Caravanserai

THE MOMENT WE LEFT the jetty the heat hit me like a hammer striking a gong. It

felt as if I had walked into an oven, a furnace, into the heart of the sun. It had

been July when I was in La Gomera. By now it was surely August, the hottest

month, the light piercing the thin air making it hard to breathe. The sky was a

turquoise mirror without cloud, the shimmer along the shoreline creating the

impression of movement where there was none. We were in the grips of

stillness, of calm, of stasis, a time between times.

I used to have a pair of sunglasses and missed them now. My skin ran in rivers

of sweat. Even with the assortment of new aromas wafting from town, I could

smell my own smell, the scent of a woman for whom sex has become her reason

to get out of bed and to make her way back to bed as soon as possible. I was both

ashamed of this new me and proud of this new me. We carry contradictory

feelings and emotions. I adored being naked and I was pleased concealing the

secret in my new clothes.

Umah was just behind me, a sack over his shoulder. As I glanced back, he

lowered his gaze. He was afraid and I took from his fear an unexpected sense of

contentment. It occurred to me that my pleasure counted more to me than the

boy's anxiety, that the self-centred nature of forbidden sex makes it all the more

potent, that betrayal and duplicity were merely ingredients for more and better

orgasms.

I remembered a girl I had known at school telling me that when she first went

up to Cambridge, her tutor was so angry at the poor quality of her first essay, he

made her bend over his desk and slapped her bottom with the manuscript. She

had been shocked and humiliated. It had bought tears to her eyes. She considered

going to the authorities to complain, but decided wisely to sleep on it. By the

time she awoke the following morning, she just found it old-fashioned and

amusing.

She redid the essay, her tutor said he was satisfied, and she felt a twinge of

disappointment that their meeting was brief and formal. She deliberately made a mess of her next assignment and, when she went to see her tutor, instead of

wearing jeans, as she had the first time, she wore a short flared skirt. There was a

complicity, a bond, an understanding. She bent over the desk, he lowered her

knickers and used the flat of his hand to spank her. The game went on for the

next three years, her tutor guided her education, she left Cambridge with a first

and was now working at Conservative Party Central Office.

I had not believed the story when she told me, but I believed it now. I had

been a prude, a tease, a quasi-virgin. Just as a yawn makes you yawn and a burst

of laughter makes you smile, thinking about my old schoolfriend with the

unknown man beating her backside sent a shiver down my spine and put an

involuntary wiggle in the cheeks of my bottom.

I grinned and gazed back at Umah, flashing my eyelashes. He had no way of

knowing that keeping the secret was just as important to me as it was to him; that

just as it had been surprising to him that I had allowed his erection to pierce the

sacred halls of my vagina, it had been surprising to me, too; an instinct, the pull

of gravity, the memory of our coupling, dewing the parted lips of my sex as I

wriggled my way through the dusty streets, the scent of my discharge rising to

my nostrils sweet as an English rose.

Yes, I had become obsessed, a flower opening in the garden of earthly

pleasure, the whip, the cane, a hand striking the mounds of my backside. I

breathed sharply through my teeth as a thread of moisture trickled down my

thigh. I wasn't wearing knickers and vowed never to wear them again. The

future was uncertain, the future always is, but whatever happened to me, I was

glad to have escaped London and to be exactly where I was at that moment.

With the exception of that old schoolfriend working for the Conservatives, if

most of my other friends could have seen me now they would have called me

cheap, fallen, a concubine. They wouldn't have understood; just as I didn't

understand the spanking tendencies at the best university in the world. We use

just a third of our brains, a third of our body's potential; I was finding my hidden

depths, hidden fantasies. I was playing catch up with the unknown and hidden

me.

Behind my veil I was smiling. I was also thankful that my arms and legs were

covered and the white folds of the turban shielded my skull from the teeth of the

sun. The spider gripping the front of my hijab glittered as if with inner life, the

pearl in its claws a moon reflecting the sun's light. I kept looking down at the

brooch as you look into the eyes of your lover, or your image in a shop window,

the fleeting inspection to make sure you are there, that you are real, a peep for

veracity, not vanity.

