The Journeyer - Jennings Gary - Страница 84
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“We Muslims do not abhor and loathe serpents as you Christians do. Oh, we are not particularly fond of them, but neither do we fear and hate them as you do. According to your Holy Bible, the snake is the incarnation of the Devil Satan. And in your legends, you have inflated the snake to the monster called a dragon. All our Muslim monsters take the form of human beings—the jinn and afarit—or a bird, in the case of the giant rukh, or combinations like the mardkhora. That is a monster comprising the head of a man, the body of a lion, the quills of a porcupine and the tail of a scorpion. Notice, there is no snake included.”
My father said mildly, “The serpent has been accursed ever since that unfortunate affair in the Garden of Eden. It is understandable that Christians should fear it, and right that they should hate it and kill it at every opportunity.”
“We Muslims,” said Nostril, “give credit where credit is due. It was the serpent of Eden who bequeathed to Arabs the Arabic language, for he contrived that language in which to speak to Eve and seduce her, because Arabic, as every man knows, is the most subtle and suasive of languages. Of course, Adam and Eve spoke Farsi when they were alone together, for the Persian Farsi is the loveliest of all languages. And the avenging angel Gabriel always speaks Turki, for that is the most menacing of all languages. However, that is by the way. I was speaking of serpents, and it must be obvious that it was the snake’s sinuosity and convolutions which inspired the writing of characters, the Arabic alphabet which is also employed for the transcription of Farsi, Turki, Sindi and all other civilized languages.”
My father spoke again. “We Westerners have always called it the fish-worm writing, and never knew how nearly right we were.”
“And the serpent gave us more than that, Master Nicolo. His mode of progression along the ground, by bending and straightening himself—that inspired some ingenious one of our ancestors to invent the bow and arrow. The bow is thin and sinuous, like a snake. The arrow is thin and straight, like a snake, and it has a killing head. We have good reason to honor the serpent, and we do. For example, we call the rainbow the celestial snake, and that is a compliment to them both.”
“Interesting,” my father murmured, with a tolerant smile.
“By contrast,” Nostril went on, “you Christians liken the snake to your own zab, and assert that the serpent of Eden introduced sexual pleasure into the world, and that therefore sexual pleasure is wrong and ugly and abominable. We Muslims put the blame where it belongs. Not on the inoffensive snake, but on Eve and all her female descendants. As the Quran says in the fourth sura, ‘Woman is the source of all evil on the earth, and Allah only made this monster that the man should be repelled, and turn away from earthly—”
“Ciacche-ciacche!” said my uncle.
“Pardon, master?”
“I said nonsense! Sciocchezze! Sottise! Bifam ishtibah!”
Looking shocked, Nostril exclaimed, “Master Mafio, you call the Holy Book a bifam ishtibah?”
“Your Quran was written by a man, you cannot deny it. So were the Talmud and the Bible written by men.”
“Come now, Mafio,” my pious father put in. “They only transcribed the words of God. And the Savior.”
“But they were men, indisputably men, with the minds of men. All the prophets and apostles and sages have been men. And what sort of men did the writing of the holy books? Circumcised men!”
“I beg to suggest, master,” said Nostril, “that they did not write with their—”
“In a sense, they did exactly that. All those men were religiously mutilated in their infant organs. When they grew to manhood, they found themselves diminished in their sexual pleasure, to the degree they had been diminished in their parts. That is why they made their holy books decree that sex should be not for delight, but solely for procreation, and in all other respects a matter for shame and guilt.”
“Good master,” Nostril persisted. “We are only divested of foreskin, we are not pruned to eunuchs.”
“Any mutilation is a deprivation,” Uncle Mafio retorted. He dropped his camel’s rein to scratch his elbow. “The sages of ancient days, realizing that the trimming of their members had blunted their sensations and their enjoyment, were envious and fearful that others might find more pleasure in sex. Misery loves company, so they wrote their scriptures in a way to ensure that they had company. First the Jews, then the Christians—for the Evangelists and the other early Christians were only converted Jews—and then Muhammad and the subsequent Muslim sages. All of those having been circumcised men, their disquisitions on the subject of sex are akin to the singing of the deaf.”
My father looked as shocked as Nostril did. “Mafio,” he cautioned, “on this open desert we are terribly exposed to thunderbolts. Your criticism is a novel one in my experience, perhaps even original, but I suggest you temper it with discretion.”
Unheeding, my uncle went on, “Their putting fetters on human sexuality was like cripples writing the rules for an athletic contest.”
“Cripples, master?” Nostril inquired. “But how could they have known they were cripples? You contend that my sensations have been blunted. Since I myself have no exterior standard alongside which to measure my own enjoyments, I wonder how anyone else could possibly do so. I can think of only one sort who might qualify to judge even himself. That would be a man who has had experience, so to speak, before and after. Excuse my impertinence, Master Mafio, but were you perhaps not circumcised until midway in your adult life?”
“Insolent infidel! I never have been!”
“Ah. Then, excepting such a man, it seems to me that no one could adjudicate the matter but a woman. A woman who has given joy to both sorts of men, the circumcised and the uncircumcised, and paid close heed to their comparative heights of enjoyment.”
I winced at that. Whether Nostril spoke in snide malice or sheer ingenuousness, his words hit very close to Uncle Mafio’s true nature and probable experience. I glanced at my uncle, fearing he would blush or bluster or maybe knock Nostril’s head off, and thereby confess what he had so far kept concealed. But he bore the seeming insinuation as if he had not noticed it, and only continued to muse aloud:
“If the choice were mine, I should seek out a religion whose scriptures were not written by men already ritually maimed in their manhood.”
“Where we are going,” my father remarked, “there are several such religions.”
“As I well know,” said my uncle. “That is what makes me wonder how we Christians and Jews and Muslims dare to speak of the more Eastern peoples as barbarians.”
My father said, “The traveled man can look with a pitying smile at the crude pebbles still treasured by his home folk, yes, for he has seen real rubies and pearls in far places. Whether that also holds true for the home-kept religions, I cannot say, not being a theologian.” He added, rather sharply for him, “But this I do know: we are at present still under the Heaven of those religions you so openly disprize, and vulnerable to heavenly rebuke. If your blasphemies provoke a whirlwind, we may not get any farther. I strongly recommend a change of subject.”
Nostril obliged. He reverted to his earlier topic and told us, at stupefying length, how each letter of the Arabic fish-worm writing is permeated by a certain specific emanation from Allah, and therefore, as the letters squirm into the shape of words and the words into reptilian sentences, any piece of Arabic writing—even something as mundane as a signpost or a landlord’s bill—contains a beneficent power which is greater than the sum of the individual characters, and therefore is efficacious as a talisman against evil and jinn and afarit and the Devil Shaitan … and so on and on. To which the only rejoinder was made by one of our bull camels. He unfurled his underworks as he strode along, and copiously made water.
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