Equal of the Sun A Novel - By Anita Amirrezvani Page 0,175

on both sexes.

What role did eunuchs play in the Middle East?

They were enormously important for centuries. In the ancient Iranian empire, they served the kings in a variety of capacities, as advisors, sexual consorts, or even military leaders. A eunuch named Bagoi helped lead Iran’s charge into Egypt in the fourth century B.C.E. and was later suspected of arranging for the murder of his own king, Artaxerxes III, so that his son could take the throne. After Islam arrived in Iran in the seventh century and unrelated upper-class men and women were increasingly segregated from each other, eunuchs became increasingly vital as messengers, advisors, and go-betweens. For my novel, it was convenient that Javaher could travel easily between men’s and women’s spheres.

How did eunuchs become eunuchs?

For many centuries, eunuchs were usually brought to Middle Eastern courts as child slaves. In this terrible practice, children from other lands (such as India or East Africa) were captured by slavers, castrated, and sold to courts or to upper-class families who could afford them. Boys and young men (as well as young women) were also sometimes captured during wars of conquest. Mary Renault’s 1988 novel The Persian Boy imagines the life of such a captured eunuch, who is given as a gift to Alexander the Great, serves as his sexual consort, and falls deeply in love with him.

At court, eunuchs were educated to perform specific important duties: guarding the entrance to a harem, administering its operations, training young princes and child eunuchs, overseeing religious donations by the court, and so forth. Because they had no other family and no other ties, they were thought to be especially loyal to their patrons. On occasion, eunuchs were able to achieve high position, becoming wealthy and influential. For example, Beshir Agha, a eunuch from Abysinnia, was in charge of the Ottoman royal harem from 1717 to 1746. According to scholar Jane Hathaway, he “was arguably the most powerful occupant of that office in Ottoman history.” Most eunuchs were not that fortunate, of course, but it’s interesting to note that enormous economic and social mobility were possible.

Did men ever become eunuchs voluntarily?

Sometimes. In The Imperial Harem, Leslie Peirce tells the story of two Hungarian brothers who had converted to Islam and served at the Ottoman court in the mid-sixteenth century. After being informed by Sultan Selim that they could join his intimate household staff if they were willing to become eunuchs, they submitted to the operation. One brother died, but the other, Gazanfer, went on to have a distinguished career for more than thirty years.

In China, young men or boys also voluntarily undertook castration in order to make themselves attractive as employees. In The Last Eunuch of China: The Life of Sun Yaoting, author Jia Yinghua recounts that when a court eunuch came to Sun Yaoting’s village in 1908, Sun was so impressed by the man’s wealth and prestige that he begged his father to make him a eunuch. His mother objected, but one day when she was away, his father performed the operation using a razor and no anesthetic. Sun spent two months recovering, only to learn that the last emperor of China, Pu Yi, had abdicated. Still, he managed to serve the royal family and others for many years.

What kind of sexual lives did eunuchs have?

It’s difficult to say for sure, but in The Last Eunuch of China, Jia Yinghua writes the following: “Castration did not always deprive the eunuchs completely of sexual desires. Quite a few eunuchs had an obsession with anything related to sex and would go to extreme lengths to find substitute outlets. They enjoyed looking at pornographic paintings, had endless gossip about sex, and sometimes engaged in homosexual relationship [sic]. Sun Yaoting found himself attracted to pretty women. When first shown some pornographic paintings in Prince Zai Tao’s house, he remained sleepless all night with excitement.”

Apparently, a eunuch castrated after puberty could retain more sexual feeling than one castrated as a child. Some research on people with spinal injuries, as reported by Mary Roach in Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, influenced my thinking about the possibilities for a eunuch’s sexual life. Roach wrote about people with spinal-cord injuries who still have sexual feeling and even orgasms in non-genital areas; sometimes they even develop “a compensatory erogenous zone above the level of their injury.” This research by Dr. Marcalee Sipski and others suggested to me the idea that some eunuchs might have discovered non-traditional areas of physical sensitivity and unique