Nekropolis

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  She can’t be made happy. I sit for a while, hopeless and hopeful until she dozes. Finally freed, I pull the sheet over her and kiss her on the temple, and leave her lying there.

  Outside on the street the hot dry wind curls the dust into a devil, turning and turning, and I follow it to the souk to buy rice. Maybe Hariba can keep it down. She was worried that I was leaving. I’ll surprise her by coming back early and feed her sweet milky chai, spoonful by spoonful.

  A woman without a veil is bargaining with a man about oranges and there is something familiar about her that makes me stop. Then I realize, it isn’t that she’s familiar because I know her, it’s because she’s a harni .

  I haven’t seen another harni since I left the crèche.

  She cocks her head and flirts with the stallman while he fills her bag with oranges. He puts an extra in for her.

  She turns around and sees me. She’s enough like me to be my sister-although she isn’t my crèche-mate.

  “Why are you here?” she asks.

  “I’m with someone, but she’s sick,” I say. “I want to get her some rice and chai.”

  “I know where to buy it,” she says.

  I want to touch her and she wants to touch me, to collapse together skin to skin and feel someone else, but we’re here in this human souk, so I follow her between the marketmen. She reaches back with one slim hand and catches my wrist, her skin dry and warm, and takes me behind a stall into a space just wide enough for us and we wrap ourselves around each other. I smell her skin and her hair and her dry, slightly cinnamon smell. She nuzzles the base of my neck, smelling me. Relax. Relax, her scent says to me. We are one.

  We stay there only a few moments, and then I follow her out to buy chai and rice.

  “I’m in trouble,” I say. “Hariba has run away-she’s jessed-and we don’t have any money.”

  “I’ll come back here tomorrow,” the harni says in answer. She gives me an orange. I want to embrace her again, to feel safe. I want to take her with me back to Hariba.

  She takes me to a stallman who sells fragrant basmati rice, and then we leave the souk and find a tea shop where I can buy chai.

  “Do you live near here?” I ask her.

  “My owner does,” she says.

  “In the Nekropolis?”

  She shrugs. “I come shopping at this time most days.”

  “Tomorrow?” I ask.

  “Tomorrow,” she promises.

  She doesn’t wear a veil because she’s a harni and therefore not a decent woman. Her hair runs down her back like a hot black tongue, shining in the sun. I remember the touch of her dry hand. The inside of the tea shop is cool and smells of mint and cinnamon. Hariba has to eat.

  I have to buy a cup since I didn’t bring one, but they have green tea chai, which Hariba likes better than black tea chai. It’s milky, spiced, and sweet.

  “Hariba,” I whisper when I get home.

  “Akhmim?” she asks.

  “I brought you some chai.”

  “Ohhh, Akhmim,” she says, grateful I’ve come back. “I can’t, I can’t drink it, I’ll get sick.”

  “Drink a little,” I say. “You have to have something.”

  I sit on the bed and coax her with spoonfuls, as if feeding a child. I push her hair back off her face. “Akhmim,” she says, “I’m afraid. What are we going to do?”

  “I’m here,” I say. “I’ll take care of you.”

  It is the right thing to say, and her little happiness, her relief, softens the room.

  * * *

  In the late afternoon I go to the Moussin of the White Falcon, but Myryam doesn’t come that evening.

  At night I lay down in bed next to Hariba, craving the touch of someone. For a few minutes she lets our skin touch. Her skin is hot and alive. Supple and smooth and faintly damp. I can smell the rich odor of her unwashed hair. I think of the harni in the souk and of her touch. I close my eyes. I’m calm. Lonely, but not quite as lonely with Hariba here beside me.

  After a few minutes, Hariba shifts, moving a little away. She can’t sleep against me, nor can she stand it if I sleep against her. She can only allow so much touch.

  The next morning the souk is full of wind and dust and women wrap their veils around their faces to keep the grit out of their teeth. I wait for my harni . Skin of my skin, bone of my bone, where are you?

  At last I see her. Her hair is tied up, but pieces have escaped and blow around. She holds her hand up to the side of her face, trying to block the dust.

