The Hoor’s Last Sigh
Ali Eteraz
Photo by Shirin Neshat
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We have created (their Companions) of special creation.
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And made them virgin – pure (and undefiled),
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Beloved (by nature), equal in age,-
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For the Companions of the Right Hand.
There is one murder I will willingly commit. So give me Gabriel’s guidance. Send for a winged stallion. Let me climb the seven rungged ladder to Paradise. There is one there I wish to entomb. I will bring my own scimitar. I will kill The Hoor.
Beautiful, ideal, alabaster skinned idol of men’s delight; delightful, virginal, dark eyed apple of the martyr’s appetite; cursed Helens of Troy for all the believers. Her sins are dual.
Her first is to have transgressed against love — against dirty, angry, dusty, earthly love. You see, the Uproarious One has not made this world, and these particular times, very easy for the believers. Where one is not engaged in proving his humanity, one must try and keep others from selling it to Iblis. Where neither, the believe battles Mammon and his younger brother Baal. He battles civilizational sleep and the insomnia of insecurity. Throughout this cavalcade of existential desperation and barely borne stoicism, there is only one thing which keeps the believer on his feet. Only one ‘pack animal’ who shares his load. Only one confessor who hears his sorrow. Only one soul who shares his smile. I’m speaking, of course, of the Muslima. I’m speaking of the Muslima who is ruby-lipped, wrapped in Chanel, but unheard in Arabia; of the Muslima who is brave and vociferous, alertly pulling her chador in Iran; of the Muslima who props on her head the entire village’s laundry and chases roosters to slaughter in Pakistan; of the Muslima who sneaks out Grameen loans and dives for crayfish before sleep in Bengladesh.
It is this Muslima, in all her manifestations, that The Hoor has transgressed against. We ask how it is that we have become unable to give dignity to our women, and the answer is because we have been wenching before their very eyes; because we have already bought our whores and found nothing reprehensible in this. What is the incentive for any man to his portion of the Earthly Eternal Feminine if he has access to the The Hoor in Paradise? Why bother to lay his spirit on the desert to keep the Muslima’s cracked heel from bleeding? Why drape her with protection instead of cheap cotton? Why, fundamentally, love the woman of the world at all; and as such, love life? No, The Hoor makes this impossible, and for my love of the Muslima I will murder The Hoor. For having had an appetite of the Muslima’s flesh perhaps I am a sinner, but in that pursuit a curious thing happened — I came to learn of her heart, which is sweet like pomegranates, and far more satisfying. If I should find myself in Paradise I will not whet my longing in a subservient Hoor’s dispassionate embrace. I will wish for immersion in the Muslima’s crooked smile. In her cantankerous elbow. In her happy knees. In her supined feet. Let Paradise be a celebration of woman’s inadequacy, because we men have been the greatest one.
Just as The Hoor makes impossible earthly love, she defiles the believer’s greater, more transcendental love. Is it acceptable when a man sits each day upon a measuring scale and enumerates his good deeds against his bad ones, then accounts for the “God’s Mercy” differential, and then resolves that he must “perform” (as if decency is an act), this many more good deeds to be with The Lovable? So, it is equally unacceptable that a believer aspire to Paradise based upon the pornographic lust for sculpted white thighs, of delicious aureolas, of edible lips. Since when did God become the greatest of the brothel owners? If He did, then do away with all talk of blasphemy and let us call Him pimp. I want none in Paradise who came to fulfill their ejaculatory impulse, unless that is the purpose of Paradise, in which case I will volunteer for hell. If it is the thought of an unearthly stripper that brings you to God, then be honest with us and make a great monument to your phallus and call it Islam; or, at the least, when we try to escape from you, understand we are not leaving Islam to become godless, just trying to be closer to God by leaving.
I have begun hunting The Hoor and will not respite till she is finished. Then we will gather together, man and woman, upon her funeral pyre, and take little pieces of her flesh.
And eat them like white raisins.
Ali Eteraz is the author of the prose work, Children of Dust, forthcoming on October 13 with HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins.