Jaafar of Arabia by Patrick Sean Lee (best classic literature txt) 📖

Orient; the restoration of a Greek tragedy by scholars in Baghdad; the charms of the dancer and excellence of the flautist. It was a busy night when Rashid entered, dressed, now, in white robes and turban. He seated himself with regal bearing in his usual place near the corridor, alone again. This night, unlike the two previous however, every head turned, and every eye locked on him. Sanna bint Abbas rushed forward, though she tried vainly to disguise her anticipation.

 

“My Lord! What is your pleasure this wondrous of evenings? Coffee? Tea from lands far to the east? Pomegranates or sweet grapes? How may I serve this poet dressed as a prince?”

 

“If I dress as a prince, it is to draw forth the smile and sweetest words from the mouth of a princess. Sit with me and allow me to gaze upon the lips that inhabited last evening’s dreams like music from Allah’s angels, and haunted the hours of this longest day of my life.”

 

“Sir, that is my fondest desire, but I cannot. I blush at your overtures…but do this. At the conclusion of the first dance, remove yourself to the soft breeze outside, and there I shall join you…if for only the shortest of moments. Compose your grandest poem, my Lord. I long to let it take me far away when to me you recite it.”

 

Rashid was pleased, as a blind man who has suddenly seen sunlight, a man who at last has heard the melodies heretofore denied him by the curse of deafness. He reached up and touched her veiled cheek as every patron watched in silence.

 

The flautist began. The dancer emerged. Sanna bint Abbas swept herself away to fill anxious orders; to count every note and wish it were ten. Muhammad al-Tafar rose like a swirl of mist off the water moments later and left through the doorway near the secluded kitchen. Nearing the street he drew a knife and waited.

 

 

 

                                       ***

 

 

The slight tension in Rashid’s arms faded. Sanna bint Abbas' tears fell upon her lover’s face.

 

A hundred meters up from the peaceful waters of the Tigris, beneath a sky black as an Ethiopian prince and speckled with the white of a hundred million stars; beneath the multi-hued linen canopy that fluttered at its ends in the soft desert breeze, Jaafar al Rashid closed his eyes that a second ago had beheld her loveliness, and he died.

 

 

Imprint

Text: (c) Patrick Sean Lee-2011
Publication Date: 11-15-2011

All Rights Reserved