A Muslim Suicide

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200 15 My sleep patterns that night were much disturbed, and I spent several hours wide awake or else dozing off for a while. Whichever of the two states I was in, I kept on dreaming of spoken confrontations with different faces: Khalid and ‘Abla, King Frederic, Ibn Khalas the governor, ‘Abd al-Barr al-Baradi‘i, ‘Ukasha al-Khalti, the warden of the insane, Fayha’ and her aunt and uncle. While I could remember snippets of the conversations I had with them, they dissipated as soon as I woke up or became aware of my surroundings. Very early in the morning I decided to put a definitive end to my tossings and turnings. I got out of bed and proceeded to perform my ablutions and prayers before reading some texts of the ancients. I decided to resort to a walk around the house garden, in the hope that the earliness of the hour might refresh my senses and whet my distracted mind. Then I might feel more relaxed and be able to go back to the process of writing and revising my book, Escape of the Gnostic. As I was walking along a hallway leading to my destination, I happened to hear some groans coming from the room of Hafsa, the maid. If it were not for the sighs of pleasure and delight I would have assumed that someone had been wounded. For a while I stayed rooted to the spot, but, when it was a little lighter, I took a peep through the aperture. What a horrendous sight did I behold!! There was Hafsa, stark naked and behaving like some wild animal; beneath her lay ‘Abla, spreadeagled like some piece of prey. Without the slightest doubt, they were engaging in lesbian sex, thrashing around and grabbing each other for all they were worth, not to mention the snorts, grunts, and gasps they kept making. The whole thing appalled me, but I decided not to stop them and reprimand them both severely for fear of consequences that I could not even envisage. No, I told myself, better to wait; definitely better to wait. With that I hurried back to my closet in order A Muslim Suicide | 201 to think things over. I had heard before about lesbianism, but had never actually witnessed the kind of thing I had just seen. I now recalled that ‘Abla had alluded to the fact that someone else was keeping her constrained, but she had kept it a secret. Now this very morning I had discovered it for myself. Obviously Hafsa hated men, but ‘Abla was clearly being forced to do something she did not like. If not, then why had she asked me on several occasions to get her married? So now things were a lot clearer, and my earlier intuitions had proved to be correct. From now on I would have to sever this bond between the wild female beast and the young gazelle, indeed to save the gazelle from the wild beast’s clutches. The entire operation would require a good deal of secrecy, skill, and careful management. As the saying has it, success comes only from God! I spent at least half the day trying to overcome my lack of sleep, sometimes by writing and at others by walking around my quarters. All the while I kept praying to God that he would find ‘Abla a good husband. At noontime I summoned her and told her to go to her mistress and help her take care of her aunt; she should not return unless it was with her mistress. ‘Abla did what I told her, but Hafsa was there in the blink of an eye, her expression a tissue of anger as she glared in fury at both of us. Once ‘Abla had left, this squint-eyed harpy came over and gave me a blank stare as if to make it clear that she was fully aware of what I had found out. Then all of a sudden she let out a laugh, and her attitude softened. She asked me if I needed her for anything, and I asked her nicely to bring me some food to the misriyya.* I decided that, from now on, I would not eat anything she had prepared and cooked, even if I was starving. Late in the afternoon I left the house to perform the prayers in the Zaghlu Mosque close by the place where the legal counselors used to sit. There I found...