Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. II, No. X., March 1851Various
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. II, No. X., March 1851
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
Yellow morocco slippers hid her feet, rosy and round; over these brooded
a bewildering fullness of rainbow silk--Turkish trowsers we call them,
but they are shintyan in Arabic. Like the sleeve of a clergyman's gown,
the lower end is gathered somewhere, and the fullness gracefully
over-falls. I say rainbow, although to the Howadji's little cognizant
eye was the shintyan of more than the seven orthodox colors. In the
bower of Kushuk, nargileh-clouded, coffee-scented, are eyes to be
strictly trusted?
Yet we must not be entangled in this bewildering brilliance. A satin
jacket, striped with velvet, and of open sleeves, wherefrom floated
forth a fleecy cloud of under-sleeve, rolling adown the rosy arms, as
June clouds down the western rosiness of the sky, inclosed the bust. A
shawl, twisted of many folds, cinctured the waist, confining the silken
shintyan. A golden necklace of charms girdled the throat, and the hair,
much unctuated, as is the custom of the land, was adorned with a pendent
fringe of black silk, tipped with gold, which hung upon the neck behind.
Let us confess to a dreamy, vaporous vail, overspreading, rather
suffusing with color, the upper part of the arms and the lower limits of
the neck. That rosiness is known as tób to the Arabians--a mystery
whereof the merely masculine mind is not cognizant. Beneath the tób,
truth allows a beautiful bud-burstiness of bosom; yet I swear, by John
Bunyan, nothing so aggravating as the Howadji beholds in saloons
unnamable nearer the Hudson than the Nile. This brilliant cloud, whose
spirit was Kushuk Arnem, our gay Ghazeeyah, gathered itself upon a
divan, and she inhaled vigorously a nargileh. A damsel in tób and
shintyan exhaling azure clouds of aromatic smoke, had not been
displeasing to that Persian poet, for whose coming I had prayed too
late.
But more welcome than he, came the still-eyed Xenobi. She entered
timidly like a bird. The Howadji had seen doves less gracefully sitting
upon palm-boughs in the sunset, than she nestled upon the lower divan. A
very dove of a Ghazeeyah--a quiet child, the last born of Terpsichore.
Blow it from Mount Atlas, a modest dancing-girl. She sat near this
Howadji, and handed him, O Haroun Alrashid! the tube of his nargileh.
Its serpentine sinuosity flowed through her fingers, as if the golden
gayety of her costume were gliding from her alive. It was an electric
chain of communication, and never until some Xenobi of a houri hands the
Howadji the nargileh of Paradise, will the smoke of the weed of Shiraz
float so lightly, or so sweetly taste.
Xenobi was a mere bud, of most flexile and graceful form, ripe and round
as the spring fruit of the tropics. Kushuk had the air of a woman for
whom no surprises survive; Xenobi saw in every new day a surprise, haply
in every Howadji a lover.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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