With grimaces and gestures, I managed to convey a question to my companions. Suppose that, in the manner of Venetian young men, they should go strolling about the streets to ogle the beautiful young women —how would they know if a woman was beautiful?

They gave me to understand that the prime mark of beauty in a Muslim woman is not the comeliness of her face or her eyes or her figure in general. It is the massive amplitude of her hips and her behind. To the experienced eye, the boys assured me, those great quivery rotundities are discernible even in a woman’s street garb. But they warned me not to be misled by appearances; many women, they indicated, falsely padded out their haunches and buttocks to a counterfeit immensity.

I put another question. Suppose that, in the manner of Venetian young men, Ibrahim and Naser and Daud wished to strike up an acquaintance with a beautiful stranger—how would they go about it?

That inquiry seemed to puzzle them slightly. They asked me to elaborate. Did I mean a beautiful strange woman?

Yes. Certainly. What else should I mean?

Not, perchance, a beautiful strange man or boy?

I had earlier suspected, and now I was becoming sure, that I had fallen in with a troop of fledgling Don Metas and Sior Monas. I was not unduly surprised, for I knew that the site of the erstwhile city of Sodom was not far distant to the east of Acre.

The boys were again giggling at my Christian naivete. From their pantomime and their rudimentary French, I gathered that—in the view of Islam and its holy Quran—women had been created solely so that men could beget male children upon them. Except for the occasional wealthy ruling sheikh, who could afford to collect and keep a whole hive of certified virgins, to be used one time apiece and then discarded, few Muslim men utilized women for their sexual enjoyment. Why should they? There were so many men and boys to be had, more plump and beautiful than any woman. Other considerations aside, a male lover was preferable to a female simply because he was male.

There, for an example of the worth intrinsic in the male—they pointed out to me a walking heap of clothing that was a woman, carrying a baby in an extra looped swath of cloth—they could ascertain that the child was a boy baby, because its face was entirely obscured by a crawling swarm of flies. Did I not wonder, they inquired, why the mother did not shoo away the flies? I might have suggested “sheer sloth,” but the boys went on to explain. The mother liked having the flies cover the baby’s face because it was a male infant. Any malicious jinn or afarit hovering about would not easily see that the baby was a valuable male child, hence would be less likely to attack it with a disease or a curse or some other affliction. If the baby had been a girl child, the mother would uncaringly flick the flies away, and let the evil beings see it unobscured, because no demons would bother to molest a female, and the mother would not greatly care even if they did.

Well, fortunately being a male myself, I supposed I had to concur in the prevailing opinion that males were vastly superior to females, and infinitely more to be treasured. Nevertheless, I had had some small sexual experience, which had led me to conclude that a woman or girl was useful and desirable and functional in that respect. If she was or could be nothing else in the world, as a receptacle she was incomparable, even necessary, even indispensable.

Not a bit of it, the boys indicated, laughing yet again at my simple-mindedness. Even as a receptacle, any Muslim male was far more sexually responsive and delightful than any Muslim female, whose parts had been properly deadened by circumcision.

“Wait a moment,” I conveyed to the boys. “You mean the males’ circumcision somehow causes … ?”

No, no, no. They shook their heads firmly. They meant the circumcision of the females. I shook my own head. I could not imagine how such an operation could be performed on a creature that possesses no Christian candelòto or Muslim zab or even an infantile bimbìn. I was thoroughly mystified, and I told them so.

With an air of amused indulgence, they pointed out—pointing toward their own truncated organs—that the trimming of a boy’s foreskin was done merely to mark him as a Muslim. But, in every Muslim family of better than beggar or slave status, every female infant was subjected to an equivalent trimming in the cause of feminine decency. To illustrate: it was a terrible revilement to call another man the “son of an uncircumcised mother.” I was still mystified.

“Toutes les bonnes femmes—tabzir de leurs zambur,” they repeated over and over. They said that the tabzir, whatever that was, was done to divest a baby girl of her zambur, whatever that was, so that when she was grown to womanhood she would be devoid of unseemly yearnings, hence disinclined to adultery. She would be forever chaste and above suspicion, as every bonne femme of Islam should be: a passive pulp with no function but to dribble out as many male children as possible in her bleak lifetime. No doubt that was a commendable end result, but I still did not understand the boys’ attempted explication of the tabzir means that effected it.

So I changed the subject and put another question. Suppose that, in the manner of Venetian young men, Ibrahim or Daud or Naser did want a woman, not a man or boy—and a woman not condemned to numbness and torpor—how would they go about finding one?

Naser and Daud snickered contemptuously. Ibrahim raised his eyebrows in disdainful inquiry, and at the same time raised his middle finger and moved it up and down.

“Yes,” I said, nodding. “That sort of woman, if that is the only sort with any life left in her.”

Though limited in their means of communication, the boys made it all too plain that, to find such a shameful woman, I should have to seek among the Christian women resident in Acre. Not that I should have to seek very strenuously, for there were many of those sluts. I had only to go—they pointed—to that building directly across the market square we stood in at that moment.

I said angrily, “That is a convent! A house of Christian nuns!”

They shrugged and stroked imaginary beards, asserting that they had spoken truly. And just then the door of the convent opened and a man and a woman came out into the square. He was a Crusader knight, wearing the surcoat insigne of the Order of San Làzaro. She was unveiled, obviously not an Arab woman, and she wore the white mantle and brown habit of the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Both of them were flushed of face and reeling with wine.

Then, of course, but only then, did I recall having heard two previous mentions of the “scandalous” Carmelitas and Clarissas. I had ignorantly assumed that the references were to the names of particular women. But now it was clear that what had been meant were the Carmelite sisters and those other nuns, the Minoresses of the Order of San Francesco, affectionately nicknamed Clarissas.

Feeling as if I had been personally disgraced in the eyes of the three infidel boys, I abruptly said goodbye to them. At that, they clamored and gestured insistently for me to join them soon again, indicating that then they would show me something really marvelous. I gave them a noncommittal reply, and made my way through the streets and alleys back to the khane.

4

I arrived there at the same time my father was returning from his conference with the Archdeacon at the castle. As we aproached our chamber, a young man came out of it, the hammam rubber who had attended Uncle Mafìo on our first day at the khane. He gave us a radiant smile and said, “Salaam aleikum,” and my father properly responded, “Wa aleikum es-salaam.”

Uncle Mafìo was in the room, apparently just in the process of putting on fresh clothes for the evening meal. In his hearty way, he began talking as soon as we entered: