# Cancel that appointment in Samarra!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-that-appointment-in-samarra/168441>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [April 13, 2003, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-that-appointment-in-samarra/168441 "2003-04-13T15:37:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\
**Post date:** [April 13, 2003, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-that-appointment-in-samarra/168441/1 "2003-04-13T15:37:20Z")

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I don’t know the origin of this piece. My father read it to me as a child and I found it again (a few years ago) at the beginning of one of John Updike books. It’s called _An Appointment in Samarra_. It’s a parable and worth the read – especially today.

[http://www.tatanka.com/reading/humanity/parable/samarra.html](http://www.tatanka.com/reading/humanity/parable/samarra.html)

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**Author:** ![Banger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@Banger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banger)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2003, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-that-appointment-in-samarra/168441/2 "2003-04-14T04:52:58Z")

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Death Speaks:

> [@](#):
>
> 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 market-place 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 Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

The passage is attributed to William Somerset Maugham and appears at the start of [Appointment in Samarra](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0394711920/qid=1050295349/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-7823351-1170450?v=glance&s=books) by John O’Hara. Note that John Updike provides the introduction to the edition available at [amazon.com](http://amazon.com). It’s a pretty good novel, detailing a man’s self-destructive actions starting from throwing a drink in the face of the wrong person and ending in, well, an appointment in Samarra.

Coincidentally, I just started reading Maugham’s [The Razor’s Edge](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140185232/qid=1050295557/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/002-7823351-1170450). For anyone interested in this book, skip the introduction in the Penguin paperback edition, as it is spoiler-heavy (I hate when an “Introduction” reveals what happens at the end of the novel :mad: ).