The Carpent Merchant's Son

Welcome to my shop. Please come in. Browse around, feast your eyes on the beauty, the work of human hands. Feel the quality of the warp and weft. The depth of the pile. Luxuriate in the quality that a Sultan would expect from his carpets. Where do they a come from? From all over the Middle East sir but the best of the best come from my natal city. A city of towering minarets, shadowy lanes and exotic souks. I, alas cannot return, my health you know, but my son! He visits and brings back word from friends, relatives and contacts. Plus he brings back these most excellent carpets.

You have? You have just returned from there? I envy you.

No, no, you must not say that. I do not look like the sultan. He is more handsome, more regal. Me? I am just a poor carpet salesman.

Ah, here is my son, he is far more knowledgeable about the stock, especially that which has newly arrived.

Ah, my son, you are a fine salesman. Our customer spent much money and took some fine carpets, he will be back I am sure. You do me proud.

He had a private interview with the Sultan? And had pictures? Now that is exceptional. He showed you? You have never seen the Sultan? Ah, a fine man. Regal and beneficent. He rules with wisdom and kindness and our business flourishes as a result.

The customer sent you a picture of the Sultan. I am sure that is not a wise thing to have. I look like him? Like a brother? Never. I am just a poor salesman.

That is his likeness? No, it cannot be. That is a picture you took of me. It cannot be, this is trickery. Digital nonsense. I will not tolerate it.

What do you mean, the customer says the sultan and I are brothers? Nonsense, where does he get this from? It is dangerous talk. I will not hear any more of it.

Don't say that. You cannot leave. I will be bereft without you. You are my life, my son, my last contact with my home.

I am not lying. Not covering up. No. Please. Wait. I am sorry. I will tell you all. Please shut the shop and ask your mother to bring us coffee and join us. It is obvious I need to tell you a story that I have not ever told and you, my beloved son deserve to hear it. In fact it is essential to your survival and I must confess that I have hesitated too long.

Please sit. Both of you. Are you comfortable? My story will take some time. Ah my wife you make the best coffee on the world. No, not flattery. Just the truth.

Yes I am hesitating. It is a hard story I must tell and I have kept it hidden for so many years that my tongue sticks on the telling of it.

The story starts when my father was young, wild and high spirited. He lived in the souk where his father sold carpets of high quality. His father's clients included the present sultan's father and much of the nobility of the land. Our family was rich and influential and were appointed carpet suppliers to the Sultan's court. A lucrative appointment it was.

My story starts with my father running, hiding, fighting, with his friends through the souk. High spirited he was and full of life. One day he was pursued by a posse of his friends, over walls, under tables around walking people, diving, rolling, jumping and running again. His friends wanting to throw him in the canal for his eighteenth birthday were rapidly closing in on him and so he was careless and, diving around a corner, he rolled further than he meant. You should have heard his story of that day! He was such a rascal, bless his soul. However back to the meat of the story. The dive roll took him right under the feet of a group of women and young girls. He ended up lying almost on the feet of the leading lady and her daughter. Realising his high spirits may have offended someone of quality, he jumped to his feet and executed a most perfect bow. Even his friends admitted that, under the circumstances it was a perfect bow.

Without looking up, he greeted the ladies solemnly and said, "It is my pleasure to have cleared a tiny bit of dust and dirt that might have soiled my lady's feet.

He was rewarded with laughter and he looked up into the eyes of the woman.

"You are kind and thoughtful, I commend you on your fast footwork and self-sacrificing attitude to your Sultana.

He bowed more deeply, "Apologies my lady. I did not mean to startle you."

The woman laughed, "You are a rascal and a handsome one too. Be more careful or I will have to have you thrashed."

"Yes, my lady." he said and backed away quickly but as he did so he looked up into her eyes and saw things there that an eighteen year old had only dreamt of seeing in a woman's eyes. And things that should not be there in the eyes of a queen. A woman inaccessible beyond his wildest dreams. He bowed again and raced away with the sound of her laughter ringing in his ears. He told me just before he died that she haunted his dreams almost every night thereafter and he sought her out in parades and visits to the palace, but he never saw her again. He suffered from what they call in the west a "teenage crush". She was a distant and impossible dream.

The years passed, soon he was a married man, helping to run his father's shop and, as such had no business dreaming about an inaccessible woman, but she haunted his dreams, she was the fantasy that he dreamt of when loving his wife.

