by Alon Hilu
Aslan heard his crude bellowing and his fear increased, now it was clear that this man lusting for his body wanted nothing but to hurt him, to prick his delicate soul, and he ran faster, panting and sweating in the ceaseless downpour, but heavy-limbed, slow-witted Ibrahim the manservant overtook him and felled him and held him tight and his body touched that of Aslan’s, and he held this frightened bird, which had been fleeing for its life, and brought it to the seditious monk, who planted a lover’s slap on Aslan’s cheek while the manservant covered Aslan’s mouth with a slow, heavy, steamy hand and dragged Aslan towards the city gate, and save a few scurrying passers-by there was no one about to take note of them, as the rain poured and the thunder roared and the lightning flashed.
My happy friend, do make certain to write here, and trace the letters over again with a double portion of ink, so that the elders and the wise men will know that at that moment I cursed myself and my ragged, vacuous brain a thousand times for this escapade I had brought upon myself, for I did not know what evil designs these two had on me nor to what sort of place they were leading me, and only the manservant Ibrahim was kind enough to shelter me under the wing of his thick garment to ensure that I would not fall ill or take cold from this heavy rain and that I would be fit for the deed whose nature I knew not save from delusions of benighted desire.
They brought me to a small shack outside the city walls, a wretched hut covered in a loamy thatch that miraculously prevented the raging storm from leaking inside, and once there Tomaso instructed his manservant to wait at the entrance, to guard against unfriendly prying eyes, and the monk planted flaming, stinging slaps on my face and furled his fingers into fists and beat my nose so that it bled, and just as Aslan was about to faint, to slip away to a world of sweet sleep or death, Tomaso revived him and stripped him of his clothing and warmed him with a forceful embrace and told him, Aslan, my dear child, forgive your father for his actions, and he kissed one cheek and then the other, and this new game was more pleasant in Aslan’s eyes than the terror of blows that preceded it, and the monk removed his skullcap and his black mantle and revealed his tiny organ wrapped inside its foreskin, and they pressed up against one another and the monk petted Aslan’s head and spoke words of praise, not of censure, unto him, of forgiveness and not of insult, of love and not of hate, for they were momentary lovers, and he said, My beloved son, kiss my lips, and they kissed at length, and the narrow, lustful eyes of the monk drew close to those of Aslan’s and they were as two brown stains, flickering, and Aslan loved them dearly and his own eyes filled with tears, and he too begged forgiveness for his estrangement and flight, for he had not known of all the goodness and benevolence the monk would bestow upon him.
After that Tomaso cast Aslan prone upon the bed, spread his legs apart and dispatched his tongue to hidden parts, always hoarded from view, and lavished hot, loving saliva on his buttocks and along the deep, miraculous crevice running between them, and Aslan lifted himself, enraptured, to his knees and one sole desire was in his heart: to welcome into his own body the monk’s small, uncircumcised member, and he spurred Tomaso on to carry out the deed and the monk, now sprawled the length of Aslan’s backside, was perspiring profusely, his heart still pumping madly from the exertions of his sojourn through the city and the pursuit of Aslan and the walk in the rain and now this act of love in a shack, and he thrusts one finger and then another into the enchanted aperture, bringing a rounded burn of pain to Aslan’s body, but this pain turns to love and forgiveness and the fingers churn inside that sweet darkness and bring forth an aroma of burnt honey, figs and almonds, an orchard redolent of spring blossoms, and Aslan, wishing to consummate the act, caresses the receding foreskin and makes way for the tip of the erect organ, and outside the storm crests, rain lashing the ramshackle hut, threatening to collapse it from all sides, and Ibrahim, the spectator and listener, releases a sigh of pleasure, and Aslan feels the encroaching intercourse, first light groping around that precious, pain-prone pucker, then in a faster, more determined manner, and Aslan digs his nails into his hands from fear, for suddenly, all at once, without warning, he is filled with a blazing, glorious, sun-like presence, not that of a foreskin, or a penis, or Tomaso, but the essence of masculinity itself, which hurtles through him, spilling and pouring, filling the deepest chasms, healing his coquettish gait and delicate manners and tearfulness and feebleness and foolishness and haughtiness; all these are banished, vanished, dissolved, and Aslan’s body threatens to tear asunder, and he emits not one, not two but a string of shrieks, for that force now snaking through him threatens to destroy his intestines and burst through to his stomach and pierce his heart, and Aslan is halved like a man who has fallen on his sword.
