I
had always been intrigued by the quotation Edgar Alan Poe uses as an epigraph
for his poem, “Israfel.” It is
this: And
the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest
voice of all God’s creatures. —KORAN.” I got a copy of Poe’s works for Christmas when I
was age thirteen, but I didn’t examine the quotation until many years later. I
looked for it in the Qur’an, but could not find it. I did some searches and
couldn’t find it on any of the popular search engines. I did, however, run
across someone who had a much better knowledge of the Qur’an (I knew this because
he used technical terms I did not know). It seems that Poe either just made the
quotation up or got it from a source that misquoted it. I liked the poem, the
opening stanza of which reads
In Heaven a spirit
doth dwell
“Whose
heart-strings are a lute”;
None sing so wildly
well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars
(so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns,
attend the spell
Of
his voice, all mute.
Even
misquotes, however, can begin the imagination working and I came up with an
erotic story, “The Slave Girl and the Angel Israfel.”
 |
| Hala |
It
centers on a young woman named Hala. She is sold as a slave to pay a debt and
lives in a coastal city. She is a Christian, her owners are benevolent, though
when she comes of age, her duties include servicing their son, a thing Hala
comes to accept and eventually enjoy. She wonders if he will marry her but her
world is jarred when he gets in trouble with the authorities. To pay his fine,
or to perhaps pay a bribe, the family sells her. She ends up in the slave
market in Baghdad. She is sold to an older man and takes up his place in his
home.
As
his mistress, she has privileged status in the house. Very quickly, however,
she encounters a woman named Fatima, who bullies her. After her first experience
in bed with her master, she is lying down, contemplating, when Fatima bustles
into the room:
“Get
up, you lazy whore,” she said.
Hala glared at her.
“Up, unbeliever—and don’t look at me
like that or I’ll make you pay for your insolence.”
Hala got up. The woman led her to a bath chamber.
Again, she pushed her along, cursing her all the way. Hala’s anger flared. She
turned and again glared at the woman. She swung her hand to slap Hala, who
seized her fingers and sunk her teeth in them.
She bit down as hard as she could. The woman began
to scream.
“Murder!” she cried at the top of her voice.
“Murder! This kaffir is trying to kill me!” She bellowed and roared as Hala
clamped her teeth with all the force she could call up.
She heard scrambling and clattering. The young man
she had admired earlier in the day came bursting into the room, scimitar drawn.
The young man
who comes to the scene, named Suleiman, creates order. After he leaves, taking
Fatima, Hala realizes she has been standing there, naked as the day she was
born, all the time he was in the room. She thinks him extremely attractive.
Fatima is
disciplined and reduced in rank as a servant for her behavior. Hala is assigned
a servant girl who tells her Suleiman is their master Daroysh’s bodyguard. Like
them, he is a Christian but is not permitted to serve in the army or the police
because of his religion. Hala begins to dream of him and the two of them get to
know each other. Suleiman is attracted to Hala, but does not think they should
risk being found out and so will not become her lover.
Time passes. One
night she dreams of the Angel Israfel, whose heartstrings are a lute. She
awakes from the dream to find Suleiman in her room. He has not been able to
resist the love he feel for her and she joyfully yields to his embrace. They
become lovers.
During her time
in the seaside town where she lived her many years, Hala had learned to play
the lute from the daughter of English merchants residing there. She has asked
Daroysh to purchase one for her and he does. She tells Suleiman she will be
playing at a dinner tonight for Daroysh’s friend Kharki, who is highly critical
of him for hiring unbelievers, Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. Kharki will not sit with unbelievers, so
Suleiman says he will listen from within the next room.
That
night, Kharki makes an attempt on Daroysh’s life, hoping to take his position
working for the government. Aided by Fatima, he announces he will kill Hala first. Just then
Suleiman and some guards come into the banquet hall, kill Kharki, and capture
his henchmen. He later tells Daroysh that he knew to come to his aid when he
heard discordances from Hala’s lute. She never played discordant music. Daroysh
is grateful, gives Hala her freedom and permission to marry Suleiman. They live
long and happy years together. She never forgets her dream of the Angel
Israfel.
The
story appeared in an erotica journal called Oysters
and Chocolate, which is no longer published. You can read it, however, in a
special issue of Erotique that consists
entirely of my erotica—“The Slave Girl and the Angel Israfel,” and a number of
other stories about relations and the joy of love. Take a look at their website here.
For additional titles see my Writer's Page.
If vampire stories are your thing, a unique and unusual tale is Sinfonia: The First Notes on the Lute: A Vampire Chronicle, Part I.
For another multicultural story, I recommend The Sorceress of Time.
Happy reading.
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