Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh by Magnus Irvin Robert Irwin

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.
    ‘They were going to lodge their favourite peris in these tiny buildings and play harems with them. But I brought in the cats, before its building was quite finished.’ Emerald sighed. ‘The peris used to piss in my eyes at night as I slept, so that I could hardly get the lids apart in the morning and I hated them as much as they hated me. Still it makes me sad to see this fine building so abandoned. I do believe that the girls were going to imprison some of the peris in these toy buildings and keep them there so that they forgot everything about the outside world. I think they were even going to use delicate little needles to make a few of the peris into eunuchs. I should like to have seen that….’
    Back in the corridor, Orkhan heard Anadil whispering to Perizade,
    ‘Emerald’s stories are ridiculous. Still, he is a great lover … even though the business with the chocolates is a bit messy.’
    The eunuch’s former sunniness had by now quite vanished. He was a sombre and silent escort for the remainder of their walk to the hammam.

CHAPTER SEVEN
     

A few more steps brought them to the Imperial Laundry. Perizade went in to find Orkhan a clean robe. He caught a glimpse of vast vats and mangles and of hefty women using great wooden paddles