Aslan’s shrieks melded with Tomaso’s repeated sighs, and the two men sprawled across a straw mattress in a ramshackle hut were as one man, one’s belly pressed into the other’s back, one’s organ inside the other’s body, their necks entwined, their sweat mingling, and Aslan allowed that organ to slip gently from his body, and he relaxed his rounded muscles and he was shot through with joy and pride over the act he had committed and the fluid now coursing through him and he craved to glance upon the monk and kiss his hands and thank him for the good luck that had brought them together.
Tomaso continued to lie splayed across Aslan’s back, apparently wishing to exploit to the fullest the precious moments of pleasure he had not known since his romantic involvement with the yellow-haired monk who had sailed back to Rome, and Aslan, crushed beneath Tomaso’s monkish weight, whispered a request that he might slide out from under him and dress himself, for the scalding cold of winter had hit his body all at once; but Tomaso did not respond and Aslan wondered at this odd silence, for he knew well, even from their limited acquaintance, that the monk was loquacious, always moving, never still and never staid, and Aslan extracted himself, wet with perspiration, from under the aged, shrivelled body, only to come face to face with the shock of Tomaso’s wide pupils, his minuscule organ, now feebler than ever, and his shrunken and silenced breast. My happy friend, it was none other than Ibrahim, with his slow brain, who comprehended, all at once, what I myself failed to understand, and he took flight and fled for his life, not towards the walls of the city of Damascus, whose gates were shut but for a single, narrow opening kept ajar for the latecomers to return home, but towards the west, to the tiny village from which he had alighted ten years earlier and taken on the performance of a host of duties under the monk’s patronage: the preparation of his morning, midday and evening meals, the laborious rubbing of the floors, the master’s erect penis in his mouth and on his tongue.
Only Aslan and Tomaso remained in that wretched hut, a powerful stream of water pounding the thatched roof, one standing frozen, his gaze bewildered, the other lying prone in his nakedness, his hand dangling over the side of the bed, his tongue extended, his eyes open wide in reckless abandon, the odour of sweat, semen and a hint of death wafting above him.
O Happy Friend, O Honourable Elders of Damascus, why did Aslan not take hold of the pocket knife concealed in the belt of Tomaso’s clothing, why did he not slit the veins of his wrists, why did he not throw himself beside the body to be discovered later, rotting next to the carcass of his momentary lover?
Drums began to beat in his temples: Flee, Aslan, follow after the dimwitted manservant, depart with no intention of returning. For it is enough if they know you were to be found in the company of the monk prior to his demise, enough if they discover remnants of the act of copulation that occurred between you, that same act now sharpening the openings in his body and passing through them a tremor of deep pain, for Aslan will be condemned to death for this crime, perhaps by hanging, perhaps by drowning, perhaps by strangulation.
Aslan emerged from there to return to the city, wanting nothing more than to cleanse his traitorous, loathsome body and lie down upon his double bed, upon the prickly wicker, which seemed to him now a most wonderful miracle, suffused with precious light, and he wou
ld like to remove his shoes and dispatch with his sweaty clothing and sleep soundly, sweetly, free of dreams, beside Markhaba, his wife; So flee now, quickly, before some evil eye beholds you.
