The history of the epigraph from Appointment in Samarra (2022)

I was thinking of this legend because, somewhat improbably, it shows up in the last 20 seconds of the video for "Particle Man": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsAiCs66l40 (thanks pvg!)

Here's a melodramatic rendition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLeVHqiAGcY.

The essential version of the story is quoted at the end:

> 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 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 Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

the link between the 'Appointment in Samara' story and depression is that it's a sense of damnation that finds a way to catch up with you, and when you find some escape or even come through it, the consequences of things you neglected under its influence come due. The story is a bit trite, as like the servant it's easy to say we fool ourselves. I'd say it's less easy to apprehend the layered mendacity of a malevolent presence that hates you, but the story captures some of the dynamic well.

It's a wry observation about what we do to ourselves, but having given it some oddly specific thought, it's more useful as a metaphor for articulating and black boxing a game that this thing can set us up to play and lose. Perhaps a bit personal and TMI, but if someone's going to talk about Appointment in Sarmarra today, it's worth looking at it with a contemporary lens.

Interesting if that affected general development and progress and how will future languages look like, or it was the other way round. I guess it may e.g. become even more logical and circumstantial in structure and remove obvious uncertainties (like “do not X and Y” can mean “do” or “do not” to Y) in favor of cfg-ness.