A JOURNEY

THROUGH

THE SHADES OF LOVE

An erotic romance novel

by George Loukas

1
When I write I don’t aim to shock people and

I’m surprised when I do. But I don’t think that

anything that occurs in life should be omitted

from art, though the artist should present it in

a fashion that is artistic and not ugly. I set out to

tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking

Tennessee Williams

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 CHAPTERS

almost yesterday

images

an inevitable idyll

the birds and the bees, if you please

the black hole

conflicts

THE INHERITANCE – A novelette

port said – the final years

cairo

a blue-eyed butterfly

cinderella and a portly prince

disintegration and flight

stories for chris and reveries

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 Obsessive, untidy, unpredictable, unplanned. Both disastrous and
miraculous. Divine and hellish. That was my life.
Well, not much of it left. But lucky, in the last analysis, for I am still alive,
with a little money, in reasonable health, retired, an aspiring author of two
unpublished novels, innumerable short stories and a new dominant need to record
this strange but finally desolate and petty life of mine.
I am writing for myself. I want to understand my obsessions and the
comfort I draw from them. To understand why an avidity for life is nearly always
detrimental. Strong emotions, sensuality, unconventional behavior. Why we are
urged to live with the insipid Aristotelian maxim of „pan metron ariston’, that
everything in moderation is excellent?
The past is constantly hounding me. Recurring and persistent. I live in it
again and again in the novels and short stories I write. It makes up my dreams and
nightmares, reminding me that my civilized, well-kept exterior conceals an
adventurer who muddled through life with no purpose or achievement other than a
desperate thrashing about for survival. A craving for money and love and the
gratification of passions steeped in an amorality whose only excuse was that it
was a reaction to the forces that battered me. The past is forever coming back….

4
 almost yesterday

Certain things happened when I was thirteen. My mother denied them

vehemently. She has planted doubts in my mind. She ascribed to me too vivid an
imagination, too obsessive an interest in sex. It was partly her doing. An unusual
uninhibited attitude of her own. A wish, perhaps, to bring a healthy outlook to the
mystery of man and woman, to the human body, in the manner of nudists and
naturists. Except the setting was different, the times and circumstances. As far
back as I remember, she was never furtive with her body, never kept her self
meticulously covered, never exhibited a sense of shame for physical nudity and
bodily contact.
The inexplicable difficulties of her marriage, inexplicable because, at the
time, I barely understood their origins, the surliness of my constantly dissatisfied
father, tied us in a bond that was not wholly natural. I loved to look at her from an
early age and reveled in her hugs and caresses. Her embraces were my paradise. A
mother, after all, is a son‟s first woman and the relationship, especially with an
only child, sometimes errs from the normal to the pathogenic. She was of average
height with the shapely femininity of wide hips and ample breasts. Not the
African statuette of fertility; something perfect and refined. A brunette with a
short practical hairstyle, normal almond shaped brown eyes, wide cheekbones and
a smile that, to me, was unbearably sweet and expressive and revealed her
thoughts. At least the basic ones of anger, amusement, irony, disbelief, ridicule.
Not her inner, inner thoughts about her life, her dreams, her disappointments, her
rage, and her need for a man. Because there is no doubt she was a passionate
person. Resigned but passionate. Ill- fated but passionate. Her name was Antigone
for she was Greek. It should have been Jocasta for much of my childhood, even
before I knew the legend, I dreamt of being her Oedipus.
My Maltese father, Emmanuel Zimit, was a queer fish. He was born in the
minor port town of Mgharr, on the island of Gozo where the Zimits originated.
Short, good looking with pleasant regular features and an air of eagerness and
intelligence about him that somehow went awry in later life. When he was
eighteen, the Second World War broke out and he signed up in the RAF in
Valletta. His good school grades and perfect eyesight were noted and he was
trained as a fighter pilot and was shipped, a year later, to Egypt with his squadron
during the El Alamein campaign against Rommel. Those three fateful years from
1941 to 1944 dominated his being, his thoughts and memories for the rest of his
life and left him with a taste of unfulfilled promise that he believed was his due.
Much of the blame for this he ascribed to his wife.
He was originally stationed at a camp near the Almaza airfield just outside
Cairo and then moved to the western desert where most of the action took place.
After Rommel was trounced, he spent a few months on an airbase near Port Said
where he met my mother. By the time I was old enough to be curious about the
romance, their life had already soured and I did not manage to learn of its
circumstances nor glean any part of its magic. It was a disconcerting subject for
both of them. Yet there must have been magic in the love affair of the short but
dashing aviator and the beautiful young woman my mother had been.
In those mad days of war and upheaval, of troops coming and going, of
hunger, need, and uncertainty, the fissuring of a conservative society and laxity of

5
morals, my mother fell pregnant. They married as they had originally intended but
in somewhat of a hurry because he was to be moved again to Italy with his
squadron. In the autumn of 1945, he returned to Port Said, to his wife and year-old
son he had not seen, to plan and pull together the disconnected bits of his life.
There were three options open to him. Continue his military career in England.
Join his father‟s thriving tobacconist business in Valetta or try to settle with his
wife in Port Said.
My mother vetoed out of hand the military career. She could not envisage
herself the wife of a military officer in England, moving from camp to draughty
camp and socializing with other British officers‟ wives. They traveled with me,
soon after, to Valletta to reconnoiter the prospects there but my grandfather had
another son in the business and the welcome was short lived. In Port Said, my
mother was already working at a dressmaker‟s atelier and she convinced father to
return and try to find a job there. It was their love that mattered. Or so they
thought. They did not know that love, in the end, never matters all that much. It
clouds one‟s thoughts and contributes to wrong decisions.

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 images

We walked to the railway station to fetch Vassiliki. Mother invited her for
a short stay with us to enjoy a few days by the sea. Our less than wealthy families
exchanged these small courtesies. Whenever she had business in Cairo, mother
stayed at her cousin Ioanna‟s home and she invited Vassiliki, her daughter, as a
sort of repayment. Ioanna was a widow. Her Greek husband passed away some
years ago and she remained a sleeping partner in the small business he owned
with another two associates and some money was coming in every month.
I had not seen Vassiliki in four years. I did not revisit Cairo since the few
days we were guests at aunt Ioanna‟s. Vassiliki was thirteen at the time, a tall
quiet, very pretty girl. I was one year her senior, not overly sociable and we had
little in common. However, we did play cards and backgammon to break the
monotony; went for short walks and chores for our parents and I did fall in love
with her. I fell in love very often in those days. Silently, timidly, choking my
sentiments, afraid to let the slightest hint escape. Baby love, perhaps, but no less
soul wrenching for that.
The station was a half- hour stroll through the Port Said of my memories
and ever-present nostalgia. A small, pleasing city, clean, calm and uncrowded. Of
wide pavements and heavy colonial-arabesque buildings whose upper storeys
overlapped the pavement, were supported by massive columns and provided
permanent shade and a refreshing coolness in the sultry summer sun. It was my
hometown and I felt comfortable in it. I had known little else and though I knew,
one day, I would fly away, I also knew I would never be able to relinquish its
claim on my heart. Port Said had character. It had a stamp on it that was different
from Cairo and Alexandria and the lesser cities of that time which were little more
than large villages. That it has lost much of that in later years with the population
explosion, the hopeless overcrowding of people, buildings and cars, pollution and
dirt, was inevitable in that poor part of the world.
Opposite the station was a beautiful middle-sized mosque with a high, slim
minaret on the side, widening gracefully at the top like the glans of a phallus.
There was an opening on the side and all around it a narrow balcony, where the
muezzin clambered five times a day to call the faithful to prayer. Technology has
annulled this quaint practice. Two black, large megaphone cones, incongruous
and ugly, are now strapped on opposite sides and have relieved the progressive
sheikhs from the arduous climb. Now, with an unearthly screech of static one
hears the ear-drilling Allahu Akbar. I still remember the days of the muezzin and
the strange feelings his distant chant aroused. He walked around the narrow
balcony, raised his hands behind his ears and called for prayer, „…to attest and
confirm that Mohammad is the Prophet of God…‟ It was extraordinary how this
fanatic five-times-a-day, every day call, never became routine and ignored.
However much I loved Port Said, this call to prayer reasserted again and again, in
my mind, that this was not my world. I had roots there but roots that could not
grasp and feed on the dry desert sand and would wither and not hold me there for
long. There was the certainty that one day I would leave.
On Fridays, an hour or so before noon, the whole square was covered with
straw mats and the men drifted in; limbs washed, face, neck and ears; removed
their shoes to one side and sat, quietly, cross-legged on the mats. The sheikhs
arrived soon after, microphones put in place, and the prayers would begin. That

7
strange ritual of standing, bowing, kneeling and the thumping of foreheads on the
ground, forever facing Mecca. The prayer was mobile but silent with lips moving
in mute recitation, punctuated every now and then, at the same instant, by a joint
audible uttering of Allahu Akbar. I was always moved by it. It was not loud. A
sort of surrender to God, a complaint, a grievance for their hardships. Of hope, of
mercy. It came out with a deep, deep sigh from the soul and a sort of temporary
desperation before they resumed their lives of penury, of hustling, lying, cheating,
working, trying by any means to survive.
The sheikhs had their turn next with their beloved microphones spewing
words at ear-splitting decibels in an interminable, rushing and unstoppable jabber,
which I did not fully understand but whose sound alone revolted me. A sound of
ignorance, fanaticism, narrow mindedness, of God and Sata n, paradise and hell, of
what God said, his rewards and terrible punishments.
I loved the mosque and its typically Islamic architecture. The exquisitely
latticed wooden windows. Its carved wooden doors. The graceful mingling of the
angular and smoothly round Arabic script on its walls, strange and moving
because it is art that conveys a message, and is part of our human heritage and
culture. Like the many grand cathedrals of Europe, monuments to the mystery of
our existence.

8
 an inevitable idyll

When I saw Vassiliki, my heart skipped a beat. She had grown

spectacularly in those four years. Tall, beautiful and cool. Thankfully, not taller
than me for I had stretched as well. She had chestnut colored hair and a pair of
large eyes that asked questions as we embraced. In a white shirt and a tight
reddish-brown skirt, one could see her body was not yet perfect, not yet fully
developed but with the promise there. Blooming, not yet in final bloom. The hips
wide, the legs long and shapely, the breasts assertive. A smile cool, serious and
reserved and a constant sense of appraisal in her eyes. A girl- woman; the dual
characteristics intermingling; now one emerging, now the other. Polite and
affectionate with my chattering mother and with stealthy, speculative glances for
me. Carrying Vassiliki‟s suitcase, we left the noisy, cavernous station with its
frenetic, disorderly activity and the ponderous arrivals and departures of old steam
trains and modern diesels. In the busy, untidy square outside hailed a horse drawn
carriage and clippety-clopped to our house in the calm streets of Port Said.
At home, we settled her as well as we could in our small apartment. For
lack of space, Vassiliki was to share my room. I ceded my bed and half my
cupboard space and a camp bed was installed for me. The instructions, given with
a smile by my mother, were that at no time was the bedroom door to be shut when
both Vassiliki and I were inside together. Especially so at night.
“Anyway, she is almost a sister to you,” was the afterthought. “And she is
a good and virtuous girl.”
Her words came back to me at the station when Vassiliki and I were
sneaking glances at each other. She is not like a sister to me, I thought, and what a
beautiful girl. I hoped she was not as virtuous as all that.
My mother had, by that time, a tiny dressmaking atelier of her own near
our house. She came home at noon and prepared a cold lunch for father and me. In
the evening, she cooked something more elaborate but father was usually absent.
He was either drinking with friends or spending the evening with his mistress.
Things had calmed down by now and facts accepted and tolerated by my mother
after years and years of unbearable tension and quarrels. Age is decisive and time,
a healer. She was older; jealousy turned to indifference and she no longer cared as
long as he provided the little money he did. And what a common, vulgar thing
that other woman was. Some things are inexplicable. Oh, they surely have an
explanation but I could not think of one. My mother, a goddess by comparison.
We sat down for lunch when father returned from his work. The
atmosphere was always frigid when he was around. He greeted Vassiliki politely
and the lunch was over quickly with a minimum of stunted small talk. He invited
us to visit him at the office for an ice cream, which we did after mother left for
work and after a long walk to the beach and the return along the Corniche, the
port seafront, passing by the large, bronze statue of De Lesseps. Vassiliki liked
Port Said. It was her first visit and the city had many picturesque Islamic style
buildings and mosques, which she admired. The headquarters of the international
Suez Canal Company was housed in a beautiful marble-clad building on a
quayside of the port. It was also of Islamic design with slender marble columns
and arches. Most of the employees of the Company and the captains who took
charge of the ships for the crossing were foreign and together with the Greeks,

9
Italians and ubiquitous British garrison soldiers stationed in a camp at Port Fuad
made for a colorful, cosmopolitan atmosphere.
At seventeen, Vassiliki seemed to have changed. She had overcome the
diffidence that was her trademark four years ago and acquired the coolness and a
kind of detachment that remained permanently with her. However, that summer in
Port Said, she was outgoing and talkative, at least when we were alone. It was
strange how that long walk quickly established a familiarity and comfortable
intimacy that, how could have I known it then, tied us for life. We talked, laughed,
and learnt a few things about one another.
She had just finished her pre-final year St Mary‟s College, an English
school for girls run by nuns. Even at that age, she found the prayers and the nuns‟
constant allusions to the good God insufferable. They put her off. She was frank
about her awakening instincts. She had missed not having boys in the class. She
loved parties where she flirted and sometimes kissed with boys, which was all she
could do because her mother kept her on a tight leash adhering to the mores of the
middle fifties in Egypt. There were many questions we discussed, serious and
almost philosophical. About love and sex and how far a girl could go and why
was virginity so important? She listened with a smile to my muddled, less than
perfect explanations.
She was headstrong and a quiet, considered rebel despite her cool. Despite
her apparent gentleness. A leader in her class of oppressed, religiously oriented,
and inhibited Egyptian schoolmates. They looked up to her, consulted her on
every conceivable problem though rarely followed her normally daring and
controversial advice and called her El Raissa Vassi: Vassi the Leader. So Vassi
she became for me, too. Vassi in Port Said. Vassi for a lifetime.
In Port Said, I attended the Lycée Français, a coeducational school
sponsored by the French government. It was a good school and I was a diligent
student. When I graduated that summer, I enrolled in an Italian technical college
called Don Bosco to follow courses that started in the fall.
Vassi was curious about the life I led in our small town where Greeks,
Italians and Egyptians mingled comfortably. „Did I have a girlfriend?‟ Not just
now. „In the past?‟ Yes, sort of. „What does that mean?‟ Well, never an enduring
attachment. I liked parties, too, and I, too, kissed a few girls and after such
intimacies a tenderness remains and, for a while, one feels emotionally involved
until things cool off. „Did I make love to any one?‟
“No.”
“Not even a prostitute? Boys your age supposed to have their first
experiences with prostitutes.”
“Well, I never did. They are usually coarse and unattractive and how can
one make love without feeling? Without a kiss, without desire?”
“Many people do it.”
“Those who can, do. Those who cannot, do not. When we get home,” I
told her, “I shall give you a book my mother gave me a few years back with all
the information on sex you need. It is for young people like us and it is written in
English.”
We reached my father‟s office on the road running parallel to the tall, iron
railing that separated the port from the streets and busy life of the city. He worked
for a ship chandler‟s firm. The building was old and weathered. A wide stone
staircase, its steps concave with use, led to the upper floors. One felt the mustiness
of age and dampness as soon as one entered the spacious entrance lobby and it

10
extended to the large rooms with worn out, creaking floorboards of the office. It
was the afternoon lull and the employees were chatting behind large, ancient
desks surrounded by shelves of dusty dossiers with protruding yellowing invoices.
I greeted the people I knew. Two or three were Italian, one was Greek and
the rest were Egyptians. They seemed to like me and fussed over me with good-
humored, loud voices. We provided the intermission of a boring afternoon. I was
asked to introduce my beautiful girlfriend. Vassi blushed and my father came in
all smiles. He brought two chairs, installed us on the balcony, and sent out the
office boy for two kaimac ices: milk- froth ice cream scented with gum from
Chios.
From the balcony, one could see the movement of liners coming in and
out of the port and entering the Suez Canal. Often, in my free time, I would go
there, take a chair and sit looking at the ships. I knew the flags of every nation that
ever sent a ship to our port. Peculiar feelings of romance and adventure, of the
need to escape my narrow world flooded my being at their sight. I needed to see
the world, to see brown and black and yellow people with slit eyes; to see jungles
and animals, deserts and snow, to travel for weeks in the oceans, to take a measure
of our earth. I tried to explain all this to Vassi and she listened with her cool smile
but she was too down-to-earth to appreciate my longing.
On our way back home, I held her hand. I was elated by our rapid,
unexpected intimacy, our easygoing familiarity, a friendship that promised more
to come.
Before going to bed that night clad respectably in our night attire, Vassi, in
a non-transparent, full- length, cotton-print nightie and, I, in my best pajamas, I
opened the drawer where I kept my sex magazines and revolting pornographic
pictures, the only kind available in those days, and fished out the sex book I had
promised to give her. She spied the small stack of Gala magazines and early
edition Playboys with which I relieved my sexual tensions feeling guilty after
each and every ejaculation and asked to see them.
“These are not for you,” I told her. Not a very clever or effective
prohibition, I must admit. It aroused her interest and set the ball rolling a few days
later.
That first night, I was so utterly happy. I felt something new and thrilling
had entered my life. I lay on my uncomfortable camping bed thinking of Vassi,
not two steps away, of her beautiful face and delicious smile. Her shapeless
nightgown could not conceal the wide hips, dainty ankles and the pointed breasts,
which pressed on the cloth even without a bra. I imagined her naked and tried to
construct and visualize every feminine feature of her body, her breasts, her
tummy, her back tapering to her waist and widening to a perfect backside, her
superb legs leading to her genitals. One vision after the other and an arousal that
forced me to bend my body to disguise it. Wondering if I would ever glimpse the
actuality of my fantasies, which continued until sleep swathed my consciousness.
I woke up several times. My bedside lamp was on until very late. Vassi was
avidly enriching her knowledge of sex. In the middle fifties, in our conservative
Egyptian society, our knowledge and experience of sexual matters was still quite
Victorian.
Next day we went to the beach. Mother packed us off early before she
went to work. She was taking some very inadequate precautions. We put on our
bathing costumes beneath our clothes and held our folded beach umbrella and a
bag with two towels and a few sandwiches. No suntan oils, in those days, with sun

11
block filters but neither a disappearing ozone layer in the sky. We did not have a
telephone at home and passed by some friends to let them know we would be at
the beach.
On our way there, we met Bippo and he said he would join us in a couple
of hours after he finished some business. He needed a nap in the sun, he said,
smiling at Vassi.
“I work mostly at night and sleep late in the morning.”
I was dying to know what his business was. Bippo was Italian and we met
often in our small city and the small circle of friends that had spontaneously
formed through the years in Port Said and organized parties, days at the seaside in
summer and small cycling excursions in winter. He was older than most of us
eighteen- year olds in the group but seemed to find our company congenial. He
dropped out of school before graduating and had always enough money and the
generosity to offer us drinks and ice creams whenever we met and an odd meal at
a restaurant. It was rumored that he was involved in contraband cigarettes. He was
lean but sinewy and there was not a pleasant feature on his face. Not ugly, just
unattractive. I often thought that if I were a woman I would not make love to him
even if he were the last man on earth. However, I am not a woman and I liked
Bippo just as most people did. He was a fanatic spaghetti lover and still lived with
his parents where adequate supplies were always available. Everybody knew, for
it was a badly kept secret, that he had a garçonnière for his sex life. A sex life
based exclusively on the exchange of money for flesh with professional ladies.
The beach at Port Said is sandy but neither very wide nor very long. The
encroaching city comes to it level to the very edge, unlike the long Corniche
thoroughfare at Alexandria, which follows the seashore for miles, at a certain
height and affords a fine, panoramic scenery. Here, at the back end of the beach a
wall of wooden cabins on stilts blocks the view of the sea and the waves arching
and toppling over in perpetual motion, depriving the city of the airiness that an
unencumbered seafront would afford.
We penetrated the wall of cabins to the beach, strolled to the spot where
our group usually congregated, stuck our umbrella in the sand and stripped to our
bathing costumes. The sea was a fine blue and the waves were tumbling and
frothing unhurriedly with a lulling susurrus. The day was sunny and calm with a
gentle, refreshing breeze. It was as perfect as Vassi, the girl- woman in a one-
piece, red bathing suit and a sensuality that kept me staring at her. Her eyes were
puffy from reading late into the night.
“Did you finish the book?” I asked.
“Most of it. The most interesting parts. The physical aspects. I left out the
babble of morality. We get enough of that from the nuns.”
“Did you learn things you didn‟t know?”
“Yes. Mostly about boys. Well, I am a girl and I know my sex. I did not
know certain physical details like that the penis gets flushed with blood when it
enlarges and gets erect. That the sperm is produced and stored in the testicles. The
female ovulation. The most dangerous period for pregnancy. It is very interesting.
One thing I did not understand is why a woman has to be a virgin until marriage
while a man can have sex before it. It is not clearly spelled out but that is the
implication.”
“I suppose, the reason is that the woman may get pregnant and that would
be a disaster. Abortions can be performed but they are dangerous, bad for the

12
health and in many countries unlawful. There is also the moral problem that
abortion destroys a life.”
“But there is contraception. A whole chapter of it with many different
methods.”
“I am not sure why this is so. It is the morality of our times.”
“Well, I find it hard to understand and it seems to me totally unfair.”
I smiled at her conclusion. It sounded correct. I never thought about it.
“Perhaps you are right,” I admitted.
“A thing that amused me,” she said smiling, “is that the book states that
women develop sexually and emotionally much faster than the men. So, as far as
sex and emotional maturity is concerned I am probably your superior.”
“That‟s good news,” I said with a smile.
We talked and laughed in this vein for about an hour. We could not go for
a swim while we were alone because the umbrella and our clothes might
disappear but a few friends eventually came along and after introductions, we
saddled them with the chore of safekeeping our belongings and waded into the
sea. The water was fresh but not cold.
Vassi could hardly swim. She just about managed to keep afloat and I
undertook to teach her. It was an artless start of our physical contact. Not that I
did not take advantage of it. We were playful, merry and not a little excited at the
covert caresses, playful ducking in the water and hugs that became part of the
lesson. I held her prone, my hands supporting her legs and chest, straying now and
then to her breasts, while she splashed with thrashing legs and rotating arms in a
caricature breaststroke and promptly sank when I let go. I told her that perhaps we
should start with the crawl but that she ought to get used to submerging her face in
the water. Exercises below sea level were improvised, sweetened by out-of-sight,
underwater embraces and awkward, water-choked salty kisses and the initial
acquaintance of our frisky tongues. Heartened and urged by the readiness of her
response, by the cool smile and her searching look into my eyes.
We emerged an hour later with sodden, sea-wrinkled fingers and red, salt-
pickled eyes. Vassi‟s hair, soaking and stringy, accentuated the delicate beauty of
her face, flushed from the sun and maybe from our kissing. We returned home at
around four, had a shower, and rested chastely on our beds until mother returned
from work to prepare the main, evening meal, which we ate in the absence of
father. Thankfully, my parents were at their best behavior. There were no quarrels
or loud-voiced exchanges while Vassi was with us. They ignored each other. I
wondered how they could share the same bed. But there was no other option in
our small flat.
We left again at eight for a movie. Took the ferry to Port Fuad, which was,
in those days, the residential area where the foreign, mainly French, employees of
the Suez Canal Company lived in relative seclusion and luxury. A district
separated from Port Said by the port and the Suez Canal, of quiet, tree-lined,
empty streets with comfortable two-storey villas, each with a garden and separate
quarters for servants. On the port side of Port Fuad, a number of small clubs were
located and nearby a single open-air cinema operated in summer.
The film was of no importance. It was an excuse to sit with Vassi, to hold
hands, to chat in a low voice and exchange a hasty kiss, now and then, for a few
other spectators were also present and the tolerance of romantic intimacies was
limited in those days as it still is in that prudish, religiously oriented part of the

13
world. We left the cinema a little after eleven and headed for the ferry, which
stopped operating at midnight.
The streets were deserted and at every dark corner, I embraced Vassi and
we kissed. Our first lovely, above sea level kisses, tongues exploring each other‟s
mouths, hands caressing faces, hair and bodies. She was, as my sex book
presaged, at least my equal in maturity, in desire, my equal in her eagerness to
learn and experiment. I was experiencing, again, the magic of love, the thrill of
shared feelings but in an entirely new way. I did not have to coax, to soothe
inhibitions, to overcome my partner‟s reluctance. I fondled her breasts over her
dress, lifted her skirt and caressed her behind over her panties. She felt my
hardening penis and put her hand to feel it. I told her she was bea utiful and that I
was falling in love with her and she was silent. I asked her if she loved me too,
and softly she said, yes. However, we did not linger overlong for fear of being
surprised by the odd pedestrian and the last ferry had to be boarded.
Mother asked us if we enjoyed the film and we said, yes, and she asked if
we were with friends and we said, yes. Small lies to put her to sleep. For a long
time in bed, I thought of Vassi and our kissing. It was a wonderful feeling. She
was reading her book again. Revising the material. Perhaps, comparing theory
with practice. Printed words with the enchantment of the act. I longed to slip into
her bed.
Next day it was the beach again. We were alone that morning and asked a
neighbor to keep an eye on our things while we swam. Vassi was getting the hang
of the breaststroke. Still a little labored and frantic but at least she kept afloat. Our
underwater kissing recurring, less frolicsome and more obsessive but our spirits
high and merry. The passion was building up. Always demanding a little more. I
wondered where we were heading. How fast? There was no restraint, no curbing
on her part. Would we go past the inhibitions of our times and of our milieu?
Even at nineteen, these questions puzzled and worried me. We were indoctrinated
in the concept of chastity and I sensed that we, Vassi and I, might not be able to
control a situation that was pushing us on.
We left the beach early that day after eating our sandwiches. We were rosy
with sunburn and Vassi was sleepy. She took her sex studies seriously and had
been, again, reading late into the night. At home, she took a shower and promptly
went to sleep. My mother came in later and started preparing a meal. Vassi was
still asleep and I kept her company in the kitchen. She told me she did not want us
to come home so early. I understood the implication. I went up to her and hugged
her. I kissed her on the mouth. For years, ever since her falling out with father, I
took some liberties that were not altogether normal and she d id not seem to mind.
“Are you jealous?” I asked her.
“You are a silly boy,” she said with a smile.
“You told me Vassiliki is a good girl.”
“Yes. But she seems so grown up.”
“So?”
“So things might get out of hand.”
“Like they did in Malta?”
My mother blushed deeply. She turned to her cooking to conceal her face.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, her back turned to me.
“I remember some strange and exciting things. They come back to me in
my dreams. How can I forget?”

14
 “Oh John, will you stop inventing things. And stop this habit of mixing
dreams with reality. We were in Malta six years ago. You were hardly thirteen.
How much can you possibly remember? You must control your galloping
imagination.”
I went and hugged her from behind, my hands crossed on her chest, resting
on her breasts. I kissed the back of her neck. She did not push me off. There was
an erotic undertone in my affection, in my kissing and petting which was as new
as history, a personal and peculiar six- year-old history. Did she feel it? Was her
acquiescence an avowal that she enjoyed my fondling? A license for me to go
further? Could it be that her inexistent sexual life was troubling her and that her
growing son‟s physical attentions were not distasteful to her?
“Try as you may,” I told her, “you cannot erase that summer from my
memory.”
“Go away, John,” she said turning around. She was once again composed
and smiling. “Let me cook in peace.”
Oedipus and Jocasta, an anathema. Why does it trouble us? Why does it
trouble the world so much as to intrude into mythologies and the writing of
tragedies? It is not easy, it is not usual and it needs a whole set of special
conditions. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes it is touching and tender. Do we
have to tear our eyes out?
Next day, once again, mother packed us off early to the beach but we
returned home earlier than usual because we were both tired. We showered in turn
and then I left Vassi for a moment and went downstairs to buy some ice cream.
When I returned I found her, cross- legged on her bed, leafing through my sex
magazines and pornographic pictures. She had fished them out of my drawer. I sat
next to her and we looked at them together. Her equanimity surprised me. She
examined the pictures calmly, almost scientifically. Pictures of sexual intercourse,
of fellatio and cunnilingus, one partner doing it to the other or jointly in the sixty-
nine position, women with legs parted showing their genitals, of anal intercourse
and a single one of bestiality with a huge dog. Most of the pictures were ancient
with plump women and men with handlebar mustaches and enormous cocks but
some were recent with the most appalling and unappetizing females.
“The women are not very pretty, are they?” said Vassi.
“No.”
“And some of the men have enormous penises. I never imagined they can
reach that size.”
“God has not been fair. Some men are better endowed than others.”
She laughed.
“And so many variations,” she said. “You can do it with the mouth. You
can do it from behind and you can do it with a dog. Does a man do it with a
bitch?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I never had the urge but I have read of cases of
bestiality with ewes and sows in farms and isolated places.”
“Unbelievable!”
“Oh there are many more unbelievable perversions. Necrophilia, for one.
Doing it with a dead person.”
“Good God! That must be a male specialty. I cannot imagine a dead man
doing it with a live woman.”
I laughed.
“Any others?” she asked.

15
 “Dozens. Take homosexuality, peeping toms, exhibitionists, sadists,
masochists, pedophiles, an inexhaustible variety of fetishists and on and on.”
“You are very well informed.”
“Sex interests me.”
“It interests me too. Is that why you keep these pictures? ”
“I keep them to relieve myself when I get sexually worked up and
frustrated.”
“You mean, to masturbate?”
“Yes.”
She smiled.
“Will you show me?”
I was getting aroused. A shapely leg was uncovered from her shapeless
nightdress. The cool smile killed me. The lack of false modesty. More than
anything else, her willingness, nay, her eagerness, her need to engage in sex, to
learn, to move on. I uncovered her other leg and moved closer to her. Her panties
were showing. I caressed her legs. My heartbeat quickened. The feel of her flesh,
the display of her body dried my mouth. I separated her legs and touched the soft
center of her sex over the cloth many times over. She looked at me intently, a
smile lingering. I slipped my hand through the side of the panties and felt the
sparse pubic hair and the molding of her genitals. Our silent love play and her
acquiescence excited me terribly. My throat felt dry and choking. I tried
swallowing several times but there was no saliva and my attempts gave an
impression of unease and stage fright. She was tender and caressed my hair.
“You are so sweet,” she told me. She was suddenly my senior. Comforting
me. Encouraging me. “I trust you and I do love you, you know.”
My penis was visibly erect and she reached and held it over my trousers.
“Let me look at it,” she said.
I wanted her to look at it. To hold it and move it. To put it in her mouth. I
got off the bed and took off my shirt, trousers and underwear. Naked and in
gorged erection I went back to Vassi. She held my penis straightaway. No
hesitation. She looked at it riveted, and cupped my testicles.
“It‟s very nice,” she said. “Not like the monsters in the pictures. It‟s so
nice to hold. I would not have imagined.”
She held it and squeezed it, testing its texture, its hardness, its feel. She
pulled the foreskin back and the smooth, purple glans was exposed. A sensation of
nakedness beyond nudity. The longing to be held finally fulfilled. She moved her
hand slowly up and down looking at it and looking at me. I sat next to her and
kissed her, my tongue deep in her mouth, my roving hands constantly returning
from sensual explorations to the goal post between her legs. I lifted her nightie
over her head and her lovely breasts, firm, still not fully ripe with rosy nipples,
appeared. Another longing had materialized. It shortened my breath. I stared and
lightly touched those divine jewels of life and sex and tried to inhale normally. To
brazen out her placid smile and her handling of my cock. I touched her breasts as
if they were fragile, fondled them, licked the rosy nipples gently and her hand
pulled my head on them. I kissed and suckled them in turn many times. I looked at
her; her eyes were shut, her hand kept gently pumping. I kissed her and pushed
her on her back. A smile lingered on her delicious lips, her eyes glittered and her
thick hair seemed to sizzle with static electricity. She lifted herself slightly as I
pulled off her panties. Her pubic hair was not yet thick and the lips of her vulva
protruded slightly, just barely visible. With a throbbing heart, I stared and stared

16
at that strange, hair-hidden, fleshy opening. She saw my hypnotized gaze and
opened her legs completely. I stopped her goading hand to avoid ejaculating and
reclined beside her from my sitting position, kissed and breathlessly my hands
roamed on her body. I could not yet penetrate her but I touched her and let her
touch me. I was discovering the female anatomy I had been reading about so
eagerly and randily for years. The simplicity and functionality was touching and
exciting.
A study in contrasts, my Vassi. A seemingly cool person so eager for sex.
Her exposed genitals enthralled me. After touching them gently, opening and
examining them, I bent and kissed and licked them, stroked her with my tongue.
We replicated the exploits of the porn pictures we had just scrutinized. I felt the
sweetness of her moist, warm mouth on my penis. We had come a long way in a
rush and after the energetic exertions of our mouths and tongues, after the
excitement of kissing and tasting the most secret and hidden part of a woman, of
Vassi, I felt my orgasm approaching. I pulled out of her mouth, lay by her side
and asked her to just move her hand up and down. The sensation was almost
unbearable and I started moaning. Instinctively she quickened the pace and with
loud groans, I ejaculated and startled Vassi because the first few spurts shot out
with force and the sperm landed on her chest and my body.
With some effort, I got up and wiped as much of it as I could with my
hands and went to the bathroom to wash it away. A little dribbled on her hand and
she smelled and examined it carefully. Then she also ran to the bathroom, her face
flushed and glowing, her body naked and gorgeous, and rinsed it away. My
orgasm had drained me. It seemed to revitalize Vassi who returned in high spirits,
embraced me, kissed me repeatedly and fondled my deflating penis.
“It‟s so sweet and soft, now,” she said. „What a magic transformation. I
wanted it terribly inside me.”
She teased me with her tongue, licked my lips, bit them, sucked them and
put her tongue in my mouth. Her body was glued to mine. I caressed her back and
squeezed her behind and felt myself hardening again. However, my mother would
be arriving soon and I told Vassi that we should get dressed.
We each had a rapid second shower, collected and stashed away the
magazines and the less than erotic but instructive porno pictures, put on pajamas
and nighties and stretched on our beds.
“Johnny,” Vassi said, “I think I love you.”
“I thought you already did.”
“Yes, but I feel it more intensely.”
“So do I, my love.”
We were silent for a while and then we fell asleep.

17
 the birds and the bees, if you please

We went to the cinema that evening in Port Said after my mother came
home, prepared the food, woke us up and we joined her for dinner. Father was not
with us. He was a phantom father, coming and going silently, hardly exchanging a
word with us. He was elaborately polite with Vassi when their paths crossed,
which was not very often. Mother chattered pleasantly but her eyes were turning
suspicious and were searching for clues. Was she safeguarding Vassi‟s virginity
or mine? We put on a show of nonchalance and slipped out of the house as soon
as was decently possible.
We walked to Gianola for an ice and sat on a sidewalk table to look at the
passers-by. It was a show I always enjoyed. A parade of our fellow townsmen.
Mostly ordinary people in grubby clothes and gelebiehs hurrying to and fro. In
their midst a few well dressed effendis, some still donning the red tarbush banned
by the revolution, swinging ceremonial walking sticks they did not need, strolled
on their way to a coffee house for a leisurely bubbly smoke on the shisha, as the
narghile is called in Egypt. A few supercilious European employees of the Suez
Canal strutted by. Creased, exhausted travelers just off a liner from the East
enjoyed their first cup of tea on solid ground. Giggling schoolgirls, and women
covered in black milayas, English soldiers on their day off badgered by sticky
hawkers of wallets and fountain pens, cigarette lighters and Gold Coin condoms,
horse-hair fly chasers and pharaonic statuettes, their merchandise lugged around
in overflowing wooden boxes. We did not know, just then, these were the last
days of a cosmopolitan atmosphere that was to disappear suddenly after the Suez
crisis of 56.
“Please John,” Vassi said, “would you buy me one of those round chewing
gums.”
I laughed.
“They are not chewing gum, Vassi, they are prophylactics. ”
“Oh my God, Johnny,” she cried, “go buy a few.”
“If mother finds them at home, you‟ll be on the first train to Cairo. ”
“We‟ll hide them well.”
“Vassi, I can tell by her look that she is getting wary and might decide to
do a little search in my drawers.”
“But we shall need them.”
I looked at her, surprised, and she smiled.
“We really shall, you know. I have decided.”
My avant-garde Vassi was creating a dilemma in those days of
compulsory virginal girlhood. Of the deflowering sanctioned only by the church,
by priests, psalms, and incense. Of a husband requiring his feudal droit du
seigneur. Though Vassi had taken her decision, I found it hard to take mine. I took
her by the hand and we walked to a nearby cinema. The truth was that after the
afternoon‟s baring of our bodies and souls we were pathetically in love. We could
not keep our eyes and our hands off each other. In the cinema, we sat in the last
row, held hands, whispered and kissed furtively when the screen and hall
darkened. Her hand kept returning to my fly where my penis hardened after every
tongue-lingering kiss. It was nice knowing that the pleasure of touching and

18
fondling those intimate parts was reciprocated by the opposite sex even if for
reasons of propriety and decorum they often feigned aversion.
Mother packed us off the next day before she left for work. When she told
me to get ready, I was amused and she caught my smile. We were alone in the
kitchen and she said that, after all, it was not a very good idea Vassiliki coming to
stay with us.
“It was a very good idea, mother,” I answered. “We are having a good
time.”
She looked at me intently trying to decipher my bland statement.
“I hope no funny stuff is going on,” she said after a long stare.
“What funny stuff?”
“Just bear in mind she is young and is your cousin.”
“What funny stuff, mother?”
“Don‟t pretend you are stupid.”
My sweet, gentle mother, was she really jealous?
We walked in town for a while before going to the beach. It was still early
and the atmosphere was fresh and fine for a stroll. Not a very comfortable stroll,
needless to say, with our beach umbrella and bag of towels. There was the usual
morning activity, more purposeful and thick than in the afternoon but calm and
subdued all the same. The cars were few; moving at a snail‟s pace,
accommodating the horse-drawn carriages with hardly a beep. Vassi spotted the
man with the condoms further down the street.
“Hey, Johnny,” she said and pointed at him, “the chewing gum man.
Good, he‟s a regular around this area. We‟ll know where to find him. ”
We arrived at the beach an hour or so later. It was getting warm despite a
gentle breeze. We stretched on our towels on the sand and nearly went to sleep. I
kept on looking dreamily at Vassi and getting erections, which rarely went
unnoticed and always elicited her smile. After a while we swam and indulged in
underwater kissing and other hidden but inadequate little sex games.
“And now for a little serious discussion,” she said when we settled under
our umbrella after drying in the sun.
Her hair was still wet and untidy and her white skin was beginning to tan.
An aura of latent sexuality radiated from her, from her ca lm walk and cool
glances. Past puberty and not yet a mature woman, she drew insistent and
indiscreet stares from the men sprawled on the sand. It was the constant
annoyance of a person accompanying a woman in Egypt. The strict Islamic
separation of the sexes made the few, mostly European women in a bathing suit,
items of almost pornographic titillation for the sex-starved males.
I smiled at her. I had started doing some serious reading that year.
“Albert Camus says the most serious question in this life is whether or not
to commit suicide.”
Vassi laughed.
“Admittedly,” she said, “it is not as serious as that. But is love not
serious?”
“Of course it is. It is overpowering. No doubt about it.”
“I love your body but I love mine too and mine needs more than we are
offering it. Is this not worthy of discussion?”
“You are treading on dangerous ground.”
“Oh nuts. Where do you see the danger?”

