Wounded (11 page)

I think I confuse her as much as she does me.

She's back, cleaning herself up. It's a familiar pattern now. She returns from the building next door, a half-destroyed mosque, I think it's called. The irony of a prostitute operating in a bombed-out church isn't lost on me. She goes into the bathroom, cleans herself, then sits with me, and we exchange language lessons. I'm picking up Arabic faster than she is English, I think. It's only been a couple of days, but I can understand a few words here and there, say a few of my own. I want to be fluent, so I can talk to her. So I can understand what she says. We both have a tendency to say what we're thinking as if the other can understand us. I told her about Derek earlier. How we met, how we've been friends our whole lives. How much I miss him. How he saved my life, and ended up dying for it. She heard the pain in my voice and let me talk, even if she didn't know what I was saying. It was cathartic, in a way. Like a confession, if I was Catholic. I can say the truest things in my heart without having to worry about feeling vulnerable. She can't tell anyone. Can't judge me. Can't level expectations at me.

Why do I feel so rotten when she goes out that door? Why do I care what she does? I've known plenty of sluts, men and women. People who sleep with anything that moves, anything with tits and a twat, anything with a cock and balls. In a way, that's worse. What Rania does, she does out of necessity. Those slutty people, it's totally different. They have no self-respect, no modesty, no morals. They fuck for the sake of fucking, as if it means nothing. Derek was like that. Total man-whore. Except he was honest about it. He plied them with drinks and took them home and fucked them, and that was it, and they both knew it going in.
 

Rania...the look in her eyes in the moment before she walks out the door, it's resignation. Disgust. Loathing. It's there, and then gone, hidden behind the careful façade of applied seductiveness. In private, with me, she's another person. Quiet, reserved. She hates getting close to me, hates touching me or being touched. As if she's afraid of what will happen if I touch her.

I think she expects me to try to sleep with her. To try to use her like...well, like a whore.
 

I won't deny the attraction. She's beautiful, and what I've seen of her body makes my mouth go dry and my cock hard. I've managed to keep her from noticing, but I have to keep my eyes off her when she forgets I'm here and changes in front of me, or cleans up in front of me. She's used to being alone. She forgets I'm here and then remembers, blushes, gets angry at my presence, at my eyes on her. I can't help looking at her. I try, but I can't. There's no privacy in this little house. No door on the bathroom, no curtain, nowhere to change. When she strips her shirt off to change it, I try not to watch her full breasts sway in the dim light. She peels her skirt off, and I try to stare at the wall or the floor, but my eyes are drawn to the dark triangle between her legs, the swell of her hips.
 

She's all woman, but she's...forbidden fruit. Her clients are enemy soldiers, officers, insurgents. We must be near a base of operations or something. I don't know.
 

All I know is I shouldn't want her. But I do.

She's sitting beside me, staring at me. Her brown eyes are narrowed and inscrutable. She's within reach. I could stretch out my hand and touch her knee, her slim thigh. My hand trembles beneath the blanket, straining against my self-control.
 

She saved my life. I owe her.
 

She doesn't want me. How could she? I'm an American, a man, a soldier...for all I know, I may have killed someone she loves.
 

My hand slips out from beneath the blanket to rest on my knee. Rania is watching me with a guarded expression, concealing her thoughts, her feelings. My hand moves toward her, and I sense her freeze. She was already stone-still, but now she's not even breathing.
 

I can't help it. My fingers touch her knee. Just her knee. No higher. Her eyes burn into me. Dare me to go farther, yet beg me not to. So conflicted, both of us. She wants, doesn't want. I want, don't want.
 

Her skin, so soft. So delicate.
 

Rania gazes at me, sighs gently, a sound of resignation, then grasps the bottom hem of her shirt and lifts it up, crossing her arms to draw it off. I'm the one frozen now. Her breasts, unhampered by a bra, are round and full, with small nipples surrounded by wide dark fields of areola.
 

