Being a Girl (28 page)

David's voice was a whisper. ‘I don't have the money, actually. Not exactly.'

‘You play without money?' Omar looked surprised.

David shook his head. ‘Well, yes, sort of.'

There was another silence. My underarms were damp. I glanced down at David. He seemed to have shrunk in his chair.

‘You are a stranger here?' Omar said.

David nodded.

‘Then I must give you one more chance. It is our custom.'

The men nodded. They understood. Omar placed the two dice in David's hand.

‘What?'

‘We each have one throw. If you win, we shake hands and say goodbye.'

David was relieved but unsure. This was a lifeline. ‘And if I lose?' he asked.

Omar's eyes brushed over me momentarily. ‘Then she is mine.'

David was gripping the dice tightly in his hand. His knuckles were white. His fist was shaking. I could see his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. He didn't know what to say and looked to me for guidance.

‘Until midnight,' Omar added.

David glanced at his watch.

It was three hours before midnight.

I remained very still. I looked at David looking at his watch. Slowly, he looked up at my eyes. The
blood was racing in my veins. The flush rushed up my neck, over my cheeks. It was as if a sheet of paper had been placed on hot coals, warming and curling before bursting into flames. We waited for something to happen. There is no rush in the desert. David didn't know whether to look at Omar or at me.

‘But what for?' he said finally.

‘That is for me to decide.' Omar looked down at his watch. It was gold. A Rolex. ‘It is nearly nine.'

David came to his feet and took a step towards me. He laid his hands over mine. I could feel them tremble.

I nodded, solemnly, and the men in the room nodded also.

I am worth $1,600.

We watched David blow into his cupped hand. He let the dice run across the board until they settled on a six and a three: nine, a good score. The men in the bar sighed, drew breath.

Omar scooped up the dice. He had no tricks, no spells, no entreaties. He looked into my eyes, and we both looked down at the black and red points marking the backgammon board. The dice caught the light as they tumbled melodically across the wooden surface, and it was as if time was standing still, the dice turning over each other until they stopped abruptly. On each of the faded amber faces were five spots, a double five. We were silent for a moment, as one is after dramatic events. David was white, drained of colour. The watching men returned to their own tables.

‘Come,' Omar said, and I followed like a sleepwalker out from the bar into the hot night. We climbed into a black Mercedes and I watched the buildings of Agadir vanish as we drove into the
desert. David held my hand in the back seat. He didn't know what to say and didn't say anything. I watched Omar watching us in the rear-view mirror. There were other cars behind, hidden by dust.

No one seemed surprised when we arrived at the encampment, an oasis around a well with a few date palms. Tribesmen with biblical faces and dark secretive eyes sat in the shadows beside a log fire and I wondered where the logs came from; except for the few palms there were no trees. I heard the sound of camels, goat bells, barking dogs. Some musicians smoking kif in hookahs sat with legs crossed, observing me with the transient interest of people in the bazaar idling away time with no interest to buy. Not that they can afford me. I am worth $1,600, an expensive piece of merchandise. More so here.

The sand ran between my toes as I stepped away from the car. David's weak smile said he was with me; we are in this together. He had no idea what awaited me. Neither did I. That was the wager he had made with Omar, and to which I had agreed.

Omar sent an older woman off to one of the tents, his words in Arabic like the phrases of a song. Several younger women followed. The musicians gathered up their instruments, flutes carved from gourds, a lute, a drum, the skin stretched over a clay pot, an ancient man with empty eye sockets bent over a zither.

‘She will dance,' Omar said, his orders directed always to David, and David nodded his assent.

The music was mesmerising, sensuous, primeval, slow at first and slowly gaining in tempo. My shoulders lifted and fell automatically, my hips swayed. It was the music of a belly dance, not that I had a belly to display, just thin arms and sharp bones, a reed caught in the wind. I was unable to hear what
Omar was saying to David, but understood when David caught my eye and pulled at his shirt.

‘Your clothes,' he whispered.

