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  • Announcing the 'New Yorker' parody fiction contest -- put your spin on history!
    • SimonWallaby June 27, 2012 at 2:35 pm

      The minarets and towers of Baghdad glittered in the setting sun falling behind the city. The plain smelled faintly of smoke, but the army was so used to its smell, the sight of fire and smoke, that they did not notice it, and if they had, would not have thought it anything special. It was the stench of this miserable, dead, hostile land. Both horses and men were drinking greedily from the river, and slaves were busy setting up tents and small temporary palisades to surround them. There was a real sense of excitement in the camp, and secretly most people were hoping the peace negotiations would fail. They had hardly travelled ten thousand kilometres, for a year and twenty days, for a peaceful exchange of prisoners.

      In the largest tent at the centre of the camp the Khan of Khan's brother-in-law was discussing the matter with a vizier from Baghdad. The Arab was a small man, rather young, and with the countenance of a schoolteacher or horse attendant, rather than a respectable diplomat. Still, he tried to present his case with conviction: “the great God in heavens has granted the Caliph the greatest power on Earth, with his divine blessing, his force which not all the armies of men could match, it is God's will”. The Mongol had heard similar arguments day in and day out in his talks with the Arabs, and was still uninterested in attempting to comprehend the petty theological niceties of their banal and crude religion. For him, the affair was very simple: “in the eyes of all the gods, who see all that happens on Earth, there is no one greater than the Khan of Khans. He institutes his right and will by might, and demands that your Caliph bows down to him in submission, like his god has done. We wish you and your people no harm, but simply an arrangement of the powers that be into a more natural order. Our subjects are happy, our vassals prosperous: your King would benefit from our protection, from our highly evolved financial and judicial policies.”

      The Turkish soldier guarding the tent was all tense from the quiet arousal that had overtaken him in the last few days: Baghdad was in sight, you could almost touch it, and inside it were all the stunning riches which the folk tales spoke of. He was so happy the Mongols had arrived: they would spread the wealth of Iraq to their warriors, the rough and illiterate men of the steppe, those who no one had taught to read. The Arabs would receive what had been coming to them for so long, now it was time for the men of Asia to enjoy God's blessings.

      The haughty and stubborn Caliph until the last minute would not allow freedom for his subjects, would not allow them to bow down to the King of Kings, Caliph of Caliphs, the Conquering Wrath of Allah. He refused to accept the possibility there was a greater man than him in the deserts of the east, in fact he failed to comprehend it, and when the barbarian army surrounded the city, he was sure it was some fiendish trick played by his brother. He loved that sort of pranks. Even when he was unceremoniously rolled in a rug and thrown out of a palace window, the Caliph, in his pitiful tribal pride, refused to accept any offers of friendship, assistance and co-öperation.

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