Desert Fairy Tales

Then the ogre bowed respectfully. The sisters bowed in response, put on their clothes, and walked out of the forest. And accordingly, the next day, the men passed safely into the ogre's land, found game aplenty, and returned home weighed down with venison.

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Eventually, the dry season ended, the rains fell, and the land around the village was revived. The animals returned, and the villagers survived. From time to time, one of the women would walk to the ogre's frontier and leave a basket filled with eggs and baked goods. And, invariably, when she returned on the following day, she found it empty.

One morning, as the three sisters began to bustle about in order to perform their chores, Benadir noticed an envelope on the floor just inside the entrance. She beckoned her sisters, who immediately joined her. Caprina's brow wrinkled; she was partly alarmed but mostly annoyed; how, she wondered, in view of their preternatural senses, had someone managed to approach their home and push this missive under the door without being detected? The envelope was sealed in red wax imprinted with the figure of a stag. They broke the seal, removed the letter that was inside, and unfolded it. It was an invitation to dinner that evening in the ogre's stronghold.

In the late afternoon, the sisters bathed and anointed themselves, and donned formal abayas made of light blue silk and decorated with colorful embroidery. They made their way to the ogre's keep and were amazed at what they found. The granite stronghold had been transformed into a palace. Its walls were pierced by large glass windows that spilled cheerful light out onto the grounds. Inside, servants were busily shuttling back and forth.

Waiting patiently for them at the entrance was the ogre; but he, too, had been transformed. He was neatly groomed and dressed in fine clothing. Around his neck were the gold chain and medallion of a nobleman. And on one of his fingers there was a ring bearing the raised figure of a stag that had become his emblem. As they approached, the ogre smiled and bowed. They bowed in response. He invited the sisters within, where a large table had been set with fine china and silverware. Standing along the walls were servants formally dressed, ready to serve them and attend to their needs.

The ogre and the sisters dined. Then they settled into comfortable chairs by the fireplace and talked long into the night. The ogre described the battles that he and his men had won. He explained how he had received the wounds that had disfigured him. He described the ostracism to which he had been subjected and his consequent rejection of society. He confessed that his embitterment had impelled him to torture innocent travelers who had strayed onto his land, and explained that his nightly self-flagellation had been his way of atoning for his cruelty.

Then he revealed that his sovereign, the Sheik of Al-Khajirah, just before he died, had commissioned his eldest son, the crown prince, to seek him out and endow him with title and wealth as a long-overdue reward for his 30 years of service.

When he was finished, the sisters spoke. They described their childhood and upbringing. They recounted how their mother had saved them from genocide by appealing to Mother Panther. They spoke of the training that they had received from the witches. They described the afflictions of the many unfortunates who had come to the temple seeking relief and how the sisters had healed them. Finally, they described the taunting and persecution to which they had been subjected and their ensuing isolation and rejection of society.

When they finished, the ogre thanked them for saving his life and for reconciling him with the villagers. Then, as the dawn broke, he kneeled before them and asked them to marry him.

And so it was that four pure souls, having been persecuted by the very people that they had served, found each other, loved each other, and lived, ever after, happily.

Jamila and the Baobab Stalk

In the western desert, near the north coast of Africa, lies the city of Marrakesh. Two hundred years ago, the peace-loving people of this region were conquered by a radical sect that believed in a single, all-powerful god. This inscrutable deity forbade all forms of sexual pleasure. Sinners were regularly denounced and punished.

During this time, a noble woman gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, whom she named, Jamila. Her mother entrusted Jamila to a nurse from Al-Khajirah, who had been captured during a raid and had been turned over to the family as a slave. The nurse loved the child dearly and regaled her with stories from the mythology of our people.

Jamila proved to be intelligent and curious. Tutored by her nurse, she developed a passionate interest in plants, and, by her eighteenth birthday, had learned the medicinal properties of many kinds of roots, stems, leaves, and flowers. Within the temple complex, there were many institutions of learning, among which was a well-respected school of medicine. Jamila wanted to become a doctor. So, with the help of her mother and her nurse, she disguised herself as a boy, passed the entrance examination, and was enrolled.

In the second year, Jamila and her closest friends, Amin and Jamal, began their studies in medicinal botany. Each study group was assigned a rooftop horticultural conservatory. Jamila was given a baobab seedling in a ceramic pot. She placed it on a low bench and attended to it daily.