As we left the coast and made our way into the warren of sand-coloured shops, I was overcome by a feeling of belonging, that I was part of the tribe, a

part of something, but the sense of individuality that had evolved in me on the

boat had gone and I would have to find a new self, a new role, a new way, I

suspected, of pleasing Samir.

Only a few minutes had passed since we disembarked, but Samir on land

seemed different from Samir at sea; more aloof, taller, if that were possible. He

strode ahead in leather shoes, the laces untied, shoulders back, his crisp white

djellaba swaying in such a way that people approaching stepped aside for him to

pass. There was a class system defined by the clothes you wore and I wondered

how I, a fake in sheikh's clothing, fitted into the construction. I had grown used

to being naked, now I would have to learn to travel in clothes and in disguise.

Like the sailors, I was barefoot. My toes burned in the dust and I soon gave up

trying to pick my way through the red gouts of beetel, chewed up and spat out;

the steaming remains of dung dropped by donkeys and gathered for fuel; the

random piles of waste where dogs scavenged and chickens pecked.

Cicadas sang from the trees like clicking castanets. At a crossroads with a

water trough in a small dusty square, green-feathered birds sat in lines in the

shade below the fronds of tall palms. It was too hot to fly. Even the flies were

idle. There were scores of donkeys pulling carts with two wheels, handcarts

made of wood, bicycles, camels that lumbered along like prehistoric creatures

oblivious to the Toyota pickups and the occasional rush of a black-windowed

limousine hurtling through winding streets just wide enough to take them.

Men baked samosas on braziers, the spicy tang clinging to the air; they sold

newspapers, packets of Kleenex, single cigarettes, fizzy drinks in buckets of ice,

CDs. A wailing lament grated from two small speakers balanced on a barrel

where a rat chewed at the electric cord, the owner of the machine lazily brushing

the rat away, the rat returning again to sharpen its teeth. I watched the rat and I

watched the man. They had the same patience and composure, and I imagined

this game they were playing had, like a myth, been going on through eternity.

The boat was a time machine that had taken me back to some slower, simpler,

hotter age, to Babel, perhaps. The people wandering by, mostly men, spoke in a

polyglot of tongues and revealed their clans in the patterns of their djellabas and

turbans: Berbers in brown stripes, Tauregs in blue, black Arabs in cloaks and

white gowns with headdresses pinned with gemstones. I saw a man wearing a

red fez with dancing tassels and yellow slippers with upturned toes; a man

playing a tambourine while a sad-faced monkey danced a jig. Shoeshine boys sat

in the dust with brushes and bottles of polish, and men in dhotis, doubles of

Mahatma Ghandi, sweated and wheezed as they pushed by with handcarts laden

with sacks of grain, cages with raucous chickens, logs from invisible trees. Only the assault rifles and the whiff of diesel reminded me that in this multi-ethnic,

multi-cultural mix we were in the present, that the Tower of Babel had spread

across the entire planet.

The women in the streets were equally diverse, unveiled in bright dresses, in

kufis, mud-cloth and rags. Some wore yashmaks, headscarfs, black burkhas that

engulfed their bodies and hid their eyes behind a mesh. It was illogical to me that

in the blaze of the sun black was the colour chosen for those women, they must

have been suffocating inside those pleated tents, each step in the 45 degree heat

an unrelenting chastisement. Better stripping off the carapace and baring your

ass for the whip, the cane, the horny hand. I found the black burkhas self-

important, a subtle form of superiority, the sign of a link to some higher

authority when in truth there was none.

I enjoyed watching the black women gliding by with baskets of fish balanced

on their heads, the baskets buzzing with flies, the women moving like boats, like

dancers, their bodies swaying, each foot gripping the ground beneath them as if

magnets were joining and releasing. They wore thick-lipped smiles and long

kaftans with intricate blue tattoos decorating their faces and hands.

