Arabian Nights

THE DINGHY BOUNCED OVER the waves, gaining speed as we rounded the coast

and entered the bay. The sheikh raised the propeller at the last moment and I was

thrown forward as the inflatable ploughed into the sand. He had stared at the sea

ahead from the moment I hauled myself on board and, when he cut the engine,

the sudden calm was like the stillness before the storm.

'Are you OK?' I said stupidly. He didn't acknowledge that I'd spoken.

The Arabs were sitting in a line outside the fishing shed in the glow of an oil

lamp. They were waiting without talking, the blaze from their cigarettes like

fireflies briefly lighting their faces before thrusting them back into darkness. The

sky was clear. It was as if time was standing still, that my following the sheikh

into the dunes had never happened, that kiss, the long swim, the blue bursts of

summer lightning, the glimpse of life on La Gomera like something seen in a

dream. Only the moon turning yellow and lowering in the sky marked the course

of the night.

I adjusted the sarong the sheikh had brought for me and stepped out of the

dinghy as he made his way in restless strides up the beach. He stopped, turning

to crook his finger, motioning me to follow. As I did so, he bent and grabbed a

strip of cane from the same abandoned lobster trap from which the man in black

had armed himself to beat me. A tingle ran across my bottom. The pain had gone

but my memory was still smarting.

The men shuffled to their feet, their shadows elongated by the diffused light of

the lamp. The sheikh tapped the sand with the tip of the cane as he spoke, his

voice soft and melodious as if he were reciting poetry. When he gestured

towards the boat, the three sailors he had arrived with grabbed the sacks lying on

the sand, made their way down the beach and waded through the tide.

The sheikh glanced at the beachcomber and spat out a single word that sent

the man scurrying off back into the shed. He returned with an enamel cup filled

with water. The sheikh was about to quench his thirst but stopped himself as the

cup was about to touch his lips. He placed the cup in the bowl of my hands and, as our eyes met, the crescents of light mirrored in his gaze were like flames

heating the night air. My pulse raced. My underarms were damp. I had that

feeling you have in a school play just before you go out on stage. I looked down

at the cup and found the moon floating on the surface of the water. I drained

every last drop and the beachcomber refilled it again for the sheikh.

No more words were said. The beach was an amphitheatre. I was a part of the

drama, but unsure of my role, my character, the arc of my journey. I looked out

to sea. The sailors had balanced the sacks on their heads and were about to board

the boat. I glanced back at the man in black. He had remained silent, shoulders

hunched, hands loose at his sides. The sheikh dropped the cup when he had

finished drinking, the water that remained draining into the sand.

He then turned to the man in black, eyes blazing, teeth clenched. I felt the hair

rise on the back of my neck as the sheikh raised the cane above his head and

brought it down across the other man's arm. The man flinched, his mouth fell

open and he gasped for air. He didn't cry out, he didn't move, he didn't defend

himself. That man had whacked me five times, five fork-tongued lashes that

branded my bare flesh. He had slapped my breasts and bent me over the rubber

side of the Zodiac to take me like a wild beast in rut.

Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.

I felt ashamed and I felt confused. That man had inflicted pain on me, but still

it was horrifying to watch as the sheikh beat him again and again, slashing at his

arms and legs, one side then the other, one stroke after the other, the bamboo

singing as it sliced through the air, the two figures in the moonlight silhouettes in

a lantern theatre, one in black, one in white, their movements oddly mechanical,

the cane climbing into the air, the man in black shrinking away as the two

figures fused together just as the bomber pilot and the bomb he drops from

50,000 feet connects him to the people in the villages and schools and hospitals

on the ground below.

The man turned, his black turban slowly unwound, falling like a dead cat to

the sand, and the cane came down in a series of vicious swipes against his back.

One, two, three, four, five times …

He fell to his knees.

…six, seven, eight …

'No. No. No more,' I cried.

The night stood still.

The sheikh turned and stared at me. He looked angry, puzzled, uncertain. I

had disturbed the ritual. He turned away and struck the man in black again, three

more times, three hard concentrated blows before he tossed the cane back on the

sand. He marched down the beach and I followed as a wife would follow her man

from the pub after a brawl. He dragged the inflatable off the hard sand, fired the

motor and lowered the propeller. He stared into my eyes, his face taut with

tension. Once more he was giving me a choice and, just as I had chosen not to

swim on to La Gomera, again it was with my own free will that I stepped into

the dinghy. The sheikh pushed the craft from shore and slipped across the rubber

hull, accelerating without a word towards the boat.

