The Haj - Leon Uris [51]
Ibrahim had gotten rid of the children for the occasion. He took Ramiza into the bedroom, which was inundated with incense and shimmering light. She had never seen a bedstead before, nor a room like this.
Ramiza turned her head and giggled as she swayed between nervousness and curiosity. She dared a peek out of the side of her eye as Ibrahim lifted his robe and flung it aside. This was the moment that every woman waited for. From the time she was a little girl, talk of the moment of her husband revealing himself dominated all other conversation among the women. She peeked again and her eyes widened and her lips parted as she gaped at the thing between his legs. All her life it had been pounded into her that she was to fear his instrument. Would that thing hurt her? He was holding it in one hand and it was swollen. He rubbed something on it with his fingers and moved toward her.
‘I want to see you!’ he rasped.
His hands were on her, clumsily pawing at her headpiece as he half ripped her bridal costume off. The top of her was magnificent, with skin as smooth as precious oils and ripe breasts bearing large brown nipples. She took off her long pantaloons and stood rigidly as he continued to stare up and down.
His member began to itch fiercely, causing him to pant like a dog. He seized her, wrapped his arms around her, and clutched at her as control fled. Ibrahim pushed her onto the bed and jumped on top of her, becoming wild, thrusting crazily, cursing for joy, grunting, gone. Ramiza could not see, but could only feel, this large creature cover her and crush her. She felt the thing tearing at her hard, poking ... through ... between her legs. She let out a cry of excruciating pain.
Outside they danced and ate at the threshing ground. Haj Ibrahim could not help but keep on using Gideon’s magic powder. It was sublime! It kept him up and going, over and over, sublime, sublime! He used the powder all night long until it was gone.
For Ramiza it was a long and hideous nightmare, just as her mother and sisters had told her it would be. Men were no good on the penetration night. Let time pass, her mother had told her, and you might catch a moment of pleasure for yourself now and then.
By daybreak Ibrahim was scarcely able to lift himself from the bed. For him it was a night never to be forgotten. The secret of the brown powder must have come from Allah himself. Ramiza’s bridal nightgown, crimson with bloodstains, was proudly hung where the mirror reflected its image into the living room. All the visitors could now see the manliness of Ibrahim. This night was the moment of truth to all the Arab families, for if the bride had cheated sexually it would have become necessary to have her killed by her brothers, for their honor and the honor of the father depended on her virginity.
There had been occasions in Tabah when a girl was not a virgin and her husband collaborated with her by cutting himself and allowing the blood to drip on the bedsheet.
Girls who had lost their hymens either by masturbation as youths or by some rough game or accident as children had to travel to Lydda to obtain a physician’s document of virginity.
There were those who were not virgins, and they had to dupe their new husbands. For a goodly price they could get one of the old widows practising witchcraft to sew up chicken blood in a breakable skin and insert it into the vagina so that it would burst on penetration by the husband’s finger or sexual organ. However, if the husband suspected, the blood could be examined by a midwife who was an expert on these tricks.
There was a percentage of girls whose hymens were elastic and did not break easily, and if such were the case the old daya, or midwife, was commissioned to break the hymen with her fingernail and then certify