Throwing Sparks (32 page)

She must have been trained by a true pro to arouse such powerful and simultaneous feelings of repulsion and attraction: one instant I felt that she had eyes for no one but me and the next I felt I was being flung into the rubbish bin like a scrap of meat.

I heard room service knocking insistently on the door of our suite. I quickly threw on a bathrobe, afraid they would barge in and feast their eyes on the charms of my reclining temptress.

I blocked the door as I opened it and grabbed the breakfast cart from the waiter. I was flustered and inadvertently exposed myself. He was mortified and muttered repeated apologies before closing the door.

I wheeled the cart into a corner and went to wake her up. I held her close and began nuzzling her neck as I considered how she too was risking so much to be with me. She shifted about, hoping to get a few more minutes of sleep, and I gave up trying to wake her.

I seated myself before the enticing smells wafting off the artfully plated breakfast and picked up a copy of
Okaz
, the local newspaper, that had been placed alongside. The first thing my eyes fell on was a photo of his jowly face under a banner headline. I paid no attention to the story and was fixated on the face staring out at me menacingly. I was shocked at feeling undone merely by contemplating his photo.

I looked into his eyes defiantly and before I could stare them down my cell phone began to vibrate. It was a text message from him. A wave of anxiety flooded over me. I read: ‘Son of a bitch, you’re not answering. Where are you?’

I jumped up and went out to call him from the balcony – if she said anything, he would surely recognise her voice. I was rehearsing all the excuses I would dole out but he did not give me the chance.

‘Get over here,
now
,’ he barked.

I shook her awake and told her we needed to leave.

‘Didn’t you say we were spending the day together?’

‘I’ll make it up to you later,’ I promised her.

*  *  *

Osama’s nightly sorties were anything but disappointing.

He was dashingly handsome and bold. Backed by the Master’s protection and influence, it was not too difficult being bold. In any case, those two attributes greatly facilitated his job. All he had to do was wander about the souks and other recreational areas in search of attractive girls and then start flirting with them. If a girl did not respond to his overtures immediately, he would brazenly stuff his phone number into her handbag or hand it to her. He could be very forward when it came to doing his job.

I was worried that some day Maram and I would run into him at one of the places we liked going to. We had just started seeing each other in secret, stealing moments here and there, and she had begun telling me some of her story. It turned out that what I had on her in my file of Palace girls was inaccurate.

‘Do you like Osama?’ I asked her on one such occasion.

She bit on her lower lip, trying to recall who he was. ‘Osama? Who’s Osama?’

‘You know, Osama,’ I explained. ‘He’s the guy who brought you to the Palace.’

She burst out laughing at the suggestion and said she would tell me her story some other time when she felt more inclined.

I was pleased by that as it held the prospect of more surreptitious meetings.

We did the rounds of Jeddah’s hotels, restaurants and beachfront bungalows for several months. We would steal out of the Palace once or twice a month after silently communicating our desire without ever looking each other in the eye.

‘I feel so happy with you,’ she once cooed with delight. ‘Every cell in my body speaks of you, reminds me you are there. I can feel your fire even when you’re gone.’

The imperious demeanour Maram maintained at the Palace completely vanished between the sheets. She became a sweet girl who craved affection and thirsted for any word that conveyed warmth. She loved it when I put my mouth over her ear and whispered my passion and longing for her, and she became wildly aroused and moaned urgently when I ran my tongue over her collarbone.

Once, in the Palace, she got up from her seat beside the Master and went to fill her glass. As she passed me, I whispered very quietly that I missed her. She was so disarmed, she practically fell into my lap, and began coming and going in the hope of hearing me repeat the words. She would sit down beside him and then spill her drink, or say that she got the wrong thing, or that she forgot the ice-cubes. I really thought she was going to give us away that evening. I kept my gaze averted but could sense her darting eyes looking for me around the room.

‘I feel safe with you,’ Maram said, quivering in my embrace when we were finally alone again. I buried my head into her neck, inhaling her fragrance, and started to kiss her. Moving up to the top of her head, I planted my lips on her eyebrows and began kissing her eyes. She moaned and I took her into my arms.

‘I’ve never known such tenderness my whole life,’ she confided. Putting her arms about my neck, she looked deep into my eyes and asked, ‘Would you like to hear my story?’

‘Yes.’ I pulled her head in close and ran my fingers through her thick hair.

She sat up, gave me a kiss, took a long sip from her glass of Chivas and began her story, with a distant and sad look on her face.

Maram told me how her father had died before she had laid eyes on him, which for her proved that her birth had been inauspicious. Her parents had only been married for a year and a half and her mother had been optimistic about the future when, out of the blue, her father dropped dead and they were left high and dry.

Maram’s mother thought she had left poverty behind for ever after she had found a man willing to take her on and deliver her from the humiliation of being shunted around between her brothers. They had tossed her around like a ball, letting her spend a week here, a week there, and she was beholden to them. She wanted to settle down, and accepted Maram’s father when he asked her to be his third or maybe his fourth wife. He was older than she was but she needed a way out of her predicament.

Not only did the marriage prove short-lived, but it took three months for her mother to find out about his death. She did not know his family or where he lived. He had set her up in a home of her own, that was what mattered, and he would come by and check on her periodically. Maram said her half-brothers – the sons by the other wives – had expressed no concern for them and withheld her share of the inheritance.

So now, they were two stray balls instead of one, and the last thing Maram’s mother wanted was to be bounced back and forth between her brothers again. So she sold all her gold – the jewellery from her dowry – and bought a sewing machine. She opened her doors for business, making dresses, gowns and abayas for the women of the neighbourhood, charging them whatever they could afford.