I glanced back, just as I had glanced back from the tower earlier that day, and

watched the past recede.

How did I feel at that moment? I felt bewildered, impulsive, terrified and I felt

reborn. I felt like the newly hatched butterfly seeing the world for the first time.

My shoulders were bent from being imprisoned inside the cocoon and, as I

stretched, I was aware of my wings growing, forming, sprouting feathers. They

were fragile, of many colours, slowly unfurling, and I didn't know if my wings

were going to take me high into the sky or whether I was destined to plunge

disastrously back down to earth. The baby bird doesn't know how to fly when it

leaves the nest, it flies on instinct. I had been given the chance to go back, not

once but twice, and felt certain, even now, that had I slipped over the side of the

white dinghy the sheikh wouldn't have stopped me swimming away.

He turned off the engine, raised the propeller and we bounced against the hull

of the boat. My fingers went unconsciously for the St Christopher at my throat, a

gesture that belonged to my mother, and I thought of her wearing gardening

gloves, trimming the roses, looking up from under the brim of her straw hat, the

sun behind her, her wide face with my own green eyes full of mystery and

secrets. I didn't know my mother. I didn't know myself.

The sheikh threw a line up to one of his men and reached for the rope ladder.

There are few moments in life when we are faced with great decisions. When I

reached the halfway point on my swim to the island from La Gomera may have

been one of those times. This was another. I knew I would regret it if I didn't

leave with the sheikh and, at the same time, I knew I was taking an unimaginable

risk, that far greater regrets might be waiting in my future.

I stood. When I took his arm to balance myself, he flinched as if my fingers

burned and it occurred to me at that moment that he too might be taking a risk,

that this young man who appeared to wield such power might be subject to some

greater authority, that taking white girls south to nowhere may not be the most

sensible thing to do.

Why did he want me? I didn't know and it is the unknown that drove me on.

Our eyes met for a second and he looked away as I shuffled the sarong up my

thighs. I climbed the ladder and stepped on deck, disturbing the pair of seagulls on the rail at the stern. The air filled with the beat of their wings and I watched

them sweep over the sea, cackling noisily until they vanished from view. The

anchor chain groaned as it ground its way around the pulley. The diesel engines

thumped, the moon was at eye level off the starboard side as we moved into the

night.

The boat was a patchwork of ancient timbers held together with sheets of

steel. We travelled at a leisurely pace, the sound of the engines muted below sea

level, no louder than the beat of my heart. The breeze combed the knots from my

hair as I watched the island disappear, consumed by the black swell of the sea.

Though I had chosen to follow the sheikh, now I was standing on the deck of

that dilapidated vessel, I paused again to wonder what madness had urged me to

do so. I had passed my exams. I had a job. Friends. Contacts. I moved in

charmed circles. The young, the gorgeous, the privileged. I am a Pisces, a good

swimmer, prone to opposites, moving in two directions at once, not unerringly

cautious, but I wasn't impetuous either. So much had happened that day, it was

like many days, weeks and months condensed into one gulp of time I didn't want

to end.

Every second from the moment the beachcomber found me like a conch shell

on the sands had been vibrant with new and disparate experiences, fear, of

course, but incredulity, too, my shame and humiliation set against a lewd and

promiscuous pleasure – so Piscean! I had detested being naked before the eyes

of strangers, but was aware of that feeling transforming during the day into an

immodest sense of daring, a sense that I was doing something that I had always

secretly wanted to do. Lurking in my subconscious was the notion that all

women want to be seen undressed, taken against their will, that pure satisfaction

comes from impure desires.

I could rightly claim that everything that had happened to me until the

moment I climbed the rope ladder on to the boat had been against my will: my

mouth and vagina being used as a receptacle for the abusers' semen, the

spanking, the beating, even kissing the sheikh was only a subterfuge in my plan

of escape. The wanton side of Pisces was in the ascendant and my caution must

have flown away with the seagulls I'd watched abandon ship.

I could recall a thousand and one days walking along the Fulham Road feeling

bored, fatigued, lost, my heels clacking, my fingers reaching for my top as it slid

from one shoulder then the other, the breeze lifting my skirt, each movement

displaying little slices of bare flesh as if I were a book jacket tempting the

browser to open the covers and reveal the nude girl within.

