Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh

that meaning was. He continued,

‘However, I was still a troubled man,’ he continued. ‘For the peris did not disappear with the underwear and I found that I could still hear them tinkling under the skirts of the concubines. Oh it is a subtle and sinister sensation, to hear the sound of fairy bells from under a woman’s skirts! On investigating further, I found that the peris were still clambering up into the skirts and sheltering in the warmth and intimacy there afforded and the mad things used to hang on to the pubic hairs of the women and, from that safe refuge, they used to bait me by swinging and ringing their tiny bells. The madness of the bells! Those bells were driving me crazy! I tried getting the girls to lift their skirts, so that I could dust down the insides of their thighs with my hands, but really they were so disagreeable about this and, besides, there was more work in this respect than I could handle. So then I gave orders that, from that day on, all the concubines should shave their pubic hairs and that practice too has continued from that day to this. Now I was even more out of favour with the young ladies of the Harem, which saddened me, but I did it out of love for them and their innocence. And consider that one concubine had gone blind from playing with the peris!’

‘However, to continue, despite having got rid of underwear and pubic hair, I remained a troubled man, for the numbers of the peris did not diminish. Indeed, I thought that I could detect new faces in their wild rout. It puzzled me how they were getting into the Harem. Then I thought about the young concubines and their passion for cucumbers, which I remembered seemed to have started at about the same time as the Harem became infested with peris. Now, the cucumber I have always thought is a rather dull vegetable. It has very little flavour. Is that not so? It is pale and watery with just a taint of bitterness. Therefore I was suspicious of the passion of the young ladies for this dull-seeming vegetable and once again I was right to be so.’

Emerald paused to ensure he had his hearers’ full attention.

‘The next time a consignment of cucumbers was delivered into the Harem, I pounced on them and took them into my rooms where you have been, and, on cutting a cucumber in half with my scimitar, I discovered that its centre had indeed been hollowed out and there, in the hollow, lay a sleeping peri. I brought my scimitar down once more and cut her and her vegetable chamber into tiny pieces. The next cucumber was the same. Each and every one had been cunningly hollowed out so that it could serve as a comfortable chamber for the peri who was in this manner smuggled into the Harem. So I started to work through the rest of the cucumbers with my sword, until the floor of my little room was awash with little bits of cucumber and severed limbs of peris. I gave orders that, from then on, cucumber would only be allowed into the Harem after having been thoroughly diced first. There was then naturally a problem with — ’

Emerald broke off in mid-sentence. His eyes grew wide and he shot out an arm and pointed with a trembling finger.

‘A peri! I see a peri! In that drain over there — the one that is blocked with leaves. If you hurry, you may catch it, but I believe the little creature must be trapped in the drain.’

Anadil and Perizade hurried over to the drain. Orkhan would have followed them, but Emerald seized him by the arm.

‘Why am I telling you the story of my long struggle with the peris? For the mere pleasure of telling stories? I think not. Everyone knows that nothing is more important for a story than that it should have an uplifting moral. A story must have a message and the message of my story was destined for your ears alone… for I see you walking so dociley between those two women, following wherever Anadil takes you, as if you were a little lamb that she had on a lead. Beware of going where Anadil wants to take you! It does not have to be like that. I told my story in order to show you that anyone can take their destiny into their hands. When I was young, I kept suffering the pangs of lust for women. But I did something about it and arranged to have my prick and balls cut off. My problem was solved. When I discovered that the Harem was crawling with peris, did I lie down and let them crawl all over me too? I did not! And when I found that underwear was a problem, did I let the concubines have their way with these garments? I did not! I tugged the knickers off their bodies and made a great bonfire. I recall that the little wisps of silk carried up tongues of flame to float in the air, before descending as black rain… And when I discovered that the peris were being smuggled into the Harem in cucumbers, did I just wave the vegetables by? Indeed no! I took a scimitar to the problem.’ Emerald raised a declamatory finger. ‘The message of everything that I have been telling you is obvious. Be a man!’

