13 February 2007
Appointment in Samarra
Somerset Maugham told the old tale again in 1933, just as the world was sliding into another really large misunderstanding, which still could have been avoided. John O'Hara used the story, too, placing the Iraqi town later, in Pennsylvania.
But I like Maugham's version, which went like this, Death speaking the monologue:
“There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions. In a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, saying: “Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture,.
Lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.
Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?
That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”
I can't get the image out of my mind, which is why I thought of Maugham, only I do not see death as a lady.
I see death in a long black coat, like the ones the boys wore at Columbine High School when they ran amok, or the black coat that the shooter wore in Salt Lake yesterday, when he killed six ordinary citizens in Trolley Square. I don't know what the shooter was wearing at the Philadelphia Navy Yard when he started blazing away in the converted office space.
We won't know what they were thinking, since they both died at the scene of their own particular appointments with madness, reminding me that there is another stream of bad news that is not counted in the dozens each morning from overseas.
Death has had a busy week out there. It has been almost a year since Sunni bombers blew off the glorious dome of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra. That particular appointment occurred just before the evening curfew on Feb. 21, 2006, just about the same time as Maugham said it would in his version of the appointment book.
The wearer of the long black coat last year modeled it in commando green. He was a Sunni fellow named Haitham al-Saba'a, of the Badri tribe, who has not been apprehended. In civilian life, before he became an agent of death, was as a local chicken farmer.
They say that was the occupation of Hienrich Himmler as well, though that could be disinformation spread by the Special Operations Executive in London. They also say that before the American invasion, Mr. Saba'a was not particularly religious, but joined Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a vehicle for social advancement.
The great Shia pilgrimage to the Shrine did not happen this year. Saddam had suppressed it, for the most part, but for twelve hundred years Shia have come to this place to celebrate their faith at the tombs of the tenth and eleventh Imams.
They also come to revere Muhammad al-Mahdi, who became the Imam when he was only 5 years old, in 872 of the Common Era. He is of the direct line of the Prophet, the last of them. He is known as the Hidden Imam, and is expected back any minute, here at the end of time.
There has been no rebuilding of the Shrine, and most of the thousands of golden tiles still lay shattered on the street around the site. It is a predominantly Sunni town these days, and would be too dangerous for Shias to come and do the reconstruction.
It is too important to the Faith to remain as it is, and the tombs are deep enough in the structure that they were undamaged in the blast. I presume the factions will work out an appointed time to rebuild after we are gone. At the moment, though, it is only the small American presence in Samarra that maintains a semblance of peace.
There are many appointments on the book, some of them ignored. There are many monuments here in Washington. One of them is the spare and understated marble building that is home to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), just up the street from the Capitol and precisely on the way to the Hawk and Dove Tavern, where I would go after visiting a CRS analyst with a dyspeptic view of my Agency's budget.
The Service is an ecumenical organization, chartered to answer questions from the Members of Congress about complex issues. They issued a report saying that the US has missed several appointments elsewhere, while concentrating on events around Samarra.
A fresh report states that the preoccupation with Iraq and the Middle East means the United States "is not sufficiently focused on the Asia-Pacific at a critical point in the evolution of what may prove to be a new era."
I like the use of the word “may.” It implies that the future could be changed, just as it could have been in Maugham's 1933.
I understand that a settlement among the six interested parties has been announced over the nuclear weapons of the Dear Leader in north Korea. That would seem to be good news, if the little despot could be trusted, which he cannot.
He gets all the fuel oil he needs to maintain his regime, which is something the Americans of this Administration have here-to-fore been adamantly opposed.
I don't know. I have been distracted with our appointments in Iraq, though I fear we will pay for our lack of focus. I don't know that even the best of spy work could have altered the relentless focus of the President's people. There are only so many things your can deal with at a time, and war is of necessity the most important.
It is said that the modern spy story began with Maugham's book Ashenden; or, the British Agent, published in 1928. It was partly based on the author's own experiences in the British secret service in 1917 Russia. It was a place where many appointments were being made, and some were kept while the world was preoccupied with events on the Western Front.
So much bother could have been avoided, but there was not enough time to worry about everything then.
In 1938, on the eve of the next catastrophe, Maugham summed up his body of work by placing himself “among the very first row of the second rank” of authors.
It is a comfort that he never lasted long enough to see the blogosphere, in which we all have vaulted straight to the bottom. He did have another quarter century to consider his legacy. He successfully made his last appointment in the south of France, in the lovely coastal city of Nice, on December 16, 1965.
It is said that as he lay dying he asked noted atheist, philosopher and intelligence officer Sir Alfred Ayer to come and visit him. Ayer was not knighted then, and was known to his friends as Freddie. Maugham wanted assurance that there was no life after death.
I see Freddie in a long black cloak, assuring him that was indeed the case.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com