As he read through the text, Omar gave off a smile or a grimace here and there. In the evening of his life, Nizam could not resist shooting off a few arrows and settling some accounts — for example, with Terken Khatun. The forty-third chapter was titled ‘On women who live behind the tent-work’. ‘In ancient times,’ Nizam wrote, ‘the spouse of a king had great influence over him and there resulted therefrom nothing but discord and troubles. I shall say no more about it, for anyone can observe such things in other epochs.’ He added: ‘For an undertaking to succeed, it must be carried out the opposite way to what women say.’
The following six chapters were devoted to the Ismailis and ended as follows: ‘I have spoken of this sect so that people can be on their guard … My words will be remembered when these infidels manage to annihilate people close to the Sultan as well as statesmen, when their drums sound everywhere and their designs are unveiled. In the midst of the resultant tumult the Prince will surely know that everything I have said is the truth. May the Almighty preserve our master and the empire from an evil fate!’
The day when a messenger arrived from the Sultan to see him and invite him to join him on a trip to Baghdad, the Vizir had not a moment’s doubt of what was in store for him. He called Khayyam to take his leave of him.
‘In your condition, you should not cover such distances,’ Khayyam told him.
‘In my condition nothing matters anymore, and it is not the journey which will kill me.’
Omar was lost for words. Nizam kissed him and dismissed him amicably, before going to bow before the man who had condemned him. With supreme elegance, recklessness and perversity, the Sultan and the Vizir were both playing with death.
When they were en route for the place of trial, Malikshah questioned his ‘father’:
‘How long do you think you will yet live?’
Nizam replied without a hint of hesitation:
‘A long time, a very long time.’
The Sultan was distraught:
‘You can still get away with being arrogant with me, but with God! How can you be so sure. You ought to call upon His will to be done for He is the arbiter of life!’
‘I replied thus because I had a dream last night. I saw our Prophet, God bless and preserve him. I asked him when I was going to die and I received a reassuring response.’
Malikshah grew impatient:
‘What reply?’
‘The Prophet told me: “You are a pillar of Islam. You behave properly toward those around you, your existence is of value to the believers and I thus am giving you the privilege of choosing when you will die.” I replied: “God forbid. What man could choose such a day! One would always want more, and even if I determined the most distant date possible, I would live on obsessed by its approach. On the eve of that day, whether it were in a month or a hundred year’s time, I would shake with fear. I do not wish to choose the date. The only favour I ask, beloved Prophet, is not to outlive my master, Sultan Malikshah. I have seen him grow up and have heard him call me “father”, and I would not wish to undergo the humiliation and the suffering of seeing him dead.” “Granted!” the Prophet said to me. “You will die forty days before the Sultan.”’
Malikshah’s face was pale and he was trembling so much that he almost gave himself away. Nizam smiled:
‘You see, I am not showing any arrogance. I am now sure that I will live a long time.’
Was the Sultan tempted, at that moment, to forgo having his Vizir killed? He would have been well advised to do so. Even if the dream was only a parable, Nizam in fact took formidable precautions. On the eve of his departure, the officers of his guard, assembled at his side, had sworn one after another with their hands placed on the Book that, should he be killed, not a single one of his enemies would live on!
CHAPTER 19
In the Seljuk empire, at a time when it was the most powerful empire in the world, a woman dared to take power with her bare hands. Seated behind her tenting, she arrayed armies from one end of Asia to the other, named kings and vizirs, governors and qadis, dictated letters to the Caliph and sent emissaries off to the master of Alamut. To emirs who grumbled upon hearing her give orders to the troops, she responded: ‘Here it is the men who make war, but it is the women who tell them against whom to fight.’
In the Sultan’s harem, she was nicknamed ‘the Chinese woman’. She had been born in Samarkand, to a family originally from Kashgar, and, like her elder brother Nasr Khan, her face showed no intermingling of blood — neither the Semitic features of the Arabs, nor the Aryan features of the Persians.
She was Malikshah’s oldest wife by far. When she married him he was only nine years old and she was eleven. She waited patiently for him to mature. She had felt the first down of his beard, surprised the first spring of desire in his body and seen his limbs grow out, and his muscles swell up as he turned into the majestic windbag whom she soon learnt to tame. She had never ceased being the favourite wife — adulated, wooed, honoured and above all listened to and obeyed. At the end of a day, or upon his return from a lion hunt, a tournament, a bloody clash, a stormy assembly of the emirs or worse — a tedious work session with Nizam, Malikshah would find peace in the arms of Terken. He would peel off her diaphanous silk covering, snuggle up to her bare skin, play about, bellow and tell her about his exploits and what was tiring him. The Chinese woman would throw her arms around the excited lion, cocoon him, give him a hero’s welcome in the folds of her body and hold on to him long and tight, only letting go so that she could pull him back again; he stretched himself out with all his weight, conquering, breathless, panting, submissive and bewitched. She knew how to take him to the very limits of pleasure.
Then, gently his thin fingers would start to trace her eyebrows, her eyelashes, her lips, her earlobes and the lines of her moist neck; the lion was subdued, he was purring, growing sluggish, smiling. Terken’s words would then flow into the hollows of his soul. She would speak of him, of herself and their children. She would tell him anecdotes, recite poems for him, whisper parables laden with teachings. He was never bored for a second in her arms and he resolved to stay with her every evening. In his own rough, childish and animal way he loved her and was to love her until his last breath. She knew that he could refuse her nothing and it was she who planned his conquests of the moment, his mistresses or provinces. In the whole empire she had no rival other than Nizam, and in this year of 1092 she was on the verge of felling him.
Was the Chinese woman exultant at this? How could she be? The moment she was alone, or with Jahan her confidante, he would cry the tears of a mother and Sultana. She could curse her unjust fate and no one thought to blame her for it. Her eldest son had been chosen by Malikshah as his heir and was with him on all his trips and at all his ceremonies. His father was so proud of him that he displayed him everywhere, showing him his provinces one by one, telling him of the day when he would succeed him. ‘No Sultan ever left such a large empire to his son!’ he would tell him. At that time Terken was indeed overjoyed and no unhappiness soured her smile.
Then the heir died from a sudden, shattering and merciless fever. In vain the doctors prescribed bleedings and poultices but within two nights he passed away. It was said to be the work of the evil eye or even an undetectable poison. Terken managed to control her tears and pull herself together. When the period of mourning was over, she had her second son designated as heir to the throne. Malikshah took to him very quickly and showered him with surprising titles for a nine-year-old, but it was an era of pomp and ceremony: ‘King of kings, Pillar of the State, Protector of the Prince of the Believers’ …