At that extraordinary moment watching the female donkey, however, he felt so beside himself, so aroused, that he rushed at her and penetrated her himself. She brayed under the thrusts of his powerful penis. Elias felt the pulsating muscles inside the creature almost crushing his glans. Suddenly a huge tremor shook his body as if it had been struck by lightning. He cried out so loud that the female donkey froze in alarm, while the male watched with drowsy eyes.
Elias walked slowly home. He knew for certain now that the abstemious Jesuit life was not for him. But he had no idea that two young women had been standing behind a pomegranate bush all the time, watching him. Moist between the legs and giggling, they ran home, promising each other, as they parted, to keep the secret to themselves. In Mala, however, such promises were the surest guarantee that a story would spread like wildfire. It wasn’t long before the news of Elias Mushtak’s amazing prick was circulating among the village women, and that very night he was seduced by Munira, one of the two girls who had watched him with the donkey.
He spent the days of the wedding feast in a never-ending state of exhilaration. He couldn’t get enough of women. So he went around in search of them, and as soon as his nostrils picked up that special aroma he was like a man hypnotized. Elias never found out whether it was their indulgence in meat, nuts, and wine that sent the women wild, or the forbidden thrill of an adventure with a sexually potent novice monk, but it was certain that he caught the sweetish scent more and more often.
The women laughed, pinched him, joked with him. They took him into remote corners and got to work without delay. Samia, the bus driver’s wife, worried about his health. She fed him pistachios and the spinal marrow of lambs, foods well known to increase potency. Elias could have done with something to dampen his desires down instead. The women were carried away. When he took them, they often forgot themselves and shouted out loud in their ecstasies. So what was bound to happen finally did.
The whole village was given over to the wedding festivities. So many guests could never have been received and entertained with food and drink in a single house. Every corner of the Mushtaks’ entire property was stuffed with provisions. Lambs and calves stood crammed together in their pens, quantities of different beverages were stacked on top of each other. Every day, at six in the morning, carts brought fresh supplies to the churchyard, the village elder’s house, and the village square, where bonfires were built ready to be lit. Apart from the Shahins and their allies, all the people of Mala offered guests from outside the village as many beds as their houses could provide. Hundreds still had to sleep out in the open, but the nights were mild, and apart from three or four cases of painful but harmless scorpion stings there was nothing wrong with that. Moreover, the mood remained extremely harmonious in spite of the crowds and the huge quantities of spirits and wine that they imbibed, and if George Mushtak hadn’t had his strange accident on the penultimate evening everyone would gone home with the happiest of memories.
That evening he was going back and forth between his own property, the churchyard, the village elder’s house, and the village square. He seemed a different man, affable to everyone. He said goodbye almost affectionately to those who were setting off that night. Suddenly he saw that the guests in the churchyard had run short of arrack. He decided to fetch them two canisters each containing five litres of arrack himself. His house wasn’t far off, and he also felt strong pressure in his bladder, so he could kill two birds with one stone.
He took two canisters of arrack from the stores, put them down a little way to one side of the courtyard, which was full of guests, and went to the earth closet on the other side of the yard. The long tool shed divided the grounds of the property into two, the front half ornamental, with flowers in containers, fountains, arcades, and benches to sit on, the back half devoted to the farm. There was an earth closet for the farm hands here, a rather better one for the master of the house and his family, a large stable, a sheep pen, a granary, and a kennel for the dogs.
After only a couple of steps he heard the first scream, but he thought he had simply imagined it, or else it came from the guests celebrating in his yard. He went on, lit the oil lamp in the little room with the earth closet, undid his flies and directed his stream of urine into the closet. Suddenly he heard the scream again. Mushtak paused. He listened, and a terrible fear took hold of him. It was a woman’s scream, and it came from the nearby granary where wheat and barley were stored in dry lofts. For a moment the old man thought it was his daughter Malake’s voice, and his blood boiled with anger. But then he remembered that she wasn’t there any more, and smiled. The woman screamed again.
“Let’s have no more of this,” he growled, hurrying out. Breathlessly, he tried to open the granary door, but it was bolted on the inside. Looking up, he saw that there was a window open on the upper floor: the window of the drying chamber where the clean jute sacks were stored. Now he heard the woman whimpering up there, repeating again and again, gasping for breath, “You’ll kill me yet!”
Mushtak looked around and found a ladder. It was one of the heavy kind made of steel tubing. He put it against the wall without a sound and quickly climbed up. His eyes were flashing fire; he was so agitated that he could hardly breathe. When he reached the window four metres up, and was about to haul himself through it, he froze at the sight that met his eyes. The room was dark, but light from the three tall lamps illuminating the inner courtyard came through the open window. In the lamplight he saw someone thrusting into a woman again and again. Although he could see nothing of the man but his back, his bare buttocks, and his mighty member, the sheer extent of the penis told him it was Elias. The woman was laughing and screaming at the same time.
Later, no one could say exactly what happened next, not even Mushtak himself, let alone the terrified couple in the drying chamber.
“You damn son of a whore,” he cried, and perhaps he was about to fall on both of them, hit his son, or turn away in disgust to avoid the sight of that terrible prick. He may have tried to do all those things at the same moment, with the result that he suddenly found himself lying in the paved yard below with a broken leg. Elias hurried down, and Nasibe, widow of the butcher Tuma, the first man to die in the siege, ran ahead to the wedding guests, where she cried out the news that quite by chance, she had seen George Mushtak lying on the ground as she was on her way to the earth closet.
The festivities came to an abrupt end. No one felt like singing and dancing any more. A heavy silence fell on the village. Guests took their leave of Salman, who stood at the gate outside the house and wouldn’t let anyone but old Dr. Talani disturb his father. The doctor had reassured the family at once, telling them their father was strong enough to be getting around as usual in three months’ time. But the festive spirit was gone.
Hanan the bride became nurse at the morose old man’s bedside that night, and she remained his nurse until the last day of his life, sixteen years later. For even when his leg was better he took special pleasure in having her care for him. As for Hanan herself, he repelled her, and she nursed him with silent hatred. But old Mushtak never noticed.
On the evening of the accident he absolutely refused to see Elias, and over the next few days he cursed the devil every time his youngest son entered the room. The watchful Salman didn’t fail to notice, and asked his father why, but Mushtak gave no answer.
Only when Salman took his brother to the stable on the day before he was due to leave early and whipped him did Elias begin telling the true story. Then Salman stopped beating him and started to laugh.