The town was like a giant souk without pattern or order, everyone joined by

business and barter, the maze curving off in every direction like spokes on a

crooked wheel. Sheets strung across the lanes created islands of shade and made

each turning appear intriguing and ominous. The buildings were squat and solid

with thick walls and small windows, mostly barred but without glass. Outside

the occasional café, usually on a corner, the façades there decorated with flat-

roofed arcades, the only place where there was relief from the heat. It was here

below the arches at zinc-topped tables where men drank shi and mint tea. In the

shadows, hookahs bubbled over bowls of hot coals, the smell hypnotic, and I

breathed deeply each time we passed.

It was a new challenge leaving the boat, but our pleasures need constant

change; paradise must tire given time. I had been reckless allowing Umah access

to the sheikh's concubine, but I seemed to thrive on fear, the thrill of having a

secret; even secrets shared are better than being an open book with no secrets at

all.

I wasn't sure why I had been dressed in the clothes I was wearing, not that

there had been anything else on the boat, and the way the soft fabrics had been

taken in by Umah didn't conceal but betrayed my feminine curves and features.

Perhaps it was all a game, Samir's sense of humour, and I strode along imitating

his distinctive walk finding new pleasure in the variety of sounds and smells, the

new sights meeting my green eyes that peeked out between the gap in my turban

and the strip of material covering my mouth. Men stopped to greet Samir.

Salaam. Salaam.

They moved their fingers to touch their brows and hearts before bowing and,

when they touched palms, it was with a gracefulness that made shaking hands

appear brutal and competitive. I remembered the story of Salahaddin meeting

Richard the Lionheart during the Crusades. The two great warriors compared

their causes and compared their weapons. King Richard used his broadsword to

demonstrate the power of the Cross by cutting clean through a block of wood.

Salahaddin described the subtlety of his faith by tossing a silk kerchief in the air.

He held out his curved rapier and the blade cut through the fine material.

Richard the Lionheart was an open book. Salahaddin had a secret that vanished

with his passing.

An Arab in a brown tunic with a red-and-white checked keffiyeh and a gun

over his shoulder stopped our party as we entered an arcade. He salaamed and

Samir stood legs apart, hands on hips like a pantomime sheikh while the Arab

rattled out his story, gesticulating, shrugging, and finally calling into the depths

of the arcade.

Four black Africans, three men and a pregnant woman, emerged from the

shadows with cases and bursting shoulder bags. Samir studied them for a

moment, nodded thoughtfully before speaking, and when the Arab translated, the

Africans smiled with relief. They were boat people, new immigrants, and

Samir's nod of approval meant that he would be sailing north to the Canaries

again soon; it had to be soon or the woman would have her baby in Mauritania,

not Spain.

Would he take me with him?

Was I part of the crew?

Perhaps I should have spent more time learning how to trim the sail and

grease the engine. I had devoted my days to the marvel of multiple orgasms, to

the vain delights of nudity, to the obscure charms of the whip, in my growing

cravings and masochism. I had found my role and couldn't bare the thought of

Samir leaving me. I wanted to touch him now, touch his cheek, his arm, his long

marble cock, see him smile that smile when he left his load in my ass, my

vagina, my mouth, over my face, my breasts, my belly. I wanted to be oiled with

his seed, savour his taste on my tongue. I wanted to feel the warmth of his flesh,

but in the crowded maze of the souk men did not greet or see or acknowledge

women, not even a white girl dressed as a boy smelling ripe with lust.

My heart was beating faster in my chest as we moved further along the arcade.

We turned into a doorway with a carpet hanging on the wall outside and entered

a warehouse containing rolled carpets and stacks of boxes bound in tape with Chinese characters on the sides.

Samir and a young man wearing blue jeans, a tee-shirt and Nike trainers

greeted each other by slapping hands above their heads like two rappers, like

basketball players. They were the same age, the same caste, I imagined, and the

stern expression Samir had been wearing dissolved into the sort of smile I had

only a moment before been summoning to my memory; that smile that gripped

his lips when we lay together in the cabin on long afternoons of frantic love,

those times when I was sure he was truly, unequivocally himself.

