The Harem

 DADDY LIED FOR ENGLAND. That's what he said when people asked what he did.

He was a diplomat, a spy Mummy liked to say, and I was never sure if she was

joking or not. I grew up in Madrid, Geneva, Washington. Then in Kent at

boarding school, an old red brick convent with a slate roof and a view from the

cliffs of the sea one way and the town the other. I was never completely happy

living in big cities and it was a family tease that one day I would end up in

Timbuktu.

If character is destiny, I was fated to be carried off into the desert. From the

deck of the ship I had imagined my own ghost and seen my unvanishing

footsteps. When you don't belong anywhere it doesn't matter where you are or

where you go, if you stay or move on. You become a leaf floating with the will

of the wind. You are, at the same time, both of the world and an invisible pair of

eyes looking down upon the world. You arrive at a place where the view

forwards and backwards is the same, where the sun rises in the east one day and

the west the next, where you stop planning and regretting to live like the birds

and beasts on intuition and instinct.

Life in the red fort provided many slow hours for me to look back on the past,

my schooldays, the journey from the Canary Islands along the coast of Africa.

Samir had never been so playful, so loving, so natural as he was that first day. In

the weeks that followed, I don't recall that he was ever quite the same. I saw

lines furrow his brow, a cross look about his features, flashes of temper that

reminded me that when he flogged the man in black who had flogged me on the

island he only stopped when I begged him to do so. At sea, plying his trade, he

was in command of the time and tides. Within the walls of the fortress he faced

the daily demands of his extended tribe and I had become one of that number,

another card in the deck he was continually shuffling and rearranging.

Maysoon remained with me in the tower. I learned more words of Arabic and

she giggled like a child when I tried to teach her English. Through long

sweltering days with the air like dragon's breath piercing the twelve arched windows we would roll around naked touching and licking each other like two

abandoned kittens. Her kisses sewed a line down my body. She slithered into my

cleft, my lips opened for her lips, and I would sigh that sigh of people who have

left on a journey and arrived where they want to be. Like a compass needle

turning to the north, I swivelled over her silky skin to complete the circle, my

tongue lapping at her like a lion at a salt lick, her sticky sap an elixir that kept

me in a permanent state of euphoria.

I could imagine nothing more beautiful than two girls joined in this way. I

adored sex with Maysoon, it was as near perfect as perfect can be, but like the

Persian carpet woven with its eternal fault because only Allah is perfect, we

were incomplete without the sheikh. He made us feel absolute, electric,

empowered. We needed his authority, his discipline, we needed his firm hand

and long straight penis to feel totally alive.

We snoozed Maysoon and I, we slept and awoke drowsy. We kissed and

caressed each other's crevices and curves. I treasured the shiny dome of her

shaved mount with its delicately etched spider and she admired the golden fleece

of my lush curly pubes. I wanted to be the dancing girl and she wanted to be me,

and we lost ourselves in each other during those endless afternoons when the

heavens above the tower roof were like the open mouth of a furnace and I

thought the day would last for ever. It was August, the hottest month. The sun

rose over the desert like a shooting star, burnt the paint from doors and the glaze

from china pots before vanishing exhausted in a black cloak of impenetrable

darkness.

When Samir took me into town, Maysoon would be left behind. I wasn't sure

why, and I had no idea what she did when neither the sheikh nor I were there to

acknowledge that wanton sensuality that must have emerged the moment the girl

stepped from childhood.

Maysoon remained a child in many ways and in many ways she was a wise

and worldly woman. She taught me to dance, how to roll my belly and my

bottom; she showed me that just by going up alternatively on your toes on one

foot and then the other, your hips shimmy, your shoulders turn and your whole

body gyrates without effort. We danced naked until we fell laughing on the

feather mattress and Maysoon taught me other things, things I would never have

imagined or dreamed of, and I wondered how she knew those things; whether

someone had taught her or she knew because she was born knowing as great

poets and pianists are born with the gift waiting to be uncovered and explored.

