Chapter 2 – Chapter 2

When the invitation came for a weekend gathering at Philip Hardesty's country home in the Forest of Dean to the west in Gloucestershire, Justin was both surprised and impressed. Hardesty was Mr. Arabist at Oxford. Although his reputation was part of what had drawn Justin to take the Oxford fellowship, Justin had known that he probably never would meet Hardesty, just those around him who basked in his light. Joshua Ramsay, Justin's own tutor, had been the one to deliver the invitation.

"Oh, by the way, Justin. Since you have transport, perhaps you could take along the other students who have been invited as well. It will be the three students and then the Arabist seniors who will be there."

Justin was delighted to agree to that, especially when told that one of the students would be that rough rider, Thomas. The other one was Leonard, a somewhat timid young man, who was small of stature, as beautiful in face and physicality as any woman, and, Justin had heard, a favorite of the more aggressive and rough tops at the university.

Who knew what mischief the three of them could find in the Forest of Dean during a weekend, although Justin quickly dispelled that from his mind. The payoff this weekend would be in hearing the senior Arabists speak of whatever things of the Arab world the informal discussions would lead them to. The main topics were to be Arab literature, but Justin knew from reputation that the talks would range much further and could, he hoped, touch on his own specialty, below-the-surface sexual practices in the medieval Arab world. Justin's research had told him that some of the current BDSM practices and equipment dated from this source, and these were possibilities he sought to verify—not least with the hope of discovering practices that had gone dormant in subsequent centuries.

Coleford Hall, the country home of Philip Hardesty, set high above the Severn River, was both famous and infamous in the lore of the Forest of Dean. Set on a Saxon site, it had been a place of worship—pagan worship of the most licentious nature some said—in Norman times. The foundations of the main section of the house, the existing structure being Jacobean of the early seventeenth, dated to the fifth century. The "modern" wing dated only back as far as the late seventeenth century. Extensive catacombs had been set in the Norman period, though, and the appendages of the current manor house appeared to follow the footprint of the original Norman cellars. Even older than all of these, though was a Roman temple site set at the edge of the extensive lawns on the hillside above the Severn. The manor house at one time must have had extensive vistas of the river valley, but now it was blocked in by tall and ancient trees that gave the house an aura of being tucked away in total isolation from the outside world.

The three students arrived in the late afternoon and were assigned to second-floor—which Justin had to remind himself was the third floor in American terms—chambers in a wing running between the back of the Jacobean manor house and the stable wing. Justin was assigned to his own room and Thomas and Lenoard to an adjacent, larger one. Dinner was set in an hour's time in the dining room on the Jacobean manor's first floor, where the only other room was the large library in which the group would meet for their discussions. The ground floor of the Jacobean manor was taken up with three stone-floored chambers, the central entrance hall, with the stair hall running behind it, a former parlor, which was maintained as a museum of the house's history, and, on the opposite side of the entrance all, the former dining room, which was left unfurnished as a memorial to the four Royalist officers who had been trapped there by the Roundhead forces of Cromwell during the English Revolution and who had fought to their deaths in that room.

Justin spent the hour before dinner studying the discussion agenda for the evening, while, if what he could hear was indicative despite the foot-thick stone walls in this wing, Thomas spent much of that hour riding Leonard's ass in their chamber. Justin's own ass twitched at the thought, and he hoped that Thomas had brought his riding crop.

The presence of the Arabist seniors at dinner was humbling to Justin. Not only were Philip Hardesty and his own tutor, Joshua Ramsay, present but also there were the notable scholars James Stowell and Timothy Coleson. The one guest who gave Justin pause was Charles Peters—the man who Justin had so recently had a sexual encounter with, starting in the Plush Lounge. Peters made no unusual comment of foreknowledge upon introductions, which Justin was thankful for, but a knowing look transpired between the two.

The five seniors sat in a circle of easy chairs surrounding a low table piled high with books that all were Arabic literature in both the original and translations that the scholars would occasionally dive for, separate from the rest, and wave over their heads as they made points that often were arcane even to Justin. Justin was the only one of the three students, sitting outside of the circle in straight chairs, to be making much of an effort to follow the discussion. Thomas alternated expressions of boredom and of a cat having caught a mouse, and Leonard maintained the expression of ever being the caught mouse.

But Justin listened to as much of the dense and erudite conversation as he could, reveling in being this close to scholars who were so passionate and glib about a literature largely ignored by much of the world and also by being in a musty, wood-paneled library with dusty overstuffed chairs, rich mahogany tables and bookcases, oriental rugs on the floor, and a full surround of old and moldering books. The smell was musky, not at all unlike the smell of a brutish man in heat. Justin was in heaven.

"Any discussion of this sort must start with that Arabian nights in reverse Sudanese classic, Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North," the slightly bent, grayish James Stowell with the ferret face tossed out as an opening gambit as soon as the scholars, varied drinks in hand, had settled in their easy chairs.

