by Ali al-Muqri
My first thought was “What if the painting ever makes its way toYemen, and Father sees it?” I felt nervous, confused. But a famous artist painting me? It was an opportunity. In a moment of recklessness, I found myself agreeing; or was it anger, or even courage? Call it what you will. “OK, OK,” I said to him, which made a little smile appear on his lips, a cocky smile I guess. Actually, it was more mocking, but I saw something else in there too, though I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly. Perhaps it was pity. Maybe he’d realised why I’d originally insisted that he didn’t make my face recognisable. Perhaps he felt sorry for me when I dropped my only condition as quickly as I’d set it.’
[Me]’Then what happened?’
‘We agreed that I’d come to his home studio at eight that evening. Andrew – that was his name – wrote his address on the palm of my left hand, in dark red ink.’
She took her time, choosing her words with care – very different to how she had been with the painter that evening. I felt Lula was afraid of what my reaction would be if she told me everything. But I was eager to hear the details. She said only that she went to him and they agreed she would come to Paris to work with him as a model for three months, from 21 June to 21 September, each year for the next three years. At this point she insisted we stop the tape and save the rest of the story for another time.
Her relationship with her old boss had become purely platonic. After the Paris trip, she no longer seemed to need his financial support, although she told my father she’d been given a pay rise. As far as he was concerned, this meant he could continue to rely on her support.
Later, when I insisted she finish her story about the French artist and his painting, she brought out the cassette recorder again, turned over the cassette – even though there was still space on the first side – and picked up from where she’d left off:
‘He was a strange artist. When I went to him he asked me to remove my clothes, just like that. It was like I’d just got over one embarrassing situation to find myself in another. He said this was the first time he’d seen an Eastern woman naked, in real life, not in pictures. Then he took me to the bathroom and asked me to get in the tub. I got a fright when I saw him opening a large tin and then begin pouring its contents all over me. He said “Pureed tomatoes, but no hot peppers I’m afraid,” and then he took off all his clothes.
I think he must have been in his fifties, perhaps a little older. He got in the bath, putting one foot either side of my hips and squatting down over me. I thought he was going to fuck me, but instead he began to rub me with the tomato puree like he was trying to get it to stick to me, or the red to stain my skin. He began by putting his hands on my nipples, stroking them slowly and gently, then he caressed my face and my neck. He moved his hands back down, over my shoulders, arms, chest, belly until he reached down between my thighs. With the same gentle touch, he moved on down to my knees, ankles, then the soles of my feet and toes. He returned to my nipples, and this time his rubbing wasn’t as gentle, but it was slower. Then he began to squeeze them, massaging them rhythmically . . . What am I telling you! I need a coffee. I’ll admit I was scared he was going to strangle me when he gripped my throat with all his fingers as he massaged it. Then he squeezed my clitoris and rubbed my pussy and the way he did it drove me wild. I got more and more turned on as he went harder and faster. I felt like a box of matches, his hand lighting one after the other. I screamed with pleasure. I tried to push myself towards him, towards his thing, but he just kept on touching me. Then he asked me to stand up and he began to dry me off with three red towels. When he’d finished this ritual, he took me into a cramped room that was obviously his studio. He sat me on a low table scattered with paintbrushes and covered with white sheets, and then took a brush and began to paint. He seemed tense as he made his brush strokes on the canvas in front of him. That wasn’t all . . .’
Lula was silent for a moment, and then she switched off the recorder. The noise of the button is captured on the tape. She asked me to make her a cup of strong coffee. I wasn’t about to say no – I wanted her to carry on with her story.
It seemed like a long story. Over the next few minutes, while she drank her coffee, our eyes kept furtively meeting. Then she resumed her story.
‘He suddenly pulled down the first canvas and threw another one up in its place. Then he adjusted my pose so that I was leaning back on my arms. I arched my back and kept my shoulders straight so that I wouldn’t lose my balance. He bent my legs at the knee and opened them so that the bit in between was clearly visible. Actually, he opened my legs as far as they would go. I thought he was going to paint my vagina. I was so embarrassed and couldn’t stop thinking “What if this painting becomes famous and reaches Yemen, and Father sees it? What would he do if he learned that his daughter’s pussy was famous?”
It wasn’t easy to make out what he was painting. The intersecting lines formed a sort of a spider’s web overlaid with soap bubbles and spots of bright colour: like drops of blood, sperm and burnt oil. Father wouldn’t understand this kind of abstraction, but I did. His eyes were fixed on the spot between my thighs the whole time he was painting. I knew the opening that filled the canvas like an exploding volcano must be my pussy. Oh – do you know what he did? He kept using his fingers to spread my lips and explore my opening. He studied my clitoris, which appeared to me, in the painting he produced, like a volcano’s peak.
