Books: Hassan: The Story of Hassan of Baghdad and How He Came to

J >> James Elroy Flecker >> Hassan: The Story of Hassan of Baghdad and How He Came to

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(HASSAN whirls sword round.)

You dare not do it, looking at my eyes!

(HASSAN flings the sword across the room and falls across the
divan, his face in his hands.)

HASSAN
O Hassan the Confectioner, thou art nothing but an old man and a fool!

(YASMIN comes up to HASSAN. The BOYS silently disappear.
He draws her toward him.)

(With infinite tenderness) Yasmin!

SCENE III

The Great Hall of the Palace. The room is plain, white marble.
ISHAK alone, in his robes of Court Chamberlain.

(Enter SOLDIERS with the CAPTAIN OF THE MILITARY and the CHIEF OF POLICE.)
(The SOLDIERS intone "The War Song of the Saracens.")

SOLDIERS sing

We are they who come faster than fate: we are they who ride early
or late:
We storm at your ivory gate: Pale Kings of the sunset beware!
Not on silk nor on samet we lie, nor in curtained solemnity die
Among women who chatter and cry and children who mumble a prayer.
But we sleep by the ropes of the camp, and we rise with a shout and
we tramp
With the sun or the moon for a lamp, and the spray of the wind in
our hair.

From the lands where the elephant are to the forts of Merou and
Balghar,
Our steel we have brought and our star to shine on the ruins of
Rum.
We have marched from the Indies to Spain, and by God we will go
there again;
We have stood on the shore of the plain where the Waters of Destiny
boom.
A mart of destruction we made at Yalula where men were afraid,
For death was a difficult trade, and the sword was a broker of
doom;
And the Spear was a Desert Physician, who cured not a few of
ambition,
And drave not a few to perdition with medicine bitter and strong.

And the shield was a grief to the fool and as bright as a desolate
pool,
And as straight as the rock of Stamboul when our cavalry thundered
along:
For the coward was drowned with the brave when our battle sheered
up like a wave,
And our dead to the desert we gave, and the glory to God in our
song.

THE SOLDIERS
(Cheering) Allah Akbar! (etc.)

CHIEF OF POLICE
That is a splendid song your soldiers sing, O breaker of infidel bones.
Permit an inglorious policeman to inquire what flaming victory
you celebrate today. Such is my loathly ignorance, I knew not
the Caliph's army (may it be ever plosh in seas of hostile blood!)
had even left Baghdad.

CAPTAIN OF MILITARY
It is true we have not left Baghdad, But perchance we have saved it
from destruction. For when the Caliph's Police have allowed a conspiracy
to ripen undetected, It is our duty to mow down the conspirators.
It is true we did but vanquish beggars--but they were beggars to fight.
Half of them we slew and one-half we captured, and,
since the police believe no clue but the ocular, here they are.
A victory is well worth a song.

CHIEF OF POLICE
Allah, such a song! I thought: "At the least they have captured Cairo."

CAPTAIN OF MILITARY
To save Bagdad is better than to capture Cairo.

CHIEF OF POLICE
(Pointing to the captive BEGGARS) Behold only the chain-mail
of the vanquished!

CHIEF OF MILITARY
It is an old song, a glorious great battle song, and in mocking it
thou has displayed on an absence of education, thou dragger of dead dogs
from obscure gutters.

ISHAK
Is this talk for the high divan, Captain? Ye have saved Bagdad?
Bagdad is no longer worth saving. You rose-petal-bellied parasites
of the palace, how dare you sing that song?

CAPTAIN OF MILITARY
Allah, these poets talk in rhyme.

(Enter the Herald announcing various personages, who enter as he announces
them and are motioned to their place by ISHAK.)

HERALD
Abu Said, Prince of Basra, to do homage. Fahraddin, Prince of Damascus,
to do homage. Al Mustansir, Prince of Koniah, to do homage.
Tahir Dhu'l Yaminayn, governor of Khorasan, to do homage.

The great calligraphist, Afiq of Diarbekir, master of the riqa
and the shikasta hands: also of the Peacock style, and of painting
in miniature.

ISHAK
(Aside) Episodes of considerable obscenity.

HERALD
The celebrated Turkoman wrestler, Yurghiz Khan, whose thighs are
three cubits in circumference.

ISHAK
(Aside) As fat as a woman's, but not as nice.

