A man had a jealous wife and a very, very appealing maid. The wife was careful not to leave them alone, ever. For six years they were never left in a room together. But then one day at the public bath the wife remembered that she’d left her silver basin at home. “Please, go get the basin,” she told her maid. The girl jumped to the task, because she knew that she would finally get to be alone with the master. She ran joyfully. She flew, and desire took them both so quickly that they didn’t even latch the door. With great speed they joined each other. When bodies blend in copulation, spirits also merge. Meanwhile in the bath, while she was washing her hair, the wife realized what she had done: “I’ve put the ram in with the ewe!” She washed the soap off her hair and ran, fixing her chador about her as she went. The worried wife reached the door and opened it. The maid, disheveled, confused, flushed, was unable to speak. The husband began his five-times prayer. The wife entered this agitated scene. As though experimenting with his clothes, he held up some flaps and edges. She saw his testicles and penis so wet, semen still dribbling out, spurts of his and her juices drenching the thighs of the maid. The wife slapped him on the side of the head: “Is this the way a man prays, with his balls? Does your penis long for union like this? Is that why her legs are so covered with this stuff?” These were good questions she was asking her “ascetic” husband. People who renounce desires often turn, suddenly, into hypocrites!

From Jelaluddin Rumi’s Mathnawi in The Essential Rumi, Coleman Barks with John Moyne, translators, Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 1995, pp. 178-180.