The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice (60 page)

“I stayed with him whether he was a physician or a prisoner or a vizier. He had become as much my friend as my master. Every night pupils would gather in his house, while by turns I read aloud from his book called
Healing
and someone else read from the
Canon.
Reza made sure we always had good food. When we were finished we drank lots of wine and went out and found women. He was the merriest of companions and played the way he worked. He had dozens of beautiful cunts—perhaps he fucked remarkably, as he did everything else better than most men. Reza always knew but she loved him anyway.”

He looked away. “Now she is buried and he is consumed. So that he sends old friends from him, and every day he walks the city alone, bestowing gifts to the poor.”

“Hakim,
” Rob said gently.

Al-Juzjani stared.

“Hakim,
shall I see you to your home?”

“Foreigner. I would like you to leave me now.”

So Rob nodded and thanked him for the wine, and then he went away.

Rob waited a week and then rode to the house in full daylight and left his horse with the man at the gate.

Ibn Sina was alone. His eyes were at peace. He and Rob sat together comfortably, talking sometimes, and sometimes not.

“Were you already a physician when you wed her, Master?”

“I became
hakim
at sixteen. We were wed when I was ten, the year I memorized the Qu’ran, the year I began the study of healing herbs.”

Rob was awed. “At that age I was struggling to become a faker and a barber-surgeon.” He told Ibn Sina how Barber had apprenticed him as an orphaned boy.

“What had been your father’s work?”

“A carpenter.”

“I know of European guilds. I had heard,” Ibn Sina said slowly, “that in Europe there are very few Jews and they are not allowed in the guilds.”

He knows,
Rob thought in anguish. “A few are allowed,” he muttered.

Ibn Sina’s eyes seemed to pierce him gently. Rob couldn’t rid himself of the certainty that he was undone.

“You yearn so desperately to learn the healing art and science.”

“Yes, Master.”

Ibn Sina sighed, nodded, looked away.

No doubt, Rob noted with relief, his fear had been mistaken; for soon they talked of other things.

Ibn Sina recalled the first time he had seen Reza as a boy. “She was from Bukhara, a girl four years older than I. Our fathers were tax collectors both, and the marriage was amicably arranged save for brief difficulty because her grandfather objected that my father was an Ismaili and used hashish during holy worship. But presently we were wed. She was steadfast all my life.”

The old man turned his eyes on Rob. “You still have the fire in you. What do you want?”

“To be a good physician.” The kind only you make, he added silently. But he believed Ibn Sina understood.

“You are already a healer. As for worthiness …” Ibn Sina shrugged. “To be a good physician, you must be able to answer an unanswerable riddle.”

“What is the question?” Rob J. asked, intrigued.

But the old man smiled in his sorrow. “Perhaps one day you may discover it. That is part of the riddle,” he said.

47

THE EXAMINATION

On the afternoon of Karim’s examination, Rob went through his customary activities with special energy and attention, attempting to divert his mind from the scene he knew would soon take place in the meeting room just off the House of Wisdom.

He and Mirdin had recruited Yussuf-ul-Gamal, the kindly librarian, as their accomplice and spy. While going about his duties in the library Yussuf was able to witness the identities of the examiners. Mirdin waited outside for the news, which he promptly brought to Rob.

“It is Sayyid Sa’di for philosophy,” Yussuf had told Mirdin before hurrying back inside for more. That wasn’t bad; the philosopher was difficult but would not go out of his way to fail a candidate.

But from then on, the news was terrifying.

Nadir Bukh, the autocratic, spade-bearded legalist who had failed Karim on his first examination, would test for the law! The
mullah
Abul Bakr would question on matters of theology, and the Prince of Physicians himself would examine on medicine.

Rob had hoped that Jalal would sit on the board for surgery, but Rob could see Jalal at his usual duties, tending to patients; and presently Mirdin came rushing in and whispered that the last member had arrived and it was Ibn al-Natheli, whom none of them knew well.

Rob concentrated on his work, helping Jalal put traction on a dislocated shoulder, using a clever device of ropes of Jalal’s own design. The patient, a palace guard who had been thrown from his pony during a game of ball-and-stick, finally lay like a wild animal in rope restraints, pop-eyed with the sudden release from pain.

“Now you will lie for several weeks, at ease while others struggle with the onerous duties of soldiering,” Jalal said cheerfully. He directed Rob to administer astringent drugs and to order an acid diet until they could be
certain the guardsman had not developed inflammation or a hematoma.

The binding of the shoulder with cloths, not too tight but sufficient to restrain movement, was Rob’s last chore. When he was finished he went to the House of Wisdom and sat and read Celsus, trying to hear what was being said in the examining room and gaining only the unintelligible murmur of voices. Finally he abandoned the effort and went to wait on the steps of the medical school, where presently he was joined by Mirdin.

“They are still inside.”

“I hope it is not drawn out,” Mirdin said. “Karim isn’t the sort who can deal with too long a testing.”

“I am not certain he can deal with any testing. He puked for an hour this morning.”

Mirdin sat beside Rob on the steps. They spoke about several patients and then lapsed into silence, Rob scowling, Mirdin sighing.

After a longer time than they would have thought possible, Rob stood. “Here he is,” he said.

Karim threaded his way toward them through the clusters of students.

“Can you tell from his face?” Mirdin said.

