MEMORIES from the EAST

by Abdulla Kazim

  This is the image I wanted for my life and my childhood. Why didn’t I have it? Is it not a noble request to ask for this humble favour? Am I so greedy asking it, or should I be even more polite asking it? Why doesn’t heaven give me this privilege of picking the course of my life, when the god of gods will hold hands with me, supporting my demand?

  Who is to blame for the foggy shadows of dismay that cover my life? Is it Father for being so naïve and making the wrong decisions in choosing a wife and then killing her? Is it my mother for being unfaithful in her heart and seeking her own benefits? Is it me for being the son of my parents? Or is it God for putting us all together in the centre of a volcano, knowing that it will explode at the end and spare none?

  13

  “When is your birthday, Gerald?” Qiuyue asked.

  She was sitting opposite me in KFC having dinner. It was her decision to go to that fat-filled junk food restaurant. She said that she missed it.

  I turned my eyes to her in surprise, hearing the question. Her eyes were fixed on her tray. There was on one side a small mud of mayonnaise mixed with tomato ketchup and on the other end of the tray lay a bunch of French fries, the look of which disgusted me with the sparkling fats covering them. While I had a vegetable burger, she had only the fries, and she said that it was her favourite. I just wondered how she kept her body so fit after all swallowing all that big chunk of fat!

  But the question she asked seemed dumb to me and a little surprising. It was surprising because last week, on my birthday, I had got a message from her mother greeting me on the occasion. How come the daughter missed it while the mother didn’t? I had believed that the mother got the date from her daughter, but now it seemed my theory was wrong. Qiuyue was sitting with one leg atop the other, with the leg on top bare-footed as the green slipper lay on the floor. Her legs seemed shiny. I could see now that apart from her physical attraction, I loathed her.

  I think almost two weeks had passed since last we had intercourse, and I had my lust in my throat now. I slipped my hand under the table and started caressing her raised foot, moving my hand up her leg slowly. She looked at me with that childish smile on her face, covered her lips with two fingers, and giggled. After a few seconds she shook her leg and pushed her chair back a little to escape from my hand.

  “You are burning me hot,” I whispered and she giggled again. “Away, away… not today, Gerald, I cannot.” Then she leaned towards me on her chair and whispered, with both her hands on her lap, “My vagina is paining me today.”

  This may have seemed a good reason to speak of, but looking at the facts, she had never allowed me to have her from the front, and now she was speaking of her genitals that I had never consumed. I don’t know if she did figure out her wrongly given excuse. Whatever reason it was, she didn’t wish to sleep with me that night.

  I accompanied her to the bus stop and waited there with her. As the bus arrived, she kissed me and got in, but before the bus took off, I called her.

  “You missed my birthday this year. We will celebrate it together next year,” I told her.

  “Okay,” was what she managed to say.

  I walked to my apartment alone. It was a quiet night out, and I liked it. The air brought a chill into my bones. The first thing I did when I got home was to remove my T-shirt. There was a little pain in the bottom of my chest. I opened the door of my closet and stood in front of the square mirror attached at the back of its door. I pressed the left end of my chest and felt the pain. That day was the first time that I had carried eighty kilograms for the chest exercise. Bojing, my Chinese gym-mate, gave me good support for my exercises, and I helped him in return. He was a talkative guy, but he would talk within limits, unlike some who, when they talk a lot, talk more lies. I could see he was a good guy at heart. He would always talk about sexual relationships, but again, he would talk within boundaries, and I was always surprised at his deep knowledge about sexual issues. He seemed very bright to me in spite of the foolish image of himself he portrayed in front of me. Whenever I asked him whether he had a girlfriend, he would answer that he hadn’t. I didn’t believe him in that matter and believed that he wished to keep it concealed from me, for whatever reason. He was handsome, to be honest, and I could see him achieving his dream of being a model, as he had once told me.

  Suddenly there came a knock on my door. I think it was the first time, since renting the room, I had heard anyone knock on my door in the evening. I looked at my wrist watch; it was nine thirty-five. It might be someone who had mistaken the address, was the thought that came to mind. I opened the door and there stood in front of me the last person I wished to see at the time, Ah Cy.

  She was wearing a sleeveless mini-dress that was beautifully shaded in lime green and aqua blue; the former colour starting from the top, and the latter from the bottom, and the colours gradually radiating to lighter shades as they grew from the both ends of the dress. Above her waist, just below the breasts, there was wrapped around her a light-blue ribbon. So elegant, she was! So neat, she looked! I could see she was better than her daughter at choosing colour combinations. Her slim legs were twinkling; I guessed she wasn’t sweating; she just oiled them or rather creamed them up. Her calves looked strong and suggested the owner to be a lady who plays sports. She stood at my door with one hand on the door frame and the other straightening her already straight hair. Her mild perfume was so weak and yet charming.

  “Are you busy?” she asked with a tone that would raise hundreds of suspicious questions.

