THE MAN WHO BECAME A GHOST

(Short story)

T. R. RAJAGOPALA AIYER

During the illustrious reign of the Caliph Haroon-Al-Rashid (on whom be peace ), Ali Mustapha, a distant kinsman of the Caliph, was Sultan in one of the provinces on the Euphrates. Ali Mustapha was a gay and facetious young man and extremely popular with his subjects. Besides, he found much favour in the eyes of the Caliph who visited him frequently out of the regard he bore him. The kingdom was fertile and the subjects happy. But a strange vicissitude overtook the kingdom and it was in the manner following.

There was a small village called Kut-Amar on the banks of the Euphrates and in it lived a boatman, Al-Kerim by name. This Al-Kerim was a just and contented man and held in high regard in his village. Having one-day business on the other side of the river, he, with a neighbour of his, determined not to ferry in his boat but to swim across. It was the rainy season of the year and the river having drunk deep of the waters was swollen and flowed muddy and turbulent, but Al-Kerim, a practised swimmer from his boyhood, reeked it not. When the pair of boatmen were in the middle of the river, kismet, or the will of Allah, in the shape of a tangle of creepers and moss which was floating by, caught hold of Al-kerim’s feet and the more he tried to free himself, the more inextricable became his bondage, until at last he was sucked in by a whirlpool. When Al-Kerim found his efforts useless and that he was being swept in, he cried out to his neighbour to save him. That neighbour who was a few yards ahead swam back at great risk and laid hold on Al-Kerim’s clothes, but Al-Kerim partly on account of the bondage on his feet and partly not being able to float, he had become a dead weight, was carried away from his neighbour’s grip, leaving his clothes in his hands. And Al-Kerim was seen no more.

The neighbour swam back to Kut-Amar straining his eyes over the waste of waters, if perchance he could see his friend rising and floating, but it was in vain. He then sadly went to Al-Kerim’s house and intimated the death of the sharer of his joys and sorrows, to the latter’s wife and children and kinsmen. The whole village went into mourning and there was much beating of breasts, rending of clothes, and throwing of ashes on the head, for verily was Al-Kerim held high in regard in his village. The neighbours comforted the wife and children and kinsmen of Al-Kerim and they caused to be made an empty coffin and carried it to the cemetery and buried it with due rites and the reading of the Al-Koran, as is the custom. Now only one thing troubled them and that was according to the accepted beliefs that Al-Kerim having come by a sudden and watery grave, would not find peace for some time, but would become a water-wraith or ghost and be tormented and torment others.

While Al-Kerim was thus decently buried in his village, Allah willed his fate otherwise. When he found all his efforts to free himself were of no avail and that he was being sucked in by the whirlpool, he held his breath fast and went down. He was swallowed and thrown up and swallowed and thrown up again. Retaining his presence of mind, he breathed and filled again and again, until at last a sudden burst of water floated him away from the whirlpool and landed him safe on the banks of a garden down the river. He extricated himself from the bondage which had almost cost him his life and then fell on his knees and devoutly thanked Allah the Merciful. When he turned his steps towards his village, he discovered that he was naked even as our forefater Adam was, and that he should beg or borrow a set from some kind neighbour or charitable stranger. In this he apprehended no difficulty. But since he could not appear naked in broad daylight he hid himself in some bushes and fell fast asleep with the exhaustion arising out of his buffeting with the waters of the Euphrates.

When he woke, night had set in and he felt sorely hungry. He made straight for the lodge of the gardener whom he knew well and peeping through the window he called the gardener and in two words asked him to give him clothes and food. The gardener had just then returned from the funeral of Al-Kerim where he had supped and drunk well, and the conversation had entirely turned on the after-state of drowned persons. It had been asserted, that if they had died naked as Al-Kerim had, their ghosts would always clamour for clothes first and then food. The gardener just threw a glance at the wan face, of glittering eyes, and unkempt presence of Al-Kerim and uttering a shriek, fled through the backdoor, but being a cautions man, locked it behind him, lest the ghost should steal anything. Nor did he stop until he reached the local tavern where the villagers were holding a sympathetic carouse after the funeral. When the gardener burst upon the company, out of breath, eyes startling, face livid and all limbs a-trembling, the voice of revelry died and all crowded round the gardener who could not find his tongue from sheer fright and running. However, a few cups of the Divine restorer brought him round. And a reveller asked him “Gardener what is it that aiteth these?” “You look as if you had seen Al-Kerim’s ghost. Tell us, thy neighbours, what hath befallen thee and don’t hold us so long in suspense.” “You talk true, neighbour,” replied the gardener solemnly.