Under the vibrating tips of Maysoon's skilful fingers she tickled and teased

my throbbing clitoris until from the spread arch of my legs I released a jet of spray that gushed out like an exploding fountain a metre or more into the air. She

bathed in the fine haze. She spread the fragrant liquid over her breasts, she licked

my sopping crack and the feeling of release would grab me once more.

Closing my eyes, I emptied my mind of all thought. Maysoon tapped and

rubbed the mystery button until my stomach clenched. My body shook and

trembled. I gasped for breath and screamed in ecstasy as the second squirt

emerged like mist from an atomiser; the scent of sex, pure, unadulterated, divine.

We changed positions. She spread out like a starfish on the feather bed. I

caressed her erect and eager clit and watched in awe, my mouth open, as this

beautiful creature ejaculated like a boy, her sap thick and luscious, her perfume

feral and mesmerising. If Darwin was right and we evolved through the

millennia, or if there is a Creator with a grand plan, either way we must possess

these powers and potentials for a reason and the only reason is that they are there

like the five senses to be used.

Unlike the other women, Maysoon did not cook or toil, nor carry water to the

stone shower where we washed away the sweat and smelly damp juices that

coated our flesh. As we stood shaking off the drips, the yellow parakeets that

built nests below the ramparts squawked and danced from foot to foot as they

observed our display, dancing girls and dancing birds, a recurring pattern that

appeared to show a heavenly hand. We dried in an instant, and returned to the

tower to make ourselves sticky again. It is a wondrous thing that five minutes

from orgasm and I was aroused, ready to squeeze out another.

I adored being a girl. Boys shoot their load and fall asleep. They awaken

flaccid and you get jaw ache making them hard again. Girls can go on without

end. We are comfortable lying on our backs, down on our knees, suspended from

ropes, naked when others are dressed. We have round meaty bottoms designed

for spanking, thrashing, whipping, kissing, licking. We want to feel men pushing

up against us. If men think about sex three hundred times a day, girls think about

sex three thousand times a day. I remember reading about a girl who had

coupled with more than two hundred men in one day for a documentary and

others were trying to beat her record. Men think they are the hunters, we the

prey, and it is woman's best kept secret that in the land of sexuality men are

blind while we can see across the galaxy.

Now that Maysoon had shown me how to squirt out lush bursts of girlie

essence, I wanted to do it again and again; shoot my dew higher and higher until

we coated the inside of the dome that topped the tower. Maysoon was a creature

intended for one thing only and it came as a revelation for me to discover that I

was the same.

I had discovered that in the frenzy of climax, at that moment of rapture, your soul leaves your body and you become one with the universe. It is the satori

awakening that Zen monks try to reach; a glimpse of enlightenment, the sound of

one hand clapping. In India, devotees through the centuries have been attempting

to formulate the sexual act in the study of tantra, in the creation of the Kama

Sutra. But I had a feeling that the uncontrollable joy of perfect sex arose not

through study and mysticism, but from the breaking of taboos, the crossing of

boundaries and frontiers, through transgression, multiple partners,

submissiveness and discipline; through a life dedicated to living in the present

where the pursuit of orgasm takes precedence over all, over love and loyalty,

even over life itself. Could any death be better than one that takes you as you

body erupts in spasm and your voice joins the song of the universe?

It became for me more a change than a pleasure to dress in my one suit of

clothes and join the men when they drove into town. Now that I knew those

myriad colours and costumes, now that I had savoured the exotic smells and seen

the women carrying fish in wide baskets, the street stalls laden with

Kalashnikovs, the dancing monkey, it was merely repetition and I yearned to get

back to the tower, strip off my disguise and dress in the costume of nudity. As

the beachcomber had shown me the moment I met him, a naked girl is inviting

sex, and that's all I wanted, the opportunity to draw the sheikh into my body and

search for the holy grail of the ultimate orgasm.

From out of the dust the town came into view, domes and battlements rising over

the flat roofs, the white towers of minarets, swaying palms vibrant with raucous

green birds. People washed themselves around hand pumps in the street; men

built boats with hand tools; the money changers stood outside the bank with

money to buy and sell and I wondered what went on inside the bank, whether the

only function the building served was to supply shade for the money changers

standing below the awning outside.

