Jamila and the Baobab Stalk

© copyright, Raymond Descheneaux, 2019

*

In the western desert, near the north coast of Africa, lies the city of Marrakesh. Two hundred years ago, the peace-loving people of this region were conquered by a radical sect that believed in a single, all-powerful god. This inscrutable deity forbade all forms of sexual pleasure. Sinners were regularly denounced and punished.

During this time, a noble woman gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, whom she named, Jamila. Her mother entrusted Jamila to a nurse from Al-Kharijah, who had been captured during a raid and had been turned over to the family as a slave. The nurse loved the child dearly and regaled her with stories from the mythology of our people.

Jamila proved to be intelligent and curious. Tutored by her nurse, she developed a passionate interest in plants, and, by her eighteenth birthday, had learned the medicinal properties of many kinds of roots, stems, leaves, and flowers. Within the temple complex, there were many institutions of learning, among which was a well-respected school of medicine. Jamila wanted to become a doctor. So, shortly after her eighteenth birthday, with the help of her mother and her nurse, Jamila disguised herself as a boy, passed the entrance examination, and was enrolled.

In the second year, Jamila and her closest friends, Amin and Jamal, began their studies in medicinal botany. Each study group was assigned a rooftop horticultural conservatory. Jamila was given a baobab seedling in a ceramic pot. She placed it on a low bench and attended to it daily.

Then an immense rainstorm swept in from the ocean. The temple schools were closed for several weeks. When the sun returned, Jamila was the first student to arrive at the temple. She rushed to her conservatory and kneeled before the baobab, for she had been greatly worried that the downpour had drowned it. The baobab had dropped its branches and grown smooth, thick, and tall, and its top had swollen. And from its base, two round root nodules had emerged side-by-side and now protruded above the soil.

Jamila's face flushed. Her heartbeat and breathing quickened. Her nipples swelled and hardened. She had never felt this way before. She slid her hand under her robe and down her abdomen and accidentally brushed her clitoris with her fingertips. Suddenly, an electric thrill coursed throughout her body. Her eyes and mouth opened wide in surprise, and she shuddered with pleasure.

Jamila disrobed and explored her body thoroughly. She discovered that touching her lips, cheeks, breasts, nipples, abdomen, and perineum gave her pleasure, and that thrusting a finger in and out of her vagina, or in and out of her anus, made her shiver with delight. She stared at the baobab and was overcome by a compulsion to kiss it. After doing so several times, she lowered her mouth onto the two round nodules at its base and licked them. Then she slid her tongue up the stalk, wrapped her mouth around the swelling at its top, and sucked it passionately.

Just then, Amin, anxious to determine whether his seedlings had survived the downpour, walked through the doorway of the conservatory. When he beheld Jamila's naked body, he gasped in surprise, for it was beautiful and curvaceous. He walked to the opposite side of the bench and was electrified by what she was doing. Although he tried strenuously to suppress it, within a few moments, Amin developed an enormous erection. He removed his robe, wrapped a hand around his shaft, and masturbated.

Jamila disengaged from the baobab, grasped Amin's penis, and clamped her mouth around his glans. Then she fellated him slowly, pausing, now and then, to run her tongue in circles around his crown.

Suddenly Jamal appeared in the doorway. When he saw what Jamila was doing to Amin, it took his breath away. Like a moth drawn to a flame, he approached her. Without removing her mouth from Amin's penis, Jamila reached under Jamal's robe and masturbated him.

Abruptly, Amin's penis jumped in her mouth and spouted a load of sperm. Jamila was exhilarated by the taste of it. When he finished spurting, she disengaged from him, and

opened her mouth so that Jamal could see the semen that had pooled upon her tongue. Then she swallowed and licked her lips provocatively.

Frantically, Jamal stripped off his robe, grasped his penis, and presented it to her. Maintaining her grip on Amin's shaft, with her free hand, Jamila grasped Jamal's penis and enclosed his glans in her mouth. Then she fellated him and, simultaneously, masturbated Amin. Jamal's penis leaped and ejaculated forcefully. Happily, she swallowed again, and then kissed first Jamal's shaft and then Amin's repeatedly, until eventually, their erections subsided.

