206 Kökoğlu
separation of the sexes and solely voluptuary life is destined to collapse “after
two generations”.47
Pickthall’s early fiction is also affected by both the separation of the sexes 48
and excessive sexuality.49 In Valley of Kings, Hilda is the exemplary victim of
the separation of the sexes. She is first separated from Iskender by her “sexless”
seniors. Next, her marriage to the Emir, the British hero of the novel whom she
falls in love with, is prevented by the Emir’s uncle who comes from Britain.
Iskender, when his desire for Hilda is blocked, narrowly escapes masochistic
homosexual desire in his relationship with the Emir. His excessive submissive-
ness is mixed with jealousy. He becomes hysterical and defies his own nature
and makes the relationship a real nuisance for the Emir. Iskender leads the Emir
to his doom when they leave for an expedition to find Iskender’s dreamed-up
valley full of gold. Iskender’s sole intention with his lie is to be with his Emir,
without the disturbance of all the other people who he calls liars. Ironically
his lie is the gravest causing the Emir to waste his time, money and health. The
moment the Emir realises that he has been cheated by Iskender and that there
is no such valley of gold, he turns mad, beating him with the primitive instinct
of inflicting pain on his betrayer. Iskender’s fatal submissiveness, on the other
hand, is not incurable. When he is completely separated from the Emir, who
is a Godlike majoritarian figure for him, he returns to normal and is capable
of becoming himself – a son of the Arabs. He marries the daughter of Mitri,
and with the latter’s assistance discovers his true artistic skill as a painter of
religious pictures for churches.
In House of War, the union of querulous friends Elsie and Fenn becomes
only possible with an oriental trick: Jemileh locks both of them in a room after
asking the permission of the village priest: “Would it be a sin for me to bring
them into marriage by guile or, as it were, by violence?”50 But unfortunately
Jemileh’s tricks to win Percy’s hand in marriage fail when the latter flees to
America guilty of deceiving the whole village by hiring somebody to injure him
and accusing the Muslims of attempting to murder him.
Finally, as an example of excessive sexuality, in Saïd the Fisherman (1903),
Saïd’s vile polygamy and licentiousness is utterly punished. Saïd abducts
Ferideh, the daughter of a rich Christian merchant and takes her as his second
wife. Ferideh’s well planned vengeance comes in a few years and she elopes
with another Christian man carrying off Saïd’s whole fortune. Said finally flees
47 Ibid., 119.
48 Especially in Pickthall’s Suffolk tales, there are almost no marriages without crises.
49 E.g. Veiled Women and Saïd the Fisherman among his Oriental novels.
50 Pickthall, House of War, 295.