It had been weeks since I had last had an orgasm. The sight and sound of the lash in the caravanserai had reminded me of who I was, what I needed. I stroked the spider. I found the pumping heart of its hidden eye and coated the bowl I was holding with a squirt of creamy warm broth that gushed out of me like nectar from an exotic fruit, waves of luscious discharge thick as milk from a cow.
If only men knew!
That night after we ate, our bellies engorged, Maysoon and I danced. The women had made me a costume like that which I had seen the girl wearing the night I came to the fort, the same close-fitting cap fringed with pearls that covered her face in a constantly moving veil, the same arrangement of beads looped in strings across her torso in such a way that, as she danced, so her breasts were alternatively covered and uncovered; the green gemstone sparkling in her navel above the diaphanous curtain of her low slung skirt that revealed and concealed her sex as her belly gyrated, the lush dome of golden flesh like a rising sun that mesmerised the men gathered about the fire.
Never before had I seen anything so sensual, so erotic, so arousing. Now I too could dance the dance. I had those weeks learned from Maysoon how to grind my hips and rotate my distended belly, nurtured during those days of indolence. My limbs were long, my body unblemished except for the mark, as white as candlewax now that I had spent so much time in the shade.
Maysoon hummed a tune and we moved in perfect rhythm, ivory and golden, like two queens from an extravagant chess set. We danced until we were breathless, we shed our costumes and the taste of her warm brine in my mouth that night was an elixir, a magic potion, the antidote to the poison Juliet had so foolishly gulped down her throat.
I could have sucked the girl dry. I could with concentration, with Zen will, have transformed into the spider and built my web in the grotto of her sweet humid sex. My clitoris, awakened earlier in the day, stood rigid in the bonnet of my coral inner lips, the channel of my vagina flooding with hot girlsperm as Maysoon’s tongue squirmed like a flame rising from a bonfire. The girl was tireless, a clockwork ballerina in a newly wound music box. I could have bathed in her gaping mouth until the light of dawn lit the arched windows. I could have drifted to infinity and it took all my resolve to stop myself.
I was saving myself. The girl was the hors d’oeuvre, the tapas, not the feast. The women had been running around in a tizz all day cleaning pots, beheading chickens, washing salt from bush meat, stirring date juice into the flour they fed in flattened patties into the conical oven, removing the piping discs of pita as they puffed up like engorged vagina lips, licking their burnt fingertips, their faces glowing and damp.
The night turned black. I slept without dreaming and awoke like a little girl on Christmas morning.
How brilliant for the sheikh to go when he did and return when I was ready for him. My belly that had grown rotund and voluptuous was adorned with a green stone, shiny as an emerald, the colour of my eyes. I watched from the ramparts an hour after sunrise as an open-backed pickup crossed the desert from town. They must have come straight from the boat and I knew, somehow I knew, that the vehicle carried Samir, Mohammed, Azar and Umah. They shot by the caravanserai, the driver tooted his horn as he swerved through the gate and they vanished from view in a cloud of dust.
I should have gone down to the courtyard with the other women. That was my place, my role, to throw up my hands, to fall to the floor and weep. But I remained in the tower, the creature from Scheherazade’s story. I had a new life, I liked my new life, but I knew from my old life that just as absence warms the heart, so denial keens the appetite. When Samir climbed the stairs and I finally heard his robes sweep along the corridor, he would be ready for me and I would light up and glow like a chameleon.
I didn’t have long to wait. He appeared in the doorway and I ran into his arms. He had remembered how to kiss and when he kissed my insatiable lips all the air gushed from my body. He carried me to the stone shower where I washed away the dust of his journey and he washed away the dust of my doubts and despair. I could smell the sea on his skin. His face was bronzed, flawless as a God. His cock stood between us and, when I bent to take it into my throat, I felt complete, a lock being joined by the key to paradise.
