APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA – SOMERSET MAUGHAM

 

APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA – SOMERSET MAUGHAM

 

            William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was a British Playwright, novelist and short story writer.  Though he qualified as a surgeon, he did not practise.  He has effectively used majority of the experiences that he had in his life in his stories and novels.  In one of his plays, ‘Sheppy’(1933), he has retold a ninth century Arabian Sufi story from Faudail Ibn Ayad’s Hikayat-I-Naqshia.  Somerset Maugham has included this story as a conversation between the Protagonist Sheppy and Death. 

Death began to tell a story.  A Merchant in Bagdad, one day sent his servant to market to buy provisions.  In a little while the servant came back, white and trembling.  He said that he was jostled by a woman in the crowd of the market place and when he turned he realized that it was Death that had jostled him.  Moreover she made a threatening gesture.  As he decided to go to Samarra, a faraway place to escape from Death, he requested the Merchant to lend him the Merchant’s horse.  The Merchant lent him his horse and the servant mounted on it and went away.  Then the Merchant went down to the market place found Death and asked why she had made a threatening gesture to his servant that morning.  Death answered that it had been only a start of surprise on seeing him in Bagdad, because of her having an appointment with him that night in Samarra.  The very answer of Death revealed the truth to the Merchant that whatever has to happen that will definitely happen.

            The narrator of the story, Death, was greatly surprised to see the servant in Bagdad, as she had her appointment with him in Samarra that night.  However, it happened without fail.  The victim tried to escape from Death by moving to Samarra where actually he had his appointment with Death.  Thus, it has been proved that all events are predetermined and therefore inevitable.  Here, both the confusion of Death and the doubt of the Merchant solved at the end by the inevitable escape of the servant from Bagdad to Samarra.  Thus the very theme of the story that no one escapes from his fate is revealed in an attractive way in this story.     

----Thulasidharan V