by Abdo Khal
I was at the receiving end of his profanities over the interphone.
‘Where is Maram?’ he barked irately.
The fact that I did not know did not stem the tidal wave of obscenities.
‘I’ll fix you later, and then you’ll be sure to know how to do your job.’
A good many phone calls had to be made before Maram finally emerged from the Palace and, as soon as she stepped on board, the Master dashed over, grabbed her hand and led her directly to his cabin. Despite speaking in hushed tones, his features clearly revealed the extent of his exasperation at the wait he had endured.
Only Maram could still ignite such passion in his otherwise cold and lifeless body.
She was his dazzling beauty.
Until her arrival at the Palace, the Master would spend every night in the company of a different girl.
All that changed with Maram. After just one night in her company at the last New Year’s Eve party, he could no longer bear to carouse if Maram was not there with him, at the centre of the gathering.
Before her, he had spent New Year’s Eve in Geneva or Madrid or on the French Riviera, but after meeting Maram he lost all interest in travelling to distant places. Now, wherever he went, she had to go, too.
Until Maram stepped into the Master’s life, he had needed a steady supply of new girls, deploying teams of scouts across the city to pimp for him. At the head of each team there was always an achingly handsome young man who sweet-talked nubile girls with amorous banter.
The love games were practised with an old whore who had been the Master’s lover when he was young. Having grown bored of her, both in body and spirit, she was nonetheless able to strike a deal whereby he promised not to discard her if she, in return, kept him supplied with young women to invigorate his jaded appetites. She spent her last years catering to his whims and dedicated herself untiringly to procuring all kinds of girls, whether she knew them personally or not.
The Palace staff never used her real name and only referred to her as ‘Madame’. When it became my job to hand out payments to the young women who were in charge of the entertainment at the parties, I’d try and spot Madame among the women parading themselves before the revellers.
Before the teams of young pimps were deployed through the souks of the city, it had been her job to scout for girls. She would go out every night accompanied by two black women who walked behind her and referred to her as the Sheikha, implying noble lineage.
She spoke little and with a mere gesture could convey to her assistants when her observation should be interpreted as a command. Her bearing was such that people did her bidding unquestioningly. At every stop they made through the souks, people whispered with excitement, ‘The Sheikha is coming’ or ‘The Sheikha is leaving.’
She made the rounds in places known to throng with young women such as weddings and malls, and enticed them with descriptions of fairytale nights at the Palace where they would be safe from scrutiny or detention by the ubiquitous religious police – the roving squads from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
For a while I even entertained the thought that Madame might be none other than Tahani. I was haunted by Tahani’s words to me those years ago: ‘I’ll never leave you. Wherever you go, I’ll be there.’ I became obsessed with meeting Madame.
In all, there were three women who were involved with procuring a steady supply of nubile young women to Palace parties; they also trained the young men in the best approaches to lure girls and ensnare the more difficult ones.
Osama was trained by a woman who had worked Beirut’s nightclub scene until the Israeli siege of the city in 1982, when the Master extended her indefinite hospitality at the Palace. Cosseted in luxury and accolades, she groomed Osama in the arcane art of luring women. He became very successful and always came back from his forays with freshly caught game still rosy with life.
Osama had reeled Maram, the dazzling beauty, into the Palace, like countless women before her and since. He had set his sights on her but had not imagined the Master would be so captivated by her good looks that he would be unable to let go. It was not the first time a woman had entranced the Master, and those who knew him well had believed Maram would go the way of all the others – seduced one day, discarded the next. They were totally confounded when Maram breathed new life into him.
From the minute I first laid eyes on her, I too was bewitched.
5
Issa escaped from the Firepit and only returned to smuggle the rest of us into Paradise. I was among the first victims of this human trafficking.
Bound together by a miserable childhood, Issa, Osama and I were foul-mouthed children. For those we regarded as opponents, no obscenity or profanity was too vile or hurtful, no sarcasm too biting. The neighbourhood folk avoided us and then shunned us altogether. Although we came from decent families, we were regarded as deviants who had strayed so far from the norms of decency that we had become unredeemable.
Osama’s father, Muhammad al-Bushri, periodically left his family to pursue his livelihood as a pilgrimage guide – a mutawwaf – in Mecca. Whether for the Hajj or the lesser pilgrimage, the Umrah, he welcomed the pilgrims at Bab Ismail, accompanied them on their seven circumambulations of the Kaaba, and was grateful for whatever munificence they bestowed on him. In the evenings, he repaired to a café inside a small souk and quickly went to sleep so as to be up bright and early to welcome the pilgrims after dawn prayers and get a head start on earning his living.
Muhammad had grown accustomed to being away from his family, disappearing for a week and sometimes two weeks at a time. When he came home, he would soak his swollen feet in warm saltwater and his wife would massage his feet and relieve him of the discomfort from the long hours he spent on them. He would fall asleep groaning with relief. In fact, when Osama’s father was home, he spent most of his time lying in bed to rest and recuperate.
