Free Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh by Magnus Irvin Robert Irwin Page A

profane sphere of sex to the sacred sphere of love. Orkhan listened with half an ear. He was admiring the flare of Perizade’s hips and the undulation of her walk.
    With her free hand Anadil tapped him on the arm,
    ‘I hope that you enjoyed your sex with the animal girl. From now on, until the moment of your death, there will be no more sex of any kind … That girl now was she as pretty as me?’
    ‘She was not.’
    ‘That is not a proper answer. You must list the ways in which she was not as pretty as me.’
    Orkhan dutifully compiled a list of compliments to please Anadil, but his eyes were on Perizade and his mind was elsewhere again. Something Roxelana had said made him apprehensive, yet he could not remember what it was. But by now, everything made him apprehensive – Anadil’s perfume, her reference to the moment of his death, the desolation of the Harem. In the distance, they could hear the eerie singing of the eunuchs. But the route they took, through narrow corridors running between abandoned reception chambers and lumber rooms, was entirely deserted. Orkhan was thinking, as he walked with Anadil and Perizade, that the way the women had been showing off their bodies to him and the relentless sequence of fuckings and floggings … it seemed to him as if the Harem had been conjured up out of the fantasies of the Princes in the Cage. It was as if the Harem was built of nothing more substantial than sexual dreams of the men who were its prisoners.
    They came to the Alleyway of the Dwarfs, a double row of kennel-like dwellings for the court dwarfs. Anadil stuck her head in a few of the kennels to see if any of the dwarf families were at home, but their rooms too were deserted and there was no one around to give them directions. Although Perizade had been in this place before, she could not remember how to get from there to the hammam. By now it was perfectly apparent that they were hopelessly lost and Orkhan could not disguise his impatience.
    ‘If I were you, I would not be in such a hurry to reach your destination,’ said Perizade sadly.
    ‘Perizade is right,’ said Anadil. ‘Enjoy the air and the changing scenery. It is a nice walk we are having’.
    But they had only taken a few more steps along the Alleyway when they found their passage blocked by a giant figure, black in a black robe and turban, who carried a scimitar and towered over the dwarf-kennels. He favoured them with an enormous smile,
    ‘Anadil, darling!’
    ‘We are saved!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s Emerald.’
    ‘Have you any chocolates for me?’ asked Emerald.
    ‘Not today, Emerald. Let us not talk about that now. This is your new master, the Sultan Orkhan, and this is my washerwoman, Perizade. We are all on the way to the hammam, Emerald. You can show us the way.’
    He bowed his head,
    ‘To hear is to obey. But first, perhaps, you will honour me by joining me in my rooms for coffee.’
    The suite of the Kislar Agha , or Chief Black Eunuch, was attractively furnished. They sat on low padded benches and drank coffee. The shelves above their heads were crowded with goldfish bowls. A bluish-grey cat appeared and leapt onto Emerald’s lap.
    ‘Azrael, named after his grandfather, the Angel of Death.’
    Emerald got a hookah alight and puffed at it, in between sips of coffee and conversation. But after a while, he put the mouthpiece of the hookah down and turned to look thoughtfully at Orkhan,
    ‘I was not born a eunuch,’ he said.
    Orkhan indicated that he had surmised as much.
    ‘I grew up a prince in the heart of Africa. Any of the women in our tribe were mine for the asking. Only my brother, who was king of the tribe took precedence over me. In particular, there was a beautiful woman called Rasya. I recall that she had haunches to match the finest specimens of our cattle. I used to lie awake sleepless, envying him his nights with Rasya. But one day the elders of the tribe presented themselves before my brother and accused him of