The Journeyer - Jennings Gary - Страница 59
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“That is the mihrab,” said Princess Moth. “Though Islam has no priests, we are sometimes addressed by a visiting wise man. Perhaps an imam, one whose deep study of the Quran has made him an authority on its spiritual tenets. Or a mufti, who is similarly an expert on the temporal laws laid down by the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him). Or a hajji, one who has made the long hajj pilgrimage to Holy Mecca. And to lead our devotions, the wise man takes position yonder in the mihrab.”
I said, “I thought the word mihrab meant—” and then I stopped, and the Princess smiled naughtily at me.
I was about to say that I had thought the word mihrab meant a woman’s most private part, what a Venetian girl had once vulgarly called her pota, and a Venetian lady had more fastidiously called her mona. But then I took notice of the shape of that mihrab niche in the masjid wall. It was shaped exactly like a woman’s genital orifice, slightly oval in outline and narrowing at the top to close in a pointed arch. I have been inside many another masjid, and in every one that niche is so shaped. I believe it to be an additional corroboration of my theory that human sexuality has influenced Islamic architecture. Of course I do not know—and I doubt that any Muslim knows—which use of the word mihrab came first: the ecclesiastical or the bawdy.
“And there,” said Princess Moth, pointing upward, “are the windows which make the sun tell the passing days.”
Sure enough, there were openings carefully spaced about the upper periphery of the dome, and the new-risen sun was sending a beam across to the dome’s opposite inner side, where there were inset slabs with Arabic writings entwined in their mosaics. The Princess read aloud the words where the beam rested. According to that evidence, the present day was, in the Muslim reckoning, the third day of the month Jumada Second in the 670th year of Muhammad’s Hijra, or, in the Persian calendar, the 199th year of the Jalali Era. Then Princess Moth and I together, with much muttering and counting on our fingers, did the calculations necessary to convert the date to the Christian reckoning.
“Today is the twentieth of the month September!” I exclaimed. “It is my birthday!”
She congratulated me and said, “You Christians sometimes are given gifts on your birthdays, are you not, as we are?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
“Then I will give you a gift this very night, if you are brave enough to run some risk in receiving it. I will give you a night of zina.”
“What is zina?” I asked, though I suspected I knew.
“It is illicit intercourse between a man and a woman. It is haram, which means forbidden. If you are to receive the gift, I must sneak you into my chamber in the anderun of the palace women, which is also haram.”
“I will brave any risk!” I cried wholeheartedly. Then I thought of something. “But … excuse me for asking, Princess Moth. But I have been informed that Muslim women are somehow deprived of—of their enthusiasm for zina. I have been told that they are, well, somehow circumcised, though I cannot imagine how.”
“Oh, yes, tabzir,” she said casually. “That is done to the general run of women, yes, when they are infants. But not to any infants of royal blood, or any who could in future become the wives or concubines of a royal court. It was certainly not done to me.”
“I am happy for you,” I said, and meant it. “But what is done to those unfortunate females? What is tabzir?”
“Let me show you,” she said.
I was startled, expecting her to undress, right then and there, so I made a cautionary gesture at the lurking grandmother. But Moth only grinned at me and stepped to the preacher’s niche in the masjid wall, saying, “Are you much acquainted with the anatomy of a female person? Then you know that here”—she pointed at the top of the arch—“toward the front of her mihrab opening, a woman has a tender buttonlike protrusion. It is called the zambur.”
“Ah,” I said, enlightened at last. “In Venice it is called the lumagheta.” I tried to sound as clinical as a physician, but I know I blushed as I spoke.
“The exact position of the zambur may vary slightly in different women,” Moth went on, herself unblushingly clinical. “And the size of it may vary considerably. My own zambur is commendably large, and in arousal it extends to the length of my little finger’s first joint.”
Just the thought of it made me arouse and extend. Since the grandmother was present, I was again grateful for my voluminous nether garments.
The Princess blithely continued, “So I am much in demand by the other women of the anderun, because my zambur can service them almost as well as a man’s zab. And women’s play is halal, which means allowable, not haram.”
And if my face had been pink before, it must have been maroon by now. But if Princess Moth noticed, it did not deter her.
“In every woman, that is her most sensitive place, the very nub of her sexual excitability. Without the arousal of her zambur, she is unresponsive in the sexual embrace. And lacking any enjoyment of that act, she does not yearn for it. That of course is the reason for the tabzir—the circumcision, as you called it. In a grown woman, until she is very much aroused, the zambur is modestly hidden between the closed lips of her mihrab. But in an infant female, that zambur protrudes beyond the little baby lips. An attending hakim can very easily snip it off with just a scissors.”
“Dear God!” I exclaimed, my own arousal going instantly limp from horror. “That is not circumcision. That is the making of a female eunuch!”
“Very like it,” she agreed, as if it were not horrible at all. “The child grows up to be a woman virtuously cold and devoid of sexual response, or even any desire for it. The perfect Muslim wife.”
“Perfect?! What husband would want such a wife?”
“A Muslim husband,” she said simply. “That wife will never commit adultery and make him a cuckold. She is incapable of contemplating an act of zina, or anything else haram. She will not even tease her husband to anger by flirting with another man. If she correctly keeps pardah, she will never even see another man—until she gives birth to a man-child. You understand, tabzir does not hamper her function of maternity. She can become a mother, and in that she is superior to a eunuch, who cannot become a father.”
“Even so, it is a ghastly fate for a woman.”
“It is the fate decreed by the Prophet (may blessing and peace be upon him). Nevertheless, I am thankful that we upper classes are exempted from many such inconveniences visited upon the common folk. Now, about your birthday gift, young Mirza Marco …”
“I wish it was already night,” I said, glancing up at the slow-creeping sunbeam. “This will be the longest birthday of my life, waiting for night and zina with you.”
“Oh, not with me!”
“What?”
She giggled. “Well, not exactly with me.”
Bewildered, I said again, “What?”
“You distracted me, Marco, asking about the tabzir, so I did not explain the gift I am giving you. Before I explain, you must bear in mind that I am a virgin.”
I started pettishly to say, “You have not been talking like—” but she laid a finger across my lips.
“True, I am not tabzir and I am not cold and perhaps you would call me not entirely virtuous, since I am inviting you to do something haram. It is true, too, that I have a most charming zambur, and I dearly love to exercise it, but only in ways halal which will not diminish my virginity. In addition to my zambur, you see, I have all my parts, including my sangar. That maiden membrane has not been breached, and never will be until I wed some royal Prince. It must not be breached, or no Prince would have me. I should be lucky if I were not beheaded for letting myself be despoiled. No, Marco, do not even dream of consummating the zina with me.”
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