(They will be) on couches inlaid
Reclining on them, facing each other
Round about them (serving), eternal boys
With goblets, beakers, and cups (filled) from clear-flowing fountains
No after-ache will they receive therefrom,
nor will they suffer intoxication
And with fruits that they may select
And the meat of fowls, any that they may desire
And Companions with beautiful,
big, and lustrous eyes,
Like unto pearls, well-guarded.
(Quran: Al-Waqiah, 15-23)

“Do we get dick in heaven?” my best friend’s Aunt Maryam whispers to me during the ladies’ Quran study halaqa at the Jersey City Mosque. We are doing “The Merciful,” the chapter of the Quran where all the sexy virgin babes are promised to men in paradise. “Men get pussy. Do we get dick?” Maryam says. I snort laughing, but turn it into a coughing fit and cover it with the scalloped edge of my headscarf.

“Ecksi-kuse me?” the assistant imam says in his excessively Egyptian accent. “Does zi sister have a question, inshallah?” Dark-skinned and muscular, he’s sitting next to the visiting sheikh and fielding the questions. This session, for ladies exclusively, had been scheduled on the visiting dignitary’s agenda at the insistence of Nany Elhamadany, the matriarch of the sisters’ Quran group.

“Yes, brother,” Maryam says. Oh my God. I can’t believe Maryam is going to ask it out loud. Then again, it shouldn’t surprise me; that’s Maryam for you. “Do women get to have sex in paradise too?”

“Ecksi-kuse me?” The dark-skinned assistant flushes an even darker shade under his manly thick beard. Beards turn me on; it’s a Muslim girl thing, I guess. We are all sitting on the prayer floor after maghreb, with our legs tucked to one side under our caftans, at a safe distance of about three yards away from the two men—but still close enough to smell the sandalwood scent from the stocky body of the assistant imam. He sits semi-kneeling with his ankles tucked up under his butt, his pants straining against the posture. I try not to look at his crotch. Carpet. Carpet. I look at the curlicues in the carpet instead. Maryam, who’d come to the mosque straight from her factory shift and is in black jeans and a long purple turtleneck, sits cross-legged at one end of the horseshoe half-circle we form, a prayer rug laid over her lap where her legs are apart. Her bushy black curls push out from underneath the edges of the purple and black checkered headscarf she’s wearing.

When Maryam asks her question, her niece, my best friend Reyann, who’s sitting on her rump with her arms circling her bent knees, ducks her face down behind her knees. I’m not sure if she’s cringing or hiding a smile. Reyann is like that; half old-school and half hip, I never can tell which way she’ll cut on something.

The assistant imam leans toward the visiting scholar from Egypt and whispers something, his eyes downcast, his long eyelashes lying down and surrendering on his cheeks. He is unaware of the grace of his half-turned torso. Glory be to God. Carpet, not crotch, I will my eyes. Sex on the mosque floor, a flash fantasy, to try out tonight in bed with my brand-new husband, the packaging still fresh, yes. I memorize the curlicues in the carpet. Thank you, God.

The sheikh starts visibly. “Any woman who wants such a thing is not likely to make it to paradise,” he says drily. The other ladies titter.

“What about the aya that says ‘round about, boys of eternal youth shall serve them?’ What about that?” Maryam says. But the circle is breaking up.

Maryam lights up just outside, on the stoop of the mosque, and starts to pace at the bottom of the stairs while Reyann goes to get the car from the back lot. “It’s just that I follow all the fucking rules,” she says to me, inhaling her first draw. “I never had sex before marriage. I don’t screw around on my husband. And let me tell you, habibti,” she says, jabbing her cigarette at me, its end a point of orange light in the night, “it’s not because I haven’t had ample opportunity. This bod,” she says, using her free hand to tap her J-Lo jello rear-end, which the purple turtleneck falls over but does not entirely obscure, “this bod has had some opportunities thrown at it.”

Some of the ladies floating down the mosque stoop in their caftans glance at her, standing in the street emphasizing her booty. “Hurry home to your husband, woman,” Nany Elhamadany, the Egyptian grandmother of the halaqa, calls out to Maryam, clucking and wagging her head as she walks heavily across the street leaning on her two daughters-in-law, her beige caftan sweeping the ground majestically. But a smile is twitching at the corners of her mouth.

Reyann drives up in her tiny battered Geo. Maryam lifts the front passenger seat forward and waits for me to get in the back. I nestle next to stacks of old Azizah magazines and Reyann’s smelly sneakers and workout clothes.

