Though smoke rose from the rooftops of the mud and clay houses, and their barns baaed with sheep and their coops clucked with chickens, no people were visible in the midst of winter, and the many apricot, olive, and fig orchards were bare, their dark branches clawing at the gray overcast sky.

But when the travelers passed the refuse mounds outside the huge Amáseia Gate and entered Melitené proper, they found narrow streets bursting with crowds. These streets led from one bazaar to another through covered passageways, the reams of silk and piles of spice growing larger and more colorful the deeper the travelers wended into the city, the scents (as well as those of the mountains of fruit) overpowering the odor of horse dung.

Melitené reminded Alexios of Konstantinopolis—wasn’t every city just a reflection of the Platonic ideal of cities known as Konstantinopolis?—although Melitené was smaller, of course, and the Sarakenoi influence was stronger. Arabia lay only a few days' journey south beyond the Taüros Mountains. This meant that the bedouin camel-riders of the desert were rubbing shoulders with the fellaheen peasants of the fields in addition to the refined city people, most members of this latter group dressed in blue or white robes and wearing soft slippers, the women carrying pots of water on their heads and babies on their hips. Persians—distinguished by their bulbous, colorful pants, considered barbarous by the Romans—could also be found. Kurds with enormous turbans (their size marking their owners’ ages) were likewise plentiful.

Melitené lay on the border between Romanía, Tourkía, and Arabia, and had changed hands many times over the centuries. Following Mantzikert, the Turks had taken the city, along with the rest of the Anatolian interior. Yet Roman and Armenian Christians in their patterned clothing and even the occasional white-robed Afrikans and veiled Libyan Moorish men were everywhere here, as were Jews, although telling these people apart could be so difficult that governments often ordered various groups to wear distinguishing clothing, to little avail, as the population was so diverse (and so many different peoples and faiths had intermarried) that enforcing these edicts was almost impossible.

It was hard to say who was in charge; Alexios saw no Turks. He wondered if the city’s conquest was more akin to liberation. The lack of Roman oppression made it feel as though a great weight had been lifted from everyone’s shoulders. Melitené was freer, livelier, and more relaxed than anywhere Alexios had encountered in Romanía—even Trebizond, where people were obsessed with building up their power to avoid being killed or enslaved, working every waking moment, hardly sleeping. In Melitené, in contrast, the feeling was more secure. Laughter and easy conversation—even what sounded like guitar music—could be heard everywhere, along with cooing doves and purling fountains. Alexios couldn’t help thinking about a poem which had yet to be written:

A brighter Hellas rears its fountains

From waves serener far,

A brighter Pellas rears its mountains

Across the morning star.

This place wasn’t technically Hellas, and yet Roman intellectuals these days had the odd habit of referring to anything pagan—anything Other—as Hellenikou, and since the Romans and Sarakenoi would sometimes insult each other with the word pagan, Melitené qualified as Hellenic, in a sense. And this Hellas, this Other—whatever you wanted to call it—was a wholly new world, one filled with life, vigor, power, humanity, and wit. Indeed, the Romans’ were practically at their wits’ end. Nothing they did could stop these awful dark savage hordes—whom they ceaselessly denigrated, misrepresented, and misunderstood—from conquering them and shattering their armies. The Sarakenoi were always at least one step ahead, and stronger and smarter in every imaginable way than the ailing Romans—hiding in their cities, pouring over their books—could ever hope to be.

This was Alexios’s first impression of Melitené. The Sultanate of Ikónion—a rebellious part of the Great Seljuk Empire—extended for thousands of stadia, from the shores of the Aegean to the icy mountain streams that ran down the green mountains of Ferghana, and so who could say what the rest of Tourkía was like? Could it even be called a single place at all? Idealizing was as mistaken as denigrating; it was likewise incorrect to generalize—at least from so small a sample size—across such a vast and diverse landscape filled with so many millions of individual human beings, each with their own thoughts and feelings and passions and fears, their own languages and dialects, their own faiths—either totally separate from Islam or belonging to one of many distinct branches within it.

The next stop on Alexios’s journey, the city of Samosata, lay only a few days away.

Will it be the same as Melitené? he wondered. Probably not.

A Roman man named Philaretos and a woman named Morfia walking alongside the travelers were even debating the nature of Christ. For a moment Alexios found himself wondering if he was in Konstantinopolis, where Romans greeted strangers not with hellos, but by asking their opinion concerning the hypostasis. Morfia took things a step further, however, by mentioning the Bogomils. A dangerous subject of conversation in Romanía, they were a rebirth of the iconoclasts or even the more ancient Arian heretics, but mostly centered near the Bulgar Khanate, which probably had something to do with their name.

