Throwing Sparks

by Abdo Khal

  He wanted me to go over my entire life in detail. I would not agree to do that, but he did say something that resonated with me. Human beings need to nurture their souls with positive feelings and to rid themselves of negative emotions, he said. Just as you sit down to lunch every day and later discard the waste, so too you have to sit down and feed your soul and clear out toxic residues. Life, he said, was nothing but nourishment and excretion.

  I agreed with this notion and so began searching for some positive nourishment for my dispirited soul.

  Thinking of Maram made me feel good and all I wanted to do was to take refuge in that image which came to dominate my thoughts. Before becoming the Master’s favourite, her candour during our conversations had verged on salaciousness. She had rejected the possibility of love but offered sexual bliss if I wished. Just as I began exploring the most effective approach to pick her ripe fruit, the Master set his sights on her and she became inaccessible.

  I turned to other Palace women for solace.

  But in order to be alone with a woman, I needed an official permit that would allow me to move freely in her company. That is why I had to get married: I needed that family ID status.

  I quietly approached a family from the countryside and negotiated a marriage contract where my name would not appear in full, on the off-chance that the Master had spies in the marriage courts. The clerk who drew up the contract was an easy-going fellow and, for an additional fee, was sympathetic to my predicament – my lie, that is, that I wished to protect my current wife and children from finding out about this additional marriage.

  The marriage was a mere formality. Once I received the certificate, I could divorce my putative wife without ever having set eyes on her. In the meantime, I completed the paperwork for the family ID, which enabled me to cruise unhindered around the hotels and beach bungalows of Jeddah.

  I settled into a bungalow in a hotel compound. One afternoon I felt the need to wash away any lingering thoughts of my aunt sealed in her cell, and had a few hours before I was expected at the Palace. I ran a bath and even though the water was only lukewarm, I submerged myself. Thoughts of Tahani began trickling into my head as I watched the drip-drip-drip of the water from the tap.

  How close past events seemed even when they had taken place decades earlier. Tahani was the springboard from which I leapt into the inferno.

  We had liked to quarrel because it stoked our passion. After we disagreed about something, we would have to make up; we would get close and, one thing leading to another, we would be ablaze with desire.

  We bickered over trivial things: seeing her standing in the window and looking at the young men hanging around the neighbourhood, some scurrilous rumour she had heard about me which had made her angry, her refusal to come out in the evening to meet me in secret, her failure to respond to one of my letters, her anxieties about my past, my irritation whenever she told me of suitors knocking at her family’s door.

  However, there was never a time we did not make up and forget our quarrel. The Egyptian diva, Najat al-Saghira, could always be counted on to break the logjam, particularly her soulful ‘A Night to End All Nights’, which seemed to have been written just for us.

  I recalled the night of my senior school graduation, when Tahani appeared at her window and waved. Both Osama and I had noticed that wave. Later, she told me that her aunt, Osama’s mother, had approached the family to arrange for a betrothal. He had expressed an interest in her and had promised that, if Tahani agreed to marry him, he would work and study at the same time. I had said nothing that day and had slipped away, realising how much I hated Osama.

  Where was she now, I wondered.

  Even when I hit rock bottom, Tahani remained a ray of light.

  When we fall, we are not conscious of our screaming and shouting, nor do we remember how we scrabbled desperately to grab on to something or someone to prevent our fall. We are not aware of our bleeding wounds; all that we can do is try to stop that fall. It is only once we hit the bottom that we can take stock of both our injuries and the pit we find ourselves in. I had sunk as low as possible and had nowhere left to go.

  As the tap dripped, I took stock of my wounds and how much they hurt.

  I had not been aware of the depth of my love for Tahani. Did I love her because I had ruined her, and were my feelings in fact closer to pity or self-reproach? When we slaughter an animal and make a mess of it, the creature, foaming at the mouth in agony, ends up haunting us. Tahani was my botched sacrifice.

  Thinking about Tahani invariably led me to thoughts of Maram. Maram dominated my mind; her spirit was so radiant that she could brighten the darkest gloom. And I needed someone to help me out of my gloom.

  * * *

  In our neighbourhood the practice of sodomy was not considered inherently perverse. It was a way to acquire a reputation for virility and was looked upon as an expression of one’s sex drive rather than one’s sexual preferences. It helped to classify one as either predator or prey.

  Sodomy became my bread and butter at the Palace, and with the greater availability of women, less perverted sex also became commonplace and banal.

  ‘Maybe I need to open an academy for budding queers,’ the Master had said one day, laughing, after it was brought to his attention that his victims hankered for more of our punishment. The Master did not disband the Punisher Squad because the group had been unruly or unwilling to accept the strict regimen he enforced, but because many of the victims had started to crave more punishment.

  Foremost among those was the businessman Mamdouh Suleiman, who bid on a large project when he knew only too well that the Master was also in the running. Despite several warnings, he persisted and made sure that he undercut all other bids.

  The Master arranged to have him brought in and punished, and specifically instructed that he be broken. However, after being thoroughly chastised, instead of behaving as the Master had expected, Suleiman just persisted in bidding on projects to compete with him.

