Sand clouds flap like angels wings across the dunes as the desert turns crimson. The blood of the prophet paints the sky. The muezzin calls from so far away. My pain is buried deep in my heart. They exiled me here to die where even my bones would dissolve into dust.
I had blasphemed Allah. She had spoken to me a whisper in the night her voice carrying on the wind in my dreams. My name is woman she said. Hold no other God above me. Keep me close to your heart. Never ever deny me. I am your betrothed.
I spoke the words to the sultan. If only I would renounce her and call the divinity by his male name I would be forgiven. But I could not obey. They came upon me in a phalanx forming a cul-de-sac to trap me in the canyon. Their rapacious rapiers were drawn to burn their truth into me until nothing was left but the sighing wind. Once my body was pillaged they would accuse me of having seduced them and thereby paint me as a woman of loose morals. Hence, my body would take the punishment of thirty lashes while they leered. The husk of my skin was ready to fade into the welted night of the whipmaster.
Suddenly a miniature cyclone pulls my arms up and my dress off into the sky. The vortex suspends me with my feet dangling. My bra comes unstrapped and flies like a kite into the blue. Then a downdraft sucks my panties off, carries them tumbling across the cracked earth, and onto an updraft into cloud realms. My heart pounds with the fear of a woman whose nudity is like the red cape of a matador for these bulls. Is this a circus for some misogynist God?
Stars emerge, scattered like seeds in the ocean of darkness. My mind settles into endless dreams. She appears shimmering in the purest white robe. Her face is more brilliant than the noon sun. She descends upon me like a flood of star fire. Her warmth spreads through me like a warm ocean current.
But with such love, as she created the earth, she recreates my arms into wings and my coccyx blossoms into tail feathers to make my escape. Like a migratory bird, my inner compass guides me to a sunrise like on the day of creation.
I am a black hawk with feathers fluttering who plunges into a grotto with a mirrored pool. I gaze at my reflection in the pool. I see my sharp yellow beak, aquiline black head, and tiny yellow bird eyes. I look up and am amazed at the sight. A raven-haired beauty with sapphire eyes stares at me. I scuttle to her and she reaches out to caress my silky head with her fingertips. She mutters words in a language from before time which I do not understand. Slowly I grow taller. Arms and hands sprout where wings were. Feet and toes sprout where there were talons. Breasts sprout from my chest and my nipples stand erect in the cool air.
The woman speaks and suddenly I understand. I look down at a pool and see my reflection. My form is human. I am a woman once more but this time with hair of spun wheat, sparkling hazel eyes, and a sensuously curved body, naked as at birth. I turn around and reach out to touch the creamy soft skin of the strange woman's cheeks. She strokes my hips and sides. She embraces me and gently caresses the soft skin of my back and buttocks. She tells me we are all connected to the web of life. We are bird people, brothers, and sisters of the animals, plants, and rocks.
"I have decided not to require my sisters to openly worship me. It is ok to give lip service to the male God. Pray silently to me. Your prayers will be heard as if you shouted them from the minaret."
"Getting cozy with a man, human or deity, feels icky, except with the young men, but even then only when I'm in a good mood."
