Equal of the Sun A Novel - By Anita Amirrezvani Page 0,5

me. His silence about my activities will be obligatory. For these services, I am prepared to pay a substantial salary.”

She named a figure that doubled what I earned. I felt suspicious: Why was the offer so good?

“By serving me, you will be at the heart of palace politics,” she added. “You must have a strong stomach to be successful. The challenges ahead will be severe, and if you can’t bear them, you will be discharged. Do you understand me?”

I said I did.

“You may begin your duties tomorrow morning here at my house.”

I thanked her and was dismissed. As I put on my shoes, I felt my brain prickling with possibility. After twelve years of service, my work at the palace had finally begun in earnest.

Pari’s thorough questioning and strange beauty made me remember myself as a man, not just as a eunuch. I was, after all, more than a mutilation, in my own eyes. But Pari must never know that I loved and desired the women of the harem in ways that no one would ever expect.

Prior to my operation, I had been lying with a woman named Fereshteh almost every night. The first time had been on the day that my mother and my sister, Jalileh, left the city of Qazveen, traveling by donkey rather than by horse, in so much disgrace that our neighbors dared not look at them. I remember pacing the length of my boyhood home, which had been sold. One cushion remained in the room where my family used to gather for afternoon tea; I perched on it and watched the snow drown the bushes and the fountain in our garden. That night, in a tavern, I drank until my old life disappeared in a fog. My new friends recited poems and were happy to keep me company while I paid for jugs of ruby wine. I banged my fist on the wooden table and called for more to drink, and then more, and sang heartily to every tune. After midnight, I stumbled into the fresh snow and discovered Fereshteh, who was still new at her trade. Her large dark eyes were revealed by the black chador that covered her hair, and she was shivering in the cold. She took me to a room not far away and advised me not to drink. In her arms, I discovered my body for the first time, and I sank into her the way a thirsty traveler in the desert thrusts his head into a spring.

Toward dawn, we whispered our stories to each other in the dark. Fereshteh had been flung out of her home by a stepmother who claimed that she had made advances toward her only son. Her father was long dead, and there was no one to defend her. I told her that I, too, was about to be evicted from the only home I had ever known. Fereshteh comforted me as only a tormented fellow soul could do, and in the weeks ahead, I wanted nothing but to be in her arms. I spent every night with her that I could afford. Ah, that was a time of such fierce pain and pleasure I couldn’t imagine ever experiencing it again.

In the days after my operation, any touch caused my entire body to ache. Pain became an extraordinary armor that repelled even the lightest physical contact so that my body could heal. I longed for the cessation of the pain, which seemed like the greatest possible gift. Once my body had healed, however, the mental torments began. In the morning, I would go to urinate expecting to handle my parts, and suddenly, my hands empty, I would feel as if I were falling. The vertigo was so great I feared I would slip into the latrines. Was I male? Female? What was I?

Then I would remember why I had done it, and I would steady myself, remove my plug, do my business, and emerge still shaken by my changed state.

I wanted Fereshteh, my only lover, to know what had happened to me. I tried to find her, but another prostitute told me she had left town. As time went by, a curious thing began to happen. My lips remembered the softness of Fereshteh’s tongue; my chest longed for the butterfly-wing beat of her eyelashes; my thighs tightened at the thought of gripping her hips. The beauties of the harem started to turn my head. They could show each other all their glories, and why not?