MEMORIES from the EAST

by Abdulla Kazim

  “No, no, no,” I waved my hand. “It is not for me, this whole business.”

  “Just if you are in need of some quick cash, if you get what I mean.”

  “And then be spotted on the street as a porn worker?” I laughed and ran my hand through my hair.

  “Why? There are dozens of people who look like you and me. That is the nature of the world. Normally people will not point fingers at others; accusing some stranger is so risky.”

  “Still, no. My answer is no…”

  His cell phone rang and he answered it, walking away from the table. He returned within minutes.

  “They are asking me to participate in a small sex video tonight.” He looked at his watch, “I need to go, as shooting will start within two hours. Do you want to be a viewer tonight for a live porn scene?”

  I shook my head and stood up from the chair ready to leave.

  “Please, do join me. You need to see all forms of people to realize the nature of the world we live in. You need to witness with your eyes the things you see as wrong before you judge them so.”

  I hesitated and then agreed. He was right in what he said. We walked for a while, and then he stopped a taxi.

  “There is this girl, mmm… your college classmate, I guess, who used to follow you. She is the one I am going to fuck tonight.” He talked loud to overcome the high volume music the driver was playing.

  “A classmate of mine!” I wondered. During my time in college so many girls had been after me.

  “Anyway, you will meet her soon.”

  The cab stopped and we got out.

  “It is there, the shooting of the clip.” He pointed to a blue house. “So many shootings take place there. It is a regular home, isn’t it? You cannot differentiate it from any other house in the neighbourhood. Some closed doors conceal sinful secrets, you see.”

  I didn’t comment. I was really curious to know what was going on in there, though I wasn’t a bit happy about it.

  “Over a year I have worked in this business. Some nights I just wonder whether I am one of the reasons to spoil the innocent lives of these young girls working in this business.”

  I looked at him. His eyes were cast down, and his eyebrows were close to the eyelids in a deep thoughtful expression.

  “Do you remember in college when we used to watch porn movies?” he asked.

  I nodded, but I wasn’t sure that he noticed.

  “We used to enjoy them a lot,” he continued. “Every single guy would enjoy watching porn. But now I see how some young girls put their pure innocence on the line and what they agree to go through for the sake of satisfying their un-tamed lust for cash. What are our parents made of? Why do they give life hideous worms that eat up its beauty?”

  I kept silent again. He had given things much thought, and yet he was still working in porn. I didn’t wish to give him any personal advice in the matter. I wasn’t in any position to do so. I am a murderer and he is a killer of innocence.

  We reached the house, and Bojing wiped his eyes clear with the backs of his fingers before ringing the door bell. A middle-aged man opened the door, and Bojing shook hands with him. The man asked about me, and Bojing told him a lie that I was a new porn worker looking to gain experience by watching. We were welcomed in. Bojing whispered to me that the man was the owner of the house, renting it some nights secretly for porn filming. He asked me then to keep silent and to walk without making any noise as it might disturb the other rooms.

  All the rooms had closed doors except for one. I peeked in as I passed. A young woman had her back laid on the top of the man under her, while another muscular man was on top of her, having her from the front. It was a very seductive scene, with the girl in pain and her skin laminated with a brush of sweat. The woman’s mouth kept opening and closing like a fish, while her feet, having lost their space on the floor, were dangling in the air as the two monsters pounded her hard. All of sudden, her eyes caught me standing unaware. The cameraman’s eyes followed, and he waved to one of the crew to close the door. I walked away and then looked back to see the door closed. We were now in the living room, where a group of girls, most of them nicely dressed like normal teens, were scattered across the colourful sofas, talking and chattering to each other. They all turned at me as soon as one of them pointed and moved her eyes towards me. We stood for a while there as Bojing made a call to the person who had invited him.

  “Who are you?” one jolly teenager asked me.

  I looked at her and let my eyes wander across the other girls. I ignored the question. I knew they were waiting for their turn. Some were very young to be working in porn, judging from their almost flat chests. Bojing went out of the living room through another opening at our back. I went to follow him, when a piece of cloth flew through the air towards me. I reached out my hand and grabbed it; it was a pair of tiny T-back panties that would fit a doll. Laughter followed. I stared at the girls.

  “What is your name, handsome?”

  I didn’t know who had asked the question. I squeezed the panties in my hand and then dropped them on the floor, before going through the opening at my back. I looked left and right, but there was no sign of Bojing. There were six doors, three on each side of the corridor I was standing in, with all the doors closed. The pinkish-red rug under my feet was gloomy, and what made it worse were the two dim yellow lights at each end of the corridor. The owner of the house ought to be rich, I believed, and yet he was renting his house to assist in creating a generation of true young prostitutes. It is very difficult to overcome greed.