The crewmen unburdened themselves of the three sacks they had carried from

the boat. Hanif, the man in jeans, unloaded the shells and studied each one. They

were similar yet unique, like fingerprints. I was sure I recognised the conch the

beachcomber had been carrying when he found me, a naked Venus emerging

from a shell on the beach, from a beach of shells. I had been sleeping and during

my slumber the portals in my brain like the windows of an Advent calendar had

opened or closed or changed or something. Within moments, the beachcomber

had tied my hands and spanked my ass. I let him. I liked it. No wonder I had let

Umah fuck me without a second thought.

I was making up for lost time. All those lost orgasms. All those men who had

slipped by like ships in the night. It's easy to lose yourself, that inner thing that's

you and become a puzzle of pieces put together by the hands of others, a vector

of their opinions, a cut-out from a magazine. Boarding school, uni, a job in

publishing arranged by Daddy. I had done nothing, achieved nothing. Doors had

always been opened for me and on the long swim from La Gomera those doors

closed and others swung open. I had learned in biology about left-brain, right-

brain activity, and recalled that the two different hemispheres are responsible for

different modes of thinking. The left brain is logical, sequential, analytical,

objective. The right brain is random, intuitive, subjective, capable of being a

complete and utter slut.

I watched as Hanif traced his fingers over the bulbous lip of the conch, it was

pink and shiny as if wet. His fingers slipped into the mouth of the shell and his

gaze strayed to my face. I unhooked the tail of the turban and turned to Samir,

who seemed to approve of this game of eyes. I belonged to him. He was showing

me off.

Like the conch, I was a rare object. We had made the same journey. Now we

would part, move like the wind further and further from where we came from,

seashells in the desert as precious as water, shade, white girls from the north.

Like the shell, I was a commodity, I could be bought and sold, as could everyone

and everything, but it was different here in this land of barter and trade. These

people made their wealth by what they did, what they made with their hands, what they exchanged and transported, while we had found ways of making

money from moving money, from debt, from celebrity biographies with the lies I

composed for the back cover. I had felt in London shallow and cheap, a cipher.

Barefoot with a wet pussy among strange men in the middle of nowhere, I really

did feel that I was me, that I had crossed the Rubicon from my left brain to the

right.

We moved to the corner where divans and low tables had been set up on a

platform of some ten or twelve carpets below the sails of a wooden fan that

revolved lethargically above our heads. This, I assumed was the office, the place

where Hanif made his deals and did his business. A servant brought tea in a

silver pot with a curving spout that stood on a tray with glasses and a bowl with

cubes of sugar. There were some hard biscuits that could break your teeth, which

I ate out of politeness, and the men avoided.

We lounged on the divans listening as Samir and Hanif talked like eager boys.

They had similar voices, low but melodious. I tried to imagine what it was they

were saying, but had no idea what it is men said, what Bobby said to his friends.

Men were a mystery. Our connection was physical, sexual. It didn't matter what

they said because what they said seldom had anything to do with what they

meant.

I looked down at my filthy feet and couldn't imagine that they would ever be

clean again.

Mo and Azar lit cigarettes. Mo and Umah never spoke, but Azar would

occasionally say something and the others would roar with laughter. His face

was filled with life and his lips were crimson like a strawberry in the nest of his

wiry beard. He seemed more at ease with me dressed, and it occurred to me that

a naked girl without inhibitions could be less pleasurable than painful for a man

like Azar, that those weeks on board the boat he had remained below decks to

avoid glancing in my direction.

Time slid by like the blue smoke agitated by the fan and sent off to slide

across the low ceiling. There was no hurry. There was never any hurry, and the

men finally shuffled to their feet as if guided by an inner clock. We made our

way out through the back entrance where a Toyota pickup was waiting with a

driver. Samir climbed in the front and I scrambled into the open back with the

sailors. Hanif shook Samir's hand through the open window, but he was

glancing at me. I was sure they were talking about me and wondered if this were

conceit on my part. Without language, I had begun to believe that the words

turning around me was the cosmos turning with me at its centre.