  She beckons me and I follow her back to the tea shop. I’m hoping that we’ll go behind a stall again, but with the wind so bad the cotton cloths snap and bell and there is no sensible place for us to hide. It’s too easy to imagine the shape of our bodies in the full-bellied cloth and the stallman thinking we were human lovers.

  The tea shop lets us get out of the wind, at least.

  I’m hungry, but after paying for our room, I don’t have very much money left. I ask for mint tea. The harni sits down across from me. No one here has ever seen a harni, no one here even knows to think we might not be human.

  “You need something to eat,” she says. She signals the waiter and tells him to bring us flaky dough pockets filled with beans and orange and figs. “And a pot of black tea with milk,” she adds.

  She leans forward. “I can get you work,” she says.

  “Ah,” I say, relieved. “What?”

  “You can rent yourself as a servant,” she says. “For a few hours at a time. My owner can help you. He does it with me.”

  “Do you think I could do it?”

  She shrugs. “It isn’t hard.”

  “What? I’d help when they needed more people?” I’m thinking of the mistress’s bismek games. “Serve food?”

  “No,” she says, “sex. Humans are always looking for someone to have sex with them.”

  Hariba isn’t. Sex frightens her, although she loves to be kissed. But I’m relieved, sex is easy. “You mean like a prostitute.”

  She nodded. “But you mustn’t call us that. My owner gets angry when you do.” She flips her hair over her shoulder. She has a high, strong nose and beautiful eyes. Humans would think she’s lovely. I’m happy to just be with her. It’s much easier than trying to anticipate Hariba’s feelings. She doesn’t require me to talk, and I don’t require her to talk. Being close to her makes me itch. I want skintouch. I want to smell her. If we could just go somewhere and curl up together, my happiness would be complete.

  “Can we go somewhere?” I say.

  “‘Can we go somewhere?’ “ she mimics me, sounding plaintive, and laughs with delight. Harni games.

  I sit in my chair like a woman and flip my hair back.

  We laugh together, and the sound blends until it sounds like one laugh, neither male nor female.

  * * *

  The harni ‘s house is on the edge of the Nekropolis, outside the wall. It’s a real house on an old street. The house next door has a crumbling wall. There are bricks in the street and plastic sheeting to keep the wind out. The harni ‘s house looks strong and tight.

  Her owner is a man of middle age, neither short nor tall, with hair that thins to a bare coin-sized patch at his crown. He’s quick and has an oddly delicate way of using his hands. He’s talking to a short man delivering oil and as he talks he taps his palm with one finger. His fingernails are beautifully manicured.

  He turns to us, frowning, and then his eyebrows fly up and he says, “Ah!” To the oilman he says, “All right? All right?”

  “Yes, Karim-salah,” the oilman says.

  Karim beckons to us to follow him across the courtyard to his office. “Yes, yes, yes,” he says. “Sit down. Let me look at you. You’re a harni, and you want to work for me. Yes?”

  “Yes, Karim-salah,” I say. I smile my best, but he’s too distracted. There’s no making him happy, he’s busy, too busy, eyes on me, but his mind is everywhere.

  “Have you had any experience serving people
? For their pleasure? Yes? You understand?”

  “Yes, I understand, but no, I’ve not…not really.”

  “Never mind,” he says, “you’re a harni . You’re all perverted, like foreigners. Ebuyeth, you show him around? Then we will talk about money.”

  “Yes, Karim-salah,” my harni says.

  It’s a very old-fashioned house. At the center is a courtyard with patterned tiles around the edges and porticos on all four sides. The shuttered windows are closed, but the louvers are open to let in the air and yellow draperies fill and sigh in the doorways. At two opposite corners are stairways and on the second and third floors are more covered walkways with more rooms opening off them.