19
 “I don‟t know. We were brought up this way. You know, a girl must be a
virgin until her marriage and all that. Society‟s disapproval…everything. The bad
reputation you get if it is known that you sleep around. The way you are treated
by men. All of them trying to have a go at you. They will consider you good for a
lay but not for a wife. We live in society and we must follow its norms.”
“I don‟t think I shall ever be a loose girl but that does not mean I must
forsake sex. Why should I when all the men are free to do it and the more they do
it the more they are envied and admired by other men and sought after by
women.”
“So?”
“I am not a very expressive person. I don‟t pet you and tell you often
enough I love you. But I do. Don‟t you feel it? Isn‟t it better to start lovemaking
with a man you love and trust?”
“I love you too, Vassi. And if I am reluctant to go all the way it is because
I love you.”
“You really are a conventional little puppy but I have decided. ”
I admired her guts. The serious discussion excited me and a bulge started
showing on my bathing costume. I tried to hide it by bending my legs but Vassi
noticed and smiled.
“I see you agree,” she said.
“Common sense says no but you are driving me crazy.”
“We must go find the chewing gum man.”
“Not only that. I must find Bippo and see if we can borrow his love-nest,
his garçonnière. We cannot do it in our house.”
On our way home we passed by Bippo‟s house. I went upstairs alone and
asked for him. He had just woken up at three in the afternoon. Bleary eyed, he
was amused at my request.
“Is it with your cousin? She‟s a lovely girl.”
“No. It‟s another girl.”
“Okay, okay,” he said laughing. “I‟ll get you the spare keys but go there in
the morning or early afternoon and clear out before nine. I‟ll tell the house porter,
the bawab, not to bother you.”
We went home and plunged into salty-tasting, frenzied lovemaking. We
kissed and used our mouths on each other and rubbed our genitals until I
ejaculated and then we slept. In the evening, we went to the cinema. Same
cinema, same silly film. It did not matter.
Next day we left the house at nine. We sat at Gianola and ordered an ice.
We waited for the chewing gum man. We could buy condoms at a pharmacy but I
had never done it before and felt too embarrassed to try. I was steadily eating into
my savings. Vassi was turning to be expensive. Too many ices, cinema tickets,
chips, roasted peanuts, cokes and now the additional expense of condoms. We
finally spotted our man down the road and I got up and bought five Gold Coins
after pretending I was interested in the fountain pens. I put them in my pocket and
it was a wonderful feeling. I returned to Vassi and we left before the chewing gum
man in his meandering itinerary reached Gianola. We made a beeline to Bippo‟s
love nest and entered the building, passing in front of the bawab who was sitting
on a wooden bench on the pavement right next to the entrance.
He was a slim handsome berberino. Black as coal and expressionless in a
spotless white gelebieh and skullcap. As we entered, the berberino just looked at
us. We would almost certainly be an item of gossip that would be exchanged with

20
his colleague next door. With our umbrella, our oversize beach bag, shorts and
sandals we must have seemed a very odd couple and certainly too young to be in
need of the flat. We would reinforce the average Egyptian‟s opinion of European
immorality. I could not imagine what explanation Bippo had given him. Probably,
the best of all. A good tip to dampen his scruples.
We entered a tiny darkened flat. I stumbled over furniture, found the light
switch and then opened a window that led to a balcony, to freshen up the
atmosphere. It seemed to me exactly what a garçonnière should be. A small hall,
a nice large bedroom with a double bed, two armchairs and a cupboard with a
large mirror, a copy of the Naked Maja hanging on the wall, a bathroom and
kitchen. A perfect place for illicit sex. The furniture was cheap but in good shape
and the flat clean though stuffy. It did not smell of sex. Not the slightest clue of it.
After dropping our baggage in the hall, we went in the bedroom. The bed was
made and the sheets were clean. I was surprised at the tidiness. I did not think old
Bippo had it in him. I opened the window and the morning sunlight flooded the
room. I kissed Vassi. She followed me in my explorations.
“Happy?” I asked.
“Not yet,” she teased.
We kissed for a while standing and began to be worked up. Tenderly,
sweetly, with smiles and hugs and bites and cries, without the fear of an
unexpected mother walking in. I took out the condoms and put them on the night
table next to the bed. Vassi picked them up, examined them and smiled.
“I‟ll pay you a Gold Coin for every ejaculation,” she said.
“Okay,” I answered. “Payment in advance, please.”
“Evidently. Are we going to use them all?”
It was the dawn of the rock-and-roll age with Bill Haley and the Comets
singing the legendary Rock Around the Clock. The film had created a sensation in
Egypt. The first handclapping and pounding of feet Egypt had ever experienced. It
shocked the conservative sheiks. The five-a-day prayer addicts with reserved seats
in the sensual Moslem paradise of mountains of rice, rivers of milk and honey,
and voluptuous houris. There was talk of banning the film for creating riotous
behavior.
“Sure,” I said, “it will be Love Around the Clock. Love, love, love in
broad daylight. Come, let me give you a massage. I sense tenseness in your body.
Troubling second thoughts on your mind. Doubts and reluctance.
Reconsiderations. Shall we put it off for another day? Does the sunlight bother
you? Shall I close the shutters? No? You want a clear view of things? Relax, then.
I shall deflower you in no time.”
She laughed. She enjoyed the playacting. It excited her. She kissed me
violently on the mouth. I pulled her t-shirt off and then her shorts. She was
gorgeous in her bathing costume but I lowered the zip and pulled it down and in
the broad daylight, in her invisible milk-white costume the suntan had fashioned
on her skin, she was another sun in my life. I could not take my eyes or my hands
off her. Visual and tactile sensations at their apex, at their most poignant and
intense. I made her lie on the bed. Her nakedness was my supreme aphrodisiac. I
massaged her legs and thighs, losing my mind over her purposely-opened legs and
the allure of her offered pussy. Moved to her flat belly, her gorgeous reclining
titties with the rosy nipples and to her tanned, beautiful face, which I bent to kiss.
She got up and began undressing me. Clasped my penis as it sprang up, released
from the constraining costume. She stared at it in wonder, as if for the first time.

21
 “How nice it is. Hard and erect, ready to spew its sperm, ready to
impregnate. It looks so raw and wild and I want to tame it not just with my hand
and mouth but inside me. I need it there badly.” She laughed. “Well sheathed, of
course. I am not ready to be a mama.”
“Nor I a papa. I cannot understand how mother, in her right mind, invited
you to our house expecting that nothing would happen between us. That I would
not fall for you like a ton of bricks. I melt when you kiss me, my darling, when
you open your legs for me. It hypnotizes me this female opening. I can stare at it
for hours. It excites me so much to feel that you want to show it to me, to be
touched there, to be kissed and licked.”
We sat on the bed and kissed. I bit her lips and tried to swallow her ear.
First, one, then the other. I bit her nose and nipples. We sought all sorts of little
games to work us up. To make our lovemaking merry. To bring smiles to our
passion and respite to our mounting agitation. I lay alongside her in the opposite
direction. I caressed her belly, her pubic hair and as if I had pressed a switch, her
legs spread automatically. Her right hand moved between them and her fingers
played an inaudible sonata on the keyboard of her pussy. This lack of inhibition
killed me. I loved this opening of her body with direct wiring to her soul. I offered
a tongue as an accompaniment to her sensual opus. She moaned and moved her
buttocks vigorously. She was losing control, pulled me by the hair to turn me
around. I got up and went out of the room.
“Johnny?” she cried, perplexed.
I raced back with the towel we had brought along and spread it on the bed.
I picked up a condom, twisted the round foil container, which opened in two and
held the rubber to her. She took it and smiled and we both fitted it on. We lay
again on the bed. Her kisses were turning obsessive.
“Come in me, I want you.”
I rolled between her open legs. Gently, I started pressing her vulva letting
my penis find its way. She put her hand and placed it at the entrance of her vagina
and I continued the gentle stabbing.
“Is it all right?” I asked.
“Yes, yes. Push harder.”
She winced often but also gave me passionate kisses, her tongue endless,
reaching for my throat. I pushed harder and at some point the inexplicable hymen,
which has complicated the existence of humanity for millennia, gave way and I
entered a moist, warm paradise, which even the condom could not obscure. Tiny
beads of perspiration formed on her forehead but she smiled and kissed me
repeatedly as if those deep kisses relieved her pain. A few drops of blood had
trickled from her genitals onto the towel. I did not move, to give her time to
recover. We continued kissing.
“I feel so full of you, she said after a while. The pain is easing. Move
slowly if you want.”
I moved gently at first and then at an increasing, uncontrollable pace until
I reached my groaning orgasm and ejaculated inside my sweetheart. Separated by
a condom, joined by a new poignant tenderness. I collapsed on top of her and felt
her caressing my hair.
“Well,” she said, “it happened! It is one moment in of our lives we shall
never forget.”
“Are you okay, Vassi?”
“Oh yes, my Johnny. Some sweetness came through despite the pain.”

22
 She got up, removed the condom, looked at the sperm inside and then, as
if she had done it many times before, tied a knot at its open end. We lay back
kissing and caressing gently. My erection had not subsided and her playful fingers
kept it alert. After a while, I started responding and she reached at the night table
for another condom and fitted it on me. Her kissing was once again insistent and
passionate. I was happy that the defloration was not particularly painful and her
desire intact. Mine was blossoming again.
“Shall I come on top?” she asked with a smile.
She did not wait for an answer. Frisky as a gazelle she got up, put my
penis in her mouth and worked at it with an expertise that was increasing with
each mouthful. It was a different sensation over the rubber but no less sensual and
exciting.
“Like it?” she asked and not waiting for an answer straddled me, carefully
placed my limb in place and sank on it. An expression of pain contorted her face
and her eyelids drooped. I pulled her face to mine and kissed her. Her hair, a small
curtain round our faces with the smell of shampoo from yesterday‟s bath. Her
tongue voicelessly spoke of her agitation. A girl had just become a woman.
Crossed the threshold where her need for carnal union was irresistible. It is
strange this need. It comes at different times to different women and sometimes
does not come at all.
“My God, it‟s so wonderful. I feel it in my belly. Nearly reaching my
throat.”
“Oh, hardly,” I said. “That would need one of those big ones from the
pictures.”
She laughed.
“It‟s just right for me. It fills me up completely.”
She started off cautiously, wary of the tenderness in her genitals but soon
found her rhythm, the paths of minimum pain and maximum pleasure. Up and
down, forward and backward, side to side. If she were not a virgin, I would not
have believed her inexperience. Soon the voluptuousness overcame the pain and
we were lost in the sweet torment that was building up, that showed in the
expressions of her face, her sighs, her smiles, the small cries, the sudden lurches
to kiss me wildly and suck my tongue almost out of my mouth and the quickening
rhythm of her movement. Even as early as that, with my sweet Vassi, I realized
that making love was not so much a means of self- gratification as giving pleasure.
The man‟s orgasm is eventual, is assured and because of that, almost secondary in
importance. Vassi moaned softly, her movements were out of control and then
with a cry she collapsed on me. I was elated. We had achieved what was
considered a not too certain proposition in feminine sexuality. A female orgasm.
On the second try, no less.

23
 the black hole

Six days, lasted our honeymoon. An eternity, my love for her.

I do not know what alerted my mother. Was it our evident, increasing
fatigue? The hue under our eyes? The paleness and sunken cheeks? Those last few
nights we stayed at home and slept instead of going out? Our voracious appetite?
The suspicion was always there. The sharp look searching - an oscillating radar.
And her motive, what? Protection, jealousy, avoidance of scandal?
Since our first joust in Bippo‟s flat, we fell into an unchanging routine
centered on lovemaking. Well, hardly a routine for it was so excruciatingly short.
We left the house at nine together with my mother, lugging our bag and unwieldy
umbrella and walked to Gianola for an ice and a furtive encounter with the
chewing gum man. An hour later, we curtly saluted the unsmiling, inscrutable
bawab to enter the flat. We made mad, passionate love for two hours and then
headed for the beach where we swam a little but mostly slept in the umbrella‟s
shade. As a result, Vassi‟s swimming did not improve much and she still swims
with an anxious style that does not reflect her very special talent and excellence in
other bodily endeavors.
At about two, we consumed our sandwiches with a coke and headed again
for the flat, braved the embarrassment of crossing a second time the bawab, and
on to a further two hours of love and love and love. Where did we find the
energy? Where, our secretions? We were in a wild, passionate verve and could not
keep apart. We returned at home by four-thirty, showered rapidly and waited for
mother who arrived shortly after five to prepare our early dinner. We made it a
point, to allay her suspicions, of keeping apart as much as possible in the flat. As
she came in, I would be reading a book, sitting on an armchair in the hall and
Vassi would be cross-legged inside, on her bed, skimming over a magazine.
Mother was turning surly and quiet. Those last few days she had stopped
her light- hearted prattle and was almost brusque with us. She did ask us, as usual,
how we spent the day but hardly listened to our little deceits of having met so-
and-so and done this and that. We felt very uncomfortable as we waited,
famished, for the food she was preparing. And we did clear the table, bread and
all.
The first two days of our glorious lovemaking, we went downtown to a
movie and slept throughout the film. On the last three, oh what a mistake, we went
to bed early and slept. On the sixth, mother came in chirping and happy and
released her thunderbolt.
“Vassiliki, my dear, I have just been to the telephone exchange and called
your mother. I just wanted to let her know that you were well and you were
having a good time. But she said it was time you returned. She wants you back by
tomorrow. Please, pack your things tonight. The train leaves at nine. ”
We both turned pale. We were dumbstruck.
“Why, mother?” I managed to utter.
“How do I know why? I am not Vassiliki‟s keeper. ”
We hardly touched the evening meal. Vassi went into the bedroom without
a word and started packing.
“I see right through you, mother,” I told her.
“And I see right through you.”

24
 “Meaning?”
“Meaning, my little Casanova, that you have let me down. ”
I said no more. It was futile. I just sat stunned and was unable to move.
Unable to go to Vassi and see how she felt. How she was. We hardly talked until
we went to bed.
“I love you,” I whispered across our beds. “I am so sorry.”
She started crying. My cool, collected Vassi started crying.
Very late at night I sneaked to her bed. We did not make love but we slept
in each other‟s arms. I do not care to remember the wrenching pain of her
departure, my mother‟s hard, sharp, scrutinizing look, and Vassi‟s forlorn climb to
her seat on the train. I saw her three years later under dire circumstances. But I
bore in my heart and my soul a black hole for over thirty years.

25
 conflicts

I did not have much time to grieve Vassi‟s departure, the abrupt severing
of our love. One might be tempted to call it a shallow infatuation, a temporary
upheaval of the turbulent and overpowering birth of animal instinct, but the dull
resilience of pain that lingered tells otherwise. Summer was coming on with clear,
calm days, beautiful deep blue seas, and vacationers dribbling into our city,
crowding our beaches, packing our cinemas and our open-air cafés. I could not
pass by Gianola or look at the chewing- gum man without a pang in my heart. Yet
I tried to get on with the carefree summer life that the city provided. The friends,
the clubs, the cycling excursions and occasional parties.
I tried to keep away from our home as much as possible. My mother was
moody and behaved as if I had betrayed her. She did not make a friendly move
and did not respond to my diffident attempts at reconciliation. I did not quite
understand the depth or extent or indeed the true reason for this chagrin. Why it
went on and on. I dared not tell her I wanted to go to Cairo for a few days. She did
dominate my life as my shadowy father never did and I loved her, feared her and
feared for her in a way that her strange attitude made my life, that summer of ‟56,
something of a nightmare.
As the Port Said beaches were crowded, most of our Lycée crowd usually
gravitated to the Rowing Club across the port. We took the ferry at about ten in
the morning and spent the day swimming, playing volleyball and water polo and
taking an occasional nap in the shade of a tree. Lunch was a sandwich from home
and for dessert, a coke bought at the club bar. The club was empty all morning,
even on Fridays and the weekends and usually started getting packed by seven or
eight in the cool of the early evening and emptying just before the ferries made
their last crossings at midnight. Greeks, Italians, Egyptians, we conversed in
French and were almost a family. Bippo usually appeared in late afternoon and
swam interminable laps between the two wooden piers at each end of the club. He
was tall and thin but one could tell he was strong. I often asked him why all this
effort and he used to answer that he needed to be fit for his job.
“What job, for heaven‟s sake?” I often asked and he just smiled and never
answered.
Often in these summer evenings, the happy couple, my mother and father
appeared and I hurriedly organized a jaunt to the cinema with a friend or two to
avoid returning home with them. I could not bear their hostile silence. The stoic
tolerance of each other‟s presence. The invisible wall of ruined aspirations and
hopes that separated them. I whispered a few words to my mother and she
circumspectly opened her purse and passed along fifty piasters to finance the
project. I loved so much that half smile with which she gave me the money. She
was the prettiest woman around.
After Vassi left, her dark moods made her quarrelsome. I was meek and
tried to accommodate her bad humor and brusque manner but things got much
worse with my father who also tried to keep as much away from home as he
could. It did not do much good. The bickering increased; the shouting and then the
violence. I had turned in that night and was awakened by their shouting. For a
moment, I remained paralyzed in bed. Even at that age, their quarrels terrorized
me. I heard scuffling in the kitchen. Chairs being shoved, the table banged, a plate

26
or two smashed and the slaps and her cries. I rushed inside and found her on the
floor weeping. I lost my mind. I picked up a knife and went for him but when I
reached him, his ironic smile stopped me dead.
“You touch her again and I shall kill you,” I shouted, my voice hoarse and
trembling.
It must have been comical because the knife was small and blunt and my
father laughed. He was calm and steely. He was once again flying his Spitfire in a
dogfight. This time against mother and me.
“She is mad,” he said quietly trying to defuse the tension. To make me see
reason. “She is paranoid. She was looking for a fight. She will think twice again
before she flings a plate at me.”
I had never before exchanged harsh words with him despite my hard
feelings. I felt the blood pounding my temples, my face swollen to double its size.
“It‟s you who is paranoid. A person who never matured, who lives in the
past. What kind of a man are you to beat a woman? A two-bit Casanova who
neglects a goddess to go running after whores. What have you ever offered us?
Why don‟t you go to your hag? We don‟t need you.”
He listened to me stone- faced and shocked and went to his room without a
word. I lifted my mother from the floor and took her to my bedroom. I caressed
her hair and face and calmed her down.
“Everything will be all right,” I told her. “Tomorrow I shall set up the
camp bed and we shall share the room. You don‟t have to go back to him. ”
I took off her shoes and dress, undid her bra from behind and she eased it
off and as she was in her slip made her lie down and covered her with the sheet. I
went to the other side of the bed and there was just enough space for the both of
us.
“Thank you for sticking up for me,” she said quietly after a while. “It was
not all his fault. I have become impossible.”
“Things will get better,” I said. “You shall see.”
Things did not get better. They just dragged on. Our life continued in this
vein for the next few months. The routine resumed with the final slight alterations
that summoned the end of an era in the personal history of an unimportant small
family. The total breakdown of our relationship with father. Not a word
exchanged. Not the slightest gesture of reconciliation attempted from either side.
He came in late at night and left early in the morning. Sometimes he was away for
days and sometimes he left some money on the shelf in the kitchen. Never
regularly, never enough. My mother kept our home with her little atelier and in
spite of father‟s intrusive and oppressive, occasional presence in the house, a
measure of unexpected and much appreciated peace ruled. My summer program
continued much as before until the technical college started in early October.
I never did set up the camp bed in our room. I never mentioned it again. I
enjoyed sleeping with her. I liked her presence, heavy and warm next to me, her
feel, her touch, her smell. We were comfortable with one another. Often we
embraced and caressed neutrally, asexually, careful not to go beyond the accepted
norms. Yet how could the intimacy not increase at such close proximity? In her
lack of the usual small reticences of a woman? I could not pretend that my mother
was just a mother and not a woman - a beautiful, mature, desirable woman. In the
darkness, strange thoughts crossed my mind. Strange fantasies. Strange, choking
images of female wantonness and surrender. Of purposely exposed nakedness. Of

27
female need yearning to be filled and fulfilled. A certainty that the impossible was
possible.
In the darkness, a strange audacity hid its face. A strange new beat to my
heartbeat. We were so close, a slight move of my arm would meet her body, rest
on her hip or her arm. Her hand would rest on mine. I would feel my arousal and
move to conceal it and stay motionless and try to sleep. Repeated night after night,
audacity and desire contriving an alliance, heart pounding, incremental animal
advances. Now my erect penis left uncovered but unseen. Inching towards her
stealthily, not yet touching her. A bridge not yet completed. Hoping, praying she
would notice, praying she would hold me, there, and end my torture.
In the morning, introspection. A waking up. A sense of unreality of the
night before. The sunlight altering my mental faculties. Anchoring me in our
humdrum life, of college and friends, familiar streets, cars and human noise.
Mother was again, mother. Sweet, beautiful and adorable. But mother,
nonetheless. Oh how I loved her. Off to work to make a living for her son and
herself.
Moreover, thoughts more complicated than my love for Vassi provoked.
Trying to analyze this universal taboo, this worldwide human prohibition. To
understand the meaning of sin and why it was a sin. Slowly, painfully delving into
the realm of reason and my own faltering philosophy to uncover and explain these
so-called deviant and unnatural tendencies. Trying to rationalize a longing, to find
excuses for the unthinkable, the crime, for the horror of the act.
Horror? I could not think of it as horror. Could love ever be a horror? Even
the physical attraction to one‟s mother? Admitting it is repulsive universally, are
there no exceptions? And why are they so entirely intolerable? Eventually, I
reached some tentative conclusions. I was happy I traced a path of sorts out of this
labyrinth with my own simple, perhaps, simplistic logic. Taking into account but
ignoring much of our religious doctrine. Much of the rubbish it propagated. I was
sure I had reached the truth. Two or three sentences summed it up.
Sin was every act that caused suffering to others. Incest was condemned
because it would cause havoc, conflict, and disorder in the family and society.
Society was based on an inherent social contract as many social philosophers
asserted and on the taboos that evolved with the evolution of man and his
civilization. Sin as defined by religion and religious interdictions did not concern
me. Religions for many thousands of years were a restraining factor to the
monstrosity of man. They are nearing the end of their usefulness and indeed their
lifecycle as humanity becomes educated and science explains, more and more, our
existence. Whatever brings happiness to a person or two or more consenting
adults and harms no one cannot be a sin. The question is, can we shake off
inhibitions so deeply embedded for millennia in our genes?
What of Antigone? She seemed happy and at peace. She had finally turned
her back to an indifferent and remote husband and substituted in his stead a
companion who loved her, idealized her and provided the emotional support she
needed. It was an odd marriage- like arrangement that she accepted with passivity
and tenderness and made it seem so natural. I could discern no qualms, no
reservations in her acquiescence to this new bond. She seemed to leave the
initiatives to me, her husband-son, and this was the main part of my torture. I had
formed a theoretical moral cadre in my mind but I still lived in two worlds. In the
mornings, a world of normality, of college and lessons and friends. In the
darkness of our shared bed, a hallucinatory world of dreams and sexual urgings.

28
She seemed unaware and casual and, at the same time, physical and intimate.
Moreover, sex had already been an obsession for me for so long. A few months
ago, my love affair with Vassi. Now withering and moribund, the sharpness of its
pain softening with time. A few years ago, a bewildering interlude for someone so
young, which mother claimed was a figment of my imagination. Yet I vividly
remembered so many details and young Mr. Tonna with his horn-rimmed
spectacles and sweet, shy smile.
Two months or so before my new college started, on July 26, Gamal
Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. On November 5, 1956, French and
English troops landed in Port Said. It was a time of upheaval and death and worry.
For the few months before the invasion, tension had already been building up with
alert exercises, the shrill whine of sirens, blackouts, the sounds of cannons firing
from the beaches and the deafening sound of low-flying aircraft roaring past.
Heavy guns and tanks were brought in the city and concea led. Antiaircraft guns
were placed on the roofs of some buildings. Homeowners were asked to paint
their glass windows a dark blue color and a night curfew was established with the
frequent night alert drills. Firearms were distributed to citizens who asked for
them and were prepared to fight the invaders and patrols of young citizens with
their Kalashnikovs were constantly going up and down the main streets.
Antigone stocked our house with as much non-perishable food as she
could find and our bathtubs and all possible containers we could get our hands on
with water. Much of our time we spent listening to the radio tuned to the BBC,
Radio Monte Carlo and the Kol Israel station and, in fact, it was from the radio we
learned that the war began on October 29 with Operation Kadesh, the Israeli
invasion of the Sinai. The next day brought the famous Anglo-French ultimatum
asking the two belligerents to withdraw from the canal zone and on October 31st
the bombing strikes on the Egyptian airfields started, followed b y all out strikes
on other military targets. It was Operation Musketeer, which culminated in Port
Said‟s military invasion.
Father was in a state of heightened excitement. He spent some nights with
us and the rest with his mistress. He often rushed out to our balcony when the
British and French aircraft whizzed by and called me to explain their makes and
tactics. Whereas most people cowered, he was a fearless and happy man during
those days of fighting. He was friendly with mother and me as if nothing had
occurred between us. This did not stop him from spending nights away from home
reminding us that, in fact, the situation was unchanged. Finally, the invasion
reached our city and the native populace put as much of a resistance as it was able
to. There was a considerable amount of street fighting for a couple of days, much
of it in the street below.
Inevitably, the British army prevailed. During those days, we saw, from
our balcony, countless handcarts with corpses packed, like sacks, one on top of
the other being trundled, presumably, for burial. The invasion forces eventually
controlled our city, established an uneasy peace, set up patrols, and reorganized
some of the essential public services such as hospitals. They announced that they
were ready to transport any foreign national that wanted to leave the country and
in fact, most of them took up the offer and were embarked on the military troop
ships.
My father decided it was a good opportunity to get out of the city, which
he had grown to hate. I do not know what bloody arrangements he made with his
mistress but one day when he was at home, he called me to his room and

29
announced that he was leaving. He had a British passport, he said, and he did not
have much of a choice. He told me that he was prepared to help mother and me to
leave as well if we wished but once we were out of Port Said we would be on our
own. He could not, would not take on any further responsibility for our welfare. I
talked things over with mother and we decided to remain in Port Said. Everything
was fluid and uncertain but we would rather be in a place we knew than face the
unknown practically penniless as we were. A few days later he packed a few bags
with his belongings, shook our hands and left. He promised to let us know where
he was once he had settled down. We never heard from him again.

30
 THE INHERITANCE
A Novelette

It was, almost certainly, not a dream, as Antigone, my mother, wanted me

to believe. Some of my memories may be flights of imagination but not all. Not the
whole of the dream. Because we did go to Malta. Because there were quarrels and
father left in a rage and returned to Port Said and I stayed on with mother for a
lovely, strange, exhilarating month. All alone with her. It was a dream only
because it was dreamlike and the memories are tender, happy and nostalgic and
wrench at my heart even now. How could I forget Mr. Tonna and our excursions
in the hills of Gozo and her light-hearted moods, her happiness and laughter?
I was thirteen or so when grandfather Zimit died. A telegram arrived to
announce his demise and then a registered letter to inform my father that the
family house in Gozo was bequeathed to him as my uncle Sebastian inherited the
tobacconist business in Valletta where he worked all those years. The house, a
two-storey, unpretentious construction built, like most of the other houses in
sandstone, had been shuttered for almost twenty years, ever since the family
moved to Valletta. My father decided to go to Malta to accept the inheritance and
to take mother and me as well for a month’s holiday in early summer.
I still cannot understand this decision. Their marriage was already in
trouble. My father was philandering left, right and center. He had reached rock
bottom in his professional prospects and seemed to pour his energies, in an
absurd attempt to shore up his self-respect, in adulterous relationships and
dallying. He blamed mother for his predicament. He claimed that she stopped him
from pursuing a successful military career and threw him in the backwater city of
Port Said to stagnate. Their quarrels and shouting became almost a daily routine,
a daily nightmare for me. Why did he decide to take us for a vacation to Malta?
How did he ever imagine that the outcome could possibly be different? Did he
envisage a reconciliation? A second honeymoon?
In June 1950, we embarked on a freighter and two days later, we entered
the Grand Harbor of Valletta. Uncle Sebastian and my two male cousins met us at
our arrival and we stayed for two days at their home in the city in a civil if not too
hearty hospitality. Father completed the legal paperwork necessary to register his
inheritance after which we took the boat to Gozo to have a look at the house. My
impressions of the trip are admittedly half-blurred. Some more than others but
some are so clear I have not the slightest doubt about them. They are the ones
Antigone wanted mostly to efface.
For me the trip was pure bliss. I was embarking on a grand adventure. At
last, sailing out of the port whose arriving and departing liners forever made me
dream. Our tramp freighter, the Lucinda, was tiny and mother got a fright when
she saw it as our motor launch approached to deposit us on it. It had no other
passengers and we were offered passage as a courtesy to my father’s office. My
heart was pounding as we left and moved past the giant liners, the criss-crossing
police launches, the refuse in the water and the innumerable blue, menacing and
pulsing jellyfish. Past De Lesseps’s bronze statue and into the open sea. A few
hours later, our ship entered the port at Alexandria where we loaded and
unloaded merchandise and left the next morning for Malta.

31
 My first and now somewhat hazy impressions of Valletta were of a city of
fortifications and old buildings. Valletta was built in the 16th century by the
Knights of St John of Jerusalem and great lines of walls and forts were
constructed in and around the town with its magnificent harbor to make it
impregnable. I did not know it then that Valletta is a masterpiece of late Medieval
and Baroque architecture. I just saw elaborate old buildings and a bustling
populace chattering in Malti, a language very close to Arabic. The next day on a
stroll with mother and the two boys, we walked in the city amid beautiful churches
and buildings that in times past housed different groups of knights and were now
used for government services. Further out from the center, the city is built up with
three and four storey buildings with wooden balcony windows. Lines of these
balconies, undulating with the rise and fall of streets form the characteristic
landscape of Valletta.
We arrived in Mgharr, a tiny town of Gozo, by ferry in the early afternoon
and went to a small hotel near the port that my father remembered from the old
days. It was still there, dowdy but clean. He seemed eager and excited to be
returning to his hometown though he had lived the greater part of his life in
Valletta. He got a conversation going with the owner and we were given one of
the few rooms that had a private bath. A small camp bed was put in for me. We
were slightly cramped but so were our finances. After a cursory unpacking, he
insisted we set off at once to see the house despite the heat. From the hotel, we
turned into a street up a gradient. Mgharr starts around a small cove and extends
up a hill. Around the port, there is a small shopping center with a couple of cafés
and a bank and a little further away, a small fishing harbor.
We followed an eager father striding fast and purposefully a few streets to
the left and to the right and stopped in front of a thick sandstone wall. A creaking
iron gate leaning lopsidedly on loose hinges with a rusty iron chain and padlock
prohibited our entrance. We peered at the house beyond. It had not weathered
well its twenty years of solitude. The sandstone walls were still solid but part of
the roof tiles were torn away littering the ground below and one could imagine
the damage done inside by rain and foul weather through the years. I felt my
father’s hopes almost tangibly deflate. He kept staring and staring at it. Then he
turned around to us and said,
“Well, that’s that. Everything has turned foul in my life, how could this
have been any different.” I felt sorry for him.
We returned slowly and silently to the hotel, undressed to our underwear
because the weather was too warm and humid for pajamas and slept a little. In
the early evening when the weather cooled, we strolled around the port and then
sat at the small café and ordered a snack and a bottle of the local wine for my
father. He kept drinking and ordered a second bottle. We were mostly silent. We
had brought with us our emotional baggage from Port Said. The hostility, the
alienation, the inability to communicate. The rift was too wide and deep to bridge.
Too old.
We left a little before midnight for the hotel, undressed and went to bed. I
remained a long time awake in the darkness. I was worried and wondered how a
month would go by in this state of affairs. I heard their bed creaking and the
sounds of a subdued and silent scuffle. I heard my mother whisper,
“No Emmanuel, no.”
And his answer, impatient, annoyed, “C’mon for God’s sake.”

32
 Her whisper again a little louder, “Will you cut it out. The boy might be
awake.”
Then a prolonged sound of cloth and sheets and pillows being moved
forcefully, a struggle, a subdued cry from her and more movement followed by a
regular, monotonous scraping of bed springs on and on and on and dead human
silence with only a grunt or moan or a catching of breath from him. I was
petrified. Was he strangling her? Was he putting it in her? Where? In her behind?
I had no clear idea. Then, a loud choking groan as horrible as a death rattle and
the bedsprings stopped their frightful rhythm followed by total silence.
My heart was about to break. I wanted to get up to help her, to save her, to
make sure she was alive. I was paralyzed with fear.
I waited; my eyes wide open in the darkness, seeing nothing, concentrating
on my hearing, trying to interpret the slightest sound.
“What a dead piece of meat you are,” he said to her after a while.
“That is your accomplishment,” she answered.
“My God, you make me sick.”
“Then go back to your whores.”
“The least one of them is better than you.”
“Go back to them.”
“I shall. I am leaving tomorrow.”
A long silence. Then her voice, again.
“I shall stay on with the boy for a while. We need a short respite; we need
to recuperate from your presence.”
“I have no money to spare.”
“When did I ever count on your money?”
He left very early next morning to our vast relief. We dressed and went to
the dining room for breakfast. Tea and toast, fried eggs, goat cheese, butter and
jam. A huge appetite; good humor and smiles. Unexpressed in words but obvious
in our happiness that our taciturn tormentor had left. We went to the port for a
walk. On the way out, Antigone told the owner that we would be staying on for a
couple of weeks and asked him to remove the camp bed to disengage the
cramming of the room. The weather was still cool and we walked along the
seashore beyond the pretty fishing harbor to find a place where we could swim.
There were many small coves and picturesque bays but most were rocky and we
found no sandy beaches. We walked back to the port and strolled in the village
center and dawdled for a while looking at the few shops on the way. The streets
were calm and uncrowded. Mostly tranquil pedestrians, slow-pedaling cyclists
and a few Austins and Morrises ambling by. Small herds of goats were driven
along the streets and milked from door to door. Malta is known as the island of
goats. The islands are rocky and there is not enough pasture for cows.
A fort called Chambray looked down from the cliff-tops and on the
opposite side of the harbor stood a church, Our Lady of Lourdes. It was nice, and
calm, and the heat was coming on and I wondered if this little village with no
friends or acquaintances could keep us occupied and happy for the couple of
weeks we intended to stay. We also had a language problem but we did manage to
get along with our English and French. We were used to the casual switching of
languages in our household. With mother, I spoke in Greek and with father mostly
in English. The language I knew best, a sort of belated mother tongue was French
due to my education at the Lycée Français.

33
 Back at the Palace Hotel, yes, that was the name, a palace for drab and
dingy royalty, we changed into our bathing costumes. With shorts and T-shirts
over them, with mother looking young and pretty, a bag of towels, with inside
information from the hotel owner on the best swimming spot in town, we set off
quite merrily despite the rocky seaside odds. We found the spot, deserted; spread
our towels and spread our bodies on the towels in the sun. The sea was a fine
deep blue with hardly any waves. Just a subdued susurrus as it heaved and
retreated from the rocks in perpetual communion.
She smiled at me. A smile that fed me, a smile I lived for. A black one-
piece bathing suit covered her just slightly over-curvy body. The heavy breasts,
the faintly protruding belly, a firm well shaped behind and the mysterious areas of
penis-free womanhood. Her arms were full and fleshy from shoulder to elbow and
her legs just slightly thin for the wide hips but not ungracefully so.
I thought of my father. Questions entered my mind. Questions that should
not have burdened a thirteen-year-old. Does one tire of a person? After ten or
fifteen years? Even of a beautiful person like my mother? Why the constant
surliness, the constant lookout for other women? What did he do to her last night?
I could not get it out of my mind. The creaking bed springs. I was still hazy about
sex. Trying to figure it out of half-baked jargon, misinformation, swear words and
dirty jokes. The times had not yet become sly, foxy and knowing for the young.
There was no television at the time, or the proliferation of porno magazines and
videos on every newsstand. Sex was still an unmentionable subject. I was just
barely becoming conscious of it and of my own awakening sexual urges, my
erections, the pleasure I derived from them and the stroking of my penis. Novel
sensations, sensual and emotional. Feelings of delicious depravity, vulgarity and
guilt. I craved to look, always furtively, because I felt it was wrong, at women in
bathing costumes and my mother in states of undress.
“We must not stay long in the sun the first few days,” she said. “Here, let
me put some cream on you.”
She opened the round, blue tin of Nivea and spread some on my shoulders,
chest and back and then, always smiling, carefully, tenderly, on my face and nose.
A kiss. Perhaps she felt lonely but she was at peace and the peace of mind is a
halfway path to happiness. I got up and explored the small bay tottering lamely,
my feet too tender for the outcropping rocks. Found a few patches of sand and a
rock-free opening to the sea, which we used a little later to wade in for our swim.
She swam well, my Antigone, and we dived and brought up beautiful, colorful
stones from the deep, fashioned by minerals and millennia, and we startled
lingering schools of tiny fish and one or two scurrying prehistoric-looking crabs,
pincers on the ready. Then out to dry in the sun and a slow walk to the café at the
port for a snack.
We were rosy from the sun and euphoric from the exercise. A large
sandwich, a soft drink. A huge appetite just barely sated. Back to the palace to
shower and rest. To the luxury of a private bath. The luxury of Antigone bathing
me, shampooing my hair. The luxury of my erection with her soaping. The luxury
of her smile and unabashed handling of it. Lying in bed, listening to her own
splashing in the shower through a half-open door, dying but not daring to have a
look, a heart at a gallop, emerging in her nightgown, flushed and beautiful, a
forbidden houri, lying next to me. What did father do to her? I loved her so much.
I turned and kissed her arm, the sun’s warmth still on its ruddy surface. She
caressed my hair absent mindedly, not looking.

34
 “Try to sleep.”
“Yes.”
In the afternoon, a stroll around the few shops near the port. Mingling
with the Gozitans. Very few visitors and tourists this early in June. Looking for a
pair of sunglasses and a cap for her and me, respectively. We found a shop of a
thousand unrelated items. Walking sticks, gym shoes and slippers, cheap Brownie
box cameras and Kodak film for eight exposures, cigarette lighters and Gozo
souvenir ashtrays, fountain pens and notebooks, caps and straw hats for men and
women, fake jewelry and colorful plastic bracelets, post cards, travel guides and
Maltese stamp series both stamped and virgin, chocolates and chewing gum,
beautiful mouth organs, some wide and flat with mouth openings on both rims,
others with a spring switch on one edge for an instant change of pitch, socks,
underwear, lingerie and toiletries. We entered and I was lost in this beguiling
treasure trove. I moved slowly across the glass-topped show cases peering
scrupulously inside. My mother waited patiently and the young shopkeeper
brought a chair for her to sit down. So many items I suddenly needed. So many
futile questions. “Can I have this, mother, can I have that?” Most of all I wanted
the mouth organ. It was too expensive and I settled for the cap and a pair of gym
shoes for the beach. She bought her sunglasses, trying on many pairs, looking at
her reflection in the mirror.
“How do I look?” she asked addressing her image and me.
“Very beautiful,” said the young man. She turned and looked at him and
he blushed. He wore thick horn-rimmed eyeglasses and looked like Superman
when he was Clark Kent. With black, well-combed hair but less obviously
handsome and the jaw less square. More fragile and anonymous. A type of person
who blushes.
“Johnny?” she inquired, looking back at the mirror.
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I said, “who’s the fairest of them all?”
They both laughed.
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll take them. And this red cap for me, on second
thoughts.”
She sat down again. The shop was empty and she felt comfortable. Took
out her purse and paid for our purchases. I roamed the shop for new discoveries
but kept returning to the mouth organ. I was wondering why all the nicest things
are always beyond reach. Antigone chatted in English with the young man asking
him about Gozo. Victoria, the capital was not far and there were many villages
and picturesque spots worth visiting. He suggested we hire bicycles and cycle to
some nearby places. The coast was generally rocky. The only wide sandy beach
was Ramla Bay on the northeast coast.
Some clients came in and we said good-bye and left. It was getting dark.
We walked and came across a small restaurant and had Fenek, rabbit meat in a
wine and garlic sauce and spaghetti, a traditional dish, fresh crispy, delicious
bread and salad. A half bottle of wine, as well, of which I appropriated more than
a few sips. Then a slow amble back to the port to watch the brightly lit ferry come
in and breathe the fresh sea breeze that was slowly sweeping away the day’s
sultriness. Antigone held me by the arm. The wine had gone to her head and she
was light hearted and romantic. She hummed a tune and squeezed my arm now
and then. She was thinking of the young man.
“He was nice, wasn’t he?” she asked me.
“Who?”

35
 “The shopkeeper.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t suppose he’s married. He was not wearing a wedding ring.”
“Oh? I didn’t notice.”
“Probably still living at home with his mother.”
She smiled.
“Women look out for such things,” she added. “You had eyes just for the
harmonica.”
“It was lovely, mother.”
“When you grow up you’ll understand that material things don’t matter
all that much. It’s people that matter. Feelings and relationships and love.”
She always offered me small alternative philosophies my sweet Antigone,
my sweet mother, when I craved harmonicas and things I could not have.
Sometimes they made sense, sometimes they did not, but even when they made
sense, they were not much of a comfort. I knew she was referring to father. To a
wall that could not be scaled. To a divided family at an impasse with no
conceivable way out.
From a newsstand near the quay, she bought the Match and a French
illustrated guide and history of Malta for me. We walked slowly to the hotel,
undressed and lay in bed reading for a while. I started learning a few things about
a fatherland, which was so alien to me that I did not even speak its language.
Three small islands with a history stretching back to the Stone Age. A land
colonized successively since the 5th century BC by Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs,
Normans, Spaniards, the Crusaders who built the massive fortifications,
magnificent palaces and churches, resisted the Turks but was taken over by the
French under Napoleon and, finally, became part of the British Empire before
achieving their independence.
When she switched off the light, I wanted to cuddle in her arms. In the
darkness, I was conscious of her body, her essence, her femaleness. Her smell, the
sound of her breathing, her proximity, gave me an erection. I reached and held
her hand. It was an elemental urge, an elemental compulsion. A voiceless
pleading that had to remain unanswered as if it was wrong. Immoral and
unethical. An interdiction engraved in our genes since the dawn of history,
admitting no extenuating impulses such as love, beauty, attraction, instinct,
companionship, dependence but mostly love, love, love. Can love ever be sinful?
Even when mixed with perplexing physical longing? A need to kiss and touch? To
be touched. There. Her fingers closed over mine. She held my hand.
“Good night, sweetheart,” she said.
In the morning, a nonchalant awakening, a sense of freedom and
euphoria, a leisurely breakfast, a sprightly amble to the beach of a young mother
and her sexually stirring son. Two compatible companions in search, in vague
anticipation of something new and happy and thrilling in the sleepy, sun-drenched
village of Mgharr. In shorts and caps and my new gym shoes. Antigone looking
youthful and gorgeous with her new sunglasses. A fresh friskiness in her soul. In
our room, at the hotel, she looked at herself in the mirror and smiled. She still had
what it takes. She was on holiday. Port Said and the mess of her life were a day’s
journey across the sea. She did not know what was coming but she would miss no
opportunities. Emmanuel Zimit was finished. Another Emmanuel was entering,
temporarily, her life.