Of course. My clothes. The roll of the dice was a contract. The future had been set in stone. My fingers found the zipper running down my side and the silver dress fell from me like the skin of a tropical fish, glinting in the firelight as it slipped to the sand. The pulse of the music was growing. I moved to the beat, swivelling my hips, lowering the thin straps on my white bra, revealing my breasts. They felt hot in my palms, hot and sticky with frankincense. My nipples were taut and my breasts swayed sensuously as I lowered my panties over my thighs.

I moved to the beat of my heart, to the sound of the music. I was Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships. I swirled like a Dervish and below the black sky I could see across the desert as far as the horizon. The moon was silver, curved like a sword, the stars close enough for me to reach out and touch. They shifted and sparkled, more than you can count, the constellations so vivid I could predict my future in their shapes and motions. The fire burned with green flames, the logs snapping, the shadows of the date palms swaying almost imperceptibly. I was bathed in moonlight, naked as a flower, the warm wind faint as breath on my skin.

I raised my hands to the stars and it felt right somehow that I should be dancing like this, my body bared. Something awakens in me when I am naked before unknown eyes. I feel liberated, more alive. I was dancing to the music, not for the musicians, not for the tribesmen with flames in their eyes. I was dancing for him. Just him. My skin was dewed in perspiration, warmed by the fire. I could hear the
crackle of the logs, the eternal, hypnotic sound of the zither. I danced and kept dancing and when the music stopped the silence was as vast as the desert.

The old woman who had hurried into the tent before I began to dance poked her head out and called, her tongue clucking. I glanced at Omar, then David, docile at his side, his features shaped by doubt, by insecurity. I had never danced for him, and I caught in his look the vague regret that though he had entered my body, beat me with a belt, with his hand, with his tongue; though he had watched me making love with Roddy Wise and Stephanie Jones, he didn't know who I was or what I might become.

One of the dogs growled, the sound muffled, deep in its throat. The other dogs joined in. The camels languidly raised their heads, firelight reflecting in their glossy eyes. I like the stillness of the desert, the silence, the purity. It felt as if I was beginning a long journey that must be taken alone and without fear. I wondered what the time was and glanced up at the stars as if they might tell me. I recalled a birthday card I had tucked away in a drawer to save. It had on the front a Chinese sage wandering beside a blue river and inside was the adage: To go wrong and not change course can truly be described as going wrong. The words came to me as I approached the tent and like a prayer I found them a comfort.

I imagined that a bed had been prepared, that Omar was going to ravage me.

I was wrong. I would be wrong again many times that night.

Several women were waiting. Dark hands patterned with henna reached for me and I was draped over a low divan. The smell inside the tent was ripe and pungent, the odour of women who rarely wash,
the fear prickling my armpits, something spicy and unknown that was cooking on a primus stove. Two girls raised my legs in an arch as if I were about to give birth. Others held my shoulders and the old woman who had been sent to make these preparations approached snapping at me with a pair of scissors, the sort of scissors you would use to shear a sheep. I wriggled but in vain. I was afraid for the first time. Tears filled my eyes. I stared up at the girls, murmuring unintelligibly, and they saw my tears, but they didn't see me. They had their ritual, their task, whatever it was, and they were too strong for me to fight.

The old woman was growing impatient, the blue tattoos on her face giving her a demonic appearance as she loomed over me, the scissors glinting, and for a sickening moment a vision too barbarous to contemplate ran through my mind. She pressed down on my stomach until I was still. I sucked air through gritted teeth, held myself rigid, and watched with a feeling of reprieve as she snipped away at my pubic hair. She pulled and poked, her eyes squinting malevolently in the glow of the lamp a young girl was holding, her gaze above her veil fixed on the gaping lips of my vagina.

A woman wearing lots of bangles ran her palm over my thighs, my thin arms. There was no hair to remove. My underarms too were as smooth as porcelain. I had prepared myself without knowing for what. She moved on to my breasts, her bangles jangling as she tugged at my nipples. She teased them out, pulling viciously as if at the udders of a goat. My nipples grew firm between her fingers and I envisaged milk pouring from the swollen buds. The dreamy-eyed girl holding the lamp lowered her veil. She was
no more than fifteen, intense and curious as she ran her hand down my side, over the curve of my waist, across my hipbones. The old woman hissed through blackened teeth, pinching me as if there were insufficient meat for a decent meal, and I couldn't help wondering if I had fallen among cannibals.

