A Sorority of Angels (23 page)

Shaba was pleased and proud having served her country.

Shaba had a clear conscience about her causing Busambi’s demise. Who can say murder? If he hadn’t died having sex with her, he would have died having sex with Janan or another girl. She hastened the process, avenged her rape, left Kintubi in a good position with the new Administration, and diverted Congo’s direction to a more democratic course – and a better opportunity for the starving. Busambi’s upstroke expiration was positive and legal. She never committed a crime killing him. The Roman Coliseum would have cheered the triumph.

Shaba and Kintubi waited at the airport for her British Airways flight to board when Janan came running up to them, breathless.

“I’m glad I caught you in time, Shaba. Whew. Let me catch my breath…here.” She passed a sheet of paper, IMPORTANT printed across the top in ink. “This phone message came for you three days ago from New York, but the maid misplaced it. I found it and came here as soon as I could.”

Shaba accepted it curious, wondering from whom…and with trepidation and quickening heart.

The message came from my Laura.

Alise was in the hospital in critical condition.

BOOK OF ALISE

“We live not like we wish to, but as we can.”
Menander 342-292 BC

When Laura told me what happened to Alise, I was stunned, outraged, and angry. My heart reached out to her, hoping Shaba would respond quickly to Laura’s phone message and return to New York for Alise’s sake. I’ll switch to Alise’s horrible story.

Alise remained subdued in the taxi when accompanying Shaba to the airport and cried when Shaba said goodbye to board British Airways to The Democratic Republic of the Congo via London with a three hour wait at Gatwick Airport. She watched Shaba until the crowd swallowed her, disappearing beyond security gates.

When Alise arrived at the apartment, silence and loneliness consumed her with depression.

There wasn’t a light shining in her life.

Alise Helena Diab, a child of poverty and hunger. Born and raised in the streets of fabled Damascus. A rebellious daughter refusing to marry men her father selected from the time she reached fourteen until graduating high school.

Then a tragic car accident happened that wiped out her family: parents and two younger sisters. A widowed aunt accepted Alise in her home, temporarily. Her aunt tried hard to arrange a marriage but Alise resisted.

Alise had required military training in high school; wore a brown military uniform and learned drill, discipline, nursing, and weapons handling; fifteen to eighteen-year-old girls in Syria train for home front preparedness.

The Syrian Arab Republic was born in l946. For almost all of its years of existence as a nation, Syria had been at war. War and defense are a dominant aspect of Syrian life. Almost all the national budget goes for defense.

In its first twenty-four years, the nation saw twenty-three changes of government, fifteen by military coups. With war a continuing part of life, the military grows ever more powerful.

Alise hated her surroundings, her economic strata, and absence of having something nice to wear and had no intentions becoming a simple, submissive housewife.

There’s more in life than keeping a house, feeding a husband, and remaining anonymous in his shadow.

Her father made a simple living selling straw brooms and reed baskets in the teeming bazaar Suq al-Hamidiyah. Little money remained for her aunt to raise her, why she pushed Alise to marry – to rid the burden.

Alise dreamed of distant places, spending hours perusing then studying pictures of the world’s glamorous places. To her, Damascus missed her list – the rich Damascus, yes, but unreachable.

Alise reached the crossroads when school ended. She lacked the money to attend the University of Damascus. Her future reduced to marriage or work. She chose work and realized after three months that the paltry salary as a clerk in an exporting firm served as mere subsistence to keep her trapped in poverty. Then her aunt died.

An uncle showed her the way to a financial future. When her uncle visited the house with other mourners, he conversed with Alise about her future. He wanted her impressions of what her tomorrows held. She had no idea but needed to defer marriage. They walked around the area park and he suggested she should hear specific advice and not be offended by the subject. She agreed.

He advised her to become a high class prostitute.

After the shock wore off, he explained the lifestyle and economic potential plus the benefits of mingling with the prominent and visiting foreign corporate executives. A beautiful young woman would attract big money.

“Think about it. It’s very good advice. If you want to talk more on the subject, call me. I can help you.”