HERALD
Abu Nouwas, the Caliph's jester. The Rajah of the Upper Ganges,
come hither to do homage with a present of 800 bales of indigo.

ISHAK
(Aside) And never dyed his beard.

HERALD
Hang Wung, the wisest philosopher in China, come hither to study
the excellence of the habits of true believers. He is a hundred and ten
years old....

ISHAK
(Aside) And perfectly blind.

HERALD
Anastasius Johannes Georgius, ambassador of the infidel Empress Irene,
mistress till God wills of Constaniniyeh and the lands of Rum,
come here on a vain errand....

ISHAK
He understands no word, and believes we do honour to his name.
But the jest is thin, my Herald.

HERALD
Abul Asal, the wandering dervish, come hither to remind kings that they
are but dust.

ISHAK
"Where lies Nushiravan the Just?"

DERVISH
The rhyme helps reason. In the dust.

ISHAK
The platitudes of dervishes do not much disturb the beatitudes of kings.

HERALD
Masrur, the Executioner, come hither to make several beggars
the dusty equivalents of monarchs.

ISHAK
Ah, you may well shiver, poor captives: it is draughty among your rags.

HERALD
Hassan ben Hassan al Bagdadi, the Caliph's friend.

SOLDIERS
Long live Hassan and the shadow of Hassan and the friend of Hassan
ben Hassan al Bagdadi!

ISHAK
(Drawing HASSAN aside) Come hither, friend of the Caliph;
do not forget that you are the man with the broken lute.

HASSAN
What is a friend?

ISHAK
Are you not in favour? Has not the Caliph taught you?
You have a royal friend.

HASSAN
He is generous: he is gracious: he is intimate. He has leant on
my arm, he has embraced me, he has called me by that name "friend".
But I tremble before his eyes.

ISHAK
You have found out. No man can ever be his friend.

HASSAN
Alas, that is because he is exalted far above mankind!

ISHAK
Alas, no: but because he uses that supremacy to play the artist
with the lives of men.

HASSAN
What do you mean, Ishak?

ISHAK
Have you not seen the designer of carpets, O Hassan of Bagdad,
put here the blue and here the gold, here the orange here the green?
So have I seen the Caliph take the life of some helpless man--
who was contented in his little house and garden, enjoying the blue
of happy days--and colour his life with the purple of power,
and streak it with the crimson of lust: then whelm it all
with the gloom-greys of abasement, touched with the glaring reds of pain,
and edge the whole with the black border of annihilation.

HASSAN
He has been so generous. Do not say he is a tyrant!
Do not say he delights in the agony of men!

ISHAK
Agony is a fine colour, and he delights therein as a painter
in vermilion new brought from Kurdistan. But shall so great an artist
not love contrast? To clasp a silver belt round the loins
of a filthy beggar while a slave darkens the soles of his late vizier,
is for him but a jest touched with a sense of the appropriate:
and I have seen it enacted in this very room.

HASSAN
But you are his friend.

ISHAK
As you are. It is elegant for a monarch to condescend: it is refreshing
for a monarch to talk as man to man. It is artistic for a monarch
to enjoy the pleasures of contrast and escape the formalities of Court....
But here comes the preceder of the Caliph, the penultimate splendour
of the divan, a man noble without passion, sagacious without inspiration,
and weak as a miser's coffee.

HERALD
The Tulip of the Parterre of Government, the Shadow of the Cypress Tree,
the Sun's Moon, Jafar the Barmecide.

SOLDIERS
Long live the great Vizier!

HERALD
Let all mouths close but mine. (Lifting his staff.) The Holy, the Just,
the High-born, the Omnipotent; the Gardener of the Vale of Islam,
the Lion of the Imperial Forests, the Rider on the Spotless Horse,
the Cyprus on the Golden Hill, the Master of Spears, the Redresser of Wrong,
the Drinker of Blood, the Peacock of the World, the Shadow of God on
Earth, the Commander of the Faithful, Haroun ar Raschid ben Mohammed,
Ibn Abdullah Ibn Mohammed Ibn Ali ben Abdullah, Ibn 'Abbas, the Caliph.

SOLDIERS
The Holy, the High-born, the Just One, the Caliph!
The Cypress, the Peacock, the Lion, the Caliph!
From Rum to Bokhara one monarch, the Caliph!

DERVISH
(Gloomily) A clay thing, a plaything, a shadow, the Caliph!