“Drive to Hoda’s,” Maryam orders. She isn’t ordering, really; that’s just how she talks. What she means is, “After we just got the blow-off like that, don’t you girls want to go let off steam at Hoda’s Hookah House and Café with me? C’mon.”

Maryam’s only seven years older than Reyann and I, at thirty more like a big sister than an aunt to either of us. She danced at my wedding in Paterson, with a red silk scarf tied across her curvy hips, and pulled a reluctant Reyann out to dance with her. We’re Gaza girls, came over in the 1980s with our parents, old enough to remember Israeli soldiers beating twelve-year old kids with slingshots to a pulp, young enough to break in the English language for our use like a pair of red high-top Converses.

It’s Friday night and Hoda’s is hopping. We get an outdoor table so we can do hookah. The Hudson River flows nearby underneath the terraces of the café but is not visible at night. It’s a young man who comes to light up for us, with pearly skin and heavy eyebrows like Waël Kfoury, the Lebanese hottie. The band is covering one of Waël’s old girlfriend’s songs, Nawal’s hit “Layali.” The nargileh is beautiful, old blue glass with faded gilding and a tightly coiled red and purple pipe with fur trim. Our pipe boy has our coals glowing and Maryam picks up the water pipe and draws to get it going.

“Here—have one of these,” our gorgeous Waël lookalike says, handing her a mouthpiece. God be thanked for creating him for us to look at.

“Mmm,” Maryam says, “thank you.” She looks demurely down her purple and black checkered headscarf as she inserts the mouthpiece into the end of the long coiled pipe and draws again. “Him I want,” she says when he leaves.

“Ecksi-kuse me?” Reyann says in a mock-Egyptian accent.

“Fuck,” Maryam laughs, “I’d fuck him in a Muslim minute.” We all cuss in English; somehow it seems less bad than cussing in Arabic. She blows smoke out her nostrils. I love the apply tobacco smell; it reminds me of my grandmother, whom I saw for the last time when I was five, back in Gaza. My grandmother loved smoking the shisheh, but life under a military occupation doesn’t allow many evenings of unhurried pleasure. “Not for real, I mean. I wouldn’t do that to my Hamudy. I am not an adulteress. But just for fun. Fantasy time. I’d do the pipe boy. Wouldn’t you?”

“I’m satisfied with what I’m getting, honey,” I bluster. I’m still a newlywed, three months and counting. We just got to oral sex a week ago. There’s still plenty of territory left to explore. Maryam passes the nargileh to me. I pick up a mouthpiece and draw on the pipe several times in a row. I want to get to the good stuff.

“I’m not like you, Batool,” Maryam says. “I got married right out of high school. I been married thirteen years, see. You know how it was for me, with Abi dying of lung cancer and he wanted to find me a nice boy before he went. Your mom helped,” she says to Reyann. “And I like my Hamudy. He’s good to me.” She inhales and exhales with obvious pleasure in the taste, the smoke hanging in the night air like curlicues. “So, it’s not that I’m complaining about what I’m getting. But, you know, I just wonder. Like, how many different ways can you do it with just one guy? Is this the only dick I’m ever gonna get? In my life? This is all I’m getting?”

“I’m not getting any!” Reyann moans. “Twenty-three years is long enough to be a virgin, Aunt Maryam.” Reyann and I both graduated from Jersey City Community College last year. “Find me a guy to marry, you guys. Palestinian, so my mom and dad will be happy, but like, a cool guy, too.”

“You ladies ready?” The waiter is fortysomething, broad-shouldered, cleanshaven, crinkly smile, Rajiv Gandhi-esque in face and physique. Maryam kicks me under the table.

“We are so ready, uyooni,” Maryam says. Rajiv smiles at her winsomely. She orders a fruit salad with two varieties of melon and three kinds of berries. I’m having mint tea with three sugars, and a piece of knafeh. Reyann orders kibbeh, the kind shaped like fat cigars. “I need meat,” she sighs.

“You do, uyooni,” I say, taking a very long, satisfying puff. The water is really bubbling now. The music is changing over to Western, Bruce Springsteen, Glory Days. “I hope you get some soon.”

“Look at us,” Maryam says. “We don’t drink. We don’t fuck outside marriage. We are Good Fucking Muslim Girls,” she pounds the table on each of the last four words. People glance up from their drinks.

“Alls I’m saying is, we better get some damn dick in heaven. Along with all those glasses of tequila we keep passing up.” Maryam closes her eyes and draws. She’s getting that itty bitty buzz that the nargileh has to offer.

“What about those ‘eternal boys?’” Reyann says.