  I waited for a minute, but Bojing seemed to have started his work, forgetting or losing me. I knew he was in one of the six rooms, but searching for him wasn’t an option. What attracted me were the pictures hanging on the wall on the left of each of the six doors. I was about to leave, but curiosity pushed me to look at the pictures. I walked to each of the picture on my left and right till I reached the last; they all showed clowns in action, nicely painted. They told of the mockery of life. While some clowns are on ladders working hard to build one half of the unfinished home, the other clown is smoking a cigar in an armchair in the painted and furnished part. While one clown, wearing dirty torn clothes, is sitting on the roof watching stars with a dreamy expression, the other clown, dressed in gold, is treading the earth with an expression of arrogance. They were such captivating pictures. It was worth studying them, but I wondered if the owner of the house or any of the people working there had done so! I reached the last picture—one clown eating the flesh of another. I examined the picture and gave some thought to what it might imply. It was the strangest of all of them. The door behind me opened, disturbing my meditation. Some light was let out of the room into the darkness of the corridor. A man walked out silently, not noticing me and me not giving any attention to him. The door was left open behind him.

  In the reflection on the glass of the framed picture in front of me, a shirtless guy’s figure was moving, I recognized it as Bojing, and so I decided to stay where I was and watch a fragment of Bojing’s scene through the clown’s picture. He had a smile on his face while his left hand was playing with his groin. Then came something that shattered my eyes; I saw the lean figure of a girl that my mind instantly linked to a page of fond memories. My heart drummed hard. I refused to look back at the reality the reflection might be showing. Bojing reached his hand out and placed it on the girl’s cheek, which he brushed with the back of his fingers. I didn’t want to believe it. I thought it was just some game my imagination was playing that would fade away with a single blink of my eyes. When I opened them again, the female figure was still standing, out of her one-part dress, with only the black bra and panties on, and Bojing was caressing the top of her shoulders.

  What I was seeing in my sore eyes was so painful. My state of mind was in confusion. How could such a good girl choose such a dirty pat
h? Bojing started to push the elastic straps of the bra down her shoulders, and all my nerves jumped in a sharp alarm. I turned my face now. My top layer of teeth was grinding against the lower. My fists were held so tight that my nails pierced through my palms, and eyes were burning with tears of anger. The black bra dropped to the floor, and I raised my eyes to see the girl’s bare chest. Bojing’s hand moved up towards her breasts, and at the same instant my feet pushed me and my body was flying off the ground and landing in the room, bringing shocked noises from everyone there, except for Fang, who gazed at me with silent calm eyes. The question pounded in my mind, why?

  A hand grabbed at me. My mind, confused by all the noise, triggered a defensive signal, and my fist punched in the direction of the supposed threat. Bojing fell to the floor, and I grabbed Fang by her shoulders.

  “Why?” I screamed in her face.

  “Gerald,” she spoke quietly, unaware of my loud voice and anger.

  The cameramen were about to jump on me while hurling insults and bad words at me, but Bojing stopped them and scolded them. I could see something different about Fang. Her mind didn’t seem to be aware of the reality of what was going on around her. I just wouldn’t leave her there, at whatever cost. Picking her dress off the floor, I wrapped it around her top and, wrapping my arms around her shoulders, I dragged her out.

  “I knew she is special to you. She kept repeating your name,” Bojing said.

  I ignored him, and I ignored all the curious male and female eyes in the house. I ignored the people in the road, ignored the surprised look on the taxi-driver’s face, and I ignored life. She came quietly into my arms and rested her head on my chest. For a while I forgot where I had found her and my unanswered questions about the path she had followed. I lost the person I was. I was with the one person my heart desired. I was in the company of my one real love.

  30

  It was a small stolen pleasure just to think that I had gained what my heart secretly sought. Everything in my mind just ceased to exist except for my consciousness of the presence of Fang. I opened the door of my apartment that night, and she quietly walked in.

  “You live here, Gerald?” She asked, looking around the small apartment.

  Only her bra and panties covered her. Her black dress was in my hand. I didn’t wish to stop my hand from being in contact with what heavenly belonged to it. She had preserved the fair whiteness of her skin over the years, and though she looked paler, she was still my fair goddess.

  “Yes.” I smiled and gently squeezed my hand around her dress.

  The half-naked figure of this pretty girl that would have aroused devils in me in earlier times now stirred nothing but something uniquely passionate that moved inside the cage of my chest. I just stood and watched her. She walked to the only window in the room and pulled back the curtain. It was dark outside except for one lamppost whose lower body was covered with posters. After a short while she pulled the curtain back and sat on the edge of my bed. She laid her arms on her knees and lowered her head and her silky hair covered her face. The happy expression on my face started to vanish on hearing her quiet weeping. I approached her and sat next to her.

  “What’s wrong with me, Gerald?”

  I shyly put my hand around her shoulder.

  “Nothing is wrong with you. You are as perfect as ever.” I kissed her head, and the smell of her hair indicated that it had been unwashed for a couple of days or that her scalp had sweated heavily. “But we do need to talk about things.”

  “Talk about what?” Her voice was quiet and slow.

  “Nothing special.”

  She put her head on my chest, and her wet cheek dampened my T-shirt and the skin underneath.

  “I missed you so much. I… missed you,” she said.