The Bogomils, he thought. The buggers. They like to bugger each other. They do away with the institution of marriage, and live in open sin.

Alexios overheard Morfia discussing the dualistic nature of existence, the eternal battle between luminousness and the void, the need to abolish both ecclesiastic and secular hierarchies, communicating with God via one’s heart alone, giving all possessions to the poor, and living without property like Jesus. She even expressed interest in the asceticism of the Sufis and the darwīshes. For Alexios, this one random conversation served as proof that in Melitené people could discuss these ideas freely, and even with scholastic vigor and precision, but in Romanía—an insecure dwindling empire constantly lashing out at everyone—the more prominent heretics were burned at the stake.

Prosperity and change could also easily be seen in Melitené. New brick structures were rising inside wooden scaffolds, and handsome muscular laborers were working hard at building them up. Some utilized machines which were rare in Romanía and unknown among the Latins. Most of these Alexios had trouble identifying, but they were often metallic and had complicated gears and crossbars. Windmills were connected to gristmills grinding grain or even turning sugar cane into syrup which people then drank with fruit juice. This beverage they called “sherbet.” Alexios saw streets full of men manufacturing glass as well as tin-glazed pottery—what would be called “china” in the old world—this technique being unknown to the Romans or Latins. Through windows or doorways women could also be seen transforming wool into yarn using spinning wheels. Alexios noticed grocers wrapping produce in paper for customers. He laughed at the thought of Gallic monks falling on their knees and begging to be allowed to take this wrapping paper back to their monasteries, where they were still using expensive and annoying animal hide vellum for copying ancient texts.

We have so much to learn from these people, Alexios thought. Trebizond should have worked harder to forge alliances with them.

Although tolerant of other faiths and ideas, Sarakenou rulers asked their Christian subjects to silence their bells and semantrons and keep their choral singing to a minimum, but all of this could be heard from the church domes along with the Muslim call to prayer from the new minarets. Even a Zoroastrian fire temple was present: a fountain murmured outside this white building while eternal flames flickered alongside white-robed adherents chanting ancient songs. Thus far they seemed to have escaped persecution.

I wonder if there are any Sabians here, Alexios thought. I don’t even know what they look like, or if they even exist. I’ll have to ask around. Dionysios told me to look for them. Or a dream vision of Dionysios told me to look for them…

Alexios also noticed, as he led Rakhsh through the city, that the Jewish religious buildings were the quietest among those belonging to the People of the Book, and the hardest to identify. The Star of David which Alexios remembered from the old world was almost unknown in the eleventh century. This meant that Jewish religious structures were like mosques without minarets or crescents, churches without domes or crosses, and pagan temples without pillars or pediments. No symbol marked them; the synagogues were just plain rectangular structures of brick, utilizing a sort of vernacular architecture of absence, blending in so much that they stood out, in keeping with the Jewish tradition of iconoclasm extending back to Abraham Idol-Smasher. Yet some Jews at least made up for this relative silence by arguing, complaining, and haggling in the streets louder than anyone else, even if Alexios knew that other Jews must have been, at that same moment, pouring quietly yet obsessively over books. The absence of restrictions on their economic activities which the Romans and Latins imposed on them—forcing them to work as dyers in Romanía or money-lenders in Gallía—meant that here, only the most devoted adherents of Judaism (or any faith) could be distinguished from everyone else. Most of Melitené’s people were really “just people.”

The city also had a wild west quality to it. If men were not working or buying or selling, they were wearing swords at their sides and mail over their chests. And yet while these men looked adventurous, few were unfriendly. Recognizing Alexios as a fellow warrior, multiple adventurers said hello and offered him jobs. Alexios also received invitations in multiple languages to dine at people’s homes. The darwīshes gave him blessings; they recognized him, in his dirty clothes, as a traveler from faraway lands—perhaps beyond what they called “Rûm,” to another land they called “Frangistan”—for he was a person doubtless full of interesting news.

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All this warmth from strangers was refreshing for someone who still remembered the old world’s famously cold attitudes. In Maine people could live decades alongside their neighbors without even knowing their names; in Melitené total strangers greeted Alexios and each other merely out of politeness, to the extent that it was becoming difficult to move from place to place, since everyone was constantly saying hello. Later, after wandering the city for some time and failing to find an inn, Alexios asked directions from an attractive Arab man who immediately insisted on bringing the travelers all the way to their lodgings. This man, who called himself Abdullah ar-Rahman, only left after he was certain that Alexios, Basil, and Kassia were secure.

