I knew I was no saint, and I tried hard not to be a hypocrite. I could frankly admit that I, too, was susceptible to the charms of the boy Aziz. But that was because he was here, near at hand, and no woman was, and he was as comely and seductive as a woman, and he was freely amenable to being used as a substitute for a woman. But Uncle Mafio, I now realized, must see him differently; he must see Aziz as an available and beautiful and beddable boy.
I recalled previous events involving other males: hammam rubbers, for instance—and previous words spoken: that furtive exchange between my father and the Widow Esther, for instance. The inference was unavoidable: Uncle Mafio was a lover of persons of his own sex. A man of that bent was no curiosity here in the Muslim lands, where almost every male seemed similarly warped. But I knew very well that, in our more civilized West, his kind was laughed at and sneered at and cursed at. I suspected that the same situation must obtain in the totally uncivilized nations farther east. At any rate, it appeared that somewhere my uncle’s depravity had caused problems in the past. I gathered that my father had already had reason to try breaking his brother of his perversion, and Mafio himself had apparently made some attempt to suppress the urges. If that was so, I reflected, then he was not entirely detestable, and perhaps there was hope for him.
Very well. I would lend my own best efforts to help his reformation and redemption. When we rode on, I would not ride reproachfully far apart from him, or avoid his eye, or refuse to speak to him. I would say nothing of what had occurred. I would give no hint that I was privy to his shameful secret. What I would do was resume keeping a close watch on Aziz, and not again let the child run at liberty under cover of night. Especially would I be paternally careful and strict if we should come upon another green oasis. In such a place, there was a tendency to let discipline lapse, and self-restraints, just as we let our weary muscles relax. If we again found ourselves in that ambience of comparative ease and abandon, my uncle might find the temptation irresistible: to enjoy more of Aziz than he had already sampled.
The next day, as we proceeded once more northeastward into the ungreen wasteland, I was as affable as usual to all in the party, Uncle Mafio included, and I think no one could have discerned my inner feelings. Nevertheless, I was glad that the burden of conversation that day was taken by the slave Nostril. Possibly to get his own mind off his own problems, he began expatiating on one subject, then veered onto others, and I, at least, was content to ride silent and listen and let him ramble.
What started him off was that, during our loading of the camels, he had found a small snake coiled asleep in one of our pack hampers. He had let out a screech at first, but then he said, “We must have brought the poor thing all the way from Kashan,” and, instead of killing the thing, he had tipped it out onto the sand and let it slither away. As we rode, he told us why.
“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 Nicolò. 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, Mafìo,” 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.”