Thousand: Six Hundred Eighty-Eight

her body with perfumed oil, rubbing briskly at dry spots. Then lightweight robes are lifted up the length of her arms and settled on her shoulders. While she is standing there, swaying, a little dazed, the angel walks in, touches her chin with two fingers. “What happened after that?” one of the women at breakfast asks her. The girl picks up a date, considers it as though it were naked, just washed, about to be dressed; she slides it between her lips and bites the sticky flesh from the oblong pit. After dropping the pit on a brass plate the