Do girls with their clothes carelessly slipping from their bodies know what

they are doing? Of course. We are told to expose ourselves by magazines, the movies, the giant hoardings on the sides of buses promoting perfume and

knickers are a form of mind control whispering constantly flatten your tummy,

push out your breasts, wiggle your bum, take off your clothes, open your legs,

dress is nothing but the sensual aroma of the latest scent. In PR we create false

hopes and dreams, a chimerical world full of laughter and stripped of that deep-

seated feeling that there are better times to be had if we just have the courage to

break the bonds of the life we are living. I never made my own decisions, not

really, not until that moment.

The sheikh moved around the deck, checking something or other. Each time

our eyes met he looked away. I wasn't exactly sure why he had beaten the man

in black, but I was somewhere in the mix of his anger and emotions. The sheikh

smuggled Africans to Europe, and he could of course just as easily now have

been smuggling me to Africa. People are commodities. In a free market

everything has its price. And I was sure that, like tiger skins and rhinoceros

horns, white girls like me carried a premium. Perhaps that was why the sheikh

had punished the other man, for damaging property. His property.

When the sheikh had finished his spurious inspection, he beckoned and I

followed as he gave me a tour of the boat. It was larger once you were on board

than it had appeared from shore. At the bow, the wheelhouse was crudely made

from weathered planks of wood. There was one long low cabin with portholes

above the level of the deck and, below decks, was the open hold that, over the

years, would have served to carry fish and other goods, the scattering of

discarded blankets evidence that its primary use today was human cargo.

We climbed back up the narrow stairs, the sheikh shouted an order to one of

the sailors and we entered the cabin. I was surprised to find myself in a boudoir

opulent with silks and satins in pastel colours made exotic with the rich aroma of

incense. Below my feet was an intricately woven carpet and around the walls

were big cushions hemmed with golden tassels. I made my way through the

clouds of chiffon suspended from the ceiling and wondered why they were

hanging there, what purpose they served other than to make the cabin appear like

a room in a palace, a floating harem, a place for lovers. There were divans, a

chest of drawers, low tables of carved wood, copper cups and bowls, tall lamps

that he lit and in the reflection of the round mirror I saw a blonde girl with wild

eyes and an expression just as hard to read as the man in white standing just

behind her.

In my sarong with the St Christopher glittering on the chain around my neck, I

felt like Scheherazade from One Thousand and One Nights, a book I had read

with rapt passion as a teenager. Scheherazade was dreamy, doe-eyed, ethereal

but it was through guile alone that she survived the terrible curse of the Cuckolded Sultan in a story of treachery, vengeance and sex that had captured

my young imagination.

It was long ago in ancient Persia when the Sultan returned victorious from

battle only to find his wife entwined in the arms of another man. They were

instantly executed, but the punishment wasn't enough to assuage the Sultan's

wounded pride. He had come to believe that every woman was guilty of his

wife's betrayal and took long and gory revenge. Every day for three thousand

days he married a virgin, and every morning at daybreak his bride was beheaded.

The people lived in fear and the kingdom became barren and impoverished.

Scheherazade lived in the environs of the palace where her father was an

official. The Sultan had watched her grow up and at that exquisite moment when

the child like a flower was budding with the curves and contours of a woman, he

asked for her hand. Scheherazade knew what had happened to all the girls before

her but still, against her father's wishes, consented to the marriage. Scheherazade

had a plan and enlisted her sister's help.

After the ceremony, on the way to the bed chamber, she asked if she could bid

farewell to her young sister. The Sultan, delighted with his prize, agreed and,

when the girl arrived, she asked Scheherazade to tell her a story. The Sultan

stretched out indulgently on his divan to listen. The tale his bride told had many

twists and surprises and, when she had finished, the Sultan was so intrigued, he

asked for another story.

He had not realised that dawn was breaking and Scheherazade promised that

she would tell him another, much better story, before they slept that night. One

thousand and one nights passed. Scheherazade gave birth to three sons and every

night she wove a new parable of morality and kindness. The Sultan never cut off

her head and became a wise and respected ruler.

I had always loved that story. I loved to think of myself as Scheherazade, but as I

stood in that cabin among those silk and satin cushions I had no tales to tell and

no language in which I could have told them.

