We stayed in a bungalow on the beach. I stretched my limbs below the sun in a black bathing suit. I let the sand trickle through my fingers and the days trickled by in the same leisurely way. We avoided the Europeans. We were travellers not tourists. We ate in the old town with its smell of spices and couscous, the women in veils, like shadows in the night. Men in turbans played backgammon, throwing the dice and stamping counters noisily over wooden boards. David handed out cigarettes and joined in, cupping his hands and blowing on the dice, bathing them in magic.
Beyond David, across the bar, I became conscious of the man who I would come to know as Omar watching me as I raised a glass of mint tea to my lips. He was standing with the light behind him in a pale linen suit, his hair sleek and shiny, his eyes endless as tunnels. I was sucked into them. David played for just a few dirhams but his winnings paid for our roast lamb, and he still had a little wad of grubby notes when we left the bar to wander back to our compound on the beach.
We are drawn to routine, to creating patterns. I ate fresh mangoes and watched the sun warming the sheet of African sea. Girls with covered heads and kohl-farded eyes sat at my feet with beads and sugared almonds as I read David’s crime caper set in East London, a sort of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels meets Swimming With Sharks and wisely not too original. Tinny music seeped from the minarets around the mosque and in the cheerful chaos of the kasbah I gazed at the violently-coloured sweets and nougat, woven rugs, brass hookahs, money belts with hidden pockets, men selling loose cigarettes, blind beggars with jostling hands. I found a carved alabaster atomiser filled with oil of frankincense, then I found two more and bought one each for Mummy and Binky.
We went that night back to the same little eating house. David played backgammon with a man with small impish eyes and a long white turban. Omar watched from the distance, tall in the background like the minaret above the mosque. I smiled at him with a sense of familiarity, but he didn’t smile back. He just stared at me and my neck grew pink under his gaze. The man in the turban played recklessly. I told David this later, when we were alone, but he assured me that I didn’t understand the game. He knew what he was doing. It was good research. Anyway, he had won the equivalent of $50 and next day in the kasbah he bought me a sequinned silver dress that shimmered like fish scales.
The week had flown by. I liked the warm dry air. The smell of the desert. The feel of the waves on my skin. I washed my hair in rose water and shaved the down from my armpits. I sprayed oil of frankincense into the air and it fell in a haze that coated my skin. I dabbed the fragrance behind my ears and below my breasts. Loose strands of my dark hair hung negligently about my face when I pinned it up and my lips were shiny as apples when I painted them red. My skin was lustrous, warm and damp, my appearance provocative in this land of invisible women. When in Rome, do as the Romans, I thought, slipping into a white bra and pants before stepping into the silver dress.
I was the only woman in the little eating house. David had already won a pile of dirhams from the old men, $50 or more, and that was the stake Omar suggested across the table when he approached. Strict rules. It was a large sum, and for the first time the special dice was brought into play, a dice with the numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64, a doubling device. Either player could double the stake at any time, and his opponent either accepted, or conceded the game.
I gripped David’s arm. ‘Don’t,’ I said.
He shrugged me away. Omar was holding out his hand. He was urbane, gracious, looking down as if from an ivory tower.
‘Omar,’ he said, introducing himself.
‘David.’
They shook hands. I was not introduced. I have no name. I am an object. A silver fish.
‘We will play three games,’ Omar continued, and I marvelled at his good English.
He sat. David sat. The men in the bar moved closer to watch, and I watched them, pulling on cigarettes, rewrapping their turbans.
David started with a double four. He tossed a succession of high numbers, secured a stronghold and, after rolling a double three twice in a row, doubled the stake. The move was ambitious, aggressive, a filmmaker’s move. Omar rattled the two dice in his open palm as he studied the board, then conceded.
As they gathered the pieces David tried to hide his smile. He glanced at me and a trickle of sweat ran down my back into my knickers. The room was full of smoke. Someone offered me a chair, but I preferred to stand. In my heels I was taller than most of the men. Height gives you confidence. The dice danced across the board, the counters changing patterns like chips of glass in a kaleidoscope, and it is all so meaningless this winning and losing, I thought. The second game was closer, first one then the other moving ahead, and only with the last throw of the dice did Omar win without doubling. David remained $50 ahead.
They lined up the counters. Omar looked at me for the first time, looked closely, his steady gaze validating me as a woman, and it occurred to me that he was challenging David on a level too subtle for David to understand. Like a good film script, the game wasn’t about what it was about; it had undertones, subtext: desert man against city man, the third world facing the developed world; it was the past in stasis viewing the glitzy future across history and tradition, and I grasped that in this battle of cultures I was the prize. Did the Greeks not launch their fleet in pursuit of Helen after she sailed to Troy?
‘Good luck,’ I said to David but I was looking at Omar.
‘Inshallah,’ he said. ‘God willing.’
David threw first. He quickly moved ahead and after throwing two doubles in a row he set the doubling dice on two. The stake was now $100. It was time for Omar to forfeit the game. He played on. His expression was unchanging. His eyes turned to me as he slid his counters forward.