  “Up here,” says the harni and lifts her robes to climb the stairs. “These two sides” -she gestures to the west and the north of the open courtyard-“these are women. That side” -she points towards the east-“that is for men and boys, and that” -she points to the south” -is for us. Fadima! Tabi! Everyone, I’m bringing a new one in!” she calls and pulls aside the draperies to the women’s side. Two children are playing beside a big clay olive jar. A woman without a veil is sitting on a couch, putting henna on the backs of another woman’s hands. There’s a foreign hair wand on the floor, and magazines, and celebrity picture printouts taped to the walls.

  “Karim says he doesn’t have any money,” says the one getting her hands painted. “But he goes and buys a harni .”

  “No,” the harni says, “he is independent.”

  “Independent?” says the woman. “Who owns him?”

  Who owns me, indeed? “My owner is Hariba,” I say, “but she wishes to pretend we’re free.”

  “Tabi!” they call. “Tabi! Come here!”

  Three more women come from rooms. Tabi is a little woman with very round hips who has makeup stains on her pink robe. A bare-chested boy, painted like a girl but with his small nipples rouged, slides around the curtain and another boy, barely dressed but without paint, follows him. The un-painted boy has a water pipe and he draws on it.

  “Put that down right here, Mouse,” says one of the women, but he just smiles, chin tucked down and eyes cast sideways at her, and draws more smoke.

  “You don’t want to work for Karim,” says one of the women.

  Tabi rolls her eyes. “Mashahana. Karim is no better and no worse than any of them.”

  “How would you know? You’ve never worked anywhere else!”

  “Neither have you,” Tabi says.

  “Are you jessed?” I ask.

  They all laugh. “Of course not,” says the one who is painting the other’s hands. “We’re not slaves. Except for the harni .”

  The painted boy says, “Do you think Karim will let us play some music?”

  The women hoot. “Boy, do you want to pay for power out of your own pocket?”

  “I bought power cells on Wednesday and he said he’d pay me back! He hasn’t let us play the music system in a week,” the boy says.

  “The only music Karim likes is the clink of coins.”

  I had never seen a coin until I went to the souk with Hariba. I thought money was all electronic, but in the Nekropolis they still use cash.

  “Karim is too stingy,” one of the women says to no one in particular.

  “You can always make your own music.”

  Another woman hums and gets up and dances a few steps.

  My harni pulls my arm a little and we duck out of the draperies and go to her side, which is now, I assume, my side. She pulls back the drapery and a girl and a boy, coiled together on the rose-colored couch, unfold. They are very young, and despite the differences of their sex, alike as two young gazelles. They look at me, resting on their elbows, the boy’s hand resting on the girl’s thigh. The walls here are bare and the floor is stained but bare.

  There is nothing to say, only skin. I sit down on the couch and we all touch and pet each other and I inhale young milky skin with its faintly cinnamon scent. I slide my shoes off and for the first time since I left the crèche to go to Mbarek-salah’s, I’m we.

  * * *

  The light’s very bright when the draperies are pulled aside. I can only blink and make out the silhouette.

  “Mashahana, you harni are disgusting. Karim is looking for you and the new one, Ebuyeth.” It’s Tabi.

  I sit up, away from the comfort of touch, and the perspiration on my skin dries in the dusty air. I slip into my shoes. I’m sorry Tabi doesn’t like when we touch, but I can’t help doing it, even if it would make her happy.

  “You know,” she says, “I’d understand if you had sex, although Mashahana knows, we all get more of that than anyone wants, but this piling on top of each other is unnatural. Like rats in winter.”

  I follow Ebuyeth.

  “The more of you there are together, the worse it is,” Tabi says.

  It’s nice in a way, because she doesn’t care if we answer or not. She’s not really talking to us at all.

  Downstairs Karim is sitting at his desk, papers in front of him.

  “You find it all satisfactory?” Karim says. “Okay? You will get forty percent?” He touches the papers with the tip of a stylus. “Which is fair, because I provide the place, and arrange for the people to meet you and make sure that if there is too much roughness you don’t have to serve that person again. I’ve never done anything like this, had someone here who wasn’t part of my household. You understand, I’m merely trying this out. If it doesn’t work out, you will have to leave.” He taps his teeth with the stylus. “Come back this evening, at dusk.”