The town vanished behind us in a matter of minutes, the track climbed a faint

incline and suddenly there was nothing before me but the desert, wave after wave of red sand rolling out endlessly like the waves of the sea, and it seemed as

if the wave was the fundamental form of the universe, curving, changing, driven

by the winds, appearing and disappearing without trace, as do all things, that

there is only this moment and we must make of it all that we can.

The road was bumpy. I was sitting on the ridged metal surface of the flat-bed

leaning against the cab. Each bump inflamed the tender stripes across my bottom

and a delicious pain ran up my spine. A particularly vicious bump made me

wince and Azar rolled up the sack he had been sitting on and gave it to me.

'Shukran,' I said.

'Assalamu alaikum,' he replied.

Our eyes met for the first time. Under all that hair, Azar's features were

delicately carved and his eyes were the colour of dark honey, liquid, sensitive,

filled with longing and passion. It was obvious what he wanted and it was such a

small thing it made me sad that I would never be able to provide it. Well, never

say never.

A few minutes later, he said something and pointed ahead. He scrambled to

his feet and gave me his hand, steadying me as I stood and leaned against the

cab. I shielded my eyes. Azar's grip tightened about my waist and I gazed across

the sea of sand. From out of nothing, a mirage had materialised on the horizon, a

shimmer at first, movement, forms, then lines growing cleaner as we drew

nearer.

Rising out of the desert was a red fortress with slender turrets and broad

towers, the tallest of the towers capped in a golden dome. Around the walls, the

caravanserai of shacks and tents seemed deserted in the burning heat. Trucks and

pickups were parked randomly as if abandoned, and I could see hobbled camels

and donkeys harnessed to carts like chimeras, like creatures in a painting by

Goya. Beyond the caravanserai the dry dead waves of red sand rolled out

endlessly in their burning glory.

A man in long cloak emerged from the heat haze like a genie appearing from a

lamp. What is your wish? Ask and it shall be given.

I recalled this setting from a dream, from a glimpse of déjà vu, and

remembered waking in my bed in my flat in Fulham, Bobby dressed in my

clothes, fast asleep, makeup on my pillow, and me wide awake telling the genie

that my wish was to have an adventure that I would never forget. Beware of

what you wish for! How silly Mummy's sayings were, I thought.

The man in the long cloak disappeared and may never have been there. I

pushed closer to Azar, his warm flesh smelling of the engine room. Already I

was nostalgic. Life was slow, but the driver kept a heavy foot on the accelerator

pedal and I felt safe with Azar's strong arm about me, the vehicle turning with a sudden jerk of the wheel and careering towards the red building. Beyond the

thick walls I could see an oasis of thorn trees, eucalyptus, banana plants, date

palms, a stretch of reeds that must have been growing along the banks of a river.

We passed through the open gates and entered the compound. Azar gave me

one last squeeze that I'm sure bruised my ribcage and leapt over the side of the

truck as it skidded to a stop.

Women and children ran out from every corner clicking tongues, kicking up

little cyclones of dust. They flocked about Samir as the enchanted children

gathered to the Pied Piper, or Father Christmas, not that he was bearing gifts. On

the contrary, he carried nothing, no clothes, no cases, just the Kalashnikovs on

the shoulders of his men and the leather wallet buried in his tunic.

Two older men with teeth stained red from betel joined the crowd; they both

spat heartily into the dust and pushed the women aside to welcome the sheikh,

salaaming, bowing, gesturing to their heads and hearts.

Samir patted the children, saying a few words to each one, a star on the red

carpet greeting the crowd. Some of the women were growing hysterical, tears

welling into their eyes, and refused to budge when he waved them away. A

much older woman with wizened hands, her white hair uncovered, fell to her

knees and held the hem of the sheikh's djellaba to her lips.