But his swift return to the city and its walls, the turrets of the governor’s fortress and the Umayyad Mosque on the skyline, awakened in Aslan new thoughts of an evil and distressing nature, warning him with drums and cymbals against acting in haste, without consideration or logic, for the emissaries of Sharif Pasha will set search for Tomaso’s pleasure cohort, since the friar is distinguished and known throughout the city, his finger in every pie, a junk merchant who buys for a pittance in the villages and sells for exorbitant fees in the city, and who cures illnesses and diseases and expels the evil eye for a reasonable price and a wink, using holy Christian writings as incantations for trifling matters and remedies for nonsense, thus bestowing upon him great status and spreading his fame to all quarters of the city, and when the devoted emissaries find him and discover, through their evil means, the disgraceful path his soul took in departing from his body, they will surely bring Aslan to his deserved demise, and Aslan foresees, with sharp clarity, the oblong grave awaiting him outside the walls of the cemetery, no headstone, no name, no date, no last words of absolution and atonement upon it, only the smear of blasphemous inscriptions.
And with a newfound serenity at the thought of his own demise, which would come about in any case, one way or another, now or after many years to come, Aslan retraced his steps and entered the cursed hut, removed a knife and several small tools he found in the monk’s clothing and pouch, among them a soup spoon and ladle, and he took hold of Tomaso’s warm, roughened feet and dragged them, along with the weight they pulled behind them, outside the hut, allowing the monk’s skull to jounce again and again on the moist, muddy earth, a trickle of rain – remnant of the ceaseless downpour that had continued that whole evening – dancing upon it.
With the aid of the ladle and the blade Aslan proceeded to dig a pit in the damp earth not far from the Damascus-Safed road, and there were no tears in his eyes or drums beating against his temples, only that serenity, which he now thought of as the serenity of the grave; and when he came to understand that digging this grave might require hours and days of toil, whereas it was of the essence that he finish this labour before daybreak, Aslan could see no other way, even after second and third thoughts which only reaffirmed what he already knew to be true, than to dismember the body of this lustful friar into many pieces so that it would never be found, not by Sharif Pasha’s soldiers, nor by the gendarmes of the Tufekji-Bashi, nor even by the evil, satanic, destructive angels of the Jewish Quarter.
Your expressive brown eyes are wide and round now, my happy friend, my foundling, though you are aware and understand that it was not evil that coursed through Aslan at that moment but rather his desire to save his own skin; would that Aslan could be pardoned for his heavy sins, for here he is, his helplessness so evident, so plain to the eye, and he takes the blade and brings it to the monk’s skin, removes the appendages from the body one after the other and sends each to a different hill, food for the wild dogs and famished jackals, and the knife in his hand is suited beautifully to this new task, and he slashes the feet from the legs, rivulets of blood draining from them, and Aslan stomps on an obstinate bone and quells its opposition until he is finally in possession of the severed feet, each of which he hurls to a separate exile.
It takes Aslan another hour or more, toiling slowly, to work his way up the body of Tomaso, lopping off appendages – sunburned calves, one thigh and then the other – and he dribbles drawings in blood upon the monk’s skin and removes, with his hands, the intestines and lungs right up to the juncture of blood and muscles between the shoulders and head, and when Tomaso’s skull alone remains in his hand he has finished the job of dismemberment and is free to distribute the organs on the various hills: some he sends along a gushing river to wash them far, far away; others he buries under a thin layer of sand, leaving small mounds, and a strange happiness spreads through him for having brought the task to its necessary completion.
Last of all is the head, its eyes still open, the hair sparse and the tongue swallowed deep inside the mouth, and this head is not only stunned and decapitated but also strangulated, and Aslan kisses Tomaso on his lips, lowers his eyelids, places him on a pointed rock and punts him into the darkness, wishing him a journey of a thousand days to an uncharted place from which he should never return.
PART TWO
MAHMOUD
1
MY HAPPY FRIEND, on the morrow of an eve of dread and tears spent wrapped in the bosom of an unloved wife under a thick quilt, I awakened heavy with nausea to a morning of evil tidings, the persistent pre-dawn call to worship of the muezzin ringing in my ears while Markhaba continued her holy slumber from the previous night and the air was cool and clear, the sun brightening the rain-washed orchard in the wake of the great storm.
An irritating tingle arose from somewhere inside Aslan, from that vague area between the lower back and the thighs, and it was strange and bothersome, slowly spreading and grabbing hold of his body as though it were the cold, strangulating arms of panic itself, and these arms wrapped Aslan in the throes of a deathly, lucid fear, cold and deep blue as the spring sky visible just then through the window.