As for the women, they were all veiled to varying degrees regardless of faith, just as was the case everywhere west of Sera, though many still displayed curly black or brown hair, and blonde hair was not unknown. The less religious they were, the more hair they showed. Wealthier ones flaunted their money with colorful translucent silk. Unlike in Konstantinopolis, none were decadent enough to have slaves carry them in sedan chairs.

Yet Alexios needed to be careful—since, after all, there could be no plus without a minus. Nastier aspects to Melitené must have existed, but at the moment he was too enchanted to notice any. This was just the honeymoon period for entering a famously honeyed city.

As in Romanía, children crowded the streets—for the Middle Ages were, despite their name, young. Richer children walked to school with their siblings and dressed like their Roman brethren back in Konstantinopolis. Similarly, aging spinsters guarded the virtue of young unmarried maidens from wealthy families. Poorer children of all genders, meanwhile, played pranks on passersby.

Alexios even spotted one trap he had heard about earlier: a horseshoe left in the street. A crowd of children stared at it from behind large clay jars and amphorae piled beside an olive oil dealer. Before long, even as Alexios was leading Rakhsh behind Abdullah ar-Rahman, a merchant noticed the horseshoe, looked around, licked his lips—like he was in a silent comedy—and bent down to grab it. The instant he touched the horseshoe, however, he yelped and fell away, clutching his hand, sucking his burned fingers and swearing. The children hiding nearby exploded with laughter, collapsed onto their backs, and clutched their bellies, rolling in the dust. In response, the merchant yelled at them, shook his fist, and paced toward them, demanding to know where their parents were. At this point the children disappeared into the crowds.

Alexios, Basil, and Kassia also laughed. It seemed like none of them had laughed since before the siege.

How to entertain yourself when there's no internet, TV, or movies, and when books can be as expensive as cars, Alexios thought. Maybe even theater here is rare. You just have to make your own shows I guess. Reminds me of how one medieval Roman scholar, I forget who, said the only difference between Romans and Sarakenoi is an appreciation for Aristophanes. For whatever reason, he thought Muslims couldn’t even understand drama or comedy. Just a different way of measuring people's skulls. Orientalism before it was called Orientalism.

Alexios had been concerned about their food supplies during their journey from Satala, and as soon as the excitement from spotting Melitené had worn off, he had grown worried about their money. All he possessed were the sixteen scratched and battered nomismas he'd been carrying during the siege. This was about enough to purchase one good donkey. When Abdullah ar-Rahman brought them to their lodgings—bowing and vanishing into the crowds before Alexios could say thank you—he discovered that prices were lower here than anywhere else he had visited in Romanía save Trebizond, where lodging was free. Prices were so low, in fact, that he needed to visit the nearby money changers’ street, where he exchanged his gold nomismas stamped with crosses and the faces of forgotten emperors for bronze fals and silver dirhams stamped with cursive Arabic reading ‘there is no god but God.’ One nomisma equalled about one dirham; one hundred fals made one dirham; a single night at the inn with dinner included was just five fals.

Trebizond had not seemed particularly rich when Alexios had lived there, but he recalled that the Latins had attacked partly because of the economic devastation the city had wreaked upon their homeland. Maybe the Republic of Trebizond had made more money in its short life than he realized.

Recognizing that he also needed some new clothes, as did the children—since people were wrinkling their noses at them—Alexios, Basil, and Kassia went to the nearby clothing bazaar and purchased almost the first tunics and chlamyses they found that fit. Being unclean had subtracted XP from Alexios’s charisma (Intermediate, 5/10).

Back at the caravanserai, he went inside the innkeeper’s office to get a room while the children waited in the courtyard with Rakhsh. After Alexios paid, the innkeeper—a young balding Armenian called Thorosyan—suddenly bent over a record book on his table, dipped a reed stylus in ink, and asked Alexios’s name.

Alexios cleared his throat. “My name?”

“Yes, our new masters, the Turks, may God bless them and so on and so forth, are insisting we keep records of everyone’s comings and goings.” Thorosyan waved his hand. “They tell us they need to keep track because they are having trouble with Roman agents stirring up problems across the four corners of the sultanate, but who knows?”