The following day, Jamila again arrived early and quickly made her way to her conservatory. She kneeled before the baobab stalk and fellated it lovingly until it was wet with saliva. Then she stood and removed her robe. With the thumb and forefinger of one hand, she spread open her labia, and lowered herself onto the baobab stalk, until it had penetrated deep into her vagina. As she alternately raised and lowered her body, the sensation of the baobab's swollen head thrusting in and out of her caused her to shiver with pleasure.

A few moments later, Jamal and Amin arrived, pulled off their robes, and began to masturbate. Jamila beckoned them closer and fellated first one and then the other. When their penises had hardened sufficiently, she instructed them to lie down supine upon their robes. Then she lifted herself off the baobab, lowered her vagina onto Jamal's penis, and masturbated Amin as she bounced up and down. After a few moments, she disengaged from Jamal, lowered herself onto Amin's erect penis, and masturbated Jamal. The two boys thrashed in tortuous pleasure beneath her. When their penises began to jump, she pulled herself off of Amin, kneeled between them, and angled their penises toward her mouth. A moment later, she was delighted to receive two streams of semen, which pulsed into her mouth and spattered on her lips. When they stopped spurting, she licked the excess semen off their genitals.

Suddenly, their teacher appeared in the doorway. He summoned the temple guards, who immediately arrested the three hapless students. The high priest made Jamila watch as Jamal and Amin were beheaded. Then he ripped off her clothing and hung the baobab stalk by a cord around her neck. The temple guards seized her, dragged her outside, and placed her on a horse. They took her to an ancient copper pit deep in the desert. There, the guards painted her body with tree sap and threw her over the edge. As she rolled down the slope, copper dust adhered to her body until, when she came to a stop at the bottom, she was covered in it. Then the soldiers laughed, mounted their horses, and returned to the city.

Jamila tried to claw her way up the sandy slope, but the soil collapsed and caused her to slide back down. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the copper dust that had stuck to her body began to glow and bake her skin. Squirming in agony, she prayed to the monotheist god and earnestly begged him to save her. But nothing happened. Finally, in desperation and because she could think of no other source of rescue, she cried out to Mother Cobra.

Jamila was lying on the sand, in great pain and weeping inconsolably, when she heard an ominous hissing nearby. She opened her eyes and beheld a large, brown and yellow cobra coiled a short distance away.

"Jamila, my child," said the cobra, "open your mouth." Jamila obeyed. The cobra reared up and sprayed venom from its fangs into her throat. Involuntarily, she swallowed. She felt the poison coursing throughout her body and rising through her skin. Suddenly, the tree sap melted, and as it dripped off her body and onto the sand, it carried away all of the copper dust. She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief as the pain receded.

"Remove the baobab stalk from the cord around your neck," said the cobra, "and plant it in the sand." Jamila did as the cobra instructed. Spreading its roots into the soil, the baobab anchored itself firmly and then grew upward at a rapid pace, increasing in girth and sprouting leaf-tipped branches as it rose.

"Climb," said the cobra. Jamila reached up, grasped the lowest limb, and pulled herself up onto it. Then she continued to work her way up the trunk, until at last, she stepped out onto the firm ground at the rim of the pit.

On the sand nearby, the cobra materialized a pair of leather sandals and a dark green desert ensemble. Jamila put on the abaya and the sandals and fitted the cap onto her head. She pulled the hijab over the cap so that her face protruded through the opening. Then she arranged the niqab on her face so that she could see through the horizontal slit, pulled the long ends over the hijab and cap, and tied them together behind her head.

The cobra turned and hissed at the baobab. Instantly, it drew itself up the side of the pit and transformed into a long, stout walking staff. Jamila picked it up.

"Cross the desert, turn south, and walk into the mountains," said the cobra. "During your travels, you shall perfect the art of cultivation, and when your pilgrimage comes to an end, you will know more about plants than anyone else on earth."

Jamila bowed respectfully, turned eastward, and began her journey.