Then an immense rainstorm swept in from the ocean. The temple schools were closed for several weeks. When the sun returned, Jamila was the first student to arrive at the temple. She rushed to her conservatory and kneeled before the baobab, for she had been greatly worried that the downpour had drowned it. The baobab had dropped its branches and grown smooth, thick, and tall, and its top had swollen. And from its base, two round root nodules had emerged side-by-side and now protruded above the soil.

Jamila's face flushed. Her heartbeat and breathing quickened. Her nipples swelled and hardened. She had never felt this way before. She slid her hand under her robe and down her abdomen and accidentally brushed her clitoris with her fingertips. Suddenly, an electric thrill coursed throughout her body. Her eyes and mouth opened wide in surprise, and she shuddered with pleasure.

Jamila disrobed and explored her body thoroughly. She discovered that touching her lips, cheeks, breasts, nipples, abdomen, and perineum gave her pleasure, and that thrusting a finger in and out of her vagina, or in and out of her anus, made her shiver with delight. She stared at the baobab and was overcome by a compulsion to kiss it. After doing so several times, she lowered her mouth onto the two round nodules at its base and licked them. Then she slid her tongue up the stalk, wrapped her mouth around the swelling at its top, and sucked it passionately.

Just then, Amin, anxious to determine whether his seedlings had survived the downpour, walked through the doorway of the conservatory. When he beheld Jamila's naked body, he gasped in surprise, for it was beautiful and curvaceous. He walked to the opposite side of the bench and was electrified by what she was doing. Although he tried strenuously to suppress it, within a few moments, Amin developed an enormous erection. He removed his robe, wrapped a hand around his shaft, and masturbated.

Jamila disengaged from the baobab, grasped Amin's penis, and clamped her mouth around his glans. Then she fellated him slowly, pausing, now and then, to run her tongue in circles around his crown.

Suddenly, Jamal appeared in the doorway. When he saw what Jamila was doing to Amin, it took his breath away. Like a moth drawn to a flame, he approached her. Without removing her mouth from Amin's penis, Jamila reached under Jamal's robe and masturbated him.

Abruptly, Amin's penis jumped in her mouth and spouted a load of sperm. Jamila was exhilarated by the taste of it. When he finished spurting, she disengaged from him, and opened her mouth so that Jamal could see the semen that had pooled upon her tongue. Then she swallowed and licked her lips provocatively.

Frantically, Jamal stripped off his robe, grasped his penis, and presented it to her. Maintaining her grip on Amin's shaft, with her free hand, Jamila grasped Jamal's penis and enclosed his glans in her mouth. Then she fellated him and, simultaneously, masturbated Amin. Jamal's penis leaped and ejaculated forcefully. Happily, she swallowed again, and then kissed first Jamal's shaft and then Amin's repeatedly, until eventually, their erections subsided.

The following day, Jamila again arrived early and quickly made her way to her conservatory. She kneeled before the baobab stalk and fellated it lovingly until it was wet with saliva. Then she stood and removed her robe. With the thumb and forefinger of one hand, she spread open her labia. She lowered herself onto the baobab stalk, until it had penetrated deep into her vagina. As she alternately raised and lowered her body, the sensation of the baobab's swollen head thrusting in and out of her caused her to shiver with pleasure.

A few moments later, Jamal and Amin arrived, pulled off their robes, and began to masturbate. Jamila beckoned them closer and fellated first one and then the other. When their penises had hardened sufficiently, she instructed them to lie down supine upon their robes. Then she lifted herself off of the baobab, lowered her vagina onto Jamal's penis, and masturbated Amin as she bounced up and down. After a few moments, she disengaged from Jamal, pushed herself down onto Amin's penis, and masturbated Jamal. The two boys thrashed in pleasure. When prostate fluid began to seep from Jamal's meatus, she pulled herself off of Amin, grasped his shaft, and angled both penises toward her mouth. A moment later, she was delighted to receive two streams of semen, which pulsed into her mouth and spattered on her lips. When they stopped spurting, she licked the excess semen off their genitals.