  My hand stroked her hair, and after a while I could hear the sound of her breathing. She must have been tired, I guessed. My hand was in direct contact with her fresh skin, and my nose sniffed through her hair. Nothing existed around me but her, and no earthly perfume was capable of stirring me more than her body odour, warm and undiluted. The chemistry of perfumery was disguised in her; unreal things become so real under the influence of love. I felt no guilt about my past; my presence with Fang was my present, I believed. A promise of true death-defying happiness arose in the top of my heart. My eyes fell on her thighs, her flat belly, and her small cleavage—my angel in my arms. I picked up a small blanket with one hand and pulled it over her and then laid her head gently on the pillow. I carried the only chair in the room and set it up next to the bed. I brought my drawing tools; she was to be the subject of the picture.

  My eyes were opened by a small noise. I found myself on the chair. The sky outside was lit by early aurora, and the dim light coming through the window on my side didn’t help my blurred eyes locate Fang on the bed. I rubbed my eyes and looked left, and there she was scanning through my collection of books one by one and throwing them aside.

  “What are you doing?” I smiled.

  I was expecting some sort of joke from her, but she jumped in alarm at the question and her eyes widened.

  “Who are you?” she screamed and then covered her chest with a big book of Shakespeare’s plays. “What have you done with me?”

  It was a terrible nightmare hearing those words from her. I could see it wasn’t a joke, because her face carried a really hard expression. I took the drawing pad and pencil from my lap and put them on the bed. I left the chair and started to take some paces towards her, when her sharp voice stopped me.

  “Stop where you are. Stop or…” She picked up a thick book now, Dickens’s David Copperfield.

  “I am not going to hurt you.”

  I raised my hands open and held them at shoulder level. She calmed down a little and lowered the thick book in her hand, but nonetheless she was in defensive mode. I approached her slowly, and she swallowed hard as if waiting to see what would come out of the wild animal in me.

  “Gerald, I am Gerald.” I said, but the wondering look on her face was starting to worry me.

  “I don’t know you…” Tears were gathering in her eyes. “Please don’t hurt me.”

  With the fall of her first tear drop, my heart ached. Things seemed to be a bit scary, and I could feel that something was wrong. I found my heart wishing that everything was in order.

  I calmly sat next to her on the floor. The dust of the floor covered my palms as I laid them there. Fang’s pretty face was veiled with thick melancholy.

  “Gerald,” her nose was wet when she sniffed.

  I slowly moved my arm around her and laid it on top of her shoulder. She trembled and then felt more relaxed. I pushed her head towards me under my chin. My thick beard scratched against her thin hair.

  “Gerald,” she retorted.

  “I am here… with you forever.” I kissed her head.

  “Where have you been for all these years?” She brushed her nose with one finger. “What is wrong with me? I was grieved beyond everything by you.” She circled her hands around my waist tightly. “You left me behind when you left, and I lost myself without you.”

  “I am sorry for everything I have done and for the bad person I am.” Tears poured down my cheeks. “I love you,” I said in a whisper.

  “Promise me not to part from me again.” She planted a kiss against my sweating chest, whose temperature increased with the warmth of her body.

  “I promise… till death does us apart.”

  Once a glimpse of life started to ripen in the soil of my heart, a monstrous worm grew and started to eat all the crops. I cannot imagine how a man could live with all the pieces of his soul blown apart, seeing that life would no longer entice a single wave of glee within his heart. I noticed that Fang suffered memory loss to an abnormal extent. She would share talks and laughter with me for hours and then cease to know me all o
f sudden, as if we haven’t met before. I had to write everything on a board and in notebooks for her so as to remind her of her and me. It seems that she would forget everything during the hours of memory shutdown except for my name. Her mouth ritually repeated my name.

  I did some research about her symptoms, and I came across dementia and Alzheimer’s. Yes, it is true that Fang suffers anxiety and depression as I noticed, but she is so young for such a disease. I took her to a couple of hospitals, and they all confirmed that whatever she was going through is nothing sophisticated; it might be related to some family inheritance or just anxiety because of another disease she carries. I don’t know about medication, and I cannot tell whether the doctors I have seen know anything about the symptoms of memory loss; I cannot contradict what I don’t know. But alas, as if one sort of punishment isn’t enough, Fang has been diagnosed with HIV as well.

  I have never been so glad to stay close to anybody as I am with Fang, though our closeness has never been filled with big smiles and loving kisses. Tiny particles of mirth were all we shared even at the time of her wellbeing with her memories. We kissed and hugged but never had sex. My lust and craving for sex vanished in a cloud of pure love. Being with her became my ultimate goal. She would become violent at times and hammer me with books or whatever she might lay her hands on; once she injured my hand with a knife she had hid under the pillow.

  I would disguise myself as her brother at times when she is not in her right mind, and I would give her a bath; she would be my sick sister. She has told me many versions of stories about her life and the things she encountered since the day we separated. I couldn’t pick any one of them as the simple truth.

  Almost four months have passed now since I met Fang again. I rented a small cottage on top of a mountain to stay in tranquillity with her, my dear obsession. The air is always gentle here, and it brings quiet refreshment to Fang; she seems quieter even in her periods of madness. It is here that I completed my book, The Way to Suicide, and one day upon reading a few lines from it, Fang asked me whether I am planning to encourage suicide among people. I gave no answer.