Mo and Azar drifted away from the throng. Mo was listening to a woman all

in white speaking without pause as she moved backwards before him. Her eyes

danced with that fusion of laughter and light that said Mo was her man, her

husband, and she loved him.

Following behind them was a cluster of children of various heights like a

collection of Russian dolls, the boys small and wiry, images of Mohammed, the

girls with the same open faces as their mother, their pastel djellabas stitched in a

variety of colours, the fabric light as air. As they disappeared into the building, it

occurred to me that Mohammed and the woman were not as old as I had

assumed but the sun and wind and toil made them appear that way.

Azar had grabbed the arm of a girl. They hurried across the courtyard, the

bells about her ankles ringing as she skipped along at his side, and I couldn't

help wondering if Azar would think of me as he peeled off her clothes and took

her in his arms. Would he drink from the cup of her warm vagina? Would he

spank her and caress her, fill her every orifice with the creamy seed that must

have been mounting inside him since we left the island? I would have adored

being there to watch.

Ojala!

If only!

I had noticed the girl the moment I stepped down from the pickup. Drop earrings patterned with green stones fell like constellations from her ears. Her

face and hands were decorated with henna and her eyes as they met mine

contained a glimmer of recognition and rivalry. Inside the walls of the fortress

she was that obscure object of desire, the femme fatale, and my mysterious

arrival disturbed the sexual equilibrium. The girl would have sensed Azar's

hunger, smelt it on the air, felt it in her groin. The female is born knowing. She

bares her backside as a symbol of empowerment and every line left by the whip

and cane are the strands of an invisible basket she weaves to make marriages,

build dynasties, rear sons. If a vision of me diving naked from the side of the

boat slipped into Azar's memory as he made love to her, my only desire was that

it would be the best fuck of her young life.

My cheeks burned as these thoughts entered my mind. The warm air, the

muted colours of sand and sky, the smell of men, the dancing fabrics of the girls'

dresses as they glided through the red dust combining in a cocktail of intense

sensuality, and it occurred to me in this place with long hot nights and endless

time there was no shortage of the pleasures of flesh meeting flesh. We imagine

in the west we have cornered the market in sex but isn't it merely the idea of sex

that we celebrate, the Photoshop vision of sex, the YouPorn version of sex?

I turned my attention back to Samir as he spoke to the driver. The pickup then

turned in a circle, throwing up dust as it left the compound, and the sheikh

clapped his hands in such a way that the women and children got the message

that the greeting was over. They scurried back to where they had come from,

vanishing through open doors and into shady passageways.

Just the older men chewing betel remained. Samir spoke to them briefly and

their myopic eyes turned suspiciously in my direction. One of the men said

something that sounded like a reproach and Samir was clearly irritated, raising

his voice and brushing away his remark as you would brush at a bothersome fly.

The man looked at me in my white suit of clothes, my face uncovered, shook his

head and walked slowly away. The other man joined him without a word.

The sheikh called after them, but they made no acknowledgement and one

spat again into the dust.

Samir shrugged as if what they had to say was of no consequence. He strutted

across the compound, his robes swaying, and I trotted in small steps behind him.

Just as he had taken me on a tour of the boat that first night at sea, he guided me

through the maze of rooms, courtyards, corridors, flights of roughly hewn steps.

The fort was a labyrinth from which my one escape would be among the crew

when the boat next sailed and, should I be left behind, I would be devoured by

the Minotaur of boredom and despair. On board the boat with the horizon always

ahead I had been living fully in the present, but in the shade of that warren of thick walls and small shuttered windows, of old men and flapping women, the

future appeared unformed and uncertain.

The rooms we passed through were bare except for a carpet or straw mat, a

solitary piece of home-made furniture, a spinning wheel, brass and copper pots

and pans, bead-covered gourds. There were no photographs in frames or pictures

on the walls, no mirrors. Everything was clean, but the walls and floors had been

shaped from the sand of the desert and the desert was encroaching on the space,

slowly crumbling, claiming it back.