“According to the sheikh, the boys are for the men,” I state. I heard him saying it sotto voice to the dark-lashed assistant imam as we picked up our pocketbooks and shuffled out of the prayer hall.

“Come again?” Maryam says. “The girls are for the men, we get that. What the fuck do nice Muslim men need boys for?”

Reyann busts up laughing. She pulls the nargileh toward her, its long snaky pipe, its furry trim. She puts on the sheikh’s voice: “Zi good woman who pleases her husband, her reward in paradise is to be married to him forever.”

“Damn,” I say, “they don’t want to have mercy and they don’t want to let mercy come from God either.”

“Alls I’m saying, girls,” Maryam goes, “is I want to do our Pipe Boy in heaven. And that Irish boy I liked in twelfth grade but couldn’t date, Paulie Corrigan. And the floor supervisor on the swing shift, who always comes in when I’m punching out.”

“The black guy with the dreads, really? You go for that?” Reyann says.

“Mmm.” Even though you can’t see the river from here, you feel it moving when Maryam is talking, a black curl escaping from her scarf here and there around her animated face.

“Then can I have my freshman comp teacher from college, Mr. DePetruccio?” I say. “And the waiter. Don’t forget the waiter. In a sexy older man sort of way.”

“Him too, habibti,” Maryam dispenses him for me with a wave of her hand. “And Ricky Martin.”

“Ricky Martin’s gay,” Reyann says.

“I don’t fucking care. In heaven he’ll be straight for me. And George Michael, you girls are too young to remember, I want him lined up ready to go, gay or not, right there at the door of paradise.”

“And George Clooney,” I add, while we’re on Georges.

“And George Wasouf. With his beard.” Maryam is on a roll.

“Yeah but when he looked good—before the drugs. And JayZ. And oh—

the assistant imam. Please.”

“Mmm, dark chocolate. Yummy.”

“And Edward Said.” We’re Palestinian girls, we adore Edward Said. May he rest in peace. “But before he got sick, habibi Edward.”

“Yeah, in his Richard Gere prime, miskeen,” Reyann murmurs. “And I want Yusuf Taguddin from Sunday school at the Paterson mosque when we were fourteen. Remember what a babe he was, Batool?” She’s finally mellowing out on the nargileh. Wisps of hair are coming out from under her scarf. Her meat comes. Maryam tastes fruit of every kind. The knafeh is sweet in my mouth. The pipe boy comes around to make our coals glow orange and purple again and again. He and the eternally handsome waiter orbit, serving us. Beneath us a river flows. George Wasouf croons for us, and Bruce glorifies our days. Thank you, God, for nights of manifold pleasure. Thank you.

The Quranic epigraph is from a 1985 edition of the Abdulla Yusuf Ali translation, with a few changes. I changed his “youths of perpetual (freshness)” to “eternal boys,” following the original more closely; “couches encrusted (with gold and precious stones)” to “couches inlaid” because there are no actual stones or gold in the Arabic; his “flesh of fowls” to “meat of fowls” because when we sit at table we eat meat, not flesh.

Mohja Kahf is the author of the novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf. She is an associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Arkansas.

(photo courtesy of yaznotjaz)

Love,
When you speak with me
Do not just hear with your ears
Listen with your heart
You’ll find more there to satisfy our love’s hunger

Let your words caress your lips
As they pedal the air softly to find my ears
My heart
My soul

Search my eyes
Read them, novels await you
Delicately wanting
To tell their stories

Touch
My hands
With the tips of yours
Two currents of energy flow into one
Grow, as the stories are told

-Dina B.

by Mohja Kahf

They ask thee concerning menses. Say: They are a hurt. So withdraw from women in menses and do not go near to them until they purify. When they purify, go to them as God has commanded you. Verily God loveth the returners and the purifiers. (Quran, al-Baqara 222)

On the authority of Rizvana Bano, narrated by her niece Tamequa Jackson, that her great-grandmother who was a Companion of the Woman Who Loved Her Period, Bibi Moina the Truthteller (MGEH—may God empower her), said:

Behold, my period comes. I start feeling soft and melted and sexy a night or two before, and want to be held tenderly and protectively and made love to mightily, and then I want to be covered gently and left to sleep a bonus sleep that is off the clock, no babies crying no kids homework no dishes no phone calls let my partner take care of everything for a few hours. And that is how I know it is coming, and it feels like an old, familiar friend whose face I love. For behold, I love my period. (She said this latter three times.)

And verily the people said: Here comes bint khaltek, your cousin on your mother’s side, Um Kulsoum, that time of the month, Aunt Flow. On the rag. Ya muftra, ya mum, ya shakhakhet dam. Has the moon been sighted yet?

