Love Is an Ex-Country

by Randa Jarrar

  As an adult woman, I tried to fast Ramadan, to pray five times a day, to give alms to the poor, to read up on my rights as a wife. I only succeeded at the latter. I discovered, early on in my marriage, that a wife is entitled to sex with her husband at least once every four months. A husband who doesn’t provide sex for his wife is sinning by denying her. I tried to talk about this with my mother once but was too shy; I wanted to talk to all my friends about my sexless marriage but was too ashamed. And besides: my husband wasn’t Muslim.

  •

  I did not meet the married man by the lake. The first time I met him, the very first time, was on a train from Hamburg, Germany, to Berlin. I was on my German book tour and he boarded the train one stop after I did. He was wearing denim and a cashmere scarf and a hat. He was helping a fellow passenger with a guitar case; I got up to help them both, but mostly to place myself in view of the man, because I was so drawn to him. I asked him if he was a musician, and he said he was a writer and told me his name. I recognized it but pretended I didn’t. He asked me if I was a singer. I said I wasn’t. I said I was a writer, and that I was touring Germany with my book in translation. He said he was touring Germany with his book, too.

  He invited me to join him two rows back. I glanced at the woman seated next to me; her face was contorted with disgust at my loud voice. She had been disgusted since I sat next to her, repulsed by my fat body. The married man was not repulsed by me, and I got up and went to sit next to him. I sat across the aisle because a woman—his publicist, I found out later—was sitting directly next to him.

  The man and I both wore wedding rings. We had both lived in the same small college town once. He told me about the time a man had held him at knifepoint outside a bar. He told me about his twenties, immigrating to America, his attempt to be a teacher before he became a writer. The college town had given him refuge the way it had given me refuge. My son and me. We spoke about our children.

  We talked the entire ride over to Berlin, and when the train stopped, he invited me to go to his reading that evening and said he would put my name on the list at the box office. I told him I was already an invitee at the same literary festival, and was already on the list. Amusingly, or perhaps because he was blindly sexist, he ignored me and kissed my cheek and said he hoped to see me later.

  I walked around Berlin completely adrift and bored and lonely. There was nothing that could wick away the moisture that such an intense encounter had created. I was swimming in it. I needed him. I wanted to keep hearing his voice, his stories.

  I met with my publicist and she told me she was going to the festival venue, so I told her the married man had asked me to see him read, and she whooped, because the married man had written books she admired. I walked with her to the venue and got in with my festival-writer pass, and I found the married man immediately, in the grass outside, smoking a cigarette. I was too nervous to approach him. Plus, I wanted him to miss me a little.

  I walked and sat in the hall for his reading. He read and spoke for forty-five minutes. Afterward, when he saw me, he walked right up to me, put his hand on the small of my back, and kissed the corner of my mouth. He asked me to hang by and go for dinner afterward. I waited thirty minutes but then decided not to stay near him anymore. I was married. I had only been with my husband a total of three years, one of them married. We hadn’t had sex in months, but I was hopeful that would change. It was Ramadan. I walked out of the venue and didn’t say goodbye to anyone, just walked away and through a park and into a small market and then back to my hotel. I ordered a bloody steak sandwich and ate it and then sopped up the blood with the bread and thought about fucking the married man, went to bed, and in the morning, left Berlin.

  When I got home, my husband still would not have sex with me. For a year, he didn’t have sex with me. We went to therapy, and the therapist said that we needed to create a nightly touching practice where we lay in bed, side to side, and petted each other without necessarily doing anything sexual at all. Soon enough, I was begging him to keep up the practice with me. He wasn’t only refusing to have sex with me; he was refusing to settle into the nightly touching, too. When I nagged him to pet me, I felt I’d become removed from my original desire: that he fuck me. This made me angry, but because I believed that my large body wasn’t lovable, I didn’t leave.

  When the married man and I left the casino, and went to his cabin, and when he asked me what I wanted to do, I said, Anything you want to do.