36
 Our footsteps took us there in the afternoon. Almost without thought.
Powerful magnets pulling. For me, a mouth organ, for mother a young
shopkeeper. Was he, too, waiting for us? He smiled as if expecting us, pulled two
chairs on the pavement outside the shop and asked us to sit down. Went into a
small back room and made a coffee for mother and lemonade with fresh lemon
and sugar for me. Then he sat next to us and introduced himself. Emmanuel
Tonna, born, bred, unmarried, living in Mgharr with his widowed mother.
Antigone smiled at me. Bull’s eye, she must have thought.
“My husband’s name is also Emmanuel.”
“Is he here?” the new Emmanuel asked.
“No. He returned to Port Said where we live.”
“Should I consider myself lucky?”
Antigone looked at him in the eye and Mr. Tonna blushed. He was a
curious mix of boldness and timidity. They were roughly the same age but clearly
not of the same maturity. My mother was a woman seasoned by life and Mr.
Tonna a sheltered provincial, disorientated by a traditionally puritan upbringing
and the loosening of morals brought on by the war and the expanding influx of
tourism. Even sleepy Mgharr was changing. The young male Gozitans were on the
lookout for foreign girls.
“Sorry, I do not understand the question,” she said though she did so very
well.
“Forgive me, it was a pleasantry,” he said with a smile.
I entered the shop and roamed the shelves and glass showcases in search
of new discoveries. My mother and Mr. Tonna chatted on familiarly seeming to
enjoy each other’s company. If a client appeared, Mr. Tonna would attend to him
and return to mother, more interested in their chat than a sale. There were the
happy smiles of the new acquaintanceship, the easy casualness, the promise that
seemed to shape up. She called me and said that Mr. Tonna had a half-day on
Wednesdays and would be happy to drive us around Gozo in the afternoon.
“Would you like that, John?” she asked.
“Yes.”
This Mr. Tonna was not half bad. He was not overly friendly with me but
he seemed to make my mother happy. They talked on and on and I took small
walks down the street to relieve my boredom. To look at the nearby shops and the
people, the dogs and stray cats. We left two hours later and on to the small
restaurant for dinner. A cozy atmosphere, clean, red-checkered tablecloths and
napkins, subdued lighting and a lit candle. Smiles of recognition from the waiter.
Boiled fish, potatoes, vegetables, salad, delicious crispy bread and wine. A half
glass for me. This was the good life. We left light-headed, dizzy and happy. Hand
in hand. Her happiness translating into extra tenderness for me. To squeezes and
kisses.
“How do you like Emmanuel?”
“Mr. Tonna?”
“Yes.”
“He’s okay.”
“He’s very nice. Tomorrow he will take us for a drive.”
“Do you think you might fall in love with him?”
She laughed.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because he seems to like you very much.”

37
 “Does he?”
“Yes. And now that things are so bad with father you might decide to
divorce him and marry Mr. Tonna.”
“Wouldn’t you like that?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it but I wouldn’t like to stay in
Mgharr. I want to return to Port Said.”
She kissed me.
“Don’t worry baby. We shall be returning soon enough. Emmanuel is
engaged to be married. But he is nice and there is no harm in letting him show us
around.”
She was happy. You could tell from her walk, her humming. At the hotel,
we read a little in bed and when she closed the light, I searched for her hand and
she turned and held me in her arms. I melted in her warmth, her softness, her
smell, her tenderness. It was heaven. Was I Mr. Tonna’s alternative?
The next day we returned earlier than usual to the hotel from the beach for
our shower and rest. At five, we left again and walked the short distance to Mr.
Tonna’s shop. The weather was still warm and the sunshine bright and dazzling.
Antigone wore her red cap and sunglasses. I remember it so well. A touch of
makeup, white shirt, trousers and loafers. I had never seen her so sprightly and
pretty. We had both lost our city paleness and the beginnings of a rosy tan
enlivened her face. She seemed to grow younger by the day.
Mgharr was having its siesta and there was little movement in the streets.
He was waiting for us in his car, a small, dark green, slightly dilapidated Morris
Minor. Our greetings, happy. Handshakes with smiles. His myopic eyes stuck on
Antigone. We piled into the car. Mother in front, next to Mr. Tonna and I, in the
back seat. From the beginning, it was clear that Mr. Tonna was a very poor driver
and throughout the outing, the car was careening from one side of the road to the
other causing Antigone to let out little screams followed by laughter. There is no
doubt her presence flustered him and his constant need to turn and look at her did
not help.
He had prepared not only an itinerary but also a small historical summary
of Malta to put us in the picture.
“We shall first go to Rabat, the capital,” Mr. Tonna said. “It is now called
Victoria but most of the old timers still call it by its old name. What do you know
about Malta, John?”
“I bought him a nice little booklet about Malta and he is reading it,”
mother said. “His father was a pilot in the RAF but he was too wrapped up in his
wartime military exploits and did not talk much about Malta and in Port Said
Malta was as remote to us as Alaska.”
“Oh, we suffered terribly during the war. We had the RAF airfields here
and the British navy based in our ports and thousands of people were killed and
homes destroyed by the Axis bombing. When Italy entered the war, its first move
was to bomb Malta and later, when Rommel was advancing in Egypt, the
Germans kept up almost incessant air attacks. People were very miserable living
in cellars and caves in conditions of near starvation. Things are, of course,
looking up now. There is even a political movement for our independence.”
“I read that Malta’s history goes back to the Stone Age,” I said.
“Yes, indeed,” said Mr. Tonna. “Here in Gozo we have enormous stone
temples at Ggantija and we also have plenty of relics from the Bronze Age. You
shall also read how throughout our history we were colonized and dominated by

38
various nations. But Malta as you see her today was mainly fashioned by the
Knights of St John of Jerusalem. These were crusaders that were expelled from
the Holy Land and the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, offered the island of
Malta to them in 1530. They remained here for two and a half centuries until they
were defeated by Napoleon. They built the massive fortifications to resist the
Turks and North African pirates and also built the capital city of Valletta with
magnificent palaces and churches, many of which survive today.”
We drove slowly but not very safely towards Victoria, which is located
near the center of Gozo. Our history lesson punctuated by sudden screams as
potential little accidents loomed and were ultimately evaded, and gay talk and
laughter and indiscreet, teasing questions from Antigone.
“Where did you learn to drive so well?” she asked him.
He was good-natured this Mr. Tonna. He grasped the good-humored irony
and laughed readily.
“It is not a question of where but, when. I got my driving license just a
week ago. I have not had much practice.”
“Shouldn’t you have warned us that we would be risking our lives?”
“If I did, perhaps you would not have come.”
“Oh, isn’t that terribly sweet of you?”
He laughed again.
“Why didn’t you bring along your fiancée?” she asked him.
“I see her every evening. Sometimes I need to do things without her.”
“Don’t you love her?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t seem too passionate about her.”
“Oh, you know, one woman’s as good as another.”
“Hey, that’s an original notion!”
He laughed and tried to explain.
“I mean, you meet a woman and she attracts you. You are impressed. You
may even fall in love with her but as time goes by, the enchantment dissolves and
you find she is no different than the rest.”
“My Emmanuel, my dear husband, a very refined and erudite man, used to
say, flip them upside down and they’re all the same. Different formulation, same
concept. He is a soul brother, is he not?”
A brief, shocked silence and then he laughed heartily. The car lurched to
the left. A little scream from Antigone.
“Please control your laughter, Emmanuel. Or else stop the car and laugh
to your heart’s content.”
He stopped the car and kept on laughing for a while.
“My, my,” he said, “we are having fun.”
“At the risk of our lives.”
My mother was smiling. She enjoyed this give and take with Mr. Tonna but
I was sure she did not take him seriously. There was a provincial innocence about
him. A lack of sophistication.
In Victoria, we drove down Republic Street to It-Tokk Square. An hour or
so had passed since we left Mgharr and the town’s activity was resuming. We sat
at a café for refreshments and then walked to the old town, a maze of narrow
alleys where women knitted lace in the shade of their doorways. There were some
craft and antique shops and mother spent some time looking at the shop windows,
chatting with Mr. Tonna about various articles. Further down was the Basilica of

39
St George, richly decorated by Italian artists and a short walk beyond the Citadel
and St Mary’s Cathedral. So many churches and Mr. Tonna crossing himself four
times at every one of them. Antigone asked him why and he was surprised.
“Why? Because I am Christian. It is an old habit, which I picked from my
parents. Generally speaking, we are a very religious people and we take pride in
our churches and our Catholicism. Did you know that Malta is considered the
first Christian country in the world? In AD 60, St Paul was shipwrecked in the
area known as St Paul’s Bay and here he preached the gospel and converted the
islanders to Christianity.”
“Too much religion can be stifling,” said Antigone.
“Too little can be demoralizing,” he retorted.
“Too much breeds hypocrisy.”
“And too little breeds amorality.”
“No, I don’t agree. A person, however religious, will always commit what
little sins he must. He just hides them away and always has perfect reasons to
justify them.”
“You are very cynical,” he told mother with a smile.
“And you, excessively naïve.”
We returned to the car once more and the exchange was cut short. In any
case, even at thirteen, I understood that opposite, deep-rooted beliefs are not
easily reconciled. And due to the way he drove, no serious discussion could be
continued during the drive. We rolled once again in the countryside, which was
green, covered with wild grasses and pretty flowers because of the warm spring
showers.
“In summer,” Mr. Tonna told us, “there is no rainfall and the land
becomes parched and brown. The only sound you hear in the woods is the
incessant sound of the cicada. But there is beauty even in this aridity. In the
contrast of the brown and yellow land, the blue sea and occasional patches of
green. Gozo is different from Malta. It has more hills and is much greener due to
greater rainfall and much more land is given over to agriculture.”
Mr. Tonna drove us through many villages and farming settlements on to
the Azure Window, a rock formation eroded in the form of an arch by the wind
and waves, several hundred feet high, through which one can see a unique
landscape of sea and sky. Then across other settlements and small villages with
strange names like Gharb, Ta’ Dbeigi, Ta’ Pinu, Marsalforn and Xlendi, an
inland lake and the many churches that dot this land. At Xaghra, we visited the
temple of Ggantila, the oldest freestanding structure yet discovered in the world.
The huge stones of these two temples, Mr. Tonna, explained, are said to have been
set in place around 3500 BC. Our last destination was Ramla Bay, the only large
sandy beach of Gozo.
The sun had set and it was starting to get dark. Mother urged Mr. Tonna
to get us started on the way back. His driving caused her some anxiety.
Nevertheless, we did reach Mgharr safe and sound and she invited him to join us
for dinner, a small repayment for this pleasant excursion. He demurred saying he
had to see his fiancée and she said that since one woman was much the same as
the next, it would make no difference if she were to replace his fiancée for this
evening. He had time enough to get bored with her when we left Gozo. He
laughed and we did not have to ask him twice. One thing was rather obvious, he
was much taken by Antigone, by her looks and her witty, cheeky, but good-

40
humored conversation. Her mood surprised me. I had not seen her so gay, flirty
and carefree before.
After an animated dinner with lively teasing and counter-teasing between
mother and Mr. Tonna, we left the restaurant and walked to the hotel after saying
goodbye and many thanks for the tour. He shook my hand and kissed Antigone.
His lips went for her mouth but she quickly turned her face and the kiss landed on
her cheek. I do not know if it was intentional or one of those awkward accidents
that sometimes happen when two people kiss socially.
We were both dead tired but happy and we slept almost as soon as we lay
in bed. I did not even search for her hand in the darkness. It was Antigone that
moved next to me and pulled me comfortably in her embrace, in the redolent
softness of her breasts.
“Did you enjoy yourself this afternoon?” she asked.
“Yes, mother.”
“We are having a good time, the two of us. Aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Sweet dreams, my love.”
Mr. Tonna became part of our life during the month we spent in Mgharr. I
tried to figure mother’s feelings towards him. And even my own. I did not find it
offensive that he seemed to be falling for mother nor his obvious flirtation of her.
My mother was mine, was tied to me, whatever might happen between them. It did
not shock me that he courted her more and more openly while being engaged to
another woman. For we never saw this phantom fiancée. She was a sort of
placebo in the background, a control factor that reminded them of reality and set
limits to their relationship. Not the short-term flare up but the long-term
prospects. In any case, I think, mother was out for a fling. A much-needed light-
hearted flirtation with a man after the last few miserable years with my father.
She did not take Mr. Tonna seriously. She liked his easygoing, uncomplicated
nature and found his outdated, provincial stock ideas and morality amusing. And
she did tease him mercilessly about them. She also, almost certainly, found him
physically attractive. She often asked me if I thought he was handsome.
“He reminds me of Clark Kent.”
“Clark who...? Oh, yes. What an idea!”
“I expect him at any moment to slip out of his clothes and glasses, in a
single smooth movement, and take off into the sky in his blue and red body-suit
and cape.”
Antigone laughed. She sometimes picked up and looked through my
comics.
“Clark Kent has this fiancée, hasn’t he, who does not suspect a thing,” she
said. “Cannot for the life of her imagine that he is Superman. Pretty smart girl!
What was her name?”
“Lois Lane.”
“Oh yes.”
“Just like Mr. Tonna’s fiancée. She also does not suspect a thing.”
She looked at me sharply.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, I don’t know. Perhaps, she does.”
“Does what?”
“Know that he is falling in love with you.”
“How did you ever reach that conclusion?”

41
 “He cannot keep his eyes or his hands off you.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t exaggerate.”
She also, my Antigone, did not know I had seen much more than she
suspected. I was enriching my sexual education in a strange, shocking, and very
fascinating manner. We had fallen in the habit of spending our late afternoons
and early evenings sitting outside Mr. Tonna’s shop. My mother would chat light-
heartedly and laugh a great deal with their mutual banter. She enjoyed the coffee
he made for her and enjoyed observing the milling Gozitans outside on the street.
She often asked him why he did not bring his fiancée to the shop.
“I cannot handle two women at once,” he said.
“Oh, don’t be so modest.”
“And then she might get jealous,” he said smiling.
“If you keep holding my hand, she probably will.”
“Or you might not like each other.”
“On the other hand we might become very good friends and instead of
having two women to flirt with, you will have none.”
“Give us a break, Antigone.”
“What is her name? You never mentioned it.”
“Rosita.”
“Johnny,” she called me, “Emmanuel’s Lois Lane is called Rosita.”
“What are you talking about?” Mr. Tonna asked. “The more my mother
befuddled him, the more he fell for her.”
The following Sunday, Mr. Tonna took us for a picnic in the hills. He
claimed to have discovered a waterfall deep in the woods that very few people
knew about. In the spring and early summer, just after the rains, it was quite
spectacular. Later in the dry summer, it dwindled to a trickle. We met him outside
his shop at ten. We were all sportily attired in shorts and T-shirts. Mother was
gay and sexy in very short shorts and her well-shaped legs and full breasts visibly
troubled Mr. Tonna. He could not take his eyes off her. I could almost hear the
thumping of his heart. He, himself, looked a little incongruous in shorts, coupled
with his thick spectacles, a pair of skinny legs and the everyday leather shoes and
socks he wore, which negated his obvious attempt at a casual look. Nevertheless,
he was his usual easygoing self and we set off merrily, my mother asking him why
he did not bring Rosita along. He looked at her with a sly smile. Not even I, at
thirteen, could miss it.
“She was not feeling up to it,” he said.
“Perhaps you were not feeling up to it either.”
“No. I assure you, she said she was tired.”
“You must have exhausted her last night. Being Saturday and all that.”
“We are not yet married, Antigone. We are Catholics and we believe in
mortal sin.”
“Boy, now I have heard everything!”
Mr. Tonna laughed silently to himself. Perhaps he was agreeing with
mother. He had this capacity of self-deprecation. Of seeing the absurd and
laughing at it. And he was aware that Antigone saw right through him. Right
through his professed uprightness and dodgy intentions. We drove along the main
road out of Mgharr but after a while turned into a minor side road that passed
along some farms and went uphill twisting and turning. It was narrow and uneven
but there was no traffic on it and Mr. Tonna drove at a snail’s pace. Not that we

42
were spared some narrow scrapes on the way, nor Antigone’s frightened screams
and her needling of Mr. Tonna.
“Emmanuel,” she told him, “your driving has improved tremendously
since Wednesday but, boy, do you still need a whole lot of practice!”
He laughed heartily. He enjoyed her teasing irony.
“And please stop laughing for Heaven’s sake. It ruins your concentration.
I hate to think we will plunge to our death because of your cheerfulness.”
Half an hour later, we stopped at a small clearing by the side of the road.
Mr. Tonna parked the car and we got out. There was a tiny sign tied on a tree and
half hidden by the foliage with the inscription, Caledonian Falls. He opened the
trunk and brought out a large heavy blanket and a few pillows as well as a bag
with food. He gave each of us something to carry and we set off on a narrow
footpath leading into the woods. We walked for at least twenty minutes in a forest
of trees and bushes before we heard the sound of the waterfall and then came to
an opening by its side.
The rock face was at least eight to ten meters high with a reasonable,
though not by any means plentiful, amount of water coming crashing down, not in
a smooth flow but breaking up and frothing on ledges protruding from the rock
façade. At the base, a pond had formed the size of a small swimming pool, deep
where the water crashed and shallow right opposite, where the water overflowed
and run downhill in a wide watercourse that narrowed further down the hill. It
was quite spectacular and we stopped and looked at it for a while and then Mr.
Tonna found a clearing a little way off with both sun and shade and a nice view of
the waterfall but where the sound of the booming water was more subdued. He
spread the blanket and pillows and we sat down as comfortably as we could and
he brought out a thermos bottle with steaming coffee and paper cups. Even some
milk to put in my coffee.
“The sandwiches are for later,” he said.
“How thoughtful of you, Emmanuel,” my mother said. “Did Rosita
prepare these?”
“No. I did,” he said with a smile.
“You really are a darling. You have been very sweet to us. Hasn’t he
John?”
“Yes.”
I got up, went to the pool and played with the water. Then I took off my
shoes and waded in. Though the weather was getting warm for it was already
midday, the water was cool and clear and one could see the smooth pebbles at the
bottom. I started collecting flat stones and making them bounce on the surface of
the pool. Mother and Mr. Tonna were chatting and laughing. I was happy they
enjoyed each other’s company because I wanted my mother to be happy. I could
not bear it when she was sad and tense and miserable. My happiness depended on
hers. Completely. It was as if we were one single person. I wet my shorts and
asked her if I could take them off and swim a little in my underpants. She turned to
Mr. Tonna and said, “Why don’t we all go for a swim.”
“In our underwear?”
“Sure. Unless that, too, is a mortal sin.”
She got up and, casually, took off her T-shirt and shorts and came to the
pool in her bra and panties. I saw Mr. Tonna staring at her as if in a dream and I
thought how stupid he was to say one woman was much the same as another. I
wondered what his Rosita was like. Certainly not another Antigone. She would

43
have been here with us if she were. Not left forgotten and neglected in Mgharr.
My mother’s teasing of Mr. Tonna was more than that. It was a witty and gentle
uncovering of his hypocrisy. His ulterior motives were buried in wooly moralistic
homilies that always brought an ironic smile on Antigone’s lips. She came up to
me and taking hold of my hand we plunged into the limpid water. It felt freezing
and we swam vigorously to warm up. Mr. Tonna came, inching his way in, very
gradually, in his boxer underwear minus his glasses. Without his leather shoes
and socks, he looked much better. Apart from his rather thin legs, the rest of his
body was quite nice and sturdy.
“Emmanuel, how different you look without your spectacles,” mother
cried. “Younger and more handsome. I think I might fall in love with you. I might
steal you from Rosita. But on condition you shall not wear glasses.”
“I’m half blind without them.”
“You don’t mean to tell me that you make love to Rosita with them on?”
He laughed.
“Will you stop embarrassing me, Antigone?”
She went close to him and with a powerful push flung him in the water. He
emerged and went for her and they started fighting. There was a lot of shouting
and laughter and a lot of pawing on his part. A golden, disguised, opportunity for
our holier-than-thou moralist. He ducked her in the water and I went to her
rescue. I gripped him from behind and together with Antigone, we nearly drowned
him. He came out gasping for air and said it was not fair two against one.
“We are a team, Johnny and I,” said Antigone. “Nothing can separate us.
So you better be careful.”
I felt so happy.
We played some more games, two against one, and Mr. Tonna was always
the loser. Then we came out of the pond and Mr. Tonna shifted the blanket out of
the shade into the sun and we stretched out to warm up and dry. Our underwear
had become transparent and Mr. Tonna’s eyes cross-eyed. He could not take them
off Antigone’s panties with the black patch of pubic hair, her delectable behind
and the round, brown area of her nipples showing through the bra. There was a
bulge in his boxer shorts. I knew what it was all about. The sun was warm and we
dried up quickly and moved the blanket back to the shade. Mr. Tonna brought out
the food. Cheese and ham sandwiches, a bowl of salad, a bottle of wine and three
large bananas for dessert.
“Oh Emmanuel,” Antigone exclaimed. “Wine, too! How thoughtful. Are
you planning to get me drunk? And those large, suggestive bananas! How very
sweet of you.”
Mr. Tonna smiled.
“Will you stop your innuendos, Antigone,” he said.
“Forgive me, my pure and innocent Emmanuel.”
We polished off our sandwiches in this mode of banter, teasing and laughs
and finished the bottle of wine of which I shared a good part. I was quite dizzy by
the time we finished and lay back on the pillows to relax. It was warm even in the
shade and I dozed off. I woke up sometime later because the sun had shifted and it
shone in my face and found that I was all alone.
I waited for a while and then started descending the gentle gradient
alongside the channel of gushing water overflowing from the pool. The vegetation
of trees and bushes was thick and I was a city boy and did not know their
botanical classification. I was barefoot and descended carefully minding where I

44
stepped. I heard voices and further down at a small clearing, half hidden by the
trees and ferns I saw mother and Mr. Tonna kissing. I hid behind a tree. I wanted
to see what was going on. They were in their underwear and barefoot just as we
were while eating lunch except that mother was without her bra and Mr. Tonna
without his glasses. They were kissing continuously; their lips stuck together, and
caressed each other’s bodies. Mr. Tonna was squeezing her heavy breasts and
bending down to suck her nipples. They did not talk much or say they loved each
other but just moaned now and then and smiled at each other and did not stop
kissing. Then Mr Tonna slid her panties off and mother did the same to him. His
penis was large and brown and stood up. It was much bigger than mine and my
mother held it and moved her hand up and down as I did when I had my own
erections, while he caressed her behind and put his hands between her legs.
My heart was beating hard. I was aroused and confused and could not
figure whether I was upset or happy, jealous or resentful. I was in a state of shock
and could not delineate my emotions. I was just fascinated and curious. My
mother went on her knees and put Mr Tonna’s penis in her mouth and Mr Tonna
made funny faces and closed his eyes and moaned. Then, after a while, he pushed
her away and pulled her by her hand to a low, flat rock where he sat down and
she sat astride on his lap, her legs apart and his penis inside her. Not in her
behind. Of that, I was sure. I was learning a thing or two. She moved up and
down, sideways, backwards and forward and he helped and moved as much as he
could. Her lovely breasts were bobbing freely and he held them, licked them and
sucked them repeatedly. She started moaning as well and I realized that it was not
from pain but extreme pleasure. They kept up this movement for quite some time
and she let out many little screams like those in the car. Then he told her to get off
because he was coming. I did not understand where he was coming from but my
mother rose and held him again and started moving his penis violently up and
down and he was almost yelling in agony and then he spurted a liquid and by and
by he calmed down and his penis wilted. They embraced and kissed a little. Gently
and tenderly this time and started putting on their underwear.
“That was nice Emmanuel,” my mother said.
“Oh yes. Oh God, you are fantastic.”
“So are you, Emmanuel, I must say. Rosita is a lucky girl. I wonder if she
already knows it.”
He smiled.
“I know I shall never get a straight answer from you. What with your
mortal sins and all.”
He kissed her on her mouth and caressed her hair.
“The wine helped, though,” she said. “It kept us going. I had so many
orgasms.”
“Yes, I felt it. I am so happy for you.”
“Next time bring some condoms you silly man. Didn’t you feel it in the air
that something was bound to happen?”
“It was too much to hope for. I could not imagine. Antigone, I am falling
in love with you.”
“Please, leave love out of this. Keep your love for Rosita.”
“But it is you I love.”
“Nonsense. One woman is much the same as another.”
“My God, why did I have to open my big mouth?”
“Because even little hypocrites make mistakes.”

45
 I left my hiding place and hurriedly went back to our blanket and
pretended to sleep. They returned silently, stretched on the blanket, motionless for
a while and then dozed off. I looked at Antigone. She was so relaxed and peaceful.
So was this love? This violent half-hour of fusion of two human beings? Of trying
to know and feel and enter each other’s body? With tongues and hands and
genitals? It was an exciting and staggering experience. Even to just watch it. How
strange, I thought, that this same act could be so revolting for Antigone in one
instance, as it was with my father, and so completely gratifying in another, with
Mr. Tonna.
They woke up half an hour later and we finished the rest of the coffee in
the thermos, got dressed, collected our things and walked to the car. Mr. Tonna
constantly looked at Antigone with knowing, conspiring glances, which she
ignored. She did not want the cloying aftermath, which would lead nowhere.
Which would tire and complicate their relationship with useless verbiage. At the
end of the day, each would be going his own way. They had just experienced
something wonderful, physical and ephemeral that should be enjoyed while it
lasted. No more, no less.
The drive back was more subdued and silent and when we got out of the
car in Mgharr, Antigone just said, “Good bye, Emmanuel. Thank you for the
lovely picnic. We’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”
I also said, “Thank you Mr. Tonna,” and he just mumbled something and
looked perplexed. I suppose he expected more elaborate farewells but Antigone
was putting this affair in the perspective she wanted. She put her hand over my
shoulder as we walked to the hotel. She was still a little taller than I was and it
was a warm and comfortable gesture. I kept thinking of her lovemaking with Mr
Tonna. I was just beginning to realize that this was something that human beings
had to do, need to do, because I, too, needed to see a naked woman and touch and
cuddle in her embrace. In my case, just now, it was my lovely mother but later it
would be another girl, another woman, a wife. I was getting erections more and
more often and derived pleasure in stroking my penis and in my mother’s
manipulations during my baths. This sensuality, the need for physical contact was
becoming clear and obvious. The only thing that did not seem right was that my
mother was intruding in another woman’s life. Rosita’s. Mr. Tonna was a double-
crosser and mother was abetting him if not egging him on. She was doing the
thing she resented when it was done to her. But there were so many things I did
not understand in life. And I figured they would clear up eventually.
“Did you enjoy the picnic, John?” she asked.
“Yes, it was fun.”
“That was a lovely swim in the pond. The water was so cool and fresh. We
really thrashed poor Emmanuel.”
I laughed.
“He had it coming,” I said.
“Heavens, I feel exhausted. I am looking forward to a shower and a rest.”
I showered first, she shampooed my hair and soaped my body and I had an
erection when she washed my genitals. She smiled and said,
“We are growing up, aren’t we?”
It would not subside even when she was drying my hair and combed it. I
lay in bed in my underwear and heard the water running in the shower. The door
left open as usual. I was thinking of their lovemaking. I could not get it out of my

46
mind. I got up and went to the bathroom. My heart was beating. She was naked,
soaping her body.
“Do you want something, John?” she asked.
“No. I just wanted to look at you.”
“Oh, okay.”
I stayed and watched her until she finished and then dried herself with a
towel. She put on her panties and her light nightdress on top.
“Come, let us rest a while,” she said.
We lay in bed and she promptly went to sleep. She slept facing me and I
kept looking at her. Her breathing was regular and peaceful and she was very
beautiful. I could not sleep. Too many things troubled my mind that day.
The romance continued, nevertheless. Perhaps romance is not the right
word, for Antigone tried to eliminate all sentimentality from this affair. Yes, affair
is a more appropriate term. She tried to keep it purely physical whereas Mr.
Tonna was pining. Quite a reversal of roles. Of the masculine and the feminine!
We kept up our afternoon visits to his shop and Antigone kept up her usual playful
teasing. Asking after Rosita. Expressing a desire to meet her. Ridiculing his
melancholy glances and lovelorn declarations. Threatening to stop seeing him
since the affair seemed to bring him more sadness than happiness and generally
trying to keep a note of casualness and transience. As the time of our departure
approached, Mr. Tonna grew more distressed and Antigone would lose her
patience.
“Oh, grow up Emmanuel. What do you expect? That I stay here in Mgharr
with John? You have your Rosita. In a week, after we’re gone, I shall be a
memory.”
By that time, she no longer pretended with me that there was nothing
between them. On several occasions, she told me, “That silly man Emmanuel is in
love with me,” and I worried over the implications but she would add, “I am
getting a little tired of his moaning and groaning,” and that would reassure me.
She started going out late at night with him once or twice a week. I
suppose, when he could get away from Rosita and I stayed up waiting for her. The
first time was a few days after our picnic at the Caledonian Falls. She told me she
was going out for a walk.
“Can I come with you?” I asked.
“No baby, I want to go alone. I need to think.”
When she returned a couple of hours later, she took a shower before
coming to bed. I was certain she had seen Mr. Tonna. She was always very tender
with me after these outings. She embraced me and kissed me and told me I did not
have to stay awake waiting for her. It was the tenderness of a sexually satisfied
woman after the act. I was the recipient of the post coital tenderness for the lover
who was not there. I was the substitute and those late night caresses never failed
to arouse in me not only the deepest feelings of love and dependence on her but
also an indefinable sexual longing.
There were two more Sunday picnics after that first one. The second was a
drive across Gozo to Ramla Bay and a swim in the sea. The beach was fine, wide,
and sandy, quite a change from our rocky coastline in Mgharr. Mr. Tonna
brought along a parasol and the usual lunch and we stayed until the early
afternoon. The third Sunday picnic was again at the Caledonian Falls.
On the fourth Sunday, we were in Valletta boarding the ship for Port Said.
It was sweet sorrow, yes, undoubtedly more of it for my mother, but not too much

47
for me. I was eager to return home to our city and my friends though
apprehensive about our meeting and renewed cohabitation with father. I also
knew I would be separated from Antigone. The manner we had been living
together in Mgharr could not go on. The companionship and intimacy. The
closeness and dependence on one another. The understanding that did not need
words and language. The secrets that were sealed and secure in our two minds.
For in the end there were none between us but between us and the world. I, too,
was almost losing a lover.
The third picnic was much the same as the first. The good humor was
there. The hopeless driving of Mr Tonna, as well, and Antigone’s little frights and
screams. Her constant, witty, faultfinding of Mr. Tonna and his amused and
sometimes guilty laughs. The absent Rosita ever present. A sense of expectation
also from all sides. For things were bound to happen. This, all three of us knew.
But the two lovers did not know that I, too, was in a state of heightened
expectation.
I had confused and ambivalent emotions. My mother was mine but I felt
neither exclusive possessiveness nor blatant feelings of jealousy. I felt she had a
right to this strange human act of love that I had only very recently become aware
of. I came to that conclusion after heart-rending thought and soul searching of my
limited and inexperienced thirteen-year-old intellect. I could not fill that part of
her life however much I might have wanted to. My father had abandoned her
because he held her responsible for his failure in life and for other reasons I
could not fathom. She had a right to look for love elsewhere and she found a
temporary partner, borrowed for a month from a mysterious Rosita, here in
Mgharr. The gentle, provincial, religiously indoctrinated, innocently hypocritical
but vigorous Mr Tonna.
We drank our coffee in the shade of the trees and the sound of the
waterfall with talk of Malta and Gozo. I had finished my book on Malta and we
had many laughs when Mr. Tonna tried to teach us Malti and decipher the funny
spelling of the towns and cities of Malta. He talked of their old-world values, of
tightly knit families, their strong attachment to Catholicism and respect for the
elders. Of traditions, village festas, and siestas in the afternoon. It was his world
and he knew it well. A world not for us, not for Antigone. A month in it was
enough. It would have been far too long without Mr. Tonna. Antigone looked at
him and smiled. It was the first time I heard her say something sweet to him in my
presence.
“Emmanuel,” she said, “we were really very lucky to meet you in
Mgharr.”
He looked away, got up and walked towards the pool. He stared for some
time at the waterfall.
“Last month it was double the volume of water,” he told us. “Next month
it will be a trickle. Just a few tears. For you will not be here.”
Antigone ignored the sentimentality.
“Aha, so you were here last month with Rosita,” she said laughing. “Will
you stop being corny and hypocritical.”
He smiled.
“And this month I was with you,” he said.
“Much the same thing according to your theory.”
He pretended to pull his hair in despair.
“Come on you guys, let us swim,” he shouted.

48
 We had our cool swim and if anything, the laughs, the fighting and the
screams were louder and more violent than before. It was again two-against-one.
The alliance was indestructible and Mr. Tonna no match for it. Then, sunbathing
and drying our transparent underwear. Antigone was tanned by now and beautiful
and radiated an intense femininity. Mr. Tonna and I could not take our eyes off
her. She knew it and kept smiling at us; now at the one, now at the other. How
different she was from the harried dressmaker and repressed housewife of Port
Said. The transformation was extraordinary. Yet in two weeks, we would be back
picking up our dreary routine and fitting ourselves in our old molds and
situations.
Lunch was again sandwiches and salad, courtesy of Mr. Tonna and a
bottle of wine. I feigned sleepiness when we finished and looked for a pillow for
my head. I noticed an extra blanket thrown casually on the side. I lay down on our
blanket and closed my eyes. Antigone and Mr. Tonna kept talking for some time
but I could not make out what they were saying. Then they tiptoed off taking with
them the blanket and something from his bag. I waited a while and followed them
cautiously and quietly down along the waterway and as I came close to the same
clearing, I heard their voices. I hid behind the same tree and saw they had spread
the blanket on the ground and were sitting on it. Antigone with her legs stretched
in front of her and Mr. Tonna to her side. His legs were apart and she was
between them, one leg behind her back, the other over her lap. They were close
and they were kissing. They had taken off their clothes and he caressed her
beautiful breasts and held her nipples while she held his penis and moved her
hand slowly up and down.
More than anything, I loved their kissing. I could tell it was full of emotion
and this immoderate desire called passion. I could tell from the moaning. I could
tell from the way one kiss ended and their eagerness and thrust for the next. I
could tell from the fleeting smiles, the closed eyes, the soldered open mouths
where one tongue interlaced with her lover, explored the other’s mouth and
desperately reached down the throat searching for the heart, where their saliva
was exchanged and intoxicated them more than the finest champagne, the most
potent drug. My face was scarlet; my heart was beating fast, as if it was I that was
making love to my lovely Antigone. I had an erection. My hand that was stroking
it was her hand.
“I love you, Antigone,” he said.
“Yes my darling,” she answered.
I imagined she was talking to me. That I was her darling. For I loved her,
too. More than Mr. Tonna. She stopped and pushed him to lie supine on the
blanket and put his penis in her mouth. Her head moved slowly up and down and
her hand, lips and tongue worked him up to the verge of an orgasm and stopped.
Then she lay on her back and he, bent, on his knees, between her open legs
prayed, in the eastern fashion, to that feminine opening into her body, the passage
of love, the giver of life, the way to her soul, and kissed and licked and tasted the
ultimate intimacy. My head and heart were reeling, about to explode. I was
learning from my own mother the wondrous ways of love. I was learning about
love, with love. Because all what my mother did was love, was done with love,
was the epitome of love. He moved over her.
“The condoms, Emmanuel,” she said.
He opened a small packet lying at the edge of the blanket together with his
glasses. He extracted and put one on. He came over her again, between her legs,

49
and slid his penis inside her. The mystery had cleared completely. She uttered a
moan of fulfillment, of completeness, of happiness as he started moving inside her.
She reciprocated with her moves and her cries, her smiles and bites and scratches
and thrashing. She reciprocated with her passion and her pleasure and tenderness
and love and I felt she was doing it for me. As if she was teaching me what love is,
how it is done, the pleasure it gives. She was teaching me not to be afraid to give
myself and to take what I wanted. To be generous and honest and passionate. She
was teaching me that life is short and must not be wasted. Oh, my Antigone, you
deserved better than that. Better than the short, painful life you had.
They reached an orgasm and collapsed exhausted. He came out of her and
removed the condom. He caressed her and kissed her tenderly. He told her he
loved her. She told him he was a wonderful lover. He put his hand in the moist,
soft nest between her legs and she held the implement that gave her so much
pleasure. They dozed for five minutes. I could not bring myself to go. She started
kissing him again. Putting his reviving penis in her mouth. Telling him to hurry up
because John might wake up and look for them. Fitting him with a condom and
straddling him when he was ready. An Amazon on her steed. Showing me another
variation. Taking the initiative, setting the pace, improvising the movements,
searching at a gallop for her pleasure. Telling him, disjointedly, in gasps,
“I shall miss you Emmanuel. I shall miss the lascivious yearning you
aroused in me, the feeling of your penis inside me. And the fun and the laughs, of
course, but this mortal sin most of all. How does it feel to be a candidate for the
eternal fires of hell?”
He laughed.
She bounced up and down, from one orgasm to the next, one little scream
to the next, kissing him, sucking on his tongue, biting his ear. Faster and faster
until she crumpled in perfect timing with his orgasm. I knew there would be no
third and retreated carefully back to our base. They arrived ten minutes later
looking droll in their underwear. I was sitting up.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“We walked a little way down by the stream to see where it would lead,”
said Antigone with a smile. She looked tired and beautiful. Her face drawn but
peaceful. Her eyes slightly puffed as if she had just woken up with a barely
perceptible shade of blue beneath. I smiled at her. I felt for her a vast tenderness.
I felt her happiness and I made a thoughtless little comment.
“Does it lead to happiness?” I asked.
She looked at me sharply. Then she smiled.
“Yes. Sometimes. When you find something you do not expect.”
“What?”
“Peace.”
She was silent. I expected her to elaborate but she just looked at me and
smiled.
“You did not sleep then?” I asked her.
“No. I think we shall rest for a while. We are both tired. We walked quite
a long way down.”
Mr. Tonna looked embarrassed. He avoided my eyes. I was not interested
in him. He was an extra in our lives. Like the anonymous extras needed to make a
film. That is why, perhaps, I did not feel antagonistic towards him. Antigone
picked up two pillows and placed them on the blanket. She stretched on it and
motioned to Mr. Tonna to do the same. They were soon asleep and Mr. Tonna

50
started snoring. It must have been about four and it was still very warm. I went to
the pool and dived in. The cool water braced me up. It slowed my racing thoughts,
the images of a naked Antigone making love. Of her ecstasies and cries and
abandon. Of her vitality and her passion. I swam round and round the pool and
dived underwater to see if there were any fish. Then I came out and sat on a rock
in the sun to dry. The sun and the warmth made me sleepy but there was no space
for me on the blanket and I just walked around on my bare feet and played with
some sticks and the water. They woke up after a while and we had some coffee
and returned to Mgharr.
A cool goodbye to Mr. Tonna and a slow walk hand in hand to the hotel. I
wondered if the matter-of-factness she displayed towards him was genuine. Did
she not love him? Was physical gratification all she wanted from Mr. Tonna? Did
the sexual intimacy between them not tie them with stronger bonds? It obviously
tied him but she seemed much more detached. Was the tenderness she showed me
after having sex, not meant for him?
At the hotel, she kissed me and told me to get in the shower. As I was
undressing, she started undressing too. I went in the shower, opened the water
and waited and she came in and joined me with a smile. I caught my breath and
my heart started pounding for she was naked. After the time I watched her take
her bath she took no precautions to hide her nudity from me but this close
proximity was another thing. She shampooed my hair and started soaping my
body. I had an erection from the first moment and when she held and washed my
penis and testicles I had my hands on her shoulders to steady myself for I was
shaky and overwhelmed with emotion and could not take my breath. She put me
under the spray of water and as the soap was washing off, she held my penis.
“Little John is growing up,” she said smiling. “My baby is growing up.
What are we going to do with this?”
She pushed me gently out of the shower.
“Okay, dry yourself now and get dressed. You must start taking showers
on your own. You are not a baby anymore.”
I went to bed and when she finished her shower she joined me and we slept
for a couple of hours and then went down and walked to our usual restaurant for
dinner. Before going back to the hotel we walked to the port, arm in arm, for a
breath of fresh air and in order to buy a couple of magazines. It was nearing
midnight. The weather had cooled and the crowds were thinning. The meal and
the wine put us in a good mood. We were so comfortable with one another. We
were a team. We did not even have to talk. There was no uneasiness in our
silences and I knew that my emotional dependence on her was not one-sided.
Despite my age, I was as much a support and a source of strength in her life as
she was in mine.
We read for a while in bed and when she closed the light, we could not go
to sleep. We tossed and turned from side to side for some time and then I moved
close to her and cuddled in her embrace where I was always welcome. We were
silent. Perhaps we were thinking of the same thing. This last, unforgettable
Sunday at the Caledonian Falls. Unforgettable to each for a different reason. For
both, it signaled the approaching end of an unexpected, enchanted holiday. I
could not begin to suppose or conceive Antigone’s inner thoughts and feelings.
But for me, it was the loss of innocence and the new awareness of carnal love. The
miracle was that with this new understanding came a sense of tolerance and,

51
strangely, a more intense and intimate binding with my mother. My mother, my
teacher, and my love.
Four more days to go and then, goodbye Mgharr. Goodbye Mr. Tonna.
Goodbye carefree days, easygoing, merry afternoons and tender embraces at
night. All good things have an end, just as all the bad ones do. In our lives, we
shall be perpetually crossing from one to the other and back again. It is the fate of
the human race.
“What did you mean when you asked if the stream led to happiness?” my
mother suddenly said.
I was startled.
“I don’t know. I suppose I said it because you were with Mr Tonna.”
“And?”
“Well, you told me Mr Tonna is in love with you and I thought perhaps he
kissed you and you were happy.”
She laughed and she kissed me and put her hand on my nose.
“It is growing,” she said, my little Pinocchio. “Try again, baby. Did you
think you could fool your mother?”
“Well, you said you found something you did not expect. You found
peace.”
“And?”
“And I suppose one finds peace when one is happy.”
She laughed again.
“I have a budding philosopher for a son,” she said, “and I thought you
could not add two plus two.”
“Two plus two makes four. And I know much more than that. I know that
four and four makes eight,” I said laughing.
“I guessed so. I know you know much more.”
My silly jokes were giving me away.
“I mean, since you were happy and at peace, Mr Tonna must have kissed
you. And since you were happy and at peace, you must have enjoyed it because
you must love him, after all, though you pretend you don’t.”
“Very good, John. Go on. Tell me how much is eight plus eight?”
I was getting cautious.
“I don’t know, mother. I only know four plus four.”
She held my nose again.
“Oops,” she said, “there it goes. It grew another centimeter. You sly little
boy, I am sure you know that eight plus eight is sixteen and that, even, maybe,
sixteen plus sixteen is thirty-two.”
“No, I don’t know. I thought eight plus eight is eighty-eight.”
I felt she was annoyed. She disengaged herself and turned her back to me.
“Oh, okay. Better go to sleep now, John,” she said.
“But I am not sleepy.”
“Then don’t talk to me.”
“Are you angry?”
“I cannot bear the dialogue of the deaf. I cannot bear having my son lie to
me.”
I moved up to her and hugged her from behind. I kissed her shoulder and
neck.
“I love you, mother.”
“I love you, too, baby”.