And she said: Yes the moon has been sighted; let the festivities begin! I’m driving my red convertible. The queenly egg unwinds her red turban. Roll out the red carpet.

And one said: I am not pregnant. What a relief. And the other said: I am not pregnant. What a sadness. And the Truthteller said: Knowledge that comes with blood, I welcome you. Help me to witness truth for my people.

On the authority of Rasula bint Nabia, one of the many ancient female messengers and prophets of God (MGIHM—may God invent her memory): A river runs through you. It is not unclean nor has it been created to give you pain, but to keep you tender. It is your moisture like tears are the moisture of your eyes. It is permissible to use it to fertilize your daffodil bulbs and rhizomes.

And the seventh layer of commentators added: This is what it feels like to have a tradition that includes words of love for women.

On the authority of the Mother of the Believers in the Wholesomeness of Women’s Bodies Equally as with Men’s and not in Instilling Shame for Being a Woman, and on behalf of the Campaign Against Keeping Girls in Ignorance:

Menarche is a time of joyous celebration. Prepare, prepare. Let her know in the years before. Onset, the first menses, a celebration at the threshold. My little girl, you’re becoming a woman now (but it’s okay, you’re still a little girl for a while longer too). You may not find clothes that fit you for a few years—retailers don’t listen to real girls’ bodies and makes clothes for this age, neither a little girl anymore nor a woman fully. My brave one, you’re on the cusp. Mother daughter luncheon. Father daughter ballgame. A gift for your milestone day. New rituals. Make ‘em up. Old rituals: The parents cook up wheat and sugar pudding and serve it all around the neighborhood to celebrate with sweetness their daughter’s first period. The ancient rites of goddess religions honoring our fertility (instead of fearing and covering it) survive through these traces of previous customs, in the chthonically old quarters of Damascus. And in many elsewheres.

And she added: If these words seem strange to you, it is because you have become accustomed not to honor and love women.

And the authorities of the Days of Rejection said: Here is a list of things you are forbidden to do. Pray. Fast. Make love. Make tawaf. Enter a mosque. With first blood comes first ban.

And She (MGSHQ–May God Strengthen Her Questioning) said: Why does God hold me at bay? Now when I feel like prayer most? Why does He reject me? I am in despair.

And the Divine Energy said: My Womb-ness prevails over my wrath. God said: I am al-Rahman. And, Full of Grace, the Mothers of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad said in unison: Rahma comes from Rahm. This is the feminine face of the Divine.

And the People Who Rejected Women for What They Are cried: You are not allowed to say that! God is neither he nor she—we say that every day to cover our tracks. But he is really He in our hearts. Jalal rules over jamal with us.

And the Man Who Loved Her But Held Her at Bay said: Wrap a garment around your waist. I must not touch you below the waist. It is a harm to you and a harm to me.

The Reliance of the Traveler said: ‘If a woman claims to have her period but her husband does not believe her, he may have sex with her.’ What a good way to inculcate the values of marital rape. Such are the base thoughts of men of the Days of Rejection and such are those, male and female, who revive their values.

Orgasm relieves menstrual cramping. Do not hold her at bay. But if she holds you at bay then do not push against her. Some women cannot abide to be touched during their periods while others need to be touched. Thus spake LaraLustra.

And the masses of people inquired: Are you fasting? Why are you not fasting? Are you praying? Do you have an excuse? Are you pure yet? Are you not pure? Are you polluting? Are you impure? Are you impure on Arafat, are you cut off from mercy? Can you finish your Hajj? Are you cut off from prayer? Are you forbidden in the mosque?

Forbidding is the first tendency of Those Who Reject Women, and fear is their favorite feeling: ‘If a woman fear that a drop of her blood may fall in the mosque, she is forbidden from passing through. She is forbidden, in any case, from remaining in the mosque while menstruating.’ —Reliance of the Traveler again, but only by way of standing in for many other texts that encourage the Forbidding and Fear of Women.

On the other hand we have, on the authority of Hawwa (Eve), mother of Cain and Abel’s sisters Pure (Safa) and Clean (Nadifa): It is unlawful to refer to yourself as impure. No human being is impure. No living creature is impure, not even dogs and swine. All living creatures have souls. (Note of the fourth redactor: The Malikis still hold to this Clean Souls Doctrine.) Therefore do not insult the soul placed in them by calling them impure.

And she, may her memory be blessed, added: Honey, don’t douche. It is completely unnecessary and disturbs the natural moisture inside. Lo, commercial douches have been invented so large corporations can profit from the fear of women’s pollution. And verily the corporations are the ones polluting the Earth.