CALIPH
The Divan is open. Let all mouths close but mine. Our justice today
will be swift as a blow of the sword. In the Book of the Wisdom of Rulers
I read: "Be sudden to uproot the tree of conspiracy for it scatters
far its seed." Are you the Beggars?

BEGGARS
We are the beggars of Bagdad.

CALIPH
Thou, spokesman, come hither! Wherefore didst thou plot
against my throne and the safety of all Islam?
Didst thou not fear not only for thy life but for thy salvation?

BEGGAR
Master and Lord of the World, hast thou been poor, hast thou been hungry?
Dost thou know what dreams enter the gaunt heads of starving men
as they lie against the back of thy garden wall, and moan:
"Bread in God's name, bread in the name of God?"

CALIPH
Dost thou deny conspiracy?

BEGGAR
I conspired.

CALIPH
Is there one of you denieth conspiracy?

(Silence.)

Masrur, lead out the conspirators to death.

(MASRUR executes the order.)

CALIPH
Let those whose duty it is fetch him who is called the King of the Beggars
from his cell, and let him who did us the great service of capturing alive
that dangerous man, step forth into the midst.

CHIEF OF POLICE
(Stepping forward) Lord of the World--but I am dirt.

CAPTAIN OF MILITARY
(Simultaneously advancing) Lord of the World--but I am dung.

CALIPH
Where you both concerned in his capture? My favour is doubled upon you.
Let two robes of honour be brought before my throne.

CHIEF OF POLICE
Sir, I fail to comprehend the presence of this military man.
He was but a spectator when I dragged out the King of Beggars
from the gutter of his roof.

CAPTAIN OF MILITARY
O thou civilian, I caught a valiant hold of his legs, despite his heavy
and continuous kicks, whilst thou didst but timidly pluck at his sleeve.

CHIEF OF POLICE
Pluck at his sleeve, tin-coated murderer! Summon the twenty drops
of blood that trickle round thy lank and withered frame and let them
mount to thy mendacious cheek!

CAPTAIN OF MILITARY
Thou dropsical elephant!

CALIPH
Enough! I love to hear the speech of heroes, but enough. It is clear
the glory is divided. Give me one of those robes of honour,
and summon the tailor of the court.

COURT TAILOR
(Very prostrate) O Master of the World, O Master!

CALIPH
Slit me this robe in twain.

COURT TAILOR
(Moaning as he does so) Allah is great, Allah is great.
Such a well-cut robe: such excellent silk!

CALIPH
Come hither both.

CAPTAIN OF MILITARY
(Hanging back) The glory is all to the police.

CHIEF OF POLICE
The credit is entirely due to my honourable friend.

CALIPH
(Insisting) Come hither both.

(They are fitted with half a robe of honour each amid laughter.)

SOLDIERS
Long live those whom the Caliph delights to honour!

CAPTAIN OF MILITARY
(Under his teeth) Mutinous swine!

CALIPH
And now bring forth the King of the Beggars.

(The KING OF THE BEGGARS is brought in chained hand and foot,
but still dressed in gold.)

The Salaam to my host of yesternight.

RAFI, KING OF BEGGARS
The Salaam, O man of Basra. I see thy fellow-merchant in the robes
of the Grand Vizier. But the negro, that most disgusting Negro,
seems to be absent. To Hassan, my congratulations on his advancement.

CALIPH
Thou dost speak with the impudence of a king, but thy subjects are taken
from thee. They will soon be black crows in the pine-wood by the walls.

RAFI
Had I but known thee last night, thou man of Basra, whom men call
Caliph of the Faithful--O thou massacrer of good men--had I but known thee,
had I but known thee!

CHIEF OF POLICE
Shall I tear out his tongue?

CALIPH
Let him talk. I have found a man who does not flatter me. Let me study
the hatred in his eyes.

RAFI
It is not enough for thee to misrule a quarter of the world.
Thou art not only a fool tyrant, but a mean tradesman, thou dog-hearted spy!

JAFAR
It is not decent to let this man continue his coarse abuse, O Master.
Wilt thou not end him?

CALIPH
He shall end in his time.
(To KING OF THE BEGGARS) Thy impudence will not redound to thy advantage,
Rafi! Wherefore dost thou not bite the tongue of insolence
with the tooth of discretion?

RAFI
I am a man in the presence of death.

CALIPH
There a thousand paths to the delectable tavern of death,
and some run straight and some run crooked.