My throat had turned dry. The sheikh, as if he could read my mind, filled a

cup and I drank with such thirst the water trickled from my lips and over my

chin. I wiped it away and smiled. I felt silly. A doe-eyed girl. The sheikh placed

the cup back on the table. He unhooked the fold in the sarong and flung the

material across the cabin. He then took my arm and guided me through the

quivering pennants of chiffon to one of the open portholes where he set my

fingers over the curved rim. The night air cooled my bare skin. I was bent over

with my bottom displayed like a model in an advertising shot from the 1940s,

and wondered what is it with men and bottoms. My bottom. The beachcomber had spanked me, his companion had caned me, and I was now prepared for

another thrashing.

I wriggled and made myself comfortable. Out of the corner of my eye I

noticed the sheikh remove something from the chest of drawers and my flesh

erupted in sweat when I realised what it was. He was holding a whip with a short

handle, the long coil unwinding as he crossed the cabin towards me. Our eyes

met once more and I looked away, down over my breasts at the blue arabesques

on the carpet below my feet.

The sea slapped against the sides of the boat. The engines thumped like a

distant drum. I closed my eyes and clung tightly to the ledge of the porthole. I

had fought the man in the black turban, but I didn't fight the sheikh. I knew there

was no point. I was trapped, the butterfly back in the cocoon. Like the Sultan in

the story from One Thousand and One Nights, the sheikh had to take revenge –

on the man in black, on my bottom that he had cruelly caned.

I took deep breaths. The sheikh was going to whip me. I knew that. But I

knew, too, that he was doing so without anger or malice. He was defining our

roles. With that whip licking my backside he was going to demonstrate that there

was no use to which I could not be put, no humiliation that I could not be made

to endure. He was the master and, as his concubine, any pleasure I experienced

would come from the pleasure I gave and from the obedience I showed. It was a

new world, a different way of looking at things, but it made sense standing there

naked on that hot night with my pussy moist between my thighs and my breasts

swaying like udders below me. I had always been looking for a role and my

being bent over in this way in the costume of nudity felt oddly natural, that

without papers and possessions and choices and haste I was free to be me.

The whip cracked, splitting the air. Then the whip cracked as the lash wrapped

itself like the arms of a lover across the rounded hills of my rump. The pain was

immediate, all-embracing, overwhelming. Unlike the man in black when he took

that beating on the beach, I didn't hold back, I screamed, my voice piercing the

porthole and frightening the night. When you understand why you are being

disciplined it is easier to accept, but that doesn't mean it hurts any less.

It hurts. It really hurts, the long snake hissing as it uncoiled for a second taste

of my damp flesh, carving a groove into the soft skin. I screamed again. My

body was shaking, but I spread my legs and didn't move. When you know your

place in the drama, when your bottom is the star, you steady yourself, you hold

your legs firm and you count the lashes so you don't forget how many you've

been given.

Down it came again. Number three. A snatch of lighting burning my poor

little bum and sending messages of pain up my back and down my thighs. He must have changed his position and, when the leather crackled and uncoiled, the

next stroke snapped below the crease of my bottom and sent a finger of fire

burning up the canal of my vagina, boiling the liquids of my womb. Tears

coursed down my cheeks, snot fell from my nose, discharge coated the lips of

my pussy.

How many was that?

Four. Yes, four.

Then five, that ribbon of plaited leather finding a fresh course across my

bottom to sow and reap an excruciating harvest of agony. I screamed and in the

moment of screaming the pain didn't seem quite so bad. I squirmed and

trembled. I writhed and wriggled. I was a fish. Liquids poured from my naked

body. My nipples sparked and fizzed like they were charged with an electric

current. I could smell the sugar almond sweat of my underarms, the smell of the

night air, the smell of sex, pungent, ripe, earthy, an aroma that is feminine and

carnal, the perfume of desire. I bit my lips. I almost went down on my knees, but

pushed back with my arms, holding myself steady. I gasped and I groaned and I

thrust my blazing bum out for the next one.

The whip struck like a snake's tongue and the leather fangs took another bite.

I didn't shake. I didn't tremble. I panted for air. I sniffled and sobbed. This was

my first proper beating. I was a virgin. I was Scheherazade and my story was

about a girl who ran away without any clothes and discovered the unassuming

garments of submission.

I wanted the sheikh to be proud of me. I deserved this. I had cried out fuck

me, fuck me, fuck me when the man in the black turban rode my wet pussy to a

stirring climax. He beat me and then he fucked me. Fucked me until I screamed

for more. Fucked me until I screamed in bliss. Fucked me to a sniffling state of

hysteria and shame. I was a bad girl. A slut. A slag. A harlot. The sheikh was

angry. He had every right to be angry. Like the first wife of the Sultan of Persia

in the story of One Thousand and One Nights, I had betrayed him. I had betrayed

the future.