52
 “There are some things I cannot tell.”
“This I can understand. I cannot bear the thought that you are trying to
fool me.”
“I’ m sorry.”
“It’s all right. Just remember that.”
She turned around and we embraced again. I kissed her and held her
tightly in my arms and she caressed my hair. I loved her smell, her warmth, the
softness of her breast, the feel of her body touching mine. I could not bear her to
be angry with me. I was only playing a game. I did not intend to lie to her. We had
no one else but each other. We were silent for some time. Warm and tender and
comfortable in the darkness.
“Is it so terrible this thing you cannot tell?” she said after a while.
“I don’t know, mother.”
We were silent again. Her hand played with my ear and then her finger
traced the features of my face. Forehead, nose, lips. She was thinking.
“Is my nose still big?” I asked.
She laughed.
“No baby, it’s back to normal.”
Over and over, her hand went roaming on my face. It was nice. It was a
strange sensation. As if a question had not been cleared and was being repeated.
“Is it about Emmanuel?” she said finally.
“Why do you want to know so badly?”
“Because if anything is worrying you I want to straighten it out. Do we
have any secrets between us?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes you keep things from me, too.”
“Do I?”
“Like the times you told me you went out for a walk at night. I knew you
were seeing Mr. Tonna.”
“I did not want to worry you.”
“I did not worry, mother, but I had to figure things out for myself and I
was confused for a while about you and Mr. Tonna and me and father.”
“Oh dear, I did not realize it. I am sorry. I have been very insensitive. I
did not realize how grown up and mature you have become. You really surprise
me, baby.”
“It doesn’t matter. We have had a wonderful holiday.”
“Yes, and it is almost over.”
“I shall miss you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I shall miss being with you all the time. I shall miss sleeping with you.”
“I shall, too, my baby.”
She kissed me and we were silent for a while. Our conversation
intermittently suspended into tender silences. I thought she was dropping off to
sleep but she started outlining my face with her finger again. I was not sleepy and
I enjoyed this strange caress. It was one more link to the thousands that tied us
together. I knew our dialogue would continue. Darkness was conducive to
intimacy and confidences. Her embrace and warmth were melting my reserve.
Her breast was my confessional.
“Do you want to talk, baby, or are you sleepy?” she asked after a while.
“I am not sleepy.”
“Neither am I.”

53
 “What shall we talk about?”
“About you, about me, about Emmanuel. About what you think of this
whole affair. I was worried how you would take it.”
“Do you think you will ever make up with father?”
“No, baby. It’s too far gone.”
“Yes. He has not been good with you. He is not a good husband or a good
father. So it was all right, this friendship with Mr. Tonna. A person needs a
companion. We never talked about men and women but now I understand how our
body works and how men and women love one another. I see it with myself. When
I first heard about sex at school, I was so shocked. I did not believe what they told
me. I was muddled by the dirty jokes and swearwords and I could not figure out
how things worked.”
“When we go back to Port Said I shall give you a book I have that
explains everything about sex in a nice simple way. And if there’s anything you
want to know, ask me.”
“I cannot ask these questions.”
“Why not?”
“I am embarrassed.”
“There is nothing wrong with sex. It is an everyday part of our lives. Like
eating and breathing and urinating. Certain restraints in our sexual behavior are
necessary for the functioning of society but this exaggerated inhibition on the
subject is perverse and hypocritical. It is mainly due to our religious
indoctrination. All religions try to curb our sexual drives and instill a sense of sin
in our minds the better to dominate us. That’s why I kept teasing Emmanuel. He
was the perfect example.”
“Yes. He was engaged to Rosita and he kept running after you.”
She laughed.
“You did not miss that, did you?”
“He is a double crosser. Like father.”
“I suppose he is. And I suppose it is not very nice of me to encourage him.
But I thought it was his responsibility, not mine. And sometimes I doubted her
existence. Not once did he offer to introduce her to us. Not once did she come to
his shop. How did he justify his absences to her? Three Sundays in a row. Do you
think there is a Rosita?”
“How do I know? Why would he lie?”
“To make himself interesting. A man who has a woman is more intriguing
than a man with no relationships. A ladies’ man is more fascinating than a timid
one.”
“I didn’t know that.”
She laughed.
“You are not a woman.”
“Do you love him?”
“Love, baby, is so complicated. There are so many kinds, so many shades
of love. Sometimes, you may think you are in love because you see a man often,
you are comfortable with him and habit and companionship create a need to see
him and be with him. Sometimes sex has the same effect. But, no, I am not in love
with Emmanuel though I like him and I enjoy his company. He is like a child.
Simple-minded and good-natured. He must be, to put up with so much teasing.
And he has been very nice to us.”

54
 “Yes, he has been nice. Because of you, of course. Because even if you do
not love him, you do go out with him at night.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked sharply.
I felt her irritation. Perhaps she thought I was reproaching her. Her left
hand was resting on my chest. I picked it up and kissed it.
“I am sleepy, mother. Shall we go to sleep?”
She laughed and touched my nose with her fingers.
“It is growing again, she said.”
“Yes, but when I tell you something you get annoyed. You have been going
out with him at night, haven’t you? And you kiss and make love with him.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know. I just suppose you do.”
“Please don’t lie to me, baby.”
“I know because both the last time and today at the Caledonian Falls I
saw you make love to Mr Tonna. I crept behind you and watched you.”
It came out, finally, unexpectedly, almost surprising me. She was silent
and I was afraid she might slap me or shout at me or start crying hysterically. I
was afraid she might be very angry with me but she was very still for a moment
and then she squeezed me tightly and kissed me.
“Oh my baby,” she said, “you have been carrying this burden all this
time? You should not have followed us, of course, but I do not blame you for being
curious. It is normal at your age to want to know about sex. I hope you were not
hurt or upset. You must look at it as a joyful and natural act. It is a human need,
my darling, this joining of man and woman. There is nothing bad or shameful
about it.”
“I thought about these things, mother, and I have cleared them in my
mind. Like you, I am now at peace.”
“I am proud of you, baby.”
“Except for one thing. Can I ask you something difficult?”
“You can ask me whatever you want.”
“Can a son make love to his mother? I mean, not now. When I grow up a
little?”
She was silent again. She caressed my hair and her finger traced a line
from my forehead down my nose and around my lips. Round and round. My heart
was pounding and my face was feverish.
“Do you want to, baby?”
It was getting very late. The atmosphere was intimate and our embrace
and caresses almost erotic. We had been baring our souls. She had made love that
day and the naturalness of the act, her happiness and satiety, as always, brought
out an extra gushing of affection for me and removed her inhibitions. The
darkness and the closeness of her body gave me courage. It was as if we were in
another world. A hallucinatory world of dreams and fantasies. I was telling her
things I would have never dared in other circumstances.
“Yes, because I love you, mother. Much more than Mr. Tonna. Because
when I see you naked, my penis grows and gets hard and stands up and I want to
kiss you and touch you and I want you to do to me what you did to Mr Tonna.”
“Oh my baby, I love you too. But it is not done. I suppose it does happen
sometimes but it is so taboo and reviled by society that one rarely hears of such
things.”

55
 I squeezed her tightly and kissed her on the lips. I did, what she said was
not done. What was supposed to be terribly wrong.
“I am sorry,” I said.
“No, don’t be.”
“Is it repulsive for you?”
“No, baby.”
I took her hand and placed it on my penis. She held it over my underpants
and squeezed it. I pulled them down and she let go to enable me to take them off
and then held me again and started moving her hand up and down. The sensation
was overwhelming. So were my love and gratitude. My happiness. Almost my
disbelief at what was happening.
“I love you, mother, you are my sweetheart,” I told her.
She was silent and kept on her movements, her caresses, her subtle
variations, and I kissed her again and again. The voluptuousness was building up.
I fondled her body and put my hand on her breast. I felt her nipple over the
nightdress and when I moved to the other, she turned a little to give me access.
The feeling on my penis became unbearable and heavenly. It reached a crescendo
and stayed there, on and on. I pulled her nightdress down over her shoulder and
clasped her firm, full breasts and nipples in the flesh. She followed my pace and
increased her rhythm as my rapture built up until I could not take my breath, until
for eternal seconds I thought my penis would explode and then, with a cry from
the depths of my soul, it started pulsing in the throes of my first orgasm. No sperm
came out that first time. Just the spasms of a heavenly climax, a heavenly release
in the hands, literally and metaphorically, of my darling Antigone. I calmed down
and she kissed me softly and asked me if I was happy and I could not start to
express my bliss and gratitude to her. I just told her I loved her and adored her
and that even those words could not describe my feelings.
“Now go to sleep, baby,” she said.
We slept in each other’s arms.
For the next four days, our routine was unchanged. Swimming in the
morning, a snack for lunch, back to the palace for a shower and nap and Mr.
Tonna’s shop in the afternoon for coffee and lemonade and endless chatting for
Antigone and Mr. Tonna. Dinner for the two of us when he closed the shop; a
long, lazy stroll around the port and back to the hotel. During those last days in
Mgharr, Antigone went out every night and I would wait for her to return. She
would return in the early hours, happy and smiling, and scold me for staying up
so late. I would tell her I was waiting for my sweetheart and she would laugh. I
would not ask where she had been and she would not mention Mr. Tonna.
She would undress casually, go to the shower and I would follow and
watch her with a quickening heartbeat. Her body has engraved an indelible
standard of female beauty and sensuality in my mind. Her full, slightly sagging
breasts, her barely protruding tummy, her tight, well shaped behind and slender
legs were perhaps not the ideal female shape but they formed my criteria of
assessment of female attractiveness for the rest of my life. I wanted to go to her,
touch her, and fondle every part of that lush, breathtaking body. I wanted to see
the hidden, secret part of her beneath her pubic hair, between her legs but I
suppressed the longing for fear I would upset her, revolt her, and cause her to
stop the wonderful, sensual pleasure she gave me. I was afraid to bring caution
and vigilance to our love. We were treading uncharted territory and I did not
know its limits. She would dry herself, throw on her nightdress and we would go

56
to bed. In the darkness, I would remove my underwear and, naked, slide into her
embrace. Her hand would reach for my aroused penis.
This all too short visit to a paradise of rapture and love would end with a
question.
“Was it nice, my darling? Are you happy?”
On Saturday, we packed our belongings and went to the port for the ferry
to Valletta. She asked Mr. Tonna not to come to see us off. It would be better this
way. She came in later than usual on the previous night and was quiet and
thoughtful. I tried to be gay and she smiled at my jokes. I was feeling depressed as
well. I, too, would be losing something precious. The exclusive possession of my
mother. Our total interdependence. Apart from Mr. Tonna, that is. But Mr. Tonna
did not count. He was a temporary chance encounter with no past and no future.
In Port Said, centrifugal forces would drive us apart and wither our intimacy.
Father, her atelier, her clients, the responsibility of earning our living, of keeping
our house, of shopping and cooking our food. School, studies and friends on my
side. Oh, she would be there, my Antigone, and I would love her as dearly but
would we lie again in bed, in the darkness, alone, together? Would she preserve
the beauty and allure and lightheartedness she had acquired in Mgharr?
Mr. Tonna was waiting at the port.
“I told you not to come, Emmanuel,” said my mother.
“How could I possibly not come?”
“Over and above everything else I have accused you of, this past month, I
see you are also a masochist,” she said with a laugh. “Out for a little extra pain
you could have spared yourself and us. But since you are here, help us with our
bags.”
Half an hour later, we were bidding farewell to a pale and drawn Mr.
Tonna. I thanked him for everything and Antigone did the same with cool kiss on
the cheek.
“All my best wishes, Emmanuel. Say good bye to your Rosita and send us
a wedding invitation,” she said with a smile but her eyes were glazed.
In Valletta, we did not go to my father’s brother Sebastian. We stayed at a
small hotel near the Grand Harbor. We walked about the town after we settled in
the hotel and lunched with a snack at a stall in the busy and crowded City Gate.
Back at the hotel, we had a rest and later in the afternoon, we lost ourselves in the
crowds of Kingsway, later renamed Triq il-Republikka or Republic Street. We
walked silently arm in arm looking at the shops and the many fine buildings,
drawing comfort from each other. We stopped for a coffee and a soft drink in one
of the cafeterias at a small square with a statue of Queen Victoria and when it got
dark, we had dinner in a small restaurant. Antigone ordered a bottle of wine,
which eased our depression a little and we talked of Gozo and our forthcoming
return to Port Said. It would be a more or less normal homecoming for me but I
wondered what was in store for my darling mother. We slept early that night and
though there were two twin beds in our room, my mother asked me to sleep with
her. It was a tight fit but we both needed the body contact, the tenderness, the
comfort, the love that each provided to the other.
We boarded the tiny Lucinda at ten the next day and it set sail at noon. We
arrived in Port Said the following day, on Monday afternoon. We were on deck
with mother as it entered the harbor. The sun was setting and the morning activity
had come to a standstill. Huge liners and freighters were anchored for next day’s
crossing of the Canal. Seeing Port Said and its familiar landmarks lifted my

57
depression and a sense of excitement gripped me. Mother was silent. She had
been uncommunicative throughout the voyage. She leaned on the gunwale for
hours staring at the sea. I pointed the familiar sights to her and she smiled. She
did not share my excitement. She had escaped her impasse for a month and was
now returning to it. Perhaps she was wondering why her life had gone so wrong.
If there was a way out. A launch came to pick us up and a smiling father was
waiting for us at the port terminal. We sailed through customs due to his
connections and took a horse-drawn carriage to our home. He was in the best of
humor.
“I missed you both,” he said. “You look wonderful. Tanned and rested.
Antigone you look ten years younger and John has grown at least two or three
centimeters. Quite a young man. Did you miss me?”
“Of course we did, father,” I answered.
Mother and I looked at each other.
At that moment, I thought that perhaps things would change in our
household but the honeymoon lasted all of one week and the bickering and his
absences and surliness started anew. We were back where we left off.
When the glass cracks, it cannot weld together again.

A story by John Zimit

Athens 18 September 1998

I do not know if what I wrote is wholly true. Mother planted doubts in my

mind but these memories keep haunting me and making me dream. They are so
vivid and tender and exciting, even now after so many years, even now that I have
lost her but not forgotten her. They say a person does not die if one keeps his
memory alive. She will forever be with me. Alive, as long as I live.
I have reconstructed much of the dialogue but it is true to the general
atmosphere that pervaded that magic month in Mgharr. The freedom and
happiness, the light-hearted jocularity, the excitement of my sexual awakening
and mother‟s uninhibited, though many sad and uncharitable souls would call it
shameless, attitude towards Mr. Tonna and me.

58
 Port Said – the final years

The English left as suddenly as they came. Army trucks piled with soldiers
went by beneath our balcony, on the way to the harbor. The soldiers singing, It’s a
long way to Tipperary, It’s a long way to go… Some songs never die. They keep
on reviving and bring on goose pimples even at the twilight of the Empire.
Besides seeing them on the streets of Port Said, I remember the newsreels of their
departure I later saw at the cinema. Smartly, the red- faced little soldiers embarked
the troopships in formation with a military band playing Brittania Rule the Waves
with the handsome, straight-as-ramrod British officers looking on. A glorious era
ending with Anthony Eden and Guy Mollet drawing the curtain so shamefully.
Brittania ruled no more. The ends of eras always so much more evident and
poignant than the beginning of new ones.
For the Egyptians, the military defeat turned out to be a major political
victory. Gamal Abdel Nasser‟s prestige shot up to the stratosphere. He was the
unchallenged leader of all the Arabs. From that high point until his death it was a
sad slide downhill of mistakes, mismanagement, nepotism and corruption that
tarnished an image which could have been unique. In Port Said, the situation was
returning to normal. Not as it had been. The turmoil of the aggression was bound
to change many things. Especially in our city which was distinctive in so many
ways. So different from the other Egyptian cities. Most of the foreigners left. All
the French employees of the Suez Canal Company and the foreign captains that
piloted the liners through it. For most, life picked up where it had left off, for
others considerable adjustments had to be made.
Father had left us but our feelings were more of relief than pain. It
reminded me of his departure from Mgharr years ago. I was alone with my
beloved Antigone but our newfound domestic peace was marred by new financial
worries. Most of her clients, the large majority of which were from the foreign
communities, had departed during and just after the war and she suddenly found
herself with practically no work. It would take a long time to cultivate a new
clientele and meanwhile we were eating into her meager savings. She was
depressed and worried most of the time and her moods affected mine. I started
thinking of finding a job but the prospects and the pay were so pitiful I could not
decide on anything concrete. One of the few Italians that stayed on in Port Said
was Bippo. I met him now and then by chance in the street.
One day he invited me for a meal at a restaurant and I asked him why he
had not left Port Said with the rest of the Italians. He said his parents were too old
to move to Italy and live for months and months in refugee camps and what would
he do there himself. He was making good money here and though the war
disrupted his business for its duration, he was in the process of reorganizing it
again. I told him of our financial straits and precarious prospects and asked him if
he could use me in his business, whatever it may be.
“Do you know what I do for a living?” he asked.
“Not really, but I have heard rumors that you deal in contraband
cigarettes.”
“So you know that what I do is illegal.”
“Yes.”
“And you are willing to do work in something that is dangerous and could
land you in jail?”

59
 “Yes.”
“Yes? Just like that?”
“Well, I presume the pay is good. That it is the compensation for the
danger. Anyway, I cannot find any other job. We need the money desperately and
I am willing to take the risk.”
“As I told you I am setting the operation up again and am getting in touch
with my old contacts. Not only my suppliers but also the people in the police that
get a cut to protect me. I need a right-hand man and I would rather have you than
anyone else but there are some things you must know. First, you shall have to quit
your college. Two, you have to be fit and strong. You will need to body build and
when the weather softens next month to start swimming regularly to build up your
stamina. Three, in this business we keep our mouths sealed. Do you know what
the omerta means?”
“I think so. It is the vow of silence.”
“Exactly. If ever you are caught, you do not squeal. I shall do all in my
power to get you out but ostensibly, you are on your own. How does that sound?”
“Fair enough.”
We shook hands and I met Bippo on a number of other occasions where he
explained in detail the way he operated. He said that up till now he, alone, did the
most dangerous work, which was to bring ashore the merchandise. He had to go to
the ships in the dead of the night, in a small rowing boat. He had certain police
sentry posts that would let him through and there he would arrange to load it in a
pickup truck. Initially I would have to help him until I got the hang of it and later,
if need be, do the unloading alone. That was not all, he said, the business was
complicated. There were the suppliers to deal with, to arrange timetables and
ships and crews that would transport the merchandise. There was the hard
currency to be found in the black market to pay for it and its disposal inside the
country once it was in your hands.
“But that, at the moment, will not concern you, ” he said.
He gave me some money, I joined a private gymnasium and instead of
going to college, I went there every day to exercise and train with weights. I did
not tell my mother. I did not relish the quarrels that would arise once she found
out I quit Don Bosco. Anyway, she would know soon enough. Apart from our
penury, which was going from bad to worse our life was as happy as it could be
under the circumstances.
When father left, we moved into her room and lived like two persons in
love. I had the certainty we were in love. The intimacy that was born in my room,
on my single bed after the final big quarrel with father, continued. Our difficulties
tied us together more and more. She drew comfort from me and we discussed
what we should do. What the alternatives were to our impasse. She wondered
whether we should go to Cairo to Ioanna, her cousin, to try to find a job there at
one of the big couturières and eventually try to open her own atelier. I was,
meanwhile, committed to the agreement with Bippo and told her I was sure that
things would improve. Every day I had the added worry that she might find out I
had stopped attending college and would hasten to sell the house and our furniture
and move to Cairo. I did not want that. I was happy as we were, alone, together. I
often thought of Vassi but, strangely, though I loved her, though she had a tender
spot in my heart, she was more a reason for not wanting to go to Cairo than one to
attract me there. I was in a weird and perhaps perverse way totally attached to

60
Antigone. I could think of no one else. My first loyalty, my thoughts and my love
at this point in my life were with mother.
The difficulty of telling her of my agreement with Bippo solved itself on
its own. She came in, one day, fell into my arms, and burst into tears. It took her
some time to calm down and explain what was troubling her. I hugged her and
kissed her and told her nothing could be so bad as to merit this outburst.
“It is, Johnny,” she said. “We don‟t have any money. Today I expected a
client to pay for a couple of dresses and she didn‟t show up. I just managed to pay
the rent for the atelier and we have no money at all. It‟s as bad as that. She will
probably show up tomorrow or the day after but things have never been so bad.
We are living from day to day. I cannot bear the stress. ”
I told her not to worry. I would find some money to tide us over. I left the
house, went to Bippo and asked him for a loan. He gave me the small amount I
asked for and I returned and gave it to mother. I explained to her that Bippo had
offered me a job and that I had quit Don Bosco to be able to take it. She was
terribly upset and asked what kind of a job it was. I could neither lie to her nor tell
her the truth so I went half way. I told her Bippo had a warehouse where he
stocked cigarettes and wanted someone he could trust to take charge of it. Some
of my work will be at night and I did not want her to talk to anyone about it.
“It cannot not be very proper,” she said.
“Proper or not I‟m taking it, mother. We cannot go on like this. I cannot
bear to see you in this state.”
She was silent for a long while and I suppose she saw no other way out
and did not raise any objections. She just kissed me, said thank you and hoped I
knew what I was doing and would not come to any harm.
For the next month while Bippo was coordinating the details of his
business I went to the gymnasium and exercised and a month later as the weather
grew milder, I started going to the Rowing Club in Port Fouad for endless laps of
swimming and rowing on a single-person skiff. As I gained strength and
endurance, I swam deep inside the harbor close to the anchored ships though I
was constantly apprehensive of being stung by the jellyfish that proliferated in the
port. I liked my new routine and enjoyed myself immensely. I loved to exercise
and I felt my body improve and toughen by the week.
A sense of normality and lightheartedness returned to our life. Bippo gave
me a monthly allowance to enable me to keep going and said that once we began
working my pay would be adjusted according to the deliveries from the ships. It
was enough to free us from our constant preoccupation with money and to restore
our good humor. Our delicious nighttime paranoia continued. A strange passion
between us battled with the final remnants of Antigone‟s inhibitions. By tiny
increments, the filial and maternal love was turning blatantly erotic. Moreover,
since my father left us it was as if a further moral, if theoretical, obstacle had been
removed. I took his place on their marital bed and my demands and her
capitulations evolved very slowly and always with love and tenderness and
respect to her sensibilities. The hugging and embraces were more sensuous. The
caresses more specific and searching. The kissing from cheeks and neck and body
to lips and the entanglement of tongues and searches into each other‟s mouths.
The love words, a delirium of lovers. Yet, my darling Antigone, my pusillanimous
Jocasta could not proceed to my ultimate longing. She gave me everything but
that. We reached our orgasms indirectly, separately, but wonderfully nevertheless,
with passion and happiness and with immense love.

61
 Finally, the time of our first collection arrived. I went with Bippo in the
early afternoon to the Rowing Club and we took out a skiff for two and rowed
slowly into the harbor. He said it was the usual routine. He knew more or less,
where the ship was anchored but we had to pinpoint exactly its location, as it
would otherwise be difficult to find it in the darkness. Every delivery and
collection was planned to take place when there was no moon and he knew the
moon cycle to perfection. The only lights we would have would be from the
anchored ships and there were not too many of them. The Suez Canal remained
blocked since the war and the traffic in the harbor was minimal. He told me to
wear light, dark clothes and gym shoes in case we were spotted and would have to
abandon our boat and swim ashore. I asked him if that ever happened before and
he said, yes, once or twice but it was a rare occurrence.
We reached the ship, a small cargo vessel, and noted its position and the
ships in front and behind it as well. We kept rowing at the edges of the harbor
outside the main sea- lane and he pointed out some landmarks I should keep in
mind. He told me that we would be coming from the other side of the port so I
should keep these indications in mind because especially in the dark one‟s
orientation can get completely muddled. We returned to the Rowing Club, left the
skiff and took the ferry to the Port Said side. There, along the tall iron fence,
almost outside my father‟s old office, he showed me the police sentry post where
we had access because it would be manned by people on the take. Further down
the road, there was a sand mound and some bushes and he told me that behind the
bushes the iron railings had been bent just enough so that a man can squeeze
through. Remember that spot, he said, because we go in and out of the customs
compound through it and the rowing boat we use is tied nearby.
I told mother I would be working late that night and she was not to wait
for me. I left the house at five, before she returned from work, so as not to worry
her by leaving well after midnight, went to Bippo‟s love nest, read some
magazines, slept, and waited for him.
He came around one, past midnight, and we left an hour or so later. The
weather was cool and the streets were empty. We walked slowly, casually to the
opening at the bent railing and cautiously squeezed inside. There was a narrow
jetty running all along the side parallel to the street and it was dark because there
was no lighting except what little was coming through from the street. A number
of fishing trawlers were attached to the pier as well as some rowing boats. Bippo
rapidly untied one of them and we jumped inside. He started rowing away from
the jetty and then alongside it for some distance in the opposite direction of the
customs‟ buildings. It was pitch black and we could only see the street lights some
way off and the lights of the ships deeper in the harbor. I was trying to figure the
position of our ship when he suddenly veered away from the street side towards
the ships. He was rowing furiously but quietly. The oars hardly made a splash as
they went in and out of the water. We did not utter a sound.
After ten minutes, we approached the ships and I recognized the dark
outline of our cargo vessel. He went round the back where there was a lower deck
and he whistled a short, sharp whistle. We heard movement above and a basket
was lowered on a rope. Bippo fished a roll of money from his pockets, put it in the
basket and gave a tug to the rope. The basket went up and cartons tied in a net
started coming down. We took them out of the net, stacked them in our boat, gave
a tug, again, to the rope and almost immediately another net was lowered. This
was repeated seven or eight times until our boat was packed and a short whistle

62
from above signaled the end. Bippo took the oars and headed for the sentry post
outside my father‟s office. I admired his strength and endurance for he did not
slacken his pace for one moment. Going back it was easier for me to figure the
direction owing to the streetlights and the buildings.
At the sentry post, we tied the boat and started carrying the cartons, which
were bulky but not heavy to a pickup truck outside. It was weird passing by the
police officers with our cartons and out of the gate while they calmly watched us
without a word. When the pickup was loaded, Bippo gave some money to the
officers and got in the car with the driver. He told me to take the boat back to its
berth, to tie it and go home. I was on my own but I was quite calm after what I
had seen. I rowed the boat back, slipped through the railing and happily walked
home, undressed and slipped into bed next to my sleeping mother. I was elated
and could not go to sleep. It was my first brush with danger and illegality and it
gave me a thrill.
I went at least another dozen times with Bippo before he asked me to go to
a collection alone. I had started getting my bearings and was able to find my way
in the darkness. Meanwhile I kept up my exercising and was now able to row as
long, as quickly and silently as Bippo. Still, that first time unaccompanied was not
easy though everything went as smoothly and as sweetly as honey. Moreover, it
soon became almost routine. In fact, I preferred to be on my own, which was how
I now worked most of the time.
Money was pouring in. Not millions but more than we ever had at home
and this worried my mother more than it made her happy. Her work was picking
up and she asked me repeatedly to quit my job and return to college. She guessed
that what I was doing was not legal and she was fretting continuously but I would
not hear of it. I was virtually addicted to these nighttime rowing forays, their
excitement and sense of adventure. I liked it when she asked me for money and I
was able to give her many times what she needed.
Summer passed and autumn and then winter, which was bitterly cold and
uncomfortable that year. In early March, I was returning fully laden from a ship
when a patrolling police launch spotted me from a distance. For a split second its
searchlight beam swept across my rowing boat just before I managed to conceal
myself behind a ship. I heard its screeching siren approaching and made a run for
the jetty where the fishing trawlers were tied. I rowed furiously and managed to
reach the boats that were bunched up in that part of the long, narrow pier. I pushed
the boat in the middle of the crowd, tied it up to another boat, slipped in the water
and swam away in a silent breast stroke parallel to the jetty and away from the
trawlers. The water was icy but I did not dare go ashore. I saw the launch
approach and its searchlight focus on the bunched up boats and then sweep all
around the sea. As it swerved towards me, I sank underwater and held my breath
until the sea above me was dark again. Thankfully, the night was pitch-black. The
launch approached the trawlers and searched with its projector for the rowing boat
but it must have missed it because it shut off its siren and left. I was frozen but
started swimming back to our rowing boat wondering whether to leave it there or
try to take it to the sentry post but decided that it would be madness to go to the
sentry post now that a police launch was on the lookout.
As I was swimming, I felt something like a soft piece of cloth envelop my
throat and the lower part of my face that was in the water. I was startled and
thrashed my arms in panic and with that movement I sank in the water and the
slimy cloth covered my face for a moment before I threw it off me. A searing pain

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scorched my face and throat. It became almost unbearable and I sank in the water
to cool it. I came out and it continued to burn and I felt my face swelling. I
realized that what felt like oily cloth was a jellyfish and a large one at that. I swam
to the jetty, scrambled up on it and left through the bent railing and half-walked,
half- ran to Bippo‟s house. It must have been three-thirty or four in the morning
and the streets were deserted. By the time, I reached Bippo‟s house I was hardly
able to walk from the cold. I shook violently and my face was so swollen I could
hardly open my eyes. I thought how lucky I was that I was not blinded.
Bippo opened the door and stood staring at me in stupefaction. I told him
to hurry and go retrieve the boat from the jetty but he gave me some brandy,
covered me with a blanket and walked me home. He left me at the door. He did
not want to face my mother. Thankfully, the keys to our flat were still in my
pocket and I opened the door, went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the
mirror. A monster stared back at me. My face and throat decorated and deformed
with dozens of blisters, some small and some large, all of them filled with liquid. I
lit the gas water-heater and took a hot shower. I stayed under the hot spray for a
long time and felt heavenly except for my face and throat, which was taut and on
fire. I put on a pair of pajamas and went to sleep in my own room. I did not want
mother to get a heart attack in the morning as soon as she opened her eyes.
Her worried voice calling my name woke me up in the morning. I said,
“I‟m here,” and she came into the room in her nightgown. I turned my face and
hid it with my pillow.
“Why did you sleep here, my darling?” she asked.
“Listen, mother, don‟t worry, everything will be all right. I had an
accident. I fell in the sea as we were unloading a boat and a jellyfish struck me. ”
She came running to the other side of the bed where I had my face covered
with a pillow and took it away.
“My God, John,” she cried. “Oh my God.”
She sat next to me and examined me carefully. I tried to make light of it. I
held her hand and kissed it.
“Do you still love your Frankenstein son?” I asked.
She smiled, looking at me, lightly touching my blisters.
“Do you, mother?”
“Don‟t be silly,” she said.
“Then kiss me. I‟m sorry about this. Tell me you forgive me for becoming
Frankenstein.”
“I must call Dr Petridis.”
She got up to get dressed.
“Kiss me, Antigone.”
She bent and kissed me on the mouth. There was no other available place.
I heard her dress hurriedly and go out of the door. Dr Petridis‟s house was
two blocks away. He was a friend we had known for many years from the Rowing
Club. A bachelor, short, plump and very pleasant looking, in his late forties. He
was particularly fond of my mother. In fact, he seemed to be in love with her. At
the club, he used to stare at her and this habit of his always annoyed her. I
expected him to propose to her now that my father was gone. He did not know
that we were both psychotic, that Antigone had a Jocasta complex and I was her
appropriately complexed Oedipus.
He came in smiling half an hour later with mother. He was discreet and
did not question my implausible story of the event. He told me I was lucky not to

64
have had an allergic shock and that luckily my eyes were unharmed. Yes, very
lucky, I thought to myself, to have a police patrol boat after me, to lose the
merchandise, to have to jump in the freezing water and have a huge medusa spew
her poisonous acids on my face. However, I ought not to complain for I was
indeed lucky I did not get pneumonia nor even catch a cold and the rest of my
mishaps were remediable. Dr Petridis prescribed antibiotics, ant-allergic pills, an
antiseptic solution for face ablutions and a nourishing cream for when the blisters
would shrivel. He refused his fees, obviously, in deference to Antigone. Oh well,
goodbye Dr Petridis. Many thanks. But do forget Antigone.
Bippo showed no signs of life while I was at home recuperating. He kept
his omerta pretty well. I did not blame him. It was no joking matter. When we met
some days later, after I had recovered, he kissed me and thanked me for alerting
him about the mishap thus giving him the opportunity to recoup the stuff. He said,
that night, he went back to the port, found the loaded boat, rowed it to the sentry
post and transferred the cartons to the pickup truck which was still waiting,
despite the protestations of the policemen who were nervous as daylight was
already breaking in. He really had guts, this Bippo.
“Are you going to continue?” he asked me.
“You bet,” I told him.
After that first night, I slept for two nights on the small bed in my room. I
wanted to spare Antigone my disfigurement. The antibiotics reduced the swelling
rapidly. I was considerably better the second morning. I spent the day reading
some newsmagazines that Antigone brought me and listening to the radio. The
news was depressing. Egypt was moving more than ever towards the Communist
block. Russia had drowned the Hungarian revolution in blood. Politic ians and
ideologies were ruining, as usual, the peaceful coexistence of humanity.
In the evening when Antigone returned from work, I had to face again her
inevitable pleas that I quit my job and return to college. I refused and we had, for
the first time in years, a heated argument with the same old reasoning and points
we used many times before. She was upset because it was the first time I ignored
her wishes and defied her with vehemence. She went to her room and I stayed in
mine. We were both utterly miserable. I shut the light and tried to sleep without
telling her good night.
Some time later, she tiptoed into my room in the darkness. She sat on the
side of the bed and I made space for her. She stretched herself next to me and
snuggled into my arms. My heart started pounding because she was naked. I
kissed her passionately. She was on fire.
“Take off your clothes, my son,” she said.
This, my son, hit a cord. It confirmed my long-held suspicion that the
distorted passion was not only mine. That she, too, found this forbidden
infatuation, this physical relationship overwhelming and irresistible. I took off my
pajamas and we embraced again. My daydreams, my fantasies were coming true.
It was the first time she offered me her ripe, generous body completely unclothed.
It was the first time her passion was out of control. It was the first time her kisses
and licks and moaning asked for more. She had finally overcome the remnants of
her fading hang- ups. She was the mother, I was the son and she took the initiative.
She kissed me with long, wet, voluptuous kisses and caressed my penis. She
placed my hand on her moist vulva and showed me the movements that
heightened her passion, that made her live and almost die of pleasure. She made
me taste her secretions while she tasted my hardness and slipped it down her

65
throat. She told me she loved me, her darling, her son, her lover, her husband. She
told me she wanted no one else. She told me she must be blessed by God to have
given birth to the man of her life. To a baby that became her lover. She straddled
me and choked me with her kisses and bruised me with her bites and scratches
and cried with one orgasm after the other, after another, after another until I
ejaculated inside her, inside the genitals of my genesis.
We talked a lot that night. And made love again and again. I asked her
why tonight? She said my plunge in the sea showed her how precarious life is.
How terribly much she loved me. How feverishly, how pathetically. That she,
finally, could not resist her own need and passion and, anyway, why was the
wonderful love we shared so wrong? We were harming no one with our
happiness. She knew I loved her and desired her and told me of the difficulty and
pain she went through in denying me her body.
I do not know if Oedipus and Jocasta were happy. Mythology tells us that
when Oedipus found out that Jocasta was his mother, he tore his eyes out. The
strictures of his society, of the twelve Gods of Olympus, blinded him, first
mentally and then physically. What may have been a happy life turned into
tragedy.
This ancient Greek tragedy is staged repeatedly in theatres to make us cry,
to offer us a catharsis. It may have moved the ancient world. It moves us no more.
There are no cathartic tragedies in our world. Our world moves fast. Tragedies do
occur. Tragedies of immense proportions but they are run over by the speeding
wheels of a million cars on superhighways, blown to bits by the smart bombs of
supersonic warplanes and missiles and overshadowed by the stock exchange in
London, Tokyo and New York. They are quickly forgotten however devastating
they may be. We have become superficial, venal, self-centered and unfeeling. I
know. I am no exception. I am primus inter pares.
For three years I lived with my mother as her lover. I was tempted to say
husband because we were a couple under the same roof and the relationship was
stable and unwavering but it would have implied a sense of routine and of the
humdrum. Whereas we were bound with a love and passion that did not seem to
spend itself. A love and passion that fed on the excitement of its own perversity.
And though perversity is a word I reject, the fact that it was uncommon, secret
and forbidden kept us in the thralls of an inexhaustible, obsessive infatuation.
She was so beautiful, my mother, so alive and blooming in those three
years, so avid in her sexual desire that I indeed believed this perfect happiness
would never fade. I used to watch her go to her atelier every morning and return
with a smile in the early evening and set to cook our dinner, I used to see her walk
in the street for her shopping, I used to see her sit and chat with her friends at the
Rowing Club in the pleasant summer evenings and would think how simple a life
could be the life of a goddess. How simple it was to be happy. All you needed was
to follow your inclinations as long as you did not harm anyone else. However, it
turned out that the only simple thing was my mind. It was I that was simple and
naïve. I found out, soon enough, that happiness is fragile and, like almost
everything else in our world, subject to decay and to unexpected misfortune.
Three heavenly years went by. Sometimes I think it was almost too much.
Fate ordinarily is not as gallant and generous. And it did, suddenly, change its
mind. My darling Antigone started having dizzy spells, which within a few
months worsened. Dr Petridis examined her and found nothing pathologically
wrong. Her blood pressure was normal and so were her ears, which could have

66
been the cause of her loss of balance. He advised her to consult a well-known
brain specialist, a certain professor Habashi in Cairo. We waited a month or so
hoping that the situation would improve but we only saw it deteriorate further. By
the end of the fourth month, she could not walk without help. We closed her
atelier, dismissed the three girl apprentices, and returned the cloth and unfinished
dresses to clients for she could no longer work.
Finally, I was lucky to have kept up my work with Bippo. Lucky also not
to have had any further mishaps. Not only was money coming in but the job gave
me ample free time to look after my darling mother. I, now, assumed all the
household duties and the shopping and cooking of our food. Most important, I
kept her company as lightheartedly and merrily as I could since she could not
leave the house. When she could no longer walk on her own, I moved her from
chair to chair to her bed and to the toilet. I bathed her every day and made love to
her at night because she still enjoyed it, needed it and asked for it. Because I
needed it too. I needed her body and needed to tell her and show her how my love
for her was a vast expanding universe. Her illness brought us ever closer and her
gratitude for my devotion surfaced in her tenderness. Many of her friends came to
visit her in the evenings and I could not wait for them to leave to be alone with her
again. I used to kiss her and tell her, “Alone at last my sweetheart,” and she would
laugh knowing we would soon be entangled and naked in bed.
We went to Cairo eventually. Perhaps a little later than we should have
but, in retrospect, I do not think it made a difference. We stayed for a week at aunt
Ioanna‟s and I saw Vassi for the first time since she left Port Said three years ago.
She had grown into a very beautiful young woman. Tall with a perfect body and
the breasts of a grown woman. Quite different from those I caressed and kissed.
She was now twenty-one and worked at the reception desk of the Nile Hilton
hotel. It was a warm reunion in the midst of our worry and unhappiness and a
little awkward. We kept looking at each other and smiling but there was a reserve
between us that did not fade in the span of that week.
We were friendly and asked about each other‟s news but my worries over
mother‟s health and her presence overshadowed any other preoccupation and
memories of our love affair that might have emerged otherwise. Vassi on her part
showed no inclination towards greater intimacy and, at that moment, I was
grateful for her attitude. She was detached and seemed uninvolved in our
predicament. Perhaps she held a grudge against Antigone for the way she packed
her off back to Cairo that summer. She exhibited the coolness which characterized
her throughout her life and which I never quite managed to figure if it was due to
shyness, an innate unsociability, or just a defensive trait to keep her inaccessible
until she was sure with whom she was dealing.
The news about Antigone was not encouraging. We went to Professor
Habashi‟s private consulting clinic in town where he asked us about Antigone‟s
symptoms and read a report Dr Petridis had written for us. He arranged for a set of
X-ray examinations and brain scanning as well as an examination by an ENT
specialist and various other analyses in the Cairo University hospital of Kasr el
Aini. It was a slow slog in that crowded, chaotic and dirty hospital that,
nevertheless, had the latest equipment available in Egypt.
The diagnosis was as depressing as the hospital and the ragged, hopeless,
and helpless crowds of patients in it. A tumor had been located in Antigone‟s
brain. A tiny shadow could not be definitively evaluated due to its position and
was inoperable and untreatable because the lasers and chemotherapies of today

67
did not exist. It was a wait-and-see situation and the indications were not
promising since, so far, there had been a relatively rapid deterioration in her state.
Still, sometimes a tumor would stop growing or grow much more slowly.
Sometimes, very rarely, a miracle could happen and the body would react and
eliminate it. Dr Habashi was noncommittal regarding the future and I returned that
day with a stumbling Antigone and a heavy heart to aunt Ioanna‟s. The next day
we took the train for Port Said. Ioanna accompanied us to the station. In the taxi,
she was smiling and talkative and promised to visit us soon. At the station, we
held Antigone together and she helped us settle in our train compartment. Then
she kissed her and left us abruptly. I figured she did not want to cry in front of us.
In Port Said, we resumed our recent routine. I was home all day taking
care of Antigone. About twice a month, during the change of the new moon cycle,
I would leave in the afternoon and go through the usual exercise of locating the
ship that would deliver the merchandise and in the early hours of the morning
would pull off the collection and return home almost at a run. Before leaving, I
would place Antigone on an armchair next to her bed with water and food on a
small table and a chamber pot nearby. In the past, when I returned I would find
her asleep. After we returned from Cairo, she stayed up waiting for me. I was
always in high spirits after a successful collection and I would get in bed, talk
until daylight broke and make love before going to sleep in her arms. She was so
tender and merry. One would have thought nothing troubled her. She understood
perfectly her situation.
“We still have a few months, don‟t we, my love?” she would ask.
I would say something silly and encouraging. Something she did not need.
Something she did not believe. I would kiss her and caress her hair. I would look
at her lovely face. Praying for a smile.
“In a way, I am lucky,” she often said. “I am not suffering. I have not had
to go through painful, useless operations. And, in any case, had Habashi suggested
an operation on my brain, I would have refused.”
Could any answer to this be anything but silly? Still, I would give it a try.
She would smile, again.
“I may have lost my balance but my brain sex-centers are humming to
perfection. Better than ever before.”
She would laugh.
“Don‟t you think, my darling?”
It was funny but it was more sad than funny. I would kiss her on the
mouth, caress her luscious breasts and we would slide into passionate lovemaking.
The sensuality and sexual pleasure made her feel alive and normal. They gave her
courage and perhaps the illusion that since not all of her body was deranged there
was still hope.
After lovemaking, we would talk again before going to sleep.
“I am not afraid to die,” she often told me. “I know there is no hereafter.
Death is the eternal sleep. I do not want to die because of you. But I have no say
in the matter. We have been so happy together. The two of us. Oh, even before
that. We have always been so close. Except for that summer with Vassiliki. I was
so jealous and angry.”
“Yes, I thought so, my love.”
“Promise me something, Johnny.”
“Anything.”
“Promise me that when I leave you, you shall quit this job. ”

68
 “I promise, mother. But please don‟t talk this way. ”
“You must get used to the idea.”
The months dragged on slowly but oh, so fast. Happily and sadly.
Desperately and with illusory flashes of hope. We savored each day in its details
trying to make it longer, staying up half the night not wanting to go to sleep. We
did not play cards or read magazines, which would make time fly faster. We
wanted to be bored together, bored in each other‟s presence. We wanted time to
stop or at least to make full use of the hours and minutes and seconds that went
by. We talked and sat close together and held hands in a paranoid exchange of
love that would have amused ordinary lovers. But we were under sentence. For a
period of two months, her condition seemed to be stationary and our hopes flared
up but the slow deterioration resumed and she was soon after unable to walk even
with my help. Then she could not sit on a chair. I had difficulty in feeding her and
her dizzy spells would cause her to vomit. I could not give her a bath and would
sponge her in bed. She had no appetite and started losing weight. Our lovemaking
stopped, as she could not bear the movement. Dr Petridis advised me to take her
to hospital but she did not want to go and I did not see the point. I was better than
any nurse.
The last two months, I stopped working for Bippo. I could not take the
time off. In her last days, she would not take any food and again Dr Petridis told
me to take her to hospital so that she may be fed intravenously. I refused. I did not
see the point of prolonging her meaningless life. She was not suffering and I was
grateful for that but she was semi comatose. She opened her eyes now and then to
smile at me and I was constantly by her side. I wanted to be there every time she
opened her eyes. To caress her hair and kiss her on her mouth. That tired smile
was what had remained of my life, the force that kept me going.
My darling Antigone died about seven months after we returned from
Cairo. I cursed God for not taking me with her. But God has done many worse
things than that. I do not think there can be a God as heartless as that. I do not
think a God exists.
Aunt Ioanna and Vassi came to the funeral and stayed at home. We buried
Antigone with her mother and father, my grandparents, in her family‟s crypt.
After the funeral, I took a blanket and went to the beach. The weather was not
cold and I spent the night there thinking and talking to Antigone. Talking to
myself really, because Antigone no longer existed except in my mind. I was all
that was left of her. She is still alive in me. Always will be. That night, I could not
bear to return to a home without her. I would not have been able to small talk with
Ioanna and Vassi. They left the next day and I set about quitting Port Said for
good. I would not have stayed for all the money in the world.

