Alif (19) Ana nodded. "Then I'll be able to leave too. I wouldn't have to work for that odious Mr Madir just to be able to see you. It'll be wonderful, won't it? The two of us together. We could lead an ordinary life and be a normal couple..." "Well, almost a normal couple," remarked Binta with a sardonic smile. "We could walk the streets of the city. We could sit in cafés and see the world. And I'll be able to wear clothes again. I haven't worn a stitch for so long." Binta glanced down at her naked body which had the even tan she had cultivated in the Brothel sun beds. Ana wasn't at all sure she wanted even the smallest part of her lover's gorgeous body hidden from sight, but she recognised that it would be totally impractical to be a full-time naturist working and living anywhere else in Alif. "And I'll be able to show you Rif," Ana remarked. "It'd be so nice to introduce you to my family and friends." "And perhaps I could show you Jebel," Binta countered, "even though I'm not too sure I ever want to go there again. It's beautiful. It's the most beautiful place you can imagine. But after the way I was treated there, and the way people would treat me if I returned, I don't think I could face it. Although it would please me so much if you were to see my home. I think about it so often." Binta dropped her head sadly, and grasped Ana's hand for reassurance. "I may never see it again though." "I'm sure you will," said Ana, without conviction. "Perhaps Zabba is right. Perhaps we will have to make our life in Blad. What do you think of Blad? I see so little of it from inside here in the Brothel. I'd never visited it before I came here. Do you think we could make a life here?" "Of course, we could. We'd have to find a new flat together, because I wouldn't be able to stay in my present apartment if I left the Brothel. But it wouldn't matter what it was like or where it was, as long as we were together, and the Brothel was far behind us. Our life would be so much better. I could visit Jebel and you could visit Rif, and we would live in Blad during the week. We would go to bed together, and wake up in the morning and work in different places. We could cook together, see films together, sit in cafés together. We could spend every moment of our lives together when not at work." Binta smiled broadly. "That would be so good. Life would be so fulfilling. No more Pimple. No more Khedra, Kesira or whoever. No more filthy minded, unhygienic clients. An ordinary life, and someone to share it with. It seems such a modest, such a simple ambition. Surely, it isn't too much to ask for. Even if we do have to live in Blad!" "Oh dear!" Sighed Ana. "You're not really that keen on living in the city are you?" Binta smiled sadly. "Not that keen. I'd much rather live in the country again. I am still a country girl, and I don't feel any enthusiasm for Blad's noise, hustle and bustle. I'd prefer the country air, the blue sky, and everything else I miss from Jebel. But Zabba is right, there's nowhere else in Alif we could live as a couple without being found out again by snooping neighbours, and then we'd both be incarcerated in a brothel or prison. And, anyway, how would I get a job in the country with my criminal record?" Ana nodded her head. "But do we have to live in Alif? Couldn't we live in Agdal? Ketaba thinks it's a pretty good place and we wouldn't have to worry about breaking the law there. We could really lead ordinary lives." Binta's face lit up. "I suppose you're right. It's obvious really. Just because Ketaba's so keen on it doesn't mean it wouldn't be any good for us. Nobody would hold my criminal record against me in Agdal, and we could be just like an ordinary couple. But I can't believe it can be that easy. I can't see the Alif government letting us leave. And why would the Agdal government welcome us? They've already got plenty of people much better qualified than either of us who can bring a lot more wealth with them. And if we had to bribe our way in, how could we afford to do it? I haven't got any money. Have you?" "Well some. But not very much." "Ketaba can afford to go to Agdal. She earns a lot of money. But even she says it's expensive. I don't think we could. We won't be able to get the papers together, we can't afford it and I don't know that they'd even want us anyway." Ana sighed disconsolately. She picked up her cup and sipped at the coffee. "It would be nice, though, if we could. Ketaba's photographs were very nice. Agdal seemed such a lovely place. It'd be good just to have a holiday there. And there's an awful lot of countryside. There are mountains and hills, just like in Jebel." "A lot more mountains than Jebel, I'd have thought. Jebel's not really that mountainous. And Agdal's by the sea as well. I'd love to see the sea. All that water! And sand as well! We could sit under palm trees on the beach and watch the sun come down. Oh! It would be so nice to live somewhere like that. And we could be open about our love for each other. We wouldn't have to be secretive. We could kiss in public. We wouldn't have to pretend to be just friends. And people wouldn't think we were perverts if they knew. They'd just accept it! Think how different my love affair with Mezyana would have been if we'd lived in Agdal rather than Alif." Binta stroked Ana's knee, but seeing her longing gaze Ana did not feel at all reassured. She still felt unsure about her rôle in Binta's life after her meeting with Mezyana, and often felt the heavy weight of guilt whenever she reflected on the love that the novice still expressed towards her lover. It had been so difficult reporting her meeting, and not only because of the pain the encounter caused her. She felt some anguish as she observed Binta's great interest and concern towards her former lover. Could she be so certain that she wasn't merely a temporary aside in Binta's great lifelong romance which would be revived once both of them had finished their sentences? "If we had lived in Agdal," Binta mused, "we would never have been parted. We could have been like a married