But the painting still wasn’t finished. I kept twisting, my eyes moving between his brush strokes and his naked body. Actually, I was watching the way his penis, stiff like his brush, bobbed up and down. I don’t think I’ll ever forget what happened next. He still hadn’t asked me to change my pose. So I stayed in position, trembling, wanting to jump on him, to put him on his back, grab his cock and ride him, to give him a good pounding. But what did he do? From under the table he took out another large tin of tomato puree and sat down beside me. He began painting my body again. And I’d thought he’d finished! I sat there moaning with longing as he spread the puree over my neck, breasts and between my thighs. I was going crazy. Without even thinking about it I found myself dipping my hand into the tin and spreading puree over his erect cock. He seemed to be enjoying it and turned to face me. I got even more turned on. I held his cock tight and pushed myself towards it, until the tip was above my clitoris. I thought I was helping him to finish the painting. But I was wrong. He stood up suddenly and slapped me across the face.’
[Me] ‘God punish you! God curse you!’
‘What? But we agreed!’
I didn’t want her to talk about these things anymore. I’d got so worked up that I couldn’t hide the moisture dripping between my thighs as Lula talked. She kept telling me to go and wash it off in the bathroom, confident of the effect her words were having on me.
The story hadn’t ended as I’d expected. There was still one question that I couldn’t let go of, but despite myself, I kept quiet.
Lula stopped the cassette player and went to get another tape.
Even though there was plenty of space left on the tape, she was afraid she would fill it before she could finish her story.
A Personal Cassette Recording (2)
‘He’d discovered I was a virgin. He was stunned by the lock on my pussy. Imagine, he couldn’t even be bothered to give his key a good push to open it and come inside.’
[Me] ‘A virgin?! What are you on about? How can you be a virgin? What is this?’
‘Yep, a virgin, my Muslim sister. Did you think your sister had lost her way? That her morals were base and corrupt? God forbid, God forbid. Do you think I could really disobey God, and not fear His punishment, His hell fire? And me, a paragon of virtue, a model of chastity. God willing, God willing!’
[Me] ‘Without going on too much, and without mocking our religion, tell me, what happened?’
‘Don’t you believe that it’s possible for a girl to get her virginity back once she’s lost it? Listen, before the boss would agree to me travelli
ng to Paris on my own he made me visit this Russian doctor, Natasha. At first I was surprised he even knew of her and I wasn’t sure what he wanted exactly. But he took me in his car and dropped me off in front of her clinic. He waited for me there until I returned, a newly restored virgin. I travelled on the condition that I’d return to him stitched up tight, as God created me.’
[Me] ‘Don’t you dare speak God’s name. God curse you!’
‘My God, you’re cursing me again. Enough. Don’t you want me to finish?’
I thought the story had finished, or at least that things were clear now. I didn’t ask her to continue.
After a few moments of silence, also caught on the tape, she started talking again, without any prompting from me:
‘The flight to Paris stopped off at Jeddah. I only woke up because the air hostess asked me to sit upright in my chair and prepare for take-off again. I noticed a new passenger had taken the seat next to me. I don’t know what it was that made him ask me “Where in Yemen are you from?” I’d already taken off my abaya in the bathroom. Was it because the plane was coming from Sana’a?
He apologised for disturbing me and introduced himself. His name was Ahmad and he was a Saudi who was studying computer programming in the States. He was going to visit his sister, who lived in Paris with her Spanish husband. We talked about everything. He made me feel at ease with his ideas on women’s rights, but he lost me when he insisted that a girl should keep her honour intact. He said he could never marry or love, or even talk to a girl who had lost her honour. I said to him, laughing, “And how do you know I’m a virgin?” He said “You’ve got an honest face, even if you’re not wearing a veil.”
After we talked for a while longer, he asked me outright if I would marry him. He didn’t waste much time! I thought he was joking. I told him he could never pay my dowry, as it was very expensive. But he wasn’t put off, and told me that he was from a rich family with roots in the Hadramaut region ofYemen. He said he would pay any price, no matter how high. He gave me his sister’s address in Paris, but we didn’t agree on a specific date.
When I left Andrew’s house he was screaming at me “Sick! Pathetic! Stitched up!” I sensed that was the end of my modelling for him. I thought about the young Saudi guy: Why not marry him? I’m a virgin now, aren’t I? I went to him, to tell him that I’d accept his offer, on the condition we get to know each other a little first. He agreed, and invited me out to dinner. Afterwards we went back to his sister’s place, and he did everything he possibly could to make me agree to giving him what he’d described as my “honour.” At first I made a show of refusing. But he kept promising he’d marry me and was willing to give me any assurance I wanted. Do you know what he did once I’d given into him, and he’d established his prowess by tearing the threads of my honour? He took a bunch of notes out of his wallet and handed them to me without a word. I didn’t know what was going on. I kept asking him “What’s the money for?” Eventually he yelled “This is the price of your honour!” He added that he didn’t want to marry a girl who was happy to give away her honour to the first man who came along. He kept yelling, even though I hadn’t tried to argue with him. I didn’t bother to remind him that he’d promised me marriage and that I’d taken him at his word. He told me he was testing me, and then passed judgement: “A woman who gives away her honour before marriage is a woman who cannot be trusted in marriage.”‘
[Me] ‘So in the end, what happened?’