69
 Cairo

It took me a few weeks to dispose of our furniture, the flat and my

mother‟s small atelier, which had remained unused for a year but for which we
continued to pay rent in the hope that she would return to it. Both the flat and the
atelier were not ours but the practice of „bon de sortie‟ existed in those days. Key
money that was given to the occupant for ceding a flat. That, together with my
savings amounted to quite a respectable sum of money. My darling Antigone‟s
yearlong illness hardly made a dent in my funds. I did not know what to do with
all that money. There are times in your life when money does not mean a thing. A
sort of numbness settled in my soul and prevented me from taking any decisions.
All I knew was that I had to get out of Port Said.
As a first step, I decided to go to Cairo. I told Bippo I would no longer be
working for him and said goodbye to my many friends and acquaintances. I said
goodbye to my mother just before leaving and laid red roses on her grave. It was a
meaningless gesture because she would not know it. It was comforting just for
me. My one consolation was that she died in my arms. That whenever she opened
her eyes those last days, I was there to smile at her, to tell her I loved her. That
goes a long way to soften my pain though not my need for her.
I never liked Cairo much. It was, even in those days, too unwieldy and
noisy, too crowded and dirty. The so-called European part was impressive and
majestic with its wide streets, its modern buildings, its famous hotels, its museums
and ancient mosques, its Islamic and Coptic heritage but the more popular
districts were as poor and depressing as the worst of Port Said. The Nile lent much
of its beauty to the city together with its bridges, the gardens and the world
famous Pharaonic antiquities. All that did not stop me from missing the
homeliness of Port Said though I put it out of my mind whenever I thought of it. It
was too soon to start feeling nostalgic. I had lost things that were more precious.
I found a small hotel in Soliman Pasha Street, the city center, and settled in
it until I found permanent lodgings. I called on aunt Ioanna on the day following
my arrival and she reprimanded me for not going to their house. I said I did not
want to be a burden but, in truth, I did not want to feel like a refugee. Like a poor
relation. Money, after all, had its uses. Vassi, again friendly and distant at the
same time. I could not make out if she was making an effort to be friendly or
making an effort to be distant. She was very beautiful and I was sure I would fall
in love with her again, eventually, when my pain subsided. I had not fallen out of
love with her since those two weeks in Port Said but this mad, fiery and haunting
love malady of Oedipus and Jocasta overshadowed everything else. I asked her if
I could call her on the phone now and then and she said, of course. I also asked
aunt Ioanna if she had any idea of a job for me and she promised to look into it.
She called me two days later at the hotel and told me that if I did not mind
to work as a mechanic, her husband‟s old partners were willing to take me on in
their workshop. For lack of anything better, I started working in their diesel
engine repair shop in Shoubra, a poorer district of Cairo, which was, however, not
too far from the hotel where I lived. Within a month, I found a tiny ground floor
flat close to my work, paid the bon de sortie, bought the barest necessities of
furnishings and moved to Shoubra. I was settling down to a life that was
altogether different from the one I lived in Port Said. I did not like it but I

70
considered it a sort of temporary solution until my mind cleared and I decided
what to do with my life.
What can I say about my work? It was dirty and demeaning because I had
to start from scratch. From learning to screw and unscrew bolts, wash and grease
engines, fetch and lift this and that with the greasy, kerosene-smelling boy
apprentices half my age and earn a pitiful monthly wage that would not last a
week. My eau de cologne was kerosene and my fingernails were in perpetual
mourning. However, I had advantages that my smiling, good-natured little
comrades did not have. I was considered a Greek like my employers and had
Ioanna‟s sponsorship and support. I was moreover keen, clever with my hands and
a fast learner. I learnt to use a micrometer, estimate tolerances, work with a file as
a fitter, and use a lathe to make simple things like bronze bushings, bolts and
screws. I was promoted very quickly. Not formally because an Egyptian
supervisor, Osta Mahmoud, worked in the shop for many years and was in charge
of the technical side of the business but Iakovos and Stelios, the two partners,
counted more and more on me and increased my salary twice within the first year.
It was still inadequate and I kept on drawing on my savings to be able to live
decently.
Sunday was my lunch date at aunt Ioanna‟s. We were getting more
familiar and I started appreciating the sincere interest she took in my welfare. She
always asked me how the week had gone by and if I needed anything. Usually
Vassi was there. I assumed she was happy with her work though she did not
express herself one way or another. Similarly with her private life. She told me
she was going out with somebody giving me absolutely no further details. It was
as if she was simply telling me she was not available.
I happened to see them a few times in town. The man was tall, good-
looking, in his early thirties and obviously wealthy because he drove a new
American car. He might have been Greek but I assumed he was probably Shami, a
Christian of Syrian-Lebanese origin with French upbringing and culture. He
seemed to fit that configuration. I could not help feeling awful. I remembered how
much in love, intimate and uninhibited we were and it broke my heart to see her
with another man. Still, despite the familiarity of their smiles and the holding of
her elbow, the fire and vibrations of a passionate relationship seemed to be
lacking. It was just an impression and probably wishful thinking on my part and I
wondered if they slept together. And then I thought how naïve I was to even
imagine that they did not.
As the pain of Antigone‟s death receded, I thought more and more of
Vassi. I needed the solace of another person‟s friendship. Aunt Ioanna went a long
way towards comforting me and making me feel I had a family but I craved to
hold and kiss the beautiful Vassi. My sexual drive was awakening from its
hibernation of my mourning. Life goes on and the instincts of survival cannot
remain inert for long. I started calling Vassi on the telephone for chats from a bar
on the street below, as I did not have a telephone at home. S he was friendly but
again I felt a lack of interest on her part. I was discreet and did not ask her about
her boyfriend and she neither volunteered details about him nor about her feelings
and plans. All the time I felt at a disadvantage. How could a kerosene-soaked
mechanic compete with the owner of an American car and the wealth it implied? I
was relying on the memory of two weeks of love, three years ago. Apparently, it
was not enough. I was learning the value of money the hard way. After a few
months of sporadic calls, I put an end to them and she did not inquire why. This

71
indifference towards me made me give up all hope of ever having her again. It did
not stop me, however, from being troubled whenever I saw her at aunt Ioanna‟s on
my Sunday visits. There was always this tightening of my heart, this pang of pain.
It was something that pursued me all my life and is perhaps the explanation for
the course my life took.
Loneliness haunted me. However much I immersed myself in my daily
routine, when I returned to my empty flat I felt a loneliness that choked me. Going
to the cinema and taking long walks were only temporary respites. I kept thinking
of Antigone. Of her short unhappy life. Was she really happy those last few years
with me? Or was our strange love affair an accommodation of expediency? An
avoidance of loneliness and sexual frustration? Would she have been happier with
another man in a normal relationship? Pointless speculations, but they kept
disturbing me.
My sexual needs, after a year in Cairo, became obsessive and it was not
easy to satisfy them in the prudish ambiance of the early sixties. I did not know
my way around. I had no Bippo to give me tips. There seemed to be no possibility
of meeting a girl. Of falling in love. Of having sex in a normal liaison. I started
going to bars and nightclubs in town. The better ones were outside the city on the
road to the pyramids but they were expensive and one needed a car so I
frequented the lesser ones in town with second-rate cabaret troupes of foreign
girls. If you wanted their company, you had to submit to the practice of the so-
called consommation, offering and consuming with them a steady stream of
drinks. During the chat, you might work out an arrangement if the girl attracted
you. Most of them would be ready to sleep with you for a price. On occasion, I
took a girl home late at night after her work at the club was over.

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 a blue-eyed butterfly

I met Anita in this way at the nightclub I frequented most often and a
strange affair began. I often think about her and wonder where she is and what her
life has been like. She fills a good part of my interminable reminiscences. Some of
the unanswered questions of my life. The what ifs. What if she was different and I
had joined my life to hers? How would my life have been? Would we have stayed
long together? She was both an ordinary and an extraordinary person. A woman
who marked my life because she taught me about life on the fringes of society.
The fringes we scorn, which nevertheless are human with passions, fears, and
ambitions. Fringes that would not be there if they did not serve a purpose. If they
did not serve our dreams, our fantasies and our lusts.
I was sitting with an Egyptian friend at a table in the maelstrom of loud
music, cigarette fog and the incessant comings and goings of habitués, barflies,
and waiters as she strolled by casually looking for company. She smiled at us and
we asked her to join us. She was attractive, not by any means beautiful but pretty,
of normal height with dyed blond hair, a sultry, vividly made up face and a
slightly plump, sexy body. She must have been in her late twenties or early
thirties. We had seen her dancing in the show previously and she was of the
general standard of the rest of her troupe. Not the leggy, beautiful Hollywood
showgirls but of a second selection, so to speak, both in their dancing skills and
their looks. I motioned the waiter for a drink, the usual fee for half an hour‟s
company.
We spoke to her in English and after a while, she suddenly addressed me
in Greek. I was surprised and asked her how she knew I was Greek. She said she
was not sure; it was just intuition. I told her that, in any case, she was half-right.
My mother was Greek but I had a Maltese father. We chatted for a while in the
usual, superficial gaiety of nightclub conversations with showgirls. Asking of her
impressions of Cairo and the other countries she had visited with her troupe and
then she left us for the second part of the show. I asked her if I should wait for her
to finish her show and she looked at me with a half smile and said, “Yes.”
There was something about her that touched me. She was not gay and
animated like most of the other girls. She had a quiet comportment that suggested
loneliness and large, serious blue eyes that made the gaudy makeup not only odd
but inconsistent with her reticent smile and manner. She seemed out of place in
this milieu and yet I had seen her dance exuberantly and walk about looking for
company. She intrigued me. I had never desired any of the cabaret girls as much. I
was happy and excited she accepted my vague offer to wait for her. Well, not so
vague under the circumstances. It could only mean one thing. I sensed a response
to my attraction in her steady look and placid smile. I wanted desperately to kiss
her.
It was a Saturday night and the place was packed. Mostly with young
people casually dressed as the nightclub was not top notch. It did not have a live
band and the almost exclusively western music was relayed by a stereo system. In
between the shows, the dance floor was crammed with couples dancing
energetically the twists and cha-chas of the day as well as the romantic slows.
When I was alone I usually lingered at the bar where the girls nonchalantly
approached us asking for a drink. That particular day I met an old school friend
from Port Said and I persuaded him to accompany me for a drink. After Anita left

73
us, we talked for a while and then he left and I nursed a couple more of the
adulterated whiskies that were served until Anita was through and came out to
join me. She had changed into a pair of black slacks and looked incongruous but
attractive with her flashy makeup and serious demeanor. It was already past one
and the belly dancer had just come out with her band to do her number. Anita
asked me if I would like to see the show but I had seen the belly dance before and,
anyway, I was intrigued and more interested in Anita.
We took a taxi to Shoubra. She did not bring up the question of money and
in the cab I reached for her hand and held it. She looked at me and smiled. Her
thumb caressed my hand. It was surprising and tender and I wanted to kiss her.
We talked disjointedly, holding hands, while the driver gunned his d ilapidated
taxi in the empty streets throwing us off balance and making us laugh.
In the flat, I kissed her just as we shut the door and she kissed me back
with the same feeling and hunger. It was almost as if we were in love. As if we
met after a long separation. We kissed and kissed again. Was it to forget our
loneliness, our circumstances, and transient encounter? I did not expect this
tenderness and was surprised by her passion and mine, with this inexplicable
attraction that joined our mouths, tongues and bodies with straining embraces and
fitful searches in each other‟s eyes. For all our kissing, we had not moved from
the door and when I asked her to come in and sit down for a drink, she said, “No,
let us go to bed.” I wondered if this eagerness was genuine or if she wanted to be
done with the sex as quickly as possible. I insisted on the drink and we sat on the
sofa in the hall. I wanted to look at her. To break the anonymity of a one-night
stand. I looked at those blue eyes and the more I looked the prettier she seemed.
Her smile less reticent.
I brought the bottle of whisky I kept for such occasions and two glasses
and we drank it neat. Two, three double shots in rapid succession. We were
getting tipsy but the drink loosened us and our tongues and we talked a little. She
told me I had a nice flat and I laughed and told her it was horrible and that she
must be getting drunk. She said she was not and I said it did not really matter if
getting drunk makes us see the world in a better light.
We looked at each other with amusement.
“You are very beautiful,” I told her and she laughed.
“It‟s you who‟s a little drunk,” she said.
I kissed her and we continued kissing on and on, caressing and gingerly
undressing one another. We were both intoxicated and emotional and all of a
sudden I told her I loved her and she told me she loved me. The alcohol was
manipulating our emotions. Her unexpected ardor, the lateness of the night, her
eagerness to make love threw me off balance. One does not fall in love with
cabaret girls even if they don‟t ask for money. They hover barely a notch above
prostitutes. They are in the business of sex as well but certainly in a more
roundabout and glamorous fashion. They are artists of a more elaborate seduction
of men, not solely crude female receptacles for their sexual release. They dress
provocatively, dance, sing, and exhibit their bodies to arouse passion and lust
though not necessarily to satisfy it. It is their mode of survival, of earning their
living and, in the final analysis, they are performing in their own way the role
nature bestowed on women in all walks of life.
One can perform sex at any time but it takes familiarity and even love to
indulge in its more intimate and randy elaborations. Yet with Anita, that first
night, we went through a rehearsal of our entire sexual erudition. Intoxicated with

74
the whisky and our kisses, with each other‟s odor and warm saliva we removed
our clothing. She helped me take off my clothes and her need to expose her self,
to be Eve without the fig leaf, an Eve shameless and enticing took my breath
away. Her smile and haste to offer her body and the sizzling, slippery passage
between her open legs kept my penis straining. She held my head to her plump
breasts and nipples for licks and bites and then lifted it to kiss my mouth with
lingering kisses of lustful longing and words of bizarre emotions. I was her baby
suckling her breasts, her lover when we kissed, her studhorse for her genitals. She
put my cock in her mouth, a warm, wet alcove of mind-turning voluptuousness
where her lips and tongue engaged it in a mute, mobile language of the flesh. Her
eyes looking up at me to gauge the effect of this wordless recital, intimating that
my pleasure was shared.
I gently pulled my penis from this fiery, salivating venue of rapture to visit
another. I laid her back on the sofa, went down on my knees, and spread her legs,
my eyes prisoners of their hairy meeting point. I opened and gently stroked her
cunt. I looked at her and she smiled and that smile talked to me. „Do you like it,‟ it
asked. „My cunt is my treasure, my living, my pleasure and soul. I love to have it
touched, kissed, and looked at. To have it fondled, licked and penetrated by
tongues and fingers, noses and pricks of the people I love. And I do love you
Johnny since I am unfolding, opening my gates to you. Be quick, I am burning, I
want you inside me.‟
I lingered looking at it to swell her yearning and mine. She reached and
pulled my head to her genitals and I started slowly licking with my tongue. I
pulled up her pubic hair to expose her clitoris, moved my tongue along the length
of her opening, then inside her vagina for repeated, inflaming, but inadequate
thrusts and lifting her legs up high, licked her asshole for a while. I circled and
lightly stroked her clit with my nose. My face was bathed in her secretions. She
breathed in short gasps and moaned softly and the sensations stirred a greater
need. She tried repeatedly to push me away and I stopped and looked at her.
“Oh God, John, come into me,” she said.
It was the first time she uttered my name. To ask me to enter her body, to
be her stud, to deliver her from her craving. I got up and she kissed me with such
thirst and wild passion I felt her desperation. I pulled her by the hand to t he
bedroom. She held my upright penis as we walked like a mother holds a child,
climbed on the bed and reclined with relaxed legs apart. Her breasts sagged
sideways and her genitals glistened with her secretions and my saliva. Her face
was flushed and her restless eyes followed me as I brought a condom from my
night table. With a hint of a smile, she took it, fitted it on me and lay back again. I
clambered on the bed and on her body between her legs. It was warm inside,
slippery and tight. It was as close to paradise as man will ever get.
We slept in each other‟s arms and woke up late in the day. It was Sunday.
I had the day off and she had to be back at eight at the hotel. I opened the blinds
and we looked at each other for the first time in the daylight with curiosity and
some apprehension. Disheveled hair, messed up makeup. It was touching more
than anything else. A pair of very blue eyes, a docile smile and a warm, sexy,
naked body renewed my longing. I went back to her and we embraced. I was
enticed by her odor, her wanton kisses. I had fallen for this girl and had not the
time to think about it. Falling in love so suddenly is confusing.
We made love again. Without a bellyful of whisky, it was not as drawn out
but it was passionate and sensual and it preserved our tenderness and familiarity,

75
which was for a split second threatened by the sunlight. I went in for a shower and
kept wondering about her. How did she get into that sort of life? Did she really
love me? Was it at all possible? Were we going to be together? And for how long?
It seemed so absurd. Hardly twelve hours had gone by since we met.
I came out of the shower in my underwear and she was still naked in bed. I
could not take my eyes off her. Off her lovely full breasts, shapely plump legs and
that center of femininity with the carefully trimmed pubic hair.
“I need a shower too,” she said and got up and went to the bathroom.
I prepared breakfast with the few things I had at home. She came out in
my bathrobe, her blond hair wet and stringy. Her makeup washed away. Another
person. At least five years younger, pretty and childlike. Not the gaudy cabaret
girl. I stared at her and she laughed.
“Do I look that much different?” she asked. “Well, I have to masquerade
myself for work. I have to look cheap and easy. Men who come to a nightclub
looking for women prefer vulgarity to refinement. That‟s probably why you fell
for me.”
“I fell for you for the same reason that you seemed to like me. Simple
attraction.”
She laughed.
“That was quite a tempest of love from a simple attraction.”
I held her and caressed her wet hair. She looked almost like a schoolgirl.
Younger than I was, whereas made up she looked quite a few years older.
She smiled.
“It‟s better this way,” she said. “A simple attraction is less complicated
than love.”
“But I do love you. I liked the way you looked. I liked your reserve. I felt
you were lonely and understood your loneliness because I am lonely too. And I
love you because you kissed so passionately. It was real, wasn‟t it? You did mean
it? The passion, I mean.”
She smiled.
“Yes. Once in a while, I meet somebody like you for whom I feel this
simple attraction. Someone I want to make love to.”
“But not always?”
“Of course not. Most of the time it‟s just business.”
I was shocked. I was silly enough to be shocked. What did I expect?
“Come,” I told her, “let us have breakfast.”
We had a simple breakfast of tea, stale toasted bread and cheese and then
we dressed and left the house to take a cab to the pyramids. It was already past
twelve. Before we left, I phoned aunt Ioanna from the bar next to our house to tell
her I would not be going for the usual Sunday lunch. Anita told me she had not
been to the pyramids as she was hardly more than a week in Cairo. It was early
autumn and the day was warm and sunny. A perfect day for an excursion.
On our way out, I said hello to a girl that lived in the flat opposite mine.
She was a university student sharing the flat with two other girls. She was always
friendly and we exchanged greetings and a few casual words each time we met.
She was slender and tall and had a beautiful face. Her eyes were bright and
inquisitive. She seemed intelligent and completely different from the majority of
priggish native girls. Many a time I felt like inviting her for a coffee but was wary
of getting involved with Egyptian girls. They always seemed to have a brother

76
lurking in the background monitoring their behavior and the company they kept.
She smiled and nodded at Anita.
“What a beautiful girl,” said Anita as we stepped out on the street.
We chose one of the less ramshackle taxis and left Shoubra. We drove
through the city center, crossed the wide and placid, majestic Nile and then on to
Giza. We were sitting stuck to each other. I was holding Anita‟s hand. The driver
kept looking in his rear view mirror, checking the situation. He seemed edgy. He
did not want any hanky-panky in his cab.
I tried explaining a few things to Anita. “Giza,” I told her, “is the province
where the pyramids are located. There are pyramids in other parts of Egypt as
well. There are the step pyramids of Sakkara, a little to the south, which are
smaller but more ancient than those of Giza. And there are others at Dahshur,
Meidum, Meroe and in other locations.”
She was probably not listening. She was looking out of the window
inattentively and then she squeezed my hand and looked at me.
“It seems so crazy,” she said, “all this talk of love. I am surprised at
myself. You must not get too emotional, John. I don‟t want you to be hurt. To
expect too much of me.”
“Which means, what?”
“Nighttime is for dreams, daytime is reality.”
“Were we both hallucinating?”
“At night emotions are illusory.”
We passed the Botanical gardens, the Cairo University, the Zoological
gardens. I pointed them out to Anita. A little local topography.
“Now we are out of town,” I told her. “We are on a straight line to the
pyramids. Notice how flat and green the land is. Not a hillock in sight. All this
land is watered by the Nile. Look at those date palm trees and the water buffalo
pulling the plough. The woman balancing a pot on her head, her hands empty,
swinging by her sides. The small mosque with the minaret. Typical Egyptian
scenery. And just beyond you can see the desert taking over.”
She was silent and nodded absentmindedly.
Suddenly the great pyramid loomed before us. A sight that is always
gripping. We were still some way off but its immensity was obvious.
“Wow, said Anita, I did not think they were so big.”
We passed the Marioutia, a feeder canal of the Nile and reached the start
of the desert road to Alexandria. Just beyond, on both sides of the road were
dozens of horses, donkeys and camels parked for hire. The animals‟ keepers
beckoned us with cries of, „ride horse, ride camel‟ but we did not stop and the taxi
speeded up the steep gradient to the plateau of the great pyramid of C heops. To
our right, resting on the side of the slope was the famous Mena House hotel.
We left the cab at the top, paid our morally uptight driver, and stared at
one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. The sight is awesome and
fascinating even in our days of skyscrapers and moon landings. Anita stared at it
silently then I held her hand and we walked slowly towards it to get the true
perception of its size. A small procession of donkeys, horses and camels followed
us, the Bedouins exhorting us to ride their animals. The blocks of granite at the
base of the pyramid were huge, almost the height of a man and there were little
steps carved on the stones for climbing. We went a little way up and sat down. We
could see the green fields stretching before us and the city, hazy in the distance.
On the other side, the stark, empty, yellowish desert.

77
 “The pyramids were tombs, weren‟t they?” said Anita.
“Yes. This whole area is an ancient cemetery. The necropolis of Giza.”
“It‟s funny how cemeteries evoke the same feeling. The feeling that life is
short and it all ends in a grave. A sense of futility.”
“Yes because now we know better. The ancient Egyptians had constructed
a very elaborate religious fantasy about life continuing after death. They could not
accept death as the final and irrevocable end of existence just as most religions
have invented some sort of afterlife. All around this area next to the big pyramids
there are many small ones and innumerable tombs.”
“The funny thing is that being in a cemetery alters for a moment one‟s
perspective of life but once you are out you go right back to your daily, petty
concerns.”
“Yes. You start wondering why Anita does not love you. ”
She looked at me and smiled.
“A good example of a petty concern,” she said.
“Yes, but what else can one do? Brood on the futility of life?”
“No. Not much good in that. I suppose the goal is to try to be as happy as
possible in our short life for there is no other. I suppose all people try to do this.
That they are mostly unsuccessful is another matter. The human being is not
gifted in the pursuit of happiness. He is always after something he cannot get.”
“Are you referring to me?”
“No, my dear, though, surely, we are no exception. I was talking in
general. Man‟s major failing is greed. Greed for money, power and glory. These
pyramids are a glaring monument of this. Think about it and you will find that
behind every misfortune of mankind is greed.”
“You must admit, though, that greed has contributed to human progress.”
“Do not confuse greed with the quest for knowledge. ”
I squeezed her hand.
“You are quite a thinker,” I said.
She was silent. The sun was soporific. It warmed us and gave us a sense of
well-being. No wonder Ra was the principal God of the Pharaohs. He was the
most apparent and the most vital. I told her the few things I knew about ancient
Egypt and she nodded. She was not communicative. She had reverted to the
serious, slightly detached person that attracted me the night before. We sat a while
on the pyramid absorbing the sun. We stopped talking and nearly went to sleep.
Eventually, I asked her if she would like to climb to the top but she said
she was afraid it would tire her and she had to dance in the evening. Instead, we
hailed a camel boy and bargained with him for a tour of the area. He asked us if
we each wanted a camel or if we would share one. I decided on sharing. I thought
it would be more fun. He chose a sturdy beast and made it kneel. The camel was
not pleased and started growling in a weird liquid gurgle and Anita did not want
to ride that unfriendly animal. I told her that all the camels protest as a matter of
form when they are forced to kneel and I helped her climb on it, which was not
easy. I clambered behind her and we survived the ordeal of her seesaw rising up
with little screams and laughs. Then the slow, body-swaying amble to the pyramid
of Chephren, Cheops‟s son and that of Mykerinos.
Aly, the barefoot, little Bedouin boy, walked in front pulling the camel
with a rope leash and tried to communicate with us in poor but very original and
inventive English. The most repetitive word in his mostly incomprehensible
utterances was baksheesh.

78
 I hugged Anita from behind and kissed her neck when we were trudging
away from the crowds and the boy was busy pulling our poor overloaded camel. I
put my face in her hair and breathed her body odor. It was a strangely moving
olfactory sensation. It reminded me that last night I was in love with her. That we
made wonderful, passionate love but in the morning the physical bond was
tenuous and fading because it was sexual attraction in a vacuum. We knew so
little of one another. I bit her ears and held her breasts and she turned now and
then to give me a kiss. A little of her solemnity left her and she giggled and
pinched my legs. We went round the two lesser pyramids and turned back to go to
the Sphinx. On the way we saw some very tiny pyramids and the boy said they
belonged to the wives of the pharaohs.
“So typical of men! Sometimes I hate them. Not one stupid pharaoh had
the gallantry to build a good-sized pyramid for his wife.”
“But, Anita, they had harems of dozens of wives. Ramses II had hundreds.
He could not possibly build pyramids for all of them let alone large pyramids. The
wives considered themselves lucky if he came around once every few months to
have intercourse with them.”
“Silly, selfish bastards. Do you blame them that the women made love
between themselves?”
“If they had the taste for homosexual love, good for them.”
“If you have nothing else, it is an alternative. It is an acquired taste.”
“You seem pretty sure of this. Would you do it?”
“Yes, I would.”
I was shocked. This woman kept surprising me. I bit her neck and she let
out a cry. The boy looked up and smiled at us. Perhaps he guessed we were
fooling around. The taxi driver would have thrown us off his camel. We were
lumbering and swaying on a paved road on the rear side of the great pyramid. I
was stuck to Anita and with every step, I bumped on her lightly. I kissed her and
held her around her waist. She seemed to be enjoying the ride. The camel‟s
swaying and Anita‟s proximity had given me a hard-on and she felt it prodding
her. She turned round, smiling, and kissed me.
We reached a steep downhill incline of the road. As we descended, the
Sphinx appeared to the right below us. Anita stared at it. She was not effusive in
her reactions. We stood for a while and looked at it. So did our camel with
haughty indifference.
“Zis Aboulhol,” said our little Bedouin.
“Thanks for the information, Aly,” I told him in Arabic. “We would have
never guessed.”
Aly laughed though I doubted he understood the irony.
“Aboulhol is the Egyptian name for the Sphinx,” I explained to Anita.
“Is it a he or a she?” she asked.
“I don‟t know. Probably a he. The Sphinx was carved from an outcrop of
limestone right where it stands during the reign of C hephren. It is supposed to
have the features of his face and its headdress is that of a pharaoh. It was to be the
guardian of the necropolis. So it must be a he. Ah, yes, I forgot. It had a beard,
which was broken off and now it rests in the British museum. So it is definitely a
he.”
“Well, he did a good job of safeguarding,” said Anita. “The pyramids are
still in place.”

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 “Not so good,” I objected. “All the tombs in the area have been opened
and burglarized. I think he should be pensioned off. Fifty centuries on duty is too
long and, anyway, his health is not what it used to be. He is crumbling little by
little.”
“On the other hand,” said Anita, “he is now earning his keep attracting all
those tourists. It‟s worthwhile keeping him on despite the serious neglect of his
duties in the past millennia.”
We set off on our way back. Past a few other small pyramids and empty
tombs. I asked Aly to deposit us at the Mena House.
“You give baksheesh?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“One bound?”
I laughed.
“The letter p is missing from the Egyptian alphabet, Anita, and the closest
substitute is a b.” I turned to Aly. “Five piasters.” I said.
He laughed dismissively.
“Fifty biasters,” he said.
“Ten piasters.”
He laughed again.
“Twenty- five biasters.”
“Okay,” I said.
It was way too much but he was a sweet kid and he walked a long way on
his skinny, barefoot legs pulling our reluctant camel behind him. Just listening to
his English you got your money‟s worth. Outside the hotel, camels and horses
with their garrulous, noisy keepers were waiting for clients and groups of
mounted tourists passed us by. We seesawed to a precarious landing, our camel
growling once more unhappily, paid little Aly and entered the hotel‟s gardens. We
walked towards the entrance of the building, up a wide stairway to a large patio
with tables and bronze pots of flowers and, inside, past the reception desk and
down a corridor to the toilets. We both needed a pee.
The hotel was not at its best. It had seen better days when exiled royalty
and prime ministers patronized it during the Second World War. Still, one felt an
aura of history and grandeur in its spaciousness, elaborate Islamic-style
woodwork decorations, and the huge bronze chandelier hanging from the cupola
of the main hall. A few foreigners were milling around in the reception lobby and
a few others were sitting on comfortable leather armchairs. We sat at a table on
the patio. The view of the great pyramid in front of us was superb. A party of
three tourists was slowly working its way up to the top guided by a dragoman in a
galabeya.
Anita was again silent. She was lost in thought, her eyes on the great
pyramid. The waiter came and I ordered food and a bottle of Rubis d’Egypte, a
local wine.
“It must be nice to be rich,” she said. “To live in beautiful hotels like the
Mena House, to travel and not to worry about money. ”
“I suppose so,” I said, “though even the rich worry about it. I never cared
about money.”
“One never craves something that is not lacking in his life. ”
“I haven‟t all that much and I have been through hard times but I never
associated happiness with wealth and I never felt the greed for money you talked
about.”

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 “If that is true you are an exception. What do you do for a living?”
“I am a mechanic.”
“A mechanic?”
“Yes. I work in a machine repair shop.”
“Do you earn all that much?”
“My salary does not last half a month. I draw on savings from my previous
job.”
“Which was?”
“Contraband. Smuggling foreign cigarettes into the country.”
She laughed.
“I don‟t believe it!”
“It‟s true. I lived in Port Said and worked at it for four years. Unloading
cartons of cigarettes from ships in the dead of the night. I made a lot of money.
Then my mother died and I could stay there no longer. I came to Cairo and took
up this job temporarily until I decide what to do next. More than anything else, it
is something to occupy my mind. To keep me from morbid thoughts. I have been
working in Cairo for over a year and I still haven‟t decided on my next move.”
“How old are you, baby?”
I felt a twinge in my heart. Antigone called me baby.
“Baby all of a sudden?”
She laughed again. Her mood was brightening.
“Why not? I do like you. You‟re an interesting case. A kindred spirit.”
“First you love me, then apparently you don‟t, then you start liking me.
You‟re an interesting case, too. I‟m twenty-four, by the way.”
“I don‟t know how you got into this contraband business which must have
been dangerous but at least you had a family.”
“Just my mother but she was my universe.”
“Whereas I started off at eighteen on my own. I packed a bag and set off
for Athens. I had this overriding need for independence. It was not so much a case
of ambition to achieve something worthwhile in my life or a thirst for success and,
in any case, as you see, I ended up a cabaret girl. It was a desire to escape the
bonds and constraints of my family and the narrow- minded mentality of our
village. I was a little wild.”
“You do not look wild.”
“You do not look like a smuggler either.”
“I mean, you give the impression of a calm, restrained person.” I smiled
and held her hand. “Your other qualities are not apparent.”
She smiled, too.
“In Athens I started working as a waitress, first in coffee bars and then in
regular bars. I liked working in the evenings and eventually I became a barwoman
and it was a hectic job especially on the weekends but it was lots of fun. Men
were constantly flirting with me, trying to pick me up. I met many people and had
a vast choice of men and all the sex I wanted. Of course, they were casual affairs
for who would want to marry a barwoman? Men are all for the female sexual
liberation because it makes sex easier and more varied. Their broadmindedness
stops there. It is pure hypocrisy. When it comes to marriage, their considerations
revert to the traditional. They want a girl from a good family, young, with money,
with her own privately owned flat, preferably with a good job. Also not too
worldly- wise and independent so that she will serve her lord and master.”
“Surely not all men are like that.”

81
 “Most of the young professionals who can afford to frequent bars and
nightclubs regularly are of the same cast.”
“What about contrabandists and mechanics that frequent nightclubs?”
She smiled.
“Perhaps they are a little better,” she said. “Especially if they are twenty-
four.”
The waiter arrived and laid the table. He opened the wine and poured a
thimbleful for me. I tasted it. It tasted like wine. I nodded my head. He poured
some for Anita and then filled my glass.
“What shall we drink to?” she asked.
“To Cheops for building one of the wonders of this world. For providing
us with this fantastic spectacle.”
“We cannot drink to his health. He is dead,” she protested.
“We‟ll pretend he is sitting on the sun boat of Ra where all dead pharaohs
have their rightful place in their afterlife. ”
“But he caused terrible suffering to his people in order to build this tomb,
this monument for himself.”
“So what? One does not achieve wonders by being nice. One needs to be
cruel and ruthless.”
“We‟ll be drinking to a man who expresses the most common of human
traits on a grand scale. Selfishness. By and large, a male attribute.”
“You are very cynical about men, Anita.”
She smiled.
“Is it cynicism to be a realist?”
“You are asking difficult questions.”
She smiled again.
“Yes, John, let‟s drink to cynicism which prevents our self delusions. That
makes us see life with a clear eye.”
She lifted her glass.
“To Cheops, then, and to cynicism,” I suggested.
“Okay. To Cheops and to cynicism.”
We clinked glasses and drank the wine.
“Look,” she said pointing to the pyramid mountaineers, “they have nearly
reached the top. The view from up there must be superb. Another time we must
give it a try.”
I was happy she assumed we would see each other again. Happy also that
she seemed to like me because despite her unexpected tenderness, passion, and
expressions of love during sex, I was now unsure of her feelings. She had
withdrawn into her shell in the morning. We talked for a long while during our
leisurely lunch. I told her about my father and mother, the misery of our life, my
father‟s departure during the war, the four happy years with Antigone withholding
the fact of our sexual relations, her illness, my job, the severing of my education
and the present emptiness of my life. I told her about Vassi.
“God,” she said. “Same old story. A loves B but B loves C. One must not
dwell obsessively on sentimental disappointments. One must forget and get on
with one‟s life.”
“If one can.”
“Yes, of course. One must, however, make the effort.”
I was curious about her cabaret life and how she got into it. I was reluctant
to ask. I went about it obliquely.

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 “Do you enjoy your work, Anita?” I asked.
“Yes and no,” she answered. “It gives me some of the things I need but at
a price. I have my independence. I earn quite a lot of money and I travel a lot.
Apart from Athens and Thessaloniki, we have been to Italy, Spain, Morocco,
Tunis, Cyprus, and Lebanon. We spent a whole year in Lebanon but usually we
stay from three to six months at every place. Here, it‟s three months in Cairo and
two in Alexandria.”
“And the price?”
“Loneliness, as you guessed. The girls form friendships between
themselves and usually pair off like married couples. They room together and
often have a physical relationship. It‟s not so much the need for sex as the need
for a steady intimacy with another person, something that is lacking in their lives.
It is a bit like a women‟s prison or even a harem, despite our continuous
association with men. With men, sex is almost always business. Sometimes it
isn‟t, but even if it‟s not, the relationship, under the circumstances, cannot last
very long. It is, however, a respite. That‟s why when we find it we go for it but we
are careful not to get too involved. What is missing in our lives is a long-term
stable relationship with a man. Why do we persist? We persist because of the
money. Money is security and independence. We have a few good years and we
try to make as much of it as we can.”
I was starting to understand Anita a little better. I could no longer doubt
that she slept with men for money. I also knew that she must have liked me to
come with me without asking for it. I did attract her as much as she attracted me.
Her passion and tenderness and even her avowals of love were probably genuine
and now she was on the defensive against herself, against her feelings. I took her
hand and kissed it.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
“Because you have turned me into a cynic and I see life with a clear eye.”
She smiled.
“I don‟t understand,” she said.
“But I do,” I answered. “I am the respite.”
She laughed.
“Yes, my baby,” she said. “Yes, you are.”
“Do you also have a girlfriend?”
She looked at me surprised. Then she pinched my cheek playfully and
smiled.
“This does not concern you.”
“Which probably means you have. It doesn‟t matter, Anita, for we are
kindred spirits. Only my sins are slightly different. If you can call them that, for
love can never be sinful. Perhaps one day you shall confide in me and I shall
confide in you.”
“Perhaps.”
“What will you do after your nightclub career is over?”
“Career? Wow! Are you making fun of me?”
“No, my dear. In my situation, I should be the last person to make fun of
you.”
“Well, I might go back to bar tendering. My main objective is to buy a flat
so I will have a roof over my head. Then I shall be all right. And when I am
settled, I might even consider getting married. Pretty banal isn‟t it? ”

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 I looked at her. A rebel tamed by life. Using her body to survive. Still
fighting desperately for her independence. The independence that money
provides. I still felt love for this girl but was it love or was it pity? No, not pity.
Compassion? Understanding?
It was about four when we took a cab for the city. I told her we still had
almost three hours before she had to be back at the hotel. I asked her if she wanted
us to go home for a while and she said, “Yes,” just like the night before. And just
like the night before, we kissed passionately as soon as we shut the door of the
flat. We did not stop for a drink but tore off our clothes and made love. She could
not help saying she loved me. Perhaps she said it in response to my own
passionate babbling. I was not sure. I think she meant it.
We rested a while and then we dressed and took a cab for her hotel.
“I wonder how I shall be able to dance tonight,” she said. “I can hardly lift
my legs.” She laughed. “We sure had a full day! Mr Cheops and family, their
negligent tomb guardian with a broken nose and a beard in the British Museum, a
camel ride, a wonderful lunch with a view of the pyramids at a beautiful hotel and
a pleasant getting-to-know-you. And baby, it was so nice making love with you. ”
“When will I see you next?” I asked.
“Come around next Saturday.”
“But I want to see you sooner.”
“I have to work, you know.”
“I shall come round about midweek.”
“Listen, just because I call you baby you don‟t have to behave like one.”
“But I love you.”
“Keep your love for Saturday.”
“You really are tough.”
“I have to survive, baby.”
Back to work on Monday drenched in oil and the smell of kerosene. The
rush, rush, rush to get that motor fixed and the other tested, to send the boys to
buy spare parts and the thousand small odd jobs to be done kept my mind busy. At
home, the evening would not end. I was like a caged animal. I brooded, thought of
Anita, read the newspaper, brooded on and on until it was time to sleep. On
Tuesday, entering my flat after work I fell upon the girl next door. I was
embarrassed at my state of appearance but she smiled and said hello and I asked
her to join me for a cup of tea. She said okay and I asked her to give me half an
hour to shower and make myself presentable. She knocked on my door an hour
later.
“Are you alone?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
She made a show of reluctance to come in.
“I thought your wife would be with you,” she said.
She was justifying her acceptance to come to my flat.
“Please, please come in,” I insisted. “I won‟t eat you.”
We laughed and she came in. I told her the girl she saw was not my wife,
she was my girlfriend.
“She is very nice,” I told her, “and she would be happy to meet you. My
name is John. I am an engineer. That‟s why I was so shabby a while ago. ”
Egyptians tend to put great emphasis on one‟s profession. Had I told her I
was simply a mechanic she might have looked down on me.

