3 Min read
Lunch hour Lit
1 Ancient tale
Writer’s Toolbox, ages 9 to 99
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Murder your darlings.
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
A popular writing exercise is to kill–or murder–your darlings, those lines and that passage you cherish. You know the one, the part with the turn of phrase just so, the artful description, the amazing story.
Years ago my father told me a story that I included in a chapter of my book. It went something like this.
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The Merchant of Saigon
A long time ago, a Saigon merchant sent his servant into the market to prepare for a large gathering. Not long after arriving, amid the hawking with vendors and smell of anise and cardamom, the servant felt a tug on his sleeve and a sudden, cold unease. When he turned, he saw a robed figure and felt a shadow cross his soul, his heart stopping for a moment.
He ran all the way back from the market and found his employer.
“Sir, I went to the market as you asked and I ran into Death there! I beg you, please let me to go, because Death is coming for me!”
The merchant said, “How do you know this? “
” I felt it by the chill in my bones and ,” the servant paused. “And Death’s face.”
So he let his servant go. He took the first bus to his home in Hue across the Hai Van Pass. The employer was upset with the disruption his leaving caused and went down to the market to find Death, demanding to know what happened to his faithful servant.
Death answered, “I did not scare him. I was merely surprised to see him in the market, because I knew I had an appointment with him tonight at the Hai Van Pass.“
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There it is. This calamitous tale of fate with its permutations of actions the servant could have taken, the illusion of choice after this poor man’s encounter in the market. The story has fascinated me as a child and as an adult.
It’s a darling I had to include. And, it’s one as fate would have it I had to cut.
So I’m sharing it here. In the process of writing and research on this tale for my book, I discovered the original was the parable, Appointment in Samarra.
My father, bless his story-telling nature, likely made up this version with its setting in Vietnam to entertain his children. That was what stoked the fires of the heart, especially with his being gone these sixteen years. It is a pleasure and joy, an utterly profound and touching experience to learn personal, hidden and perhaps intentionally secret aspects of your parent’s nature, long after their demise.
When the story came to mind recently, I had to check the manuscript.
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The tale is no longer in the chapter. Why?
It does not help the narrative arc and will disrupt the reader. Alas, I love diversions and the hidden alleys and byways of a place, often more than the real thing I was in search of. The real thing for this particular chapter was a barracks room ode and I needed to keep that front and center.
Murder your darlings.
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Good news, dear reader, the cover art for my memoir is locked in.
I’m finalizing the manuscript with the proofreader and working with the layout team.
Cheers and Happy 2026!
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FOOTNOTES
*Appointment in Samarra was a novel by John O’Hara. Wiki describes the title here:
The title is a reference to W. Somerset Maugham‘s retelling of an ancient Mesopotamian tale[2] which appears as an epigraph for the novel:
There was a merchant in Baghdad 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 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 Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
**History of the epigraph of the Appointment in Samarra, April 13, 2022. This is listed under Extracts by a Sub-Sub-Librarian with fascinating insight on origins for the ancient tale.
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