RAFI
Cut, scourge, burn, rack thy uttermost. The nobler the aim
the baser the failure. Do not I deserve to feel
every separate pain of those whom my folly has sent to cruel death?

CHINESE PHILOSOPHER
I am a hundred and ten years old, and I have never heard a remark
in more exquisite taste.

CALIPH
It is well. But before I send thee to a death so cruel
that thy conscience will be fully satisfied in this world and the next,
answer me this: Hast thou forgotten that unparalleled lady whom
the zeal of my servants ravished from thy embrace?

RAFI
Thou devil of Eblis! Have I forgotten? Have I not prayed
thou shouldst forget?

CALIPH
Shall a gallant man forget the name of a beautiful woman?
We will look on her, for whom thou didst attempt to raze
the central fort of Islam.
(To ATTENDANTS) Bring in this lady, Pervaneh.

RAFI
(In supplication) O Master of the World! O Master of the World!

CALIPH
Thou changest tone abruptly but late.

RAFI
I was insolent only that her name should be forgotten in thy anger
and my death, O Splendour of Islam!

CALIPH
A crafty excuse for impoliteness. Wilt thou now begin to be polite
to the tyrant whose coffin was to be nailed over his open eyes?
He who hopes for his audience to forget the subject of his discourse
should moderate his style.

RAFI
God blind me that I may not see her!

CALIPH
Why? Dost thou not love her still? Is not the sight of his beloved
to the victim of separation like the vision of a fountain to him
who dies of thirst?

HASSAN
(Aside) But if that fountain be a fountain whose drops are blood?

RAFI
Thou, thou hast held her in thy arms! O God, have pity on my soul!

CALIPH
But with this knowledge thou didst still desire her, and was ready
to wreck Bagdad for the sparkle of her eyes.

RAFI
But first the blood of her possessor should have washed her honour clean.

CALIPH
Thou art a most ridiculous man. Thou hast built thy monstrous tower
of crime on a foundation of painted smoke. Dost thou imagine
I have tasted all the fruit of my garden?

RAFI
Allah has given thee men's bodies, but it is for him alone to torment
the soul. By thy faith, O Caliph, speak the truth!

CALIPH
Do I know every slave whom my industrious officials sweep in
from the streets? To my knowledge I have never set my eyes
on this woman of thine.

HERALD
The maiden Pervaneh!

CALIPH
Let her come before me.

(PERVANEH is ushered into the Presence.)

PERVANEH
(With due reverence) O Master of the World!

CALIPH
It is written in the Sacred Law: In the King's presence a woman may unveil,
without fear of censure.

PERVANEH
Ah, Master, but only the eagle dare look upon the sun.

CALIPH
Thy speech is proud enough for all the eagles, Lady Pervaneh,
and I doubt not thy eyes, which I desire to see, are steady
in the blaze of danger. Must I command thee to unveil?

PERVANEH
Alas, Master of the World, my eyes are dim with long confinement
in a jewelled cage, and the wings of my soul are numb.
Only on the hills of my country where the rolling sun of Heaven
has his morning home, only on their windy hills do the women
of my country go unveiled.

ISHAK
(To himself, half singing) The hills, the hills,
the morning on the hills!

CALIPH
(To PERVANEH) I command thee to unveil.

PERVANEH
If thou wilt tear my veil off my face, I will tear my face
before thy eyes.

RAFI
Ah, no!...

PERVANEH
Who art thou who dost cry, "Ah, no!"? Who art thou who dost hide
thy face in fettered hands ...

RAFI
A prisoner.

PERVANEH
dissembling thy voice...

RAFI
A prisoner awaiting death.

PERVANEH
trembling when I touch thee?

RAFI
A man afraid.

PERVANEH
(In a voice of exaltation) For thee, Sultan, I raise my veil;
and wait, thy captive, to share thy destiny.

HASSAN
Oh, Ishak! The fire of the heart of beauty!

RAFI
Leave me, Pervaneh! Walk not upon my path! You do not know
what a foul doom is mine.

PERVANEH
Foul dooms? Foul dooms? Rafi, I can forget ten centuries of doom
now that I see your eyes again!

RAFI
I conspired against his throne to win you freedom.
Through my fault I failed, through my fault my thousand followers
are dancing in the wind.

PERVANEH
For me you conspired? For me--for me?

RAFI
I would have drowned Bagdad in blood to kiss your lips again.

