The Assassin's Song Read Online Free Page A

chattering, they swung to and fro, their dainty feet and ankles visible to the kneeling sufi as he looked up and out his window before getting up. He would smile, allowing his eyes to linger for a moment or two upon the sight of so much innocent joy. He learned that the house and the maidens belonged to a famed courtesan named Priyanti. The young women's games consisted of getting each other to utter the names of their husbands—which a woman was never supposed to do—using clever verbal ruses. The husbands, he presumed, were imaginary. Sometimes he heard them running about behind the wall, sounding angry; they were simply pretending to spank their lovers with branches.
    One afternoon as he lifted his head from prayer he heard a sound behind him. He turned around to meet the gaze of a short, broad, sinewy fellow, evidently a guard of some sort.
    “My mistress next door wishes to consult you,” spoke the man.
    Warily Nur Fazal stood up and followed. He walked through the gate next door and the garden, where the young women were still about, and was taken inside the house and into an opulent reception room. There he saw, sitting stretched out on a carpet, leaning against a bolster, the most beautiful and sensuous woman. Her hair was long and wavy, her face oval, her eyes the shape of almonds; her glittering bright-coloured clothes clung to her flesh, an ample midriff showed, and the sheer white veil over her head was not there to hide the face.
    “Does your lordship attend to the souls of women?” she asked with a smile, then added, “Welcome and sit.”
    He sat before her utterly mesmerized, as a bolster was brought for him.
    He understood roughly what she said, but a young woman came and sat behind him who spoke his language. Feeling nostalgic, he was tempted to ask her where she came from, but that would be impolite, so he desisted.
    “What ails you?” he asked when her question was repeated to him.
    “Can a woman attain union with the Brahman?” she asked.
    A cup of sweet, coloured milk was provided for him, and the young translator came to dab his wrists and forehead with an attar.
    Certainly, said the sufi, in answer to the lady's question, a woman could attain union with the Absolute, for which there were many names. In Arabia there had been a woman called Rabbia who had reached the highest spiritual status.
    She eyed him a little doubtfully; twitched her bare toes at him. They were delightful mischief-makers. He had not seen a woman as beautiful, as powerful. And she had only begun her gambit. They made some small talk.
    “Are the women of your country beautiful?” she asked.
    “They are, and so are the women here in Gujarat,” he replied.
    “You don't find us dark?” asked the dusky lady.
    “Dark but beautiful …” and sensual enough to tempt the saints, he thought.
    Were his senses dulled? Was it Nur who was talking? O My Master, he called out within himself.
    “Tell me, Sufi,” the lady said, “why, in the stories that are told, are women the cause of temptation and fall of the great men of God?”
    “But to reach union with God, a man has to become a woman in his soul,” he said.
    He recited a poem to her. By this time the young translator had left and now the fan attendant departed softly.
    “To be one with God, you have to be one with all his creation,” she replied. “That is what our great gurus have said.”
    “That is also what the great sufis have said.”
    “Even to love a woman is to love God?”
    He agreed. “Some sufis have even said that.”
    “Love is both art and meditation, wouldn't you agree, Sufi? It annihilates the self in a perfect bliss. What else is God?”
    And so she seduced him.
    That night he lay in the sweetest embrace in that heavenly abode; all his senses had been roused and satiated. As he awoke, a warm sunshine filtered through the gossamer drapes, a sound of singing came arbitrarily to increase his happiness.
    The prayer hour had passed; the auspicious