Cleopatra�s Perfume

by Jina Bacarr

  My hand was still shaking.

  The fortune-teller’s words freed my spirit. I was like a bird released from its cage, not knowing I was the bait for bigger prey. I rebelled, ravaged my past and let go of my fears. Looking. Searching. Imagining. My need for sensuality clashed with my need to be rational, and won the fight.

  I elected to remain in Port Said.

  I returned to the ship and made arrangements for my luggage to be transferred to a hotel. Then I sent a cable to my secretary and oft–traveling companion, Mrs. Wills, in London, telling her I was staying in Port Said. A woman whose starched back never bends, her prompt response was one of concern as well as curiosity as to why the change in my plans. Bookish with gray strands weaving through her dark hair like a melody of lost notes, she cuts a slender figure in her proper dark suits and blucher-style brown oxfords. She’s an asexual creature who neither understands nor approves of my erotic adventures, but I value her friendship and advice. She rarely if ever ventures forth with a personal opinion, believing it isn’t her place to do so, but I would have never found my way in British society as Lady Marlowe without her.

  I refused to admit I was profusely affected by what the fortune-teller had told me, his prediction disturbing me in an obscure, mysterious way. Over the next two days, I went out of my way to avoid men, peering over my sunglasses in a dismissive manner whenever a gentleman spoke to me, as if I was testing the fates and their uncanny way of making things happen when we fight against it. But my resistance was as fragile as a dream and just as fleeting when I saw the man I came to know as Ramzi.

  It wouldn’t have happened, I’ve since convinced myself, if I hadn’t encountered Lady Palmer fretting about the hotel lobby, looking for her daughter. The young woman had disappeared after leaving an afternoon thé dansant, a tiresome trend consisting of dancing and sipping warm weak tea that has spread around the world from Bombay to Manila to Hong Kong by way of the contingent of the smart set. Lady Palmer was a longtime family friend of Lord Marlowe’s and fancied herself his social chaperone after his first wife died. She befriended me, I believe, more out of duty than true friendship. I found her pleasant and unassuming, though her daughter, Flavia, possessed the frivolous manners of her society stepsisters hungry for wicked games, but only if played according to their rules. No wonder Lady Palmer came to my husband numerous times to ask for his assistance in getting her daughter out of trouble without creating a scandal. He always obliged her with the understated elegance I loved about him. I felt that same obligation to help her when she sought me out in Port Said and told me her daughter was missing.

  Earlier she had made plans to take the girl on a picturesque tour of the city, she told me, extolling the values of “going native” in a cart drawn by two mules, riding up and down the tree-lined streets past the lighthouse, then the Victorian buildings with purple-red bougainvillea overflowing on the terraces. Flavia refused to go. She assured her mother she’d have a better time at the afternoon tea dance, insisting she’d befriended some British girls she met on the beach visiting from St. Claire’s English School. That was the last time she saw her daughter. When Lady Palmer returned from her city excursion, Flavia’s new friends informed her the girl had left the hotel.

  With a man. A tall Egyptian with a charming French accent, they said. Sweeping her away into his arms as if his galabiya, indigo blue robe, was a magic carpet flying around him, the orange-hued imma on his head contrasting with his black hair, the tightly wrapped turban giving him a courtly demeanor. Bidding the British schoolgirls adieu with a grandiose gesture of his bare brown muscular arm, his large ruby ring set in pearls dazzling them, the girls sighed, speculating he must be very rich and very important.

  They said his name was Ramzi.

  When I asked my British circle of friends about this Ramzi, no one knew much about him, though I watched more than one spectator-pumped miss sigh with a near-rapturous want, as if she’d gladly drop her knickers for a quick poke. I knew I must find him. Was he the souteneur the fortune-teller warned me about, the man who held the key to unlocking the great waves of pleasure I so desperately sought? I shuddered, though in a pleasant manner. I intended to see for myself.

  Wrapped in a black curve-smothering tunic with clasps of bright copper and gold placed between my eyes to hold my nose veil in place, I hired a local guide to take me around the port city to places where men wearing dark-colored gandourah sat under the blue-and-white striped awnings of restaurants, playing games and smoking from nargilehs, water pipes. I kept my distance, my heavy cloak trailing over dirty floors rife with crawling creatures, until—

  “Asim knows of this man you seek,” my guide said.

