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

now his Harem seemed drained of all vitality. The girls were not even interested in the dear old Carpet of Mirth any more and those who greeted me on my rounds of inspection were often wild-eyed and sweaty. The Sultan also was in no better state. I noticed that his hands had become clammy and they shook slightly, like leaves in a breeze.’
    ‘Then one day a couple of the youngest concubines came to me and complained that they were having difficulty in seeing. They were afraid that they were going blind. I realised then in a flash how stupid I must be not to have seen immediately what the trouble was. No wonder the concubines were having problems with their vision!’
    Emerald paused for solemn effect,
    ‘The whole Harem was infested with peris.’
    Anadil snorted, but Emerald continued,
    ‘I believe that I am the only person in this room ever to have seen a peri. They are by no means easy things to see. They are like the jinns, but they are smaller. A jinn may often be bigger than a man and sometimes he or she will find it a tight fit to squeeze into a man’s body. But the peri is a different matter. Oh who can see the peris? The largest is no bigger than the top of my thumb here. Their appearance is as faint as dreams, but madder than dreams. And they are so fast, like mercury racing over the surface of things, looking for resting places, but never finding them, all the time in and out of pitchers, hiding in eyebrows, exploring the lingerie chests, dancing on pillows, swinging on cobwebs, curdling milk, scavenging in ants’ nests, dancing from one hiding place to the next, teasing the eyes of those who try to look on them. I could have a troop of peris dancing on the back of my hand and not be aware of them until I thought about it – the drumming of their feet being no more than itching on my skin.’
    ‘I know that there is the blood of peris in my family,’ said Perizade. ‘That is why I am able to tell the future.’
    Anadil smiled, but Emerald was stern,
    ‘Fairy blood is not a thing to boast about.’
    And he continued,
    ‘It was no wonder that some of the concubines were starting to go blind. The peris were so small and, besides, one needed to squint to see them and they were as nimble as thought. I have observed that sometimes for sport they would plunge into a perfumed bead of sweat on a concubine’s flesh and in such a manner they would travel fast as a quicksilver pearl down her body. A marvellous things to see – and all but impossible to catch at. A man could be as fast as a fishing cormorant and still find himself snatching at air.’
    ‘Now you,’ said Emerald, pointing at Orkhan, ‘I know that you really are a big man, almost as tall as the door of the room you entered by. But your image is a different matter. Your image has to shrink to enter my eyeball, so that I can see you. That is right, is it not? So it is that I see you as a little mannikin, no bigger than my eyeball. Nevertheless, not being mad, I know that you really are a big man. The peris, now … the peris are different. Their image neither shrinks nor grows. A peri’s image is always the same size as its actual body, which is smaller than an eyeball and so hard to see. I could always tell when a concubine was watching a peri, as her pupils would dilate so as to accommodate the tiny creature’s image.’
    As Emerald paused to puff at the hookah, it suddenly struck Orkhan that the blacks of the eunuch’s own pupils were preternaturally large. Emerald blew a few smoke-rings and continued,
    ‘The peris were as pretty as motes of dust caught in a shimmering dance in a shaft of sunlight, but I was like a man possessed, for, though pretty, they did such bitter mischief. They rubbed themselves against the lips of the concubines so fiercely that the mouths of those ladies scorched. They tinkled and hung upon the ladies’ nipples and milked them as if they were a herd of cows. They left little threads like snail’s tracks on the