And she, may her memory be blessed, pointed out in an aside: You can too swim and take baths during your period.

And Our Mother Hava (Eva) also said: One last thing before I leave. You may hear ugly stories about me in later times of darkness but do not believe them. I, your grandmother, who loves you even though you are yet unborn except in my hopes, tell you: Verily, your period is not a curse but a blessing. It is one of the Signs of God, so learn to read it.

And Hazrat Bint Hawwa remarked, commenting on the words of Our Mother, and explaining in a different way the refraining from namaz during menses: You do not need to pray during your period only because your bleeding is prayer. Not because it is pollution—they got it wrong, it is the other way around. It is prayer so powerful that people, if they knew, would come and touch the feet of the menstruating woman. It is the manifestation of the sacred role women are given, no matter if some of them choose to bear children and some not; for even those who do not bear children participate in the monthly rites. Contemplation of this can lead to elevated spiritual states.

And she (MSBGP—may she be given pleasure) said: Listen. This is what it sounds like to hear words that love women. Words that need no excuses and explanations. Words that do not make women curl up and die inside.

And those present raised their hands and said: Teacher, can I recite Quran when I have my period? Can I touch the Quran? What about a translation of the Quran? Can I pick it up if I am dusting the shelf? Can I recite a whole sura or part of a sura? Can I recite a whole aya or part of an aya? Can I recite a dua if I am in fear? Can I recite kul a’uthu bi rab al-nas if I am in need of it? Must I keep silent?

And the teacher said, these are the questions of women living in shame. These are not the questions of those accustomed to being honored.

And the women who were not in touch with their bodies but in touch with the Set of Rules made by heavy-jowled men asked, How will I know if my period is over? And they used to send Aisha pieces of cloth from their underwear with yellow streaks to ask her scientific opinion (so says Muwatta Malik). For Aisha was a lore-learned woman. And they used to light lanterns in the desert night to check their underwear (Muwatta Malik). She Who Knew Her Own Body said, If they but knew! Lanterns and literalism. It’s over when your body tells you it’s over. Learn to read your own signs.

And Rabia al-Milwaukeeya said: My open root chakra helps me to perform my work at a deeper level. Yes of course I can still do math on the rag. Maududi claims I cannot count change or think straight during menses (in Purdah and the Status of Woman in Islam). May God reincarnate him as a tampon for spreading such half-truths and disrespecting women’s bodies and minds. I can do rocket science or keep planes from crashing into each other or grade papers or judge court cases if it is my job. Our cycles do not cause incompetence in the work world; it’s the other way around: The rigid work world needs to become more fluid, better geared toward human cycles, male and female, before it destroys the Earth and its Rivers.

And LaDawna al-Muslimah Bint Barbara al-Chicagoweeya said: This intensity makes me impatient. Give me space to be this vulnerable or I will bite your head off. My vulnerability is part of who I am. I am learning to wield my blessings gracefully. This is a gift I will share with you, if your arms are open.

And in another narration al-Chicagoweeya said: I need room to feel this way, so back off. Come not near to me. But don’t go too far, and bring leafy greens back from the grocery when you come back because my body craves to restock its nutrients. Verily, I love the Patient Returners.

And at the end of it all, the Truthteller (MSBSWDA—May She Be Showered with Divine Attributes) said: I ache. From my inner labia to my nipples to that place I can’t reach in the middle of my back between the shoulder blades. A massage there would be nice now. Hurts hurt more and loves love more. I embrace this productive pain and the insights given me when I look on the world from within it. If I feel like crying, I cry. For all that is going down in the world, for the unfulfilled promises that are dissolving and bleeding out as I sit here. For all the men and boys gunned down whose bleeding goes unheeded. For women and girls raped and knifed and battered and silenced about it, for children growing thinner, beaten down, their futures trammeled. For those under occupation, and those whose souls are occupied by evil, and those in prisons of another’s making, and those in prisons of their own making.

My blood joins the river of human blood that has been shed and I am one with them. This is my purification: Let the rancor bleed out of my heart.

Mohja Kahf is the author of the novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf. She is an associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Arkansas.

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The conditions Sakina put in her marriage act with one of her husbands, Zayd, made of her a celebrity and a nashiz, a rebellious wife. She stipulated that he would have no right to another wife, that he could never prevent her from acting according to her own will, that he would let her elect to live near her woman friend, Ummu Manshuz, and that he would never try to go against her desires (Agani XIV, pp. 168, 169. Mada’ini, Kitab al-muraddafat, p. 66).  When the husband once decided to go against Sakina’s will and went one weekend to his concubines, she took him to court, and in front of the Medina judge she shouted at him, ‘Look as much as you can at me today, because you will never see me again!” (Agani XVI, p. 155).”