The Sultan was becoming a source of gossip. He had only sired one child in his entire adult life and that a girl who could not follow him onto the throne. The women of the harem remained barren and the Sultana had produced but one child. The Sultan was ageing and the gossip said that he was no longer capable, that there would be no more of his line. He blamed the Sultana for everything and the word was that she was to be exiled or executed. The court was terrified as the Sultan's fury rose. My father feared for the distant goddess and prayed daily for her safety. It affected his life, his mind spinning out of control, his concentration only on the embattled woman he had fallen so deeply in love with so many years before. He feared for her life to the detriment of his own. Then his father died and he inherited the shop which continued to thrive under his skilful guidance.

Late one day with the sun setting, catching the glints off the golden minarets of the palace on the hill and sending them streaming into the souk, my father sat at the door of the shop waiting for the last of the customers to leave when a man in fine silken robes arrived. My father greeted him formally as he had not seen this man before and invited him in.

The customer hummed and hahed. Touched carpets, smelt warp and weft and slowly but surely moved to the back of the shop. My father followed him warily, not certain if he were some sort of cut purse or brigand. The man reached the back of the shop and before my father could stop him, pulled a kelim off the wall. He pulled a long thin stick out of his cloak and in one lightning strike he scraped the stick down the length of the wall leaving a glowing line on the wall. The man raised the stick once more, and touched it to the line he had inscribed and dragged it downwards, leaving an angled glowing line. He repeated the motion in the opposite direction. On the wall there was now, in glowing lines the outline of a door. The man tapped at the middle of the outline twice, thump, thump and suddenly there was a wooden door, a black iron latch holding it closed. He waved my father forward and, as if controlled from outside, my father walked forward, turned the latch and pushed the door open. The light on other side was as dim as the back of the shop had been so his eyes did not need to adapt.

The door slammed shut behind him and he was left looking down a long corridor. Fear froze him in place, he was unable to move, scarcely able to draw a breath. Then he heard footsteps. Someone in slippered feet was approaching, he turned to retreat back through the door, but the door was gone and he was faced by a solid wall.

"Come. Do not waste time trying to flee. We only have a short time."

He turned and found himself face to face with one of the Sultana's eunuchs.

"Come! Hurry!" the eunuch said and started to walk away, down the corridor, and, as if sleep walking my father followed the eunuch. Soon they stood at a richly ornate door and the eunuch knocked on it loudly. The door swung open and he was ushered into a richly appointed room with fine carpets on the floors and walls. Low flickering lights, soft music played and the smell of incense was everywhere made the room almost magical.

Soft hands undressed him, stroked him and caressed him. A beautiful woman guided him into a bath of scented water where he was washed by two women, one of whom ran her hand down his chest and onto his groin. He felt himself start to go hard under her hand ashamed he tried to pull away but the woman giggled and kept up stroking him.

"My lady will be well pleased tonight." said the woman.

They took him out of the water and dried him, their gentle stroking engorging his penis even more so that when they were finished he was fully erect. Then they led him to a curtained room and ushered him inside.

"My lady! He is ready and waiting!" a waft of giggles followed this announcement.

He saw, lying on silken pillows the Sultana.

"Come, I have waited far too long for this moment" she said, "Come and fill my belly with a man child and fulfil my dreams and fantasies. I have lusted after you since I first saw you and you have infected my dreams. Now that you are here, do not hesitate. Come. Take me. Make me the mother of a strong Sultan."

Scarce believing his eyes he walked up to the bed. When he got there the Sultana opened her gown and he saw that she was naked under the cloth.

"Come. My body is all yours for the night. Come mount me like a bull. Make me cry out in ecstasy."

And she reached out and took his cock in her hand and drew him closer to the bed. Rolling on her side, she took him in her mouth and stroked him with her hand, then she looked up at him.

"So hard. It has been too long since I have felt a man so hard."

She rolled on her back, spread her legs, "Come! Mount me. Pump me full of your seed. Do it quickly. Do it now! I have waited too long."

My father, unable resist the command of his body and the Sultana climbed onto the bed and in between her legs. He thrust deep inside her making her cry out "Oh! Oh! Oh!"

All self control lost, he pumped into her without mercy, restraint or control. The years of longing for this woman drove him onwards and it did not take long for him to spurt his seed deep inside her. He stopped moving, staying between her legs, still embedded in her. One of the women started caressing his testicles helping him recover and soon as he was able he started to pump again. This time slowly and methodically.

