on the bed. “Give me a few minutes to get dressed.”
“How can you even think of going there without bathing first.” Farib kept his shoes and socks locked up in her suitcase. “You know that sexual sweat is forbidden.”
Along with blood, urine, feces, and the touch of an unbeliever, the perspiration produced by sexual excitement was one of about a dozen substances considered ritually unclean.
“If I was sweating last night,” Darius said, “it was because of the damn heat.”
But he wouldn’t mind a shower. On previous visits to Qom he had felt clean only during the scattering of religious festivals when he accompanied Hormoz to the ritual bath. Now he let Farib herd him into the tile bathroom that had been installed in the ancient house since the last time he was here. The salty water made for thin lather; but in fresh clothes, his hair damp against his ears, he felt as though he had shed layers of skin. Ten minutes after joining Farib outside in the predawn blast furnace, he needed another shower.
They walked alongside the muddy bed of the Qom River close to the Faiziyeh Seminary. The streets were clogged with the maimed, the blind, and insane seeking cures at the shrine of Fatemeh, sister of the great-great-great grandson of Hussein, the seventh-century leader of the Shi’ites. Vying for the pilgrims’ trade were miracle workers who tugged at Darius’s sleeve barking their qualifications to heal his head. Religious music blared from the minaret loudspeakers that had blasted him from sleep.
A legion of unattached women wound through the gateway in the high wall. All ages, sizes, and dialects were represented among them, and in common only the veil, and abject despair.
“Hookers,” Darius said disgustedly in English.
“They do nothing immoral. The holiest of men employ seegahs from time to time.”
Darius was sorry he’d opened his mouth. In matters of religion Farib was the last true defender of the faith.
“The Prophet gave them his blessing,” she said.
Seegahs were temporary wives, who, in exchange for a small sum of money, contracted themselves to a man for a predetermined period. The religious laws, even those proscribing capital crimes such as adultery, came equipped each with its own legal loophole, and it was the seegah to whom the Shi’a traveler turned for companionship in a strange city. A contract might run from an hour to ninety-nine years, but the temporary wife received none of the benefits of her permanent counterparts; any children she bore had no legal right of inheritance. The sole requirement for becoming a seegah was that the woman not be “addicted to fornication.”
In their own quarter of the courtyard were the mohalels, the seegahs’ male equivalent. A woman divorced three times by her husband was forbidden to return directly to him. Mohalels were available for a sexless one-night stand culminating in a quickie divorce that left yesterday’s bride free again to remarry her original husband.
The courtyard was paved with old gravestones arranged around the main building of the shrine. At a shallow pool in the center of the court the pilgrims made their ritual ablutions. Farib tunneled through the mob to plunge her arms in the filthy water, and to splash some on her forehead and nose. As Darius wet his fingers, a few drops landed on his cheek. More than ever he wanted another shower.
“I’ll see you later at uncle’s,” Farib said, and started for the women’s entrance. Darius watched her pass barefoot through an anteroom of the shrine’s golden dome. Mirrors in the ceiling of precious metals dissected her into cameos edged in silver and gold. She kissed the right doorpost of the tomb chamber, and lit a candle from another pilgrim’s stub. Swept up in the procession around the sandalwood sarcophagus, she joined her wails to the mourners’ din in the ecstasy that had eluded her the night before.
Darius stood at the men’s entrance under the arched portal.
“How can you even think of going there without bathing first.” Farib kept his shoes and socks locked up in her suitcase. “You know that sexual sweat is forbidden.”
Along with blood, urine, feces, and the touch of an unbeliever, the perspiration produced by sexual excitement was one of about a dozen substances considered ritually unclean.
“If I was sweating last night,” Darius said, “it was because of the damn heat.”
But he wouldn’t mind a shower. On previous visits to Qom he had felt clean only during the scattering of religious festivals when he accompanied Hormoz to the ritual bath. Now he let Farib herd him into the tile bathroom that had been installed in the ancient house since the last time he was here. The salty water made for thin lather; but in fresh clothes, his hair damp against his ears, he felt as though he had shed layers of skin. Ten minutes after joining Farib outside in the predawn blast furnace, he needed another shower.
They walked alongside the muddy bed of the Qom River close to the Faiziyeh Seminary. The streets were clogged with the maimed, the blind, and insane seeking cures at the shrine of Fatemeh, sister of the great-great-great grandson of Hussein, the seventh-century leader of the Shi’ites. Vying for the pilgrims’ trade were miracle workers who tugged at Darius’s sleeve barking their qualifications to heal his head. Religious music blared from the minaret loudspeakers that had blasted him from sleep.
A legion of unattached women wound through the gateway in the high wall. All ages, sizes, and dialects were represented among them, and in common only the veil, and abject despair.
“Hookers,” Darius said disgustedly in English.
“They do nothing immoral. The holiest of men employ seegahs from time to time.”
Darius was sorry he’d opened his mouth. In matters of religion Farib was the last true defender of the faith.
“The Prophet gave them his blessing,” she said.
Seegahs were temporary wives, who, in exchange for a small sum of money, contracted themselves to a man for a predetermined period. The religious laws, even those proscribing capital crimes such as adultery, came equipped each with its own legal loophole, and it was the seegah to whom the Shi’a traveler turned for companionship in a strange city. A contract might run from an hour to ninety-nine years, but the temporary wife received none of the benefits of her permanent counterparts; any children she bore had no legal right of inheritance. The sole requirement for becoming a seegah was that the woman not be “addicted to fornication.”
In their own quarter of the courtyard were the mohalels, the seegahs’ male equivalent. A woman divorced three times by her husband was forbidden to return directly to him. Mohalels were available for a sexless one-night stand culminating in a quickie divorce that left yesterday’s bride free again to remarry her original husband.
The courtyard was paved with old gravestones arranged around the main building of the shrine. At a shallow pool in the center of the court the pilgrims made their ritual ablutions. Farib tunneled through the mob to plunge her arms in the filthy water, and to splash some on her forehead and nose. As Darius wet his fingers, a few drops landed on his cheek. More than ever he wanted another shower.
“I’ll see you later at uncle’s,” Farib said, and started for the women’s entrance. Darius watched her pass barefoot through an anteroom of the shrine’s golden dome. Mirrors in the ceiling of precious metals dissected her into cameos edged in silver and gold. She kissed the right doorpost of the tomb chamber, and lit a candle from another pilgrim’s stub. Swept up in the procession around the sandalwood sarcophagus, she joined her wails to the mourners’ din in the ecstasy that had eluded her the night before.
Darius stood at the men’s entrance under the arched portal.
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