Tale of the First Eunuch, Bukhayt.
Know, O my brothers, that when I was a little one, some five years old, I was taken home from my native country by a slave driver who sold me to a certain Apparitor.[FN90] My purchaser had a daughter three years old, with whom I was brought up; and they used to make mock of me, letting me play with her and dance for her[FN91] and sing to her, till I reached the age of twelve and she that of ten; and even then they did not forbid me seeing her. One day I went in to her and found her sitting in an inner room, and she looked as if she had just come out of the bath which was in the house; for she was scented with essences and reek of aromatic woods, and her face shone like a circle of the moon on the fourteenth night. She began to sport with me, and I with h