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 We conversed in Arabic and got to know each other slowly, cautiously,
following the elaborate ritual of Egyptian courtesies. For a year, I had been
meeting her regularly on the few steps that led us from the building‟s entrance to
our ground floor apartments and I vacillated, both wanting to find a way to be
acquainted and talk to her and at the same time reluctant to do so. Now that I met
Anita and was at the onset of a bizarre infatuation, I picked up the courage to
invite her to my flat. However, in life it is always so. It is the happily matched
person who feels confident enough to try for something new and casual and is
unfaithful to his partner. Not the unhappy one.
This girl interested me. She seemed different from the parochial Egyptian
girls of her generation. The way she looked at you. The pleasant, open smile that
invited you to talk to her. She was at the forefront of a change of attitudes that was
finally burgeoning in Egypt in the educated classes. For she was educated. She
was a third- year student at the School of Medicine of Cairo University. Her name
was Samia and hailed from a small provincial town on the Nile Delta. She shared
her flat with two other girl students both of whom I had seen at various times but
had not attracted my interest in the same way. Samia was tall and slim and lacked
the sex appeal that Anita radiated but she had a beautiful oriental face with two
large eyes full of life and intelligence and a luminous, extremely becoming smile.
Her shoulder- length hair was jet black and curly in the manner that became
fashionable in the nineties and had a silk- like unblemished skin slightly darker
than a European.
I excused myself to go and make some tea and she followed me to the
kitchen. I liked her casual, easygoing attitude. Then we sat and sipped the tea and
talked. She did not stay long and she left saying she had to study. I went and
invited her again a few days later. She was again studying and I told her to come
for a break and asked her friends to come along as well but they made their
excuses and Samia came alone. We were getting familiar with each other and her
visits broke my monotony so very pleasantly.
After I met Anita, I stopped going to the cinema. I tried it once or twice
but I kept thinking of her in the darkness and the film was just a blur. I started
seeing aunt Ioanna on weekdays since my weekend s were taken. By and by, I had
to reveal the reason for this and she told me to beware of cabaret girls. I said it‟s
too late and it was no joke but we all laughed including Vassi. Her curiosity was
aroused and, wonder of wonders, she started calling me up at work to see how I
was getting along. I took my revenge by being as vague as she was previously
with me. I was working off my resentment. I still loved her but sometimes I hated
her. I also bought a few books and started reading. In between, I daydreamed of
Anita and was constantly counting the days to Saturday. I brooded over how she
spent her evenings and was troubled that I had become suddenly so infatuated
with a woman that was, in the last analysis, almost a prostitute. For the first few
weeks, Samia was my respite from these thoughts. She was always gay and
friendly and as her trust built up, she often knocked on my door and came for a tea
break without being invited.
The Saturday following my initial encounter with Anita, I went to the
nightclub in the evening with a pounding heart and spasms in my stomach. I was
wondering how she would confront me. A whole week without the slightest
contact had gone by and the sense of familiarity had inevitably faded. Our
passionate one-day affair seemed like a faraway dream. Moreover, with a person
who valued her independence as much as she did, one could never be sure of her

85
reaction. She might feel threatened by the prospect of a sentimental attachment
and decide not to get involved any further. Six days might have cooled her down.
She was doing her number with a half dozen other girls on the dance floor
as I went in. It was the same routine with the same music as the week before.
They were all dressed in the same glittering outfits except that the color hues were
different. A sort of one-piece bathing costume with a skirt of thin sheets of
glittering cloth that allowed the legs to protrude and billowed easily at every swirl.
On their heads, a sort of crown collected their hair and emphasized their necks,
bare shoulders and revealing décolletage. The dance was energetic and
meaningless, the girls getting together and drawing apart going round and round
in a circle and around their own axis like a demented solar system.
My eyes were on Anita and I smiled at her earnestness. She seemed to me
so lovable. Not beautiful, not graceful, not an accomplished dancer, simply
lovable by dint of her earnestness and effort to do a good job. At the end, they
stood in a line bowing slightly to the applauding spectators, a professional smile
on their faces. She caught sight of me, the professional smile became genuine and
I relaxed. I went and sat at a side table and waited. A girl came and asked if I
would offer her a drink. For the first time ever, I refused.
“I am waiting for a friend, I told her.”
She came out ten minutes later in a dark red pair of trousers and a white
shirt walking slowly, her eyes searching the crowds. She stopped at a table and
greeted some men. She talked to them for a minute then smiled and left them with
a small wave of her hand. I wondered who they were. Probably clients she had
socialized with. It came to me how small a part of her life I was. How small, how
big, I was not sure. Then she moved on looking for me. She looked so nice. Sweet
and serious even made up as heavily as she was to emphasize her sultriness. I was
in love all over again. I waved. She saw me, smiled and came to my table.
“Hi baby,” she said.
I was so perfectly happy I was her baby again, I did not know whether to
say, hello darling, hello sweetheart or hello my love, so I said,
“You dance very well.”
“Oh come off it,” she said. “How have you been?”
“Lonely. It was hard waiting for Saturday.”
“I was lonely, too. I missed you.”
Even if it was not true, it was music to my ears.
“Oh come off it,” I said.
“Really. One can be lonely even in a crowd.”
“You seem to have plenty of friends.”
“Oh, you noticed! They are regulars at the nightclub. They spend a lot of
money. We have to be nice to them.”
“How nice?”
“Very nice,” she said with a smile.
“I hope not as nice as you are with me.”
“We‟re getting possessive, are we?”
“You have not given me that privilege.”
“Oh baby, I do not want us to be hurt. I am a special case. You must make
allowances.”
“It seems to me I don‟t have much choice.”
“Just remember, you are my respite.”
“And you are mine.”

86
 “That‟s good,” she said. “That‟s how I want it to be. There is no other
way.”
She stretched her hand and caressed my cheek.
“Shall we have a drink?” I asked.
“Yes we must. It‟s my job, after all, to get you to drink.”
She smiled. I ordered two whiskies.
We talked a while. We did not have much to say. None of the small talk of
conventional lovers. Our lives were separate and exclusive. Hers was hidden from
me; mine was uninteresting. What bound us was sexual passion in a void. Yet it
was overwhelming and powerful. We shared a language and loneliness. Not much
more. Moreover, there were the limits she imposed apart from the time limit of
her stay in Egypt. It put a brake on our intimacy even though we were already
lovers. I raked my brain to find something to say. Tomorrow it would be easier.
With the music you cannot talk of Cheops or muse about your life. You need
short, self- sufficient sentences and I could not find any. As we were sipping our
drinks there were comfortable silences and tender smiles. Then she left for the
second part of her show.
We left again straight after she finished. We took a taxi home and I held
her hand. I looked in her eyes and tried to find the blue in the dark. It came and
went with the streetlights. So did the makeup and her smile. Her thumb caressed
my hand again. It meant something, did it not? It was tenderness. It said things she
did not say. It made me happy. I wondered if she was.
“Are you happy?” I asked.
“I am not lonely with you.”
“We have not talked much tonight.”
“We do not need words.”
We fell into a passionate embrace as we entered the flat. The kissing
touched our souls. It was not just lust. Her emotion penetrated my being. It was
there, her love, almost tangible. How unnatural to deny it. How perverse to
suppress it. In moments like these, it broke through. For every, “I love you,” came
her echo: “I love you too, baby.” Then, the reserve, the pulling back, the caution.
It baffled me and kept me off balance. I did no know what to think nor how to
react. I would muse on her other life of which I was no part and wanted no part. I
would have a whole week of afternoons to contemplate and invent a thousand
troubling thoughts. Then Saturday, again, and eighteen hours of happiness. I was a
modern Prometheus: the eagle of love eating my viscera for five days only to be
healed on the weekend, with the torture resuming on Monday.
We kissed and drank, and drunk with love and drink, we undressed and
tasted those secret parts that joined our bodies and souls and bestowed us
unutterable longing. Then we moved on to my bed to extinguish our passion,
which, like a cat, had almost nine lives a night. That second Saturday was nearly
better that the first. The novelty was still present and thrilling and to our love,
much denied but alive, was added the new awareness and knowledge of our
individual bodily needs. We made love madly, crazily; a marathon of coupling,
with little naps in between.
In the morning, a shower to revive us. To remove her makeup and expose
unadorned her lovely blue eyes puffed up from lack of sleep and the blue hue
beneath of inordinate lovemaking. A leisurely breakfast and a taxi to Sakkara for
marvelous decorated tombs and the crumbling step pyramid of Zoser. The taxi

87
waited for us, as the necropolis was out in the countryside, and two hours later, we
returned to the city for lunch in a restaurant.
“Thank you, John,” she told me. “You are pulling me out of my ignorance.
In Greece, we are so self-centered. All we talk about are the ancient Greeks and
their civilization. We ignore all the other countries that had civilizations even
more ancient than ours. I mean, what we have seen is breathtaking.”
“Yes. And the strange thing is that it is from tombs and ancient
monuments that we are learning history.”
“Those tombs with their colorful murals depicting the everyday life of the
dead man were extraordinary. The fishing and hunting and their opulent meals.
What I resented was that the men‟s wives were usually half the size of their lord
and master. It rubbed in their inferiority.”
I laughed.
“Quite a feminist, you are, my little Anita. They were, I must admit, quite
retarded on that subject these ancient Egyptians. The one Queen-Pharaoh they
had, Hatshepsut, is usually depicted sporting a royal beard. You know, the long,
thin, cylindrical one coming down from the bottom of the chin with an outward
slant at the end.”
“It‟s good they did not add a royal penis on her, as well,” she said with
some annoyance.
“But there were one or two tombs belonging to women. ” I protested.
“Wow, thanks a lot. Even the Apis bulls had their catacomb, the
Serapeum.”
“Yes, but don‟t forget the Apis bulls were sacred animals. ”
“Whereas women were several grades beneath.”
“Women‟s power is not on show. They rule by subterfuge, subtlety and the
slit between their legs.”
“How dreadful you are John! Is that what you think?”
“No, but they do come into play even today. Don‟t they? Say the truth,
Anita. Unfortunately feminism has created an us-and-them mentality.”
“Yes and it is the result of aeons of oppression.”
“Perhaps. Still, the fact is, one sex cannot live without the other.”
“Oh yes we can.”
“Now not only you exaggerate, my love, but you are also telling me
indirectly that I am an insipid lover.”
We laughed because the whole of our conversation was on a half-serious,
merry tone.
We did talk, finally, quite a lot. A bit about the pharaohs, a little about
man and God and the different religions. I told her the few things I knew about
Islam and perhaps due to the telling, which was more than a little biased, she was
not charmed. She was developing a taste for Egyptology and we scheduled the
archeological museum for the following Sunday.

88
 cinderella and a portly prince

We returned home and made love again. She was as avid as I was and I
thought that if all this inexhaustible passion did not bind us together, nothing
would. We slept a little and I asked her to dress when we woke up. I wanted her to
meet Samia. Not for any special reason but because both girls expressed the wish
to meet. I knocked on Samia‟s flat. She opened the door and smiled.
“Can you come to my flat for a moment?” I asked. “Anita is with me and
she would like to meet you.”
She wanted to go in and dress. I told her she was just fine as she was and
she followed me in a pair of jeans and a blue, long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves
rolled up. Her hair was ruffled and she tried to smooth it out as we crossed the
landing between our flats.
“You look very attractive,” I said. “Don‟t worry.” She blushed. I was
surprised because she was not shy.
We knocked on the door and Anita opened. They smiled at each other and
shook hands.
“Anita, Samia.” I introduced them. “You can talk in English or employ me
as an interpreter. Samia, you do speak English, don‟t you?”
“Of course. All our medical textbooks are in English. But I am not fluent
in speech. I need a lot of practice.”
“So do we,” I said.
“I saw you the other day and I thought you were his wife, ” she told Anita.
“Of course, I had not seen you before but I assumed you were away. ”
“I was away. I only came to Cairo recently.”
“And how do you like it? Forgive me, it is the classic question. You must
be tired of answering it.”
“That‟s all right. I like Cairo. The European part is nice and the Nile
grandiose. I have not been to the poorer areas, which I am told are dirty and
miserable. John is showing me the archeological sites. You have a glorious history
and, of course, amazing archeological monuments. ”
“And the people?”
“Exuberant, noisy. I have not been to a country with so much noise. Car
horns, the radios in the more popular coffee shops, even the prayers from the
mosques, all turned up at full blast.”
I was silent. I wished Anita would not be so frank.
“As for the people themselves, I have not really formed an opinion yet.
The people I meet at work are of a wealthier class and they are much the same as
everywhere else. I mostly meet men and I have not a very high esteem for them.
Of course, it is in the nature of my work to see the slimy, arrogant and sticky side
of them. They think they can buy a human being with money. I have to be civil
but I cannot help feeling contempt for most of them.”
Samia was puzzled.
“May I ask what your profession is?”
“She works at a hotel,” I said.
“John wants to give you a good impression. I dance at the hotel nightclub.
I am a showgirl.”
Samia tried to hide her shock.
“How interesting,” she said. “It must be fun.”

89
 “Oh, so-so,” said Anita.
“I would love to come and see you sometime.”
“Sure. Ask John to bring you.”
“We shall arrange it,” I said.
“John told me you are studying medicine and that you work extremely
hard. I really admire you for that and you have such a beautiful oriental face. I
mean, you could not possibly have been a European. If I were a man I would have
fallen in love with you.”
Samia smiled and her face darkened. It was what blushing did to her dark
complexion. I got up and went to the kitchen to prepare some tea. The two girls
continued chatting. They seemed to like each other. I returned with three mugs of
tea, we talked a while longer and then Samia got up to continue her studying. She
kissed Anita and I told her I felt left out and she said with a smile that in Egypt
women may kiss other women but never a man.
“Not even when they make love?” I asked.
She laughed.
“That‟s different,” she said.
“Oh do make an exception for our Johnny,” Anita said. She was close to
Samia and caressed her hair, cajoling her. “He is a nice boy. I am glad you are
becoming friends. With my work I do not see him as often as we both would like
and he gets lonely.”
We were standing near the door and Samia kissed me on the cheek.
“You don‟t mind if I come here for a cup of tea now and then?” she asked
Anita.
“No,” said Anita with a smile, “I don‟t mind sharing him.”
“What do you mean you don‟t mind sharing me?” I asked her when Samia
left. I held her and kissed her. “You have not stopped shocking me ever since we
met. You are confusing me. I don‟t know what to think. ”
She laughed and kissed me.
“Don‟t you see that I love you in my own way? I care for you. I am
preparing the way for my successor. Samia is such a nice girl. I really like her. I
shall not be with you for very long. Time flies. ”
“No, no. I cannot believe such altruism! And anyway, I cannot get
involved with an Egyptian girl. I cannot enter such complications. Nor ruin her
life.”
“How do you mean?”
“All Egyptian girls are virgins. They are expected to be virgins until the ir
marriage.”
“Samia is not a virgin.”
“How do you know? Did she tell you?”
“She didn‟t tell me. It‟s the way she talked to me. She does not talk like a
girl. She is a mature woman.”
“Oh, well, perhaps. I don‟t know.”
I kissed her again.
“Let‟s get married Anita. I cannot bear the thought that in a few months
we shall part.”
“Oh, my baby. You really are a baby.”
“I mean it.”
“Don‟t be silly.”
“Oh go to hell, then. I don‟t care.”

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 She laughed and kissed me.
“Time to be getting back to the hotel.”
“My God. Another week of Promethean loneliness. The eagle of love will
be devouring my entrails again.”
“Samia will chase it away.”
For the next five or six weeks my routine changed for the better. The wise
Anita proved to be correct. My feelings of desperate loneliness were assuaged
largely by Samia‟s presence. With Anita, we kept Sundays for our education, for
it was mine as well as hers. We visited the archeological museum as scheduled.
The fine, old Islamic mosques and Coptic churches, the old city of Cairo and the
Khan el Khalili, the Citadel and the Al Azhar University. I was surprised at the
continued interest she took in those outings and the semi-serious, good-humored
discussions we had during our pleasant lunches. After which we rushed home for
love and sex as if the night sessions were wanting, incomplete, inadequate and the
hardship too severe to bear. In the afternoon, Anita always asked to see Samia and
all three, usually had tea together before they both went their way.
During the week, I started reading, in French, Proust‟s interminable
volumes of reminiscences, Α la Recherche du Temps Perdu. It was easier knowing
Samia was next door. Sometimes I took a break and knocked on her door to ask
her to come for a cup of tea and sometimes she took a break and came unasked.
Once a week I went to aunt Ioanna and if Vassi was at home, I would stay on
longer. I would return home late and not see Samia. Next day, she would
complain facetiously that this break in her well-ordered routine disturbed her
studies, her mental tranquility. I told her that when she was not at home, I, too,
felt something was missing. She said we were acquiring bad habits like smoking. I
said bad habits are sometimes very pleasant.
She asked me many questions about Anita. Was I really in love with her?
How could I be in love with a girl that led such a disreputable life? Did she meet
other men? How could I be so complacent? To have a fling with her was okay; to
be in love was, to her mind, absurd. That she liked Anita did not change the facts.
It was difficult answering those questions for they were questions I often asked
myself. I told her love is not offered us on a menu where you can pick and choose.
Circumstances predispose you and love chooses you. Does the fact that she liked
Anita not say something?
As we got more familiar, she spoke of her life more and more I started
realizing that Anita was probably right to believe that Samia was not a virgin.
Nothing concrete. She said young people were not as inhibited as in the past. She
knew girl students that had affairs and went out with rich men to have a good
time. She said the good students, the ones that studied from morning until bedtime
non-stop, were usually deprived boys from the provinces. No one turned to look at
them though they would be tomorrow‟s famous doctors and university professors.
The girls ran after the rich boys with cars that could afford to spend on them; the
rich ones that rarely graduated and did not need to. Of course, there was a cost.
Nothing is free and the price was usually sex. She had fallen in love with one of
that tribe but she soon realized that she was being used and that he was running
around with other girls at the same time.
“So, what now?” I asked.
“A person grows up by his mistakes,” she said. “Now, my priority is my
studies and I am looking around a little. Not with much hope. All those rich boys
will eventually enter arranged marriages with equally wealthy girls. When I am

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finally a doctor, I shall be independent. My diploma will be my menu.” She
laughed. “And I shall pick and choose.”
“Meanwhile, don‟t you get lonely?”
“A little, when I have the time. Usually I don‟t. My studies absorb me. I
have an immense volume of information to learn almost by heart. This is why
medicine is so difficult. Plus, you must be immune to both sentimentality and
disgust. You work with human corpses and you must look at them like you, an
engineer, looks at an engine. Not everyone can do that.”
“Anita admires you and so do I. I am very lucky to have you as a neighbor.
We keep each other company. Of course, you have your flat mates whereas I have
no one. So you can say I am the luckier of the two of us.”
She smiled.
“A man is different from one‟s flat mates. Even if you are not romantically
linked with him, the feeling, the vibrations are different. The interest is greater.
The relationship is complementary rather than antagonistic. So I am quite lucky
too.”
“Then we are two lucky people.”
“Lucky to be friends. Love is too complicated.”
“Perhaps. But love is the magic of our lives. The supernatural, the
mystery, the enchantment. It is so terribly powerful and thrilling that you can
think of nothing else. It is a wonderful mental sickness.”
“Yes. So I‟d better stay out of love if I am to graduate. ”
We laughed.
“When will you come with me to the nightclub to see Anita dance? ”
“Will this Saturday be all right?”
“Sure. Do we have a date?”
“Yes. Unless something unexpected crops up.”
Nothing unexpected cropped up and on Saturday at ten Samia knocked on
my door. I was ready. Nicely dressed in a cool summer suit and shining shoes. I
opened the door and stared. For a moment, I was tongue-tied.
She smiled and said hello.
“Do you know the story of Cinderella?” I asked her.
She was quick witted, understood the compliment and turned it upside
down.
“Am I so grubby every day that just because I dressed up a little I
surprised you?”
“You are not in the least bit grubby but most assuredly you have a fairy
godmother who just touched you with her magic wand. Samia, you look
stunning.”
She had pulled back her hair in a bun which accentuated that lovely face of
hers, made up to perfection with eye liner, a blue shade on her upper eyelids, a
darkish lipstick that suited her skin color and a touch of rouge on her high
cheekbones. Her ears were dainty and beautiful and exposed with two large
circular earrings hanging from them. She wore a black, simple dress and her high
heels brought her up to my height. A perfume enveloped her, an invisible
accessory to her beauty. I walked around her, ogled her and smelled her noisily in
a humorous and not very refined performance but one that amused her.
“Oh, stop exaggerating,” she said.
“I do not understand why you do not have fifty men running after you.”
“Perhaps I have. That‟s not the point.”

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 “What is?”
“Out of the fifty, the hundred, finding the one you want. ”
“Oh boy,” I said, “another tough cookie.”
She laughed gaily. She was in a good mood. I took her by the arm.
“Come, my Cinderella, let us be off.”
On the street, we waited for a taxi to pass by. I apologized I did not have a
Rolls Royce which was what she deserved. We entered, instead, into a run down
little Fiat and by ten thirty we made our grand entrance in the nightclub. All eyes
were on us. On Samia because of her striking beauty; on me out of curiosity. One
always looks at the man who accompanies a beautiful woman and tends to wonder
what she finds in him. We sat at a table and I asked her what she wanted to drink.
“Whatever you have,” she said.
“Whisky?”
“Yes, fine.”
I was surprised. I did not think she would drink. I ordered the drinks. It
was still too early for the show. Anita was nowhere in sight. She did not know
Samia was coming. During the week, we were incommunicado. The music was
playing some gentle slows and couples were dancing. We sipped our drink and
talked. She said she was excited all day about our outing and hardly studied when
she returned from the faculty. In any case, she was preparing herself most of the
afternoon having a bath and so on.
She smiled.
“In the villages and the lower classes,” she said, “women take their baths
on the days they make love.”
“So you‟re all set, I told her.”
She laughed.
“Yes, except that the man is missing.”
“Look around and take your pick. I don‟t think there is a man in sight who
would refuse you.”
“You know very well, women do not function this way.”
I asked her to dance. I had never danced with Anita. She was hesitant.
“Do you think Anita will mind?”
“Didn‟t she tell you she didn‟t mind sharing me with you? ”
“She was surely joking.”
“Perhaps she wasn‟t. She is a strange girl. One never knows what‟s on her
mind. Anyway, perhaps I am sharing her with other men.”
We got up and walked to the dance floor. She moved easily into my arms
and we held each other comfortably. Not too tightly, not too loosely. I enjoyed her
movement, the feel of her body, the sensation of her firm embrace. She was
slender but graceful and light as a feather. Where did she learn to dance? Egyptian
girls are sheltered. I kept looking at her perfect face. She was a different Samia.
Not my chum from next door. I felt a traitor because of a new interest in her, a
new attraction and a new fascination for her beauty. I felt I was betraying Anita in
my heart. Subtracting, what? I did not even know. Some indescribable emotion
from Anita and transferring it to Samia. A new intimacy with Samia that seemed
reciprocated.
We returned to our table. The nightclub was filling up and we did not want
to lose it. I ordered another round. The clientele was mixed. The well dressed with
the casual. Young couples out to dance and have a good time and single men
looking for women. The cabaret girls were circulating looking for company to

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offer them drinks which were fake and on which they had a cut. Gin and tonic,
which was only tonic, scotch on the rocks, which was diluted tea on the rocks,
glasses of champagne from the rich Arabs, which were faintly colored soda water.
Samia was vastly interested in the goings on.
“So this is where you pick up your girls?”
“Picked.”
“Okay, picked.”
“Yes.”
“You had to have intercourse?”
“Yes. Am I not an animal, like all the animals you see around you offering
drinks to the females of the species?”
She laughed.
“Am I an animal too?”
“An exquisite, intelligent animal.”
“Thank you for the unusual compliment. I must tell you, however, that I
am not desperate to have intercourse.”
“The subject is as vast as the ocean, my dear. You made yourself very
beautiful tonight. I saw the pleasure you derived from the admiring glances all
around you. You danced ever so tenderly with me. I am almost in love with you. ”
She smiled.
“You mean I am trying to seduce you?”
“Not necessarily me.”
“Who, then? That fat man over there who has not taken his eyes off me?”
“Perhaps. How do I know? But, pray tell me, why are you so beautiful
tonight? There must be a reason you took all afternoon making yourself
seductive.”
She laughed.
“Don‟t be absurd.”
“All I‟m trying to say is that a woman‟s approach to sex is different. Her
sexual drive is not as urgent and she is not as direct as a man. She is subtle and
selective because her concerns are different but what is certain is that she is an
animal and, as such, has sexual desires.”
I held her hand. She did not pull it away.
“Apart of that,” I told her with a smile, “I still have not pinpointed the
reason why you are so beautiful tonight. I am not even convinced you are not
desperate to have intercourse.”
She laughed.
“Shut up,” she said. “Just shut up.”
The music stopped, the lights lowered and the dance floor emptied. The
same familiar music of the ballet troupe began and the girls came running in, a
spotlight on them.
“Oh, there she is,” said Samia.
I had seen the show a dozen times. It was identical every time. Same
music, same outfits, same choreography and the same sweet Anita moving
energetically and earnestly with the rest of the girls, smiles fixed on their faces. It
had seemed haphazard the first few times. Now I knew every move as if I were
the choreographer and had taught them their steps. It was neither art nor
particularly sexy. I wondered if the girls did not get bored doing the same thing
night after night. What was the point of it? I suppose to create atmosphere, to

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show off the girls that would later mingle with the clients to induce them to spend
as much as possible. When it was over, I asked Samia how she liked the show.
“It was fun,” she said. “You see one, you have seen all.”
“Oh, so you have seen one before?”
“A few. With that two-timing ass I told you about.”
The music started again and I asked her to dance. The two whiskies
loosened her up and her body stuck to mine. We danced and did not talk. I looked
at her face now and then and we smiled. Her perfume was spicy and exciting.
They say they use the sperm of rats in their formulas. I do not know if that was the
reason she held me tight. At twenty- four, one does not need rats‟ sperm to get
aroused. She sensed it and said we had better sit down.
Just as we sat, I saw Anita in her usual attire, a black pair of trousers and a
white silk shirt. She was made up to kill. She smiled and came towards us. She
stopped at the fat man‟s table, bent and kissed him on the cheek. He pulled her by
the arm and made her sit at his table. They talked for a few minutes and she
picked up his glass of whisky and took a few sips. Then she got up and came to
our table. We got up to kiss her.
“What a pleasant surprise,” she told Samia. “I saw a gorgeous girl with
John and then I realized it was you. You look unbelievably beautiful.”
“She has been trying to seduce me,” I said.
Samia blushed.
“You liar,” she said.
“Good for her,” said Anita. “It couldn‟t have been too hard.”
“Hard? I‟m almost in love with her.”
“Better hurry and do something about it because you are facing
competition.”
“Who from?”
“The man I just talked to. He asked me about Samia. He wants to meet
her.”
“That fat slob?”
“That fat slob is filthy rich. And believe it or not, he is a very nice man.
Quite unlike most of the others.”
“Is that why you kissed him?”
“I kiss whoever I like.”
“I don‟t doubt that. I was just wondering if it was for his money or because
he was nice.”
“For both.”
What started as a joke was turning into an unpleasant exchange. Samia
was embarrassed and I decided to shut up. Anita‟s familiarity with the man
spoiled my mood. I felt possessive again and possessiveness had no place in our
relationship. She had made that clear enough many times and I thought I had
accepted it. But that was only theory. At times, I could not reconcile our passion
and tenderness, our easygoing companionship with this total independence she
displayed so openly. Much as I tried to allow for her special circumstances, I
remained a very conventional male and if our relationship held it was because I
saw her once a week mostly away from her working environment. She was wise
to have insisted on this arrangement. It was an indication of, if not her love, at
least her attachment to me but I often wondered how solid this was. Was I only a n
ephemeral respite? Not much more?
“How did you like the show?” she asked Samia.

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 “It was very nice.”
“Oh well. It‟s nothing special, I know. The second part is better. Do you
mind if we join Amr? He asked me to invite you to his table. ”
“If John doesn‟t mind.”
I did mind but I did not want to be a spoilsport.
“Sure,” I said and we got up and moved to his table.
Amr stood up to welcome us. Anita introduced us and Amr thanked us for
accepting his invitation.
“I usually come alone,” he said, “but surprisingly, I meet very interesting
people in this nightclub. Not the stuffy rich. It is a mixed crowd and there are
many young people. I am a people watcher. I try to guess what they are, what they
do in life and so on. Just idle speculations to pass the time. I love to look at faces
especially if they are as beautiful as the ones of our ladies here. So please forgive
me for staring,” he said addressing Samia. “I often ask total strangers to join me
for a drink. We are basically all of us old lechers looking for a woman. I saw you
and Samia and I thought, ah, two lovebirds. A lovely couple.” He laughed. “It was
a surprise that Anita knew you.”
He snapped his finger at a waiter and ordered a bottle of champagne. He
was very friendly and kept talking and looking at Samia. Because of Anita, we
spoke in English. Our English was mediocre and did not compare to his, which
was almost perfect. I asked him how come he spoke that language so well and he
explained, asking to be forgiven if he sounded snobbish, that he had an English
nanny, went to an English school and studied economics in London.
“That was long ago,” he added. “We have since been stripped of the bulk
of our wealth by our glorious Socialist Revolution but we are surviving.”
“Quite well,” said Anita with a smile. “With a little champagne now and
then.”
He laughed because the waiter had just arrived with the champagne and
poured it in our glasses.
“Yes, my dear, quite well. Cheers everybody. To our health.”
He was about my height but twice my girth. Not a handsome man but
pleasant looking nevertheless. He must have been in his early forties and was
already losing his frizzy hair. His impressive physique contrasted with his sweet
smile and his quiet, pleasant voice.
“I was told you are studying medicine,” he told Samia. “I am impressed.
Hurry up and get your diploma because with the dissipated life I am leading I
shall need a doctor soon on a permanent basis. I am not very fond of doctors and
hospitals and the only thing that would induce me to undergo regular checkups
would be a doctor as beautiful as you.”
Samia smiled.
“Don‟t you work?” she asked him.
“I am very lucky in that. After the government nationalized our factories
and took away our land, I turned a hobby I had and loved into a profitable
business. I breed horses. I breed the finest horses in Egypt and sell them. Mostly
to Arab princes but also to the States, Europe and England. The Arab horse is the
most beautiful horse in the world. The most beautiful animal, if you ask me. So, I
make good money without having to keep office hours. I am pretty free to come
and see Anita almost every night and enjoy her lovely company. ”
“And what will you do when she leaves?” I asked him trying not to show
my pique.

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 Anita smiled. We looked at each other. I did not understand the meaning
of that smile. Was she mocking me? Once or twice, she had called me a crybaby.
Was that smile repeating her taunt?
“Let us avoid sad issues,” he said. “Everything has an end. The good and
the bad. And, ultimately, so do we. One can only take life as it comes. Only rarely
can one fashion it the way he wants.”
Anita left for the second part of the show. Amr started talking with Samia
in Arabic. I did not take part in the conversation. I was trying not to show I was
depressed but it must have been obvious. I wondered if Amr knew the reason. If
Anita had told him about us. I wondered about them as well. Anita had not
mentioned a thing. Money, I thought. Money that I pretended did not interest me.
Money was everything. I was learning a few things about life.
I asked Samia to dance and we left Amr alone. I held her closely but the
sense of fun and excitement had left me. Samia sensed it and was mostly silent.
After dancing for a while, she told me, “Cheer up John, something like this
was bound to happen.”
I did not answer. We kept dancing, lost in the music and our thoughts. A
hand tapped my shoulder. Sometimes things happen in split seconds. By the time I
came out of my reverie and turned to look, the dancing couple had taken a turn
and I just saw the man‟s face. He was just barely familiar and I could not place
him, as the couple was lost again in the crush of the dancers.
“Who was it?” I asked Samia.
“A very beautiful girl.”
I laughed.
“All the beautiful girls are slipping out of my reach, ” I said.
“I suppose I don‟t count,” she said with a laugh.
I kissed her on the mouth and we were lost for a while. We kissed again
and again, as we danced until the lights were lowered and the dance floor was lit
with the spotlights for the show.
When Anita returned to our table, Amr ordered another bottle of
champagne. I felt better. I was happy. It must have showed on my face because
Anita kept looking at me trying to decipher the change.
“I usually spend all day Sunday at the farm,” Amr said. “I have a
suggestion. Next Saturday, after Anita finishes her show, we all drive to the farm.
We shall sleep there and I shall show you my horses in the morning. I am very
proud of them. In a way, I feel like an artist and they are my work of art because
they truly are my creations. I match this mare with that stallion and the foal is
almost my baby. I am its father. I watch it grow for two and a half years and judge
whether the match turned out as I expected, whether the qualities of the parents
have passed on to the offspring, whether there is amelioration or deterioration in
the strain. Then I have to sell it and it breaks my heart but business is business. I
have to live to give birth to other beautiful creatures. How about it John? Shall we
arrange it?”
I looked at Samia. “Is that all right with you?” I asked.
“I suppose so,” she said, “though I have so much work.”
“Then, it‟s settled,” said Amr, “and I shall accept no backtracking.
Especially not from you, Samia.”
They started talking in Arabic again and Anita talked to me in Greek.
“I shall be staying with Amr tonight,” she said.

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 I just looked at her. I felt nothing. When there is no reciprocity, sometimes
love dies. Not always. But sometimes it does. At least momentarily. And
sometimes an ember remains alive and fires your soul repeatedly throughout your
life. I have lived through all the trials.
“Samia loves you. I can tell. You are better off with her. ”
“Thank you for your thoughtfulness.”
She laughed.
“You silly boy,” she said. “I love you too but Amr is a big fish and I don‟t
want to lose him. Watch he does not take Samia from you. You see, we are allies
after all. We have common interests.”
“Uncommon interests, is more like it.”
She laughed again. She was tough. Life was a game and the stakes were
not love.
It was past two. I asked Samia if she wanted us to leave. She said yes, she
had an awful lot of studying to do in the morning. We stood up and said goodbye.
Samia kissed Anita and before I kissed her we looked at each other for a few
seconds. Strange messages were exchanged in those pregnant glances. Questions
and justifications, reproaches and promises, pain and apologies. I brought them
back to my mind the next day and tried to work out, for a long time, their
perplexing meaning. We shook hands with Amr. We thanked him for his
generosity and he held us once again to our Saturday rendezvous.
We found a cab and headed for home. I held her hand in the darkness.
History is constantly repeating itself.
“What were you chattering in Greek?” she asked.
“What were you chattering in Arabic?”
“Oh, nothing much. This Amr is very sticky.”
“He is mad about you. It‟s written all over him.”
“Doesn‟t he see I am with you?”
“Are you, my Cinderella? “
“Well, aren‟t I?”
I kissed her hand for a reply. It was the most I could do in a cab. I wanted
to kiss her lips. I was happy.
“And Anita?” she asked.
“Anita is playing roulette. One chance in thirty six to get him. ”
“Meanwhile she is milking him well and good, I suppose. ”
“Don‟t be obscene.”
“Oh stop it. I meant his money.”
“This is life. Each is getting something from the other. Sociologists call it
the Social Contract.”
She laughed.
“Oh, hardly,” she said.
“And yet, that‟s what it is. Like marriage and government and the law and
even prostitution, like all the relationships in society where there is no struggle but
consent.”
We reached our mingy home. Went up the few weathered steps to our
landing. We looked at each other in the silence of the slumbering building, the
deserted street outside and the dim light of a single lamp hanging from its wire
and bronze socket. She was exquisite. She was almost mine. I was not sure of her
intentions. How far she would go. I kissed her. She held me firmly. I felt her
excitement. Her quickening breath.

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 “Do we have a social contract, us two?” I asked.
“A real contract?”
“A real contract.”
“No more Anita?”
“No more Anita.”
She looked at me, for a moment, in the eyes, first in one, and then the
other. Evaluating their sincerity.
“Satisfied?” I asked her.
She smiled and kissed me. I disengaged myself from her embrace,
searched for my keys and opened the door. I stood aside and she entered. I closed
the door and held her in the darkness. We kissed and I caressed her breasts. They
were small and firm. I felt her long back and firm buttocks. Her breath smelled
champagne and her faint body odor mingled with the fading perfume. It was a
different body, long and angular. A different feel, a different response. I could not
help thinking of Anita, a buxom, voluptuous authority of sex. An annihilator of
conventions and inhibitions. I fumbled with the zip of her dress and could not
undo it. I moved to switch on the light and she asked me not to.
“I feel bashful,” she said. “Let us do it in the darkness the first time.”
I took her hand and we moved, two blind mice, bumping on the furniture,
on the walls, on the door, on each other, giggling, to my room. I kissed her, turned
her round and managed to undo the zipper. I carefully slid her dress down. I
circled her with my arms from behind and felt her breasts again, her nice flat belly
and wispy pubic hair over her panties. I bit her neck; she let out a cry, reached
backward and pulled my hair. I tackled the clasp of her bra and managed to undo
it. Her nipples were erect, her breasts filled my hands. They were just right. No
overflow. I pulled down her panties, turned her round and kissed her. Her
nakedness excited her and she kissed me violently.
“Take it easy,” I told her and she laughed.
She unbuttoned my shirt as I kicked off my shoes and took off my trousers
and underpants in one go and threw them on the heap of clothes on the floor. I
lifted off my flannel, the last item, and kissed her again, my erect penis happily
squashed between us, linking us, not yet joining us. I felt she was taller than I was.
“Do you usually make love in high heels?” I asked her.
“Isn‟t it sexy and depraved?” she said with a laugh. “If you don‟t like it,
take them off.”
The passion was awakening, not yet desperate, and the jesting helped to
build it up slowly and pleasantly. I took her to the bed, made her sit, and pushed
her to lie down. I picked up one long leg, removed the shoe, kissed her foot,
caressed her uplifted leg and touched her genitals.
“Now, with one shoe,” I told her, “you are the true Cinderella. Tomorrow
Prince Amr will come searching for you with the other.”
“Oh nuts, you are my Prince,” she answered.
I kissed her foot again.
“So shall we make love with you as Cinderella or would you rather I made
love with Samia?”
“With Samia, my love,” she said.
“With Samia my love, it shall be.”
I picked her other endless leg and took off the other shoe. I spread her
legs and knelt on the floor. She was silent. I missed my eyesight. I missed looking
at her flower, her cunt, her rose with soft, thick petals and exciting fragrance.

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Those other lips of another avid mouth whose fascination never fades, whose
wonder never diminishes. I felt its softness, its warmth as I opened and licked it.
She gasped and then was silent. I licked, tasted and kissed her for the pleasure she
gave me. For her pleasure was mine. Her excitement was mine. Her moans, her
gasps, her cries were all mine. I kept on and on and on until she could bear it no
longer. My face was bathed in her fluids and my saliva. My mouth a male vulva. I
bent over her and kissed her all over her face.
“That‟s what you taste like,” I told her.
“Not bad,” she said.
I made her lie on the bed normally. I opened the bedside cabinet brought
out a Gold Coin condom and gave it to her.
“Here‟s a penny for your thoughts.”
She felt it in the darkness.
“That‟s a Gold Coin, not a penny but it was on my thoughts and you are
very thoughtful.”
I laughed.
“This is no laughing matter,” she said. “Please hurry.”
“How nice,” I said, “you are losing your inhibitions.”
“After this workout, what do you expect?”
I took the condom and fitted it on. I took her hand and placed it on my
rubber-clad penis.
“You have not touched it until now,” I told her. “Are you still shy? Relax,
it is quite dark, and he is dressed. He is wearing his rubber tuxedo and is ready to
pay you a visit.”
She held it and kissed me repeatedly, energetically, wildly pushing her
tongue as deep as it would go in my mouth, reaching for my throat and then she
got up and straddled me.
“Bla, bla, bla. Too much bla, bla. Too much prevarication, ” she said
pretending to be annoyed. “I shall have to take the initiative.”
She placed my cock in her opening, sat on it with a loud gasp and we were
off on the wonderful journey of carnal intimacy. I could barely see her in the dark.
I could just hear her loud, irregular breathing, her small cries and moans, the
creaking of the tormented bed. Sightlessly, I caressed her long slim body, her
widening haunches and dancing, jumping, oscillating backside. I sucked her
breasts and bit the nipples brushing my face, responded to her fiery kissing
assaults and helped her along the way to her orgasm with cooperative
countermoves. She gradually speeded up her movements and kept increasing the
pace to a cadence of delirium, of almost desperation until her orgasm struck her
with a sharp scream and felled her like a tree to her side. The fall disconnected us
and she was dead for a while.
I lit the bedside lamp. I looked at her beautiful face and caressed her hair.
She was exquisite and relaxed and was perspiring slightly. After a few minutes, I
saw her stirring. I wiped the perspiration of her forehead with my hand. She
opened her large, almond-shaped eyes, looked at me and smiled.
“Knock, knock,” I said, “may I come in?”
She laughed and opened her legs. I entered her vagina, the warm, slippery
gate to her body, her insides, her being. We were on our sides. I was between her
endless legs. I did not move. After her orgasm, she was calm. I smiled at her.
“What shall we talk about?” I asked.