We rose up to another floor where the arch-shaped windows offered a glimpse

of eternity, the surreal beauty of the desert beyond drawing the eye and mind and

soul. The sun was past its zenith and the sand was darkening. We climbed

another flight of stairs and he unlocked a door that gave on to a walkway with

crenulated battlements decorated in earthenware tiles with a pattern of spiders.

I was wearing a spider brooch. The sheikh wore a spider pendant. I wanted to

know what the spider signified, why the spider tiles and the walls in which they

were set were the same colour, as if subtlety and discretion were more important

than show and embellishment. Everything I saw challenged my formerly held

ideas and opinions, the very culture of the west. In my world boasting, exhibiting

and flaunting were expected and encouraged; your accomplishments,

possessions and 34C-cup breasts in an uplift bra being the sum total of who you

are.

The domed roof of the turret at the end of the walkway was decorated in gold

and I imagined at night the light of the moon made the dome shine like a beacon.

Windows like the arched slits in the walls of Norman castles circled the turret

and, to one side, a ladder with the wood bleached white as bone climbed up to

what turned out to be a stone tank. A bung cut from a car tyre was set in the

bottom of the tank and, when Samir pulled it out, water clear as crystal poured

from the hole.

We stripped off our clothes. There was block of hard soap on a ledge and we

washed each other in the antediluvian shower with the sun falling over the sea

somewhere behind us. I soaped his back, his shoulders, his bare chest, his

genitals, his cock that sprang to attention. I had been thinking of his cock all day.

Even when the boy slid sneakily into me from behind it was Samir's soldier that

entered my imagination. The arc of water washed away the soap and I fed his

cock into my mouth.

We dried in the lingering heat. I tasted the buttery yeast of his pre-cum and

left his cock wanting more, pushing it against his belly as I stood, the moist tube

of flesh throbbing between us. I ran my tongue between his teeth, feeding his

own zesty tang into his mouth. We were cannibals. We wanted to eat each other. He pressed back, his kiss that had always been reluctant, uncertain, filled with

vigour and passion as if his own taste was as much an elixir to him as it was to

me.

The women must have been busy downstairs in the kitchens. I could smell the

scent of baking bread and roasting meat rising up through the stairs and corridors

of the fort and my own body rose like dough, cooking in the hot air of the late

afternoon as the sheikh lifted me in his arms and carried me into the tower below

the golden dome.

We entered a round room, the floor layered in carpets, the light diffused

through slender arches, windows without glass. Already my body was coated in

perspiration. Moisture leaked from between my legs and trickled down my

thighs. He stood me down and we kissed again. As we parted, I gazed up at the

inner circle of the dome and felt a rush of vertigo. My head was spinning. I

wanted him to slap me. Shake me. Remind me what it is to be fully awake and

living in the present.

I leaned forward in his arms and bit his bottom lip until he winced with pain.

His eyes blazed in sudden confusion and I grinned as I slipped from his

embrace. I fell to my knees and scurried off, sniffing out the corners of the round

room, barking and wailing, wiggling my ass. The sheikh thought me totally mad,

I'm sure, but naked together we spoke the same language and when his hand

came down on my rump I let out a long sigh of relief. I had been a naughty girl

that morning on board the boat. I needed to purge my sins. I remained on all

fours, pushing out my bottom, revelling in each slap that warmed my skin and

brought the memory of the bullwhip back to life.

Yes. Yes. Yes, I cried.

Aewa. Aewa. Aewa.

The sheikh's hand came down again and again. Slap. Slap. Slap. Gleaming

trails of discharge slipped down my legs. Warm juice coated my labia. I pressed

my eyes shut and the secret chemistry that converts pain to pleasure was like a

shot of adrenalin injected straight into my heart. The ring of those slaps echoed

around the room, escaping through the arched windows, and I thought briefly of

the bells tinkling about the ankles of the girl with the hennaed face and hands,

those big drop earrings like stars about her carved cheeks and long elegant neck.