It was on one such trip to Mecca that Muhammad lost his life to a random bullet in the courtyard of the Kaaba. A self-proclaimed Mahdi and his band of heavily armed men chose the dawn of a new century in the Islamic calendar – 1 Muharram 1400 AH – to take control of the entire site, and Muhammad al-Bushri was one of the many victims to fall that day. His was killed trying to escape from the holy sanctuary after refusing to pledge allegiance to the Mahdi, who would meet his own death three days later.
Muhammad’s family received no compensation or blood money for his death, so Osama’s only inheritance was the ihram clothing his father had worn to perform the circumambulations and a few religious books. Among these was a book of prayers that Muhammad had known by heart and that his son could not even begin to decipher.
Osama’s mother had wanted her son to inherit the mantle of pilgrimage guide. But her wish was never realised because the senior mutawwafs ranged themselves against Osama on the grounds that he was too young, wayward and unruly. While his forehead bore the black mark from frequent prostration, they felt his conduct had not exhibited the requisite reverence for such a holy place.
The first day Osama donned his father’s ihram clothing and performed the seven circumambulations of the Kaaba, he had not even bothered to tame his head of hair. He actually welcomed the pilgrims with words that were too abominable to repeat. His transgressions were reported to the head guide, who grabbed Osama and dragged him away from the Yemeni corner of the Kaaba, warning that he never wanted to lay eyes on him again. Osama had scuttled his mother’s plans for his future. He left Mecca and returned to the neighbourhood and to a life of vice. He did so surreptitiously, in order to maintain a reputation for piety that he had attempted to cultivate to appease his mother after being expelled from school over a porn magazine scandal. At the time his mother had promised that if he mended his ways, she would betroth him to her niece, the beautiful Tahani.
Osama had a proclivity for fair-skinned boys. In pursuing them, he was imitating the neighbourhood’s old pederasts and also joining their ranks. The wiz
ened old wolves still stalked him in the dark alleyways and he was so dashingly handsome that after his father’s death even the head fisherman, Sheikh Omar, made a pass at him. But Osama knew the old men and their tricks, and he refused their gifts.
Sheikh Omar was undeterred and he persisted until one day, after the sunset prayers, Osama grabbed the microphone in the mosque and, in front of the entire congregation, warned the man to keep his hands off him. Sheikh Omar was stunned and, despite repeated attempts to clear his name, his reputation was for ever ruined.
Later, Sheikh Omar approached Osama and tried to explain that his overtures had been misinterpreted – they were purely honourable, sanctioned even, given the heavenly reward promised to those who provided succour to orphans. But Osama’s allegation and public warning caused a lasting rift between the head fisherman and the rest of the community.
Just as Sheikh Omar had pursued him furtively, so too did Osama resort to subterfuge in his pursuit of boys younger than he. He had taken to shaving long before the incident with the fisherman in order to appear older and fend off the pederasts. By the time he was twelve, his moustache and beard were already growing out.
Osama was expelled from his first school for being what school officials called a ‘depraved member of society’. He was caught distributing porn magazines to his classmates by the school janitor, Gebreel Musa, who had been asked to keep an eye on the boy. Gebreel offered Osama the use of his quarters in the school as a safe hiding place for the magazines in case of a surprise search. Later that week, at the first signs a search was in progress, Osama dashed over to Gebreel and, extracting sixteen full-colour porn magazines from his schoolbag, he handed them over to the janitor for safekeeping. Gebreel proceeded to take them straight to the headmaster.
Osama would probably have stayed in school were it not for the worst caning he received in his young life and for the fact that the disgrace was made public. The students were made to line up in the courtyard while the headmaster gave a scathing speech about him over the public address system, thereby broadcasting the scandal to every house in the neighbourhood. Before the froth on his lips had dried, the headmaster got Gebreel and a teacher to hold Osama in place, and reached for his cane.
Three whipping canes were broken on the soles of Osama’s feet that day, and Osama vowed he would get back at Gebreel at the first opportunity.
As a child, Osama was stuck to Tahani and she led him on, even though she was four years younger. However, when she was not around, he clung to her older brother instead. With his father habitually absent in Mecca, Osama learned all the secret ways to crush a man’s virility in the alleyways of the neighbourhood and decided early on to join the ranks of the predators rather than the prey.
The three of us – Osama, Issa and I – broke all the rules and violated all the taboos in the crevices of that islet. It was the launching pad to the slippery paths that all three of us followed, in lives dedicated to the single-minded pursuit of pleasure and sensual gratification.
* * *
Despite our delinquency, the three of us managed to get through school. It was generally accepted that the school examiners had been lenient in passing us, year after year, even though our marks were the lowest possible in nearly every subject.
Osama’s marks actually improved after he was expelled from his first school. As he started in his new school, he did not try to deny the porn magazine scandal that had preceded him there. On the contrary, he went to great lengths to appear contrite and remorseful, going so far as to rub his forehead in the sand for hours in order to acquire the tell-tale black mark on the brow and dupe people into thinking he spent his spare time prostrated in assiduous prayer.