Markhaba rolled towards him in their nuptial bed and smiled her quashed smile, kissing the phantom phylacteries between his eyes, and Aslan thought at once, See how you beat her with whips and scorpions, abstaining from coming unto her, never bestowing your smile upon her, offering no caresses, no conjugal future, and she smiled again at him and then, for the first time, he looked into the depths of her face, a face on which was engraved that timeless sadness of exile and destruction of the Jewish people, wandering the earth from Salonika and Lisbon to Damascus and Baghdad, etched on her face in freckles and papules, and from within her weary eyes his own pale face was watching him, and he wished to share a quick confession with her, but then a sharp and incisive thought caused him to hold back: You must watch your tongue, Aslan, that you not incriminate yourself, that you not blurt a word of your whereabouts the previous evening or of your deeds with the monk and his manservant, neither to your wife nor to your parents nor to a single soul in this entire world; may Aslan remain placid, unlike his usual demeanor, may he conquer his tendency to tears, may he disappear into the masses and behave as other men, otherwise they will flay his skin with metal combs until his soul departs in great agony.
Aslan leaves his room, and his home and his father’s estate seem more dear to him than ever. He runs his hand along the clay wall of the two-storeyed abode, passes a trembling finger over its cracks, glances at the spacious garden and the rooms adorned with thick and beautiful carpets, and a bitter knowledge strikes him: not for ever will this home stand in its place, not for ever will the Farhi family and its ivory towers endure; nor Kharet Elyahud with all the Jews contained therein, nor the houses of worship nor the fruit stands nor the cobblers fashioning shoes nor the butchers chopping meat nor the stained-aproned slaughterers nor the small, stoop-backed bakers nor the cooks imprisoned in their kitchens; they are all destined for the same ruinous fate: to fall into the flow of the Black River, to merge with the viscid black filth and from there to shut their eyes beneath mounds of earth, forgotten for ever, no poet to sing their praises.
Aslan wishes to scrub his arms and body in a bucket of scalding water, for he reeks of Tomaso, of his scent of sweet and putrid ageing and his odour of death, fresh and pungent, the smell of the monk’s genitals strong upon his belly and buttocks, and Aslan squats, his eyes tearing as he is flooded with sadness for having given in to his tortured desire, grimacing as he recalls the monk’s stale kisses and filled with self-loathing at the thought of the man’s tiny penis and the foreskin rolled up to the tip like a jester’s cap, and he steals away to sequester himself in the bathing room so that no one may spy him and read in his expression the distress that has befalle
n his life.
Aslan stands above the gaping cesspit, and as he aims his organ to relieve himself of water he wishes he could castrate this limp, foreshortened pipe that has brought upon him the nightmare of the previous eve, wishes he could remove the pair of testicles dangling below that they might no longer disturb him with their destructive commands, thus permitting him to return to his days of roses of yore when his body was soft and smooth, his voice thin and pure, and his mind empty of evil thoughts; would that he could take up the blade sitting on the wooden shelf near the cesspit and slice from his body the organ of impurity and hurl it downwards, downwards, then shave the hair from his body and lather himself with creams and unguents, don a woman’s dress and live out his life patching and laundering the tattered clothing of men.
From outside the bathing room Aslan imagines he hears the buzz of voices, the sound of horsemen, loud cries, and it seems that his guilt has already been discovered, and he crouches in anticipation of being found and beaten, his brain a jumble of hallucinations: the battle, cries for blood, falling on his sword, shrieks and wails and lamentations, and suddenly a wide-eyed woman is screeching inside Aslan’s body, wishing to tear her way through his internal organs where she encounters, among the pathways of veins and arteries, the remains of a shrivelled womb possessed by Jewish men between their ribs, and with eyes wet with blindness and mouth agape and shrieks she demands to be born, to enter the world and destroy Aslan’s time-worn and familiar form, and Aslan lowers his undergarments and spreads his legs, terrified to discover the crack of female genitalia beneath his scrotum.