  The harni lets me out. I touch her hand, the warm, dry skin. I don’t want to leave, but when I think of Hariba, I know she’ll be upset.

  It’s afternoon and the day’s nearly gone. The wind blows grit in my face and men go home bent against it, with their djellabas pushed against their legs. The sunlight is angled harsh against the buildings.

  I only have a little money, enough to buy chai for Hariba, but maybe tomorrow I’ll have more.

  “Where have you been?” she says when I come in. She’s sitting in the bed with her knees drawn up to her chin. Her face is bony and she’s getting thin.

  “I’ve work,” I say. “I found some work.”

  “Ahhhh,” she sighs. “What kind?” I’ve pleased her.

  “Waiting tables at a club. But it’s very late. At first I don’t know how much money I will make. I’m going back tonight.”

  “Tonight?” she says. She doesn’t want to be left here.

  “It’ll be okay,” I promise. “How are you feeling? Are you getting better? I brought you some chai.”

  I sit next to her on the bed and feed her like a child. She’ll take about half a cup and then she says no more, afraid it will make her sick.

  “It’s just on trial tonight,” I say. “I don’t know if I’ll make any money at all.”

  “Will they give you dinner?” Hariba is ever-practical.

  “Yes, I think they’ll give me dinner.” I lie down beside her where she sits. “I don’t want to leave you here.”

  She smiles. “You’re too good to me. Put your head on my lap.” She strokes my forehead. “What’s it like? This place?”

  “It’s on the edge of the Nekropolis, in a regular house, not a death house. The owner’s name is Karim and he’s a little fussy. He talks too much.” I make my hand into a mouth and make it talk. “He’s nice enough, though.”

  She laughs. “You charmed him, didn’t you.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “He doesn’t notice much except Karim.”

  I make small talk with her and she’s happy and even finishes her chai. Maybe she’s adapting to not being jessed. I don’t think Hariba has had a lot of happiness. Unless it sneaks up on her, she’s wary of it. I have to ambush her to get her smiling.

  “I’ll make flowers for a while, when you’re out,” she says.

  “And then when I come back, I pick up all these little snips of paper. It’s just to make me w
ork,” I say.

  “Yes,” she says. “Work, my husband!”

  “Your flowers are beautiful.”

  Hariba doesn’t know how to flirt, but she loves it.

  I leave her feeling good, sitting in the bed surrounded by sheets of paper. Soon I’ll have money to buy her more paper and she can make crisp, dry roses and stiff tulips that shimmer like silk.

  The wind is still blowing. I don’t mind at first, but the wind wears at me until I’m glad to get to Karim’s house. Inside the door, the heat of the day is still in the walls, warm and kind.

  Karim is in his office, and he directs me upstairs. The courtyard has a string of lights-red, green, yellow, blue, white-shaped like candle flames. Upstairs the drapes have been pulled aside so the front rooms are all open, lit with soft lights, and everybody sits as if this were a play. The women are all dressed in thin robes and their rosy nipples and the triangles of their pubic hair are visible through the cloth. They’re all painted and their hair is curled. One of the boys looks like a beautiful girl. His robe is nearly transparent, too, except it has a panel of fabric that runs down the front from neck to hem, hiding his sex.

  The harni are all naked. The woman and the girl each wear a gold chain necklace and slippers, but the boy wears nothing at all. I take off my clothes. I’m glad it’s warm in the room.

  The women are talking, in a desultory way, about nothing really. “So then, what did your cousin say?” “He said it was none of her business, anyway. He said what he did when he was working was his business.”

  Karim comes upstairs. “Sit on that couch,” he says to me, pointing. “You’re pretty old. Most people want a boy. Still, we’ll see. Tabi? Is everything all right?”

  “Whoever sold you these figs stole your money,” she says.

  Karim goes back downstairs. Being a prostitute is a lot like being a servant-nothing much happens. A little later a man comes up the stairs and hands one of the women a length of violet ribbon. She smiles up at him, takes him by the hand, and leads him back into a room.

  “Violet means oral sex,” says Ebuyeth. “Blue means intercourse, red means anal sex.”