couple. We would never have had to hide our love from other people." She looked into Ana's eyes and must have noticed her discomfort. "Oh, Ana! Oh, sweetheart! Oh, dearest! Don't think that just because I love Mezyana ... loved Mezyana ... that my love for you is any less strong. She is in my past, and had we not been separated by the law who knows what might have been? Who knows? But that is only speculation. What matters is our love together. Don't be jealous of Mezyana. We're together. And that's what matters! Isn't it?" Ana nodded. "That's what matters!" She stared at her cup sadly and then looked up imploringly. "Oh, Binta! Please stay with me. Please say you'll always love me. I couldn't bear to be without you. Your love for me is the most precious thing in my life. Everything else is unimportant. Please always love me. You are my whole life." She was conscious of tears welling inside her eyes, and of sniffles coagulating in her nostrils. "Please always be with me. I love you so much!" "And I love you!" Insisted Binta, looking rather sad and a little guilty herself. She squeezed Ana's hand under the table so tightly that their palms sweated together. "Don't ever think otherwise. I love you. And I want you more than you could possibly know. Just don't ever believe anything else." 19 Ana and Binta stood by the bars enclosing the Brothel garden and watched the city streets below in the long evening shadows. Even now, long after the working day was over for most people, life was busy in Blad. Ana sometimes found it quite reassuring: but now she was somehow finding it irritating. Couldn't Blad ever sleep or rest like a normal place? Why did it have to be so permanently lively? She expressed her thoughts to Binta, whose arm was surreptitiously around Ana's waist, confident that the corner of the garden they were standing in was safe from prying eyes. "After all these months, you're still very much the country girl!" laughed Binta. "You'd rather have the quiet of a rural evening. Crickets and cicadas in the evening sun. A perfectly black sky and none of the ceaseless roar of traffic. Perhaps that's why I love you! You're just like me!" Ana sighed. "You're right! It still doesn't seem right to me. I'd love to live in the country again. Rif. Jebel. Khlib. It doesn't matter where. That's all I really want." "And yet you want us both to settle in Blad!" objected Binta. "It's not what I really want. It's just what we have to do. What is important is that we stay together! Everything else is irrelevant." "And so it is!" Agreed Binta with a smile, kissing Ana on the ear, snuggling her face into Ana's hair. "Just you and I! Nobody else. Just us!" "It would be perfect. Away from the Brothel. Our own flat. We could cook dinner together. We could watch television together, stretched out on the sofa. We could share the evenings together in the parks and cafés..." "And best of all we could make love all night together! With no fear of other people knowing what we do. And with no obligations to anyone else at all!" exclaimed Binta, taking Ana's ear in her mouth and running her tongue around its crevices. "Wouldn't that be perfect!" Ana blushed. Binta was so right. That was very much what Ana looked forward to more than anything else with a yearning that ached in her bosom more than she dared admit to herself. However much she rationalised her love in terms of the more domestic and mundane, what really drove Ana's love was much more carnal and she was still not sure if she should be so unashamed about it. Not only was she in love in a more physical way than she'd ever believed was truly right, it was for a woman. With a sudden spasm of guilt, she disengaged herself from Binta and walked towards a corner of the garden bars where she knew that they would be within sight of the young Delta who was bent over her flowers with a trowel and a small plastic bucket. She glanced at the girl who was looking up and, despite her PAR, seemed quite attractive in the late evening light. It was so unfair, Ana mused, that appearances which couldn't be helped had become such a currency in the Brothel. But, at the same time, she thought, as the girl lowered her head and the bright sparkling eyes and full cheeks were hidden and her clumsy awkward body became more the object of her attention, there must be a reward for those like Binta blessed with more than their fair share of beauty. She turned to regard Binta, who was clearly rather put out by Ana's sudden dismissal of her. She was so beautiful! The eyes. The hair. That body. Every inch of her was beyond comparison. Ana must be the most fortunate girl in the world to be privileged with a lover as beautiful as Binta. She smiled broadly, and glanced again at the Delta. Binta's breasts, her hair, even such details as the slenderness of her ankles and the sinuousness of her legs made her so much the better in comparison. It may be unfair on the Delta to think such unflattering things, but beauty is so much better appreciated when contrasted with those that fall short of its high standards. "What are you thinking about, Ana darling?" Binta asked in genuine concern. Ana bowed her head, and in the process took in the sight of the whole of Binta's naked body. A pang of emotion and love stabbed her breast and very nearly caused her to burst into tears. "I was thinking about you," she admitted. "Nothing bad, I hope?" Joked Binta. Ana looked up with a sad smile. "I love you so much. And I love you more and more. How can there be so much love in me? Nothing I do. Nothing I ever say. Nothing. Is enough to express my feeling for you!" She approached Binta, who withdrew discreetly behind a small palm tree and out of sight from the Delta who was gazing rather vaguely and nonspecifically in their direction. "I never knew love could be so strong!" "Oh Ana! Oh Ana!" Exclaimed Binta, pulling Ana towards her and kissing her long and forcefully on the lips and inside her mouth. Ana felt her entire body tremble in the closeness to Binta's naked body, ignoring the possibility of being