As further signs of his newfound fervour, he let his beard grow out, shortened his thobe to reach the middle of his calf and, from his first day at the new school, took on the responsibility of reciting the noon prayer, intoning the call to prayer himself. This show of zeal won him the mentorship of the assistant headmaster, who put him in charge of the school’s religious education club. This also impressed his teachers, who gave him extra credit for his participation in the club and who, subsequently, overlooked what should have been a complete failure in the final oral examination. Utterly stumped, Osama had been unable to answer a single question.
When the results were announced, we sat together under the loudspeaker as the names of the graduating students were reeled off to the sound of loud cheering everywhere. We could not believe it when we heard the amplified voice – hesitant and straining as if to swallow a mouthful of mud – call out our three names.
That night, Osama and I became mortal rivals. Puffed up with pride, we sowed the seeds of hatred for one other.
The successful graduates spilled out on to the streets, passing out fizzy drinks to everyone, friends and strangers alike. Cheers rang out across the neighbourhood. From their windows, the mothers of graduating students showered the streets below with sweets and nuts to the sound of zaghroutas.
My own successful graduation was a rare opportunity for me to see my mother happy. She hugged me and babbled phrases I could not quite understand. My father was away with his third wife, and Aunt Khayriyyah, who was washing some underwear, cocked her face to one side and exclaimed, ‘Even muddy balls will roll.’
Aunt Khayriyyah still believed that all my actions were evil and even on my graduation day, she had nothing kind to say about my success. While I did not expect any ululations from my aunt, I had hoped for a zaghrouta from my mother – but our home was tight-fisted in matters of celebration.
So I left them and went looking for Tahani, hoping she at least could provide some cheer. I stood in front of her house and looked up at her open window, squinting to see a shape behind the lattice screen. But she was not there.
I could see her mother and her aunt leaning out of another window, busy throwing sweets and nuts and ululating above Osama’s head. As my attention turned to the children who had gathered on the street and were rushing to catch the sweets, I spotted her.
Tahani darted out the front door and, right under the noses of her female relatives, came to stand next to Osama. He turned, leaned in towards her and whispered something in her ear which caused her to burst out laughing.
That day I realised how much I hated Osama.
When the three of us met up later in the day, we teased each other about graduating and even mocked former classmates who came to congratulate us. But I was not really with them; my mind kept re-enacting a succession of images – the empty window and Tahani laughing with another boy.
Osama had become my rival. He, too, wanted her and now, as the images were seared in my mind, I could no longer be sure which of us was the intended recipient of her coy smiles and surreptitious gestures.
Gnawed with doubt, I avoided Tahani in the days following our graduation. But one night she tossed a cassette in my path, a compilation of songs by the popular Egyptian diva, Najat al-Saghira. Attached to the tape was a brief note that read:
Darling Tariq,
Life without you is without taste and without flavour.
Don’t deprive me of you.
I am so happy at your success – a million congratulations!
You’ve graduated and you’re going to start university.
Our dreams will come true.
I love you maaaaaaaaaaadly.
Don’t deprive me of you.
Here’s hoping ……..……….. (fill in the blank!)
Your sweetheart for ever,
Tahani
Love of my life, I will always love you, Tahani.
Before the country became awash with money, and residents of the old neighbourhood broke with their old ways, evenings in the Firepit had been lively.
The Palace was the watershed in our lives. It marked a point in time, the transition of an era – from ‘before’ to ‘after’ – as surely as any calendar. Whenever the older generation recounted our history, they would make clear the period by appe
nding ‘before the Palace was built’ or ‘after the Palace was built’.
Before the Palace was built, people would roam through the neighbourhood in search of any available distraction. The women devised celebrations and other occasions to get together; the men congregated at local hang-outs and told the same old stories, alternating between laughing and crying as they reminisced about their youth; the children ran around the alleyways looking for open spaces in which to play.
As for us, the teenagers, we kept watch on street corners for glimpses of feminine charm. The young girls of the neighbourhood were coming of age and their womanly attributes were becoming ripe for plucking, if only with our eyes.
However insignificant the occasion, our evenings were festive. Always ready for the next adventure, I would slip away from view of Aunt Khayriyyah’s lattice-screen window, escaping both her spiteful tongue and her beady eyes.
It was as if she had a sixth sense about me.
She seemed to know what I was up to from the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper. The very first time I sneaked into my father’s room to rummage through his pockets, she caught me before I could savour the triumph of my first larceny. She pinched my ear, dragging me as she shouted, ‘You little thief! Practising to be the next Ali Baba are you?’
Her shrill, piercing voice woke my father and he proceeded to discipline me in the manner he favoured throughout my upbringing. My body was not sufficiently grown to withstand the brunt of his wrath. He raged with shame at having produced a son who was a thief, which elicited another biting remark from Aunt Khayriyyah.
Referring to my mother, the sister-in-law she detested, she said, ‘What did you expect? Saniyya only ever laid rotten eggs.’
Those were her choice words, the ones she invariably repeated whenever she had a row with my mother, or when she wanted to needle my father about marrying my mother in the first place.
I had always hated her. Right from the start, Aunt Khayriyyah subjected me to relentless vigilance, as if I were nothing more than a device for her to sharpen her own surveillance abilities.