Thief of Baghdad Read Online Free Page A

life. “Go, all those of Mossul! I put myself in the hands of Baghdad.”
    His chamberlain started shooing Osman’s people out of there. When the last was gone, Karim quietly unpinned his robe, let it fall away from his face, and took a swallow of the royal coffee. “Good,” he said. “From the north, O Sultan?”
    “No, no,” Abdir the Foolish said. “Made right here in my own royal kitchen.”
    Karim sighed. Even for a short period, it was a strain to talk to Abdir the Foolish. “Excellent coffee,” Karim said. Absent-mindedly he cut the string on the black pearls he’d given Abdir, and stowed the pearls dexterously under his cloth of gold robe. That boy worked all the time.
    Beside me one of the men who’d crowded in from the street said: “It is. No, it cannot be. But it certainly looks like—” He turned and looked at me. I was dressed very poorly, like a fakir, and this seemed to reassure him. He said: “Neighbor, I think that prince is no stranger to Baghdad.”
    “He does look familiar,” I said cautiously.
    My neighbor was a fat man, though not very rich looking. He bent toward me, wheezing. “He looks like Karim, the Thief,” he said.
    “There’s a resemblance,” I said.
    My neighbor began chuckling. He said softly: “Oh, there will be fine times in the Street of the Tanners tonight, if that, in truth, be Karim.”
    “Shush,” I said. “If it is, indeed, Karim, do not disclose him.”
    He drew himself up indignantly. “No man of all the poor of Baghdad would betray Karim the Thief,” he said, and pulled his robes away from me.
    Music had started up, flutes and cymbals, two lute players and a harpist. Abdir the Foolish was eying the cymbals hungrily. Now he clapped his hands, as was required, and the dancing girls came in, twenty of them, large breasted and small waisted, with curving hips leading to shapely, luscious legs. They started their dancing, sinuously winding themselves around themselves for the enriching of the eyes of their royal master and his princely guests. They were clothed—lightly, but still clothed—according to the desire of Karim.
    Abdir the Foolish was still looking at the cymbals. But Karim was a right-minded young man; he was watching the dancers, especially the leading girl, a red-headed Circassian.
    So was I. But as the robes—according to the routine laid out by Karim—began fluttering to the tessellated floor, I decided that a sex-starved jinni had better get out of there. The permanent, fixed command to have nothing to do with ordinary mortal girls was taking an awful strain.
    It wasn’t necessary to retire before I dematerialized. I could have changed myself into a camel with the heads of an ass, a goat and a horse added to the rear end, and no man present would have noticed. The floor of the great hall was beginning to be covered with the gauzy clothes of the dancing girls, like rose petals falling in the autumn . . .
    Dematerialized, I teleported up to the women’s gallery. The Lady Amina and her ladies were lined up at all the choice viewing points; down the gallery, the handmaidens were peering through the screen, giggling and poking each other.
    This was only a slightly better place for me than down on the floor of the great hall. But at least these young maidens—some of them, I’m sure, only maidens by courtesy—were keeping their clothes on.
    The lady next to the Princess Amina was keeping up a running commentary: “He’s very handsome, Amina.”
    “He’s very interested,” the Lady Amina said. “He’s just dying to make a grab for that red-headed hip-twirler.”
    “Well, you wouldn’t want a husband who wasn’t interested in girls.” The lady-in-waiting giggled. “Look at his shoulders. He’s very virile!”
    “He’s very lecherous,” Amina said. “Look at the sweat on his forehead, Mariam.”
    The Lady Mariam was a great giggler. “If he leans forward any further, he’s going to fall right off the leewan,” she