When David moved half his pieces into the home stretch he doubled again to $200. The amber dice thudded like drum rolls as they bounced from the sides of the board, arranging themselves enigmatically. I could smell mint tea and sweat, the frankincense on my skin. I was hot and tired. I wanted to sleep, wake with the sunrise, swim once more in the sea before flying back to London. I watched David turn the doubling dice to eight and knew that my life was about to change, completely, and forever.
Omar threw three doubles in a row, two sixes, two fours, two fives. They were level suddenly. Either could win. I was cupped like the dice in the hands of fate. David tossed a weak two and a one. Omar looked closely at the board before turning the double dice to sixteen – sixteen times $50.
I could hear the beat of my heart. My breasts were rising and falling like waves inside the sequinned dress. Before Omar’s gaze I felt naked. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat and watched his hand open like the pages of a book, the dice springing from his long fingers, juggling themselves into the numbers he needed.
Omar could have doubled again before the end of the game but settled on winning $800.
There was a long sigh around the room. Then silence. There was no question of David not paying. It is something men understand. There is a code. Debts must be honoured. He looked from Omar to me, then back again. The shiny eyes of the watching men followed. Omar’s expression remained unaffected.
David’s voice was a whisper. ‘I don’t have the money, actually. Not exactly.’
‘You play without money?’ Omar looked surprised.
David shook his head. ‘Well, yes, sort of.’
There was another silence. My underarms were damp. I glanced down at David. He seemed to have shrunk in his chair.
‘You are a stranger here?’ Omar said.
David nodded.
‘Then I must give you one more chance. It is our custom.’
The men nodded. They understood. Omar placed the two dice in David’s hand.
‘What?’
‘We each have one throw. If you win, we shake hands and say goodbye.’
David was relieved but unsure. This was a lifeline. ‘And if I lose?’ he asked.
Omar’s eyes brushed over m
e momentarily. ‘Then she is mine.’
David was gripping the dice tightly in his hand. His knuckles were white. His fist was shaking. I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. He didn’t know what to say and looked to me for guidance.
‘Until midnight,’ Omar added.
David glanced at his watch.
It was three hours before midnight.
I remained very still. I looked at David looking at his watch. Slowly, he looked up at my eyes. The blood was racing in my veins. The flush rushed up my neck, over my cheeks. It was as if a sheet of paper had been placed on hot coals, warming and curling before bursting into flames. We waited for something to happen. There is no rush in the desert. David didn’t know whether to look at Omar or at me.
‘But what for?’ he said finally.
‘That is for me to decide.’ Omar looked down at his watch. It was gold. A Rolex. ‘It is nearly nine.’
David came to his feet and took a step towards me. He laid his hands over mine. I could feel them tremble.
I nodded, solemnly, and the men in the room nodded also.
I am worth $1,600.
We watched David blow into his cupped hand. He let the dice run across the board until they settled on a six and a three: nine, a good score. The men in the bar sighed, drew breath.
Omar scooped up the dice. He had no tricks, no spells, no entreaties. He looked into my eyes, and we both looked down at the black and red points marking the backgammon board. The dice caught the light as they tumbled melodically across the wooden surface, and it was as if time was standing still, the dice turning over each other until they stopped abruptly. On each of the faded amber faces were five spots, a double five. We were silent for a moment, as one is after dramatic events. David was white, drained of colour. The watching men returned to their own tables.
‘Come,’ Omar said, and I followed like a sleepwalker out from the bar into the hot night. We climbed into a black Mercedes and I watched the buildings of Agadir vanish as we drove into the desert. David held my hand in the back seat. He didn’t know what to say and didn’t say anything. I watched Omar watching us in the rear-view mirror. There were other cars behind, hidden by dust.
No one seemed surprised when we arrived at the encampment, an oasis around a well with a few date palms. Tribesmen with biblical faces and dark secretive eyes sat in the shadows beside a log fire and I wondered where the logs came from; except for the few palms there were no trees. I heard the sound of camels, goat bells, barking dogs. Some musicians smoking kif in hookahs sat with legs crossed, observing me with the transient interest of people in the bazaar idling away time with no interest to buy. Not that they can afford me. I am worth $1,600, an expensive piece of merchandise. More so here.
The sand ran between my toes as I stepped away from the car. David’s weak smile said he was with me; we are in this together. He had no idea what awaited me. Neither did I. That was the wager he had made with Omar, and to which I had agreed.
Omar sent an older woman off to one of the tents, his words in Arabic like the phrases of a song. Several younger women followed. The musicians gathered up their instruments, flutes carved from gourds, a lute, a drum, the skin stretched over a clay pot, an ancient man with empty eye sockets bent over a zither.
‘She will dance,’ Omar said, his orders directed always to David, and David nodded his assent.
The music was mesmerising, sensuous, primeval, slow at first and slowly gaining in tempo. My shoulders lifted and fell automatically, my hips swayed. It was the music of a belly dance, not that I had a belly to display, just thin arms and sharp bones, a reed caught in the wind. I was unable to hear what Omar was saying to David, but understood when David caught my eye and pulled at his shirt.
‘Your clothes,’ he whispered.