“I saw his ghost as plainly as if I saw his living self. And the ghost beseached me just for clothes and food. Now Allah be praised in that the ghost did not catch hold of me and kill me, which it might have easily done.” And he told them in detail of what had occurred, with not a few of those inventions and embellishments, which the fact of his being a hero amidst such a sympathetic company and a ready wit and a fluent tongue, and wine, the Bright inspirer, suggested to him. And all marvelled greatly thereat and they discussed it long and loudly, and they sent for the rest of the villagers who heard the tale which did not lose anything in the repetition. And the night was a night to remember forever, and it became even like day, for none slept in the village that night, but they continued talking and discussing and drinking the red wine until morning broke. But one and all the villagers abjured the gardener to resign his post and not go near the haunted garden; nor could anyone be found daring enough to become the gardener of that accursed place. And so the garden fell into a neglect and decay and really became the haunt of Al-Kerim.

If the gardener was astonished at seeing Al-Kerim, the latter was no less at the frantic and inexplicable behaviour of such a good neighbour as the gardener. He had to turn back cold and hungry and somehow or other to spend the night. It was the cold season of the year and a chill fog lay about. He wandered disconsolately through the garden until he lighted on some fruits which he ate with avidity, and then seeing a bower and a seat thereon, he heaped dry leaves and laid himself amidst them, costly enough, and thinking many thoughts fell into a deep sleep.

Grown desperate in the morning, he resolved, as he was, to meet the gardener, but he did not find him, and flitting from tree to tree, he was observed by the curious eyes of such of the villagers who were bold enough to peep cautiously. The gardener’s story was confirmed and the garden was afterwards given a very wide berth.

All this bore very hard on Al-Kerim. He could not forever subsist on the fruits, plentiful though they were; but what troubled him most as a decent and worthy human being was his absolute want of clothes. He improvised some dry leaves to cover his nakedness. And a few days after, he formed the idea of visiting the house of the neighbour boatman and ask him a return of his own clothes. Choosing the time when he expected everybody to be in bed, he went straight to his neighbour’s house and knocked at the door. “Who is it that knocks at this untimely hour?” growled his neighbour not fully roused. “It is I, Al-Kerim,” replied the voice. “Will you just return me the clothes you took from me? You can scarce imagine my sufferings ever since that black day, which Allah wipe out from the calendar. I have been naked and cold ever since and I am also very very hungry. I would just like to have a good dinner. I have not known what a meal is for the past so many days.” The pathetic words of Al-Kerim went into the heart of his brother boatman, but he was not to be so easily cheated and caught by a ghost. For everyone knows that it is the hard and unfortunate fate of these ghosts that they have no peace, and they wander about troubled and vexed until they secure-some victims who would become ghosts in their stead, arid then they are freed from their curse. Now Al-Kerim’s neighbour was a shrewd man. So he lay quiet quaking in his bed, and not all the wheedlings or prayers of Al-Kerim could induce him even to open his lips, let alone opening the door and admitting him. Al-Kerim cursed his neighbour and his fate, and finally resolved to go to his own house. Here too he fared no better and for the same reasons. His wife and children loved him, alive and dead, but they were not going to immolate themselves, for nothing for a ghost.

Bitter and desperate and cursing, Al-Kerim returned to his garden. He was not able to understand his treatment. The next night he determined to try other people in the same way and see whether they at least were kinder than his neighbour boatman and his own wife and children. But within that time the events of the previous night had been told to everybody. and AL-Kerim tried his luck in vain the next night and a few other nights following. Now AL-Kerim’s visitations were so regular and were known so precisely that the villagers shut their doors early in the night.

