by Jina Bacarr
But nowhere in the club are things more interesting than at the corner table near the piano player, a light-skinned colored girl with nimble fingers, a pleasant voice and bouncy breasts. You can’t take your eyes off the beautiful blond Englishwoman wearing a cream-colored djellaba drinking brandy and snorting white powder, while her handsome consort smokes a chibouk filled with hashish, his face reflecting a mood you can only describe as ecstasy. You suspect underneath the hooded robe the woman is nude, which explains the wandering hands of the handsome Egyptian seated next to her. And on this night you’ve heard whispers among the guests the Englishwoman will dance nude. Watching her, you can’t contain your excitement. She allows the hood to drop off her head and her platinum hair sparkles under the lights with bits of gold braided through it. She shakes her shoulders, raises her chest, and you see the points of her hard nipples begging to be freed from the soft cloth. You imagine underneath, her bare breasts are very warm and damp with her sweat. The thought of cupping them in your hands makes you tense with an ache you yearn to satisfy before you leave the club.
You move closer, careful not to let her see you staring at her. It’s then you notice the spicy scent lingering upon her, drawing you in, making you want more of her, her perfume snaking around you like a serpent ensnaring helpless prey. But you go willingly into her trap. In a room filled with tobacco smoke and the sweet scent of hashish, as well as the unpleasant odors peculiar to the arousal state of the club habitués, this aroma becomes almost magical. Not floral or exotic, but filled with whimsy and heat and mystical breezes.
You can’t stop staring at her, not even when she gets up from the table, looks around, her eyes glazed over with a drug-induced haze, then pulls the hood up over her head and scurries into a darkened corner. She didn’t see you. Good. You follow her, discreetly, of course, and watch her disappear through a small hidden door. You wait, mull over your options, decide you must see more. Bending over, you slide the door open, pause. Dim blue light greets you from an unknown source, showing you the way down a winding staircase. You put your foot on the first step, then the second, your feet making a scraping sound. You stop. No, go on, your curiosity demands. You continue, a coolness touches your face as you descend the stairs as if you’re reaching down into the ancient bowels of an old crypt.
When you reach the bottom, you see her. Naked. Her glorious body facing away from you and poised over a carved stone sarcophagus as if it’s a spanking bench. She’s holding on to the upturned cornices, her legs spread, her hair glowing blue under the eerie lighting. You hear a snap. You draw backward, take in a sharp breath, but you can’t take your eyes off the nude girl, her buttocks shaking as a tall Nubian, his skin so dark all you see is the flash of the thin whip in his hand striking her backside. She flinches, but doesn’t cry out. Is she gagged? No. Why then does she remain silent? Is she drugged? Yes. You saw her inhaling what you believe is cocaine.
You advance to take the whip away from the Negro, protect her, but a more inquisitive side of you hesitates, a darker side you dare not show to anyone pushes through your civilized veneer, daring you to remain silent and watch. Panting, you wait to see if she is a natural submissive, a creature so inclined to allow her exquisite body to receive the whip that when she hears the air rush, she pushes out her rear again and again to meet it as the leather explodes against her skin, sending red-hot sensations through her, making her writhe and twist her body. Not in pain, as stoic members of polite society would describe it, but as if she’s on a journey into a world of dark pleasure that leaves a tingling aftertaste and a red glow signifying her badge of courage. It’s then you realize the mingled scents of her perfume and musky sweat are stronger here, as if with each blow the aroma oozes from her skin and fills the hidden room with the provocative and spicy scent.
She turns her head around, almost as if she knows you’re watching her. Her lips are soft and puffy from biting down on them, but no one can mistake the distant but happy expression on her face. The ache in your groin rises to such a fever pitch you tremble with an uncontrollable urgency. You can’t stay here another moment and watch her exhibiting such pleasure without giving away your presence.
You return to the private room upstairs, look around, no one saw you leave, you’re quite sure of that, then you hear the Egyptian you saw earlier making an announcement.
The evening’s pleasures need a new volunteer, he says, his eyes as dark as the devil’s soul searching the faces of the eager onlookers.
