"Is it really me you wish to hear about?" She looked at him squarely, her voice quiet. "Or is it Shirin?"
"You," Hawksworth lied, and absently stroked the edge of her foot, where the henna line began. Then he looked into her dark eyes and he knew she knew.
"Will we make love again if I tell you?"
"Possibly."
"I know how to make you keep your promise." She took his toe in her mouth and brushed it playfully with her tongue before biting it, ever so lightly. "So I will tell you anything you want to know."
He scarcely knew where to start.
"What was it about the harem, the zenana, that you liked so much?"
She sighed. "We had everything there. Wine and sweet
bhang. And we bribed the eunuchs to bring us opium and nutmeg and tobacco. We could wear tight trousers, which none of the women here in Surat dare for fear the mullahs will condemn them." As she spoke, her eyes grew distant. "We wore jewels the way women in Surat wear scarves. And silks from China the way they wear their dreary cotton here. There was always music, dance, pigeon-flying. And we had all the perfumes—musk, scented oil, attar of rose—we could want. The Moghul had melons brought by runner from Kabul, pomegranates and pears from Samarkand, apples from Kashmir, pineapples from Goa." She remembered herself and reached to place a rolled betel leaf in his mouth. "About the only thing we weren't supposed to have was cucumbers . . ." She giggled and took a betel leaf for herself. "I think His Majesty was afraid he might suffer in comparison. But we bribed the eunuchs and got them anyway. And we also pleasured each other."
Hawksworth studied her, not quite sure whether to believe it all. "I've heard the harems of the Turks in the Levant are said to be like some sort of prison. Was it like that?"