My feet burned black as I trudged through the dust and dung a few paces

behind Samir. Mo and Azar were at my side, smoking, armed to the teeth. Umah

followed carrying a leather satchel with separate compartments joined by a wide

strap. Samir purchased sacks of rice, rolls of cloth, the herbs and spices that

didn't grow on the oasis edging the fort and which gave the food we ate at night

flavours and tastes that touched my senses like an opiate, an aphrodisiac that set

fire to my imagination. The vegetables were pulled from the thin soil the same

day, the chickens roamed at will through the courtyard not knowing the knife

was always close behind, the fish came straight out of the sea and the occasional

sheep was slaughtered just hours before the fires were lit. We only ate once a

day, at sunset, and I always filled my plate. I had grown adept at eating with the fingers of my right hand and had learned in this land without lavatory paper that

washing my bottom with my left leaves you feeling cleaner.

Azar shouldered the heavy sacks. Umah tucked the spices into the satchel and

I gazed at Samir as he bargained with the traders, the brightly-coloured notes

exchanging hands with the speed of the myna birds spiralling through the date

palms. Azar, Mo and Umah seldom spoke but would on occasions burst into

smiles for reasons I never understood. It was written in their faces that they were

satisfied with their lives and content to be in each other's company. They

seemed to understand the universe and their place in it. They were not striving to

be something else or someone else; to be all they can be. They already were and,

knowing it, I came to see, is the recipe for happiness.

Umah had grown more confident now more time had elapsed since we had

left the boat. He had started to gaze upon me with mooning eyes, but my

indiscretion had been as innocent as it was impetuous, and to replicate the act

would be premeditated. We grow through change, we die in repetition. The echo

is already dead. Lizards climbed the tower walls and as I watched them navigate

the phallic white curves of the dome I recalled some words from William Blake

– the man who never changes his opinion is like standing water and grows

reptiles of the mind. I was a lizard, a chameleon, a girl of many colours. I could

do and be anything and didn't know that time like sand in the hour glass was

gathering speed, that the only permanence is change, and the idyll will always

come to an end.

We met Africans in Hanif's warehouse, men with young sons, pregnant

women, families who came from somewhere and wanted to be somewhere else.

They wept and argued and paid over vast sums of money that Samir folded into

a stained leather pouch and slid inside his white djellaba. At any price the people

wanted to reach Europe and no sum would have persuaded me to do anything

but stay.

I met an Indian man who had crossed the continent from Kenya and was now

making the journey to join his brother in Spain. He was an engineer, he said,

with five children and a wife to care for at home in Mombassa.

'There is no work now,' he said, 'how can I feed my family?'

I shook my head and looked suitably forlorn. It was so long since I had last

heard English spoken the language seemed strange to me.

'I don't know,' I said in a whisper.

It felt as if my words might shatter the fantasy and I would suddenly wake in

my bed in Fulham with, with … that boy in girl's clothing, that mirage in my

shoes and make-up. Like the future, the past had become abstract, an unreal

place I no longer believed in. There was just this moment. The engineer looked into my green eyes, at the blonde ringlets escaping from

my turban.

'You are leaving here with us?' he asked.

'No,' I said. 'This is where I belong.'

I didn't know it then, but this was to be the last time I went into town. We

drank mint tea with Hanif and after, while Azar went to get the truck, I followed variations.

Azar appeared in the shop and placed the ingots in a bag. The sheikh and the

goldsmith touched foreheads and chests, and I was relieved to journey back to

the fort where I felt safe and at home. We bathed in the stone bath, Maysoon

joined us and the world was back in balance; a boy and two girls in a round

tower with twelve windows. And I wondered that day as we made love with

Samir if he knew the things Maysoon had taught me. Or was that our secret, the

secret life of girls?