  The married man then drew me a bath and told me to get in. I put my lips on his, something I’d wanted to do years before, on the train to Berlin. He didn’t kiss me back, testing me. I waited, my mouth completely still, until, finally, he reached for my tongue with his. He twisted my hair in his hands, then pulled roughly. It hurt, but I told myself I needed to take it. I undressed and he watched, then said Wow when I was done. I was scared he said it because I was fat. My husband hadn’t told me I was fat in years, but I knew he still thought it. I got in the tub, floated back, allowed my breasts to peek out. He didn’t want to undress; he stood at the edge of the tub and washed me, pleasured me. He rubbed my feet clean, then sucked my toes. I took his hands and put them over my throat gently, playing at force. He choked me. I was afraid. He let go. I took a deep breath, and when I let it out, he choked me again and held me underwater. I thought I would die.

  I struggled, and he let go.

  I wanted to ask him to stop but didn’t know how. He slapped my breasts, my belly. He asked me to slap his face. I did. I slapped him harder and harder. He was soaked in water, his hands around my neck. He hit me on the head. Harder and harder. I finally said Stop. He stopped. He took out his penis. It was small, and I was disappointed and embarrassed for him. I was embarrassed that he’d hit me and embarrassed that his dick was so small. I got out of the tub and got into his bed. He put his hand on my vulva and roughly fingered me, harder than I wanted, and I understood that it was because he couldn’t roughly fuck me. He fell asleep when I put him in my mouth. I got out of bed and found his wallet and his credit cards all over the floors of the cabin. I took out receipts from his wallet and read them: a burrito he’d eaten in Manhattan, a meal he’d bought his children. I wanted proof that he’d hurt me and that I’d spent this night with him. I texted a mutual acquaintance and asked her to pick me up from the married man’s cabin in the morning. I got back into bed and tried to sleep.

  When I woke up, he asked, proud, if I felt sore. I said I didn’t, even when I felt the bruises. I didn’t want him to think he’d hurt me, broken me. I had the bruises on my neck and breasts for over a week afterward; they were a yellowish hue when I finally left my husband, who didn’t notice them.

  •

  I left my husband after I came home from the lake. I told him it was over while we were in bed. He had made love to me three times in five years and refused to get help. This convinced me that there was nothing wrong with him, that he was simply not attracted to me.

  He packed all his things and left two weeks later, and he took half of our books. It felt almost as if the books’ absence was also the absence of his body, and this made me very sad.

  •

  My mother called, after I told her that I left my husband. She wanted to help me through my sadness, but I declined her calls. She had told me once, when I had confided in her years earlier about how I often felt hopeless and depressed, that I should pray. She said that praying and talking to God would help me feel better. I have maybe seen my mother pray once or twice my entire life. I wanted to tell her what I had read once: that my husband was the one who had sinned. That he’d been depriving me of my rights.

  The next Ramadan after my divorce, I thought once again of the married man and of the way my skin felt for days after that night I committed zina for the first and only time; it felt as if the married man’s hands were still on me, this strange other, the one I’d invited to heal me, to help hurt me and release me, all at once.

  20

  LOV
E IS NEITHER SLAVE NOR PHARAOH

  Many women claim that, because they are bosses out in the real world, constantly fighting to be heard, respected, understood, and obeyed, they want to be the opposite in bed: submissive, taken care of, coddled, made to obey, made to respect, made to listen.

  In my conversations with other women, when I’ve asked them if they’ve ever been the dominant one, they often said they had no interest. Then I met E.

  A disabled poet and a badass, she dominated her husband from across rooms with a remote-controlled device, which sent shock signals to a cock ring, which she’d placed around his balls in the morning. He begged her to do this to him. The differences in the size of their bodies painted them as inverses of each other; he was large and tall, she was petite and short, and in the real world, she was the one forced to deal with people’s assumptions about her diminutive body, its supposed disenfranchisement, lack of power, weakness.

