I cannot tell you that you shone out to me first. There were many men and women and children who kindled my appetites in Mumtazabad, where the workmen dwell and the travelers in Shah Jahan’s empire may rest in caravanserais and barter in bazaars. I saw them everywhere, these virgins and sodomites, scented with dusty sweat and the stains of their exploits. Men with gray eyes and drought-cracked lips who prostrate themselves to their Allah, unaware of wolfish eyes that fall upon their upraised buttocks.
