Bound & Bound – the Curse and the Captives – - 10. Chapter 10: Rumi in the Pit

Chapter 10: Rumi in the Pit

A CHILL AUTUMN BREEZE SOUGHT OUT and found all the deepest recesses of the castle's courtyard.

With the shortening of the days, and the coming of more frequent precipitation, life altered too. The routines continued, but at a commingled slower and more urgent pace. Slower in that daily activities became more rheumatic and languorous; urgent in that supplies of food, beer, and a cistern full of water must be laid in store for the coming, snowy months. This priority was no vague druther, because this military stronghold must be prepared for an assault by the Sultan's army, or a revolt by the Romanian peasants. That possibility simmered earnestly in the back of every mind of every inhabitant of the castle – all of them, except for two slaves, two Turkish well-digging slaves. For them, nothing had changed.

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An A-frame pulley system had been erected over the wellhead.

A Romanian man hauled in on a rope slung over the central lug pole, and hand-over-hand, a basket full of broken shale, dirt and debris rose upwards.

Once it cleared the level of the paving stones, two boys swung the rope and grabbed the handles of the basket.

Together, with great straining effort, the lads walked the overladen scuttle to the front gate. A pair of guards idly watched as the boys trudged under the portcullis.

Beyond this was a long wooden footbridge. It connected the castle to the cliff face on the other side of a consuming ravine. This link could be easily broken and burned when news of an impending siege reached the lord of the place.

The Romanian youths trod about twenty-five paces away from the castle ramparts, hoisted up the basket, and tipped the contents into a showering spray of dirt and rocks to the streambed – about eight stories under them.

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Junayd paused. The sweat stung his eyes as he cast them skyward. The pit they were digging was circular, and large enough so that Ahmed and he could swing picks without injuring one another. From where they stood at the bottom of the shaft, there was at least the height of three tall men above their heads of area that had already been cleared out. Junayd pulled out the small cloth he kept tucked in his waistband above his rear, and wiped his forehead. He could see the wooden frame above ground, and wondered how soon the emptied basket would be returned.

Ahmed swung his pick and broke new rock while he hummed softly to himself. It was Junayd's job to shovel up the debris and fill the basket for hoisting.

The dervish let his sweat rag brush over the smoothness of his youthful moustache. He had never let his face hair, which was scanty to begin with, blossom into a full beard, but with Ahmed's help, he wore a fine moustache now. The older man, the professional soldier, consulted on which shape would be best for the young dervish, for as an elite cavalryman in the Sultan's army, face hair was a matter of prideful devotion and careful study; Ahmed had told Junayd that it was all part of 'being a real man.' The older of the two men was now in the habit of shaving and carefully grooming his companion's moustache once a week, which was all it really needed. In return, Junayd gladly trimmed and tidied the Kapikulu's full beard as often as it needed it, sometimes doing it once a day when Ahmed complained it was too hot.

A shadow intruded on his thought. The basket was being lowered again. Junayd reached up and positioned it to rest on the broken shale where he wanted it.

He scooped loudly with his shovel and dumped in a pail-full of refuse, being careful not to breathe in the rising dust.

Ahmed hummed much louder, and the pick blow and shovelling rhythm locked into perfect synchronicity with his wordless music.

Junayd smiled to himself. He considered how over these last few months the enslaved Turks had settled into a smooth domestic and daily work routine. Sure, the professional soldier still acted like he was not particularly fond of the notion of being stuck with a religious ascetic, but the older man's gradually softening actions began in time to speak louder than his gruff words.

Junayd laughed quietly to himself, because he wasn't sure how much of him Ahmed could take, but apparently he annoyed the man less and less. Besides, the blustery soldier had to talk to someone, or else he'd go mad!

Suddenly, Ahmed stopped. The instant silence continued to echo around their ears as it made its way up the shaft like smoke up a chimney. Junayd witnessed his companion turn this imposing silence upon him.

"What!" Ahmed asked, leaning on his pick.