  I hesitated to answer at first. Her eyes were scanning my bare chest. Two of my neighbours were passing in the corridor now and they started whistling with their eyebrows uplifted. The bright aroma of Ah Cy’s perfume was a little clouded by the bad smell those two brought with them, and I guessed it came from their mouths. One of them winked at me, and the other made the shape of a circle with one hand’s thumb and index finger, and started pushing his other index finger into the circle.

  “No,” I answered Ah Cy to avoid the strange looks from damned people such as those two passers-by.

  But before I even asked her, she stepped in, brushing her arm against my chest. I closed the door behind her. She stood and looked admiringly at my painting on the wall. She asked me about it and whether I drew it. Then she looked in my open laptop, and she made an unfunny joke about the written lines—whether they were some sort of an ancient lost language or some sort of secret code.

  “It is a MIDlet application I have been working on for about a month.”

  “Okay,” she replied, not understanding what I was talking about. Her eyes were rolling all over my small room.

  She stopped near the bed, stared at it for a while, and then sat down there in a relaxed mood with her hands stretched backwards. Instantly my eyes caught a glimpse of her white panties through her legs that were uncrossed in the style of a man.

  “Did my daughter sleep here ever?” she asked, her fingers pinching the mattress.

  “Once,” I answered honestly.

  Suddenly she moved her arms and rested her elbows on her knees. Her hands crawled under her dangling hair that was now covering her face and her forehead. I couldn’t understand what she was up to and what she sought, but I could hear her now inhale deeply through her wet nose. She was crying. I stood there in front of her. I didn’t know what to do really, but I didn’t plan to do anything. I wasn’t a babysitter or a comforter to offer refuge to anyone having personal issues. I believe that every person has some issues in their lives.

  Ah Cy raised her head up a little, but it still was curtained by her silky hair, and she wiped her under eyes with the bottom of her palms.

  “Sorry for that,” she said with cracked voice. “I am supposed to have a date tonight, but the guy is busy with another girl, much younger.”

  She pushed then her hair back with her hands and started smoothing it.
Her wet eyes didn’t look good to my taste, and I tried to avoid them. It was only then, as I lowered my eyes that I caught a glimpse of her nipples. What a daring lady she was to put on such a nice outfit with no bra underneath!

  “I am sorry for that,” I said. I had nothing to do with her personal matters.

  In a split second, she jumped from her place and wrapped me with her hands. What a surprise! Her wet cheekbone tickled the side of my neck. Her short nails pierced my back, and her breasts were flattened against my chest with the force she put into that embrace. One hand then moved down my back and rested on my buttock and pressed there. I stood motionless with my hands parallel to my sides.

  “Give me this night,” she said in what sounded like a whisper.

  I was hungry for sex at the time; I had always been hungry for soft creatures. As I mentioned earlier, I hadn’t had intercourse with her daughter for more than a week. This period might seem very short for some, but for me it was long enough to revive my need for sex in its strongest form.

  “Can you?” she whispered again, but it seemed more like pleading this time.

  I said nothing but answered with a series of actions. I placed one hand on the centre of her bottom and pressed it hard down there. My other hand cupped her breast and squeezed it gently like a sponge ball. She liked that, I could see it, and she drew back her chest a little as I pushed my mouth there. She pushed me onto the bed, and I let myself fall to satisfy her. She sat on the floor and like a snake she crawled near me, spreading my legs apart as she did so. She disarmed me of my pants and underwear, sliding them under the bed where I hid some of my shoes and unwashed socks. She started kissing there in between my thighs and licking and even chewing, as I felt it. My genitals were under her full control, and she liked to be the dominating one. I don’t know how long she sat there doing some ritual I guess she had mastered over years of experience; I couldn’t feel myself, and how could I, being with a lady with such an experienced mouth? My soul was drawing away from my body, and all my nerves fell tense. I sensed the veins on my neck harden. I don’t know if I screamed there or not, but I can say I moaned. After that first batch of extreme caressing, she stood on her feet and pulled down her short dress, which fell at her feet, and followed that by pulling down her panties. She stood naked now. She came atop me, and her magic fingers worked again to apply the required touches. I felt myself so smoothly sliding into her with my wet genital, like when one slides a wet candy into his mouth. Thinking of it, the smoothness of the candy’s sliding motion can be explained by the amount of saliva in one’s mouth and the amount of wetness on the candy, and it can also be explained by the width of one’s open mouth. In my case, I believe the second example applied more strongly with Ah Cy. She did what she liked with my body, and I was, happily, against my own will giving her my whole physical self.

  About forty-five minutes later, we lay next to each other on my small bed, our soaked arms touching.

  “Please don’t look at me as a bad mother,” she said.

  A moment of silence hung in the air. I didn’t comment on what she said.

  “I love my daughter, and I hope that what just happened will be kept as a secret between me and you,” she continued.

  I laughed inside myself at her talk. What a good mother she really was! So lustful and sexually greedy to want a portion of what her daughter had found. What sort of a family life did that woman lead, I wondered, and what a shining example she had set for her poor daughter! I still didn’t say anything but just kept silent, looking at the ceiling where the white fan, edged with thick dust, moved slowly as if out of energy.