- Women’s Rebellin & Islamic Memory, by Fatima Mernissi

Do you have any idea that, in my heart, I
Hid a dream of your love?
Do you have any idea that of this hidden love
I had a raging fire on my soul?

They have said that that woman is a mad woman
Who gives kisses freely from her lips;
Yes, but kisses from your lips
Bestow life on my dead lips.

May the thought of reputation never be in my head.
This is I who seeks you for satisfaction in this way.
I crave a solitude and your embrace;
I crave a solitude and the lips of the cup.

An opportunity far from the eyes of others
To pour you a goblet from the wine of life,
A bed of roses so that one night
I might give you intoxication.

O, hey, man who has burned my lips
With the flames of kisses,
This is a book without a conclusion,
And you have read only a brief page from it.

About The Poet:

The poem and its author deserve their own separate discussion. Furugh Farrukhzad (1935-67) is one of the most extraordinary Persian or Iranian poets of the twentieth century. Even through perhaps inevitably inadequate translations, one can sense the deep humanity and beauty of her verses. Farrukhzad, born into a middle class Tehran family, came of age in the wake of the CIA-organized coup in 1953 that brought down the regime of nationalist Mohammad Mossadeq and restored the Shah to power. It was an extremely difficult and, in many ways, disheartening period; “eternal twilight,” in the words of one of Farrukhzad’s poems. She held, according to a biographer, a “popular secular intellectual view” of Iranian society.  - Source

In the same way that one is allowed to look at the cornfield or a flower-bed, enjoying its green and breathing in its various odors so long as he does not stretch out his hand for it, but is not allowed to stretch out his hand for a single grain of mustard seed without right to it, as he is not allowed to eat something that is forbidden, so is one allowed to talk to the singing girls, to joke, flirt, and shake hands with them, and to touch them in order to turn them around as long as nothing illicit is involved in it.  Did not Allah himself except al-lamam, ‘the lesser offenses,’ when he said: “Those who avoid the heinous things and indecencies, save lesser offenses-surely thy lord is wide in his forgiveness” (Sura 53:32, Arberry’s translation).

Jahiz then puts forward a number of interpretations of what lamam may mean, including kissing or, If I may use the expression, “petting.“

- Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam edited by Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot, P. 103

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‘That old man who cannot rise without a stick,
How should his stick rise?’”

Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam edited by Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot, P. 90

“Suffice it to say that the view of Galen and other Greek physicians was that a man’s abstinence from sexual intercourse as a rule results in his becoming melancholic, as soon as the putrid matter of the retained semen reaches his head.  This was then the medical explanation of why so many great lovers went insane, though it accounts only for the male. Rumi alludes to it in a great poem on the benefits of motion and on the damage of the lack of it, making use of the double meaning of hawa, air and concupiscence, in the following verse:

‘The air becomes putrified if closed up in a pit,
Look at separation, what damage the dirang-i hawa,
it caused by protraction of carnal desire!’”

- Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam edited by Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot, p. 89

Also,

“This conclusion gains indirect support from the contemporary medieval Arabic secular literatures.  Medicine, materia medica, and popular literature all treated contraception and abortion as if they were two aspects of the same process: birth control.”

- Sex and Society in Medieval Islam, Basim Musallam, pp 58-59.

“Al-Ala b Ziyad said: What does it matter? We used to do that when we were on expeditions.  Hasan al-Basri:  It is only your own water (=sperm). Let it go!  Mujahid: People used to teach this to their young men so they could avoid fornication. Ad-Dahhak and others declared it legal in the absence of any proof of its illegality.”

- Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam edited by Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot, p. 35

“A’isha [ Muhammad's favorite wife] reported [what follows]” The wife of ar-Rifa’a al-Qurazi came to the Prophet while I was sitting [in the room] and Abu Bakr [A'isha's father, the first calif] was present. She said: “O Messenger of God! I had been married to [lit., was under] Rifa’a and he divorced me and then I married Abdarrahman ibn az-Zubair, but, by God, he does not have, O Messenger of God, more than this fringe!”  ANd she showed the fringe of her trousers.  Her words were heard by Khalid ibn Sa’id who was [standing] at the door without being asked to enter, and he said to Abu Bakr: “Will you not prevent her from being so candid towards the Messenger of God?” But the Messenger of God just smiled and said to her: “You would like to return to Rifa’a, wouldn’t you, that you may taste his sweet honey (’usaila) and he may taste your sweet honey again?” Henceforth it [the fringed trouser] because a custom (sunna).