Of course. My clothes. The roll of the dice was a contract. The future had been set in stone. My fingers found the zipper running down my side and the silver dress fell from me like the skin of a tropical fish, glinting in the firelight as it slipped to the sand. The pulse of the music was growing. I moved to the beat, swivelling my hips, lowering the thin straps on my white bra, revealing my breasts. They felt hot in my palms, hot and sticky with frankincense. My nipples were taut and my breasts swayed sensuously as I lowered my panties over my thighs.
I moved to the beat of my heart, to the sound of the music. I was Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships. I swirled like a Dervish and below the black sky I could see across the desert as far as the horizon. The moon was silver, curved like a sword, the stars close enough for me to reach out and touch. They shifted and sparkled, more than you can count, the constellations so vivid I could predict my future in their shapes and motions. The fire burned with green flames, the logs snapping, the shadows of the date palms swaying almost imperceptibly. I was bathed in moonlight, naked as a flower, the warm wind faint as breath on my skin.
I raised my hands to the stars and it felt right somehow that I should be dancing like this, my body bared. Something awakens in me when I am naked before unknown eyes. I feel liberated, more alive. I was dancing to the music, not for the musicians, not for the tribesmen with flames in their eyes. I was dancing for him. Just him. My skin was dewed in perspiration, warmed by the fire. I could hear the crackle of the logs, the eternal, hypnotic sound of the zither. I danced and kept dancing and when the music stopped the silence was as vast as the desert.
The old woman who had hurried into the tent before I began to dance poked her head out and called, her tongue clucking. I glanced at Omar, then David, docile at his side, his features shaped by doubt, by insecurity. I had never danced for him, and I caught in his look the vague regret that though he had entered my body, beat me with a belt, with his hand, with his tongue; though he had watched me making love with Roddy Wise and Stephanie Jones, he didn’t know who I was or what I might become.
One of the dogs growled, the sound muffled, deep in its throat. The other dogs joined in. The camels languidly raised their heads, firelight reflecting in their glossy eyes. I like the stillness of the desert, the silence, the purity. It felt as if I was beginning a long journey that must be taken alone and without fear. I wondered what the time was and glanced up at the stars as if they might tell me. I recalled a birthday card I had tucked away in a drawer to save. It had on the front a Chinese sage wandering beside a blue river and inside was the adage: To go wrong and not change course can truly be described as going wrong. The words came to me as I approached the tent and like a prayer I found them a comfort.
I imagined that a bed had been prepared, that Omar was going to ravage me.
I was wrong. I would be wrong again many times that night.
Several women were waiting. Dark hands patterned with henna reached for me and I was draped over a low divan. The smell inside the tent was ripe and pungent, the odour of women who rarely wash, the fear prickling my armpits, something spicy and unknown that was cooking on a primus stove. Two girls raised my legs in an arch as if I were about to give birth. Others held my shoulders and the old woman who had been sent to make these preparations approached snapping at me with a pair of scissors, the sort of scissors you would use to shear a sheep. I wriggled but in vain. I was afraid for the first time. Tears filled my eyes. I stared up at the girls, murmuring unintelligibly, and they saw my tears, but they didn’t see me. They had their ritual, their task, whatever it was, and they were too strong for me to fight.
The old woman was growing impatient, the blue tattoos on her face giving her a demonic appearance as she loomed over me, the scissors glinting, and for a sickening moment a vision too barbarous to contemplate ran through my mind. She pressed down on my stomach until I was still. I sucked air through gritted teeth, held myself rigid, and watched with a feeling of reprieve as she snipped away at my pubic hair. She pulled and poked, her eyes squinting malevolently in the glow of the lamp a young girl was holding, her gaze above her veil fixed on the gaping lips of my vagina.
A wom
an wearing lots of bangles ran her palm over my thighs, my thin arms. There was no hair to remove. My underarms too were as smooth as porcelain. I had prepared myself without knowing for what. She moved on to my breasts, her bangles jangling as she tugged at my nipples. She teased them out, pulling viciously as if at the udders of a goat. My nipples grew firm between her fingers and I envisaged milk pouring from the swollen buds. The dreamy-eyed girl holding the lamp lowered her veil. She was no more than fifteen, intense and curious as she ran her hand down my side, over the curve of my waist, across my hipbones. The old woman hissed through blackened teeth, pinching me as if there were insufficient meat for a decent meal, and I couldn’t help wondering if I had fallen among cannibals.
Now that that first wave of fear had passed I observed the girls observing me, studying my body with indifference. The aloof way in which they touched my breasts made me think of women buying live chickens in the marketplace. I was until midnight their prisoner, and as I looked up into their dark eyes I wanted to know what they were thinking, their secrets, the meaning of the henna swirls covering the backs of their hands.
The snipping was soon over. My triangle of pubic hair was a patchwork of stubble. I had no idea why this had been done to me and remembered a year ago making Cheats and doing the same for David Trevellick, for his vanity and pleasure. The old woman stretched my thighs and before I was aware of what she was doing she ran her finger through the spread lips of my vagina, rubbing it back and forth. She held her finger up to the oil lamp and the girls clucked their tongues when they saw it glistening in the dull light.
Being a Girl Page 21