My hands move faster than my lust, quicker than my desires. I want to keep looking. I want to touch her. I want her to keep stripping. Instead, I grab her wrists and pull them down. She fights me, trying to pull the shirt off. I'm weak right now, each motion causing excruciating pain, but I still overpower her easily, without hurting her. I force her hands away and pull her shirt down so her magnificent breasts are covered once again.
 

She stares at me in confusion. My hand has landed on her knee once more, and she looks at it pointedly. I withdraw my hand and she breathes a sigh, whether in relief or disappointment, I don't know.
 

 
Rania stands up and storms away, out the door and into the heat and brightness of the afternoon.
 

*
 
*
 
*

When she comes back, she won't so much as look at me. She's ignoring me.

I give her some time—there are no clocks here, so I have no way to measure the passage of time except the rise and fall of the sun—and then decide to break the ice.

"Rania," I say. She ignores me. "Rania. Please listen to me." This is in English.
 

Her shoulders flinch when I say her name, but that's the only recognition I get. I'll have to claim her attention, then. I learned how to say "I'm sorry" the other day. It took a lot of miming, but I think that's what she was getting at.

I lever myself to a sitting position. My broken ribs scream, send lightning bolts of agony through me, so blinding I have to stop and pant to keep the breath in my lungs. My shoulders hurt, too, but that's a dull, constant pain, not like the sharp spikes that pierce me when my ribs are jostled. I wait until my stomach is no longer about to revolt from the pain, and then I force myself to my one good knee. More panting, more gasping, sun-bright lances of pain. Eventually I make it to my feet, or rather foot, and hop and hobble across the room to Rania's side. I'm without anything to balance me, as she's sitting cross-legged on the floor away from the walls, doing nothing. Just staring out the window at the cloudless blue sky.
 

I move so I'm standing in front of her. "Rania."
 

She ducks her head to stare at the floor. I growl in frustration, hopping in place to keep my balance. Eventually, I have to put my other foot down, but it collapses under me and I fall to the ground. Rania's expression is shuttered, and I can tell she wants to move to help me but isn't letting herself. I lie gasping, stunned, fighting the pain, and then work back upright onto my ass, game leg stretched out in front me.

She doesn't look at me, but now I know she's aware. Listening.

"I am sorry, Rania," I say in Arabic, and I know I've butchered it, by the way her lips twitch.
 

I'm not even sure what I did to piss her off besides touch her. I didn't let her strip. I think she meant to have sex with me, thinking that's what I expected. But why is she mad? I'd think that would be a relief, knowing I don't expect it from her.

She finally looks at me, brown eyes searching mine.
 

"I won't touch you again," I say in English.
 

Time for an Arabic lesson. I touch my knee and say "touch." I touch the floor, which she's told me the word for, and repeat myself. Touch various things within reach, repeating the word "touch."

Eventually she gets it and tells me the word in her language.
 

I know I'm going to butcher the grammar on this one, but I say it anyway. It's important that she trusts me. I don't know why, but it is.
 

"I not touch," I say, in halting Arabic.
 

She frowns. Shakes her head. Thinks.
 

She touches her chest, our symbol for "I," then produces a carefully folded bill from her pocket and holds it up, points to her crotch, then to me, then gestures with the money. Says a word.
 

Prostitute.
Whore
. She's telling me what she is. No. Not what she is. Not who she is. What she does. There's more to her than that.
 

I shrug, pause. Then point to her: "Rania."
 

I don't know what my point is. Maybe that I see her, not her job. It is a job for her, I realize. Not a profession. Not a lifestyle.
 

She stares at me in confusion. Says something, a long sentence in which I catch a reference to herself, the word she'd used before, which I take to mean "whore." And then points next door, where she entertains the johns, and says "Sabah."
 
It's a name. I know that much. Then she gestures to the house around us, and says "Rania."

It takes a while to comprehend her meaning. I think she's saying she uses a different name for the johns. To them, she's Sabah.
 