ξ

At its eastern edge, the desert gave way to a scrubland with sparse trees and grass. As Jamila was crossing this land, she came upon a poor village. The head of the community was a middle-aged woman named Namiba. She welcomed Jamila and invited her to stay as a guest in her hut. That evening, they shared a dinner of cooked plantain mixed with dried fish.

"Forgive the meagerness of this meal," said Namiba. "Were it not for the plantain, we would starve. But our crops do not grow well in this soil. Because of our hunger, the pleasures of the marriage bed have become infrequent. Our young people are not making many babies. That is why there are so few of us. I fear that soon we will have to leave and risk passing through hostile lands before we can find another place."

Jamila looked at the children in the village commons and was distressed by their thinness. "Do your people pray?" she asked.

"Alas," said Namiba, "the gods have abandoned us. Our prayers have for so long gone unanswered that the old religion has died out."

The following morning, Jamila rose early and walked into the village planting field. She kneeled in the tinder-dry grass, and, with a broken wooden spade that she found abandoned in the dirt, she dug a hole and peered inside. The soil was a mixture of earth, clay, and sand. There were no earthworms and only a few tiny beetles scurried about. Jamila dipped her fingers into the soil, tasted it, and determined that it contained no nutrients.

She returned to find Namiba bustling about her hut preparing their morning meal.

"I will help you. Please designate a group of young people to assist me." She pointed at the ceramic cups and bowls in Namiba's kitchen and asked, "Does your village have a potter?"

"Yes," replied Namiba.

"I will need him to create leaching and distillation bottles to my specifications. Give me a hut to serve as my laboratory and ask the youths to move the potter's wheel inside. I also will need a stone hearth and a bellows, a large water urn, and, in the shade behind the hut, a large cistern."

Over the following weeks, Jamila dispatched her assistants to gather raw materials: guano from the floor of a bat cave; hardwood from the forest; sesame, poppy, and sunflower seeds from nearby meadows; and urine from the babies in the village. She told them to burn the wood in the hearth and collect the ashes; to grind the seeds into powder; and to fill the cistern with urine. And she directed the children to collect earthworms from the forest floor.

Patiently she mixed her materials with water, set the containers aside until most of the water had evaporated, and filtered the residue through squares of clean fabric. From saltpeter in the guano and lye in the ashes she refined potassium salts. From boiled urine she leached compounds of nitrogen and phosphorus. And from the ground seeds, she extracted zinc.

When the substances had been refined to an acceptable level of purity, she selected a small cluster of plantain vines in the planting field, worked the chemicals into the soil, watered it thoroughly, and released the earthworms. A few days later, the plantains had swelled and ripened and had sent new shoots out into the soil.

But she had underestimated the region's impoverishment. The bat cave was small; hardwoods were rare, as were sesame, poppy, and sunflower plants; and babies were few in number. Her heart sank as she realized that the resources that were available to her were insufficient to revitalize the planting field.

Alone in her hut, Jamila racked her brain, searching for an alternate source of agricultural nutrients that was plentiful and readily available; but she could think of none. She pictured the malnourished children that she had seen in the village commons and resolved to find a way of helping them. She made her way to Namiba's hut and knocked on the door. Namiba welcomed her and invited her to enter.

"Please go to the head of each household," said Jamila, "and ask if the family will allow me to pray to Mother Cobra on their behalf." Namiba consulted the villagers, who unanimously consented.

Jamila walked into the forest and searched the undergrowth until she found a young iboga tree. She cut several strips of bark from the root, put them in the pocket of her abaya, and conveyed them to her hut. She steeped the root bark in hot water, chewed the resulting pulp, and lay in her cot, waiting for the iboga to take effect. Within a few moments, she fell into a deep sleep.

ξ

When she awoke, she found herself in a fallow field under a blackened nighttime sky. Above her was a full moon surrounded by dark gray clouds. Lightning and thunder erupted sporadically in the distance.

In the center of the meadow, just outside the entrance of an enormous tent, was a broad Persian carpet upon which a huge bed upholstered in purple velvet had been installed. Pole-mounted torches surrounded and illuminated the sumptuous boudoir. Suspended from gold chains that descended from an invisible ceiling somewhere high above were gold-trimmed dishes, each of which bore burning incense.