The story shows that voices were raised against  this kind of candor from the very beginning. It has to be stressed here, however, that outspokenness may occur on quite different levels from such nasty dirt as exists in al-Azdi’s Story of Abu l-Qasim of Baghdad to the pointed and sometimes sarcastic frankness of a Jahiz up to the highly poetic and elegant metaphors with which Nizami and other poets describe the act of bodily union.

- Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam edited by Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot, p. 82

“At the gates of the city of Basrah a bedouin was heard reciting the following line: “Love is kissing and the touching of hands/Going beyond that is asking for a child” (Ibn al-Jawzi, Akhbar al-Nisa p. 51). In another story the following dialogue occurs:

Man: What do you do when you are alone with your beloved?
Bedouin: We touch, kiss and the like. What do you do?
Man: I throw her on her back and penetrate her between the thighs.
Bedouin: You are no lover! You are the seeker of a child! (Ibid., pp 46, 50)

- Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam edited by Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot, p. 155.

-Sex and Society in Medieval Islam, Basim Musallam, P. 131

- Basim Musallam’s Sex And Society In Islam: Birth Control Before The Nineteenth Century, p. 155

“Fasting is easy,” an American businessman booms at me, at a club meeting where I’d talked about Ramadan. “You can eat after sunset, right? What I’d do is,” he says, as if we Muslims wouldn’t have figured out all the tricks to fasting already, “I’d eat all I want in the evening. Easy!”
“All right, you try it,” I wanted to retort.

Maybe Lent is easy, post-Vatican II. On the other hand, “May it be an easy fast” is the Jewish greeting for a fast day. This, I’ll take, from the Jewish friend who offers it for Ramadan. She knows fasting ain’t easy: a Jewish fast is even harder, from sunset to sunset.

A Muslim fast goes like this: no food dawn to sunset, and no drink, not even water. Also no medicines, no smoking, and no sex.

“Who has sex during the day?” a WASP friend asks. “Where’s the hardship in that?” Apparently, she has never taken advantage of an early morning woody. Sadly, these forbidden fruits go to waste in Ramadan.

Welcome to coffee headaches, nicotine withdrawal, horniness, hunger, and thirst. Wait: you’re supposed to fast from peevishness and cussing, too. God help me.

I used to love fasting: the rigor! the workout! But the body gets creakier with age, and craves its comforts. There is some deeper lesson to be learned in this; I’ll let you know when I figure it out.

The Ramadan fast is for Muslims past puberty except those with health conditions or on their periods. Pregnant women are exempt, but may fast if they feel up to it. I fasted while pregnant with my first two. And don’t look at me that way; those kids aced their SATs.

Yes, all privations are lifted after sunset. You are then free to eat, drink, smoke, and make freaky, if you have energy left. Nighttime is when you’re also cramming in workouts, grading, writing, socializing, even your basic day-planning, because who can do any of these things without food or drink or, more importantly, coffee? For the pious, there’s also those marathon Ramadan prayers, which can last until midnight. The final ten evenings of Ramadan are especially blessed, and many perform all-night prayer vigils. Or all-night grading sessions, as the case may be. Anyway you cut it, your REM time is shot, your body broken down, which is why all you feel like doing during daylight is sleep. Sleep is at a premium in Ramadan; there’s never enough time for it.

I’ve only ever Ramadaned in America. I’ve heard all this is easier in Muslim countries. They tell me Ramadan there is some fun festive thing. The workday is shortened, and you can actually go home and sleep during the fasting day. Wusses.

So sometime when the moon is high, you catch a few winks. Then you wake up, not before sunrise but before dawn which, in case you’ve never been up then, folks, is a whole lot earlier. That’s when you grope groggily for something to sustain you through the fasting day. Some annoyingly chipper Muslims buzz about bright-eyed, making an actual four-square meal in the ghastly dark. At the other end, some lazy bums skip it, which I don’t allow my husband to do at our house. Somebody’s got to hydrate the teenager.

On the other hand, the man is on his own when I and my teenager are on our periods. Waking up to make pre-dawn meals for others during the one week when you get a break from fasting is beyond-the-pale Suzy Homemaker behavior, in my book. My period always comes right after I’ve finished indoctrinating the department staff about all the challenges of Ramadan, but haven’t thought to explain the exemption for menstruating women. Chad, the office manager, is shielding me bodily from the brownies, bless his heart any other day, but today I’m trying to reach around him for them. They’re walnut.

“No really, I can eat this week,” I insist.