I point at her. "You Rania," I say. "No Sabah."
 

Her face shutters closed. "No. Not Rania. I am Sabah. Only Sabah. Rania is—" and she says a word I don't recognize. She mimes being dead, eyes rolled back in her head, tongue lolling out, making a gagging, gasping sound.
 

Rania is dead
. The sentiment makes my heart clench for her. She's only Sabah, the whore, to herself. Why is that so sad? This is all she has? All she knows? Has she ever known love? Has she ever known the beauty of sex, the joy in making love?

To her, it must be a dirty, shameful, ugly act. I doubt she ever gains any enjoyment from it. I wish I knew how to communicate with her. Show her. I wish there was a way I could give her joy. Give her even a moment of peace, or pleasure.

Her eyes burn into me, hunting for my reaction. I don't know enough of her language to express what I want to say.
 

"No. No dead." I use the word she did, hoping it means what I'm assuming it does. "Rania."

She shakes her head and looks away.
 

I start talking in English, needing to say it. "There's so much more to life. You're stuck here. Stuck in this shitty life. Stuck being a whore. You deserve more." I don't know why I feel that way about her. I've known her for a matter of days, and I can't even have a real conversation with her. "You're more than this, and I wish you could see it. I wish I could take you away. Give you something better. Except...I don't have anything to give you. I can't even walk on my own."

She speaks, slow and sad words. Eyes downcast. I catch references to herself, prostitution, the mime for hunger. She point out into the street, mimes shooting a rifle.
 

"Hassan is dead."
 

This Hassan must be the guy who threw the grenade and then died in the street. She knew him.
 

I point to her ring finger, then say his name, point at her.
Was he your husband?

She looks confused for a split second, then understands. "No. Not—" and the word for husband, I assume. "Mama," she says, then mimes a pregnant belly, hand curving out over her belly, the points at herself and holds up one finger, then says his name, mimes pregnant again, and holds up a second finger.

I have to work at the meaning, but get it eventually. He was her younger brother. Derek killed her brother, and Hassan killed the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever had.

We both fall silent then, both reflecting on our lost brothers. Derek had family, a mom and dad and a sister. I wonder if they know he's dead. I wonder if what's-her-name, the girl he hooked up with over holiday leave—the Rack...Megan? Something like that. I wonder if she'll be sad for his death. If they were serious.
 

If I die, no one will care. Derek's family might, a little. I spent a lot of time with them growing up, especially after Mom and Dad died.
 

I look at Rania. "Your mama?"

She flinches, won't look at me. "Dead."
 

"I, too." I say it in my broken Arabic.

"Papa, too?" she asks. I'm guessing on that last word.
 

I nod. "Yes. Papa dead. Mama dead. Only I."

She looks outside, as if seeing the street where Hassan and Derek died. We should hate each other for our losses. Instead, I feel closer to her for it. She meets my eyes, and lets me see her pain.
 

Her hand is resting on her knee, and I, perhaps stupidly, rest my hand atop hers. She glances up at me sharply. I keep my eyes on hers, keep my hand on hers. It's meant as a gesture of comfort, but I'm not sure she sees it that way. She leaves my hand on hers for a while. Perhaps she draws comfort from it, perhaps not. She doesn’t seem mad this time.
 

She stands up, takes my hand in hers, and helps me to my feet, then to the nest of blankets that is my bed. When I’m finally lying down again, every fiber of my body is pulsating with pain and I can’t breathe, and she’s touching up her makeup. I hear an engine. Then it turns off, and there are footsteps.
 

Rania looks at me, and then as I watch she becomes Sabah. The pain is pushed away, the flash of disgust that crossed her face when she heard the vehicle is gone, replaced by a silky, seductive smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.
 

My belly tightens, my heart rebels, my mind screams. No. No. I want to grab her and shove her back into the house. Go outside and beat the fuck out of the john waiting for her.
 

She’s mine
.
 

But she isn’t. Where the hell did that thought come from?