seen, surrendered totally to the vagaries of her passion. Ana's hands wandered down Binta's naked body and clutched her buttocks in her palms. As she did so she envisaged her body as she now knew it so well, spread out on the bed receiving her caresses with such gratitude and returned with so much passion. She felt her love swell as the image grew in her mind. She possessed Binta's body. But, and the thought sent another much less pleasant spasm through her, it was also a body she shared with so many others. She tried to banish the image, but it stayed in her mind, even while Binta's tongue explored inside her mouth. The hairy buttocks. The taut sinewy hands. The swelling gut. The harsh bristles on a man's chin. The thoughts became too much. She pushed herself off Binta and with no warning burst into tears. She covered her face with her hands, but the tears still came. Her face felt ugly with unhappiness but she couldn't stop. "What's wrong now, Ana? Why are you crying? Has Mr Madir been particularly bad today?" "No. It's not that!" Ana sobbed. "In fact, I've not seen him at all today. I wasn't thinking about him at all!" "So what's troubling you, sweetest?" Ana looked up. Could she voice her feelings? The very idea of what was troubling her sent a fresh spasm of emotion through her frame, and the tears resumed. "Tell me! What's wrong?" Demanded Binta, resting a hand on Ana's shoulder. "Why are you crying? What's upset you?" "Nothing. It's nothing!" "There must be something. You can tell me. You must tell me. If anyone should know it's me." Ana looked steadily into Binta's concerned wide eyes. "It's you! It's what you do. All those men. Those horrid men! Every day. Hour upon hour. How can you?" Binta nodded with reluctant understanding. "It doesn't mean anything, Ana. You must believe me. It's not choice. It's not what I want to do. It's what I have to do. It doesn't diminish my love for you. If anything, it makes my love for you that much the stronger. I don't enjoy it. You know that. I hate every second of it. It's horrid. It's disgusting. It's demeaning." "But you still do it..." "I'm not here by choice. The clients mean nothing. They're less than nothing. There's only you. Believe me!" "But they do it to you. They do it every day. While I sit in the office, typing letters and taking notes and addressing envelopes, there are men, every day, while I think how wonderful you are and how much I love you!" "My thoughts are with you when the clients do what they do, Ana. It becomes more bearable to think of you and how much better it is with someone I love. Someone who loves me. When they come into my room, take off their trousers - their bellies swelling loose and the smell of sweat - and then come on top of me, snorting and grunting like pigs... it's you that my thoughts focus on." "Are you saying that you think of me when your clients are making love to you? Am I just there to make it more bearable for you?" "No, not at all. Well, yes, I mean. I don't know!" Stuttered Binta. "Yes, I do think of you when I'm servicing my clients. But I don't mean that I think of you and them in anything like the same way. It's not the same at all. It might be in a sense. It's sex I suppose. And sex is sex, whether you enjoy it or not. But love makes all the difference between it being hell and heaven. With you, it's heavenly. I'm in paradise. That's because I love you and respect you and I can't bear to be parted from you. But with them..." Binta paused. She turned around and looked out through the bars of the garden at the rooftops opposite. The dusk was setting in. Street lamps were coming on, and light emanated from behind the curtains of the residential blocks opposite. A car drove by and cries from a crowd of young men echoed across the streets. Ana walked up to Binta, and put an arm around her bare waist. There was a tiny shudder from Binta's buttocks as she did so. Binta wasn't crying, but her eyes had a drained look about them. "I hate them so much, Ana! You must believe me. I hate the Brothel. I hate everything to do with it. Each day I count off: thinking only of the end of my sentence. I look forward to our meetings together. And those days when we don't meet... Those are the worst days! I feel lonely. Isolated. Surrounded by enemies. Okay, the other prostitutes - some of them - are all right. Zabba. Ketaba. Ferhana. They're company. They're people I can talk to, and who listen to my worries. But they're just friends. And often not really that. And the clients. They don't count. They just break up my days: and a good day is when I can forget them altogether. A good day is when we meet and spend the nights together. Please believe me. You are more important to me than you can imagine." "But so many men! And you can't say that you don't enjoy it! You enjoy it with me. How can you not enjoy it with them?" "It's different. It's not the same thing at all. I hate men. I despise and loathe them. I didn't before I worked here. I just didn't think about them very often. They were just there. I was, I suppose, just indifferent. So I had no strong feelings about them. In fact, I sometimes thought there was something wrong with me: not liking them in the way a woman is supposed to. I thought maybe that I would get to like them more if I got to know them better. But it's not been like that. At all! The more I've seen of them, the more clients I have, the more contempt, disgust and revulsion I feel towards them. I know that Ketaba and Zabba say I should make more allowances for them. Even Ferhana says that men are more to be pitied than despised: but if you knew men like I know them, then you would hate them too. When God created Man, he made a big mistake; which he tried to compensate for it by creating Woman, but the damage was already done. If it weren't for men, this world would be a so much better and healthier place. And Alif is a true man's society where women can only be either whores or mothers, and never anything that they might otherwise choose to be."
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