“Sure, Mohja.” Chad raises an eyebrow. “Riiight. Listen, I won’t tell if you want to cheat.”

Why isn’t this stuff in a sitcom?

The fasting cycle lasts a lunar month, twenty-eight or twenty-nine days, depending on when the new moon sliver appears. Ramadan makes you notice the moon; I love that. You don’t have to be an astronomer to get that when it’s full, the month is halfway through, and you’re like “ohh, so that’s what the moon was for, a scheduling device, before Blackberries.”

Ramadan rotates ten or twelve days earlier each solar year. When I started fasting, exuberantly, around age eleven, Ramadan was in balmy August. It has since inched backward through the summer, spring, winter, and autumn, to September. A February Ramadan is easy, granted. A May one is hard. A July Ramadan is murder.

Your body is getting all sorts of things flushed out of it, depending on what you’ve been putting into it. Okay, okay, I really am grateful for this. I wouldn’t do it on my own, if it wasn’t a religious thing. You don’t know, until you put your particular body through a particular year’s Ramadan, what it will do to you, or for you. Even a brisk, short-day November Ramadan knocked me flat, because I’d become a heavy coffee drinker over the preceding year. Fasting sure kicked that addiction for me that year, cold turkey, but if some of you in your goyish oblivion tapped me on the shoulder during those first mornings, I wanted to punch your lights out. Which really isn’t in the spirit of the month.

The spirit of the month: Generosity. Forgiveness. Charity. Joy. Gratitude. A softening of the lower ego, and a measuring of the higher will. Tell that to the scramble of drivers trying to shove their way into a toll booth on the New Jersey Turnpike as my husband and I race to get to Clifton on time for one of Mrs. Hozein’s fabulous Ramadan spreads. You can’t be late for a fastbreaking; it’s the height of faux pas. I’ve often thought there should be a toll booth reserved for fasters.

There’s something terribly antsy about those last two hours before iftar. You can’t focus on anything. “I can’t do homework,” my daughter wails. “Or studied for my huge trig test!” So far, the learned ulema haven’t fatwa’d an exemption from fasting for students with huge exams. I think the next exemption to come up for a fatwa consideration ought to be for soccer moms.

Because if you schedule my kid’s soccer game across town during those last agonizing hours when my husband and I are trying to figure out, on half a brain between us, what the whole ravenous family is going to eat at fastbreaking, or worse, if sunset occurs right in the middle of a horribly timed band concert, well. Utterly forgetting the less fortunate and the truly hungry, I have been known to break down and cry in the car over a plastic baggie of dates I grabbed to tide us over. Or I’ve whined, “I foreswear all events scheduled so #%&*ing insensitively by goyim during Ramadan!” And then, “Damn, I cussed! There goes my fast!”

Things happen when your blood sugar drops. Ramadan is sort of like being socked in the gut (I mean, until your charity, forgiveness, generosity, joy, and gratitude kick in). I think that’s even a Tunisian saying, something about Ramadan being like this guy who kicks you in the groin, but you grin and bear it, because deep down you really love ‘im. I’m just telling you this in a friendly, precautionary way, in case you run into me around town this Ramadan.

It is a mitzvah (to borrow a term from our Jewish cousins) to feed a faster, so if you’re plugged into a Muslim social circle, your Ramadan fastbreakings are booked solid, especially weekends. You’re either invited to other fasters’ homes or they’re invited to share your fastbreaking meal. One doctor couple we know, between their on-call schedule and fasting, we have to book them a year in advance, if we want them over for fastbreaking.

But if you’re kind enough to think of inviting your Muslim friends over during Ramadan, a word to the wise: Fastbreaking at 7:38 pm means fastbreaking at 7:38 pm. Not 7:39 pm. And not, as you love your life, a quarter to eight. “Sure, no problem, you’ve got Ramadan, we’ve got it all worked out, we won’t eat till after sunset,” I’ve been told, only to find myself gnawing my knuckles as the hosts bustle about, blissfully thinking that in scheduling dinner, oh, about forty minutes “after sunset” they’ve earned a shiny gold star in multicultural protocols party planning. How many well-meaning goy friends I’ve wanted to strangle for not getting the urgency of 7:38pm!

And don’t phone us at sunset! The closer it is to sunset, the harder it is for me to remember to practice charity, joy, forgiveness, and all that other Ramadan stuff. When the phone rings at 7:37 pm at our house in Ramadan, we all look at each other. Doggone goyim. Leave a message. And it better not be “Fasting is easy.”

“Mohja Kahf is the author of the novel, “The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf.” She is an associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Arkansas.”