Lying supine upon the bed was the naked body of Father Crocodile. His back was arched, his face was turned upward, and his mouth was opened wide in ecstasy. His huge testicles rested on the satin bedsheet, and his gigantic penis was fully erect. Curled up between his outstretched legs was Mother Cobra. Her mouth was wrapped around his penis, and she was subjecting him to intense fellation. The mattress surged rhythmically as her head bobbed and her lips slid up and down Father Crocodile's shaft. Jamila became sexually aroused. Her cheeks flushed and her nipples hardened. Unable to restrain herself, she slid her hand down her abdomen and, through the fabric of her clothing, stroked her clitoris.

As Father Crocodile approached a climax, Mother Cobra withdrew his penis from her mouth, angled it upward, and masturbated it repeatedly with great vigor. Father Crocodile bellowed in a deafening voice and spouted an immense load of semen, which, fell like rain upon the soil. Immediately, stalks of wild wheat emerged, swelled, and sprouted upward, evolving green leaves in a spiral pattern as their shafts increased in height. Their pods sprang open and sprayed seeds in all directions, which burrowed into the soil and germinated swiftly,

sending up new stalks that grew as quickly as their predecessors. And before long, the entire field was covered in wheat stalks that were bursting with grain.

Mother Cobra shifted toward the foot of the bed, turned toward Jamila, and beckoned her. Jamila lowered her eyes and approached the boudoir.

Mother Cobra smiled. "My beloved Jamila," she said, "the gods admire your devotion, your skill, your compassion, and your capacity for love. It is for these reasons that I rescued you from the copper pit and enhanced your powers of cultivation. But, my dear," she said, "you, like many healers before you, have overlooked a resource that is good and plentiful.

" Remove your abaya," she commanded. Jamila untied the bow at her neck and let her robe slide down over her body, revealing the short split skirt that she habitually wore underneath. Her ample breasts bobbled in the torchlight.

"Climb into bed with us." Jamila obeyed. "Lie down prone upon the mattress, take my place between Father Crocodile's legs, and fellate him." Father Crocodile fixed his eyes upon Jamila and hungrily lashed his tongue back and forth. Jamila trembled with fear. Hesitantly, with one hand, she grasped his shaft, and with the other, raised the hem of her niqab. Opening her mouth wide, she wrapped her lips around his enormous glans and slid them downward and upward slowly and repeatedly. The sensation of his hardened penis slipping along the insides of her cheeks excited her. She closed her eyes and moaned sensuously. With her free hand, she reached down and caressed Father Crocodile's testicles. Then she reached beneath her skirt and rolled her rosebud between her fingertips, which caused her body to shudder with pleasure.

Careful not to choke her with sperm, Father Crocodile ejaculated a small amount of semen onto her tongue. Heightened by her sexual arousal, her acute sense of taste revealed to her that semen contains phosphorus, potassium, nitrogen, and zinc.

ξ

Jamila's eyes flashed open. She was lying again upon her cot, covered in perspiration. The taste of Father Crocodile's semen reverberated on her tongue. Her heart was pounding as a massive orgasm coursed throughout her body. Only when it subsided did she realize that she wasn't wearing her abaya.

ξ

The following morning, Jamila hastened to Namibia's hut. Namiba welcomed her and invited her to sit at the kitchen table.

"Please go to the head of each household," said Jamila, "and ask if the family will allow me to perform the fertility rites of Mother Cobra. If they give their approval, I will need a virtuous young man, unmarried and no less than eighteen years old, and five young married couples, also no younger than eighteen. Everyone else must stay in their homes. No one but the eleven participants may witness what is done. And each woman must bring an uncooked plantain."

That night, when the full moon was high, the young people came to the planting field. The air was pleasantly cool, a relief from the heat of the day. At Jamila's request, a large wooden trough had been moved to the field and filled with clean earth, and six beds of straw had been arranged in a circle around a stone hearth. Jamila lit the kindling and fed the flames with dry wood until a comfortable fire blazed. She greeted the young man who had been selected, removed his clothes, and told him to sit on the bed that was nearest the trough. The boy did as she asked.