Now that that first wave of fear had passed I observed the girls observing me, studying my body with indifference. The aloof way in which they touched my breasts made me think of women buying live chickens in the marketplace. I was until midnight their prisoner, and as I looked up into their dark eyes I wanted to know what they were thinking, their secrets, the meaning of the henna swirls covering the backs of their hands.

The snipping was soon over. My triangle of pubic hair was a patchwork of stubble. I had no idea why this had been done to me and remembered a year ago making
Cheats
and doing the same for David Trevellick, for his vanity and pleasure. The old woman stretched my thighs and before I was aware of what she was doing she ran her finger through the spread lips of my vagina, rubbing it back and forth. She held her finger up to the oil lamp and the girls clucked their tongues when they saw it glistening in the dull light.

The girls were saying things in Arabic, their voices like ripples in a pool, and I watched the old woman crossing the tent to the iron pot bubbling on the stove. She gripped the handle in the folds of her skirt, and returned, placing the pot on the floor beside the divan. The mixture had the yeasty smell of pitta. As if some message passed between the women, their grip on me grew tighter, their weight leaning into my shoulders, my legs parted, held still, my white skin patterned with their dark hands.

The old woman grinned as she stirred the mixture. I watched, terrified, as she ladled the stuff from the boiling pot to my pubic bone, the burning as it touched my skin like the touch of fire, the kiss of the devil. It was a pain beyond pain. My body shook and grew wet with fear. My scream was so shrill it was hard to believe the sound had came from my throat. I wriggled, but the hands holding me were strong, they were women who milked goats and carried pails of water in the desert, women who worked like men. The old woman was going back for more, digging the spoon in the pot, spreading the paste over the delicate lips of my sex. Tears fell from my eyes. But the pain was less intense. My senses were numb. Sweat glossed my skin and with my sobs I rocked uncontrollably.

The old woman's tattoos turned her face into a mask as she smoothed the mixture into the crack of my bottom. The young girl seemed fearful, the lamp swaying in her trembling hand, the shadows dancing just as I had danced in the firelight. The others watched as if it were a rite of passage. Still I had no notion of what they were doing to me. Or why. But the pain was passing and it didn't matter. The holiday with David was a luke-warm bath, not fiery and steaming like the poultice setting as solid as a chastity belt between my legs.

I had agreed to Omar's challenge knowing how it was going to turn out. I had once watched David play blackjack in the casino in Cannes and no matter how much he won he always lost. I had been waiting it seemed with a sense of destiny for the pattern to recur once we had arrived in Morocco.

There was pressure again on my arms and legs. The old woman started picking at the poultice. She teased back the edge across the top of my pubic bone until
she had a ridge wide enough to grip in her fingers. She looked into my eyes and I looked at her fading tattoos as in one swift movement she snatched off the compress, the stubborn tufts of hair ripping out and again I screamed in agony.

‘Cluck. Cluck. Cluck,' she said, tapping my thigh.

Struggle was pointless. I opened my legs wider, proffering myself, pushing up my bottom, and the old woman picked away at the dried mess, pulling out the last strands of hair as she did so. My pubic mount was bare. I was as smooth as an egg, ripe as fruit. A virgin. My vagina stung but the old woman produced some talcum that eased the pain as she upended the tin and let it snow between my legs. She dusted away the powder and the young girl with the lamp leaned forward to admire her handiwork.

The woman with the ringing bangles prised the lid from a pot containing a buttery ointment with a harsh, faintly rancid fragrance and all the dark hands dipped in at the same time, scooping out the stuff, spreading it over my skin, my arms and legs, my breasts and tummy, between my thighs. They turned me over, massaged my back, rubbing in the cream, their busy fingers strangely hypnotic. I wriggled like a fish.

The hands of the women grew still. My skin was coated, every plane and angle, every crack and crevice smooth and oiled. I sat on the edge of the divan and the young girl leaned forward, the lamp lighting my features, her own face illuminated with anticipation and curiosity. I was being prepared like a bride, I realised. The girl had this to come. I was the echo resonating her future.