Suddenly, their teacher appeared in the doorway. He summoned the temple guards, who immediately arrested the three hapless students. The high priest made Jamila watch as Jamal and Amin were beheaded. Then he ripped off her clothing and hung the baobab stalk by a cord around her neck. The temple guards seized her, dragged her outside, and placed her on a horse. They took her to an ancient copper pit deep in the desert. There, the guards painted her body with tree sap and threw her over the edge. As she rolled down the slope, green copper dust adhered to her body until, when she came to a stop at the bottom, she was covered in it. Then the soldiers laughed, mounted their horses, and returned to the city.

Jamila tried to claw her way up the sandy slope, but the soil collapsed and caused her to slide back down. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the copper dust that had stuck to her body began to glow and bake her skin. Squirming in agony, she prayed to the monotheist god and earnestly begged him to save her. But nothing happened. Finally, in desperation and because she could think of no other source of rescue, she cried out to Mother Cobra.

Jamila was lying on the sand, in great pain and weeping inconsolably, when she heard an ominous hissing nearby. She opened her eyes and beheld a large, brown and yellow cobra coiled a short distance away.

"Jamila, my child," said the cobra, "open your mouth." Jamila obeyed. The cobra reared up and sprayed venom from its fangs into her throat. Involuntarily, she swallowed. She felt the poison coursing throughout her body and rising through her skin. Suddenly, the tree sap melted, and as it dripped off her body and onto the sand, it carried away all of the copper dust. She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief as the pain receded.

"Remove the baobab stalk from the cord around your neck," said the cobra, "and plant it in the sand." Jamila did as the cobra instructed. Spreading its roots into the soil, the baobab anchored itself firmly and then grew upward at a rapid pace, increasing in girth and sprouting leaf-tipped branches as it rose.

"Climb," said the cobra. Jamila reached up, grasped the lowest limb, and pulled herself up onto it. Then she continued to work her way up the trunk, until at last, she stepped out onto the firm ground at the rim of the pit.

On the sand nearby, the cobra materialized a pair of leather sandals and a dark green desert ensemble. Jamila put on the abaya and the sandals and fitted the cap onto her head. She pulled the hijab over the cap so that her face protruded through the opening. Then she arranged the niqab on her face so that she could see through the horizontal slit, pulled the long ends over the hijab and cap, and tied them together behind her head.

The cobra turned and hissed at the baobab. Instantly, it drew itself up the side of the pit and transformed into a long, stout walking staff. Jamila picked it up.

"Cross the desert, turn south, and walk into the mountains," said the cobra. "During your travels, you shall perfect the art of cultivation, and when your pilgrimage comes to an end, you will know more about plants than anyone else on earth."

Jamila bowed respectfully, turned eastward, and began her journey.

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At its eastern edge, the desert gave way to a scrubland with sparse trees and grass. As Jamila was crossing this land, she came upon a poor village. The head of the community was a middle-aged woman named Namiba. She welcomed Jamila and invited her to stay as a guest in her hut. That evening, they shared a dinner of cooked plantain mixed with dried fish.

"Forgive the meagerness of this meal," said Namiba. "Were it not for the plantain, we would starve. But our crops do not grow well in this soil. Because of our hunger, the pleasures of the marriage bed have become infrequent. Our young people are not making many babies. That is why there are so few of us. I fear that soon we will have to leave and risk passing through hostile lands before we can find another place."

Jamila looked at the children in the village commons and was distressed by their thinness. "Do your people pray?" she asked.

"Alas," said Namiba, "the gods have abandoned us. Our prayers have for so long gone unanswered that the old religion has died out."

The following morning, Jamila rose early and walked into the village planting field. She kneeled in the tinder-dry grass, and, with a broken wooden spade that she found abandoned in the dirt, she dug a hole and peered inside. The soil was a mixture of earth, clay, and sand. There were no earthworms and only a few tiny beetles scurried about. Jamila dipped her fingers into the soil, tasted it, and determined that it contained no nutrients.

She returned to find Namiba bustling about her hut preparing their morning meal.

"I will help you," said Jamila. "Please give me a hut to serve as my laboratory and designate a group of young people to assist me." She pointed at the ceramic cups and bowls in Namiba's kitchen and asked, "Does your village have a potter?"

"Yes," replied Namiba.

"I will need him to create leaching and distillation bottles to my specifications. I also will need a stone hearth and a bellows, a large water urn, and, in the shade behind the hut, a large cistern."