  “Which man is Asim?” I asked behind my veil, trying to read their faces.

  “The man with the dagger fastened with a leather band to his left forearm. He says Ramzi took the girl to his nightclub.”

  “Is he sure?”

  He nodded. “Yes. The Bar Supplice.”

  “Why did he take her there?” I knew the answer before I asked. The French word supplice meant torment.

  His mouth twisted in a dirty grin. “In Port Said, one does not ask why. One knows.”

  “Take me there. I will pay you well.” I made him an offer, knowing I straddled two worlds here in a culture that judged me as a lesser being than men, but hadn’t I overcome similar prejudice when I, a commoner, married Lord Marlowe? I couldn’t stop now.

  “I get into much trouble if Mahmoud sees me bring you there—”

  “Mahmoud?”

  “Ramzi’s bodyguard. He can snap a man’s neck in two with his hands.” He made a gesture that left me no doubt he’d seen Mahmoud render such a punishment.

  I removed the soft georgette from my face as if to remind him I wasn’t like the women of Port Said who lived in a male-imposed fear behind the veil. In a steady voice, I made him another offer. A higher one. He shook his head. I kept raising the ante, trying to persuade him. After all, money meant nothing to me. I’d inherited a vast fortune to spend freely, along with a title, when Lord Marlowe was killed in a motorcar accident. I’ve no doubt he meant for me to indulge in our secret passion after he was gone. A shiver went through me even as I sweated under the heavy robe. This could be the end of my journey to find that passion again. I repeated my offer. The guide’s answer was still no.

  I raised the abaya, robe, above my ankles, then my knees, to reveal my white wide-leg trousers, as if my gesture had become a symbol of the shift in my demands that now went beyond asking questions. I must make him understand I wouldn’t go away without an answer. My own curiosity and needs had been replaced by a feeling of dread. I was certain the girl’s life was in danger. No doubt Lady Palmer’s daughter had succumbed to the allure of an exotic man with a charming accent; but after a few whiskeys, I imagined her naked and trembling on her hands and knees in front of him, then lifting his galabiya and taking his cock into her mouth. So young she was, not more than twenty, and inexperienced. What did she know about performing fellatio? Such a delicacy must be savored by a woman.

  Fighting my own needs, I must do what I could to help her, if only to repay a favor to my husband’s loyal friend. A woman’s body was a distraction in the Arab world, I knew, something chewed upon, then what was left over was tossed away like scraps to the dogs. I had no doubt the man who had seduced Lady Palmer’s daughter was such a deviant.

  Casting his eyes downward as if to hide his thoughts, the guide nodded at my final offer. The price was set. He led me down a street filled with multistoried houses with Greek names, as if that gave the brothels a touch of class. Inquisitive girlish faces peered at us from grimy windows, yelling to men straggling from house to house, intent on tasting as much female flesh as their bodies could endure.

  At the end of the street, the guide pointed to an ornate door painted to resemble a golden orifice, though I could see chipped paint belying the possibility of any precious metal underneath. Bar Supplice, he assured me, t
hough no sign proclaimed what kind of torment went on inside. I paid the guide, adding a generous tip. Without counting the large notes, he bolted down a side alleyway, jumping over the body of a beggar woman who had collapsed onto the dirt, her open hand asking for alms even in death. I turned my head away, the fetid smell of her rotting corpse announcing the presence of evil everywhere. I could do nothing for the unfortunate woman lying in the dirt, but I could save the girl.

  Snatching up my robe to keep from stumbling, I pulled open the door. Though the hour was not yet sunset, darkness greeted me with the secret handshake known to all who entered this den of debauchery. I walked with confidence down the cool cavelike corridor as if I wore a cloak of invisibility, my feet treading over the worn path to decadence as had so many before me, my anxiety increasing with each step. Or was it my anticipation to experience something wildly erotic with its overripe sweetness and pungent aftertaste?