The following day, the sheikh and the other men left without a word, and I

forgot my place, my role, that I was merely a woman who waited as women

always wait. The days went by, two, three four, five. I felt bereft, Maysoon's

tongue small compensation for the long hours of loneliness that stole upon me. I

felt abandoned, an outsider, my doubts changing to fear when at dawn one

morning I awoke to find the women of the house making their way into the

tower with numerous pots and bowls. Maysoon led the way, chatting and giggly,

the women smiling, the bells about their ankles ringing out like funeral bells

before they bury the dead. They stopped and there was silence.

Amatullah, Mo's wife, carried an iron pot, her hands protected by cloths. She

placed it down carefully on the mattress where I had been sleeping. She raised

the lid and inside was a bubbling substance like the restorative goo I had seen

applied to the wounded camel in the caravanserai. She removed the scarf from

her head, rolled up her sleeves and stared down at me, her eyes dancing, the

wrinkles growing deeper on her brow. I looked at Maysoon. The girl gave a little

wave. My mouth was dry.

One of the other women held my shoulders and Maysoon took my hand. I

could have fought them off but I had come to believe in fate, that we are guided

by the wind and stars, que será será. Amatullah stirred the scalding liquid with a

wooden spoon before taking a dollop of the mixture and spreading it over the

bouncy blonde curls of my pubic hair.

A scream left my throat. I thought I was going to die. I gasped in pain. All the

breath left my body. Amatullah shook her head and tutted. She looked angry

now as she scooped out a second spoonful. She pressed her free hand into the

hollow of my stomach and, as she forced the white stuff into the entrance of my

vagina, it hit me that I was going to be circumcised, that once my senses were

numbed by this vile concoction, Amatullah would take a knife to my vagina. The

young men were away and the old men who hated me were now in charge. I was

a stranger, a foreigner, an interloper. I was being punished. I was going to be

robbed of my clitoris, my femininity, my secret joy of squirting girl juice into the atmosphere.

I looked up at Maysoon.

'Is OK,' she said, about all she could say in English, and she traced her finger

down over the blue line that ran from below her bottom lip and down into her

lush cleavage.

Tears were falling from my eyes, but my fear disappeared as quickly as it had

emerged. I felt ashamed. I wasn't going to be robbed of my sexuality. I was

being invited into the clan. I was one of them and I realised that that was what I

wanted to be. That if Samir was going to leave me waiting while he went about

his business, I needed to be united to the tribe, a member of his harem. I had

been sad and now I felt joyful.

Amatullah continued, spreading the mixture as you would smooth dough into

a cake tray, coating the area from just below my waist, across my pubic mount

and into the crack of my bottom. While the poultice set, she ran her fingertips

over my limbs and her look seemed to say that she was impressed not to find any

other superfluous hair.

The woman holding my shoulder, Yasmeen, a timid soul with a squint in her

eyes, released her grip and turned to pick up the brass bowl on the floor behind

her. Her fingers, I noticed, were stained the same shade of blue as the liquid the

bowl contained. I didn't work in the house. Like Maysoon, my one task was to

please the master, but I recalled Yasmeen grinding petals and roots in a mortise

and pestle. I remembered the words she used: indigo and saffron. She had made

a dye from the plants that grew along the banks of the muddy stream beside the

fort.

Amatullah carefully soaped and sponged the lower half of my face, over my

chin and down between my breasts. With all this fuss being made over me, my

nipples popped out, eager for attention, and Amatullah paused in her

ministrations to give them a good hard tweak. I yelped. The women laughed and

I laughed with them. They were unaffected. They had a naturalness I envied and

tried to emulate. They had their role, their tasks. They cooked. They cleaned.

Yasmeen collected herbs and spices. Maysoon and I provided the release from

tension a house full of women always stirs.

This is the life inside a harem and the mere sound of the word was poetry that

resonated musically in my mind. I was a slave girl, a concubine. I had no

responsibilities except to please my master. Like Maysoon, I was an object of

desire, and the awareness that I was valued in this house without mirrors had

freed me of the vanity being desirable inspires.