The dervish knew he had heard his laugh. This was another feature of Junayd that exasperated his compatriot.

"Nothing," Junayd said, trying to avert his eyes. While up above the temperature was cool, down here it remained hot. Both men wore only loincloths, and now Ahmed's Herculean physique glowed from head to foot, the un-wiped sweat straightened the otherwise curly dark hair that accented the soldier's impressive body. "I was just thinking about your Hungarian lessons."

"Oh." To Junayd's gaze it looked like Ahmed was simply pretending that he believed him. He turned back to his work, and swung his pick.

The dervish scooped with an iron on rock screech, and had an odd thought. 'I don’t smell Ahmed's scent anymore, not in a bad way. I suppose I am just used to it now. I wonder if I stink to the Kapikulu?'

The basket was full. Junayd tugged twice on the rope, and it slowly spun as it ascended into the light from above.

Ahmed sighed and reached for his own sweat cloth with his left hand. With his right, he tilted the pick handle towards Junayd, and said, "Your turn."

The men switched implements and positions.

Junayd started breaking rock, while Ahmed leaned on the wall of the shaft. This gave him a chance to catch his breath and wipe his face and neck.

"You were laughing at my Hungarian, huh?"

"Not laughing, not exactly."

"Well, teacher – teach me. How can I say 'Come here Christian dog and suck my fat Muslim cock!'"

"You know, Kapikulu, you must have a death wish, and you want me to help you commit suicide. I cannot, for that's a sin."

"Fuck you, dervish. You only teach me how to kowtow to these Hunish bastards. I don’t want to tell them 'Good day to you, kind master.'"

Junayd felt himself laugh despite his best intentions not to because Ahmed had slipped into near faultless, if slightly apish, Hungarian. "That's the only kind of language you can use safely, so that's why I'm teaching it to you."

"Come on now, dervish! Just one word…what's 'dick?'"

Junayd stopped. He smiled hopelessly as hímvessző spilled out of his mouth.

"Hímvessző, huh? Good. Now, what's 'cunt?'"

The younger man laughed. "No, that one I cannot see you'll ever have a use for."

"Dervish! Tell me, now."

"Tell you now, or what?"

Ahmed pursed his lips in a show of ireful contemplation.

"Or, I'll shave off that pretty little moustache in your sleep."

"It's hüvely. But be careful with that."

"Hüvely, hüvely, hüvely."

"I said be careful! Don’t let the supervisor hear you."

"Fuck him. He's too busy with his beer and pork chops to dare lay a finger on me."

Suddenly all of Junayd's good humour left him. He could read Ahmed's utterly astounded reaction, but ignored it to go back to work. He swung his pick feeling Ahmed's stare on him.

"Did I…" The older man stammered in concern, but the younger man interposed.

Junayd tried to laugh it off. "You need to know how to talk Lady Gretza if she ever addresses you directly." The dervish swung his pick as if angry. "Say: 'Your Ladyship does me a great honour.'"

Ahmed approached, and forced Junayd to stop swinging by his mere presence. When the dervish looked to him, the professional soldier offered him a touching tone of docile compliance. "Your Ladyship does me a great honour."

"Yes, Kapikulu. You are a good student."

"That's because – dervish – you are a good teacher."

There was a moving shadow above the men's heads, and they looked up to see the basket being lowered again.

Ahmed went over to guide it down. He said as his hands reached over his head for the basket, "But enough of the ugly tongue of the Huns. You sing us one of your songs."

"A ghazal?"

"Yes. Sing us one of your strange, mystic songs."

Junayd began to beat a pulse for the lyrics to his song with his pick, and Ahmed's shovel scoops provided the downbeat accompaniment.

The dervish sang:

"Seasons rise and fall

The sap and snow do too

But my aching for you

Know no cessation –

It does not grow or wane.

In your thought, my winters are not cold,

In the desert, my feet are not burned –

To your memory, my pain is quick sold,

And by it, perseverance is learned.