Now there was a famous astrologer and magician in the village, Sulaiman by name, of approved learning and piety and be had been a friend of Al-Kerim. Sulaiman’s foretelling and charms were renowned throughout the province, and it was even whispered that the great Caliph himself had envied Kut-Amar of the possession of so great a magician. He was driving a very thriving trade and had grown very rich and proud. With the advent of Al-Kerim’s ghost, however, he was always pestered by people asking him as to the nature of the ghost, the extent of its powers and the best way of averting danger from it. Hitherto he had dealt only with the ghosts of hallucination, raised by the fears or wild imaginings of people, and casting them. An actual ghost was more than what he had bargained for, and what he heard of it frightened and baffled him considerably. And when the villagers in a body called upon him to exorcise the ghost from the village, he determined to secretly nee away. He had large possessions and it was not easy to settle his affairs suddenly, but he made haste and finished them in quick time. But the trying situation he was in, and the need for the utmost secrecy so preyed upon his mind and wasted him, that he grew careworn and thin and was like one haunted. His wife, the partner of his weal and woe, noted his altered condition and asked him, “Prithee, husband, what secret care preyeth on thy mind?” Long he resisted a confession of his ignorance and that he was an imposter, but his wife, a true, daughter of Eve, coaxed and wheeled him so prettily, that in a weak moment he blurted out that it was the ghost of Al-Kerim that was sitting so heavily upon him. “But you are so well-versed in spells and charms that people acclaim you to be as great as Sulaiman the wise king of the Hebrews. Surely you can with a wave of your wand consign the ghost of Al-Kerim to the desert of Kobi” protested his wife proudly. “Wife, wife “, sadly exclaimed Sulaiman, “thou art a woman and thou little knowest what I really know. Hitherto I have not been found out. If I stay here longer, I am likelier to be killed by this Al-Kerim’s ghost than by anything else.”

Now this Sulaiman’s wife was a born gossip and no sooner had this talk taken place, than she called a council of her favourites and her slaves, and to them she communicated the fact her husband was engaged in working spells and charms infalliable so far, against Al-Kerim’s ghost; and how when he consulted the Magical Mirror of the Future as to the issue of his fight with the ghost, it had been revealed unto him darkly that the ghost was endowed with such terrible and unheard-of powers that no human magic could avail in the least against it, and Sulaiman himself, the greatest magician in the world, was likely to be killed in a shocking manner shortly. All her hearers huddled together and trembled sympathetically when they heard this. And such is the swiftness of the tongue, the babbler of things good and bad, that the whole province knew the story within the evening and stood poised awaiting the result of the conflict between two mighty supernatural forces – Al-Kerim’s ghost on one side and Sulaiman the magician on the other.

That night, Al-Kerim, tired of rousing his friends at midnight, resolved to visit the village earlier. Sulaiman the magician was returning to his house after arranging for camels and ponies to convey him and his wife and their worldly goods, early next day morning before anyone was up. He was worn out with the strain and fatigue and he was glad to feel the steps of his house again. No sooner had he set his feet on them then he heard a hollow voice startlingly near: “Sulaiman, thou famous magician, peace be on thee. I am Al-Kerim thy friend. Wilt thou not at least give me some clothes and food?” The voice was going to say something else besides, but this was enough for Sulaiman who shrieked aloud in sheer terror. “Al-Kerim’s ghost! I am slain. I am slain. Wife, drag me inside and shut the door!” He rushed towards the door and his wife hearing the words, more terror-stricken than him, banged it so violently on her unfortunate husband’s head while he was on the door step that his head got cracked and-his body crushed by the violent impact. And then she dragged him bodily inside dead and bleeding, and bolted the door.

When Al-Kerim heard the words “Al-Kerim’s ghost,” light dawned upon him for the first time as to the strange behaviour of people towards him. The comedy of the situation struck him so violently that he burst out into a loud and hysterical fit of laughter, repeating aloud “AL-Kerim’s ghost! AL-Kerim’s ghost!” and he continued violently laughing all down the street. Hitherto the villagers had been expecting the daily visits of the ghost at midnight, but when they heard the affrighted shriek of Sulaiman “Al-Kerim’s ghost! Al-Kerim’s ghost!” “I am slain”, “I am slain”, and when they heard the violent peals of laughter of Al-Kerim’s ghost”, “AL-Kerim’s ghost” succeeding and passing and echoing down the streets, they know that the worst had befallen Sulaiman,but they were so afraid that they shut their own doors and dared not stir abroad. As for Al-Kerim, when he got over his laughter, he made straight for the cemetery and there he found a newly-raised cenotaph. On the rather costly gravestone above, a black marble from the quarries of El-Mukhar in the dim light of a wick he snatched from the tomb of a Pir nearby, he read, the following legend:

“To the beloved memory of

Al-Kerim, the boatman of Kut-Amar,

Laved by the unresting waters of the Euphrates,

Who was sucked by the jealous river which he loved so well,

This cenotaph erected by his sorrowing

wife and children, kinsmen and neighbours,

In the 19th year of the reign of Caliph Haroun Al-Rashid.

May Allah rest his soul in peace! Amen!”

