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The Emperor's Elephant(92)

By:Tim Severin


They did not even raise their heads as the dockers lifted up their cage with levers, slid rollers into place, and began to shift it off the barge.

‘Our reception committee seems very well prepared,’ I said to Abram. On the quay a stout, low trolley was already in position.

‘The barid, the caliph’s intelligence service, will have told them what to expect,’ he replied.

Walo, hovering beside the cage, was trying to explain something to the official in charge. Osric hurried off to help with translation.

‘The barid has eyes and ears everywhere. That’s how the caliph keeps his throne,’ said Abram, lowering his voice. ‘Be careful what you do and say.’

The shore gang was quickly on the move. At least twenty men hauled on ropes as they dragged the laden trolley away and down the nearest street. Behind them two men carried the gyrfalcons in their cages, and another group were leading the white dogs. Abram and I hurried after them.

Baghdad’s houses were set close together, scarcely an arm’s length apart, and they were a strange assortment. Some were modest in size, little more than cottages with small windows and sun-warped doors. The plaster on their walls was often patched and peeling. Other dwellings were far grander and larger, boasting intricately carved doors of oiled wood and outer walls decorated with patterns of coloured tiles in green, blue and yellow that glittered in the sunshine. All were single-storeyed and every house was built with a flat roof. Several times I saw people looking down at us, curious to see the little procession on its way past.

‘This is a mixed district,’ Abram explained. ‘Merchants, traders, shopkeepers and manual workers, all living side by side.’

I asked why there were so few people in the street.

‘It’s still too hot,’ he answered. ‘People prefer to stay indoors until the worst of the day’s heat is over. Even the homeless and the beggars try to find a spot of shade.’

‘So there are beggars even in wealthy Baghdad.’

The corners of his mouth turned down. ‘Beggars and vagrants by the thousand. While the caliph and his favourites live in unimaginable luxury, there are vast numbers of desperate poor. Often they are those who have flocked into the city, hoping to better their lives. That’s another reason why the caliph needs the barid’s eyes and ears. To be alert to any risk of mob riot.’

We walked for perhaps a quarter of a mile further, crossed a small bridge that spanned one of the canals that provided the citizens with water, and found ourselves confronted by a thirty-foot-high wall, topped with battlements. It needed no imagination to see why the caliph’s residence was called the Round City. The great wall trended away on each side in a smooth curve, a circular design unlike anything I had seen before.

Abram noted my reaction with a knowing smile. ‘Not like Rome with its conventional straight walls, is it?’ he said. ‘Caliph Mansour himself drew the initial outline of Baghdad in the ashes of his campfire. He sketched a circle, then jabbed his pointed stick in the centre. That spot, he told his architects, was where they were to put his palace so that he could be in the middle of all that was going on.’

I was finding the dragoman’s air of superiority irritating but had to admit that the great wall was impressive. The base was a full fifteen feet thick, and we passed through the iron gates of an imposing brick archway into a hundred feet of open space – a killing ground. Beyond was an inner wall, even higher and thicker than the first, and a second iron gate. If the city mob did riot, they stood little chance of gaining access to the royal household.

Once through the second gate we turned to our left, still following the bear cage on its trolley, and continued along the line of the inner wall past a long arcade of shops and stalls that, I presumed, supplied the needs of the palace staff. Ahead was a high, square building that I took to be an immense warehouse. Gatekeepers held open broad double doors and we went inside. The smell made me catch my breath. It was like walking into a vast, stuffy stable. Behind the familiar mix of dung and hay there was something else – sour, pungent and fetid. Large windows set high up pierced the thick walls. Shafts of sunlight illuminated a long central passageway floored with wood blocks, and on either side a long line of heavy wooden doors. Instantly, I was reminded of the place where we had kept our animals inside the Colosseum.

An extraordinary sound made me jump: a shrill trumpeting blast, part squeal, part bellow. Just ahead of me one of the doors creaked open a few inches, pushed from the inside. A loose chain prevented the door from opening any further. Out from the crack slithered a thick grey serpent. It waved in the air, menacingly. I jumped back with a frightened yelp.