  The Master switched to punishing his rivals by stripping them clean of their wealth. He did this by luring them into various scams, including money-losing deals, shady real estate schemes and fictitious joint ventures. Eventually he struck where it hurt them and their shareholders the most and he celebrated their declines in the stock market. He played his hand masterfully thanks to the advice and acumen of an army of economic and media advisers, planners and policymakers, bankers, brokers, middlemen and fund managers.

  Once the Punisher Squad was disbanded, I was freed of the vile responsibility of recruiting for it. Instead, I was charged with distributing gratuities to the girls who provided the entertainment at the Palace gatherings.

  Maram was the choicest among them.

  She knew how seductive she was and thrived on the attention of the men who lusted after her, albeit discreetly. They had to be careful that the Master did not notice their eagerness when their gaze lingered on her cleavage, her majestic ivory neck rising out of the vale between the rounded hillocks of her breasts. His drinking companions stole only surreptitious glances at her whenever she swept into the room to take up her place beside him.

  I had become adept at the furtive contemplation of women during my adolescence. They hurried through the alleyways and little markets of the neighbourhood and I filled my imagin­ation with whatever I could steal without them noticing my marauding eyes.

  There was nothing furtive or oblique about the way I looked at Maram. Women are very responsive to a man’s lustful stare, which generates an almost electrical charge inside them. When a man looks at a woman with desire, she responds with every pore and cell of her body and wants more of it.

  Maram often caught me with my eyes latched on to her breasts, and she tripped me up time and again.

  On dancing nights, Maram would remain seated until she was specifically requested to dance, and then she would get up and do so only if she had the entire dance floor to herself. The other girls knew this and as soon as Mar
am stood up they all made way for her.

  The men, for their part, launched into conversations with their neighbours and averted their gaze. They knew it would mean the end for them if the Master caught them ogling her. They would be summarily expelled from the Palace and would be lucky to escape with their eyes intact.

  Maram was gifted in both the Khaliji style of dancing as well as in the more boisterous Egyptian rhythms. She would begin by kicking off her shoes and stepping coyly to the centre of the dance floor. Then, wiggling her bottom provocatively, the rippling movements progressed to her waist and from there her whole body shook and undulated. All of her seductiveness was concentrated between her torso and her buttocks and she swung her cascading hair enticingly from side to side. She moved ever so lightly on her feet, painting sways and bends with her body in waves that revealed her breathtaking femininity. Like a priestess in a sacred dance, every limb and joint shimmied and trembled. Finally, with tiny intertwined steps and snaking legs, she would sidle up to the Master and let her hair cascade over his face.

  Unable to contain himself after such a bewitching performance, the Master would envelop her in his arms, kissing whatever part of her his lips could reach. Then he would lead her off to one of the Palace bedrooms.

  More often than not Maram would later return to the hall without him, smiling radiantly, to look for her purse or phone or shoes and to bask in the pleasure of the guests’ lechery. She was careful to avoid looking directly into any of their covetous eyes after they had ravished her body.

  Before the videos of my crimes came to light, I had thought of luring Maram to the villa. The Master beat everyone to the draw and snatched her up. She sowed the seed of a passionate love in his heart. However, it became apparent that she was not as enthralled as he was. She would invariably leave whenever he was at the peak of his pleasure, claiming she had to return home.

  It became so intolerable that he told her she had to make a choice. Maram chose him, and he took care of all the impediments that had kept her from being with him night and day. She later told me that the Master enlisted the help of people in high places to get rid of her husband, who ended up institutionalised in a psychiatric facility after a judge obligingly issued a court order.

  Ever since her first night at the Palace, when she had complained about making less money than the other girls, I had been baiting her with flirtatious remarks. She responded to my overtures with a broad grin but continued on her way, sweeping through the Palace majestically, like a ship cutting through the waves on the high sea.

  One day, before she had become the Master’s exclusive preserve, I took my courage in both hands and confided that I was in love with her.

  ‘And what exactly are you after?’ she replied, laughing.

  ‘I just want you to know that I love you.’

  ‘Do you not think that’s what I’ve heard from every man I’ve ever known? Love is just a word and I’m not looking for words.’

  ‘I can give you whatever you want,’ I tried again.

  ‘You think love can be bought, just like a body? Look around you,’ she went on. ‘There is not a loving man or woman in this place. There is only lust, extinguished as quickly as it’s ignited.’

  I remained silent.

  ‘But if you’re looking for something else,’ she said, ‘a little bit of bliss, maybe, I would consider it. Just don’t ask for more.’

  Whenever I saw her after that, she held my gaze and it was clear in the way she moved that it was a promise deferred but not forgotten – even though she had become the Master’s chattel.

  * * *

  Where was Tahani now? What abyss had she fallen into?

  I erased every act of wrongdoing with a more egregious one, and had no qualms whatsoever about it. For good measure, I was careful never to look my victim in the face. Such abdication of responsibility came at a price – as I found out for myself.

  Tahani lurked on the periphery of my mind, but I managed to keep thoughts of her at bay until Osama joined us in Paradise. With him around, I could not help being reminded of her and of our rivalry.

