Robert Irwin - Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh

Then sensing Orkhan’s apprehension and hostility, she continued,

‘I know that these last two days have been hard for you. But all your ordeals are going to end very soon. Trust me. Trust us. It is very important for you to be relaxed now. That is why we are going to massage you.’

And Anadil and Mihrimah led him to a large stone slab set on brass feet, surrounded by braziers of burning spikenard. They began with him lying on his front, while she walked up and down his back, digging her toes into his back as she did so. He felt his body buckle and slowly soften under her feet. By the time she had finished this exercise and clambered down, Parvana, Najma and Gulanar had clustered round the slab and together the four of them set to pummelling and kneading the body of Orkhan with their hands. Mihrimah stood looking on. Anadil, as she worked, kept whispering to Orkhan about how important it was that he relax himself utterly, that he feel himself to be soft and weak.

‘For the seducer always seduces from a position of weakness.’

The concubines rolled him over and the fingers of the women moved inexorably towards his groin, probing and exploring. His testicles were gently squeezed by Parvana while Anadil anointed his penis with a yellowish unguent. He entertained the fantasy that he was floating in the air, his body being kept up by thousands of tiny butterflies trapped inside him, which flapped and beat their wings.

Finally Mihrimah raised her wide sleeved arms, so that she looked like a great white cormorant about to fly. It was a signal that the massage could be prolonged no further.

‘There is just barely time to show you the Rapturous Chamber,’ said Anadil. ‘It will be best if you see it first, for the unknown is always so frightening, is it not? But if you have seen the place, it will be easier for you to envisage what is going to happen in it.’

Orkhan walked shakily between Anadil and Mihrimah back into the tepidarium. Here he was handed a plain white cotton robe which he slipped on. Then from the tepidarium they passed through a door he had not noticed before into a reception chamber, and without pausing, the three of them entered the Rapturous Chamber.

The walls and vaulted ceiling of the Rapturous Chamber were covered in mirror-mosaic, whose glass fragments were framed in intricate tendrils of silver arabesque. Hundreds of candles burned and glittered in niches set into the walls. The floor was surfaced in porphyry. Most of the surface, however, was occupied by a great pool of quicksilver on which floated an inflated mattress, covered in silk and tethered at its corners by silken cords. So silver burned on silver and it was some moments before Orkhan, dazzled, realised that a woman stood at the far end of the quicksilver pool. The woman wore a plumed turban and was sheathed in a tight silver dress whose long train fanned out over the porphyry. The woman, seeing Orkhan stare at her, made an exultant gesture with her raised and clenched fist.

It was Roxelana. Orkhan turned to Anadil.

‘Oh Orkhan! How can you be so boring and stupid?’ Anadil was pouting in exasperation. ‘Of course it is Roxelana. It just happened to be her turn to play the animal girl. We all take turns at the different parts. Sometimes I am the one who laughs; sometimes I am the one who sheds tears. Otherwise it would be too boring… though it is true that Babur seems to like Roxelana best. She, like the rest of us, is a masquerader — part of the Harem’s spiritual theatre. As a Prayer-Cushion, however, she is on a lower level than Mihrimah, so, after you failed your night of vigil with Mihrimah, we realised that you could not have been ready for such an exalted sexual experience and we chose Roxelana to take you through something lower and more physical. It was my fault. I thought that you might have been ready for Mihrimah, when clearly you were not. Still Roxelana probably gave you what you needed… ’

She looked as though she was going to say a lot more, but at that moment a ragged fanfare of shawms accompanied by cymbals sounded outside the Rapturous Chamber.

‘The Valide Sultan has arrived,’ said Anadil, looking apprehensive. ‘I only hope we are not approaching the final ritual performance too quickly.’

When Orkhan in the Cage had fantasised about life outside its walls, he had had no idea that the reality would be so strange. Together with Anadil, he passed through the outer reception room and emerged into daylight once more. The Valide Sultan, dressed in heavy black and red brocade and flanked by attendant concubines and eunuchs, stood waiting on the grass. This was the first time that Orkhan had seen her when she was not laughing. She stepped forward to brush at his hair with an anxious gesture. Then she embraced him, before pulling back a little, so that her hands rested on his shoulders, and she began to address him,

‘Beloved son, this is your mother’s proudest day of her life. Beloved son, you are now only a few moments away from encountering your betrothed and consummating the marriage which for so many years I have been dreaming of for a child of mine.’

Although the Valide Sultan faced Orkhan directly, she did not seem to see him. She was gazing into the past, staring at it with such intensity that she seemed to see everything that had vanished so many years ago in perfect detail.

‘I was born in the Harem,’ she continued. ‘And I have spent all my life within its walls. I remember that, when I was little, I had a toy model of the Harem, perfect in every detail, to play with. I used to put my dolls in it and have them play at harems, for of course I knew of no other world. I used to arrange weddings and wedding-feasts for my dolls within its tiny rooms. But there was one particular doll, which was an especial favourite of mine, whom I could not marry off for a long time. This was because I could not think of a bride who should be noble enough, rich enough and beautiful enough to become the wife of my favourite doll. Then one day I was inspired and decided that he could marry the Divinity and then there could be the grandest of all wedding feasts for such a mystic marriage.’

She sighed, reluctant to leave her memories,

‘That was long ago and all in play. Yet what the child dreamed of in play has come to fruit in reality today. For Orkhan, beloved son of mine, I have betrothed you to the Divinity. Even now the Goddess is hastening to your bed. Listen!’

Orkhan, listening, heard nothing save his mother’s stertorous breathing.

‘She is close! Very close!’ the Valide Sultan insisted. ‘Just now She is like a gentle breeze stirring in the tops of the trees. Then, when She comes to you, She will be like a forest fire and, finally, when you consummate your love you will be swept up in the flaming cyclone of Her embrace — or so it may seem to you. But who can describe congress with the Infinite? Here I am, an ordinary mortal, and I am trying to tell you in words about something for which there can be no words.’

Now the Valide Sultan really did look at Orkhan and her voice hardened,

‘I see from your eyes that you are afraid. Do not be so. You are only a day out of the Cage and you have already enjoyed several women. Yet the delights you have experienced with them will come to seem as nothing when the Goddess comes to your bed. You will look back on your first fumbling explorations of sex with women and, by comparison with what you have since experienced, it will seem to you that you were then fucking creatures no more substantial than shadows. Foolish people think that the ultimate mystery of life resides in the spirit. The wise know that it is found nowhere save in the flesh. The Goddess who is even now beginning to spread Her mighty thighs is the fleshly incarnation of ultimate love and all other women are merely the ghostly and reflected images of Her infinitely voluptuous body. She is robed in oceans and sunsets. But she will strip herself for you. Do you not like the firm breasts of young women? The Goddess has breasts which are larger than mountains.’