The Journeyer

“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.”

“I am confused, Princess Moth. You distinctly said you would sneak me into your chamber … .”

“And so I shall. And I shall remain with you there to assist you in zina with my sister.”

“With your sister?!”

“Hush! The old grandmother is deaf, but sometimes she can read simple words from the lips. Now keep silent and listen. My father has many wives, so I have many sisters. One of them is amenable to zina. In fact, she can never get enough of it. And it is she who will be your birthday gift.”

“But if she is also a royal Princess, why is her virginity not equally—?”

“I said keep silent. Yes, she is as royal as I, but there is a reason why she does not treasure maidenhood as I do. You will know everything tonight. But until tonight I will say no more, and if you pester me with questions I will rescind the gift. Now, Marco, let us enjoy the day. Let me command a coachman to take us for a ride about the city.”

The coach, when it came for us, was really only a dainty cart on two high wheels, drawn by a single midget Persian horse. Its driver helped me hoist the infirm old grandmother up to sit beside him at the front, and the Princess and I sat on the inside seat. As the cart rolled down the garden drive and out through the palace gates into Baghdad, Moth remarked that she had not yet had anything of breakfast to eat, opened a cloth bag, took from it some greenish-yellow fruits, and bit into one and offered another to me.

“Banyan,” she called it. “A variety of fig.”

I winced at the word fig, and politely declined, not bothering to mention my Acre misadventure that had made figs repulsive to me. Moth looked sulky when I refused, and I asked her why.

“Do you know,” she said, leaning close and whispering so the coachman would not hear, “that this is the forbidden fruit with which Eve seduced Adam?”

I whispered back, “I prefer the seduction without the fruit. And speaking of which—”

“I told you not to speak of it. Not until tonight.”

Several other times during the morning’s ride, I tried to broach that subject, but every time she ignored me, speaking only to call my attention to this or that point of interest and to tell me informative things about it.

She said, “Here we are in the bazar, which you have already visited, but perhaps you do not recognize it now, all empty and deserted and silent. That is because today is Jume—Friday, as you call it—which Allah appointed to be the day of rest, and there is no doing of trade or business or labor.”

And she said, “That grassy parkland which you see yonder is a graveyard, which we call a City of the Silent.”

And she said, “That large building is the House of Delusion, a charitable institution founded by my father the Shah. In it are confined and cared for all the persons who go insane, as many persons do in the hot summertime. They are regularly examined by a hakim, and if they ever regain their reason, they are set free again.”

In the outer skirts of the city, we crossed a bridge over a small stream, and I was struck by the color of that