I READ Abdel Muslim el-Khurasani, translated into Indonesian as Bendera Hitam Dari Khurasan (The Black Banner from Khurasan) before I turned 13. I only half understood it: this novel by Jurji Zaydan, the Lebanese writer who lived in Egypt and died in 1914, seems to depict a fragment of history around Baghdad. The main character is Abu Muslim el-Kurasani. One summer in the 8th century, he waved the banner of revolution over all Khurasan in northea