You shift your weight, thinking, anything to relieve the pressure in your groin. Should you? Could you? Why not? No one will believe your wild stories when you return home, the sensual splendors you’ve seen and experienced firsthand, accusing you of concocting exaggerated travelers’ tales.
You make your decision. Let them think what they want. You know the truth.
You walk forward, smile, then disrobe, anticipating the divine pleasure about to be laid upon your quivering buttocks.
Ramzi and I ruled over this underworld paradise, and although you may accuse me of being a creative harvester of memory, I assure you, the details, the facts, the sexual games, all happened as I’ve written them down. I wish I’d had the foresight to save the reel of film a European director shot at the club one night so I could prove it to you, but like the whereabouts of the tomb of Cleopatra, I fear the reel of film is lost. You may not have realized, dear reader, that Cairo was a mecca of filmmaking before the war started. I even had a small part as a high-society girl in the first talking moving picture made in Egypt. I joked with the director about typecasting me as a rich girl, though secretly I wondered what he would say if he knew I was playing a role within a role.
Night after night, the action at the Cleopatra Club never stopped. It was an erotic amalgam of cabaret and brothel, a place where the ultraintellectual, aristocratic clique of Europeans could indulge in the perversion of their choice. While in the infancy of my orgiastic journey, I welcomed the onslaught of one orgasm after another, leaving me breathless, sore, nullifying my senses. Then something I never could have foreseen happened to me. My anticipation for sex wasn’t driving me for release as it once had. When Ramzi touched me, my body went forward in the throes of ecstasy with the same mechanics as if I were winding up the gramophone, the needle falling into well-worn grooves on my body, the melody never changing, the scratchy sounds taunting my nerves. I existed at the farthest ends of a pendulum, craving sexual pleasure as well as bemoaning the redundancy of it. I’d sit alone at the bar, my spirit in desperate straits, shouting orders in a caustic manner, uncompromising with the staff, and I was often combative with Ramzi.
I turned to Mahmoud to relieve my sexual urges, encouraging him to take the whip to my pleasure-starved body in the privacy of the hidden storage room I discovered down in what I believe was a burial crypt. Did I harbor some macabre feeling that offering up my naked body to the kiss of fire rekindled embers vanquished on that autumn night when I lost Lord Marlowe? I don’t know.
As I’ve admitted, I was using drugs again and that caused me to do strange things, like taunt Mahmoud with the promise of sexual intercourse, something he knew was beyond his duties, though by his overt mannerisms I could see he wanted me badly. I exuded a hypererotic air about everything I did, and one night I succumbed to Mahmoud, gently and with great tenderness, his arms wrapping around me, thrusting into me until his passion overtook him and our bodies bucked and writhed into a lost oblivion.
Afterward I made the Nubian promise to keep our secret and not tell Ramzi. Why did I do it? I had to prove to myself none of this was real because I no longer felt anything beyond the physical release. Although I found satisfaction in Ramzi’s embrace, I realized I had also stripped away any emotion and feeling. I could no longer dip into my subconscious essence and experience that elusive emotion taken from me when I lost my husband.
My mind wandered, meandering, listless, yet I had come to a new place in my search for fulfillment, learned a new truth I
could no longer deny: my love affair with the Egyptian had soared to momentous heights, then it had nowhere to go. Yet I couldn’t let go of one thing: the constancy of belief that sex could turn into love, the same profound love I’d had with Lord Marlowe, but it didn’t happen. I refused to back down, admit defeat, though Ramzi laughed at my foolishness.
“You desire love, my English lady?”
“Yes. Is that against the teachings of your Koran?”
He ignored my question. “The will of Allah decrees that a man must take pride in his penis and fuse his flesh with woman. What more do you wish? You have beauty, wealth, power.”
“But I don’t have you.”
He smiled. “You will never know how much you entwine my soul when I touch you, hold you in my arms, enter you and feel you moving against me.”
“I don’t have your love, Ramzi.” I looked at him, realizing he didn’t understand the meaning of the word. It was a hot August morning, the club had closed for the night, the customers gone, the local cleaning crew scrubbing away the stink of spilled human seed as well as alcohol. The dilapidated building with its chipped marble cornices and cold drab walls appeared differently in the daylight without the swell of human bodies hot with emotion distorting the newly painted cheap frescoes into a sensual dream.
