Prayer-Cushions Of The Flesh (1999) - Plot & Excerpts
This is the sort of slim, unserious novella that a charitable critic might call a jeu d'esprit and a less charitable one a complete waste of time. The style has been aptly summarised by a previous reviewer as ‘Orientalist porn’, and sure enough the whole thing feels like an extended riff on a Jean-Léon Gérôme painting, perhaps this one:The Grand Bath at Bursa, 1885The setting is the closed world of the imperial harem in Ottoman İstanbul. Orkhan, a relative of the sultan, has spent his life locked away in a cage: finally one day he is released, and hailed by the harem girls as their new ruler. But he quickly realises that there is something more sinister going on behind all the sensuous luxury on display, and there's every chance he might not make it out alive.The approach is episodic and hallucinogenic, with poor Orkhan stumbling tumescently from one steam-room to the next, desperately trying to assert his authority over a series of horny concubines, bored laundry girls and mystic priestesses, who always seem to know a lot more than he does. There is a dwarf, there is crocodile sex, there is a voluptuous fortune-teller who practises ‘phallomancy’ and ‘vulvascopy’. There are Arabian Nights-style anecdotes, such as when the harem develops an infestation of those Persian fairies known as peris:They would clamber into the stocking tops of the concubines and ride about in this manner. They used to tiptoe into the girls' knickers and snuggle there for warmth and soft comfort…and, of course, the girls liked them being there for they would receive feathery tickles from the little creatures nestling in their underwear.Like sexy crabs.Irwin is probably the world's foremost expert on the Thousand and One Nights and has written several scholarly works on it; there are doubtless more references here that I'm picking up on, although I spotted quite a few. The scene where Orkhan is instructed on what to call the parts of a woman's body (culminating in ‘the Tavern of the Perfume-Makers’) is unmistakably modelled on the well-known Tale of the Porter and the Young Girls (where if I remember rightly the same anatomical area is called ‘the khan of Abu Mansur’).It's all quite playful and tongue-in-cheek, but you have to wonder what exactly the purpose is. (‘No purpose at all,’ one character says tellingly, ‘save my pleasure in the stringing of words together and in the telling of it. Must everything have a purpose?’) If there is a message, it has something to do with turning away from so-called higher concerns and concentrating on more accessible, earthly pleasures: Foolish people think that the ultimate mystery of life resides in the spirit. The wise know that it is found nowhere save in the flesh.This doesn't put me off Irwin: he's a very interesting and rather neglected writer with some clever ideas. However, this is definitely a minor work – though diverting enough for the few hours it takes to read it.
What do You think about Prayer-Cushions Of The Flesh (1999)?
