They went into a women's and girls' shop, a simple door into an old brick building with a sign to one side and the windows painted black. Ishmael had to wait outside with the other various mahram, the men suitable as escorts for women because sexual intercourse was prohibited between them and the women escorted.
Ishmael was not exactly in that category. He could legally have had intercourse with either Besma or Petra, had they been married. Ishmael, however, was a eunuch, having been castrated as a boy, just before he was sold. He couldn't really be expected to have intercourse with anyone and so was mahram as a practical if not a legal matter. Even so, Ishmael's master, Abdul Mohsem, was taking some risk by having him escort the family's womenfolk.
One aspect of that risk was visible just across the street from where Ishmael and the rest of the mahram squatted outside the women's store. Ishmael didn't know what the crime was, but he saw a group of mutaween, wearing their traditional brown robes, drag a man from another shop and force him up the street to one of the usual sites reserved for executing the judgments of the police for the prevention of vice and the promotion of virtue. There was a stout pole there, affixed into the cobblestones. From the pole hung a looped rope.
The man being forced blubbered and begged for mercy. It was not forthcoming.
First, one of the mutawa knocked the man to his back by a blow to the face. Then two others gathered up his legs and lifted them. A fourth dropped a loop of rope over the ankles while a fifth pulled on the rope to raise the feet. Once this was done a sixth lashed the rope to a pintle on the pole. The man's shoes were removed, and the senior of the mutaween took a long, stiff but flexible stick from another and bared his right arm to the shoulder.
Even from as far away as he was, Ishmael heard the hiss of the stick. He could have been considerably farther away and still heard the scream of the victim.
The shop was small and the shelves and racks something less than full. Dust gathered here and there showed that the emptiness was not a recent phenomenon. And yet Besma had said that this was one of the better women's shops in the town. Petra assumed this was so, and really didn't even notice the emptiness of the stock or the dust where no stock lay. Her town's one remaining general store had had even less.
"What was that?" Petra asked, as the reverberating sound of a human scream penetrated the shop's black-painted windows.
"The mutaween," the shopkeeper answered. "They become more vicious with each passing day. And if you're a poor Nazrani minding your own business . . . I'm Muslim and it still makes me sick what they do to the Nazrani."
Petra gulped. She was both Nazrani and poor. Worse, she was owned. What would they do to her?
Besma patted her arm. "Don't worry," she insisted, "I won't let them near you and they wouldn't dare touch me."
Having had a chance to watch the household for a while by this point, Petra wasn't sure that Abdul Mohsem hadn't doted on Besma so much that she had forgotten her place in the world. After all, their burkas sat on a chair in one corner. Outside was a man who would escort them wherever they went. And she'd seen enough to know that Moslem women, if wealthier, were not even as free as the wretched Nazrani girls and women of Grolanhei.
She said nothing, though.
Besma turned her attention to the shopkeeper and said, "My friend needs two new dresses and a pair of shoes."
"Yes, miss. Right away." The shopkeeper measured Petra by eye, then went to a shelf and dusted off some cobwebs. She removed half a dozen ankle length dresses in what she thought was a fair match for size and brought them to the girls.
For the nonce, Petra was able to screen out the screams and sobs coming from outside in her wonder at the fine—she certainly thought it was fine—clothing the shopkeeper began laying out on a table top.
* * *
The actual beating was over, though the victim still sobbed loudly. Two of the mutaween left, while the rest stood around smoking and, apparently, telling jokes.
"Poor bastard," Ishmael said to no one in particular.
One of the mahram smiled, perhaps sadly, and said, "You haven't seen anything yet. Wait."
It wasn't long, so Ishmael saw, before the two mutaween who had left returned carrying a large bucket between them.
"Now it gets nasty," the mahram who had spoken previously said. "That's ice water. They're going to pour it over his feet."
"What will that do?" Ishmael asked.
"You'll see."
The two mutaween lifted the bucket and began to pour water over the bruised soles of the victim's feet. Within a few seconds the crystal clear water running off the feet turned red, even as the victim emitted a scream such as Ishmael couldn't remember having heard since his own castration.
"Does something to the blood vessels, the bones, and the skin," the mahram explained. "Regular water wouldn't do; it has to be cold."
"Il hamdu lillah, what did he do to deserve that?"
The mahram looked on Ishmael with something like pity. "You don't get around much do you? The mutaween probably demanded a 'donation' which he refused. That would be enough."
Ishmael, even though he thought this an abomination, also thought it very likely as the mutaween began circulating about the square shouting, "Donations for the defenders of the faith to continue with their holy work?"
He still had the dirhem he'd been given by Besma. When he dropped one in the cup of a mutawa, and got nothing but a dirty look in return, he decided that his feet were more important than a few bits of silver. He turned over all he had. Each tinkle of silver on silver was like a knife to his heart. That money was freedom money. And, yet, how much would the mutaween, who made a living from robbing others of their freedom, care for the freedom of a castrated slave?
There had been just enough money, after purchasing dress and shoes, to replace Petra's threadbare burka with a new blue one.
"It will match your eyes," Besma assured her, "even if no one but you and I and Ishmael know that it does."
Interlude
Kitzingen, Federal Republic of Germany,
11 January, 2004
Mahmoud stretched out on one side of Gabrielle's bed. He'd tried to cover himself partly with the top sheet but she'd insisted on full nudity for her sketch. Having moved the sheet, she'd stepped back, looked him over, then reached out and draped his penis at what she thought was an aesthetically appealing angle.
"Besides," she said, smiling warmly, "I like seeing you like this."
It was a strange thing to Gabi, what she'd come to feel for Mahmoud. She was modern and western; casual, recreational sex was no big thing to her. What she felt when she was with Mahmoud was not casual. Rather, it was—though she didn't like the term— something approaching sacred.