Samir’s warm manhood was an alien sun that energised me. His taste was sugary like sherbet. I felt spasms rolling down from his ribbed stomach and paused, not wanting that first orgasm to come too quickly. I rose with a long wet lick from his curly-covered balls to the groove in his soft helmet, from his navel to the broad plain of his smooth hairless chest. I climbed up into his embrace and the little sheikh throbbed against my belly.
He pushed the plug back in the shower. We dripped in the morning sun. The yellow parakeets stood in a line, hopping from foot to foot, close enough to touch, and sang their dissonant song.
‘You are happy to see me, habibi?’ he said.
‘So happy, you can’t imagine,’ I answered, careful with every word, and he leaned back, pleased and surprised.
‘You speak my language?’
I ran my forefinger in a line from my chin to the spider. ‘I had a good teacher,’ I told him.
He went down on his haunches to admire Amatullah’s handiwork. He caressed my mount. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said.
‘And you are beautiful.’
‘Yes, me beautiful.’ He kissed the spider. ‘She beautiful.’
‘You speak my language,’ I said and he looked up over my round belly, which he stroked.
We entered the tower. The light was hazy, like a dream. I took his hand and kissed his palm. I sucked his fingers, one after the other, then slid like an obedient slave over the pillows piled high on the dais of carpets. I got a good purchase with my knees, my breasts hung like udders over my lovely tummy and, as I rolled my hips seductively, an ancient memory flooded my mind. I was thirteen in the showers after a hockey match at school, a skinny thing with budding breasts barely contouring my chest. A plump hirsute girl ripe as a peach slapped my backside with a wet towel and all the girls laughed when she roared ‘shame your arse is your best feature’.
I was angry and tearful, but the memory now brought a smile to my lips. The hairy girl may have been right. My bottom was full, plump, two precise domes that rang out like a bell as the weathered hand I’d kissed came down in a hard smack that set me on the yellow brick road to euphoria. The weight of that slap pushed me forward, collapsing the pile of cushions, and without my arms for support, I buried my head and pushed the target up to meet the next stroke of discipline.
There is nothing, but nothing, like a good spanking. I wiggled all the more as my bum grew redder, sweat poured from me like a tide and the sheikh’s wet hand rang out louder and louder as smack after glorious smack rained down on my intoxicated posterior. I liked the whip. You can enjoy the cane. But your lover’s hand is the fleshly connection of your lover, it is his penis in another form. Men with large hands are endowed with large cocks and the sheikh’s hands were long and fine. If you look at the shape of a man’s palm and the soft curve of a girl’s backside you can see that they are meant to join. They are the two parts of a child’s first puzzle. All through my childhood Daddy had said what I needed was a “damn good spank”. How prophetic.
I wriggled and writhed. My breasts wobbled. My wet hair hung in a golden veil over my eyes. Samir beat me until the glow spread up my back and down my thighs. He beat me until my drenched pussy sent a stream of boiling lava down the insides of my legs. He beat me until the smell of my arousal stewed his mind and he fell on me like a satyr, driving his spear deep into my winking backside, filling me to the rim and we exploded instantly roaring like beasts.
We lay in a lake of sticky fluids, chests beating, the light growing stronger as he revived sufficiently to swivel around and investigate the tattoo. He licked the eight legs of the spider, he petted and nudged my swollen clit and his tongue like a sword slid into the sheath of my flooded vagina.
All warm and soft, the little sheikh was per
fumed with my own scents as it worked between my teeth and, like baking clay, slowly hardened. Is there anything better than sucking a man’s cock after it has rutted your backside? Is there anything better than fucking?
The morning was soon gone and Samir was gone all too soon. We bathed away the juice coating our bodies and he threw a sheet around his waist. As he hurried along the walkway, the parakeets took wing and suddenly, for no reason, a cold chill like a bad omen ran down my spine.
He vanished with a wave through the open door and I shook the feeling off. I had been looking into the future. There is no future. I told myself there is only this moment, the aroma of food slowly cooking, rising up the fortress walls, and Maysoon must have guessed I was starving because she appeared with a warm clay bowl and a crispy pita rolled up like a cigar between her pouting lips. There were slices of meat with secret blends of spices on a bed of chutney made from mangoes mixed with pitted dates and brown rice. We ate with our fingers and wiped the bowl clean with pita strips that smelled of the oven.