The conversation with her uncle clung for weeks, alone in her dismal world without sexual experience. How does one begin that career? She called her uncle. He told her to come to his apartment to talk further.

“Uncle Hafez, I have thought much about what you said. How do I begin to meet better people?”

“If you are sure then you must train. You must learn your profession, to think and function as a love object, and know how to please the men who pay you for their pleasure whatever their desires. I can help you to begin. I have influential friends. I will tell them you are a beginner. Are you sure?”

“Yes. That is what I want.”

“You are a virgin?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must not be to begin or inexperienced. Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Then I will pay to train you. Whenever I give a lesson, I will pay you. That way you will learn and have money at the same time and feel productive that it is your business, an entrepreneur. Think of me as your teacher.”

She surprised herself that she accepted her uncle’s advances and proposal. If prostitution meant escaping poverty…that shone as the way out.

“This week we’ll train your body and discuss and practice the various methods of health and protection. Then I will teach you how to act to pretend enjoyment and to react the way a client expects. It’s your profession. Think of men as clients. Avoid emotional involvement with them, very important. Stay professional. Concentrate on repeat business as a foundation for your growth. You studied nursing in school. Pretend you’re the doctor, they patients, consider the encounter a clinical procedure. You must become an actor with the bedroom as your stage. Emote, emote, emote.”

A patient teacher, Uncle Hafez eased her into excitement stage by stage by assuring her comfort at each stage – soft, tender, and clinical. When the first experience ended, he paid her the equivalent of forty American dollars, almost as much as she made working at the export firm for a week. With each lesson, he increased the fee.

Several years later, she met Ali Fuad Kahil.

Ali turned out to be her pillar of weakness, not strength. Love weakened Alise making her dependent; to be with Ali as often as possible; to stifle any personal ambitions; to yearn for him; to live as his wife; to have his children; to become what she fought. Love neutralized her life, wanting to belong to Ali. Love debilitated her career.

They met at a bachelor party. He had called her madam, who Alise channeled through periodically, for six girls. On seeing Alise, Ali kept her to himself the entire evening refusing to allow her to participate in the ongoing orgy. Instead, he brought her to his apartment, made love to her, and paid the predetermined agency price plus five hundred dollars as her tip.

In the next few months, Alise became exclusively his. He called repeatedly until finally asking her to move in with him. She did, abandoned her profession, and worked for Ali in his international law office for two years. There, she studied and learned English to communicate with British corporate clients.

Appointed as ambassador last year, he insisted Alise join him in New York, and she knew the language. She held hopes of going as his wife, but he never asked. New York was a travel fantasy, a magic carpet ride, and an opportunity to live there with the man she loved.

Alise agreed.

Shaba was right about Ali. The future with him looked bleak.

Alise refused to believe or fathom the thought. Was it possible he could live with her for all this time and lack love feelings for her? Alise believed Ali loved her and tried to make him marry her, and now the pregnancy. Maybe he never cared – once a prostitute, always a prostitute. She refused to believe he would think that way. Their baby would keep them together.

Hope and delusional optimism kept Alise going.

Loneliness that first evening without Shaba encouraged depression to keep Alise awake until three o’clock. She slept and awakened at the usual hour for work.

Alise decided to stay home and avoid Ali today to collect her thoughts. Their next meeting must be unemotional and positive. She needed a balanced mind to discuss the baby in a calm and logical manner. Today wasn’t the day.

By eleven o’clock, she finished eight cigarettes.

Damn it! I have a problem and have to confront it.

As she headed for the phone to call Ali, the phone rang.

“Good morning, Alise, Ali. Are you all right?”

“I don’t feel good. Now that I hear your voice, I feel better.”

His voice erased many insecure barriers she erected.

“What’s wrong? Unlike you not to call. I worried when you didn’t show up.”

See. He does care.

“I feel down today. Depressed.”

“Shall I come over? Maybe I can cheer you up a bit.”

“Now?”

“Sure.”

Alise lacked tolerance to cope with his wheeling and dealing to get her into bed. She wanted to talk to him this evening away from the apartment. Chances improved having better communications in a public place like a restaurant, a captive audience and his mind unconcerned with only sex.