Through cycles, you’re all

My heart can ever do,

You're the one seed it grew

In love's gestation –

It flowers joy and pain."

Junayd's voice was a clear and shimmering tenor. Although he sang softly, the round walls of the cored-out void they were in amplified it with numinous reverberations.

By the time the song was sung, the second filled basket was being hoisted up.

"Dervish, you know I think you sing well, but – I don’t get it. 'Through cycles, you're all; it flowers joy and pain?' I cannot understand it."

"It's a ghazal the poet Rumi wrote for his beloved boy, Shams."

Junayd leaned on his pick handle and wiped sweat from his brow.

Ahmed squatted on his heels for a rest. His frankly open gaze drifted up to Junayd's face. "What does that have to do with it?"

"It's about transformation; it's about the wonder of God's love suddenly finding you out of nowhere."

The dervish saw that Ahmed was dubious.

"Here's what happened to them." Junayd concentrated on delivering the events in a story-telling aspect. "Rumi was already a mature man, and famous as a stern and stoic cleric. In the street one day, a young student – Shams – suddenly came up to him and asked a simple question. It changed his life, and made the grim theologian doubt his own notions down to his core."

"What did he ask?"

"In a nutshell, he wanted to know if Rumi thought Rumi was worthy of love. The great professor of religious study, the master of every verse of the Holy Book, fell to his knees before this boy, and uttered a profound truth: he did not know.

"Shams picked him up, took him home and they made love and taught one another in seclusion for a month. Rumi reemerged as a true student of the truth, and as an apparent man in love with both the young man and his Creator.

"So in the song, Rumi sings that Nature herself acknowledges Shams as part of the Way of Truth, but no more than any of us are."

A gruff voice echoed down around their ringing ears. The supervisor yelled down from the top of the well. "Muslim dogs! Get back to work!"

Ahmed glanced to Junayd with a wicked eyebrow flare and smile. He lifted his head and said in flowery Hungarian, "Stefan Karolyi, our kind overseer, you are right to chide our indolence. A thousand apologies."

The basket began to descend, and the supervisor moved off in a grudging huff.

When Ahmed finally glanced at him, Junayd knew he was grinning at the professional soldier ear to ear.

"What?" Ahmed asked, as he reached up for the basket.

"Nothing. Your Hungarian is good, and so is your sense of when to kiss their Christian asses."

"It's all for you, my boy. I can get myself in trouble, but I can't get you involved in my personal episodes of hot-headedness, now can I?"

Junayd laughed, and resumed breaking shale. "Is that right?"

"And besides…" The soldier bent to fill the basket with the first shovelful. "The reason I need the c-word is because I see the way the so-called lady leers at us. I wouldn't be surprised if she gets wet watching our Turkish bodies get slick with man-sweat."

"Well, maybe at yours, but not mine."

"Don’t be so sure. Now, it was hüvely, right?"

"Yes."

"Hüvely, hüvely, hüvely. And hímvessso..?"

"Hímvessző."

"Hímvessző, hímvessző, hímvessző for cock; hüvely, hüvely, hüvely for pussy. What's Hungarian for 'in'?"

"No, I won't tell you that! And, will you please be careful with those two other words!"

Ahmed ignored Junayd's plea completely. He chattered while he adjusted his crotch, "I can tell that woman is a siren, and that she wants it bad from me. Fuck! I can give it her too, anytime she wants."

The dervish went back to breaking rock and chanted rhythmically between the pick blows:

"Why look to the stars

when in wine is inspiration;

Why to mysteries

when in joy lies excitation?"

"Another Rumi quote, dervish? I'm not sure my simple soldier brain can ever follow that."

Junayd explained while he continued to work. "I can sympathize with people still stuck within their desires, but I have overcome lust and know passion and love and sex and wine can be liberating if approached in equanimity, and with a special aim in mind. With the goal of spiritually joining with the Divine."

In his mind Junayd wondered if Ahmed, a man he valued and trusted, could ever understand how to transmute his feelings for bodily contact into the higher purpose of connection.

