A Tale of Khurafa

Khurafa related one day, saying:

"I was a man of means; then my wealth vanished and debt weighed me down, so I went out a fugitive. A violent thirst seized me, and I made my way to a well and went down to drink; but a voice cried out at me from the well, so I came out of it without drinking.

"Thirst overcame me, so I returned to the well, and it cried out at me; then I returned a third time and drank, paying it no heed. So it said: 'O God, if this is a man, turn him into a woman; and if it is a woman, turn her into a man.'

"And behold, I was a woman.

"I came to a city, and a man took me in marriage, and I bore him two sons. Then I returned to my own country and passed by the well from which I had drunk, and it cried out at me — as it had cried the time before — and I drank, paying it no heed; and it prayed — as it had prayed the first time — and I became a man again, as I had been.

"Then I returned to my country and married a woman, and she bore me two sons.

"So today I am father to two children and mother to two."

And they said to him: "This is astonishing indeed!"

The Westerners relate in their tales a matter no less strange and wondrous. Some of them say that whoever passes beneath the rainbow changes from one sex to the other: if a man, he becomes a woman; and if a woman, she turns into a man.

I found in this an incentive driving me to add another tale — not the work of Khurafa, or of fancy, but a tale brimming with science and its experiments.

We observe from what has passed that man, from his very beginnings, has stood amazed before the differences that nature created in his world; and for this reason he tries to lift the veil from the hidden process that governs his sexual character, and to strip nature of its power to control it, so that he may, as he believes, preside over one of the avenues of his happiness and well-being.

Man has tried to find a means enabling him to control this side of his life, driven by his love of knowing what is unknown and hidden in his affairs. The man wishes to turn into a woman so as to feel her sensations and share her feelings; and the woman would like to become a man so as to feel his sensations and share his feelings. Thereby man would understand nature as it truly is. To this end he has employed many superstitions, and amulets and charms that bear no fruit and bring no benefit; he has paid visit upon visit to saints and holy men — yet neither he nor they could light the road before him. It escaped his insight that the only path to the fulfillment of his hope is science, with its theories and its experiments; and perhaps he will find in it what quenches his thirst. Will science, one wonders, open before him the way to control his sexual character?

The changing of man's sexual character after his birth is a matter we must fold away forever. But the controlling of this character before his formation is a question whose realization is possible; for it appears to the scientists that a luminous dawn — fit for man to hurl himself into, far from nature's dominion and its assaults — will break some morning, and man will be freed from the fetters that burden and hinder him, and will grasp the reins of his primary character with both hands. This will happen, as some foretell, within fifty years.

As for the means, it is intricate; man has begun to untie its knots one by one, and they may all unfold in the hands of science and experiment through perseverance and diligence. Certain scientists have been able to point to a difference between the X male cells and the deficient male cells; they carried out many experiments in which they measured the length and the volume of the cell's body, and from these they concluded that the male cells are of two classes, one class bulkier than the other — that is, one of the two kinds of man's reproductive cells is larger in volume than the second kind.

If this is correct — and so far as we know it is — the scientists could devise a means, such as compounding, or clarifying, or filtering, that would lead to the separation of one of the two kinds from the other.

This operation is the thorniest obstacle standing in the scientists' way to achieving what they seek. If they can surmount it, they will reach their goal directly, and it will be within their power to produce children as they please, female and male, by using a second operation that completes the first stage: artificial insemination.

This artificial insemination is an operation that has been employed in the animal world and in the human world alike, and much clamor has arisen around it: people have talked of its legitimacy, its benefits, and its consequences. I shall not speak of this; but I do want a word to acquaint the reader with a fundamental side of the controlling of the sexual character — namely, that those who wish to control the sexual character of their offspring, in accordance with the means we have set forth, must accept these insemination operations. If we consent to them — and in this context they are not illegitimate — then the means whose exposition we began is complete for us, and the manner of employing it in producing infants of the character we designate becomes clear.

We see from what has passed that control over this character takes place before the formation of the embryo. For at the moment the embryo is formed, by the fusion of a male cell with the female cell, the new creature passes beyond the latter's sphere of influence. It is not conceivable, as we know, that man should manage to discover any single means enabling him to master that character after its formation. But he can, without doubt, thanks to the hormones — chemical substances that course through the blood — soften the excesses of the secondary sexual manifestations and the sharpness of their instincts.

So until the tale of Khurafa, or the Westerners' matter, comes true, we shall remain as we are: the man a man, and the woman a woman.