  “My daughter is not fully sane, eh? Those are some harsh words,” she started again. “Don’t you know anything more about her? I suppose you don’t, and Qiuyue will not reveal it to you. I suppose she just cannot.” She paused for a couple of seconds. My eyes were still turned away from her, and no single word did I speak. “She lost her father when she was just eight. My boyfriend was such a good guy, and if anything wrong happened in his life, then I suppose it was me. We had such good intimacy with each other. He was ready to marry me, but I wasn’t, even after getting pregnant with Qiuyue. I really loved him, and, to be honest, no man ever came into my life after him for whom I felt stronger love than the love I felt for him. I was just scared of getting married. It is such a big step in life. I believed it requires much preparation and planning, and I had done none of those at the time. My boyfriend accepted my decision to delay the marriage plan till the day I was ready. Qiuyue grew up more with her father than me. You see, he was a better parent than I was. He was responsible and caring, with a lot of love to give out. Qiuyue was strongly attached to her father, something I didn’t mind because I was always busy with my girlfriends. Going out with them and having chats and beers was my normal life. But the day came when my daughter and I were to lose something dear. I was called one night to hospital and found my daughter in a terrible state; she was emotionally broken. She had been walking out with her father that night, when a speeding car hit him so hard that he instantly died in front of her eyes. My poor daughter could never recover from that shock, but she sought for something as atonement for that loss. She sought for an alternative love in males. It was a desperate search on her side. I could see that she would have been tricked very easily by boys disguising their sexual lust with fake words of love. To avoid any unexpected results from her desperate search of love, I advised her privately not to give her vagina to any boy unless she was sure of his true love for her.”

  Ah Cy paused here and sat on the bed, and pushed herself to rest her back against the wooden palate at the head of the bed.

  “Qiuyue agreed to that because she believed in what I said, but still I wasn’t fully comfortable with it. Then I got this idea: to let my daughter fall in love with a guy I chose for her, and what’s better than a guy who has no interest in girls, a gay?”

  I frowned now upon hearing that and turned my eyes to her. I caught sight of her beautiful bare breasts, uplifted without even the support of any bra.

  “I contacted one of my girlfriends who used to know a few gay males from her neighbourhood. She arranged one for me, and I insisted on meeting him first. The guy looked good, and he has a strong muscular body like you. His name was Bojing, and what a funny character he was! He even told me that he was planning to be a model one day.”

  Bojing! Yes, my ears caught the name and everything she described about that guy fitted the Bojing I knew from my college and gym, except what she mentioned about him being gay.

  Ah Cy went on. “Qiuyue soon fell in love with Bojing as I planned for her. Bojing was a very good speaker, and he did his magic with my daughter, but he hadn’t the slightest interest in her. I paid him well for his role, but in the end I had to put an end to Bojing’s role in the life of my daughter; I was running out of money to pay him, and his continued existence on the stage for long would ruin everything. I made him tell her that he had to go to the United States to finish his studies and that he would return to her as soon as he was done. And thus it went. Bojing was out of sight, and Qiuyue was dreaming of the day she would meet him again and get married to him. That was four years ago, and you, Gerald, are the only person in her life with whom she had casual sex since the supposed departure of Bojing. I am sure my daughter didn’t give you her vagina, did she? Eh, she will not, I am sure of it. My daughter always finds emptiness in her life, and then you come to fill it up.”

  “But why would you put this illusion of love in her mind?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said and lowered her head. “I suppose it is a mother’s quest to protect her child. However bad a person I am, I am a mother in the end, and I carry love for my child.”

  A cloud of sadness came over her expressions. She got off the bed, grabbed her dress, and put it on, before combing her hair with her hands.

  “Thanks for havi
ng me in tonight.” She smiled now and left my room.

  What a strange mother she was, but I believe she was a better woman than my mother. But saying this, I didn’t consider Ah Cy a good mother and woman. I could see that she brought destructive ruin to the lives of her boyfriend and her daughter.

  What a strange family I had met. Having the privilege of sleeping with both the daughter and the mother! Who would believe that? What could one say about having access to the mother through the front lids and the daughter through the back cave! I couldn’t see what principle of loyalty they both believed in.

  What bothered me more than the mother and daughter was hearing about that paid-for Bojing. Was he the guy I knew? A gay!

  14

  Since the day I heard the story of Qiuyue, I started avoiding her and she, for whatever reason, stopped bothering me. I was glad for that. For matters related to my sexual fulfilment, the mother, Ah Cy, was there. I could see how careless a mother she was. She didn’t deserve the good things in life. I was enough for her to fulfil her unfilled desires—me, a bad guy and half her age. Looking at her, I just wondered what types of girls exist in life and how far they will go to satisfy their needs. It was really a shame that Ah Cy was a mother. She would visit me afterwards on a regular basis in my room, fulfil her need, and go. I didn’t bother asking her about her daughter; I believed the mother targeted just one particular pleasure by visiting me, and I sought the same from her.