‘I know where I am going,’ said Orkhan.

‘I hope so,’ said Emerald.

The two women rejoined them. Perizade looked disappointed, Anadil looked doubtful.

‘You found nothing?’ asked Emerald. ‘My mind and my eyes must have been wandering. It must have been the shadow of a leaf. It could not have been a peri, for there are no peris in the Harem any longer. I will tell you how that is.’

And he resumed his story.

‘Although I now ceased to see new peris about the place, that still left hundreds of the little folk already in the Harem. What was to be done about them? I went to the Harem’s library and there I consulted The Perfumed Battlefield and the chapter on ‘The Sexual Uses of Domestic Pets’. Having done so, I sent the Agha of the Janissaries to the Animal Market and he came back with three fine Persian cats. I set these cats to hunting peris. Ah, those cats certainly loved their work! I would be sitting quietly in my room with a cat on my lap and not a peri to be seen or heard, as far as I was concerned, but then I would feel and see the cat crouching low on my lap with its spine arching and rippling and it ears pressed back. A moment later, it would shoot off me in pursuit of the invisible peri. They were great hunters those cats and good against cockroaches too. The coming of the cats inaugurated a miniature bloodbath, as a tiny war was fought out in the runnels of gutters and on the tops of wardrobes. The peris had no chance. Early on they tried to charm the cats by playing with their sexual organs, but the cats would lazily let them do that and then, just as lazily, chew them up and so the cats grew fat on fairy meat. As the numbers of the peris diminished, so the concubines grew fatter too. They were sleeping better at night and rosy tints returned to their cheeks.’

‘I believe that I was present at the death of the last peri. The Queen of the peris was stronger and more cunning than most of her subjects and she had hitherto escaped the murderous cats. Azrael and I came across her in one of the flower beds that runs along the edge of the hammam. This Azrael was a rare blue Persian and the grandfather of the cat you saw in my room and he was the best of the hunters — indeed the Angel of Death. I saw the reflection of the peri Queen, sheltering under a rose petal, in the dilation of Azrael’s pupils before I actually saw her running amongst the shrubs and then trying to shin up the wall of the hammam, clinging to its rough surface like a lizard. Azrael had pounced and missed twice on the ground, for she was as fast as mercury, but, once she started climbing, she slowed somewhat and that was her doom. The cat swiped at her with his paw, caught her and played with her a bit, before eating her.’

‘With the peris gone, I was calm once more. The concubines pined somewhat for their vanished little friends and they hated the cats at first, but in time they came to love them — exceedingly so. Things returned to normal in the Harem and it was like a fever that had passed. But you know the saying, ‘Three things are insatiable: the desert, the grave and a woman’s vulva’. The next thing was that I started hearing strange talk about prayer- cushions.’

Emerald paused at a door.

‘Let us go in here. I have something to show you.’

‘Emerald, we should hurry on to the hammam.’

‘This will only take a moment,’ he replied reassuringly. ‘It is something to see.’

They followed the eunuch into a lumber room, full of discarded objects of pleasure — a couple of unstrung dulcimers, some archery quivers whose stitching had come loose, a leather mattress, some boxes of white crystals, the effigy of a woman stuffed with straw. Orkhan had briefly fantasised that the eunuch had brought them there to show them a prayer-cushion, but, no, Emerald brought them over to a table on which there was a model of a building — or rather of a group of buildings.

‘I confiscated it from the concubines,’ said Emerald.

Looking closer Orkhan saw that it was a miniature, wooden replica of the Harem. First, he found the Cage and the Passage Where the Jinns Consult. Then, having got his bearings, he found the porcelain pavilion, the chamber of the ice-pit and the zoo.

‘They had made it from thousands of toothpicks, in order to house their peris,’ claimed Emerald.

Anadil looked doubtful.