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 She laughed again. I loved to hear her laugh. It was throaty and intelligent
like her eyes, like her smile. I have seen laughs that reveal the stupidity that was
not apparent on a face and others that reveal a lack of humor. Hers disclosed her
brains, her openness and sociability.
“Now that you are safely inside me and I am so full of you, we can discuss
whatever you want.”
“Sex?” I ventured.
“Oh yes. Quite appropriate, I must say.”
“Isn‟t sex wonderful?”
“It depends.”
“Quite true, it depends. But sex can be wonderful. It can be wooden and
animal- like and it can be playful and imaginative. It is an art. Some people have a
special talent for it. They are the explorers of sex. The sensualists, the discoverers
of subtle variations in this seemingly clear-cut and unchanging act. They are the
tantrika, the lovers of women. The culture of the tantra believes that the woman
coupled with the man can attain a state of divinity. The idea that sexual pleasure
and fulfillment is as close as man ever gets to God. To being Divine. That‟s where
I am now, my darling Samia. Inside you and it‟s paradise. I have a hunch you are
an explorer too. Have you tasted the penis? You have the perfect mouth for it.”
“No. I have dissected penises of corpses but I have never sucked the m.”
I laughed.
“Not very appetizing, I imagine.”
“Oh God, no. They are bloated from the formaldehyde and they look
tumescent. They look awful enough to put you off sex.”
“Ah, but sucking live penises is very pleasant for the sucked and the
suckers.”
She laughed.
“How do you know what it‟s like for the suckers? If they call someone a
sucker meaning a dupe, a fool, it cannot be all that good. Have you tried it?”
“No. I haven‟t had the pleasure. I just presume because I love licking
cunts. It is the male equivalent. It brings on a whole multitude of emotions.”
“Such as?”
“For one, the pleasure you give your partner. The fantastic satisfaction that
you have reached the most intimate, the most hidden, the most difficult to expose
part of the woman. For me, kissing erotically and licking a woman‟s genitals is
almost more enjoyable than intercourse. It gives a feeling of depravity and
depravity is arousing and very raunchy. It is absolutely enslaving.”
“I shall try it soon. In a while. I must. For where would I find a more
uninhibited and more lustful teacher?”
“If you are a good pupil, if you put your heart in it, I shall teach you many
different, perverse variations of sex.”
“You will debauch me?”
“If you wish, my dear.”
“Oh thank you, thank you. You‟re terribly sweet and lascivious.”
We tried to keep a serious face but could not help laughing.
“Was Anita good?”
“Anita? Anita? Let me see. Anita, you might say, was the equivalent of a
university professor in creative sexual intercourse. She also has considerable
expertise in fellatio and, I suspect, in cunnilingus as well.”
She gave me a few punches.

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 “Oh shut up,” she cried. “You are making me jealous.”
“My exquisite Cindy, not to worry. I‟ll have you up to par in no time.”
She kissed me passionately. Our playful, sexy conversation while joined
fired her libido. We were finding our pace. I turned carefully trying not to lose our
genital contact and got on top of her. Her arms and endless legs enveloped me.
“Fuck me, my darling, fuck me,” she said.
“Shall we do it Tantric style?”
“Is it à la mode ?”
“On the contrary. It is quite ancient.”
“I rather like antiques.”
“Let‟s see if you shall also like antique sex. It is quite simple really. Like
all good things in life. Simple and wholesome.”
“No acrobatics?”
“Just of the mind.”
I started: one, two, three and then…four. Three shallow moves at the edge,
just barely inside her and then a deep thrust, right in. One, two, three and…four.
On and on. Three frustrating, teasing movements and then the reward. On and on.
Waiting for number four. On and on. Dying for number four. Wanting them all
number fours but, no, she had to wait. Three slow frustrating tickles and then, oh
God, yes! She pushed me in with endless legs but I resisted. One, two,
three…four. She was delirious. She kissed me wildly, holding me by the ears,
moaning, scratching my back, hitting me, punching me where she could.
“You are killing me,” she cried.
“Shall I stop?”
“Don‟t you dare.”
When we finished we lay in a comfortable embrace. I was surprised at her
ardor at her uninhibited humor. I did not expect it. She was nowhere as
experienced as Anita but more than matched her in the need and enjoyment of
lovemaking. As we rested, she fondled my penis.
“You are a shameless and wonderful lover,” she told me.
“With a little practice you shall be twice as shameless and twice as
wonderful yourself,” I said. “You have tremendous potential.”
She laughed.
“I have never had such orgasms before. Nor so much fun. But then I have
not had much practice in my life.”
“Naughty girl. You have been indolent and negligent. You are
unforgivable. Now you have to work twice as hard.”
“Yes, but I don‟t think I shall make love with you again. ”
“Why not, Cinderella?”
“Not once did you say you love me.”
“Did you, by any chance?”
“No. I was waiting to be told first.”
“I love you Samia.”
“I am not convinced. It must come out spontaneously. ”
“It shall come by and by because I do love you.”
“Okay, I‟ll give you one more chance.”
She gave me another chance half an hour later by encouraging my penis to
rise to the occasion with her hand and then her mouth, and I told her I loved her,
loved her passionately. She told me she loved me too but I was not sure either of
us was telling the truth. We were not lying or pretending, but loving someone and

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being in love with him are separated by the borderline of sanity. Being in love is a
form of mental illness. A mild and glorious type of insanity. We were on the way
there but the changeover had been too abrupt. Anita was not to be put away so
easily. She was still circling my mind.
Samia left about five. It was early spring and the day was beginning to
break. She did not want her flat mates to know she spent the night with me. She
wanted to sleep a few hours and get back to work to prepare for an afternoon
anatomy class. She kissed me tenderly and thanked me for the evening and my
love and the wonderful fun we had. She said she had a feeling something like this
would happen. She laughed. She had not bathed in vain.
I slept fitfully after she left. I kept on waking and thinking of Anita. My
initial indifference to her, to her faithlessness seemed to be wearing thin. I looked
at her blue eyes in the semi darkness of closed shutters and tried to interpret her
look as we said goodbye. Was there a soft core to her toughness where I could lie
low and wait for her to change? That look, what did it mean? It lasted a few
seconds more than it should. Why did she impose on herself this denial of
affection, this erasing of the intimacy that had developed between us? Was I
mistaken? Did she really not care for me and Amr‟s money was vastly more
alluring? I hated her and then I loved her. I called her a whore and then I
condoned her behavior. Thank God for Samia. I would have gone mad without
her. She was so sweet and now we had a social contract between us. I did not lie
to her. I meant to keep my bargain but Anita gave me no peace.
I slept a few hours in the morning and woke up at eleven feeling empty.
What a psycho I am I thought to myself. But it was Sunday and I would have
arranged a lovely outing and now I did not know how to spend my day. I
showered and had a light breakfast. I tried to read Proust but could not
concentrate. I dressed and went out for a walk. What a dreary place Shoubra was.
Narrow streets; old, badly kept, shabby buildings, the poverty of the Egyptian
middle classes reflected in their attire, in the dirt of their surroundings. I thought
of Antigone. I should have died with her. If I believed in an afterlife where we
would meet, I would have killed myself. Sometimes I needed her so badly. I
thought what a hypocrite I was to think of her only when I was despondent. In
some ways, Anita reminded me of her. Perhaps that was the reason I could not get
her out of my mind. I called aunt Ioanna from a kiosk telephone. I told her I was
free and asked if I could come for lunch. She asked me what happened to the
showgirl. I said she met a rich guy and left me.
She said, “Thank God. I shall be expecting you.”
I walked towards the Nile. The Shoubra part was filthy. The riverbank was
strewn with garbage and children were playing in the middle of it and plunging in
the brown muddy water in their filthy underwear, unconcerned about Bilharzias.
Their shouting and high spirits in the midst of their hopelessness comforted me. It
gave me something to think about. I walked south along the Corniche towards the
city center up to the Nile Hilton, turned left into the city and slowly walked to
aunt Ioanna‟s house.
I kissed aunt Ioanna when she opened the door and she ushered me to the
living room. Vassi was sitting on an armchair, one leg over the armrest, reading a
magazine. She greeted me all smiles. She was barefoot, in very short shorts and a
barely buttoned shirt and I could see she was not wearing a bra. She was just too
beautiful for words. I felt drowning in my longing for her. What a mutt, I thought

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of myself. A real mutt. You spank it and shoo it away and it keeps running after
you, wagging its tail.
“I saw her,” she said after we kissed. “She is very beautiful but she has left
you, has she?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your showgirl. Yesterday. You were dancing in the clouds. I tapped you
on your shoulder and you didn‟t even turn. ”
“So it was you, was it?”
“Who did you think it was?”
“I couldn‟t guess. I know a few girls in that club.”
“I see. Quite a Casanova.”
“Oh hardly that.”
“Don‟t be upset, Johnny. Life is full of ups and downs.”
“Thanks for the tip. Is that how it is with you?”
“Well, you can‟t always be lucky and happy.”
“Oh you needn‟t be so precise. I didn‟t ask for details. ”
She laughed.
“By the way, that was not the showgirl,” I said.
“What? Who was it then? All that kissing!”
“It‟s another girl.”
“Okay, okay,” she said and laughed again.
We had lunch in their large kitchen and chatted amiably. Aunt Ioanna
insinuated I was lucky to be out of the showgirl‟s clutches. In her mind, all
showgirls were money-sucking leeches. Surprisingly, Vassi was in high spirits.
She told her mother,
“Give the man a break. He is not a baby; he knows what he is doing.”
“All men are babies,” was the answer. “All it takes is for a woman to wag
her behind and they fall for her.”
“Never thought of it,” said Vassi. “Perhaps I should start wagging it too.
Would you like that Johnny?”
“Very much,” I said and we laughed.
I enjoyed aunt Ioanna‟s outdated clichés. They did not seem all that crazy.
After lunch, we went to the living room for coffee and talked and at about five
thirty, I got up to leave. They told me to stay a while but I said they probably
wanted to rest. I had not been to the cinema for ages and I was thinking of going
there.
“I haven‟t been to the cinema for ages either, ” said Vassi. “Can I come
with you?”
We went to the Cairo Palace, which was close by. The film was passable.
Vassi was chattering throughout the film, annoying our neighbors.
“It reminds me of Port Said,” she said.
“Yes,” I said, “only now we don‟t kiss.”
She held my hand. I pulled it away.
“Will you stop teasing me,‟ I told her.
“Don‟t be so childish,” she said and we held hands. In the love scenes, she
squeezed my hand. Not tenderly but very tightly, with all her strength and looked
at me with a smile. I could not figure out what it meant.
“Cut it out,” I told her and she laughed.
“Three years you left me. Did you expect me to enter a monastery? Now
you are running around with other girls. So stop pretending you are angry. ”

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 “I am not angry.”
“That‟s better,” she said.
After the film, we had an ice cream at à l‟Americaine, which was two
blocks away, and then I walked her home. Talk, talk, talk but nothing personal.
Only tit-bits. She said she was trying to transfer to the new Hilton that had
recently opened in Athens.
“And the boyfriend?” I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Like your showgirl,” she said cryptically.
“After a big fish?” I asked.
She nodded.
“He‟s wavering between me and money.”
“My God, what a moron!”
She smiled and I smiled too.
“I shall survive,” she said.
I marveled that people could be such imbeciles. The more money they had,
the more they wanted. I could not understand it.
I left her at the entrance of her building. We kissed on the cheeks.
“Thank you,” she said. “It was very pleasant. Let‟s do it again.”
Was this my reserved and frigid Vassi?
“Next weekend is out,” I told her, “but I might see you midweek.”
It took me half an hour to walk home. I was in a daze. It was nearly ten.
Yesterday at this hour, I left home with Samia for the nightclub to see my love,
Anita. Within twenty-four hours, Anita had absconded, I fell in love with Samia,
well, sort of, made love with her, spent a miserable morning brooding over Anita,
spent the afternoon with Vassi and now I was back to Samia, thinking about
Vassi. Congratulations Mr Casanova. I just hope you don‟t go mad.
I entered the flat and flopped on the couch. Minutes later, a knock on the
door. It was Samia. A lovely smile on her lovely unmade up face. A Cinderella
before the magic wand. Surprisingly fresh and spry for her lack of sleep.
“Hello,” she said. “I saw the light in the flat. Where have you been?”
We embraced and kissed. It was so nice to be back in an unwavering
emotional situation with someone you could stretch your arms and touch and kiss
and make love to. With someone accessible, whose feelings you knew. It
anchored my wandering thoughts.
“I missed you,” I said. I was lying and yet I was not. I realized I missed
her the moment I saw her though she did not preoccupy my thoughts all day
because for some time now she was the stable part of my life. If she were with
me, she would have spared me this turmoil.
“How was your day?” I asked.
“Deadly. Dismembering corpses all afternoon. And yours?”
“I visited my aunt and cousin and went to the cinema.”
“Alone?”
“With my cousin.”
“Is he your age?”
“It‟s a she. You saw her yesterday.”
“I did?”
“She‟s the girl who tapped me on my shoulder as we were dancing. She
thinks you‟re very beautiful. She saw us kissing.”
“Good, so she won‟t get any funny ideas.”

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 I made some tea and we sat on the couch and as we drank we kissed and
talked and with each successive sip we talked less and less and kissed more and
more and I said I wanted to see her wonderful, long legs and she took off her
jeans. She had the longest legs I had ever seen on a girl. They were slim but well
formed and sexy.
“Are you an athlete?” I asked her.
“I was pretty good at sports in school,” she said. “Now I don‟t have the
time.”
She sat next to me again and we kissed more and more elaborately. We
were exploring mouths with tongues. Her mouth was big and spacious and I made
her open it wide by pressing her cheeks with my hand, sliding my tongue down
her throat as far as it would go. Her saliva was sweet and plentiful from the tea
and dribbled out of her mouth. I licked it and she laughed.
“You are such a sensual creature,” she said.
“Not as much as you. Only you don‟t know it.”
“I do know it. Of course I do.”
She squeezed my penis, which was hard and felt constricted and started
undoing my belt. I got up and took off my trousers and boxer shorts, my cock
jumping up to greet her. She held it and examined it.
“I don‟t like the look in your eye, Samia. You look as if you‟d love to
dissect it.”
She smiled, fondled my testicles, weighing them with her palm, telling me
with a smile, they were full of sperm and we should lessen their load lest they
burden me with shameful and unbecoming thoughts. She moved my penis up and
down, pulled back the skin to expose the glans, looked at me, stuck out her tongue
and asked, “May I?”
“Of course, my darling. My pleasure!”
She laughed.
“I have seen so many dead ones it‟s a wonder I am still capable of having
the taste for a live one.”
She licked it like a lollipop and then put it in her mouth and worked at it
with her wet, soft, wonderful lips. She tried to put it down her throat but choked
on it and laughed.
“I need some instruction from Anita for this,” she said smiling at me.
“Practice makes perfect.”
She went back to it, giving me voluptuous sensations. I moaned, held her
bobbing head and bending, kissed her hair. She turned to look at me, smiling.
“As you said, the sucker gets as much joy as the sucked. ”
“Yes, but we mustn‟t get greedy and selfish. It‟s my turn.”
I pulled her up and slid off her panties. We kissed, both tenderly and
passionately for a while, standing. It was a game with smiles. When her kissing
was wild, I held her head and touched her lips with tender little kisses and because
she caught on fast, she did the same with me. I caressed her buttocks, licked my
finger, softly massaged her anus and felt the outline of her vulva, free and easily
reached between slim upper limbs. I sat on the ground, leaning on the couch. She
smiled wondering what I was up to.
“Come,” I told her, “take your pleasure from my lecherous tongue. But it‟s
your move. Your moves rather. I just provide the instrument and peripheral
caresses.”

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 She came up to me, smiling and curious. She lifted one leg over my
shoulder and placed it on the couch. The view was superb. So raw and primal and
exciting. Aesthetically banal but overwhelmingly gripping. An intimacy coarse
and mind turning. This is the magic of love. The meeting of the spirit and the
flesh. The delicate, romantic, and intellectual with primitive animal urges. Only
this explains man‟s ambivalent attitude towards matters sexual ever since he was
civilized, educated, refined, and conned by religion, church, and fraudulent clergy.
I caressed her, front and back, and pulled her by her buttocks to my mouth.
She found my tongue and started a sensual oscillation, rubbing on it her erogenous
centers. She bent to support herself with her hands on the backrest of the couch
and being steadier and her sensations rippling, rising and falling like a fountain,
moved ever faster, indiscriminately taking my whole face. I held her buttocks to
limit her movement and rubbed my nose on her clitoris. After a mini orgasm, so
named by her, she asked me to sit on the couch. She ran to the bedroom, barefoot
and bare-bottomed and returned with a Gold Coin. She twisted the foil, extracted
the condom, fitted it on me and sat on my lap.
“Your face is still wet from my juices.”
She dried it with her hand, spreading it on my face, a sexily scented lotion.
“That was lovely,” she said. “It was superb and now I am nice and
comfortable with something good and hard inside me.”
She smiled.
“It‟s conversation time. No? So what shall we talk about?”
“Sex?”
“Inevitably.”
“May I ask something indiscreet?”
“You can always ask. I shall answer if I can. ”
“Why does a passionate girl like you not have a boyfriend? ”
“I have one, don‟t I?”
“I mean before.”
“Because we are in Egypt. It is a prudish, religious society. All the girls
that have affairs in university are well known because the rich playboys with
whom they hang around can‟t keep their mouths shut and brag about their
conquests. They are branded as bitches and all the boys are after them for sex. The
other girls and the pious, five-times-a-day-prayer boys scorn them. I started going
out with this idiot and I, too, was branded a whore. My family would be horrified
if they knew I was not a virgin and these rumors spread like fire. So when I
stopped, I stopped for good. It is not easy finding a man outside college. Studying
takes up all my time.”
“And now, with me you are not getting enough sleep. ”
“Never mind that. Lack of sleep is an aphrodisiac.”
“Is that a new theory?”
“It‟s as old as the Perfumed Garden.”
“What‟s the Perfumed Garden?”
“An old Arab erotic treatise written by my compatriot Sheikh Nefzawi in
the fifteenth century.”
“I thought it was between your legs.”
She laughed and kissed me and started moving forwards and backwards,
not up and down, closing her eyes to concentrate on the sensation.
“I love this cool infatuation we are sharing. Making love in this easygoing
fashion. I think you do not love me.”

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 “I do.”
“No. You are not in love with me. I do not blame you. Yesterday Anita,
today me. I was lucky but admit it, so were you.”
“Yes my darling. I was extremely lucky.”
“We should get married, you know. We will live a happy life. We are not
madly in love and so there‟s no fear it will wear off. On the contrary. ”
She looked at me. I did not know what to say. I was caught unawares. She
waited a moment.
“No. Don‟t answer. It‟s not fair. It‟s too complicated a question. ”
She started unbuttoning my shirt. I watched her, smiling. She took it off
and yanked off my flannel. She bent and licked my nipples and then started
undoing hers and removed it throwing it on the ground.
“What‟s wrong lazybones; don‟t you want to play with my tits? They‟re
not like Anita‟s but they‟re all I have.”
She unhooked her bra and took it off. I held her breasts and squeezed her
nipples. I sucked them and teased them with my tongue. She started moving up
and down. She tried to kiss me but kept losing my mouth because of her size, her
movement and our not very comfortable position. I laughed and she stopped.
“Very funny,” she said pretending to be annoyed. She kissed me and then
bit my nose.
“You also have a lecherous nose,” she said.
“Really? You liked it?”
“It did some very wonderful things down there just now.”
“Sometimes, when circumstances permit, it actively participates but
mostly it just breathes and smells.”
She laughed.
“Shall I tell you a secret?” she said.
“Oh, yes, I love secrets. Dark, unwholesome secrets.”
“Sometimes when I get randy I masturbate. Now I have your tongue and
your nose for the job.”
“I love you, Samia. You are a wonderful girl. I am so lucky to have you.
Let‟s go to the bed.”
“Will you do it to me Tantric style?”
“I do not want to kill you.”
“Please. I feel suicidal.”
She got up and we ran to the bedroom. All the jokes were over. She
stretched on the bed and I lay between those endless, welcoming, open legs. I
penetrated that enchanting, seductive gateway to her body and her soul and we
made love noisily, furiously, helplessly, fighting and struggling, biting and
kissing, pumping and breathless, one, two, three…four; one, two, three…four; on
and on, until we blew our brains in a simultaneous explosion.
“Do you really want to get married?” I asked her a little later.
“Yes. I have thought a lot about it. I think it will bring a sense of balance
and stability to my life. A sense of security. I felt a terrible need for it when I left
that stupid idiot. I was completely lost.”
“And your studies?”
“Oh, there‟s no question about that. I shall never abandon them. ”
She got up.
“I must be going,” she said. “Think about it.”
We went to the hall. She picked up her clothes and started dressing.

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 “Samia,” I told her, “I am nothing compared to you. I have no money
worth talking about and it is evaporating steadily. I am not even an engineer. I lied
to you because I was embarrassed when you saw me in those rags. I am just a
technician in a small workshop. I shall be leaving the country soon. Put these
thoughts of marriage with me out of your mind. I would be more of a burden to
you than a help. I am not worth considering.”
She continued dressing slowly, silently. When she put on her shoes, she
came up to me and hugged me.
“Thank you for being straightforward and honest with me,” she said. “I
love you. Nothing has changed. Let us have fun while it lasts. Maybe a little love
as well. It was lovely tonight. It was lovely yesterday. Maybe it will be lovely
tomorrow.” We kissed and she left.
I went to bed. My solitary bed. Alone. Exhausted. I shut the light and I
saw two blue eyes in the darkness. Still haunting me.
Okay, Anita, I thought, you were right. Amr will take her away from me.
But with my help. Because I want it. Because I love Samia in my way, too. But
Samia will take Amr away from you. You never had a chance, anyway. How
could you be so naïve? Especially you. I am so sorry. I am not being vengeful. I
hope you milked him well and good, as Samia assumed. As for me, something
new is dawning, I think. I am not sure. It‟s just a hunch.
Monday. Thirty hours since I left work and came back to it. Seemed like
three months. Plunged in oil and kerosene and the smell of metals. Bossing the
kids around trying to meet deadlines. It grounded me to reality. To hard work and
money and survival. But it brought me peace of mind and, at home, after the
meticulous scrub and shower in the bathroom and the cold meal I brought from
the grocer, I managed to read a little Proust and understand him. Then I dozed off
for an hour or so and felt refreshed and read some more until night fell. I made
some tea and I called on Samia to join me for a break and she said in a while but
she did not come and I went to sleep thinking: That was a fast retreat!
However, I was mistaken and the next day she came, my lovely, long-
legged Cinderella, and said she was sorry and she had an awful lot of work. She
kissed me tenderly and we made love with the same calm ardor and good humor
and joking. We enjoyed every moment of our playful encounter because somehow
we had a feeling our days together were finite. Finite on the short side. So finite
you could count them on your fingers.
She was with me on Wednesday, too. And Thursday and Friday and on
Saturday was our date with the Prince of the Arab Stallions, the portly Prince Amr
and the Fairy Godmother and the courtesan Anita. She came in at ten, my
exquisite Cinderella, shining, brightening my shabby flat with her presence and
her smile, holding a small bag with a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, tennis shoes and a
change of underwear for the farm. The only thing missing was the carriage made
from a pumpkin and the horses out of six mice. Otherwise, the Fairy Godmother
neglected nothing. Samia was dressed in a simple red dress with the décolletage at
the back rather than the front, black high- heeled pumps and a black, silk shawl to
cover her shoulders. Her face, oriental and angelic, with the large oval eyes from
the thousand and one nights, framed this time in a loose, undulating hairdo from
which two earrings played hide and seek. A smile of happiness, of perfect white
teeth, greeted my ecstatic look.
“Okay,” she said, “don‟t say it. I know I look prettier than I am in reality. ”

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 “Prettier? You look fantastic, my Cinderella. Prince Amr doesn‟t have a
chance.”
“Oh, who cares?”
“He cares. I care. Even if you don‟t. Shall we go?”
We found Amr at his table smoking a cigar, a bottle of whisky on the
table. His eyes lit up when he saw Samia. He squashed his cigar in the ashtray and
stood up to welcome us.
“I am so happy you were able to come. How have you been? How was
your week?”
We smiled politely.
“Work, work, for me. Study, study for Samia. She is much busier than I
am.”
“You are lucky to live next to each other and to keep each other
company.”
“Yes. When she takes a break, she usually comes over for a cup of tea.
How is Anita?”
“Very well. You shall see her shortly. We, too, have been keeping each
other company.”
“And your horses?”
“Oh, well enough. They are pampered, well fed and exercised. Living the
best part of their lives. You know, after a horse finishes its racing career at the age
of four or even earlier, the top ones go to stud and have a sex life. Supervised, yes,
but still a chance to mate. The second raters are sold off for riding and usually it is
a downhill journey for them. Their life becomes more and more miserable and
sad. All those horses for hire you see at the pyramids and elsewhere are former
racehorses. Some are so weak and underfed they do not move without the whip.
You must have seen them. But that‟s life. Man is not sentimental except about
money.”
“How sad,” said Samia.
“Yes, I think so too. But the joy I derive from the young animals is a kind
of compensation. You don‟t have the same problem, John. ”
I laughed.
“No. When we throw away an engine, it goes to the furnace for melting to
make a new one. No guilt feelings there.”
He asked us if we would like some champagne but we said we would have
a whisky. We drank it sip by sip and talked for a while in generalities and then I
excused myself and went for a stroll. I saw a girl that had come to my flat, we said
hello and I offered her a drink at the bar. I was giving Samia time to get to know
her prince. I went back a little later and they were talking quite familiarly.
The show began. Same music, same tired routine. I would not have
bothered to look at it except for Anita. I looked and looked at her. She was
someone I loved and lost. A girl that moved me despite her profession and her
loose, rootless life. She was not as beautiful as Samia but she had a sultriness that
Samia did not have. What intrigued me was her whole attitude to life, to her
profession, to her personal and sentimental relations and feelings. She too loved
sex like Samia, had magic orgasms but was able to detach herself from sensual
pleasure at the same time. No sentimentality to it. She could take it or leave it.
How unlike a woman. One was just never sure of her. Was it her unpredictability
that hooked me to her? The fact that I was never sure of her? I was not as
substantial as Amr. He was worth his weight in gold.

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 She came round after the show well dressed, made up and smiling, kissing
us, for Amr a peck on the lips, for us on the cheeks, and the same, almost
imperceptibly delayed, questioning look for me. Funny how it consoled me this
extra split second. Complete indifference would have killed me. It was, of course,
just ego. It was neither hope nor desire to be back with her. Not now that another
hope was smoldering.
“You must be fed up of this show,” said Anita laughing. “I wonder how
Amr can look at it night after night. I cannot bear it any longer. It even haunts my
dreams. It is my worst nightmare.”
She sat with us and had a drink and was merry and talkative and kept
referring to Amr. Then she left to prepare for the show. Samia asked me to dance.
As we walked, she held my hand.
“Your perfume is very nice,” I told her.
“It‟s the same as last time,” she said abruptly. “Why did you leave me?”
“I felt restless.”
“I saw you drinking with a girl at the bar. What‟s happening? It‟s like a
conspiracy. As soon as you left, Amr started telling me how much he liked me. He
asked me if I would go out with him. I said, out where? He said, a decent place
not a dump like this one. I told him I did not have time. I had too much work.
Then Anita comes and wants to make it obvious that she is with Amr. As if we
didn‟t know. As if I was going to steal him from her. I couldn‟t care less. And
you, drinking with a girl at the bar. I felt so humiliated. I have a good mind not to
go to the farm.”
“I am sorry, Samia. It was stupid of me. This girl came up and asked for a
drink and I offered it to her. I am sorry. I should not have done it.”
“I held your hand so he would see it but I am angry with you. ”
I laughed.
“You are very sweet even when you are angry. Such a lovely tune, this.
Just let yourself go. Come on, loosen up.”
She looked at me and smiled.
“Kiss me,” she said.
“So that he will see?”
“Yes.”
I kissed her because I loved her. Because she was so beautiful, so young,
so intelligent and brave enough to have ignored the oppressing mores of her
society and religion and opted for love and sex.
“I kiss you because I love you,” I told her. “Not for exhibition.”
We left for the farm as soon as Anita finished the second part of the show.
American car, liveried chauffeur, Prince Amr sitting in front and three of us,
comfortably, at the back. Destination: Menoufia, a center of sorts for specialized
farms raising horses. The roads were empty and we traveled for an hour, door to
door. Amr talked, Anita talked, I talked a little less but tried to be sociable and
agreeable, Samia was monosyllabic. Perhaps she was tired as we all were. Perhaps
she was sulking. I could not tell. I thought she had overcome her initial annoyance
at our behavior. The ordinary human behavior of all three of us. Each with his
ulterior motives.
It was past three when we arrived. Off the main highway down an unpaved
dirt road which bounced us merrily and sometimes violently in the pitch-black
darkness. Up to a phantom mansion looming suddenly in the headlights in the
middle of nowhere. A few warning hoots from the driver and lights turned on

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inside and outside the mansion and we disembarked in the cool of the early hours
where a faint and not unpleasant smell of hay and dung and stables hovered in the
air. Servants came down steps to help with the baggage we did not have. At three
in the morning.
“I shall show you around tomorrow; now to your bedrooms,” said Amr.
“Unless you are hungry and would like to have a bite.”
We declined and thanked him and he led us to an upper floor by a
princely, wide, marble staircase, which ended on a spacious landing of similar
white marble tiles with armchairs and a small table and two wings, left and right.
“Four guest bedrooms,” said Amr. “One, two, three, four.” He pointed
them out. “Take your pick. They‟re identical, each with a bathroom. Wake up
time is whenever you feel like it. Breakfast is downstairs and has no fixed hours
either. Shall we say good night?”
Samia came and kissed me on the lips and then smiling, said,
“Good night everybody. Thank you Amr for the hospitality. ”
She was making a point.
“You‟re welcome my dear,” he answered.
The mansion must have been recently redecorated because everything was
gleaming and modern including the spotless bathrooms. I d id not waste much time
noticing. I washed my face and jumped in bed. Just before I slept I said, “Please
God, let me dream of Vassi,” and I smiled to myself because even if I dreamt of
Vassi, I still would not believe in the stupid, heartless God men invented in their
image.
I woke up at eight, before everyone else. I showered, shaved, and put on a
sports shirt and a pair of jeans I brought with me. I went down the marble
staircase where a servant dressed in a spotless white gelebieh and a wide, bright
red sash around his waist asked me if I wanted breakfast. I told him I would have
it later with the others. I went out the main door, down the few steps to the wide
circular concourse in front of the house. The air was cool and pure. It had the
special smell of the earth and the flat cultivated green fields stretching to the
horizon. The smell of animals too, which drifted in with the breeze, at times more
pronounced than others. There was a small fountain sprinkling an anemic column
of water with a subdued gurgling sound in the center of the yard, which I had not
noticed when we arrived. A few date palm trees here and there stood in little
groups like families, stamping the scenery: made in Egypt.
I turned left on a path paved with tiny loose stones the type used with tar
to pave roads and behind the house, I saw the stables and three large sheds
probably used for storage. Beyond the stables, which were within a huge
rectangular compound, containing at least forty boxes for the horses facing
inward, was an oval racetrack. It was not as large as the ordinary racing circuits
but it must have been about a kilometer in circumference. Its wooden, one- meter
high boundary fence was freshly painted in white. The outside lane was well kept
in grass and another lane on the inside of the fence was covered with a good deep
layer of desert sand. Four or five horses went round and round in the sandy lane
ridden by young boys in their middle teens.
I entered the compound. The smell of horsiness was more pronounced
here. About ten boys were working in a variety of jobs with two adults
supervising and giving orders. The boys were barefoot and their clothes ragged.
Their feet weathered and tough. Their toes reared in freedom were large and
cheeky and their nails hard as an old man‟s. They stole secret glances at me with

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large Egyptian eyes. Some were cleaning out the stables, others were brushing the
horses, cleaning their faces and anuses with wet towels and splashing water on
their genitals, and still others were putting food in the boxes of the horses that had
finished their exercise.
I walked up to the man who seemed to be in charge and asked him what
the horses were fed. The main staple was barley with very little hay. It provided
strength and muscle without fattening the horse. In winter, it was supplemented
with bersim a local fresh clover and in summer, a dried out version of it called
diris. I asked him when they started work and he told me at daybreak, summer
and winter, seven days a week. The work was almost over by now. I admired the
young boys of fourteen and fifteen who were doing most of the work and were so
much at ease with the beautiful, spirited, and edgy animals. Each one of these
animals was worth more than they would earn in twenty lifetimes and you could
tell they loved and cared for them. The love of horses was a craze I could
understand though I did not suffer from it. I went around from box to box with the
man, looking at each animal, listening to his explanations. I lingered in the stables
for an hour and then returned to the house.
I found the Prince and his two ladies in the dining room having breakfast.
A chorus of Good Mornings. Samia looked at me insistently. She wanted a public,
possessive kiss from me but I ignored her. I could not start the show so early and
dishearten our Prince. She wore her jeans and T-shirt and she had lightly made up
her face but not as elaborately as last night. She looked quite lovely.
Anita on the other hand had washed away hers and looked seventeen. She
wore the same clothes as last night. I could not help feeling tenderness for her for
she undoubtedly was to be the loser in this little game of love politics. On top of
everything, she had lost me. Not that I was anything special but perhaps I was
better than nothing. Amr was dressed in a white cotton gelebieh with the front
embroidered in a discreet Arab motif in a light blue and silver thread. He wore
dark red slippers and looked like a traditional Arab sheikh. A man of wealth and
power.
“Have you been to the stables?” he asked me.
“Yes. Forgive the intrusion. I did not ask your permission. ”
“That‟s what we‟re here for. What did you think of them?”
“Lovely. Absolutely lovely. Of course, I do not know the fine points of a
horse but they are beautiful, fascinating animals. Much more so than dogs though
dogs are perhaps more intelligent.”
“I don‟t know if one can be sure of that,” Samia said. “Dogs are certainly
more sociable and attached to man. Horses are more like cats and perhaps even
more aloof. A cat enjoys being petted whereas a horse seems indifferent. And then
each animal has the intelligence it needs to survive. But how can a horse survive
in this world except in our unscrupulous hands. Very few horses exist in the wild.
The wild America mustang is being caught and made into cat and dog food. Some
wild horses still roam in Mongolia but for how much longer?”
“John, please serve yourself,” Amr said.
The table was laden with eggs, cheeses and foul medammes and the fresh,
crispy local bread. I poured some tea and put a few pieces of cheese on my plate.
“Shall I tell you a few words about the Arab horse?”
“Yes,” Samia and I answered.
“Anita, may I? I have talked so much of horses to Anita that she is
probably fed up.”

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 “Oh, please go ahead,” Anita answered with a smile.
“The Arab horse is lighter, smaller, more agile and of a gentler
temperament than the European breeds. It has had a tremendous influence in
improving other breeds. In fact, every English thoroughbred can be traced back to
three Arabian sires. Even now, that the thoroughbred has developed into a larger,
faster, and stronger animal it is still crossed with Arab breeds to bring further
improvements to the stock. That is why a good number of my horses go to
England, Europe, and the US. Of course, with the new oil money in the Arab
Kingdoms and Emirates, my major clients are Arab princes. And they don‟t
haggle about money either. They are also making a mark in the international
racing scene. I have renovated this house because they often come here to choose
their horses and sometimes stay overnight.”
Amr laughed.
“A luxurious, well kept house like this adds a few tens of thousands of
dollars to the price of a horse. The petrodollars have made bloodstock-breeding
big business. Whereas in the past a good horse would bring a few thousand
pounds, now, a top stallion with a brilliant racing career and impeccable lineage
can bring up to a million dollars. And prices are going up and up. ”
“I suppose you keep meticulous records of the bloodline of each horse, ” I
said.
“Oh absolutely. Sires, brood mares, races won, the complete record.
Everything with official documentation. Each horse has a dossier.”
“No trouble with the government?”
He laughed again.
“That‟s the funny thing. I am thriving in a socialist environment where
most big businesses have been nationalized. However, they realize that in their
hands this whole setup would be ruined in a couple of years. As it is I am a prime
source of foreign currency though, of course, I am no fool. A good part of it stays
abroad.”
“So you must travel abroad a lot,” said Samia.
“Every month or so. Europe, America, the Arab states. ”
We talked and downed our breakfast at a leisurely pace and overate
inflating our bellies and our host‟s ego with our polite preoccupation with his
affairs and his horses. The truth is, he was not arrogant, and had no need to be. He
was sitting solidly on his saddle. Luck had been good to him but he had,
undoubtedly, been clever enough to grab it and had the competence to exploit it
and benefit from it in a big way. With our talk, I noticed a subtle change in
Samia‟s attitude to her Prince. The Prince that was hers for the taking but not yet
accepted. She manifested a new interest in him and his affairs and his answers
were framed very subtly to arouse her interest and insinuate his present needs,
which line by line sketched an ever-clearer picture of Samia.
“Oh, you know,” he said, “business and travel and this unsettled,
dissipated life, it cannot go on forever. There comes a time one wants to settle
down and raise a family. After all, whom am I building all this for? And don‟t
forget I am getting on in years.”
There was the slightest of smiles on Anita‟s lips. She was the dissipated
part of his life just now.
“So what‟s keeping you?” asked Samia.
“I am thinking about it. More and more. Moreover, one starts thinking of
the kind of woman he wants to share his life with. I was already married once.”