  I wasn’t disappointed. On a small round stage surrounded by empty tables and chairs and lit by a sole spotlight, I saw a partially nude girl stretched out on a soft sand-hued rug. The white-skinned nymph wore nothing but a loose robe of coral-red silk spread out around her like a scarlet angel’s wings. A tall Nubian lapped at her pussy, licking with zest, his long tongue darting in and out of her, his giant presence dwarfing her slenderness. She threw her head back and thrashed about on the rug, groaning. A dark-haired man in an indigo blue galabiya and orange-hued imma sat cross-legged next to her, smoking a chibouk, a long Turkish pipe bound by blue silk and gold threads and studded with what appeared to be rubies.

  I resisted the temptation to breathe in the sickening-sweet smell of what I recognized as hashish. I needed all my senses to save the girl. I faced one problem: I never expected the man I assumed to be Ramzi would have such an effect on me. Dark eyes, black brows with a sardonic twist that added an erotic aura to his nearly perfect features, a strong jawline, broad shoulders, he was so handsome I swore if he looked at me it would be the obliteration of whatever common sense I still possessed. He maintained a certain grandeur, nobility. Vulnerable as I was, I ached to acquiesce all control to this archseducer of women. I couldn’t take my eyes off his sensual mouth sucking on the amber mouthpiece, drawing in the fragrant smoke from a bowl of baked clay, then blowing rings around the girl’s bare breasts. How I envied her.

  Lady Palmer’s runaway daughter.

  I stared and stared and stared, my eyes not blinking but my hand moving upward to touch my breasts then slide down my midriff and rub my soft mound. When I saw the Nubian change position and nudge his hard cock toward her willing mouth, teasing her, arousing her, I gasped. Loudly.

  The man in the long blue galabiya yelled out in Arabic, words I didn’t understand. The girl lolled her head back and forth, licking her lips, but letting nothing stop her pleasure. She reached back to grab his cock, but he pulled it away, making her angry. Before I could take a breath, the Nubian strode toward me and grabbed me by the shoulders.

  “Let go of me!” I yelled in English.

  “A British woman,” I heard the man I knew must be Ramzi call out. “Let me see her.”

  Before I could stop him, the Nubian stripped off my abaya and threw me onto the floor, ripping my blouse and exposing my sheer brassiere underneath, my hard nipples pointing through the soft material.

  “You touch me again,” I said, “and I’ll rip off your balls.”

  “A most beautiful and spirited woman, I see,” Ramzi said, putting down his pipe and rising from his seated position. I pulled back to escape his spell as he approached me, but to no avail. I struggled to breathe when his robe fell open, revealing his muscular body. He was nude underneath. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. “Who are you?” he asked.

  Before I could answer, the girl spat at me. “She’s a friend of my mother’s.”

  “Get your clothes on, Flavia,” I demanded, noting the Egyptian did nothing to hide his nudity, as if he exploited his nakedness to produce a sexual energy between us. “Lady Palmer is frantic with worry.”

  “She should be used to it by now,” the girl said.

  “Get your clothes on,” I repeated, louder. “We’re getting out of here.”

  “The girl stays.” Ramzi looked at me with a devious expression raising his brows up higher. “Unless you’d rather take her place.”

  I choked with an emotion I couldn’t hold back, my eyes feasting on the size of his cock, the breadth of his bare chest barely covered by the robe. I trembled, knowing I could give him but one answer.

  I stood under the spotlight in the Bar Supplice and unbuttoned my white slacks and let them fall. Next, I slid my torn white blouse off my shoulders before kicking off my dust-ringed brown boots. Ramzi took this opportunity to insist his bodyguard remove Lady Palmer’s daughter, dress her and send her back to her mother. Ignoring her onerous protests, the tall Nubian picked up the girl in his strong arms and appeared to walk with ease through a black wall sparkling with thousands of stars, then drew what I assumed was a curtain closed behind him.

  I could hear the girl raising her voice in protest behind the curtain, but Ramzi paid her no attention as he caressed my shoulder blades with his long fingers, his touch so hot I jumped, as if a naked burning bulb made contact with my skin. He laughed, then touched me again. Teasing, I pulled away from him and, with great finesse, I plucked my cotton socks stained with brown around the toes off my feet, then stood before him, my eyes matching his stare.

