It was quite remarkable that in this place of everlasting torture I caught my first good glimpse of a Turkish woman. She was upon us before I knew it, skirting the poolside with rapid steps as she took the shortest route from door to door. I never actually saw her face, as she held both hands before it and glimpsed the world—at least so she wouldn’t tumble into the pool and join us—through the narrowest of spaces between her fingers. But that she was a woman left no doubt, and had there been any blood left that wasn’t already on the surface of my skin, I would have blushed.
A number of men were watching the woman’s progress with interest, and Husayn felt obliged to offer some apology. “She is accused of adultery,” he said, proving that he hadn’t lost all use of Venetian after all. “She runs this gauntlet to prove her innocence, her husband and brother observe. She wears no shalvar and, if she is guilty, her skirts will blow up over her head.”
“If they do—?” I gasped. I was more concerned for my own temperature, and relieved to find voice, than for the woman.
“If this happens, her husband has the right to kill her, same as a wronged husband would in Venice. This gauntlet is an old custom, existing, like the capitals of these pillars, from the time of the Greeks.”
“She is innocent,” I judged, as did husband and brother.
“Of course,” said Husayn, looking away from the spectacle with disinterest.
“Why do you say ‘of course’?”
“Because if she has the courage to do this, she mustn’t have a guilty hair on her head. I can only think it will make her look at her husband differently from now on. She will have learned he is not the only creature Allah made so, and that He, all praise to Him, made many much better. I’d say any man is a fool who demands this of his wife in the first place.”
With this dismissal, Husayn returned to his soaking and I must confess that my own discomfort soon numbed me to anyone else’s.
I was aware of the curious and rather unpleasant sensation of other men’s naked, parboiled flesh against mine under the water, but again, I was too numb to think much about it. I didn’t think of it, in fact, until Husayn suddenly leapt up out of the water, steam curling from his skin, and began a most shocking tirade. I thought for a moment that it was aimed against me, and that he’d forgotten once again that he needed to go easy on the Turkish for me.
“A curse on your religion!” This harangue started where the Venetian began and progressed from there to “May Satan stick his finger up your ass!” and “They found your grandfather’s shoes under your mother’s bed, you know that?”
I recoiled from the horrible blackness of such thoughts as from a physical blow. He was better in this language than he was in Venetian, I had to grant him that. Cursing is the first thing a traveler becomes fluent in, I reminded myself, and, if I couldn’t comprehend the reason for the abuse, I could at least learn the flair.
But presently the realization sank through the heat-fog in my brain that the object of his abuse was not me. It was the creature who’d been pressing so restlessly up against my opposite side.
I blinked against the steam as the figure retreated before Husayn’s barrage and then vanished at Hades’ rim. The steps were more exaggeratedly feminine, I thought, than those of the accused adulteress. It was only then that I realized what neither Husayn nor I could express in each other’s tongue. I’d been picked out by a sodomite as a likely candidate to share his vice by my shoulder-length locks, my hairless chin, and the air of not quite belonging, all of which matched his.
I couldn’t even meet Husayn’s eyes to give him thanks for my deliverance. My shame was too great—the helpless, polluted guilt of a victim. I hadn’t the strength to shove the blame off where it belonged—on the aggressor. Where was the gauntlet I could run to prove my innocence in this case?
Husayn offered none, but ushered me quickly back to the room where we’d begun our ceremony. Here our clothes still waited in their little cubicles and the cooler air seemed to fist space for breath in our lungs once again.
But there was to be no safety in clothes yet. The smirking African quickly replaced my dripping, loin-clinging towel with a dry one. He then threw another over my shoulders, a third over my head. I tried to smile some gratitude back at him and I saw the smirk lose its edge.
At this point, Husayn brought a Turk across the room for me to meet. The stranger was towel-draped like everyone else. Why my host should pick this Turk and not any of the identical others escaped me, and I have no recollection of his features beyond the fact that he was over fifty.
I assumed at first that this introduction was to distract me from my recent shame by presenting decent examples of the race for me to know. Acquaintance was bound to be minimal. The stranger knew no Venetian at all and the sickness in the pit of my stomach kept me still preferring the African’s softened smile.
Still, Husayn persisted in making the introductions. He gave a name I’ve now forgotten and modified it with “From Iznik, where he is head of the tile works there. His kilns are famous. No one else in the world knows the secret he keeps of firing that brilliant cobalt blue that is so valued. He is the man I brought you here hoping to find.”
When I made no reply, the man salaamed, a gesture of graciousness as it is incumbent on the younger to bow first. I tried to imitate the gesture, unsuccessfully on the platforms of my pattens. After
