Omar Khayyam - a life Read Free

make a second slip. "And then what?"
    "Oh, a globe of the sky-sphere, and a copy of Ptolemy's star tables."
    There was a lot more, it seemed, needed to complete an observatory. Yasmi perceived that what Omar longed for was a tower of seclusion that would belong to him—something like the pavilion with the white swans of her own dreams.
    "I know!" she nodded. You want to be a conjurer like Sidi Ahmed, and read fate in the stars."
    The older women of her house patronized Sidi Ahmed, the soothsayer.
    Omar was not pleased. His brows drew together and he gritted his teeth. "The father of fools, the braying donkey—with his abracadabra mumblings, and his horoscopes!"
    It appeared that Omar did not believe in soothsayers. What he wanted to do was vague in Yasmi's agile mind. He wanted to use his observatory to measure Time. Yasmi's notion of Time began with sunrise and the first of the five prayers, and it ended with starlight. There was the moon, of course, to mark the months.
    Omar, however, was not content with the moon. The moon went on its way and left many hours of Time behind each year. Why should men lose these hours from the year? The moon was to blame, but they would not forsake the moon to make a true count of the hours.
    Yasmi nodded wisely, thinking of other things. If Omar could have his observatory, and if—and if he could love her a little, she would sweep it out and wash his turban cloths for him, and embroider his slippers. The two of them would live all their hours in the observatory.
    Because Yasmi no longer wanted to go home. She wanted to listen to the voice of the son of Ibrahim, to watch the shadows flecking his smooth skin, while his eyes flashed and darkened. Without Omar, she would be empty and nothing—nothing would please her, ever. She edged a little closer to him, clutching the rose that she had picked to try in her hair.
    '"Would you like this?" she said faintly, when he had exhausted the misdemeanors of the moon.
    "What? Oh, that! Why——" He took it in his fingers and smelled it. "It is yours?"
    "But I want you to take it," she said urgently, "and keep it."
    (Once her sister had thrown such a rose from the lattice of the balcony, and Yasmi had seen a youth of Baghdad pick it up and press it to his heart.) The son of Ibrahim merely looked at his rose; his mind was off somewhere with the moon. Yasmi brought it back to earth and herself again.
    "When you have your observatory——" Yasmi thought it must be something like the round tower of the Castle. "I——I will be glad."
    Then Omar smiled. "How old are you, Yasmi?"
    "Almost thirteen," she whispered. She had heard her mother and the other wives say that a girl could be married at thirteen.
    "When you are thirteen I will send you roses, lots of them." 
    He went away then, wondering how he had come to say so much to that child in the striped dress with the hungry eyes. But Yasmi sat where she was, her eyes dark with excitement. Her whole body ached with delight. She heard the jingling of donkey bells and the cries of men as if from some remote place. All the street had altered, all these men were strangers. And she had a feeling deep within her that they would never change back to ordinary things again . . . She did not mind when the women slapped her for dawdling with the water at the fountain.
    After a while she ran out and picked herself a rose from the same hedge, and she carried it with the gray kitten to her sleeping quilt that night.
    "It is time," one of the women observed the next day, "that Yasmi wore the veil and kept to the anderun . My soul—she was seen hanging around a beardless student for an hour at the fountain."
    "No longer shall she wait in the shop," her mother agreed.
    Yasmi said nothing. This was to be expected. At last she would wear the veil of a marriageable woman. She felt sure that walls and lattices would not keep her love penned up.
    But Omar went away.

    A serai in the mountains by the great Khorasan road, three