I had taken six lashes from the whip. The sheikh paused. I thought it was over.

I went to push myself up, but he tapped my bottom with the flat of his hand and

said something, and what he said must have been stay there, stay exactly where

you are. You stand up when I'm good and ready. I sucked air through my teeth.

My hair hung in a soggy curtain over my face. My breasts were trembling below

me. I clutched the porthole so hard my fingers hurt and the pain was a little

outpost of the pain that ran from the nub of my neck to the balls of my feet.

The sheikh tested the whip once more, flicking the coiled length of hide out

across the room like a lion tamer in the circus, snap, snap, snap it went. I heard him draw breath as he took a step back. I pressed the lids tight over my eyes, and

the leather tail hissed with the sound of a sword being taken from a furnace and

plunged into water, the line of agony cutting a diagonal stripe across the

smouldering cheeks of my bottom, the knotted tip slipping over my hip to nip at

my pubic bone.

The scream in my throat died. There was no air in my body. I was like a house

on fire at that point where the fire cannot be put out. The house was crumbling to

ash as my strength left me and I collapsed in a heap on the swirling arabesques

of the carpet, weeping, the agony threaded through with an indescribable sense

of delirium. I could smell seared flesh and erotic discharge as warm juices

drooled from my vagina, coated my thighs and I gasped in obscene pleasure.

Seven.

I hoped it was a lucky number, that I was a lucky girl, and I felt like the

luckiest girl in the world as the sheikh lifted me from the floor, one arm

supporting my shoulders, the other under the crook of my knees, and carried me

along the cabin to a feather mattress where he put me down as tenderly as a

mother lays her newborn baby in a crib.

He rolled me on to my tummy. I lay there throbbing, panting, glowing. I heard

him shout. I heard the door open and close again. Cool air whispered through the

portholes. I was vaguely aware of the sound of his chewing. I heard him spit and

I felt the fire go out of the burning welts as he rubbed a paste delicately on to my

bottom. He had beaten me and now he was caring for me. I felt safe, protected,

at peace.

He chewed and spat, he chewed and spat, coating the welts in a creamy

substance that took away the sting and made my bottom feel cosy and warm. I

felt like a princess. Like Scheherazade. I had survived. My head was still on my

shoulders. Tomorrow was another story.

I must have fallen asleep and I dreamed that I was in my bed at home in Fulham;

content after getting myself off with the dildo Bobby had bought in Old

Compton Street for a joke, and he never knew on those nights when I stayed

home to wash my hair that the joke was on him. Bobby was the same age as the

sheikh, but Bobby was an apprentice in the art of sensual pleasure. The sheikh

was a master.

The moment I opened my eyes, I was fully awake, relaxed. I rolled over and

gazed at the chiffon hangings moving faintly in the misty light. The sting in my

backside had gone, completely vanished, and on the table at my side were the

skins from about a dozen Canary Island bananas. I remembered the sheikh

making the poultice that had hardened across the cheeks of my bottom and had new respect for that clever yellow fruit with the pinprick freckles and a neat zip

down the side for easy opening. I pulled three bananas from the stalk and ate

them one after the other, gobbling them down, and I couldn't recall ever having

eaten anything so sweet and delicious I pushed myself up, swept through the drapery and stood staring out of the

porthole massaging my sticky bottom. The fear of a thrashing is really much

worse than the thrashing itself, and I would spend many days trying to

understand how having your bottom disciplined can stir your body liquids into a

molten magma that erupts over the engorged lips of your pussy and leaves you

breathless, panting, in a state of euphoria.

Mmm. Lovely. I wriggled.

Just thinking about it made me feel moist and I took a big gulp of sea air to

calm myself. As I peered out at the churning ribbon of foam whipped up along

the side of the boat I thought how marvellously logical it was that I should be

carried away on the tide. My sheikh was Neptune, God of the Sea, his trident

that whip coiled in the drawer. He was a torrent of quicksilver emotions, hidden

depths, sudden storms, subtly shifting currents. My mind was filled with the

poetry of watery images that made me wonder if he, too, was a Pisces, that we

were two fish joined in the ebb and flow of the same ocean.