That dreadful night not a soul slept in the village. It would have been a comfort if Sulaiman’s wife and children had beaten their breasts and wept aloud. But the mysterious and unnameable terror which bound their tongues, held the whole village cowering in an even more abject condition, until the sun rose high in the heavens. Then was heard such crying and lamentation that the villagers, as if loosened from a spell, flocked to the house of Sulaiman. The door and steps were splashed with blood. Sulaiman lay crushed and unrecognisable – a ghastly memento of the vengeance of the ghost. Haste, almost hustle, was made in making the funeral arrangements, as it was deemed prudent not to let the body lie long. The entire congregation of villagers followed the coffin, partly out of curiosity, partly for gossip. The tongue of Sulaiman’s wife, proud of her being the cynosure–excelled that of the mellifluous professional story-tellers of Shiran and Sherzadah, and held the funeral procession spellbound until the cemetery was reached. The grave-digger had cut the first sod, when lo, from behind Al-Kerim’s cenotaph what should slowly emerge into view but the head of AI-Kerim, wreathed in smiles and grinning. He had slept the night in the mosque adjoining, and now that he had viewed the whole body of the villagers come with a coffin, he took it to be a providential occasion to declare that he was alive and not a ghost. Sulaiman’s wife was the first to espy the head. With mixed feelings of triumph and fear, she pointed to the head and cried aloud “Look! there stands Al-Kerim’s ghost” and made a rush for her home. The villagers cast a hurried look at Al-Kerim’s head and seized with panic, they threw down the coffin and fled away. In the midst of the wild stampede, somebody threw out the suggestion that unless they vacated the village immediately, Al-Kerim’s ghost, which had now after tasting Sulaiman’s blood become a ghoul, would after finishing his body in the coffin, pick victim after victim. And thus it was that when the luckless Al-Kerim, as a matter of fact, visited the village, he found it empty. He was now the sole and undisputed master of Kut-Amar; but of victuals the sustainer of the body, or of clothes the covering of the naked, he found nothing. The only thing now left for Al-Kerim was to attempt some other village and beg, borrow or steal a set of clothes and food. Once clothed, a few words of explanation from him as to the mistake of his death would set matters right, he was convinced. But the insuperable difficulty precisely lay in securing that one set of clothes and a hearer who would stand and listen to him. The problem of food became great. His hair had grown wild on his head and face and body, his nails long, his body tanned, and his eyes through his living, in the gloom, keen and unnaturally bright. Even his friends could scarce have recognised him. Besides, he was a sociable man and used to company. The cutting off from all human intercourse affected him keenly, and added to it was the unjust aspersion of his being a ghost. He grew so desperate and aghast at the turn of events that he began to be afraid of his own company. Al-Kerim began to be haunted by his own ghost.

Al-Kerim hoped that the story of his being a ghost would scarce have spread abroad, but he was mistaken, and such was now the state of panic, especially after Sulaiman’s death, that whole bodies of villagers fled away in alarm, at the least sign of his approach. He attempted distant and out of the way places, but it was all of no use; his reputation preceded him everywhere. He then made straight for Bakistan, the capital where the Sultan Ali Mustapha lived, to make his woes known and obtain redress. When tidings of his unprecedented visitation reached Ali Mustapha, he was greatly perturbed. The affrighted people were flocking in daily into Bakistan from all parts of his kingdom, by one impulse. The problem of housing and feeding them was becoming acute. Soon there arose the rumour that Al-Kerim’s ghost, not content with conquering the outlying portions of Ali Mustapha’s kingdom, had taken the road to Bakistan with a diverse legion of ghouls, dives, afrits, geni and other accursed beings. Great was the confusion and dismay. The city was immediately put in a state of siege. Drawbridges were hauled up and there was no means of communication with the outside. The Sultan, however, took one precaution.

The commander of his forces was one named Rustum, who had won fame and distinction in the numerous wars against the Tartar hordes in the north. Him the Sultan sent with a picked body of cavalry to reconniotre the movements of the ghost and its assistants. Now this Rustum, though a very lion, a veritable Rustum the son of Zal the white-haired, against mortal enemies, quailed at the mere mention of things supernatural. He could not refuse his mission, but he took his company along a way where he knew he would not even hear the name of his supernatural foe, and making a speedy circuit, he returned at dusk to Bakistan and loudly blew his horn to the watchman on the gate to lower the drawbridge and admit him and his cavalry. He was congratulating himself on the success of his return when there darted before his eyes a figure, naked, shaggy and uncouth which raised its right hand aloft, uttered some sounds and attempted to seize the bridle of Rustum’s horse. No doubt could exist but that it was Al-Kerim’s ghost and Rustum shrieking madly plunged his spurs into the flanks of his charger. That noble animal, catching the same terror and maddened with pain, neighed in an unearthly manner, reared on its haunches and plunged blindly into the company. The other horsemen and horses caught the infection and there was such plunging and confusion that many horses were thrown down and trampled. A few leapt into the moat and were drowned. The remainder broke away, galloped furiously, stumbled in the dark and broke their bones. Rustum, the commander, was very early thrown down, trampled upon and killed. It was all over in the twinkling of an eye. Al-Kerim fled away in dismay.