“My name,” Alexios repeated. “It’s—uh—”

Oh no, think fast. I can’t tell them my real name. Latins might be after us. I need a fake name. Who’s a famous Greek from the old world? Someone none of these people have heard of? But the last famous Greek was Alexander! And wasn’t he actually a Macedonian?

“My name,” Alexios said again. “Is…Ioannes.”

“Just Ioannes?” Thorosyan said. “Do you have a family name, or some sort of way to identify your point of origin—something to distinguish yourself from the dozens of other Ioanneses who pass through here every day?”

“Ioannes…”

Alexios blurted the first Greek name which popped into his mind.

“Zorba,” he said.

The moment he uttered this name, he wanted to groan and slap his forehead. Was it even Greek?

“Ioannes Zorba,” he added.

“Ioannes Zorba,” Thorosyan repeated. “That’s a new one.”

“Everyone says that,” Alexios stammered. “It’s an old name from Kretai.”

Zorba the Greek came from Crete, didn’t he? Alexios thought.

“Not to worry, we get a lot of odd names here.” Thorosyan scrawled Arabic right-to-left into the record book. “People come from Serindia, Axum, Rûm, Frangistan, you name it.” He handed Alexios his key. “Enjoy your stay. Join us for dinner in the tavern or have some food sent up.”

“Thank you.” Alexios stepped outside.

Now that he had a moment to look at Thorosyan’s caravanserai, he found that it also put typical Roman inns to shame. It possessed huge stone pillars and arches decorated with colorful arabesques and gilded calligraphy, as well as an enormous tiled courtyard with a fountain. There were gardens full of murmuring trees and cooing turtledoves. Many people were coming and going, too, and dragging their braying donkeys after them. It was popular, yet rooms were affordable.

Is there anything here that sucks? Alexios thought. Is there anything here that’s bad? I’m ready to do a commercial for this place!

There were many reasons for the rapidity of the Sarakenou conquests, but one now became clear in Alexios’s mind. Living on the steppe or in the desert meant that the Arab and Turkish raiders were better fighters than the more settled Romans, and thus usually defeated them in battle, paying for their armies by sacking foreign cities and baggage trains, enslaving the conquered, and ransoming wealthy prisoners back to Konstantinopolis. This meant lower taxes and greater investment for cities like Melitené. The jizya likewise meant lower taxes for the faithful, while the insistence that all Sarakenoi give to the poor checked wealth concentration. Rather than wasting away in rich men’s vaults, money kept circulating through greater numbers of hands. It was almost like a form of banking in a time when the Koranic proscription against loaning money at interest was widely observed.

Flailing empires are always searching for new ways to squeeze the poor, Alexios thought. They attack every nation at once; everyone constantly assails them from all sides and unites against them; in vain they waste mountains of gold and entire generations of soldiers fighting to hold every inch of territory scattered over impossibly vast distances—and still they lose. Expanding empires, in contrast, rarely have trouble paying for their military campaigns, and invest some of their newfound riches in social programs to quiet domestic unrest.

When the travelers reached the caravanserai, Rakhsh was visibly excited to have his own stall. This came with water, hay, oats, clean blankets and bedding, and even an attendant to brush his coat, pick out his hoofs, and wash his body—particularly the dried dung stuck to the insides of his asscheeks. Most important was the chance to rest after spending two weeks riding hundreds of miles.

Kassia and Basil, meanwhile, delighted in having a bed stuffed with hay and a roof over their heads for the first time since fleeing Trebizond. The room was heated with pipes in the floor, and there were no fleas, at least thus far.

Once they had settled in, Alexios ordered a banquet sent up. This included fresh heavy thick warm crisp loaves of pita bread straight out of the oven, pit-roasted lamb kebab, kofta meatballs wrapped in cherry leaves with saffron, and pilaf with raisins and almonds. For dessert, they had piles of apricots beside bowls of honey. All of this was served with cups of sour, salty ayran— a kind of yogurt, and the only acquired taste Alexios had encountered since his arrival in Romanía all those months ago. Thankfully there was also pomegranate syrup mixed with water, which everyone found more to their liking. Hopefully the days of ham, anchovies, cheese, and black bread were over.

After they ate and the servants took the banquet’s remains, the travelers washed themselves in the caravanserai’s baths using hard, fragrant soap that seemed to have been made from something other than olive oil. Alexios recognized this as ‘bar soap’ from the old world, but it was a novelty for the children. They changed into their new clothes, and here Alexios was tempted to throw their old filthy clothing away—they’d been wearing it since Trebizond—but he refrained. Then they returned to their room and collapsed into sleep in their beds.