APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA

by Steven Steinbock

Sometimes the provenance of a story is as interesting as the story itself. A few weeks back, James Lincoln Warren challenged that the famous Hemingway six-word story was not a story at all. I agreed. But it is possible for a story to be told—replete with action, tension, denouement, and even limited character development—in under 200 words. I don’t think I could do it. But it’s been done. Below is the story of such a story.

Several years ago I saw Darwin Ortiz (former professional card-cheat turned magician) perform a beautiful trick in which a spectator selected a card, and then guarded it by covering it with both hands. Ortiz then explaining that the ace of spades is the Death card, and went on to tell a story about the inevitability of fate (see below). Miraculously, the card spectator’s selected card had transformed to the Ace of Spades.

The story he told was “Appointment in Samarra,” also known as “Death Speaks,” which many, including Ortiz, claim is the shortest story every written. That claim can be disputed, but the story is a gem. When Dorothy Parker repeated the story to John O’Hara, the latter was so intrigued that he used it for the title of his novel.

British politician and novelist Jeffrey Archer opens his anthology To Cut a Long Story Short with “Appointment in Samarra,” which, in his preface, he traces to an Arabic source.

Parker, O’Hara, and Archer each first encountered the story as it appeared in M. Somerset Maugham’s final play, “Sheppey,” in which a happy-go-lucky hairdresser wins a lottery and spends his newfound wealth generously, to the dismay of his family and friends. In the final scene, Sheppey is approached by the Grim Reaper, who tells him the story:

There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

Philosophy professor Jordan Howard Sobel (University of Toronto) did a bit of research into the provenance of the story. He traced it first to a 9th century Sufi story written by Fudail ibn Ayad in his Hikyat-I-Naqshia. But as further proof that fate cannot be escaped, Sobel suggests that the likely source of the Arabic tale is the Talmud! Here is the story as it appeared 1600 years ago in the Hebrew text of Tractate Sukkah 53a:

There were two Cushites that attended on King Solomon, Elichoreph and Achiyah, sons of Shisha, who were scribes of Solomon. One day, Solomon noticed that the Angel of Death looked sad. Solomon asked him: Why are you sad? He replied: Because they have demanded from me the two Cushites that dwell here. Solomon had demons take them to the city of Luz [a legendary city where no one dies]. However, as soon as they reached the gates of Luz, they died. The next day, Solomon noticed that the Angel of Death was happy. He asked him: Why are you so happy? He replied: Because you sent them to the very place where they were supposed to die.

I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide if these two stories are one and the same. But I believe they both qualify as stories.

Samarra is as dangerous a place these days as it was for the merchant’s servant in Maugham’s story. But here at Criminal Brief, it’s pretty safe. So let’s make an appointment for next week. See you then.