The watchman on the battlement who had been about to lower the drawbridge was an eye-witness to the happenings, though he could not see things clearly on account of the darkness. He had seen a tall, gaunt, weird figure emerge from no one knew where, approach Rustum, heard the cry of terror from him and his horse and beheld the resulting confusion in the ranks, the blind melee, the death of so many gallant chargers and cavaliers, the plunging of the steeds into the moat, and others breaking away and getting lost in the darkness. He averted his eyes in horror and ran fast to the Sultan and told him of the wholesale destruction of the gallant Rustum and his company by Al-Kerim’s ghost and his confederate fiends. It was now plain that the city was being beleagured by the ghost and a whole host of its evil companions. That night, sleep, the assuager of pain and care, visited not the eyelids of any in Bakistan. The soldiers on the walls and the sentinels at the gates deserted their posts and ran home and there was none to reprove or punish them, for their officers too were afraid to venture out. The massacre of the city was expected every moment.

With morning, the Sultan wrote a pathetic letter to the Caliph Haroun AI-Rashid and sent it through two of his trusted and daring envoys, through a secret tunnel. He had scarce hopes that their going would not be known to his enemy, Al-kerim’s ghost, and intercepted, but he resolved upon it as a last expedient. The messengers, fortunately, fled in haste and reached the Caliph to whom they handed the letter. When the great Caliph read the epistle, his face grew black and tears rushed to his eyes and he was so moved that he bit his lips and rolled on the ground. The assembled viziers and emirs could not make anything out of it. However, the Caliph’s beloved vizier Jaffer (on whom be peace) picked up the scroll, read it and when he had read and re-read it, he smiled. “Laughest though, varlet, when by this time Ali Mustapha, the well-beloved, has been caught up by this accursed ghost and carried to the halls of Eblis (on whom be perdition)? But I have ever seen thee jealous of my favours to the Sultan of Bakistan.” And bitter tears rolled down the beard of the Caliph. The vizier made a low obeisance to the Caliph and spoke soft words. “I pray that the grief and anger of the Commander of the Faithful, may get assuaged. I have heard on good authority that from the days of Sulaiman the wise, to whom Allah had given such powers that he could bind and loose the seven classes of all beings, human and supernatural (except the divine) by means of the wonderful cabbalistic talisman he wore, there was a contract between him and the evil friends that they would not put their step into the territories ruled by the Commander of the Faithful. Hence your majesty may rest assured that Ali Mustapha and\his subjects are safe. While a boy I had a nurse who was deeply versed in magic and she taught it to me. If it pleases the Caliph, I shall now go personally to Bakistan and relieve the beleagured city.” The Caliph readily assented enjoining haste upon Jaffer, who started immediately with a body of cavalry for Bakistan. It was again evening when Jaffer, the trusty vizier, arrived at the spot of the recent catastrophe. His bodyguard began to show signs of nervousness. He ordered his cavaliers to encamp, assuring them that his spells would protect them. Taking food and drink and clothes, singly Jaffer pushed his way into the woods from where the ghost had issued. Shortly after, the great vizier returned secretly to his tent with another shrouded figure and departed early the next morning for Baghdad, sending word to Ali Mustapha that he had conquered the ghost and was taking it captive to the Caliph.

At Baghdad that evening Jaffer presented Al-Kerim’s ghost to Haroun Al-Rashid. And Al-Kerim was made to tell his story. And the Caliph laughed so loud and so long that the palace was shaken and tears trickled down his cheeks. And Al-Kerim found favour in the eyes of the Caliph who ordered him to remain by his side in Baghdad and presented him a thousand dinars of gold. And whenever sleep did not visit the eyelids of the Caliph, he sent for Al-Kerim and asked him to narrate how he became a ghost. And Caliph Haroun Al-Rashid ordered that the story should be written in letters of gold and preserved for ever among the archives of his reign.

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