rising from his devotions, noticed that his precious rope had been stolen.

      “Thief! Thief! Catch thief!” the shout rose, bloated, stabbed, spread.

      He ran as fast as he could. But his pursuers gained on him steadily, and he felt afraid. Only the day before he had watched a thief being beaten in public with cruel rhinoceros-hide whips that had torn the man’s back to crimson shreds. He shuddered at the recollection. He ran till his lungs were at the bursting point, his knees ready to give way under him.

      He had turned the corner of the Street of the Mutton-Butchers

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