The air was clean, clear, and soporific. I felt as if I belonged in a way that I

had never felt clipping along the Fulham Road. There had always been

something bogus in the way that I hitched up my skirt and puffed up my boobs

to glide over dance floors, along office corridors, to step on the tube and climb

the stairs on the bus. I craved attention. I'd suck air through my teeth and turn in

mock anger every time a stranger touched me on the tube. My body was a

celebrity craving to be recognised. It had always irritated me when Mummy

called me a poseur, and I giggled as I thought: what if she could see me now?

I was wearing nothing but my suntan with a sticky dressing on my bottom as

the boat slid quietly over the dark blue sea – the same colour as the planet

Neptune, as far as I could recall. I didn't feel phoney. I felt like me, natural, real,

living in the present. If the sheikh wanted me naked I wanted to be naked. If he

wanted to dress me, I wanted to wear whatever he dressed me in. All through my

life I had worried about what I looked like and what I wanted, what passing

caprice was going to please me. It was liberating to be standing there knowing

that from that day on my only role was to please him.

The last shadows of night had lifted and I became aware of the outlines of an

earth-coloured city emerging out of the dawn light. I could see castle battlements

and the domes and minarets on the mosques rising against the red-streaked sky.

Clouds glowing with pink underbellies hung over the mud-walled buildings, but the clouds seemed to evaporate under my gaze and my view was drawn beyond

the city across the endless waves of the desert.

A horn sounded, ending the silence. I thought at first it came from the city, but

it was closer, the second blast bursting into the cabin, breaking the harmony. I

heard feet slapping over the decks and the sheikh appeared, speaking fast as if I

might have learned his language in the night. He pulled a woven quilt from the

bed where I had slept and wrapped it around me. He carried me back to the

divan. He held me still and stared into my eyes as he pulled a chiffon scarf from

the hangings above and pushed it into my mouth, cramming it in until I was all

but choking. He draped another piece of cloth around my head, covering my

face, and I was barely able to breathe. He rolled me in another length of material

and I felt the bundle tightening as he wrapped rope around me and tied firm

knots.

'Shush, shush, shush,' he said.

The material over my face was sheer and I could still see the light, but then he

added a piece of brocade and I was cast into darkness. I lay there listening to the

subdued activity above decks. I heard a loudspeaker and I was sure I heard

words of French, but it was too distant and muffled for me to understand

anything that was being said.

I heard boots crossing the deck above me. There was a quiet moment, then the

boots drew closer. The cabin door opened. I heard French being spoken in a

gruff way, then the door closed again. I realised I had been holding my breath

and breathed sharply through my nose.

The boots clattered about outside, then the stillness returned, and I lay there

trying to work out what all this had meant.

Were they pirates seeking plunder? The Coast Guard searching for illegal

immigrants? Or me?

Several more minutes passed and the sheikh returned. He unwound the cloth

from my head and pulled the gag from my mouth. He smoothed back my hair

and as he looked into my eyes it was as if he were gazing into the depths of the

ocean. Then he smiled, and I realised I had never seen him smile before. WHERE DO DAYS GO? They arrive with pink dawns and pass with red sunsets. The

hours were long, the air clean and hot. The sky was the shade of blue taken from

a picture book, the sky at night low and close, shot through with a billion stars. I

ate figs, bananas, dates, and learned not to drop food down me as I shaped balls

from the rice and vegetables cooked in the galley by Mo.

I had grown to know the sailors names: Mo was Mohammed, a wiry, older

man with a single gold tooth, a hooked nose like a bird's beak and the face of a

thief from a story in One Thousand and One Nights. On those long hot days he

wore nothing but a loin cloth and cooled himself dropping a bucket on a cord

over the side of the boat and showering in seawater. Five times a day he unrolled

a mat and bent to the east to say his prayers, a ritual the other men seemed to

admire but felt no need to observe. They were Moslems in the way I would call

myself a Christian, as the sheikh had black hair and mine is blonde, these

accidents of birth and background assuming no importance; the men on board

were not weighed down with opinions or guilt and seemed at ease with

themselves and each other.

Azar was the engineer. He had coffee-coloured skin streaked in stripes of oil

and fingernails that would never be clean. The boat carried a solitary mast with a

lateen sail that barely billowed in the soft winds, and I had the feeling that it was

the genius of Azar that kept the craft going. When he came up from below

decks, sweating, drying his face on an oily cloth, he would light a cigarette and

stand at the prow gazing at the sky and listening to the beat of the engines just as

a mother at night listens for her babies.