  “Is this what you want?” I asked, licking my lips and running my hands through my white-blond hair, then chewing on wayward strands with my teeth.

  “I wish to see you nude.”

  “And then?” I teased, smoothing my hands over my hips as if I were wearing red velvet, though I stood before him in my undergarments.

  “I will decide if your body pleases me.”

  “I’m more interested in seeing what you have to offer me.”

  He tossed his head back and laughed, his white teeth catching the light, his tongue moist and inviting. “I assure you, my English lady, you won’t be disappointed.” Leaning toward me, he said, “Mahmoud will prepare you for my inspection.”

  “What if I decide to skip the foreplay?” I slid the strap of my bra off one shoulder, then the other, squeezing my breasts together. I had no intention of masking my desire. My obsession with recapturing the sexual part of my being seethed with need as I performed an animalistic dance, swaying my shoulders, grinding my hips, then rubbing my hands all over my body before unhooking the sheerest of bras, no lace, no pearls, only a taut veil of nude silk hugging my breasts, my nipples pointing through like hard stones.

  “I am master here,” he recounted with an evenness of words that belied the anger—or was it passion?—surging within him. “And you will obey.”

  I shivered, visibly shaken by his words, though I reasoned he had no idea why. A different scene played out in my head. A scene I’d first experienced years ago when—

  —leather restraints bound my wrists, tying me to the bedposts, my breasts pressed against monogrammed white silk sheets upon which a lusty king had exploded his semen into his favorite concubine, my naked buttocks quivering in anticipation of the unyielding cane striking my needy flesh. A scene played out many times in Lord Marlowe’s cottage hideaway in the English countryside near Coventry.

  But this was a hole in Port Said, hot air stifling, garish spangles masking the vices living here and making everything sparkle with a ghostly brightness. And I didn’t care. I didn’t care. At that moment my need to forge again the strange but loving relationship I’d lost was so strong in me it was as if I’d injected morphine into my thigh, as girls did in Berlin during the wild days of the Weimar Republic, and the blood flowed to my labia with such intensity I was powerless to stop it.

  I held my chin up, defiant. “Obey you? I don’t believe you’ve ever fucked an Englishwoman or you wouldn’t sputter such nonsense.”

  “And you have never known the pleasure
of an Arab cock, my English lady, though should you please me, what I can offer you goes beyond mortal pleasure.”

  He was baiting me and I knew it. My curiosity had been piqued and I played along, though I had no idea then my rash act would be my undoing.

  Before he could reach out and pinch my hard nubs, I seized control of the moment and pulled down my trunk-style satin knickers, inserting my finger into my pussy. While he watched, I rub my engorged clit in time to a humming rhythm vibrating within me. A familiar tune, as if I were hanging suspended and couldn’t touch the earth. Nor did I wish to do so. Back and forth in rapid movements, my eyes never leaving his, I stroked myself, then with two fingers, faster and faster until I was breathing hard, panting, gasping—

  “You leave me no choice, my beautiful English rose,” he said, exhaling, “but to do as you wish and fuck you.”

  Sensual, savage, Ramzi was a man who enslaved my soul with his eyes. Dark brooding eyes, seductive, and knowing.

  I was the star of his erotic cabaret.

  Wearing nothing but red high-heeled pumps and a choker of tiny diamonds, I didn’t protest when his bodyguard, the tall nude Nubian, tied me to a wooden chair on an empty stage, my legs spread, each ankle fastened to a smooth chair leg, my wrists held down by worn leather straps on the padded armrests, my mouth gagged with black velvet. I squirmed with delight, so stimulated was I by the compression of my wrists and ankles boosting my arousal to a feverish pitch. I arched my back when the Nubian took my bare breasts in his massive hands with such care it was as if his palms were bronze cups containing them as his fingers twisted and pinched my taut nipples. Lifting my head up, the spotlight overhead stung my eyes with a piercing sharpness, jolting me as I struggled to moan, but instead I sank my teeth into black velvet.

  “Is she ready, Mahmoud?” came the voice out of the darkness with the French accent. A sensual arabesque of smoke followed, emphasizing his rounded vowels.