When Samir tired of slapping me he fed his erection into my vagina, my hot

oils greasing the way, the mystery train of erogenous zones and nerve endings

flexing, parting, drawing him in until I was filled to the brim, and had there been

more I would taken everything. I held his weight on my outstretched arms, my

fingers spread on the wine-red arabesques patterning the carpet, my breasts

shuddering. My clitoris was a burning bush and with each thrust the flames grew higher.

He was about to come. I was about to come. Worlds colliding. It was too

quick. I needed more. I always needed more. I collapsed on the floor and as he

fell on top of me, I wriggled from his spread limbs and rolled him on to his back.

His cock quivered above his belly like an arm reaching out of the sea. His limbs

were tense but the muscles of his body relaxed into a state of grace as I took his

erection into my throat as the lock consumes the key, as the threads on a nut take

a grip on the coils of the bolt, my mouth a silken cloak that wrapped his precious

manhood in its limpid chains.

Agh. Agh. Agh.

He sighed. He cried. He arched his back and gyrated his hips. I sucked his

balls. I rimmed the gash in his helmet with the tip of my tongue. I nipped and

nibbled, sucking like a child with a piece of toffee. I coated the purple head in

saliva and licked it off again. I ran my teeth up and down its silky length as if his

cock were a mouth organ and I was a virtuoso playing the blues. I could hear an

acoustic guitar, drums, the slow growl of a saxophone, Soho nights gone, for

ever gone, scattered ashes of the past. I had slithered from that old snakeskin me

and would never be able to climb back into it again.

Just as women adore their breasts, men adore their cocks. They want you to go

down on bended knees, worship them, pay obeisance, genuflect, make offerings.

It makes sense that the phallus through the ages has been revered and venerated,

sculpted and exaggerated. All life emerges from the cock. I loved this cock. I

wanted his cock. I wanted to bite it off, gobble it down and keep it safely inside

me.

His body was beginning to stiffen, spasm, the thick clotted cream stored

somewhere in secret places warming, growing, bursting from their pots and

erupting in a great wave that filled my throat with the clean taste of the sun and

sea, lemon and honey, figs and yoghurt. I stopped myself swallowing, crawled

up his chest and let his sperm slide over my tongue into his mouth. We kissed,

his spunk lubricating our faces, and I went back for seconds. I sucked him until

he was hard again and when he was ready, warmed like a loaf in the oven, he fed

the holy phallus between the cheeks of my spanked bottom into the wet walls of

my pulsating anus.

Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me.

I swivelled my hips and wiggled my bum. I was a machine gone wild, a train

without brakes. I could hear the slap, slap, slap of my breasts against my chest,

my lungs screaming like overworked bellows, the fierce beat of his breath like

the motions of the sea, one hand tucked in my groin, the other beating the plump

spread flesh of my backside. Come on girl, you can make it. Faster. Faster. My clitoris was fully erect, fully aflame, and the fire spread through my entire body

as an orgasm burst from me like a tiger bursting from a cage.

The light had changed. Night was coming. I lay beneath the crook of his arm,

spent, drained, mouth open, Samir taking short sharp breaths like a diver, his

cock flaccid against his thigh, my ass burning, and I thought of Azar and the girl.

Samir ran his palm softly over the bronze curls of my pubic hair. He said

something and of course I had no idea of the meaning. He went up on his knees

to explain in mime, whipping up lather in his palm, making a razor from his

forefinger, shaving the hair until my pubis was shiny and smooth like a sea shell.

He ran his finger from my pussy in a line up over my belly, between my breasts,

over my chin and I sucked his razor finger when he reached my mouth.

There is a moment's melancholy after orgasm. Something has come and

something has gone. Something created has crumbled to dust. Something saved

is spent. There were twelve arched windows spaced evenly like the digits of a

clock around the tower. He seemed to know it was time to go and I felt like the

lover when her man leaves to return to his wife, and perhaps that's what I was.