The Abyssinian Proof

24

Balkis never saw Alp Pasha again. Often she daydreamed that he came back to the mosque, that they met again, and she showed him his child. That he was so enraptured by his daughter, he offered to support them and they left the village to live in a small house away from prying eyes. But after what had been done to her, Balkis no longer dared to dream the pasha would find anything at all attractive about the girl he had once compared to a peach. She no longer had a life outside the village, outside the sect. She was a monster, like the eunuchs, who were known to be loyal to their masters to the death because they had nowhere else to go.

After Balkis had given birth to Saba, Gudit had come to see her. Gudit with her powerful arms, short neck, and broad shoulders that gave her the appearance of a man or a bull. Like most of the villagers, she wore wide shalwar trousers, but eschewed the bright flowered cotton of the women. The villagers treated the midwife with elaborate respect. Balkis had been afraid of her.

“Your mother is weak, Balkis,” Gudit had told her. “We need to prepare you to take her place as priestess.”

Over a period of two weeks, the midwife had tattooed enormous folded wings on Balkis’s back with ink made of wood ash, indigo, and Balkis’s own breast milk.

Needle in hand, the midwife promised her, “Soon you’ll be like a houri, a winged virgin, eternally pure.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Gudit,” Balkis said through teeth clenched against the pain. “I have two children. Even Allah can’t perform the miracle of making me a virgin again.”

The midwife frowned and explained earnestly, “Only a virgin can touch the Container of the Uncontainable. She must herself become the Container of the Uncontainable.”

“Don’t talk such nonsense. It’s bad enough I have to endure this.”

The day the wings were done, the midwife dressed Balkis in a cotton robe and served her a cup of bitter, honey-laced tea. When Balkis felt drowsy, Gudit helped her walk to the sacrificial stone behind the temple and bade her sit. Three strong women who had been waiting there held Balkis down, covered her mouth, and pulled her legs apart. Balkis saw Gudit take a knife, and what followed was a pain so intense she thought they had killed her. They wrapped her in her robe and carried her to her house. Through her delirium, Balkis thought she saw the midwife empty a bowl into the pillars flanking the door to the prayer house.

Balkis had lain curled in bed in a ball of pain, refusing to speak with anyone. She could keep nothing down but simple broth. They brought four-year-old Amida to her, but she didn’t acknowledge him. She refused her breast to the baby Saba, who had to be given to a wet nurse.

When Balkis finally kept down some bread and yoghurt, the midwife sat beside her and fed her morsels with her own hand, since Balkis was too weak to sit up. When she needed to urinate, she screamed and wet her bed. The midwife lifted the covers and pushed her legs apart. Balkis could feel her manipulating her flesh, but was too weak from pain and hunger to protest, although no longer too weak to wonder what had happened to her.

When she was alone, she reached between her legs and was shocked to feel sharp needles pinning her flesh together. She cried out with fear.

“What have you done?” she wept. “What have you done to me?”

Gudit, who slept in the next room, ran in and stood by the bed, her arms crossed. She looked proud. Balkis never forgot that look.

“You’ve been cleansed in the way of our ancestors,” she explained portentously. “You’re a virgin again.”

“What ancestors? What did you do?”

“It’s an ancient Abyssinian custom. We cleanse a woman by removing her extra flesh, just as boys are circumcised. To close you up, I used special thorns brought from Abyssinia,” she boasted.

“There’s a stick,” Balkis moaned.

“A reed so you can urinate and other fluids can drain. I’ll take it out when the wound is healed. You’ll see. It’ll leave just a small opening. Very beautiful, like an ostrich egg.”

“Are you…?”

“Oh, no,” she responded, shaking her head. “I’m not important enough. Back home in Abyssinia, every girl is circumcised, but here it’s the privilege only of the priestess, once she has provided for the succession. It’s shameful to let such an old custom die. We’ve been doing it since the pharaohs.”

When Malik was finally allowed to see her, Balkis saw that he was shocked, but she was too embarrassed to tell him what had been done to her. Too weak to sit up, she simply grasped his hand and cried, Balkis remembered, feeling again her helplessness. “Stay with me,” she had begged her brother through the miasma of pain.

Malik had confronted Gudit. “What’s the matter with her? Why is she so ill? Why didn’t you tell me? And why haven’t you called a surgeon?”

“It’s my duty to continue the traditions. You have your duties as caretaker,” Gudit responded smugly. “The initiation of a priestess is none of your business. There’s no need for a surgeon. She’ll be fine.”

“She doesn’t look fine. I’m going to get Pericles Fehmi.”

“That man doesn’t know how to grow a mustache, much less cure anything. I told you, I forbid anyone outside the family from seeing her.”

Malik stepped closer and looked down at her unyielding face. “And who are you to forbid anything?”

She smiled, showing a mouthful of stained but perfectly aligned teeth. “I am the only person alive who knows all of the traditions of the Melisites. You need me. She needs me.”

Balkis waited in vain for the surgeon to arrive. When Malik came again, she asked him why he hadn’t sent for him. Malik said that he had, but that Gudit had locked the doors and Fehmi had gone away.

“You look better,” he commented, gently sweeping a strand of hair from her forehead. “You must have had a bad reaction to the tattoo.”

Balkis realized then that no one else besides the old priestess and the midwife knew what the initiation involved.

“I know the tattoo is painful,” Malik continued, “but look, I have it too.” He turned, pulled down his tunic, and showed her the powerful line of a wing at the top of his shoulder.

“You fool. What about this?” She pulled aside the sheet and spread her legs.

Malik clutched the side of the bed, his knees buckling beneath him. “Who did this to you?”

“Gudit said that this was the initiation,” she replied through clenched teeth. “Now I’m ready to be priestess, but my life is over.”

“Oh, my dear God.” He tried to caress Balkis’s hair, but she jerked her head away. “I remember Mother being ill when we were young, but I never thought…”

“Stupid,” she wailed. “Stupid. The only way they can get the priestess to go through with this is not to tell her, to tell no one. That old bitch Gudit has all the power.” She began to cry.

Later that day, her mother had come to see her for the first time since the initiation, the bones of her neck so frail they seemed barely able to hold up her head.

“Mother, how could you let them do this to me?” Balkis had pleaded tearfully.

“Hush, child,” she replied. “I went through this. So did all the women who were priestesses before us. In exchange, we have power, honor. We alone are allowed to enter the Holy of Holies. To be in the presence of the Proof of God, you have to be pure.”

The ceremony of accession was held in the prayer hall one month later. Three animals were sacrificed on the stone, the blood draining from their throats into a bowl before they were butchered and set to grill for the feast.

The caretaker and the new priestess stood before the iron gate adorned with a weeping angel and led the congregation in prayer.

Balkis turned to face the angel gate.

“Behold Balkis,” Malik intoned. “Behold the Proof of God, Container of the Uncontainable. Behold the Key to all religions.” He lifted the cape from her shoulders, revealing the wings tattooed on her back.

She heard the congregation gasp and whisper.

He let his own cape fall.

Two winged creatures with their backs to the hushed congregation.

She unlocked the gate, beyond which lay the Holy of Holies, and went inside alone.