We grinned and gazed into each other’s eyes as we ate and the joy I felt from the sheikh coming home was doubled because in Maysoon there was no resentment or jealousy. He had come to me. Perhaps another time he would first go to her, and I would remember. I would carry her food without doubt or antipathy. I would learn grace and equanimity, the laws of the harem, the law of life.
We dressed and practised our belly dance. As the heat faded, we stripped and lay in each other’s arms, the light in the twelve arched windows blushing a delectable shade of pink. Before we dressed for my début, Maysoon painted my eyes in kohl, my lips with a scarlet dye that Yasmeen ground from red petals and paste; she rubbed cream over my chin and down the silken strand to my pubis. In the shadowy light, the thread turned silver and the spider sparkled. More than anything I would have loved to have been in possession of a full-length mirror so that I could have locked that moment into the vaults of my memory.
We were ready. I could hear the musicians in the courtyard below. I wanted to go down and join the festivities, but Maysoon held me back.
‘No, no, Chengi. Have patience.’
She had said this to me before, many times, and it was so hard to learn.
She was standing beside the battlements gazing out in the direction of town. I joined her and we stared through the fading light until a spiral of dust appeared on the horizon. The spiral grew larger, turning like a corkscrew. I heard the purr of powerful engines as three black-windowed vehicles crossed the desert like a line of scarabs. Their approach seemed slow but then, as they drew closer, the engines roared and the brakes squealed as they turned towards the fort and disappeared into the gates.
‘They have come,’ Maysoon said.
‘Who?’
She looked surprised. ‘The Emir,’ she replied. ‘The Emir is here.’
‘The Emir?’
She nodded and in her eyes were two crescents of moonlight. Maysoon didn’t elaborate. I practised patience.
Above us, the night sky had never been so low and imposing. Green and blue and orange shooting stars crisscrossed the firmament below the slowly turning constellations. I stood in my costume, my ompholus, gateway to my womb, bejewelled in a gleaming green stone, a third eye, deep and unseeing.
It was time to go. Maysoon drew the cap over my head and tucked my golden hair below the intricate weaving of white pearls. We touched lips, careful not to smear the greasepaint, and she ran the tip of her tongue over my teeth.
‘I love you, Chengi,’ she said, a rare … no, not rare, a unique show of affection and friendship that made a tear well into the corner of my eye.
‘I love you, Maysoon.’
She grinned and I understood, suddenly I understood: when she was old and no longer desirable, I would be the same. I would love her as she loved me. We would buy spices when the traders came from the south. We would embellish other girls with the blue tattoo and they, with their hedonism and lascivious responsibilities, would maintain an air of peace and order.
As we made our way down the two flights of stairs, everything about me was swaying, my skirts of chiffon, the beadwork top, the veil of pearls hiding but not quite hiding my face. Everything about me, about the two of us, was tempting, ripe, a feast for a feast. If a girl has a moment when she is at her best, this was my moment. My limbs were long and slender, my bottom tingled, my feet glided silently on the stone stairs, my belly was gorgeously rounded; a marble dome that by some genius of geometry had swelled in a curve that reached to the same vertical point as my breasts that were full and perky with nipples hard as nuggets of gold.
We entered the colonnade with its row of tables laden with rich smelling platters and tureens. The compound was lit by flaming braziers on tall metal posts and a pair of sheep turned on the spit over the fire. The women fluttered by on hennaed feet in new dresses bringing bowls with dips and baskets of pita, filling every space until the tables groaned with the weight of the feast.
The men had gathered in concentric circles according to rank. Behind their chatter the musicians plucked and hammered their instruments, lutes, a zither they call a qanun, a tambourine, reed pipes, tablas of varying shapes and sizes, their rhythms slow with an emotive power that made my fingers and toes tingle.