He looked up and saw himself in a mirror. He pulled back, turned the Sultana onto her stomach and onto her knees. He pulled her head up by the hair so they could both see each others faces in the mirror and mounted her from behind.

The Sultana moaned and thrust back against him. He took hold of her hips and slammed against her buttocks and she cried out again and again. Soon the slap of skin against skin rang out through the room. As the Sultana started to orgasm moaning, "Oh! Oh! Yes! Fill me now!" he felt a woman's hands on his scrotum and he joined the Sultana in orgasm, pumping his seed into her. When he had emptied himself into her he collapsed on her, plugging his semen deep inside her.

An enormous tiredness overwhelmed him and he sank into a deep sleep still cradling in his arms the Sultana and woman of his dreams.

He awoke some unmeasured time later with his wife shaking his shoulder.

"Wake up! Wake up! What are you thinking about? You work so hard and then sleep in the shop?"

Still befuddled with the strange dream he had of the Sultana, he looked around the darkened shop confused. He could not have been with the Sultana he told himself! He must have been dreaming. But what caused the dream and the unprecedented falling asleep at work? Eventually he passed the whole issue off as being a dream brought on by overwork and lack of sleep. He allowed his wife to guide him gently and solicitously home.

The more he thought about the incident, the more he believed it was a dream, nothing more. He did not tell anyone of his dream, such dreams could get him arrested, tortured and then executed. He pushed the story deep down into his psyche and forgot about it. Or tried to. The dream did not go away easily no matter how hard he worked to forget it. He finally succeeded in forgetting the vividness of the dream and resumed his normal life. His return to normal life was accompanied by a return of his sex drive and his wife was at first surprised and then pleased by the attention he was paying to her.

After three months his life was back to normal and he allowed himself to savour the dream in the quiet when all around were asleep. The memories stirred him though and soon found his wife to be a more than adequate stand in for the dream Sultana.

Then the whole city was thrown into uproar and his carefully nurtured peace was shattered. The palace announced that at last the Sultana had conceived and was due to be delivered of a child in six months time. He counted backwards and realised that it is three months since his dream. He shook his head. Nothing could be more silly. He dreamt of making love to the Sultana and then she falls pregnant due to his dream? Nonsense! He scoffed at the thought, but a faint unease lingered.

Six months later the Sultana was delivered of a baby boy. Strong, healthy and vibrant. The whole city celebrates but he was still deeply troubled. He saw a painting of the baby and it looked like any baby. Babies are pretty much like one another. But then the whispers started. "The baby has features of the Sultana, but not of the Sultan." they said. The palace denied the stories, but the rumours kept circulating. He started to worry again.

Two years after the baby was born, the rumours had stopped and the city had gone back to normal. The women gossiped over the healthy growth of the baby and the men admired the young child's stature.

It was just after the child's birthday celebration that a courtier visited to buy a carpet, but soon he started staring at the my father. Eventually he left, hurrying off. To go to another meeting he said.

It was just after the shop opened the next morning that the eunuch from his dream appeared. He handed the shopkeeper a heavy bag and then gripped him by the shoulders, stared at him for a long time and then shook him firmly.

"There is gold in that pouch. Enough allow you to start up a business in another country. You must pack all your things and leave immediately. The Sultana bids you flee. Save yourself and her. Go now!"

He was dumbfounded.

"But why?"

"Because the child looks too much like you. My lord, the keeper of the scrolls was here yesterday and he swears blind that you look too much like the child for it to be a coincidence."

"But if I fly, will that not confirm their belief?"

"No, because we will install someone here who is vaguely like you and the investigators will arrive, find him here and leave empty handed. But you must fly. You are too much like your child."

"It was not a dream?"

The man laughs. "No, it wasn't. The Sultana wanted a child and remembered you. We fetched you and you impregnated her. Now, you must go. Take your family and only the clothes you stand up in and flee. For her sake as well as for the sake of you and your family."

"But... " he stammered.

"The young woman who held your testicles as you pumped seed into her highness still talks of your virility and how you pumped the Sultana full of seed. She says the Sultan has never delivered a load like that. And the woman who stroked you into hardness the second time speaks sadly of not having had more time to play with your weapon. Now fly!"

By night fall my father and mother were out of the city and heading to another country. The gold weighed heavily on his hip and his wife's recriminations weighed heavily on his ears.