The Romance of the Harem

by Anna Harriette Leonowens

On which the queerest-looking woman of the party, an old and toothless dame, drew out a key from her girdle and opened the wooden boxes, from which she took a small boat, a sort of coracle,[39]—such as are still found in some parts of Wales, made by covering a wicker frame with leather,—a long gray veil of singular texture, an earthen stove, whereon to kindle a charcoal fire, and some charcoal; out of the second box she produced some herbs, pieces of flint, cast skins of snakes, feathers, the hair of various animals, with dead men's bones, short brooms, and a host of other queer things.

At any other time I should have been highly amused at the grotesqueness of the figure, and the comically ludicrous manner in which she drew, one after another, her mysterious ingredients out of her boxes; but now I was too anxious, and too much pained by the situation of May-Peâh, and by what seemed to me diabolical jugglery, to think of the comical side of the scene.

With the charcoal the old woman proceeded to light a fire in her earthen stove; when it was red-hot she opened several jars of water, and, muttering some strange incantations, threw into them portions of her herbs, repeating over each a mystic spell, and waving a curious wand which looked like a human bone, and might have been once the arm of a stalwart man. This done, she seated the prisoner in the centre of the motley group, covered her over with the veil of gray stuff, and handing the short hand-brooms to a number of her set, she, to my intense horror, began to pour the burning charcoal over the veiled form of the prisoner, which the other women, dancing around, and repeating with the wildest gestures the name of Brahma, as rapidly swept off. This was done without even singeing the veil or burning a hair of May-Peâh's head. After this they emptied the jars of water upon her, still repeating the name of Brahma. She was then made to change her clothes for an entirely new dress, of the Brahminical fashion. Her dressing and undressing were effected with great skill, without disclosing her person in the least. And once more the yogi laid his hands upon her shoulders, and whispered again in her ears, first the right, and then the left. But May-Peâh returned the same intimation, shaking her head, and pointing to her sealed lips.

Then the old wizard, Khoon P'hikhat,—literally, the lord who drives out the devil,—prostrated himself before her, and prayed with a wild energy of manner; and, rising suddenly, he peremptorily demanded, looking full into the prisoner's face, "Where did you drop the bunch of keys?"

The glaring daylight illuminated with a pale lustre the fine face of the Laotian slave, as for the third time she moved her head, in solemn intimation that she could not or would not speak.

To see her thus, no one would believe but that, if she willed, she could speak at once.

"Open her mouth, and pour some of the magic water into it," suggested one of the "wise women."

But they who opened her mouth fell back with horror, and cried, "Brahma, Brahma! an evil fiend has torn out her tongue." And immediately the unhappy woman passed from being an object of fear and dread to one of tender commiseration, of pity, and even of adoration.

So sudden was the transition from fear and hate to love and pity, that many of the strong men and women wept outright at the thought of the dreadful mutilation that the fiend had subjected her to.