Miriam looked at him with inquiring eyes. She didn’t know what to make of these strange words.
“There’s one other thing I’d like to remind you of, my dear. There’ve been many times when you’ve sworn to me that after all that life has dealt you, it was no longer possible for you to believe in anything. I replied that both life and my studies had led me to the same conclusion. I asked you, ‘What is a person permitted, once he’s realized that truth is unattainable and consequently doesn’t exist for him?’ Do you remember your answer?”
“I do, ibn Sabbah. I said something like this: ‘If a person realized that everything people call happiness, love and joy was just a miscalculation based on a false premise, he’d feel a horrible emptiness inside. The only thing that could rouse him from his paralysis would be to gamble with his own fate and the fate of others. The person capable of that would be permitted anything.’”
Hasan whistled in delight.
“Very nice, my dear. Tonight I’m giving you a chance to amuse yourself with your own fate and the fate of others. Does that please you?”
Miriam drew her head back slightly and looked at him seriously.
“Have you come to ask me riddles?”
“No, I’ve just brought you some poems of Omar Khayyam’s to read to me. As it happens, tonight I need to think about my old friend. That mayor of Isfahan whom I told you about, the one who thought I was crazy, gave them to me as a present today—quite a coincidence. He’s the one who’s told me to expect a less than friendly visit.”
He untied the package and handed it to Miriam.
“You’re always thinking of things to please me, ibn Sabbah.”
“Not at all. I just wanted to give myself the pleasure of hearing your voice. You know I’m not much good at these things.”
“So shall I read?”
“Please do.”
She leaned her head against his knee and read:
“How wise,” Hasan observed when she’d finished. “All of us think too much about ‘later,’ and as a result the ‘now’ continually recedes from us. A whole view of the world in four lines… But go on. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Miriam read:
Hasan laughed, but his eyes were moist.
“My old friend knows what’s pleasant in the world,” he said. “A slight dizziness in the morning from wine, a beautiful girl at your feet, and then you really are like a king.”
Miriam continued:
“The universe is in you and you’re in the universe. Yes, Omar once said that.”
Hasan grew pensive.
“How I love him! How I love him!” he whispered, half to himself.
Miriam concluded:
“What a simple truth!” Hasan exclaimed. “Spring in bloom and a girl pouring wine in your cup. Who needs paradise after that! But our fate is to struggle with the sultan and forge our dark plans.”
Both of them were silent for a while.
“Earlier you were going to tell me something, ibn Sabbah,” Miriam finally said.
Hasan smiled.
“That’s right, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you, but I don’t know how best to go at it so you’ll understand. For twenty years I’ve carried around a secret inside me and hidden it from the world, and now that the time has come for me to share it with someone for the first time, I can’t find the words.”
“You’re becoming more and more difficult to understand. You say you’ve been carrying a secret around for twenty years? And this secret has to do with these gardens? With overthrowing the kingdom of Iran? This is all very murky.”
“I know. It has to be, until I explain it. These gardens, those girls, Apama and her school, and ultimately you and I, the castle of Alamut and what’s behind it—all these things are elements of a long-range plan that I’ve transformed from fantasy into reality. Now we’ll see if my assumptions have been right. I need you. We’re on the verge of a great experiment. There’s no going back for me. It’s hard for me to express this.”
“You always amaze me, Hasan. Speak. I’m listening carefully.”
“To help you understand me better, I’ll reach far back into my youth. As you know, I was born in Tus and my father’s name was Ali. He was an opponent of Baghdad and the Sunna, and I often heard discussions of these things at home. All these confessional disputes about the Prophet and his heirs seemed vastly mysterious and attracted me with an uncanny force. Of all the warriors for the Muslim faith, Ali was closest to my heart. Everything about him and his descendants was full of mystery. But the thing I found most moving was the promise that Allah would send someone from his line into the world as the Mahdi, to be the last and greatest of the prophets. I would ask my father, I would ask his relatives and friends to tell me what would be the signs of al-Mahdi and how we were to recognize him. They weren’t able to tell me anything specific. My imagination was fired up. One moment I saw the Mahdi in this or that dai or believer, in this or that peer, and on lonely nights I would even wonder if I weren’t the awaited savior myself. I burned, I practically burned to learn more about this teaching.
“Then I heard that a certain dai by the name of Amireh Zarab was hiding in our town, and that he was fully initiated into all of the mysteries of the coming of the Mahdi. I asked around about him, and one older cousin of mine who wasn’t particularly fond of the Shia told me that the dai belonged to the Ismaili sect, and that the adherents of that sect were secretly sophists and godless freethinkers. Now I was really interested. Not yet twelve years old, I sought him out and immediately leapt at him with my questions. I wanted to hear from his mouth whether the Ismaili doctrine was really just a cover for freethinking and, if so, what that meant for the coming of the Mahdi. In a tone of the utmost derision, Amireh Zarab began explaining the Ismailis’ external doctrine: that Ali was the Prophet’s sole legitimate heir, and that Ismail’s son Mohammed, the eighth in the line of Ali, would some day return to earth as al-Mahdi. Then he split hairs about the other Shiite sects and blasted the ones that held that the twelfth imam, who wouldn’t be from the line of Ali, would appear to the faithful as al-Mahdi. All of this squabbling over individuals struck me as trivial and pathetic. There wasn’t the slightest hint of a mystery about it. I returned home, dissatisfied. I decided that from then on I wouldn’t worry about these doctrinal disputes and that, like my peers, I would enjoy more readily attainable things. And I probably would have succeeded, if only another Ismaili refiq by the name of Abu Nedjm Saradj hadn’t passed through our town about a year later. Still furious at his predecessor for not being able to reveal any mysteries to me, I searched him out and began deriding him for the pedantry of his doctrine, which I said was every bit as ridiculous as Sunnism. I said that neither he nor his adherents knew anything definite about the Mahdi’s coming and that they were just leading poor, truth-seeking believers on.