  We were in a bar when she asked me what my favorite domme activities were. At that point, I had never dommed anyone. I told her so, and she widened her eyes in surprise. Then, excitedly, she told me about her own rituals and experiences. I listened, her tutee, grateful to her for the trust she’d placed in me. She told me about the ball torture device; the many floggers and whips she had hung up near her bed; the sounding device she inserted into her husband’s urethra. I went back to my place that afternoon and researched tools of torture late into the night.

  And over the next six months, I slowly began purchasing them. I bought a pair of leather gloves, which I used to slap M’s cock if it didn’t stand at attention for me. I bought a dick leash, which I fastened at the base of his dick while parading him around the house, calling him a worthless dog. But I had yet to feel the power E had told me of, the power and joy of being called a goddess. I yearned to find a partner who would want that, too.

  •

  I learned the practical and hands-on experiences of being a domme with A, the lover I met while I was with M. He was thirty-two, Egyptian, and Muslim. A would come over once a week and stand by my leather couch. He waited for my command. I’d sit in a big armchair and tell him to take all his clothes off. I would tell him to sit at my feet, on his knees. He did what I asked. I told him to lick my boots. He asked if this was hygienic. A was afraid of germs. This put him in a bit of a pickle since he was also very much a slave. I told him to shut the fuck up and lick my boots. He did, and then he took them off and held my feet in his hands. His hands trembled.

  I met A on Tinder. He was looking for a dominant woman to step on his cock. I was looking for a submissive man who would let me step on his cock. Soon, he was sitting on the wood floor right across from my chair, on a chain attached to my foot. My foot on his balls.

  A asked if I want to hear Egyptian music. I said yes.

  I told him that earlier that week, I had bumped into a man who had asked me to think of all the Egyptians I knew. “Aren’t they either slaves or pharaohs?” This question made me uncomfortable, especially since it was asking for an absolute judgment about a specific ethnic background. By saying that people were either in charge or subservient, he wasn’t taking into account all the subtleties of power dynamics, of how a submissive person can wield control, of how a pharaoh-like person attains and earns authority.

  I asked A what he thought of this theory. He said, “I only know what I like and cannot speak for all Egyptian men.” I liked that about him. Not so eager to generalize. Plus, he wanted to be special.

  And so A would sit on my floor, a collar around his neck, a leash hooked onto his collar. He would have his laptop open, too, and work on a lesson plan for his classes the following day. It occurred to me to ask him if he wanted some tea. But I didn’t want to get up and make it. Besides, he was my sub—he was supposed to make my tea. I wanted to lean in, unhook his collar, and send him into the kitchen to boil water for my tea. If he were white, I would have done it in an instant. But he was Arab, his hair kinky, his skin the color of my mother’s skin, my son’s skin, and it took more gumption for me to dominate him—to domme him around. He told me that his previous dommes were all white. The image of him on a chain at the feet of a white woman infuriates me. Haven’t Arab and Muslim men had enough of being chastised, dominated, humiliated, and incarcerated by white supremacy?

  I didn’t ask him this question because it would further upset me if he responded that he didn’t mind it. Instead, I told him he was never allowed to serve anyone else but me, and he lowered his gaze like a good Muslim and said, “Yes, goddess.”

  I unhooked his collar and told him to go make me some tea. He walked to the kitchen naked and put the electric kettle on and came back. A few minutes later, when the teakettle clicked off, I led him by the leash to the kitchen and showed him where the spoons were, where the honey was, and how to measure out my black tea leaves. He did, and then we returned to the bedroom, to work. A couple of minutes later, he got on his hands and knees, and I placed my tea cup on the small of his lower back and poured myself a cup. A liked it when I treated him like furniture. I loved that in my room, with his consent, I could treat a man like furniture.

  The next morning, distracted by the thought of him making me tea, by the thought of his naked body, I filled the electric kettle with water, placed it on the gas stove, and lit the stove. It took a moment for me to realize what I had done, and I turned off the stove and checked the bottom of the kettle for damage. There was none. Afterward, the smoke alarm beeped.

