the slave women and bade them bind my feet with cords and then
said to them, "Take seat on him!" They did her bidding, upon
which she arose and fetched a pan of copper and hung it over the
brazier and poured into it oil of sesame, in which she fried
cheese.[FN#3] Then she came up to me (and I still insensible)
and, unfastening my bag trousers, tied a cord round my testicles
and, giving it to two of her women, bade them trawl at it. They
did so, and I swooned away and was for excess of pain in a world
other than this. Then she came with a razor of steel and cut off
my member masculine,[FN#4] so that I remained like a woman: after
which she seared the wound with the boiling and rubbed it with a
powder, and I the while unconscious. Now when I came to myself,
the blood had stopped; so she bade the slave girls unbind me and
made me drink a cup of wine. Then said she to me, "Go now to her
whom thou hast married and who grudged me a single night, and the
mercy of Allah be on thy cousin Azizah, who saved thy life and
never told her secret love! Indeed, haddest thou not repeated
those words to me, I had surely slit thy weasand. Go forth this
instant to whom thou wilt, for I needed naught of thee save what
I have just cut off; and now I have no part in thee, nor have I
any further want of thee or care for thee. So begone about thy
business and rub thy head[FN#5] and implore mercy for the
daughter of thine uncle!" Thereupon she kicked me with her foot
and I rose, hardly able to walk; and I went, little by little,
till I came to the door of our house. I saw it was open, so I
threw myself within it and fell down in a fainting fit; whereupon
my wife came out and lifting me up, carried me into the saloon
and assured herself that I had become like a woman. Then I fell
into a sleep and a deep sleep; and when I awoke, I found myself
thrown down at the garden gate,--And Shahrazad perceived the dawn