Those were dark days. Maram was at school and looked forward to securing some kind of qualification that would land her a job and help her mother out. But as she approached her sixteenth birthday, suitors had started banging at the door. Her mother’s stringent requirement was for a groom to be financially reliable and she settled eventually on a man who promised a villa, a car and a bank account in exchange for Maram’s hand.

Her mother was overjoyed at the prospect and the marriage was arranged without Maram having any say in the matter. He was a stubborn and cantankerous man and, as it would soon transpire, also a swindler. He had informed them that he was a widower who had lost his wife a year earlier. Maram’s uncles drew up the betrothal agreement in accordance with her mother’s stipulations, the most important of which was that the dowry had to be sufficient for Maram’s upkeep for life and that the deed to the house would be in her name.

The groom promptly wrote out a post-dated cheque for 200,000 riyals and promised that the title deed would be in his bride’s hands as soon as she moved in to the villa. Even though the cheque was post-dated, Maram’s mother and uncles were satisfied and the deal was sealed.

However, no sooner was the marriage concluded than he cancelled the cheque and Maram became his lawfully wedded wife with no dowry to her name.

On her wedding night, he took her to a cheap hotel and left her there. He would disappear for a whole day and come back the next, have his way with her and leave again before she could ask him where he was headed.

Once, Maram asked why they were in a hotel and he slapped her so hard that she never dared to ask again.

As far as he was concerned, she was just his whore. He would arrive, sleep with her and leave fifty or a hundred riyals under her pillow to pay for some take-away since the hotel did not have a restaurant.

This went on for almost six months during which Maram never saw her mother and could not contact the brother she had met the night the marriage contract was concluded. She felt totally alone but knew there was nothing she could do but ride it out.

At the end of six months, she began to show signs of pregnancy. When he saw her state, her husband thrashed her. Kicking and hitting, he accused her of conniving to get his inheritance. There was a loud knock on the door and he went to open it, muttering and cursing the hotel and its staff.

But it was a woman and his voice was immediately drowned by her screams and shouts of fury. She was called Salwa and when he asked her what she was doing there, she yelled that she had followed him and that he was a cheating bastard.

This woman stalked into the room, grabbed Maram roughly by the hair and accused her husband of cheating on her for this whore.

He fell over himself apologising and asking for forgiveness, like a cat rubbing up against its master’s leg. Still yelling, Salwa told him that she was not about to forgive him and that she would teach him a lesson he would never forget.

She still had Maram by the hair and forced her to move with her as she paced around the room furiously. It was at that moment that Salwa’s brother stepped into the hotel room, prised Maram from his sister’s grasp and eventually brought her to the Palace.

Maram sighed and took another sip from her glass. ‘I think you know him,’ she said slowly. ‘He’s your friend. I’ve seen you talking together.’

I frowned and shook my head.

‘Her brother is called Issa, and he’s very close to the Master.’

‘Do you mean Issa Radini?’ I exclaimed with astonishment.

‘Yes, Issa Radini.’

‘You mean that you were married to Waleed Khanbashi, the husband of Issa’s aunt, Salwa?’

‘The husband of his sister, not his aunt. You know him, right?

‘She’s his aunt and also his suckling sister.’

‘It seems you know them well then.’

‘I do.’

She chuckled ruefully. ‘It’s a small world, isn’t it,’ she said after a while and, looking directly at me, she added, ‘That guy, your friend Issa, brought me to the Palace and I have vowed to get my own back on both of them, him and his slippery snake of a sister – or aunt.’ She paused. ‘I know the Master thinks very highly of him, but I’ll get him one day, you’ll see. Everything that’s happened to me is Issa’s fault – I’ll get my own back, both for me and my child. How else will he ever be proud of me?’

She stopped suddenly, concerned she had said too much.

‘Are you upset by what I’m saying about Issa?’ she asked anxiously after a moment’s silence.

‘No, not at all.’

‘It’s been some time since I last saw him,’ she said, chan­ging her tone and adding, almost chattily, ‘Is he away?’

‘No, but his job is with the Master’s family. He’s respon­sible for their day-to-day upkeep. Most of the time he’s in the lower section of the Palace, reserved for the family.’

I was keen for her to carry on with her story and I found myself wishing I had denied knowing her husband and Issa. As I feared, her need to unburden herself had been quashed by my ill-considered response.

She said one last thing and then no more. ‘For those who can afford it, marriage is nothing but serial adultery. They can marry and divorce as often as they want.’

It was not clear to me whether she was referring to her husband or the Master. I waited for her to elaborate but she just sat there stiffly, looking stone-faced at the wall.

*  *  *

Issa dropped in on me unexpectedly and, grabbing me by the shoulder, told me excitedly that he wanted me to be his witness. He was dancing on air.

This was at the time when I felt trapped by my aunt’s imprisonment and was considering the possibility of getting rid of her altogether.

‘I want you and Osama to be the witnesses of my marriage contract.’

So much of our lives had gone by and not one of us had started a family or had any offspring.

I had spent my time channelling the life-force within me into barren land and it dispersed bearing no fruit.

Earlier on, I had yearned to free myself of the tyranny of the ogre that made me into an animal with no other purpose than to disgorge my warm and sticky liquid. When the ejaculation of that fluid became my livelihood, I yielded to its demands in the same way that a blind man submits to the darkness of the path before him, regardless of whether it is well or poorly lit.

Life had been quick to chew us up and expel us like so much excrement to be reviled by passers-by. Subsiding in us, life could grow elsewhere. But in truth, it was best not to reproduce and therefore not to bequeath our twisted destinies to offspring who would only become tormented by our sick baggage.