Over the next few days, Jamila dispatched her assistants to gather raw materials: guano from the floor of a bat cave; hardwood from the forest; sesame, poppy, and sunflower seeds from nearby meadows; and urine from the babies in the village. She told them to burn the wood in the hearth and collect the ashes; to grind the seeds into powder; and to fill the cistern with urine. And she directed the children to collect earthworms from the forest floor.

Patiently she mixed her materials with water, set the containers aside until most of the water had evaporated, and filtered the residue through squares of clean fabric. From saltpeter in the guano and lye in the ashes she refined potassium salts. From boiled urine she leached compounds of nitrogen and phosphorus. And from the ground seeds, she extracted zinc.

When the substances had been refined to an acceptable level of purity, she selected a small cluster of plantain vines in the planting field, worked the chemicals into the soil, watered it thoroughly, and released the earthworms. A few days later, the plantains had swelled and ripened and had sent new shoots out into the soil.

Jamila was elated. But when she commenced to make more fertilizer, she discovered that she had underestimated the region's impoverishment. The bat cave was small; hardwoods were rare, as were sesame, poppy, and sunflower plants; and babies were few in number. Her heart sank as she realized that the available resources were insufficient to revitalize the entire field.

The thought of the malnourished children that she had seen in the village filled her with despair. Because she could think of no other recourse, she decided to consult the gods. Jamila walked into the forest and searched the undergrowth until she found a young iboga tree. She cut several strips of bark from the root, put them in the pocket of her abaya, and conveyed them to her hut. She steeped the root bark in hot water, chewed the resulting pulp, and lay in her cot, waiting for the iboga to take effect. Within a few moments, she fell into a deep trance.

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She found herself in a fallow field under a blackened nighttime sky. Above her was a full moon surrounded by dark gray clouds. Lightning and thunder erupted sporadically in the distance.

In the center of the meadow, just outside the entrance of an enormous tent, was a broad Persian carpet upon which a huge bed upholstered in purple velvet had been installed. Pole-mounted torches surrounded and illuminated the sumptuous boudoir. Suspended from gold chains that descended from an invisible ceiling somewhere high above were gold-trimmed dishes, each of which bore burning incense.

Lying supine upon the bed was the naked body of Father Crocodile. His back was arched, his face was turned upward, and his mouth was opened wide in ecstasy. His huge testicles rested on the satin bedsheet, and his gigantic penis was fully erect. Curled up between his outstretched legs was Mother Cobra. Her mouth was wrapped around his penis, and she was subjecting him to intense fellation. The mattress surged rhythmically as her head bobbed and her lips slid up and down Father Crocodile's shaft.

As Father Crocodile approached a climax, Mother Cobra withdrew his penis from her mouth, angled it upward, and masturbated it repeatedly with great vigor. Father Crocodile bellowed in a deafening voice and spouted an immense load of semen, which, fell like rain upon the soil. Immediately, stalks of wild wheat emerged, swelled, and sprouted upward, evolving green leaves in a spiral pattern as their shafts increased in height. Their pods sprang open and sprayed seeds in all directions, which burrowed into the soil and germinated swiftly, sending up new stalks that grew as quickly as their predecessors. And before long, the entire field was covered in wheat stalks that were bursting with grain.

Mother Cobra shifted toward the foot of the bed, turned toward Jamila, and beckoned her. Jamila lowered her eyes and approached the boudoir.

Mother Cobra smiled. "My beloved Jamila," she said, "the gods admire your compassion and your skill. But you, like many healers before you, have overlooked a resource that is good and plentiful."

"Remove your abaya," she commanded. Jamila took off her robe, revealing the short split skirt that she habitually wore underneath. Her ample breasts bobbled in the torchlight.

"Climb into bed with us." Jamila obeyed. "Take my place between Father Crocodile's legs and fellate him." Father Crocodile fixed his eyes upon Jamila and hungrily lashed his tongue back and forth. Jamila trembled with fear. Hesitantly, with one hand, she grasped his shaft, and with the other, raised the hem of her niqab. Opening her mouth wide, she wrapped her lips around his enormous glans and slid them downward and upward slowly and repeatedly. The sensation of his hardened penis slipping along the insides of her cheeks excited her. Her face flushed and her nipples hardened. Unable to restrain herself, she slid her free hand down under her skirt and stroked her clitoris, which caused her body to shudder with pleasure.