“On the other hand, maybe later. I should feel better by then. How about dinner somewhere?”

“Why go out? Much more comfortable there and with Shaba gone I can stay later.”

“I’ll be cooped up here all day. I prefer to go out.”

“Shall I pick you up at eight then?”

“No. I’ll meet you at the restaurant.” Once he came up, going out ended.

“How about Chinese?” he offered. “The Flower Song on Second and Forty-sixth. I’ll be in that area.”

“I’d like that.”

“Bye.”

“Oh, Ali. Ali.”

She caught him in time. She had a weak moment that needed assurance.

“Do you miss me?”

“Of course I do.”

She wished she could believe him.

What did Alise have in life? Her family died and she never wanted to see her uncle again. Ali? Without Ali, she had no future. She made him her life. Ali could give her all she yearned. Without her baby and without Ali where would she be? If only Ali wanted to marry her, she pined.

Then there was Shaba – closest to Alise, and Laura, who she wanted to know better. She loved Pilar but Pilar remained aloof a long time. She loved the other women of the Achilles Heart. With them at meetings, parties or lunch made closer attachments. Their common union, their Achilles Hearts, provided Alise with belonging, common cause and purpose, and devotion to their association.

To Alise, Laura represented the symbol of individualism and self-sustaining surviving without men to depend on.

(Note – Laura’s situation differed for I pled, and begged her to marry me. Alise wished she were more like Laura and Ali more like me.)

The rest of the day morphed to a ‘downer day’. Alise wrestled with her future all day, and losing.

The phone rang again at four o’clock. She had no desire to talk to Ali before tonight. It had to be him to cancel the restaurant for the apartment. Was the call for Shaba? Was it Shaba? She answered after the fourth ring. Her voice lacked enthusiasm, guarded. The voice on the other end was vibrant.

“Hi, this is Laura.”

Alise elated. “You must have ESP. I was thinking about you.”

“I called your office and they said you were home ill.”

“No, only tired.”

“Did Shaba get off okay?”

“I went to the airport with her. How’s Adam?”

“He’s furious at me. I missed seeing him this past weekend because I had company from out of town. Pilar left already, right?”

“Yes, I spoke to her before she left. She was supposed to leave this week but changed her mind and left earlier. It had to do with better weather in Buenos Aires.”

“I don’t know if Shaba mentioned but she told me about your situation. I’m concerned and want you to know I’m your friend for anything you need.”

“You’re a doll, Laura. I appreciate it.”

“What are you doing later? Shall we have dinner? Or I can come up and whip up something for you. It may help if we talk.”

“Tonight, I’m having dinner with Ali. Can we get together tomorrow night?”

“Fine. How are you two doing?”

“I’ll know tonight.”

“If it doesn’t turn out your way know that I’ll be there for you. If abortion, I will go with you. Maybe we can stay together during the week. I don’t dare miss another weekend with Adam. I can’t get over his reaction.”

“Adam loves you. I wish Ali loved me that way.”

“Men have different ways of expressing their love. I’m sure Ali loves you.”

“I’ll know for sure tonight.”

“Do you think Pilar and Shaba will succeed in their countries?”

“They should. I haven’t even begun to do anything with my country yet.”

“With your problems and condition that’s understandable, and no need to rush, nobody’s on a timetable. I just started to scratch the surface, a small lead to something. You won’t be alone in getting started. Kim, Asmir, and Jasmine have talked to their ambassadors. They already planted seeds. I’ll plant seeds at the Mission this week.”

“I haven’t mentioned it to Ali. I will tonight after we beat the other subject to death.”

“As I said, don’t rush. Timing is important, no sense bringing up a new subject if it’s unreceptive. Maybe you should wait.”

“Good advice.”

“If your evening doesn’t go positive call me. I’ll be up if you want company.”

“I’m glad you called, Laura. I feel better already. The world doesn’t seem as lonely.”

Alise cradled the phone with a melancholy aura. Laura’s call turned into an ally helping to strengthen her defenses against her future’s lurking shadows.