  The wild nights at the Palace were of no interest to Osama. Once his job setting the parties up was done, he would disappear and return only at the end of the evening. He would slip off to his room and keep his cell phone close by in case he was needed.

  One evening we began reminiscing about events both recent and long-gone.

  ‘Would you feel sorry if I told you that you ruined my life?’ he asked with a deep sigh, as if some heavy burden was being lifted off his chest.

  ‘We all ruin each other’s lives without meaning to,’ I answered, patting him on the shoulder. ‘Should I blame Issa for ruining my life? If I hadn’t gone along with him, I wouldn’t be stuck here now. Nor would you, had you not chosen to follow suit.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about being here,’ he said.

  ‘I know we made a dirty choice, but it’s too late to clean up our act now,’ I cut him off.

  ‘I’m not talking about the Palace, Tariq,’ he said, adding with resentment, ‘I’m talking about Tahani. Tell me what’s become of her.’

  I said nothing. Her face loomed before me, tender and sad as if from behind a veil of dust. I had covered her tear-streaked face with layers of dust in the years I had spent putting her out of my mind.

  Osama stood up and faced me. ‘I came to the Palace to kill you,’ he confessed. He buried his face in his hands as he added, ‘And to kill Issa – and to kill myself.’

  There was a long, strained silence.

  Eventually, Osama asked me bluntly, ‘What did you do to Tahani?’

  Just then, a servant approached to let us know that the Master was asking for us. We were both worked up, but we set aside our animosity, jumped to our feet and hastened to the Master’s side.

  ‘Get ready,’ the Master said, addressing us both. ‘There’s an arse that needs whipping into shape.’ He rose and headed to the private quarters where his family resided, adding gleefully as he reached the door, ‘I’ll be watching you. Don’t let me down.’

  We took care of business, the Master watching us closely, and when we were done we went back to our seats as if nothing had happened.

  Tahani was right there where we had left her, waiting to torment us both.

  13

  Before coming to the Palace, I would sneak off in the dead of night to the Kuft to enjoy the tenderness of young flesh and unburden myself of my infamous sex drive. Like well-worn steps, those alleyways were beaten smooth with stories and allegations of transgression. Every boy in the neighbourhood had left some trace of himself smeared against the ramshackle houses wedged together there.

  I would walk the familiar twists and turns all night. The paths were as intertwined as the spilled guts of the run-over cats I would stumble upon, their bulging eyes a stark testimony to the fatal impact.

  Early on, life in the neighbourhood had been a stagnant and putrid morass from which no one thought to raise his head or venture away. Residents were content and accepted their lot. The first person to disrupt the placidity was Issa, who set off in search of excitement and planted the idea of the easy life among us boys hankering for a little more glamour.

  Issa lured us to the Palace one after the other, slipping golden spoons into our mouths and tickling our palates. Unfamiliar with the sight of gold and the other bounties on offer, we responded eagerly and did whatever was necessary to feel those delicacies were meant for us. We were brought into the Palace to decorate it with our shabbiness like so many antiques or bric-a-brac acquired at a flea-market.

  The Master scattered us about the Palace like a novice collector who regards tattered old things as priceless gifts. In each of us, he found some distinctive feature to play up which allowed him to demonstrate to his entourage that even the poorest districts harboured hidden treasure – in our case, untold riches of deviancy to fulfil every imagin­able desire.

  It was Issa’s job to hunt down such
treasure. I was the first to be drawn in. After me was Sheikh Omar al-Qirsh, formerly the head fisherman, who piloted the Palace yacht on sea excursions and fishing trips. After him, blind Ali Madini was hired to tell dirty stories and gossip about the women he followed with his nose thanks to the over­powering perfumes they favoured. Jameel Badri was hired to plant trees and Bakr Adam to cook popular dishes. Ibrahim Dana instructed guests in the performance of the stick dance, or mizmar. Hamdan Bagheeni, who still struggled with the alphabet, was hired as a guard and Hassan Darbeel trained the dogs. This long line of people made its way into the Palace at Issa’s behest: they were selected for a particular attribute or because Issa nursed some old grudge he needed to settle.

  Of them all, I was the most dishonourable. Only I was truly despicable.

  I was the second one to enter service at the Palace after Issa. Osama joined us three years later. He was hired to assist me in punishing the Master’s rivals. After him, all kinds of characters streamed into the gilded cage.

  Osama distinguished himself from the very first day he worked at the Palace and the Master was so pleased with him that he appointed him to the Punisher Squad immediately. I had noticed him enjoying it whenever we had shared the spoils of our hunt through the dark alleyways, and only later did I realise that he had been faking it.

  At the end of his first day at the Palace, Osama frowned when our eyes met.

  ‘You still nursing that grudge of yours?’ I asked him.

  He left the room without saying a word. He was gone long enough to splash his body with water and came back, hair dripping wet and carrying a copy of the Qur’an.

  ‘Place your hand here,’ he said, facing me, with the holy book open.

  Though I was ritually unclean, I stretched my hand out to place it on the open pages, but then a shudder rippled through me and I was covered in goosebumps. I could not go through with it and drew back my hand.

  ‘If you want to end the ill will between us, just place your hand on this page and take an oath,’ he urged.