XDA

In an earlier post about biased reporting in Iraq, the deaths of four American soldiers in an unknown city north of Baghdad were mentioned. Turns out the deaths occurred in Samarra. There is an old story about Samarra which used to send chills up my spine. I'll reproduce it here:

"The Appointment in Samarra" (as retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933])


There was a merchant in Bagdad 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 marketplace and he saw Death standing in the crowd and he went to Death and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, Death said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

The story is also the epigram for John O'Hara's good novel of the same name. And the best person I ever heard tell it was Boris Karloff in Peter Bogdanovich's only really good movie Targets.