PERVANEH
O lover!

RAFI
(Showing his fettered hands) Lover indeed!

PERVANEH
There are a thousand eyes around us, O my beloved, but what care I?
The voice of the world cries out, "Thou art a slave in the Palace,
and thy lover a prisoner in chains." (Embracing him.) But we have
heard the Trumpets of Reality that drown the vain din
of the Thing that Seems. We have walked with the Friend of Friends
in the Garden of the Stars, and He is pitiable to poor lovers
who are pierced by the arrows of this ghostly world.
Your lips are the only lips, my lover, your eyes the only eyes--
all the other eyes but phantom lights that glitter in the mist of dream.

COURTIER
This is sheer heresy.

ISHAK
Then a plague on your religion.

JAFAR
This is Sufic doctrine, and most dangerous to the State.

HASSAN
Then a plague on the State!

CALIPH
Ye who make love in full Divan, can ye yet listen to the voice of the world?

PERVANEH
(Dazed) They are speaking.

CALIPH
O Rafi, King of the Beggars, since after all thou art much entangled
in the web of unreality, it is necessary that I ask thee some
phantom questions concerning thy apparent acts.

Firstly, dost thou deny thou didst call thyself Caliph of the
Unbelievers, and blaspheme thy faith in my presence and in the presence
of Jafar, my Vizier, Masrur, the Executioner, and Hassan, my friend?

RAFI
I have nothing to deny.

CALIPH
Dost thou, secondly, deny that thou didst swear in the presence
of the same to nail the Caliph of the Faithful alive in his coffin,
or that thou didst conspire with the beggars to slay me, to seize
Bagdad and to usurp the throne?

RAFI
I have nothing to deny.

CALIPH
Dost thou, thirdly, deny that thou didst scheme this monstrous crime
for the sake of a woman?

RAFI
I have nothing to deny.

CALIPH
Rafi, thou art confessed a Blasphemer, a Traitor...and a Lunatic.
It remains to consider thy punishment.

RAFI
As thou wilt.

CALIPH
Thou art brave, but I fear the shafts of unreality will prick thee
extremely hard. For thou hast merited not one but a dozen deaths.
Now, if I impale thee for conspiracy, how shall I burn thee
for blasphemy? But with such other pains as man can suffer,
judicious arrangement carries the day over unthinking brutality.
For if I skin thee for thy impudence, how can I flog thee for thy folly?
But if the order is reversed thou canst enjoy the benefits of both expiations.

RAFI
Thou hast certainly studied the art of pain.

CALIPH
Yet what are the worst tortures thou shalt undergo to the horror
of the death thou didst contrive for me?

RAFI
(With impatience) What is my condemnation?

CALIPH
For Lunacy to be nailed, for Conspiracy to be stretched,
for Blasphemy to be split.

PERVANEH
Ah!

(Murmurs of horror and satisfaction fill the Court at the announcement
of this savage punishment.)

RAFI
As Allah wills.

PERVANEH
(Falling at the CALIPH's feet) Spare, Spare, O Master of the World!

CALIPH
Dost thou think I will absolve him for thy "spare"?

PERVANEH
Mercy! Oh, Mercy!

CALIPH
Why dost thou cry "Mercy" and clasp my feet? Is not pain a fancy
and this world a cloud?

PERVANEH
(Rising to her feet) This world is Hell, but those that dig Hell deeper
shall find the Hell-beneath-the-Hells which they search for.

CALIPH
Thou hast metaphysic, but hast thou logic? Invent me a reason--
one small and subtle reason--why I should show mercy to this man.

PERVANEH
Ah--wilt thou have reasons?

CALIPH
Was not my sentence just?

PERVANEH
Wilt thou have justice?

CALIPH
If I had stood bound before him, would he have listened to my prayer?

PERVANEH
Wilt thou have revenge?

CALIPH
Shall I scorn reason, pervert justice, and put aside revenge--
for thy dark eyes?

PERVANEH
Turn thy justice, turn thy revenge on me in the name of the dark eyes
of God! They say a woman suffers longer and sharper than a man.

CALIPH
Lady, dost thou mean this with all its meaning, or say it to implore pity?
Beware of thy answer! The rack and the whip are ready and near at hand.

PERVANEH
(Her arms outstretched) Then give the word. Knock off those fetters
before my eyes--and nail me to the wall.

RAFI
Pervaneh!

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