ATEH

(beginning of the 9th century)--According to Islamic legend, the Khazar kaghan had a relative living at his court who was renowned for her beauty. Huge, silver-haired watchdogs stood guard outside her chamber, lashing their eyes with their tails. They were trained to stand still, and every so often the could be see peeing down their front legs, without moving. They rolled consonants like stones deep down in their chests, and before going to sleep they would curl up their tails like ship rope. Ateh had silver eyes; instead of buttons she wore bells, and anyone in the street would know from their sound whether the princess at court was dressing or undressing for bed. But her bells were never heard. Along with brains, the princess was endowed with inordinate slowness. She breathed less than other people sneezed, and in her slowness she abominated anything and anyone who wanted to make her act quickly, even if it was something she herself had intended to do. The lining of this garment of slowness reveled another side when she talked--she never dwelt on one subject for long, and when conversing with people would hop from one subject to another like a bird from branch to branch. But a few days later she would unexpectedly return to the story at the point where she had left off and, unbidden, would proceed with what she had before refused to consider, trailing after her meandering thoughts. This complete no differentiation between important and marginal subjects, and total indifference to all topics of conversation, is believed to be a misfortune that befell the princess during the Khazar polemic. Ateh was a poetess, but the only lines of hers to have ben preserved are :"The difference between two yes's can be greater than the difference between a yes and a no." Everything else is merely ascribed to her.

A number of her poems, or texts written under her supervision, are believed to have been preserved in Arabic translation. Authorities on the Khazars and their conversion are especially interested in the poems devoted to the Khazar polemic, These are originally love poems; only later were they used as arguments in the polemic, when chroniclers sat down to record the events. Be that as it may, Ateh took fervid part in the polemic, successfully out-arguing both the Jewish and Christian participants, and in the end helping the Islamic representative, Farabi Ibn Kora. Together with the Khazar kaghan, her lord and master, she converted to Islam. Sensing that he was losing, the Greek joined up with the Jewish deputy, and together they condemned Princess Ateh to the underworld of the two hells--to the Hebrew Belial and the Christian Satan. To avoid such and end, Ateh decided to volunteer for the third hell--that of the Islamic Iblis. Since he could not completely overturn the decision concerning the other two hells, Iblis divested her of her sex, condemned her to forget all her poems and language, except for one word, ku, but he gave her eternal life. He sent a demon by the name of Ibn Haderash, who appeared in the guise of an ostrich and carried out sentence. And so Princess Ateh was left to live forever; she could return endlessly and without haste to each of her thoughts and each of her words, because eternity had blunted her feeling for what comes before and what comes after in time. Love she could only have in her dreams. That is why Princess Ateh devoted herself to her sect of dream hunters, Khazar priests who strove to create a sort of earthly version of that heavenly registrar mentioned in the Holy Book. Her skills and theirs enabled her to send messages, her own thoughts or others', even objects, into peoples dreams. Princess Ateh could reach the dream of someone a thousand years younger, and she could send any object to someone dreaming of her as safely as a messenger riding a horse nourished on wine, only much, much faster. . . . A description remains of one such case. Princess Ateh once placed a key of her bedchamber in her mouth and waited until she heard music and the frail voice of a young maiden uttering the following words:

"A person's acts in life are like meals, his thoughts and feelings like spices. Whoever puts salt on cherries or pours vinegar on sweets with fare poorly. . . ."

As the words were spoken, the key disappeared from the princess' mouth and she knew, they say, that the substitution had been completed. They key had gone to the person for whom the words were intended, the words had come to Princess Ateh in replacement of the key. . . .

Daubmannus claims that Princess Ateh was still alive in his day and that a 17th century lute player, a Turk from Anatolia by the name of Masudi, met and spoke with her. This man was instructing himself in the art of the dream hunters and had in his possession an Arabic version of a Khazar encyclopedia or dictionary, but at the time that he met with the princess he was not yet familiar with all of its entries and so could not recognize the word ku when Princess Ateh uttered it. The word comes from the Khazar dictionary and it means a kind of fruit; had he known that, Masudi would have realized who stood before him and might have spared himself subsequent travails; he could have learned more about dream hunting from the unfortunate princess that from any dictionary. But he did not recognize her and let go of his best catch, believing it to be worthless, which is why, according to one legend, Masudi's own camel pat in his eye.