Achmed Abdullah

“ Thus spoke the voices of Asia’s mighty potentates down in the cellar, while up in the tower room of the palace, not far from Zobeid’s apartment, Wong K’ai asked his master to escape while there still was a chance. But the Mongol Prince shook his head stubbornly. He pointed at his ancestral tablets.
“My race is eternal, invincible!” he pronounced with somber, grim dignity. “I flee from neither gods nor devils.”
“But even you, O Great Dragon,” implored Wong K’ai, “cannot fight against miracles! Look!”—pointing from the window—“ever more warriors arise from the ground! Come! ”

“ Arabs and Turks, Egyptians and Moors and Turkomans; men of colossal proportions, strange and terrible figures erect in their square silver stirrups, with heads thrown hack, hair streaming loose in the wind, sabres waved aloft, lances at the carry; and small, beardless youngsters, perched like monkeys on their high saddles, but using their weapons with the same swish and sweep and surge as their elders. ”

“ And it is interesting to observe that those who gave the loudest and most blood-curdling shouts were the men who, on the night before, when the Mongols had attacked, had left their very women and children to the invaders’ mercy in their haste to bore like rats into subterranean hiding-places. ”

“ Those who entered Bagdad with Ahmed filled the places of the men killed by the Mongol horde. But while they made good soldiers and later on good husbands and fathers, the Moslem priests and theologians have never been quite sure if they or their descendants can lay claim to having a soul.
“For consider how Allah, so as to prepare for the future mission of Mohammed, created Adam!
“Adam was created out of God’s will. Some traditions say that the head of Adam when first shaped reached the sky, and they also say that Adam was so named because his color was red, like wheat ”

“ The creation of Adam occurred on Friday, the tenth of the month Mohurrun, at the eleventh hour, at the rising of the first degree of Aries, Saturn being in the same constellation, and Mars in Capricorn. God then asked the Angels to kneel before Adam, and all obeyed except Iblis, who thus became Shaitan, the Devil, the Fallen Angel. Then God created Eve. But Iblis, seeing that for one crime he had forfeited all the merit of his former obedience, determined to do Adam any injury in his power. Now Adam was in Paradise, where Iblis could not enter. ”

“ Zobeid resisted. But she was helpless. They lifted her on the rug. They held her there. Already the Prince had spoken to the rug: “O magic flying carpet, carry us to ...” when suddenly his words were cut off in midair.
For there came a shrill, high, triumphant war cry:
“Allah akbar! Allah akbar!” and, the next moment, invisible hands came out of the nowhere; invisible hands sent the Mongol soldiers spinning in all directions; invisible hands struck Cham Sheng square between the eyes; invisible hands picked up the Princess Zobeid and carried her away, out of the room, up the staircase ”