  •

  My experiences with pain during sex were all negative before BDSM. The pain was never consensual. Men gagged me, thinking I enjoyed it. They bit my nipples, assuming that because my breasts were large, they were stronger and impervious to pain. They choked me, their hands over my throat, because I asked them to, but none of them had done any training to figure out how to do it correctly, responsibly. Until BDSM, a lot of sex felt like assault. With BDSM, limits are discussed; classes on bondage, rope tying, slapping, choking, and anything else are offered at different “dungeons,” clubs, and other spaces. It’s almost the sex education everyone should be able to have. I often wish it were.

  •

  When I was a little girl, around five or six, one of my favorite things to do was to play a game I called “motorcycle.” I would beg my brother, or my cousin, or a neighbor, to lie on his back with his legs stretched straight up. I’d grip his ankles and pretend that the legs were the metal arms of a motorcycle, and then I’d place my foot on his testicles and pretend that they were a gas pedal. I had no idea that I was stepping on testicles, only that they were soft like a small jellyfish and felt funny under my feet.

  I told this story to A when we first met up. His response was “Lucky boys!” He derived no pleasure at all from his penis being stroked or touched. All he wanted to do was please me. His hands quivered when I first allowed him to touch me. I’d never seen or heard a man behave so dutifully, so adoringly. He called me his goddess. I told him to kiss me from head to toe, and he complied, his breath quickening. He loved pleasing me. It’s all he wanted to do.

  I penetrated his mouth and his ass, because I wanted to, and he wanted to do anything I wanted to do.

  I understood right away that being in charge of him was a huge responsibility. I had to make sure that when he was gagging, he wasn’t really hurt. I had to make sure his breath wasn’t restricted if I smothered him with my breasts. Before we did anything, we had very long discussions over text about what he would and would not consent to. This openness, these clear boundaries, felt nothing like vanilla dating or vanilla sex. It was the vanilla stuff that was scary, I finally understood: often unnegotiated or under-communicated. How many times had I been assaulted in one way or another during vanilla sex? Countless. There was the woman who fisted me against my will; the man who thought my gagging sounds were fun; the guys who thought it was fine to slap my ass without asking permission.

  With BDSM, nothing “just happened.” Every action, desire, and movemen
t was discussed beforehand. “Please never make me eat my cum,” A had said. “Please never pierce my skin, or make me bleed, or hit my body. Only my face.”

  Kink meant consent, always. It meant a discussion of boundaries, desires, fears. Unlike vanilla hookups, it meant safety. It meant true submission.

  •

  A slowly stopped responding to my texts after a few months of seeing each other. The silent weeks would be followed by days of ardent messages, begging for my attention. When I gave it, he disappeared again. He was married, it turned out, and I told him that there was no room in our female-dominated relationship for deceit or polytheism. I was a monotheistic-type goddess. When I broke things off with him, I felt a deep sadness. A was the first good, responsive, and devoted lover I had who, like me, also had a Muslim identity. This shared background made me feel safe, healed me of the years I thought my mother was a pushover, the years of internalized Islamophobia, years that I thought Muslim men were too rigid or stubborn or proud to submit to anyone but God.

  I believed I would never find another Muslim person to be kinky with.

  •

  I met Z a year after I met A, almost to the day. We both serendipitously wore red-and-white-striped tops to our first date. I loved this because we looked like a Muslim version of Where’s Waldo? Where’s Habibi? I had often thought. We talked about everything, including whether kink was in the Quran. “When the Quran says to beat or whip someone, it never says how hard,” he said, joking. “Maybe it’s soft play.”

  Z told me he was hit by a train when he was twenty-three. When I asked him how that happened, he said it was because he and his friends were playing chicken with the train. I wanted to tell him how stupid that was, but instead, I asked him if it was something he did regularly: play chicken with the train. He said yes. He did it all the time. He said that the time he was hit was the only time he paused to think about the train hitting him. He said he blames being hit on that pause. The train hit him, and he spun in place, like a dreidel. He spun and spun before he hit the ground. The spinning absorbed a lot of the contact, so that when he hit the ground, he wasn’t too severely injured. He was airlifted to a hospital. Four years later, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He has one ball. I pull on it gently when he’s in my mouth to help him cum.