Not every woman is a courtesan, but it is the logical corollary of being a

woman, of painting your face, of dressing to reveal your breasts, your spine, 

Samir to the goldsmith's shop, a small, stone-walled building lit by the brilliant

light emanating from the kiln. The goldsmith had the long white beard of a

prophet and looked as if he might have been casting gold in those ancient

moulds for a thousand years, although the metal shutter that rolled down over the

door and the thick bars on the narrow window belonged to modern times. There

was just enough space inside the shop for the low table that contained a set of

brass scales with weights in pounds and ounces. It was on this ancient device

that the goldsmith weighed the grit and dust and fragmented nuggets brought out

of the desert by speculators dreaming of the riches of paradise.

The goldsmith took the wad of money Samir gave him, licked his scarred

fingers and counted the bills, wahid, ithnan, thalatha, arba'a, khamsa – one,

two, three, four, five, his voice a chant that made me feel giddy in the fierce heat

thrown out by the kiln. On and on, a teacher instructing the art of pronunciation.

When he reached the required sum, he pushed the rest of the bundle back across

the counter to Samir. The sheikh didn't check. He had the careless manner of

people who have always had money and had no need to treat those grubby bills

with special respect.

Under the counter there was an iron safe. The goldsmith produced a key from

within the folds of his cloak and, when he swung back the door, a brilliant

yellow glow filled the room. He produced two one pound ingots that he gave to

Samir and Samir held them out for me to take a closer look.

'Gold,' he said. 'Is beautiful.'

'It is beautiful. And you are beautiful,' I replied.

He pointed at himself. 'Me, me beautiful.' Then he pointed at me. 'Chengi, he

beautiful.'

'She.'

'He beautiful,' he said again. He pushed the gold ingots at me. 'You, you take.

You want?'

I pulled away. 'No, no,' I said, and I meant it.

He knew that. We had little language and few secrets. I smiled. I was his

mother and his child. He was my father and my little boy. When we were alone,

joined as one, I was Samir and Samir was me, my flesh his flesh. It was, I

thought, how love should be. That love is sex in all its colours and uncountable your legs, your shape. Unless you are determined to remain a virgin, it is only a

question of the circumstances or the price under which you agree to strip off

your clothes and spread your legs. The female in the animal kingdom lets off an

odour to attract the male just as we apply scent as an erotic signal. The consorts

of the rich men I have met, the wives of peers and ambassadors, the rock chicks

and footballer's girlfriends, ornament their ears, throats and fingers with

precious stones, they hobble their feet in Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo.

Their underwear is skimpy, silky, soft, designed not for wearing but taking off.

Was the decoration of a blue tattoo really any different?

The poultice had hardened. Amatullah picked at the top edge and, when she

pulled it back, I yelped again, louder than ever. I'd suffered unnecessary hair

waxings before, but they were nothing compared with this. My golden fleece

was no more, every curl that decorated my mount had gone in one foul swoop. It

felt as if I were on fire. And if that wasn't enough, while Yasmeen and another

girl held my legs as if I were about to have a baby, Amatullah jabbed around my

vagina with a pair of tweezers snapping out any stray hairs left behind.

'Ouch, ouch, ouch,' I said, and Maysoon copied me.

'Ouch, ouch, ouch.'

The women laughed and I laughed with them. I was sweaty and hot. The sun

was already stoking up the engines for another sweltering ride across the sky and

the last of the morning shadows had fled from the room. Amatullah took a

handful of chalk dust from another bowl and coated my pubic mount. The pain

subsided and she washed me again.

'Chengi Akht, no move,' Maysoon said.

'As-salaam, Akht, ' I answered, yes, sister, I'll do my best.

I was relieved when it was Amatullah with her steady hand, not Yasmeen with

her squint, who reached for the needle, a sadistic little tool with a short stem

fixed to a cylindrical cork handle. The women grew quiet as she made a

continual series of jabs in a triangular pattern just below the centre of my bottom

lip. She carried on in a line down to my chin and then did the same again,

dipping the point of the needle into the blue dye. I noticed blood on the white

muslin Yasmeen used to wipe away the excess liquid. But I wasn't afraid. All

the women in that room were ornamented with the tribe's arachnid and with it I

would finally be accepted.

