Diana Jones - Castle in the Air

Lately, however, the daydream had been concentrating on the princess to whom Abdullah had been betrothed at his birth. She was as highborn as Abdullah and had grown up in his absence into a great beauty with perfect features and huge misty dark eyes. She lived in a palace as rich as Abdullah’s own. You approached it along an avenue lined with angelic statues and entered by way of seven marble courts, each with a fountain in the middle more precious than the last, starting with one made of chrysolite and ending with one of platinum studded with emeralds.

But that day Abdullah found he was not quite satisfied with this arrangement. It was a feeling he often had after a visit from his father’s first wife’s relations. It occurred to him that a good palace ought to have magnificent gardens. Abdullah loved gardens though he knew very little about them. Most of his experience had come from the public parks of Zanzib – where the turf was somewhat trampled and the flowers few – in which he sometimes spent his lunch hour when he could afford to pay one-eyed Jamal to watch his booth. Jamal kept the fried-food stall next door and would, for a coin or so, tie his dog to the front of Abdullah’s booth. Abdullah was well aware that this did not really qualify him to invent a proper garden, but since anything was better than thinking of two wives chosen for him by Fatima, he lost himself in waving fronds and scented walkways in the gardens of his princess.

Or nearly. Before Abdullah was fairly started, he was interrupted by a tall dirty man with a dingy-looking carpet in his arms.

“You buy carpets for selling, son of a great house?” this stranger asked, bowing briefly.

For someone trying to sell a carpet in Zanzib, where buyers and sellers always spoke to one another in the most formal and flowery way, this man’s manner was shockingly abrupt. Abdullah was annoyed anyway because his dream garden was falling to pieces at this interruption from real life. He answered curtly, “That is so, oh king of the desert. You wish to trade with this miserable merchant?”

“Not trade – sell, oh master of a stack of mats,” the stranger corrected him.

Mats! thought Abdullah. This was an insult. One of the carpets on display in front of Abdullah’s booth was a rare floral tufted one from Ingary – or Ochinstan, as they called that land in Zanzib – and there were at least two inside, from Inhico and Farqtan, which the Sultan himself would not have disdained for one of the smaller rooms of his palace. But of course Abdullah could not say this. The manners of Zanzib did not let you praise yourself. Instead, he bowed a coldly shallow bow.

“It is possible that my low and squalid establishment might provide that which you seek, oh pearl of wanderers,” he said, and cast his eye critically over the stranger’s dirty desert robe, the corroded stud in the side of the man’s nose and his tattered headcloth, as he said it.

“It is worse than squalid, mighty seller of floor-coverings,” the stranger agreed. He flapped one end of his dingy carpet towards Jamal, who was frying squid just then in clouds of blue fishy smoke. “Does not the honourable activity of your neighbour penetrate your wares,” he asked, “even to a lasting aroma of octopus?”

Abdullah seethed with such rage inside that he was forced to rub his hands together slavishly to hide it. People were not supposed to mention this sort of thing. And a slight smell of squid might even improve that thing the stranger wanted to sell, he thought, eyeing the drab and threadbare rug in the man’s arms.

“Your humble servant takes care to fumigate the interior of his booth with lavish perfumes, oh prince of wisdom,” he said. “Perhaps the heroic sensitivity of the prince’s nose will nevertheless allow him to show this beggarly trader his merchandise?”

“Of course it does, oh lily among mackerel,” the stranger retorted. “Why else should I stand here?”

Abdullah reluctantly parted the curtains and ushered the man inside his booth. There he turned up the lamp which hung from the centre pole, but, upon sniffing, decided that he was not going to waste incense on this person. The interior smelt quite strongly enough of yesterday’s scents. “What magnificence have you to unroll before my unworthy eyes?” he asked dubiously.

“This, buyer of bargains!” the man said and, with a deft thrust of one arm, he caused the carpet to unroll across the floor.

Abdullah could do this too. A carpet merchant learnt these things. He was not impressed. He stuck his hands in his sleeves in a primly servile attitude and surveyed the merchandise. The carpet was not large. Unrolled, it was even dingier than he had thought – although the pattern was unusual, or it would have been if most of it had not been worn away. What was left was dirty and its edges were frayed.

“Alas, this poor salesman can only stretch to three copper coins for this most ornamental of rugs,” he observed. “It is the limit of my slender purse. Times are hard, oh captain of many camels. Is the price acceptable in any way?”

“I’ll take FIVE HUNDRED,” said the stranger.

“ What? ” said Abdullah.

“GOLD coins,” added the stranger.

“The king of all desert bandits is surely pleased to jest?” said Abdullah. “Or maybe, having found my small booth lacking in anything but the smell of frying squid, he wishes to leave and try a richer merchant?”

“Not particularly,” said the stranger. “Although I will leave if you are not interested, oh neighbour of kippers. It is of course a magic carpet.”

Abdullah had heard that one before. He bowed over his tucked-up hands. “Many and various are the virtues said to reside in carpets,” he agreed. “Which one does the poet of the sands claim for this? Does it welcome a man home to his tent? Does it bring peace to the hearth? Or maybe,” he said, poking the frayed edge suggestively with one toe, “it is said never to wear out?”

“It flies,” said the stranger. “It flies wherever the owner commands, oh smallest of small minds.”

Abdullah looked up into the man’s sombre face, where the desert had entrenched deep lines down each cheek. A sneer made those lines deeper still. Abdullah found he disliked this person almost as much as he disliked his father’s first wife’s uncle’s son. “You must convince this unbeliever,” he said. “If the carpet can be put through its paces, oh monarch of mendacity, then some bargain might be struck.”

“Willingly,” said the tall man and stepped upon the carpet.

At this moment, one of the regular upsets happened at the fried-food stall next door. Probably some street boys had tried to steal some squid. At any rate, Jamal’s dog burst out barking; various people, Jamal included, began yelling, and both sounds were nearly drowned by the clash of saucepans and the hissing of hot fat.

Cheating was a way of life in Zanzib. Abdullah did not allow his attention to be distracted for one instant from the stranger and his carpet. It was quite possible the man had bribed Jamal to cause a distraction. He had mentioned Jamal rather often, as if Jamal were on his mind. Abdullah kept his eyes sternly on the tall figure of the man and particularly on the dirty feet planted on the carpet. But he spared a corner of one eye for the man’s face and he saw the man’s lips move. His alert ears even caught the words “two feet upwards” despite the din from next door. And he looked even more carefully when the carpet rose smoothly from the floor and hovered about level with Abdullah’s knees, so that the stranger’s tattered headgear was not quite brushing the roof of the booth. Abdullah looked for rods underneath. He searched for wires that might have been deftly hooked to the roof. He took hold of the lamp and tipped it about, so that its light played both over and under the carpet.