‘A week later I went back to the artist. I’d recovered from the damage caused when my stitches were torn. I wanted to tell him I was no longer a virgin. But he refused to talk about it and gave me some money, which he said was compensation for breaking the contract between us. I told him virginity wasn’t one of the clauses in the contract. He said that my stitches had ruined his mood, that they had hurt his thing, and that he couldn’t look at me without picturing my stitched-up pussy.’
[Me] ‘You poor thing, you lost both a potential husband and the chance to work with a famous artist.’
‘That’s not all, I also lost my relationship with my boss when he found out I was no longer the virgin Natasha had created.’
[The sound of me screaming] ‘God punish you! What is this apostasy? Don’t compare that infidel whore to the Creator!’
Side A of the Om
Kalthoum tape (replay)
Ask my heart when it repents
Perhaps it will hold beauty to blame.
When we heard the Islamic University had accepted my application, ‘Abd al-Raqeeb started calling me ‘Sheikha,’ and the rest of the family soon followed suit. With this title it seemed that I’d become someone the whole family could trust – my comings and goings were now my own business. For the first time in my life I felt free, but even this had its limits. The sharia I’d studied and learnt by heart set the bounds of my freedom. It became a part of my life, if not my whole life.
At university the students didn’t really refer to one another by fancy titles, although the lecturers treated us like serious religious scholars. Umm al-Muhibb was the only student we referred to as ‘Sheikha.’ Within the first few days of term she had established herself as a knowledgeable student. Not only did she know the entire Quran off by heart, she could recite it properly, and explain it. She had even memorised over two hundred sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. The lecturers were amazed by her knowledge.
Our male lecturers instructed us via a video link. We only heard their voices and saw their hands writing on the blackboard – never their faces. But it was from these scant clues that we learnt to recognise them – the shape of their fingers and the way they moved them, their handwriting, even how their sleeves hung around their wrists. Their rings were particularly useful for telling them apart. If there were a voice or a pair of hands we didn’t recognise, then our classmate, Faten, would come to the rescue. Straight away, she’d be able to tell us his name or whether he was new.
She would usually laugh and say something like ‘Your favourite, Sheikha Faten, at your service’ – even though she knew no one else ever described her as a ‘sheikha.’ The title ‘sheikha’ meant a lot to us, so we didn’t use it lightly. Most of the students were quite serious, except Faten, who said she had been enrolled against her will. Perhaps Saeeda had also been forced to study at the university, but unlike Faten she just stayed silent the whole time. She wouldn’t even say hello, and only spoke if a lecturer asked her a question.
Ask a sensible man for sensible answers
But who could keep his wits in the face of such beauty?
If I were to ask my heart
Tears would answer in its place.
One day our Jurisprudence lecturer told us there was a fault with the video link and that we’d only be able to hear his voice. The same thing happened afterwards with the Islamic Education lecturer, only he suddenly appeared on screen in a way none of us could have expected:
A University Cultural Mobile Phone Recording
We were expecting the sheikh to continue the lesson on the Muslim family that he’d begun the week before, but he told us, ‘I’d like to put the course book to one side for a moment and instead talk to you from the heart.’ We all took out our pens and notebooks, apart from those of us who had a mobile phone to record the lesson on. The sheikh reminded us the camera was faulty and that we’d only be able to hear his voice: ‘I tried directing the camera at the blackboard but I couldn’t get it to focus, so I’ve had to leave it.’
It was clear the sheikh had played with the camera as it was now pointing at him, although at an odd angle. At first we could see the lower half of his face and chest. The image was cropped from just below his eyes to his stomach, which pressed against the desk. But even so, this was the first time any of us had been able to see one of our male lecturers.
His black beard looked smooth and silky. His honey-coloured moustache covered part of his upper lip, and the red of his lower lip was revealed as he spoke.
‘Today I a
m going to talk about one of the most important ingredients for a successful marriage: the encounter between man and wife in the marital bed – as decreed by Almighty God in his noble Book and exemplified by His Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. We work on the principle that there is no shame in Religion. All of you will become wives and mothers one day.’
The expression ‘there is no shame in Religion’ got the students’ attention, since they recognised it as the preamble to a delicate issue.
We also all noticed that, for the first time ever, he was speaking to us directly using the formal grammatical forms reserved for a group of women without any men among them. On previous occasions he’d always spoken to us as if we were a mixed or male group – using the masculine grammatical forms, following very formal Arabic convention – and simple phrases like ‘know that’ or ‘you must’ or ‘I am telling you.’
The angle of the camera began to slowly dip until his face was no longer visible.
I remember that day so clearly. Our eyes had immediately been drawn to the red flush of his lips, but as he spoke they grew more and more attractive.
‘Dear ladies, I am going to talk to you candidly, heart to heart. I want my words to reach young hearts filled with faith and the guidance of God’s Prophet, peace be upon him.’
The way ‘heart’ rolled off the sheikh’s tongue suggested it was a word he particularly relished. He began with the words of the Prophet, who had affirmed the groom-to-be’s right to see his fiancée before the wedding: ‘If he is able to look at what will induce him to marry her, he should do so.1’
