The Thief of Bagdad. Achmed Abdullah
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face was clean-shaven except for an impudent little mustache that quivered with well-simulated wrath as he heaped insults upon the stammering, raging Tagi Khan.
The crowd laughed and applauded—for Tagi Khan had not many friends in Bagdad—until finally a gigantic, black-bearded Captain of the Watch shouldered his way through the throng.
“Be quiet, both you fighting-cocks!” he thundered threateningly. “This is Bagdad, the Caliph’s town, where they hang men in chains from the Gate of Lions for shouting too loudly in the marketplace. And now—softly, softly—what is the trouble?”
“He took my purse, O Protector of the Righteous!” wailed Tagi Khan.
“The purse was never his,” asserted Ahmed, boldly displaying the disputed article and holding it high. “It is a most precious heirloom bequeathed to me by my late father—may his soul dwell in Paradise!”
“A lie!” exclaimed the other.
“The truth!” insisted Ahmed.
“A lie! A lie! A lie!” the merchant’s voice rose a hectic octave.
“Softly, softly!” came the Captain’s warning; and he went on: “There is but one way to decide this matter. Whoever owns this purse knows its contents.”
“A wise man!” commented the crowd.
“As wise as Solomon, the King of the Jews!”
Unblushingly, the Captain of the Watch accepted the flattery. He stuck out his great beard like a batteringram; raised hairy, high-veined hands.
“Wise indeed am I!” he admitted calmly. “And now—my Tagi Khan—since you claim this purse, suppose you tell me what its contents are. … ?”
“Gladly! Readily! Easily!” came the merchant’s triumphant reply. “My purse holds three golden tomans from Persia, one chipped at the edge; a bright, carved silver medjidieh from Stambul; eighteen various gold pieces from Bokhara, Khiva, and Samarkand; a shoe-shaped candareen from far Pekin; and a handful of small coins from the lands of the Franks—cursed be all unbelievers! Give me the purse! It is mine!”
“One moment,” said the Captain. He turned to Ahmed. “And what do you claim the purse to contain?”
“Why—” laughed the Thief of Bagdad—“it contains nothing at all, O Great Lord! And—” opening the purse and turning it inside out—“here is the proof!” But he kept his right leg very quiet to keep the stolen money, which he had plopped into his baggy breeches, from rattling against the rest of his loot and thus giving him away.
Laughter, then, from the crowd. Riotous, exaggerated, falsetto Oriental laughter—presently topped by the Captain’s words:
“You spoke the truth, young man!”
He winked at Ahmed shamelessly and brazenly. For a year or two earlier he had borrowed a sum of money from Tagi Khan; and, the first of every month, had paid high interest and substantial instalments without, thanks to the other’s miraculous calculations, being ever able to diminish the principal.
He addresed the merchant with crushing, chilly words:
“Consider, O Wart, that the Prophet Mohammed—on Him the blessings and the peace!—recommended honesty as a charming and worthwhile virtue! No—no …” as Tagi Khan was about to break into a flood of bitter protestations—“consider, furthermore, that the tongue is the enemy of the neck!”
With which cryptic threat he swaggered off, bumping his sabre tip martially against the stone pavement, while the Thief of Bagdad thumbed his nose insultingly at the infuriated merchant and turned West across the Square, toward the Bazar of the Potters.
Ahmed was pleased with himself, the sunshine, and the world at large.
Money he had! Money that would be eagerly welcomed by his pal, an old man who had first initiated him into the Honorable Guild of Bagdad Thieves and had taught him the tricks and principles of their ancient profession.
Today Ahmed was a greater thief than his former teacher. But he still loved the other, a certain Hassan el-Toork, nicknamed Bird-of-Evil because of his scrawny neck, his claw like hands, his parrot’s beak and beady, purple-black eyes; and he shared everything with him.
Yes. Hassan el-Toork would be glad of the money—and the other rich loot.
“But here it was getting on toward the noon hour, and Ahmed had not yet broken his fast. His stomach grumbled and rumbled, protestingly, challengingly. Should he spend his money on food? No! Not unless he absolutely had to!
“I shall follow my nose!” he said to himself. “Aye! I shall follow this clever nose of mine than which, except for my hands, I have no better friend in the world. Lead on, nose!” he laughed. “Sniff! Smell! Trail! Show me the way! And I, thy master, shall be grateful to thee and shall reward thee with the aroma of whatever rich food may tickle my palate and bloat this shriveled belly of mine!”
So the nose sniffed and led the way; and Ahmed followed, across the Square of the One-Eyed Jew, through the packed wilderness of small Arab houses that ran together like children at play, with a glimpse at the sky above the roof tops revealing scarcely three yards of breadth, the copings meeting at times, and the bulbous, fantastic balconies seeming to interlace like the outrigging of sailing craft in a Malay harbor; until finally, at a place where the alleys broadened into another Square, the nostrils quivered and the nose dilated, causing the owner of the nose to stop and stand still, like a pointer at hay.
A delicious, seductive odor was wafted from somewhere: rice cooked with honey and rose buds and green pistache nuts and drowned in a generous flood of clarified butter; meat balls spiced with saffron and poppy seeds; egg plants cleverly stuffed with raisins and with secret condiments from the Island of the Seven Purple Cranes.
Ahmed looked in the direction where the nose sniffed.
And there, balanced on the railing of a bird’s-nest balcony high up on the wall of a Pasha’s proud palace, he saw three great porcelain bowls, heaped with steaming food, that a fat Nubian cook had put there to cool a little.
He looked at the wall. It was steep, high, straight up and down, with never a foothold of any sort. A cat in climbing, he was. But to reach this balcony he needed wings, and—he laughed—“I am not a bird, and may Allah grant it be many years before I become an angel!”
And then, brushing through the deserted Square, he heard two noises blending into a symphony: a man’s staccato snore and a donkey’s melancholy, pessimistic bray. He looked about, and, a little to the left, he saw an enormous Tartar peddler—well over three hundred pounds he must have weighed—asleep in the sun, sitting cross-legged on huge haunches, his extravagant stomach resting and overlapping on his stout knees, his great, turbaned head bobbing up and down, snoring loudly through half-open lips, while, a few feet away, a tiny white donkey, the fruit-panniers empty but for three spoiled melons and roped to the wooden pack-saddle, was braying at the sky, doubtless complaining of its boredom.
“A pulley!” thought Ahmed. “Sent by Allah Himself to help me up to yonder balcony!”
A few moments later he had unwound the turban cloth from about the Tartar’s head, weighted it with a melon, flung one end over the balcony railing, and, when it came back to his hands, tucked it deftly under the sleeping man’s knees, then tied it to the donkey’s saddle.
“Up, little donkey!” he called softly. “Up, little brother, and back to thy stable—the rich, green food! Up!”
And the donkey, nothing loath, ambled sturdily on its way; the Tartar, with the turban cloth tugging at his knees, awakened, saw the donkey trotting away, and waddled after it with loud shouts of: “Hey, there! Wait a moment, Long-Ears!” And thus, clinging to the turban cloth as if it were a rope, ambling donkey and waddling peddler serving as a pulley, Ahmed was drawn up to the balcony in triumph and comfort, and lost no time in helping himself to food, stuffing his mouth with large, greedy, well-spiced handfuls.
He