Sniffing, he nuzzled the nape of my neck. “But I have given you so much more.”
“Ah, yes, Cleopatra’s perfume and immortality.” I didn’t refute his statement. If he wanted to insist in the perfume’s power, I wouldn’t stop him.
“I must leave you, my English lady,” he said, bending down and turning my palm up, then kissing my hand in an intimate manner. “But I shall return soon.”
“Where are you going?” I leaned toward him in a possessive manner. I couldn’t help myself.
“Laila wishes me to take last night’s receipts to the bank.”
“Is she ill?” I became suspicious something was amiss. She never allowed anyone to handle the night’s receipts.
“No. Allah has granted my sister both good health and good fortune,” he said, flicking an imaginary bit of dust off his pristine-white lapel. “She is entertaining an important gentleman this morning.”
Raising an eyebrow, I couldn’t resist blurting out, “I didn’t think Laila liked men.” She never participated in any of the club’s sexual proclivities and I often wondered if she preferred her own sex. I noticed she had a new girl helping her, the fifth in the past month. Always blond, always pale skinned with small breasts, though far from innocent. Several girls we hired to entertain the gentlemen were prostitutes from Poland and Hungary, countries fearful of Hitler’s threatening presence, though they never spoke of what was happening in their villages. We didn’t allow politics into the club, though many of our customers had connections to the British military as well as pashas from neighboring Algiers and Morocco.
Ramzi ignored my comment about her sexual persuasion. “My sister has found a buyer for the Amarna artifacts she secured from the tomb in the Valley of the Kings.”
“And who is the unfortunate soul?” I asked, my sharp remark pitted against the affection I knew he had for his sister.
He bent low and whispered to me the name of the officer given the honor of acquiring art objects for the personal collection of Hermann Goering.
I jumped up, my movement so quick I knocked over the folding chair I was sitting on. I made no effort to pick it up. “I won’t have Laila doing business with a Nazi in my club.” I was no fan of the Socialist Party that had taken over Germany and destroyed the sexual freedom I enjoyed there years ago.
In a conciliatory gesture, Ramzi motioned to Mahmoud standing nearby to upright the chair. “It’s only half yours, my English rose. Laila is in charge of running the business affairs of the club.”
“I own fifty-one percent,” I reminded him, my eyes avoiding the Nubian’s lusty stare at my buttocks.
He kissed my cheek. “So be it. I shall leave you to deal with my sister, should you choose.”
He left with Mahmoud following him, but I did nothing.
Nothing.
For I had to concede he was right. I may own the majority interest in the Cleopatra Club, but Laila was in charge.
And she knew it.
Because Ramzi was irresistible to me, Laila used that as leverage and caused me to spend outlandish amounts of money to redecorate a battered-down old building, hire workers I couldn’t communicate with and ignore the business side of running the club because I was too busy engaging in sexual games with her brother.
I sat down, exhausted, my body lax with fatigue, for I had no recourse but to admit that my search for love was my bondage. And when I didn’t have it, I turned to the devil’s dream, where I could lose myself in a fusion of fantasy and surrealism. Drugs.
I began to sweat, then a slight chill made my skin cold. I had a consuming hunger more powerful to feed than dealing with Laila and a goose-stepping puppet. I clicked open my compact and scooped white powder under the long red nail on my forefinger. I raised my hand to inhale the drug, then stopped. I was still incensed that Laila was doing business with a Nazi. Looking back, I believe I had a premonition of what was to come, though it was more likely my subconscious putting together the rumors circulating around Cairo about Hitler’s impending war machine.