Samir was dressed in white with a white turban held by a single band. Beside him sat the Emir, all in black with a black turban decorated with four bands of gold that I assumed marked his status as the blue spider marked my own.
‘That’s the Emir?’ I whispered.
Maysoon nodded.
‘He is related to Samir?’
She looked back at me as if I were simple. ‘He is the head of the tribe,’ she said. ‘The sheikh’s father.’
I looked again. Of course Samir was the man’s son. They had the same shiny dark eyes, the same high cheek bones and carved features, the Emir’s face masked by a heavy moustache and beard that clung tightly to his chin. They were the same height, but the Emir was broader and had about him the air of a tyrant.
Hanif, all in white like Samir, sat at Samir’s left, and behind them were men in black and the two old men who never left the fort. Azar, Mohammed and Umah were part of the larger outer circle, a place for everyone and everyone in their place.
The women led by Amatullah emerged in a line with bowed heads and the first tantalizing platters of food. The men took bowls and filled them. The women scurried off again. It all seemed well-organised, rehearsed, as the girl and I had rehearsed our belly dance.
No sooner had the women disappeared than they reappeared with more courses, the smells filling the air with mystery and promise. The men grew louder, the beat of the music faster, drawing me hypnotically behind Maysoon as she wafted out from under the colonnade, her body like a snake weaving ancient patterns of sensuality and seduction. Like a shadow, I followed every move, every step, every gyration, excitement growing in me like fire. To dance in this way before the ravenous eyes of a sea of men is the ultimate turn on, to be desired unconditionally, universally, is the feminine ideal, the heart of our role, ultimate bliss.
My eyelashes, heavy with kohl, fluttered like two tiny birds. I didn’t so much see as perceive the Emir coming to his feet. He was motionless for a moment, then moved at speed, three steps and he reached the musicians. I didn’t know what was happening. He kicked the tabla from beneath the drummer’s hands, the instrument rolled across the dirt and the music hushed to silence as if plunging into the void.
The world stood still. The Emir grabbed my hand and pulled me under the light of the nearest brazier. I noticed Samir leap to his feet and race towards us, but he was too late. His father tore off my cap and threw it on the floor. He stared into my eyes. He ripped the beads covering my breasts and the skirt from my hips.
As Samir reached him, the Emir stood back, staring at me and holding off his son. The men of the first circle and the men in black gathered about us. They were silent as the Emir studied the blue tattoo. His eyes ran
up the silken thread to the silver St Christopher glowing in the firelight.
He looked finally into my eyes and in his expression I saw the contempt powerful men in poor countries feel for the colonial, for the big corporations, for the western governments who for five hundred years have exploited the people in their world. The Christian symbol at my throat represented everything he despised. His hand like a claw reached out and ripped the thong from my neck. He threw the medal to the floor and ground it into the dust with the heel of his leather boot.
As he turned to Samir, two of the black-turbaned men grabbed my arms. The Emir hit Samir, only once, a thunderous blow across the side of his face, knocking him off his feet.
‘Fool,’ he cried.
Samir stood. The tic on his neck was vibrating, but he wasn’t afraid.
‘She is mine, Father, mine,’ he yelled.
The Emir waved his arm. ‘She is from out there,’ he screamed. ‘You defile our land.’
‘She is a woman. She is my woman. She belongs to me.’
‘Nothing belongs to you. Have I taught you nothing. Everything belongs to the tribe.’
‘But, Father, I want her …’
‘You are not a child, Samir. We cannot have whatever we want.’
He ran at his father and grabbed the folds of his black tunic.
‘I will not give her up, Father. I will never give her up,’ he said.
His voice was low, considered. In the moment’s silence I thought for one optimistic breath that the Emir was going to relent. I was wrong. He unscrewed Samir’s hands from his clothes.
‘Take him away,’ he ordered.
Three men grabbed the sheikh from behind.
‘Father, I will not give her up. It is my right.’
‘My son, you have no rights. You have responsibilities.’
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