I had to hold my head back and remain very still while Amatullah worked her

way over my throat, between my collar bones and down over the narrow groove

between my perky breasts that had grown fuller in those weeks I had been living

in the fort. Lying flat on the mattress, my stomach curved inwards in a hollow

bowl, but when I stood and took a deep breath, I had a small belly I was trying to make bigger.

The women paused and we drank tea. It was slow, hot, arduous work and

Amatullah had to gather her reserves to make sure she didn't make a mistake. I

was, I liked to think, the sheikh's favourite concubine. My markings should be

perfect and if my pubic mount was about to be engraved with a spider I wanted it

to be the prettiest most spirited spider in the house.

My bottom lip felt numb and the area under my chin was stinging, but it was a

nice pain, like diving into cold water, or running really, really fast at the end of a

race. For some reason, I remembered winning the 5000 metres for my school at

the county championships. I had been third all the way through the event. There

was half a lap to go. My legs felt like lead. But the girls were calling my name. I

listened to their chant, it was a buzz, an ego rush, and I found a store of energy I

didn't know I had.

'Faster,' I said to myself, 'Faster. You can do it.'

My legs seemed to grow longer and I stretched out, passing the two girls I'd

been chasing to break the finishing tape with five metres to spare. It was, as far

as I could recall, the first time I had ever pushed through the mental threshold

and gone beyond myself. This aptitude to break barriers and cross frontiers was

coded in my DNA. It was no accident that I was lying there naked and sweaty

surrounded by those Arab women, Amatullah continuing her art, perforating my

skin with sharp jabs like the mechanical needle on a sewing machine and,

unexpectedly, I recalled the second verse from Thomas Hood's fourth year

poem:

Work! work! work!

While the cock is crowing aloof!

And work work work,

Till the stars shine through the roof!

It's Oh! to be a slave

Along with the barbarous Turk,

Where woman has never a soul to save,

If this is Christian work!

Strange words. I ran them through my mind like a prayer and it occurred to

me that with the tribal markings I would never be naked again. I would always

feel covered, in costume. The world would know who I was and to whom I

belonged. I wanted to belong and realised that in my wanderings as a diplomat's

daughter from school to school and from country to country, I had never really

belonged anywhere.

With these thoughts, and with utter shame, I felt a drip slip from the lips of my freshly denuded vagina. I felt excited. No, I felt warm and content, and when I

am warm and content, silky liquids seep from the salacious little creature that

lives between my legs. I felt feverish, light-headed. I felt the same way that I had

felt that day when I won the 5000 metres. It was at the time my greatest

achievement, and I had a feeling that my being branded with the blue tattoo was

greater still, that I had arrived, that I was all that I could be.

If Amatullah was aware that I was leaking, she ignored this shameless display.

Her needle punctured and dotted its way down the groove below my breasts.

Yasmeen wiped away the trickles of blood, and Amatullah did the same again,

injecting the blue dye into the minute wounds, working her way over my belly

button and down towards the pink scalded plain of my pubic bone. She paused

and took a sip of tea. Yasmeen wiped the area, cleaning away the traces of chalk,

and used a fresh cloth to dry the surface. She looked into my eyes and there was

a brief conspiratorial moment as she ran the cloth through the lip of my vagina to

dry the damp discharge.

Amatullah's sleeves had slipped down her arms and there was a collective

sigh of relief among the women as she rolled them back up again. She took a

breath and leaned forward. I could no longer see what she was doing and closed

my eyes as the point of the needle danced over my tender flesh. She worked

quickly. My mount was her canvas and she was Salvador Dalí.

Yasmeen continually wiped the area. Amatullah coated the needle in dye and,

with my eyes pressed shut, I could see in my mind the spider surfacing through

my skin like a photograph developing in a tray of chemicals. The creature was

already there, it had always been there. Amatullah wasn't engraving the spider,

she was tracing it. I was born with the stigmata.

I kept my eyes closed. I felt like a baby swimming in the amniotic fluids

inside the womb. I thought about Mummy at home in the garden. The roses

would be in full bloom, the petals turning brown around the edges, ready to fall.

I wanted to call Mummy. I wanted to tell her I was safe. I was fulfilled. I was

happy. I was me.