Whatever it was that took hold of me, I changed my mind. I tapped my nail on the edge of the compact to loosen the powder. I didn’t need the drug to charge my emotions, to make me feel alive. I was angry. With Ramzi, with Laila, with myself. This was not the sexual utopia I expected. I had stepped through the looking glass and entered a world where pleasure and greed transgressed the flesh, but the ensuing social breakdown that followed had left me cold and wondering. I had never before questioned the terrifying vulnerability I felt when I was hot and sweaty and poised on a precipice. Was that pleasure? Or something else? Something I’d had and lost. When I was with Lord Marlowe, he expressed a fierce protection of me against the external world that threatened to devour me. With him, I tasted forbidden delights. Here in Cairo, I tasted the same forbidden delights, but a tartness lingered on my tongue. I didn’t sense that same protective fiber covering my nude skin. I sought to find it again with Ramzi, even Mahmoud, but it wasn’t there. It was as if they ravished my body, but denied my soul the wearing of the veil so much a part of their world. Their pagan, cabalistic approach to sex still excited me, made my clit throb for want of release, but I wanted more.
I was reminded of an Arab proverb about finding purpose in life, and when there is none, how darkness rushes in and crushes desire. Was that what was happening to me? Was I losing my desire for sex because there was no purpose in my life?
That thought propelled me to pour my energy into a different role in my quest to find sexual satisfaction. The desire to break the rules inflamed me, drove me forward, captivated my senses with unalloyed pleasure. I discovered I liked to watch a man and a woman having sex, him reaching under her clothes, making me wet anticipating what I couldn’t see him doing to her, then undressing her, both excited, her firm flesh slick with sweat, touching each other slowly, hesitancy then passion, relishing the texture of each sensation.
I admit after months of nonstop sex, I was ready to go a step further, not simply participating in erotic intimacies in the dark that are taboo, but watching.
A seductive purr in my ear urged me to carry on, to explore this new venture, though I never gave rise to the idea that such actions would give way to disturbing feelings and make my loneliness more acute. As I watched such scenes night after night in the private backroom of the club, I recorded each moment in a different layer of my memory so I could savor it later and relive my erotic adventure.
I also discovered that being a voyeur was more than looking. It suggested to me I should also be aware of the effect it produced on me. Since watching sexual antics was a forbidden taste to women, I became intrigued with experiencing this illicit fruit, accepting this delica
te pleasure in its own true form, seeing but not touching, observing but not participating in its perverseness. Was I wicked? Oh, yes, deliciously so. I bestowed upon my own body this unique pleasure without forfeiting my sexuality with Ramzi. He knew nothing about my new game and we continued satisfying each other’s needs in our nightly drama of sexual interludes. I felt no guilt nor weighed the consequences of my wanderings. Instead, I consciously allowed him to dominate our relationship, even encouraging him to flirt with pretty customers in the club. I believe I secretly wanted to see him with another woman.
I must admit I enjoyed indulging in the covert pleasure of watching him manipulate everyone he came in contact with, especially women, when he didn’t think I was watching. He’d taken to wearing a white linen suit at the club, thoroughly enjoying his role as host, exuding a sexuality rarely seen on the streets of Cairo. His smoldering good looks attracted attention from females. All females. I could handle that, I assured myself, adopting a sardonic attitude toward his new role.
I didn’t count on the arrival of my old friend, Maxi von Brandt, to change that.
10
A wrinkle of femininity livened up my existence when Maxi found her way down from Berlin to Cairo. Aryan blond she wasn’t, but her piercing blue eyes redeemed her with the caretakers of the Third Reich, as well as her uncanny art of observation through a photo lens, though she would never use those words to describe her work.
An intense sexual experience, I often heard her comment about the pictures she took. I admired how she absorbed everything about her subject, including mentally sleeping with them, and how she refused to disassociate herself from the moral consequences of her art. That often turned her dreams into nightmares.
How well I remember the aberrant photos she took of female victims of bizarre serial murders back in our Berlin days when she became involved with a dark-eyed, handsome though perverted psychologist obsessed with lustmord, sex murder. This was back when we were both on a quest of self-discovery and pursuing sex in every imaginable form. Maxi convinced me she found the therapist with the dueling scar on his cheek sexy, but he sent chills down my spine. He seduced her with the idea that all crime was a form of sexual release and encouraged her to accompany him on his nocturnal jaunts to murder scenes as well as to the morgue before they engaged in sexual activity.