I went into what he'd called the parlor and sat down on a low Persian divan that ran the length of the wall. There were eight other men there before me, all avidly watching the show in progress. Despite my eagerness to see Mama Macri and get on with my search for Anna Kirkov, I too studied the performer, aware from my Oriental sex researches that what I was seeing was indeed something rare and special.
The girl was naked, except for a veil about the size of a handkerchief which she used as a prop in her dance. Her body glistened with some sort of heavily scented oil. The perfume she gave off was extremely erotic. The tips of her breasts had been rouged with some sort of scarlet dye, as had her mouth and the lips of her clean-shaven “Mound of Venus." “Whatever this dye was, it didn't come off easily, for although she moved the veil between her legs briskly, there was no sign of it smearing.
This rhythmic use of the veil was what alerted me to what the girl was. That, and the unseeing ecstasy on her face which testified that she had transported herself to another world, a world of pure sexual sensation, told me that I was being privileged to watch the fabled performance of a ghaziyeh. Not an ordinary ghaziyeh, either -- although they are rare enough—but an ultra-special ghaziyeh who had been in the hands of a mubetzrat, as the effects on the quivering gateway to her womanhood by the manipulation of the veil soon showed me.
The ghaziyeh is a much renowned character in Middle Eastern folklore, although very few men are ever lucky enough to actually see her in action. The only scientific research done on her is the work of the famous French Dr. Jacobus done back in the early 1930s. The space he devotes to her in his five-volume treatise L'Ethnlogie du Sens Génital presents the sole authenticated report on the ghaziyeh in print8 .
The ghaziyehs are girls born into the only bona fide Gypsy tribe in the Middle East. They may originally have come from Spain, or from the Balkans; nobody knows for sure. In appearance they are Latin-looking, olive-skinned and aquiline of feature. Dr. Jacobus somehow managed to ingratiate himself with these Gypsies and was made privy to their customs and allowed to examine their women to study the physical effects of those customs on them.
The women he examined, however, were either extremely young, or extremely ugly. This is because the Gypsy band is a small one, and the more beautiful of its women are sold into brothels as ghaziyehs as soon as they mature. Even so, there are perhaps no more than a dozen ghaziyehs to be found in the Middle East today. Most of these would be in Egypt, Turkey and Arabia—the usual wandering route followed criss-cross fashion and with much backtracking by the Gypsies—and I would guess that the ghaziyeh I encountered in Kabul was a resale passed on by a white slaver in that area.
The ghaziyeh is intended from birth to be a dancing girl-prostitute. She is carefully trained to stimulate men with her dancing and to satisfy them with her body. And, once every generation or so, a ghaziyeh is judged by the elders of the Gypsy band to be so superior in both beauty and artistry as to merit the ritual operation of a mubetzrat.
The mubetzrat, usually an old woman, is the skilled surgeon of the tribe. It is her job to declitorize the extra-special ghaziyeh. But the operation the mubetzrat performs, and the post-operative training she gives the ghaziyeh, is quite different from the tebtzir performed on female Druze infants which Teska had described to me back in Damascus.
For one thing, the Druze girl is an infant and her sex organs haven't developed yet when she is put to the knife. The ghaziyeh is full-grown, usually at least sixteen years old, and her sex organs are not only developed, they are highly trained from many years of use. For another thing, the Druze girl is not deprived of her clitoris; on the contrary, the flesh around it is removed so that it will be rendered more sensitive and capable of unhindered growth. But with the ghaziyeh, the amputation is complete.
The mubetzrat removes its very roots. And when the operation has healed, she sets about training the ghaziyeh to compensate for the missing organ. Indeed, it is the purpose of this training—-which consists of daily manipulative exercises and the application of an herb mixture designed to sensitize the lips of the labia -- to enable the ghaziyeh to attain an even more heightened thrill of sexual satisfaction than her unmaimed sisters.
Whether this is successful or not, only the declitorized ghaziyeh knows for sure. However, the one thing that Dr. Jacobus did determine was that such girls require a long period of stimulation before being able to attain their release. This period, he points out, is one in which the ghaziyeh is plunged into an actual coma-—akin to a hypnotic trance in which her eyes remain wide open, but she is unaware of anything except her own body - and his description of this coma is remarkably similar to the moments of climax described by Kinsey's female subjects, although it lasts much longer. That she achieves sexual release from this coma is observable, since the release is explosive, gushing, and sometimes messy.
Thus, her renowned dance is no act of pretense designed to fool the customers. Naked, she takes her veil in her two hands and rubs it back and forth between her breasts until the nipples strain erect. Then she runs it down her belly and between her legs, pulling it through so tightly that it is lost in the cleft of her derriere cheeks and only reappears as she flips it up her spine and over her shoulders. Then her dance grows faster, her eyes begin to stare vacantly, and the veil is drawn back and forth between her legs so rapidly that it becomes a gauzy blur. Her breathing becomes rapid; her body—hips, buttocks, breasts—jerks spasmodically. A little rivulet of perspiration runs between her breasts to her belly. Her belly begins to roll and she bends her legs at the knee, moving her feet wide apart and continuing the friction with the veil until it seems that the sparks of her lust must ignite it. Her sighs become moans, then a long, drawn-out groan as she falls over on her back and thrusts her feet, impossibly widespread, at the ceiling. One last motion, as though determined to saw herself in half with the veil lengthwise, her passion spurts forth, and she collapses in a heap, satisfied at last.
Watching the ghaziyeh at Mama Macri's reach this point, I could almost physically feel the explosive force of the release she attained. So too, I realized a moment later, could the other spectators. As soon as the dance was ended, a large Afghan came out to stand over the prostrate body of the ghaziyeh to auction off her services for the remainder of the evening. The bidding was spirited. I was saved from the temptation of participating in it by the re-appearance of the Afghan who had admitted me.
"Mama Macri will see you now," he told me. "Come this way.” He led me to a small office, very businesslike, very un-Oriental. “Please be seated." He indicated a leather armchair facing the desk. "Mama Macri will be with you in a moment." He exited by the door behind me.
A moment later Mama Macri entered. She was a tall Afghan woman in her forties, dressed in a simple black gown, devoid of jewelry and make-up. “You wished to see me?" Tight golden skin stretched over the prominent bones of her face in a fleeting smile.