Rob couldn’t, but well before Karim reached them, he shouted the news. “You must call me
hakim,
clerks!”

They charged down the steps.

The three of them embraced, danced, and shouted, pummeling one another and making such a row that
Hadji
Davout Hosein, passing, showed them a face pale with indignation that students of his academy should behave in such a fashion.

The rest of the day and the evening became a time they would remember for the remainder of their days.

“You must come to my rooms for refreshment,” Mirdin said.

It was the first time he had asked them to his home, the first time they opened their private worlds to one another.

Mirdin’s quarters were two rented rooms in a joined house hard by the House of Zion Synagogue, on the other side of Yehuddiyyeh from Rob’s neighborhood.

His family was a sweet surprise. A shy wife, Fara: short, dark, low-arsed, steady-eyed. Two round-faced sons, Dawwid and Issachar, who clung to their mother’s robes. Fara served sweetcakes and wine, obviously in readiness for the celebration, and after a number of toasts the three friends went forth again and found a tailor who measured the new
hakim
for his black physician’s robes.

“This is a night for the
maidans!”
Rob declared, and at eventide they
were in a dining place overlooking the great central square of the city, eating a fine Persian meal and calling for more of a musky wine which Karim scarcely needed, being drunk on physicianhood.

They dwelled over each question of the examination, and each answer.

“Ibn Sina kept asking me questions about medicine. ‘What are the various signs obtained from sweat, candidate?… Very good, Master Karim, very complete … And what are the general signs that we use for prognosis? Will you now discuss proper hygiene for a traveler on the land and then on the sea?’ It was almost as though he were aware that medicine was my strength and the other fields my weakness.

“Sayyid Sa’di bade me discuss Plato’s concept that all men desire happiness, which I am grateful, Mirdin, that we studied so completely. I answered at length, with many references to the Prophet’s concept that happiness is Allah’s reward for obedience and faithful prayer. And that was one danger dealt with.”

“And what of Nadir Bukh?” Rob asked.

“The lawyer.” Karim shuddered. “He asked me to discuss the
Fiqh
regarding punishment of criminals. I couldn’t think. So I said that all punishment is based on the writings of Mohammed (may he be blessed!), which declare that in this world we all depend upon one another proximately, though our ultimate dependence is always on Allah now and forever. Time separates the good and pure from the evil and rebellious. Every individual who strays will be punished and every one who obeys will be in complete consonance with God’s Universal Will, on which
Fiqh
is based. The command of the soul thus rests wholly with Allah, who works to punish all sinners.”

Rob was staring. “What does that
mean?”

“I don’t know now. I didn’t know then. I saw Nadir Bukh chewing the answer to see if it contained meat he hadn’t recognized. He seemed about to open his mouth to demand clarification or ask further questions, in which case I should have been doomed, but then Ibn Sina asked me to expound upon the humor of blood, whereupon I gave back his own words from the two books he has written on the subject, and
the questioning was over!”

They roared until they wept, and drank and drank again.

When finally they could drink no more they staggered to the street beyond the
maidan
and hailed the donkey coach with the lily on the door. Rob sat in the driver’s seat with the pimp. Mirdin fell asleep with his head in the ample lap of the whore named Lorna, and Karim rested his head upon her bosom and sang gentle songs.

Fara’s quiet eyes were round with concern when they half-carried her husband into his rooms.

“He is ill?”

“He is drunk. As are we all,” Rob explained, and they returned to the coach. It carried them to the little house in Yehuddiyyeh, where he and Karim dropped to the floor as soon as they were inside the door, falling asleep in their clothes.

During the night he was awakened by a quiet rasp of sound and knew Karim was weeping.

At dawn he was awakened again, by the rising of his visitor.

Rob groaned. He should not drink at all, he thought gloomily.

“Sorry to disturb. I must go and run.”

“Run? Why, on this of all mornings? After last night?”

“To prepare for
chatir.”

“What is
chatir?”

“A footrace.”

Karim slipped out of the house. There was the
slap-slap-slap
as he began to run, a receding sound, soon gone.

Rob lay on the floor and listened to the barking of cur dogs that marked the progress of the world’s newest physician, roaming like a
djinn
through the narrow streets of Yehuddiyyeh.

48

A RIDE IN THE COUNTRY

“The
chatir
is our national footrace, an annual event almost as old as Persia,” Karim told Rob. “It’s held to celebrate the end of
Ramadan,
the month of religious fasting. Originally—so far back in the mists of time that we’ve lost the name of the king who sponsored the first race—it was a competition to select the Shah’s
chatir,
or footman, but through the centuries it has drawn to Ispahan the best runners of Persia and elsewhere and taken on the qualities of a great entertainment.”

The course began at the gates of the House of Paradise and wound through the streets of Ispahan for ten and one-half Roman miles, ending at a series of posts in the palace courtyard. On the posts were hung slings, each containing twelve arrows and assigned to a specific runner. Every time a runner reached the posts he took an arrow from his sling and placed it in a quiver on his back, then he retraced his steps for another lap. Traditionally the race began with the call to First Prayer. It was a grueling test of endurance. If the day was hot and oppressive, the last runner to remain in the race was declared the winner. In races run during cool weather men sometimes finished the entire twelve laps, 126 Roman miles, usually collecting the final arrow some time after Fifth Prayer. Although it was rumored that ancient runners had achieved better times, most ran the course in about fourteen hours.