"Utterly ridiculous," the hunky youngest among the scholars, Timothy Coleson, favoring his Egyptian mother in his dark beauty more than his English father, countered, with a snort. "If it's the Arabian Nights literature where we must start, it must be with Anton Shammas' Arabesques."

"Why would we want to start at the Arabian Nights literature at all," Justin's tall, slender fuck friend from a previous encounter, Charles Peters, interjected. "And should it not be Philip who introduces the subject?" With this, he turned and cast a worshipful gaze on Philip Hardesty, their host and their seniormost.

"I believe Philip has said that we cannot start anywhere but with Naguib Mahfouz and the Cairo Trilogy," Justin's own tutor, the short, slightly rotund, hirsute and decidedly Jewish Joshua Ramsay said.

"Mahfouz has his own Arabian Nights work," Coleson countered doggedly. "We could segue into his other works from that topic. We have not recently delved farther back into the base than Mahfouz's early twentieth-century themes in the Cairo Trilogy."

Justin perked up with eagerness. The Arabian Nights tales were thinly disguised erotica, and this would be a splendid place for the discussion to start as far as he was concerned. And he was all for pushing back to the medieval period.

All eyes turned toward Hardesty for a verdict—all except those of Leonard, who had eyes only for Thomas, and the olive-skinned hunk, Timothy Coleson, who had turned his dark, fluttering eyelashes in Justin's direction, openly assessing the young American scholar in what Justin understood as an open invitation to getting better acquainted. There was some hope for Justin's Oxford nights, the thought. There was a look of cruelty in Coleson's eyes.

Hardesty, the most imposing figure in the room in stature, bulk, and presence, spoke in a low, rumbling voice that, probably on purpose, made all lean in his direction. "Of course the discussion must start with the Nobel Laureate, Mahfouz, and, in deference to our young colleagues, Thomas and Leonard, we will discuss from the Kenney English translations." Hardesty inclined his head toward the two students in the outer ring and gave an indulgent smile. Leonard looked up, startled, as if he wondered whether the master was asking him a question. For his part, Justin smiled and beamed inwardly that Hardesty had known that he was fluent in Arabic.

"We only have the weekend, so, with Mahfouz, the Egyptian Dickens, we can reach a depth into Arabic life and mores in the first half of the last century quickly and efficiently. Beginning with Palace Walk, we are given detailed images of the life and family of the prosperous wholesale grocer, Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, at the beginning of the century. I hope that no later than noon tomorrow we can reach the disintegration of the family unit and the values it holds to on the surface into a modern Egyptian state, influenced by English decadence. For this we will need the third book of the trilogy, Sugar Street, and the follow-up novel Midaq Alley. And then, as you like we can move on to such lesser lights and less both lush and succinct looks into an Arabic world with Shammas and Salih. Mahfouz's Arabian Nights can be used as a segue into eroticism in the opposite direction than you are proposing, Timothy."

He'd said the last somewhat dismissively and both Coleson and Stowell were cowering and blushing a bit.

As the discussion commenced, Justin leaned forward, listening for any mention of Ahmad's philandering son, Yasin, for signs of Mahfouz's subtle introduction of sexual mores of the time on a normally taboo topic for literature of the 1950s. He was even more interested in discussion of the youngest son, Kamal, as his own readings of Mahfouz had led him to believe that Mahfouz was hinting at the forbidden male domains of the Cairo coffee shops as places for rich merchants to assess and bid on the attentions of young men, something Justin had encountered in underground writings on Arab life in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, but not something he had discerned thus far in Arabic literature. If there was an Arabic author brave enough to even hint at this custom, his tutor Ramsay had told him, it would be in the brave and subtle works of Mahfouz.

Late into the evening, the men were served cups of sweet, sludge-like Turkish coffee, with Hardesty making sure that the students were included in contrast to when the liquor was floating around the inner circle earlier in the evening. The discussion became so esoteric and the coffee was having more of a sedative effect than a stimulant. Even Justin's eyelids began to droop. Leonard was already sound asleep and gently snoring, and Thomas' head kept lowering and being jerked back up, with longer and longer intervals of lowering.

At last Hardesty released the young men with the setting of a time for them to reconvene in the morning that had Thomas groaning, and a servant guided the three young men back to their bed chambers through a series of corridors.

Justin had no idea whether Thomas and Leonard were doing any funny business—and only briefly speculated on whether Thomas would come to him—when he was drifting off to sleep, his mind sifting out the nuggets of possibilities on his interests that had been embedded in those parts of the scholars' discussions that he could understand.

Tomorrow he was determined to ask a few questions to see if he could loosen the senior scholars' tongues more directly on the question of sexuality in early periods in various parts of the Arabic world. He wanted to push them back into the medieval period and loosen their tongues on male-on-male sexual practices—and on any references to bondage and sadism. It seemed that whenever they had gotten to the brink of such a discussion, they had moved away from it—but that they all had more inside their font of knowledge that they could share. Joshua Ramsay had told Justin that there probably would be something for him to learn this weekend, and he'd given Justin a very guarded look when he did. Justin just knew it had to do with sexual taboos in earlier Arabic periods.