The harem girls get a surprise

The harem girls were all in their bath chamber, lounging around nude, as previously described, when a door surprised them all by opening. It was a door that was never normally supposed to open. This was because the door led into the street outside the Topkapi Palace, a street which was not part of the palace, and therefore populated by commoners who couldn’t be allowed to see the naked harem girls under any circumstances at all. This door opened, and a nineteen-year-old errand boy walked in.

He was, as it happened, the exact same errand boy who had stumbled across Fiona naked in the Orient Express all those days ago. His name was Selim, and he had dark curly hair and wide limpid eyes and a cheeky smile on his handsome face. The girls, all three hundred of them, some chatting and some swimming and some playing chess, all froze in horror, suddenly conscious that every last one of them was perfectly nude.

“Excuse me,” said Selim. “Is this the sultan’s harem?” He held up a sword for everyone to see. It was the sultan’s sword.

“I saved his life,” he explained, setting the sword down on a nearby table, as hundreds of horrified girl eyes tracked his every move. “He was walking down the street, deep in contemplation of Philosophy, several days ago, when he was almost run over by a stampede of naked women. Luckily, I happened to be on hand to rescue him.”

Total silence hung over the bath chamber. Selim glanced politely at the tits of the nearest harem girl, who happened to be Circassian, and continued his story. “He gave me his sword as a sign of his authority,” he said, “and announced that he was setting off on a very long pilgrimage to the East in gratitude for his good fortune. As a reward for saving his life, he wished to offer me the full use of his harem until he got back.”

All eyes turned to Lady Evelyn, Harem Mistress, who was in charge of sorting out stuff like this. Lady Evelyn took a deep breath, and let out a resigned sigh.

“The rules say that anyone carrying the sultan’s sword is to be trusted and obeyed totally,” she said. “Of course, that’s normally the sultan.”

“Well, today it’s me. But I don’t want to disturb anyone’s morning. Go about your business, girls. Exactly as if I were not here. Although I am.”

“But… but… but…” sputtered Amani, horrified beyond words. “He’s a… a… a commoner!”

“Yet he has the sword. We must do as he says.”

And so the harem girls had to continue lounging by the poolside, chatting and swimming and drinking coffee and playing chess and, on occasion, fingering each other, exactly as they would on any other day. But, now, as they lounged, the girls were exquisitely aware that they were being watched.

It was like an invisible man was walking among them, bold as he pleased. Studying the way their breasts jiggled as they emerged from the water. Eavesdropping on their intimate conversations. Making casual freehand sketches of their bare bottoms as they sipped their sherbet and sucked on their hookahs by the pool’s edge. Second-guessing their chess moves. Peering between their legs to satisfy his curiosity about the precise shape of their labia, and the colour of their pubic hair.

Except they could all see him! Strolling around the bath chamber with a contemplative expression on his young face, drinking in the unprecedented spectacle of several hundred exposed, beautiful, stark naked and red-faced girls with their breasts and bottoms and pussies all on display for his viewing pleasure.

A dream come true. A vision of Paradise. Getting to walk into the women’s bath-house and look for as long as you want at the naked blushing girls, all of them embarrassed by your presence but quite unable to do anything to get rid of you.

“Harem Mistress,” he said. “Take off your silk robe and do a silly little dance.” And poor Lady Evelyn was obliged to comply.

“You are all so beautiful,” said Selim, at last, when he had drunk his fill of the bottomless wellspring that was the nude humiliation of the lovely harem ladies. “I can see I will be spending a lot of time here from now on. But I have a question. Why ought all this beauty to be concealed behind stone walls?”

“Why, that’s easy,” laughed Lady Evelyn, while Fiona - who did not consider herself to be in any way bound by the Sultan’s law, surreptitiously scooped up her robe, and crept towards the exit. Selim made no move to stop her. “So nobody can see it, of course.”

“Interesting. Yet unconvincing. You see, I am also interested in Philosophy.”