Ahmed chuckled, "I still want to plow that woman. Wouldn't you…" he demanded "…if you had the chance?"

Junayd paused on his pick handle again, but did not face the other man. "I don’t know about that."

Ahmed walked over to him, and placed a hand on the younger man's shoulder. He asked gently, "You interested only in boys?"

Junayd blinked into Ahmed's blank stare; the professional soldier really did not seem to get it.

"Kapikulu, it's not about the quality of attraction – both genders reflect the love that our Creator instilled in us as Truth, so both appeal – but neither want is strong enough in me to want sex, not without there being a spiritual connection first. I'm talking about a reason to have it in the first place."

"Aman Allahım! So, you've never had sex before?!"

"I didn’t say that." The dervish felt himself getting irritated.

"Then, who did you fuck? Or…was it you who was pounded and seeded?"

Junayd ignored Ahmed's lecherous, if friendly, leer. "Stand back," he said as he raised his pick.

"All right!" Ahmed snorted almost in self-defence. He reluctantly returned to filling the basket. "I get it," he mumbled as he shovelled a massive scoop of broken shale, and then shouted. "No fucking without 'love.' That's not a big transcendental mystery, is it?!" He noisily scooped a second load of rock. "You could have just said that; I'm no simpleton after all."

Junayd felt his own smile grow against his will. He raised and fell his pick with more vehemence, slowly letting himself think that maybe Ahmed did get it after all. He tried to rub both their faces in it by opening his mouth and singing loudly between his swings.

"Behold, the wind in the trees knows your name,

The brook and cloud ruffle you on their wave,

While each and every wonder from Him sees,

For the beauty of your love is what they sing."

By the time Junayd stopped and peeked over at Ahmed, the older of the two men was leaning toward him, resting his hands and chin on the shovel handle. A huge grin was plastered on his face, and Junayd could feel something 'bad' was about to erupt.

Ahmed pushed his words through his grin with false solemnity, "You are a strange one, dervish. The only good thing about that is, you know it already."

"And, so..?" the younger man asked.

"So, I think you should humbly request me to sing one of my songs. Will you? Will you do that? It'll put your strains of Rumi in the pit to the deepest of shame, trust me." He stood upright, and Junayd watched a trickle of sparkling sweat bead down the centre of the strong man's belly and get lost in the divot of that man's navel.

"And what exactly would be the nature of the song you are making me beg for?"

"Ask, and you will find out."

Wary, but curious, Junayd was game. "Kapikuku – professional soldier – will you please sing a song for us to work along with?"

"Why, yes." Ahmed feigned surprised gratitude. "That's a fantastic idea." The cavalryman cleared his throat, stood more than bolt upright, for Junayd watched that man's glowing physique kick his arms back and pull up his chest. It became illuminated, curly hair and all, in the light filtering down the shaft from above. Ahmed opened his mouth, and sang loudly:

"Hímvessző, hímvessző, hímvessző,

Hüvely, hüvely, hüvely!"

Junayd practically tripped over his pick as he leapt for the other man. His hand landed on Ahmed's mouth, was abraised by that man's beard, but managed to cover the still loudly singing escape of air and push the professional soldier against the wall.

Ahmed's sharp brown eyes sparkled wickedly in Junayd's sight. He held the man tight and loudly shushed him. When the soldier finally stopped trying to sing, Junayd kept his hand in place – feeling Ahmed's laugher escaping his nostrils in the form of moisture on the side of his hand – and told him, "How did I know you were going to do that, Ahmed?"

The other man just shrugged.

After Junayd removed his hand, Ahmed simply stated, "You knew, but you wanted it anyway. Isn't that right?"

Still in close physical contact, the dervish laughed, and admitted, "Perhaps I just wanted to see if you'd be foolish enough to try it."

"And? What did you learn?"

"I learned I might soon be digging this well all alone."

Ahmed howled with laughter, and again, Junayd felt a twinge of joy to see his compatriot show signs of contentment despite their status as captives in a hostile land.