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 “Were you?” exclaimed Anita. “You never told me about it.”
“There was no reason to bring it up. I mention it now to make a point. It
was an arranged marriage with a perfectly proper girl from a good family.
Unfortunately, she left me completely indifferent. She had the narrow mentality of
our conservative Egyptian society and very few interests beyond dresses and the
club and her silly girlfriends with whom I could not exchange five sentences in a
row. Things did not go well and we divorced within two years. Luckily, we had
no children. I do not want to repeat the same mistake. First of all, I need an
intelligent and educated person. A person I can talk to at a certain level. Secondly,
and this may surprise you, I want a woman who has lived, who has experienced
life and has experienced love. A woman, unlike a man, grows through experience
and becomes mature and interesting. She knows what she wants and cannot be
forced into relationships that are distasteful to her.”
He looked at Samia. She looked at him and blushed. She must have
realized that for an intelligent person, her childish displays of rebuff were
unbecoming.
“And thirdly,” he said, “she must attract me physically. She need not be as
beautiful as Samia but she must be presentable and sociable because she will be
by my side and will meet many very rich and important people. ”
I wondered if this little talk was appropriate at that moment. For one thing,
it unsettled all of us and we did not know with what expressions on our face to
confront his words. But perhaps Amr was crossing the t‟s and dotting the i‟s. He
was making his intentions clear to both girls.
We finished breakfast and moved to the salon, a large, comfortable well-
appointed room with armchairs, sofas, and small tables. The floor, a sparkling
white marble with expensive carpets like the rest of the house. The wallpaper was
of a yellowish abstract design with matched curtains on the windows and canvases
of horses on the walls. Amr pointed to them.
“Some of my best horses,” he said. “When I have a really fine animal I
bring an artist along to paint his picture. Nothing like the real thing, of course, but
something to remind me of him after he is sold away. This is Antar and Amigo
and there opposite, Bedouin Boy. Wonderful, courageous animals. When two
animals are roughly of the same strength, it is the heart than counts. Please sit
down. Let us rest a while and then we can go outside. I have surprise for you, by
the way. One of my stallions will cover a mare. Would yo u be interested to watch
it?”
“What do you mean, cover?” asked Anita.
“It‟s a polite way of saying, to mate, to couple, to have intercourse.”
“That would be interesting,” said Samia.
“Yes, we are all interested,” I said.
We talked for a while, had a small, aromatic Turkish coffee and then rose
to visit the horses. We walked down the path I took earlier, the Prince and his
Cinderella walking in front, talking cozily. I followed a few paces behind with
Anita. It was the first time we were alone in two weeks.
“How are you getting on with the Big Fish?” I asked her in Greek.
She smiled.
“I thought I was doing all right but this morning, as you saw, I received a
very broad hint. So did your girl by the way.”
“Yes,” I said. “I wonder what‟s going on in her mind.”
“Why are you so passive? Show some possessiveness for heaven‟s sake. ”

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 “What for? Let things take their course. It would be unfair to spoil it if
something is cooking. Both you and I are here today, gone tomorrow. ”
She laughed merrily.
“Wow! What a big heart!” She held my hand and we walked along, gently
swinging our arms. “Something tells me you do not love her. Did you at least give
her the experience the Big Fish requires?”
“She does not need tutoring. She is quite well qualified.”
She laughed again.
“As for me, of the three qualifications he wants, I satisfy just this one.”
“Don‟t take it to heart.”
“Who‟s taking it to heart? It‟s not as if I was in love with him. It was a
throw of the dice but the numbers did not come out. ”
“My God, you look like a sexy seventeen-year-old but you‟re a tough
cookie. Did you at least benefit?”
“He‟s a very generous man.”
“And he was very lucky to have you.”
“Not half as sweet as you.”
“Not a loser either.”
“I‟m sorry, Johnny. We‟ll get together again.”
She saw me hesitate.
“Perhaps,” I said.
“Well, okay, you know where to find me.”
We reached the stables and entered the quadrangle. Samia turned round
with a smile. She had seen us holding hands and laughing.
“What were you chattering in Greek, you two, ” she asked. “I do not like
this familiarity.”
She did not seem at all put out.
“Mind your own business, Cinderella,” I told her. “Stick to your Prince.”
She laughed and Amr smiled.
Four camp armchairs were in place under a large sunshade parasol and a
small wooden table. The stables had been cleaned out of all the litter and horse
manure I had seen in the morning. The weather had turned warm and flies kept
constantly annoying us. Nature has blessed us with over three thousand species of
flies. Egyptian flies like Arab horses are the most courageous, determined, and
least easily discouraged. Wasps and bees cruised by and sparrows came in for
their pickings of barley spilled on the ground. A few butterflies passed us by in
their erratic, jerky flight. They were so beautiful and carefree I almost wished I
were one. In our crowded, polluted city life, one forgets they exist. We squeezed
our chairs in the shade of the parasol and the man in charge stood behind us
supervising the proceedings, sternly ordering the boys around. Did he think we
were millionaires?
The boys started parading the horses one by one while Amr had something
to say about each animal. Mostly his explanations were directed to Samia who
seemed to be genuinely interested. Anita was getting bored and whispered little
jocular comments in Greek. It took about an hour to see all the horses. We took a
break with another Turkish coffee to wake us up from the heat-induced
somnolence.
The mare that was to be impregnated was brought out and walked about in
front of the box of the stallion. We got up to look at him. The mare was nowhere
as beautiful as he was. Apparently, though, she had also been a good racehorse

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and had already produced excellent offspring. With the repeated pregnancies, like
a human female, her belly had grown in size and she had lost her shape but the
genes were there. The stallion seemed to be aware of what was about to happen.
He was excited and neighed every time she passed by. Two boys held the mare
and two men put a bridle on the horse and brought him out. They could barely
restrain him and he pulled them straight to the mare. A huge penis had unfolded
between his hind legs even before he approached her. He came up to her, face to
face, and they breathed into each other‟s nostrils for a few seconds. It was
touching. As if they were being acquainted and then he went around at her back,
she lifted her tail exposing her genitals and he put his head there for a short while.
I did not expect this love play.
“Is he licking her?” Anita asked me in a whisper.
I told her, I thought he was probably just sniffing. His glans had swollen
more than the trunk of his penis and he mounted the mare and buried all sixty
centimeters in her vagina. His agony was universal, almost human, the breathing,
the glazed eyes, the involuntary in and out movement. It did not last very long. He
ejaculated his expensive sperm, dismounted, and moved away as indifferently as
most of the human male animals do after ejaculation. He was led to his box and
two or three buckets of water were splashed on the mare‟s genitals apparently to
make her contract from the shock of the cold water and prevent the precious
sperm from seeping out.
We started walking back to the house.
“What did you think of it?” asked Amr.
“It was very touching,” I said.
“I wonder if the mare gets any pleasure out of it?” said Anita. She was
forever concerned for the female side of the story.
Amr laughed.
“I suppose she gets something out of it. It is a need, after all, and nature
must have provided some inducement. Some sort of satisfaction for the mare.”
“What happens now?” asked Samia.
“When we are sure she is with foal, we shall send her to another farm I
have at the Said, in Upper Egypt. I have about fifty horses there, mostly mares
with their foals and the ones that are to give birth. It takes eleven months for a foal
to be born. I bring them back here when they are two and a half years old or when
a mare is to be mated. Here I keep the horses that are being trained and the ones
that race. It is the shop window, so to speak.”
“You obviously go often to the Said, as well,” said Samia.
“Yes, once a week. By plane. I go one day and return the next. It is
essential to keep an eye on things. Are you people interested to see this farm, as
well? We can go there next Saturday evening. Just as we did this time except that
we shall take a plane. It will not be any more tiring. We shall be back the next
day.”
“I would love to,” said Samia looking at me.
“I would love to as well,” I told Amr, “but I have a previous engagement. I
simply cannot make it.”
“So have I,” said Anita.
Everyone looked at everyone else.
“Will you come with me?” Amr asked Samia. “I promise you I shall be the
perfect gentleman.”
Samia looked at me.

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 “Go ahead,” I said.
She was taken aback and tried to hide her vexation. She hesitated for a
moment. Amr‟s eyes were on her. They were eager, almost pleading.
“Okay,” she said finally. Things were clearing up.
We entered the mansion and went to the salon. Two bottles of champagne
were brought to us in silver ice buckets and thin, long stemmed glasses. Amr
opened the first bottle and poured the sparkling wine. It was a time of austerity in
Egypt and imports of this type were prohibited. I wondered how he was so well
supplied. He held up his glass.
“To your health, my friends. Thank you for coming and making my day so
pleasant.”
We returned his wishes with our thanks and began drinking this glorious
wine and the slight tension of our refusals to visit the farm at the Said faded away
with the fumes and sparkle of the wine though Samia would not look at me. She
was practically flirting with her Prince. However, the conversation flowed easily
with various neutral subjects and talk of politics and the denigration of Egypt‟s
destructive socialism. Now and then Samia talked with Amr in Arabic and I spoke
in a playful manner with Anita in Greek.
“Did you see the butterflies outside?” I asked her. “Did you not wish you
were one of them? Not a thought in your mind? We do live in a confusing,
difficult world. Or is it us that make things tough for ourselves?”
“But I am a little butterfly of the night,” she said laughing.
“So are you carefree?”
“In a sense. It takes a special mentality. A special frame of mind, which
you can train yourself to adopt. It is not easy and you must ofte n face loneliness
and accept fate like a gambler. A gambler is an optimistic loser. He is sure he will
win the next time. For him, luck is always round the corner.”
“I told you before, you are quite a philosopher.”
“Well, for instance, today, the Big Fish and the Big Heart sealed our fates,
mine and the girl‟s. She was the winner, I the loser. Am I supposed to commit
suicide?”
“No, but some people would take it to heart.”
“And now the Big Heart will not see me again. Should I start weeping?”
“The Big Heart is perhaps not so big. Perhaps, he too, is playing a little
game just as the little blue-eyed butterfly of the night did when she left him.”
“No, my sweet, whatever your game, you are still young and fresh. Your
Big Heart has not hardened like mine. And one day perhaps, I shall tell you a
secret.”
“Oh, do tell.”
“One day, perhaps, if we meet again.”
“Shall I tell you mine?”
“If you wish.”
“I met the girl I loved, the one I told you about and she seems, perhaps I
am dreaming, deluding myself, she seems inclined to start with me again. Do
miracles happen?”
“For others, sometimes.”
We drank the second bottle, talked, worked up a voracious appetite, were
served and consumed ein feudales mitagessen, a feudal repast, of our near- feudal
Prince and I understood perfectly why he was jolly and rotund and why Samia
will put on some weight and look even more wonderful with a few extra curves, in

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due time. It was a two- hour lunch with the Turkish coffee and oriental sweetmeats
and at around four, we left Menoufia because the Prince had an evening
appointment with another prince from a real kingdom where thick, black oil
gushes from the ground creating an almost desperate need for racehorses.
We slept mostly in the limousine, on our way back, for there is nothing as
irresistible as somnolence in a speeding car, or sleep so drugged and so sweet. The
trip took longer due to the traffic and the Prince deposited Samia and me outside
our shabby building. We thanked him and kissed Anita and one part of the tale
ended and another began with Samia‟s words.
“I am angry with you. You have thrown me away.”
She ran up the few steps to the landing, opened the door to her flat and
went inside before I could react. But what would I have said? All of a sudden, I
felt lonely and depressed. So utterly depressed I felt like swallowing a hundred
sleeping pills and not waking up again.

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 disintegration and flight

Monday again. Work and a respite from my emotional confusion, from the
guilt feelings that Samia‟s words produced. In the evening, I waited for her to
come around. I waited long, slow hours for her on Tuesday and Wednesday too,
in vain. Trying to read. Wondering what this dim- witted brain of mine was up to?
Several times, I was on the point of knocking at her door but I restrained myself.
What would the point be of useless explanations, of avowals of my affection for
her and my love, yes love, of apologies for my behavior, which she did not
understand? Which seemed a betrayal of our tender contract, our contract for
tenderness. Did she not see that I was not the prince destined for a lovely
Cinderella?
On Thursday, I could not stay at home after work. I had finally realized
that Samia would not ask for me any more. I called on aunt Ioanna. Vassi was at
work and we chatted for a while.
“Something‟s wrong with you,” she said.
“It will pass,” I answered.
“You have lost your way after Antigone died.”
“Yes,” I said and got up to look out of the window. I did not want her to
see my rheumy eyes.
“Why did you leave Port Said? She told me you had a good job and was
earning good money.”
“I could not bear to be reminded at every turn of happ ier days that were
gone forever.”
“Get out of Egypt, Johnny. You have no future here going from one
showgirl to the next. You are an educated person. You read books. Working in a
repair workshop is not for you. We shall be leaving, God willing, in a few months,
a year at the most. Vassiliki is trying to get a transfer to the Athens Hilton. You
will be all alone.”
I did not stay long at aunt Ioanna‟s. I told her I would be coming round on
Sunday. I walked slowly along the lonely, crowded streets to the Hilton to say
hello to Vassi. I saw her at the reception desk in her elegant, simple uniform with
the badge on her shirt looking gorgeous and lost my nerve. She was smiling and
talking to foreign guests. They were smiling back, flirting with her. Handsome,
tall, well-dressed men with expensive cameras hanging on their shoulders.
Substantial people with serious money. Who was I to claim her love, her painfully
beautiful face, her superb body? I stayed and looked at her for a long while from a
distance in the anonymity of milling crowds. Then I left and walked to Shoubra,
to the wretched flat where I belonged.
It was round about nine when I entered our building. There was light and
commotion in Samia‟s flat. I went to mine and slept early. I must buy some
sleeping pills, I thought. I must have them handy. Perhaps if they are within reach
I shall not think of suicide. Tomorrow, work, thank God. A temporary reprieve
from my thoughts.
Saturday evening, I phoned aunt Ioanna and cancelled my Sunday lunch
appointment. Instead, I walked for hours along the Nile. My head was spinning
with furious thought. On Monday, I did not go to work. I took an early train to
Port Said. By nine, I was walking with open eyes the streets I could traverse
blindfolded. I loved and hated the place. I could not bear it any longer. I did not

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look around. I did not want to meet old friends. I bought some flowers and walked
to the cemetery, to Antigone‟s grave. I wept like a baby. Why did you leave me,
my love? Was God jealous because we invented a paradise other than his? Damn
him! I know he does not exist. I am just being childish cursing something that is
not there.
I left feeling lighter. My pent up despair subdued. My mother was gone
but life is short, thank goodness, and I shall be gone soon enough. Sooner if I am
lucky. I stopped to have a sandwich and some tea at a dirty little shop on the way
to my father‟s office. I could not bear to sit at Gianola‟s. I might see the chewing
gum man and black clouds in his wake.
I entered the office. More than five years since I was there last and yet a
few of the old employees remembered me and asked about Emmanuel. I lied and
told them he was well and was living in England. One of these days, they would
get a card from him. I smiled inwardly remembering the hatred he had for his job
and this city. I told them I needed their help. I wanted to board a ship as part of
the crew. I wanted to travel a little before I settled down and got married.
However, I had not the faintest idea how to go about it and I came to them since
they were agents and suppliers for so many maritime companies. They told me a
Spanish cargo was due in a few days and they had signaled they needed an
assistant engineer.
“Too bad,” they said, “it‟s not for you.”
“Wonderful,” I cried and almost jumped like a footballer who just scored a
goal. “It‟s perfect. I am a trained technician. Will you arrange it for me? ”
They hawed and hummed and said they had to see if the wages and living
conditions were good. They could not throw Emmanuel‟s son in any old tub.
“Once you‟re on you can‟t get off.”
“Please, please,” I begged, “arrange it for me. I don‟t care about
conditions, I don‟t care about wages.”
“But it‟s on its way to India!”
“Terrific!” I cried. “Wonderful.”
“And it will be stifling hot.”
“Oh, please don‟t worry. I shall be eternally grateful to you. ”
“Okay, if you insist. It‟s your funeral.”
“Thank you, bless you, it will be the happiest funeral you have ever seen. ”
“Go back to Cairo and arrange your affairs but fast, we shall call you. You
must be ready within a week.”
I left the workshop‟s phone number. I nearly ran to the railway station. I
thought of looking up Bippo but postponed it for my way out. I was too excited to
sit and talk, to give and take two years‟ worth of news and reminiscences just
now. I caught the twelve o‟clock train to Cairo and by four-thirty, I entered my
flat. I had a shower and a bite of cheese and stale bread. I made some tea and
knocked on Samia‟s door. She opened and looked surprised.
“Cinderella,” I said. “Please come for some tea.” I smiled at her. “I would
like to talk to you.”
She looked at me hesitantly.
“Is it necessary?”
“Absolutely.”
One of her flat mates came to the door.
“Why don‟t you leave her alone,” she said. “You have caused her enough
pain.”

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 “I have caused myself a lot of pain, too.”
“Your insensitivity and your hypocrisy are revolting. ”
“It‟s okay Shadia,” Samia told her, “I‟m all right.”
She closed the door and followed me to my flat. She sat down and I
poured a cup of tea for each of us. She looked at me while I was serving and I
smiled at her but she did not respond.
“Well?” she said and suddenly I thought how stupid of me to start a
painful, useless conversation I had avoided so far. Basically, I had nothing to say.
Just that I was leaving Egypt. So what? Good riddance! To say anything more
would sound like a plea to start all over again, which was impossible since I was
leaving. I realized I could say nothing meaningful and felt like a fool.
We sipped our tea. She would not smile.
“I wanted to see you. To look at you,” I said finally.
“Don‟t be ridiculous,” she said.
“I may be ridiculous,” I said, “but I‟m not a hypocrite. I am glad Shadia
called me that so I can refute it. It is, is it not, the main accusation against me? ”
“There is no accusation against you. I do not ask for anything. I do not
want anything. Especially not your sympathy.”
“No, but maybe I need yours.”
She laughed.
“What will I hear next?”
“I cannot leave knowing you despise me.”
She smiled ironically.
“Does it matter?” she said. “We are finished.”
We sipped our tea and looked at each other again silently for some time.
Please be patient, Samia, I kept on thinking. Please be patient. Her wings were
clipped and her look was frigid. Her face was so beautiful and serious. It was not a
face made for grimness. Had I destroyed her wonderful, gay smile? She finished
her tea.
“Is that all you wanted me for?” she asked. “May I go, now?”
“Anything I say will sound awful. Any justification, a lie. I really do not
know why I called you in here. Except for a mad desire to see your lovely face
again and tell you goodbye.”
“Are you leaving the flat?”
“I am leaving the country. I shall be boarding a ship as an assistant
engineer.”
“When?”
“In a few days.”
She looked at me. That probing look that scanned me before, so adorable
and uncertain, from one eye to the other, searching for the truth.
“Satisfied?” I asked her.
For the first time she smiled. A tight little smile that was not ironic.
“Is that why you left me so suddenly?”
I never lie. Not out of principle but because I find it difficult to do so.
Sometimes I make a concession when it is necessary. When it is merciful.
“Yes,” I said.
“Why didn‟t you tell me?”
“Because, don‟t you know, it would have brought us closer.”
“I would have preferred it to the feeling that I was taken for a ride. ”
“Samia, I am nothing. I am a cipher. Amr is the man for you. ”

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 “Damn you, mind your own business.”
“You are a terrific girl and you are my business. Ever since I kissed you
that night, you are my business.”
“Why don‟t you fuck off? Why don‟t you leave me alone?”
Her eyes glistened with tears. Her lips trembled. She got up and went to
the door. I ran after her and pulled her by the arm. She pushed me, tried to free
herself and we scuffled but I managed to hug her. I did not kiss her and we stayed
for a minute, for an eternity, motionless in my tight grip in each other‟s arms.
Then I let go. She did not move for a moment and then she reached to open the
door.
“Good bye, John,” she said gently and looked at me in the eyes. “Are you
crying?” she asked, surprised. “What‟s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. I wiped my tears away. “I was in Port Said this morning
and visited my mother‟s grave. I loved her so much and I cried at the cemetery. I
just remembered her now. It is the second parting in one day. It is my day of tears.
My life is about to change and I am emotional.”
She took my hand and pulled me back to the couch.
“You know,” she said, “those tears, they were the most precious gift you
could give me. Oh Johnny, I know they were for me. You have lifted a very heavy
weight from my heart. Let me make some tea. I have things to tell you.”
We went to the kitchen, boiled water and made some fresh tea. She
washed the cups we used because I had no clean ones. We sat on the couch of our
love and merry sex and smiled and sipped the tea.
“Is it the second installment of the Cinderella story?” I asked.
“Yes, wouldn‟t you know?” She laughed. “Amr came to the house quite
unexpectedly last Thursday evening. With limousine and chauffeur and all.”
“Last Thursday I gave up hope you would ever ask about me again. I was
very miserable and visited my aunt. I saw the commotion in your flat as I
returned.”
“Well, he insisted I dress up and he took me to the Hilton for dinner. By
the way, I saw your beautiful cousin at the reception desk. I didn‟t know she
worked there. I went and said hello to her. She remembered me. Anyway, we had
a wonderful meal and he insisted on our trip to his farm at the Said. He was very
pleasant with me. A little sticky, yes, but what do you expect? The man is madly
in love with me. We had fun and I teased him and played hard to get. No, really, I
had a good time. About the trip he would not take no for an answer. I was feeling
pretty miserable myself and decided the change would do me good. ”
“So you did go! Can you imagine, I feel both jealous and happy for you? I
was hoping this would happen.”
“I do hate you sometimes.”
She laughed. I was so happy the unbearable ambiance had changed. I was
going lose her but happily. As happy as a parting can be. With the sweetest of
sorrows. Not a torn heart.
“Well, we left by air, Saturday afternoon instead of the evening and when
we arrived it was still daylight. A limousine was waiting at the airport and
whisked us to the farm directly. He has a nice comfortable house there. Not as
grand as the one at Menoufia but nice. The farm is much bigger with an army of
servants and boys for the animals and the horses are innumerable and much, much
more fun because of all the foals that are there. I really loved them. I also saw a
foal being born. It was very moving. The mare licking it with her tongue to get all

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the gooey stuff off it and the foal struggling to get on its legs and tottering about
unsteadily looking for his mother‟s teat. Amazing. I loved the year-old colts too.
So playful and beautiful. It was a great experience. ”
“Get to the point.”
“What point?”
“Did the Prince fit the shoe on your foot?”
She laughed.
“No but he gave me a diamond ring and asked me to marry him.”
“Did you accept?”
“I think both his proposal and my acceptance were because of you. I might
reconsider and thank you some day. Just now I hate you more than I love you.”
“I am so happy Samia. Congratulations. What a lucky guy that Amr is. Did
he, at least, promise to reduce?”
She laughed.
“You are a devil! How did you know? It was one of the many conditions I
put to him hoping he would be exasperated and send me packing.”
“And the others?”
“That I would continue my education and we would think of having
children only after I had my diploma in hand.”
“What else?”
“Many, many outrageous others. I almost asked him to be free to have
lovers. I am joking, of course, but I did bring up a whole lot of unacceptable
demands. He just kept on nodding with a smile. Yes, yes, yes, and still I was not
sure I wanted to marry him and then I thought of you and I hated you so much that
I, in my turn, said yes. I don‟t know if a successful marriage can be founded on a
grudge. But I think it might, I think it will. Now that we are friends.”
“He is a fine Prince, Cinderella, and, remember, the best marriages are
arranged marriages, by grudges or otherwise. The worst are love matches.”
“Oh, do shut up.”
We parted as friends with a sorrow that was infinitely sweet. We started
off as friends and were more friends than lovers even when we made love. We fell
in love when we parted because, sometimes, the anguish of quarrels and
separations has that effect. How do I know? There is no other explanation. We
became tight, tender, simple friends again when we made up, for a week, and she
was free to transfer, little by little, her love and overflowing, secret sensuality to
her Prince. The Prince who judged her well and wanted her that way.
The next day I handed in my resignation, so to speak, verbal and happy, to
Iakovos and Stelios, my employers. They were greatly put out and promptly
doubled my salary to enable me to continue my misery in my miserable flat in
miserable Shoubra. But I was already sailing the ocean, breathing pure oxygen. I
said goodbye to the barefoot, kerosene stinking, greased up little boys who never
washed, whose only ambition was to fill their bellies with a rice and lentil
sandwich and a coke and go and play football at a garbage-filled empty lot with a
wonderfully crafted stuffed stocking. As well as my other more senior colleagues
tied and grateful to the drudge of work, a household of kids and the neighborhood
teahouse which was another home more peaceful than their own.
In the afternoon, after a nap, an inventory of things to throw, to give away,
to keep. The flat in a mess. Samia came in for tea but did not stay long. She left to
study. She was way behind her reading with all her trips and dinners and dinners
to come with her Prince. I read Proust and dreamt of the Ganges and of purifying

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myself in its waters. I read of the Princesse des Laumes and thought of Gandhi
and his spinning wheel. I read of Paris and thought of Bombay. I read of Notre
Dame and dreamt of the Khajuraho temples. I read and dreamt and went to sleep
to dream some more.
Next day, the most difficult of all goodbyes. I went to aunt Ioanna in the
early afternoon. Vassi was there. My daunting Vassi. My too beautiful,
intimidating cousin. The black hole that my love could not escape, that sucked my
being, my soul and tied it in a Gordian knot. That wiped from my fickle, love-
prone heart all rivals. Whose indifference killed me and interest resurrected me
but plunged me in mental storms of doubt and inadequacy. Alas, I was no
Alexander to slash it with a sword. She was there, my Vassi. They had just
finished their late lunch and Vassi made some Turkish coffee and we sat in the
living room to drink it. She was sulking, surly, talking to her mother. Trivialities,
petty incidents from the Hotel, her world, which was not mine. Ignoring me.
“Take a break, Vassiliki,” said my aunt. “I want to talk to John.”
“He‟s not a baby, mother, he knows what he‟s doing. He‟s just a little
mad. It was his dream ever since I was in Port Said five years ago.”
“Iakovos called me yesterday. He told me you quit your job. That you
were going to board a ship.”
I smiled.
“I‟m following your advice, auntie. Egypt for me is finished. I am
suffocating here.”
“But a ship?”
I laughed.
“Of all the innumerable choices and splendid opportunities confronting
me, it seemed the most appropriate.”
“I am worried.”
“I am worried, too,” said Vassi. “What will happen to all the broken hearts
you are leaving behind?”
“The only heart I care about is not broken.”
Vassi looked at me in the eyes. The probing reminded me of Samia. She
tried but I did not think she understood.
“Still thinking of the showgirl?” said aunt Ioanna. “Forget her.”
“I have to forget a lot of things.”
“Mother, you have missed a few episodes in his love life.”
“Oh well, how do you expect me to know? So you are decided Johnny?
We must keep in touch. I feel you are my responsibility ever since Antigone
died.”
“I know. You have been very sweet to me. I shall think about you and I
shall write. We won‟t get lost.”
Vassi got up and said she was going for a nap.
“Really, that girl has no manners,” said aunt Ioanna when Vassi left. “She
has been giving me a hard time. It is not easy to raise a strong- headed girl in our
days. She was going around with this rich Lebanese fellow but I think it‟s over.
Thank God. Not for a moment did I think his intentions were serious. Besides, I
don‟t fancy her marrying a foreigner. She doesn‟t confide in me. I have to draw
my conclusions from her moods and the few tit-bits she tells me. I am happy we
are leaving Egypt. There are very few Greeks left. Whom will she marry here? I
think her application for the transfer to the Athens Hilton has been accepted. I

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want her to get married and settle down in Greece. She has a wild streak in her
that worries me.”
I stayed and talked with aunt Ioanna until nightfall. Nothing fascinating
but I felt I owed her these few hours of company. I always felt her love for me
was sincere and that her home was my home. Vassi reappeared as I was about to
leave. She had obviously slept. A face changes after a good rest. It becomes soft
and indolent and sometimes more beautiful. She was dressed to go out or not to go
out. Slacks and a shirt. Gym shoes without socks.
“Where are you off to?” Asked her mother.
“To the cinema with John.”
They both looked at me. I smiled and shrugged my shoulders.
“Perhaps he has other plans.”
“Too bad,” she said.
It was an emotional leave taking with aunt Ioanna. With tears and smiles
and blessings and hopes for a happy reunion. Partings and reunions, a signature of
civilization. Only death is prehistoric.
“You‟re a bit of a nut, yourself,” I told Vassi going down the stairs.
“It makes life interesting, don‟t you think?”
“What film would you like to see?”
“No film. Let‟s go to the à l‟Americaine. It was fun the last time. We can
talk.”
It was a few blocks away and we walked. She put her arm around mine
and I thought if I had enough money, by hook or by crook, it would stay there for
good. I was losing my innocence. We sat at a table for two. In a corner. Like two
lovers. Only we weren‟t. A waiter, two ice creams. Two smiles.
“Don‟t be sad,” she said. “Look at me.”
I looked at her pointedly and she laughed.
“I meant, look how I got over it. It‟s finished. To hell with him. He
claimed they forced him to be engaged with this rich girl and he wanted to see me
on the side. Because he loved me. Ha! I sent him packing. ”
“What are you getting at?”
“It‟s the same thing isn‟t it? She left you for this fat, rich guy only she
probably does not want to see you on the side. Girls are slightly different on that
point.”
“Oh my sweet Vassi, I see what you mean. No, no you got it all wrong. ”
“I saw them at the Hotel. She even came up to me and said hello.”
“Yes. No. It‟s not the same with Samia.”
“But you were kissing like mad that night.”
“Yes, but we broke up as friends. We still are. She knows I am leaving. ”
“Is that why you broke up?”
“I broke up because I am in love with another girl.”
“Oh boy! You really have me confused. Affairs left, right and centre!”
“No, no. It seems that way but it‟s not. I have loved this other girl for a
long time but I saw it was hopeless and that‟s why I decided to leave. ”
She reached and held my hand. Tenderly, she smiled at me.
“Why didn‟t you call me? I was waiting for you to take me to the movies.
It was so pleasant last time.”
Two negatives to make a positive. I still remember my math. Two broken
hearts mending each other. It is at times like these that one wonders why life is so
cruel. Why it plays such dirty tricks. And then I thought of her at the Hotel and

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what chance did I have in the long run. Because Vassi, for me, was the long run.
And there, I saw no chance.
“Finish up,” she said. “Let‟s go to your flat.”
She looked at me, and those eyes that sucked me to their depths and
lodged in my soul forever, opened for me a magical trail that would traverse
paradise and end up in hell. My heart was beating hard. Reason battled my
longing in fractions of devastating seconds and won a pyrrhic victory.
“Let‟s not complicate things,” I said. “I am leaving on Sunday.”
“Don‟t leave.”
“And then what?”
“I don‟t know, for heaven‟s sake. We‟ll think of something.”
“You mean, us, together? Going back to the workshop? Living in my
hovel? Counting the pennies? We shall not last three months.”
“So what? As long as it takes.”
“Losing you will break my heart. It will destroy my will for life and I shall
have to die.”
She laughed.
“You are quite mad after all.”
“No, I‟m not. Do you know why? Because that girl I love...”
I hesitated. I did not know if I should burden her.
“What about her?”
“Nothing.”
“What about her, Johnny?”
“That girl is you.”
Surprise, disbelief, sadness alternated on her features almost as
imperceptibly, as vaguely as Mona Lisa‟s smile, as the wafting of the ceiling fan
gently stirred her hair.
“Let‟s go to your flat,” she said again.
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
She got up. She did not have a bag to collect. She just looked at me for a
moment, expressionless.
“Good bye, John,” she said. “Good luck.”
She left without looking back.
Is it madness, my darling, in our circumstances, not to want to possess you
because I cannot risk losing you forever? Is it madness to hope?
I knew if she felt sad, it would not last for long. The vulnerability was
mine. The pain, the anguish, assailed me before she was out of the door. I paid
and went out. I started walking to Shoubra. I did the right thing, I thought. I did
the right thing. My stomach was revolting and churning. My heart was pounding.
I did the right thing. I felt like crying. Who in his right mind would shut the door
to happiness? I did the right thing. I am leaving on Sunday what else could I do? I
walked slowly. I wanted to wear out my body, to exhaust my wretchedness with
fatigue but I did not have the energy to walk fast. I went ambling along muttering
my mantra. I did the right thing. Perhaps repetition will convince me. I needed
help. I entered a pharmacy on the main street in Shoubra and bought some
sleeping pills. I took a double dosage as soon as I entered the ho use and sank into
dreamless slumber.

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 I woke up in a daze. My bed was swaying. Was I on the ship? I got up and
like a drunkard meandered to the bathroom. I vomited the ice cream, in the
darkness, on the floor. I returned to my bed. Was it a dream, a nightmare, this
parting with Vassi? I did the right thing. My eyes closed. What else could I do?
I woke up late in the morning. A sense of unreality enveloped me. The
drugged sleep had done some good. The pain would return but for the time being
yesterday was almost a delusion. I had breakfast and dressed in a hurry. Trying to
forestall the pain. I went to the top floor to see the landlord. I told him I was
leaving and wanted back the key money I had paid. He said he did not have any
money on hand. We would have to wait for another tenant. I told him I would
cede my furniture if he paid me immediately. He agreed. We would meet the next
day. I went to the bank and withdrew a little money, putting the rest on a time
deposit with interest. In ten thousand years, I would be rich.
I bought two new suitcases and returned home. I put Proust‟s volumes in.
First things first. They would keep me company. I prepared tinned tuna for lunch
with olive oil and fresh bread. I heard Samia‟s voice talking to someone on the
stairs, her voice merry and was laughing. That guy Amr was lucky. I thought of
taking another pill for a midday nap but I did not and managed to sleep all the
same. Vassi kept returning but she was far away. I had used up so much pain the
night before there was little left. I just kept sighing deeply, very often, but mostly
without thinking.
In the evening, I went to the nightclub to see Anita. To say goodbye. I
missed her, too, my tough, blue-eyed butterfly. I arrived just before midnight and
she was dancing. I stood for a while between the tables and watched her. It was so
nice to see her familiar face, her almost identical movements to the same old
music that was grating my nerves. It was a Thursday night and the nightclub was
packed. The ceiling fans could neither alleviate the heat of jam-packed humanity
nor disperse the cigarette smoke. I was glad I went in a short-sleeved shirt. I could
not find a table and pushed my way to the bar. The barman smiled.
“Whisky?”
“Yes, please.”
A darkie with white frizzy hair. Fantastic white teeth to his smile.
Imperturbable and efficient. A stool emptied and I sat on it. The dance finished
and Anita came out ten minutes later. She went and sat at a table with three men.
They offered her a drink from a whisky bottle on their table. The men talked and
laughed boisterously and lit one cigarette after another. She was familiar with
them and smiled often but had the same reserve that first attracted my attention.
None of the intimacy she exhibited with Amr. I kept my eyes on her and waited.
Three men. Would she do it with three men in a row? At the same time? All,
together? If the price was right?
A few girls passed by, fishing for drinks. Sorry, I have a friend coming.
They get a cut on each drink but how do they keep tabs in this muddle? She
stayed on with them and I kept drinking but slower and slower because I was
getting dizzy. I nibbled on the peanuts and chips. The barman kept wiping the bar.
He had tiny drops of perspiration on the top of his forehead, right next to his hair.
It was too hot for a white sharkskin jacket and a bow tie. The dance floor,
overflowing in the slows, half-emptied during the fast dances and the young and
energetic had space to move and show off. The second part of her show was about
to start. She left the three musketeers and I intercepted her on her way out.

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 “John!” She was surprised. A happy smile. A kiss. “I have to go. Wait for
me.”
Another boring half- hour but for her.
She came out after the show looking for me. The three musketeers called
her and she made a sign, later. I waved and she approached with a smile. We sat at
the bar.
“Hi baby,” she said. “What a lovely surprise. I missed you.”
“I missed you, too, Anita.”
“I did not think I would see you again.”
“I came to say good bye. I am leaving Egypt for a while. Probably
forever.”
“And your new love?”
“It never got off the ground.”
“Oh dear. This world is full of disappointments, isn‟t it?”
“I think most of the times we are the cause of them.”
“Hey, Mr. Philosopher!”
“Can I offer you a drink?”
“Okay and then we can leave.”
I looked at her, surprised, and she smiled.
“If you wish, that is. I think we both need a respite.”
“Oh Anita, I do love you. You are so earthy and sweet.”
I loved Vassi too and I repulsed her. Loved her so much. So much more. I
loved her desperately. Wasn‟t it ironic? But Anita would not leave a gaping
wound. Anita did not intimidate me. Did not bring out my inferiorities that made
me inflexible. That made me refuse for fear that I would lose her forever.
“Carla,” she called a girl. The girl approached and Anita introduced her to
me.
“This is Carla, my roommate. Carla, this is the famous John. ”
“Hello, Mr. famous John,” she said smiling gaily. “For a time Anita would
not stop talking about you. But…”
She stopped. She realized her faux pas and blushed.
“But later she met other famous people,” I finished the sentence.
She laughed and we shook hands. A sweet smile, a hearty laugh, a firm
handshake. She was one of the dancers. Black hair, medium height like Anita but
thinner and less sexy.
“Carla is Spanish,” Anita said. “She joined our troupe in Barcelona and we
have been together for almost two years.”
“Why don‟t you teach them Flamenco,” I told Carla, “to liven things up a
bit? This same routine, day in day out, doesn‟t it get you down?”
“The Flamenco needs a fiery temperament. It is art. It is not for cabaret.”
Carla left us after a few minutes. We finished our drink, took a cab, and
headed home. When we entered the flat I kissed her slowly, tenderly and she
caressed my hair. We sat on the couch. I held her hand.
“Everything will be all right,” she said.
“Why do you say that?”
“I feel it in your touch, your kiss. The sadness. It will pass.”
“It is strange to be changing your life. It is unnerving to be aimless. To just
be running away.”
“From what?”

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 “From love. A love I am not ready for. A love I can neither face nor let
alone.”
“You are talking in riddles. Do you want to explain?”
“No, I want to forget.”
She took my hand and kissed it.
“Everybody has his secret.”
“And you have Carla?”
She kissed me on the mouth, lingering, tenderly. She looked at me and
smiled. She knew she would not revolt me. She trusted me. If I asked anything,
she would not lie.
“How did you know?”
“An enlightened guess. After all you told me.”
She kissed me again and her tongue was sweet and soft in my mouth. Her
eyes closed, her hand holding the back of my head firmly in place. A kiss full of
feeling. Breasts on my chest, full and heavy, moving, rubbing, sending vibrations.
“Are you a lesbian?”
She kissed me in a prolonged soulful kiss. It went on and on. I did not
want it to end. I was getting aroused.
“Does this answer your question?” She looked at me. “Do you
understand?” Her blue eyes twinkling, her face flushed, almost beautiful.
She undid my shirt. I helped her take off my flannel.
“Is it an acquired taste, as you once said?”
She unbuttoned her shirt, stood up and took off her slacks. Oh, what lovely
breasts she had. Straining to break her bra. What lovely legs. What a shapely,
plump backside. She came back to me, fell on me laughing, kissed me, licked my
face, my eyes, bit my ear, and put her tongue in it. She was playful and wild.
“It‟s an acquired need.”
“For what?”
She got up, took off my shoes and socks, undid my belt and pulled off my
trousers and underwear. She kissed me repeatedly and held my penis, squeezing
it, moving it slowly, gently, bending to put it in her mouth, bringing sensations up
my throbbing brain.
“For what, you silly boy? Why, for love and tenderness and comfort.”
“Can‟t you get that from men?”
She laughed.
She put her arms behind her back in that totally, solely feminine gesture
and unhooked her bra. Lovely, oversize, exciting breasts spilled out for the taking,
for fondling, for suckling, for excitement and for love.
“You must be joking,” she said.
She lowered her panties, lifted her body, slipped them past her legs and
flicked them away with her feet. She stretched beside me on the couch and kissed
me. Interminable, passionate, frantic movements of tongue and body and hands.
“Buffeting, vulgarity, indifference when their passion is spent, is what we
get. Not everyone is Johnny… I forget your surname?”
“Zimit.”
“Not everyone is Johnny Zimit.”
I kissed her to give her the love and tenderness and comfort that others
denied her. I gave them and took them back. They do not know this secret, the
misers of the senses. They cannot conceive that when you give, you take. I inched
my hand between her legs and felt the wet, eternally secret passage, revealed in

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these magic moments of enchantment and then hidden again for furtive dreams of
lust and yearning.
“Lick my cunt, baby,” she said.
I knelt on the ground. She opened her legs wide, my blue-eyed butterfly. A
V-sign of victory, for me, for her, for both of us and my heart pounded as I kissed
that other bearded mouth, those other tongue- less lips with just a throat, moist and
deep and elementally fragrant, and tried to figure whose pleasure was the greatest.
“Do you do it often with Carla?”
“When we are sad, my love. When we are abused and badly treated, as we
often are. When we need comfort. I do love men sometimes. The men I love, I ask
them to lick my cunt and the men I love, they always do it. Oh Johnny, I am
yours, baby. I love you. Play with me, my love, do whatever you like.”
I kissed, sucked and licked her cunt and her asshole, squeezed her luscious
breasts and nipples and bit the flesh of her backside. It was almost a debt I was
repaying on behalf of the male sex for the pleasures she has given us. A
repayment of love instead of money, of tenderness instead of drinks and vulgar
conversation, of appreciation instead of cheap humor and barely disguised
contempt. I turned to her face and kissed her. I was emotional and told her I loved
her. I slipped inside her, inside her warm paradise and hardly moved with slow
confined motion to reserve my ejaculation and bring forth her orgasms. My
fabulous Anita, that professor of creative lovemaking, understood the intent and
limited her movement while bringing her clit into focus in short, firm contact-
inducing moves. She kept the technique steadily in all positions: with me on top,
while she rode her stallion and while we lay on our sides. They came, these
delirious orgasms, one after the other for a long, long time with transports of
moaning, little cries and eager kisses and I rejoiced because the pleasure, the
sensuality was mine even more than hers.
We slept very little that night. We slept in the morning until ten and made
love again when we woke up. I took her back to the hotel for I had to see my
landlord. We said goodbye and we smiled and her eyes were glistening with tears.
Tears I did not expect. I kissed her many times. Tenderly. She always was, always
would remain a mystery.
“Why are you crying?” I asked. “You did not want to marry me.”
“Oh baby, will you always be a dreamer? You have your secrets to work
out, I have mine.”
“It would have been a solution of sorts.”
“A solution? Not remotely. Not even a temporary one. It would have
pushed us deeper in our labyrinth.”
“Anyway, it‟s too late.”
“It was never early enough, my baby. It was just a fine respite.”
“Yes, but I am not as tough. For me there is also pain. Pain, which means
love. Finally, our meeting was also a lesson. A lesson I shall never quite master
but which left in its tracks so many thoughts about life and the capacity, if you
have it, to be compassionate, understanding, and open- minded. You were, my
blue-eyed butterfly, a teacher of the good and the bad in this world. You caused
me pain but how else does one mature? How else does one think out his life?”
“Enough philosophizing, Johnny Zimit. Go before I cry again. Good luck,
my baby, in your travels and your life. Perhaps we shall meet again in the low life
of another exotic city.”
“I shall never stop looking for you. I shall always think of you.”

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 We embraced and kissed with a new helpless longing and I left part of my
life with her, as I was to leave other parts again and again with other persons, in
other places, in other circumstances.
I returned to the flat and met my grasping landlord, took the key money
and gave back my contract. I took a cab to the Hilton to change the Egyptian
currency to dollars at the illegal moneychangers hanging out at the hotel entrance.
I hoped I would not see Vassi and hoped the dollar notes were not counterfeit.
Then back home again.
It was lunchtime and I felt my throat blocked and my stomach constricted.
I felt the depression approaching like black, speeding clouds drifting in, a
premonition of the storm. I thought of Vassi. I am not a normal human being, I
mused. Everything I do is perverted, stupid, complexed, convoluted. I really wish
I were dead. It was still early afternoon. How would I spend my evening? I would
go mad. I thought of Samia. Today was Friday. She would not be attending at the
faculty. I went and knocked at her door. Shadia opened. She smiled at me.
“Is Samia in?” I asked.
“No,” she answered. “She has gone with Amr to Tanta. He is to meet her
parents and ask for her hand in marriage. Isn‟t it wonderful? ”
“Yes,” I said. “I am very happy. Please tell her so. Give her my love and
congratulations. I am leaving tomorrow. I shall probably not see her. ”
“Of course,” said Shadia, “and please forgive me for the harsh words I
said to you the other day.”
I returned to my flat and took a double, perhaps a triple dosage of sleeping
pills. I did not count them. I slept right through the afternoon to the next day.
I left for Port Said a day early.

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 stories for Chris and reveries

The child called. I glance at my watch. It is two-thirty past midnight. I

jump up from my armchair and go to her. She looks at me. She smiles.
“I am thirsty, John,” she says.
“Chris, my darling,” I mutter and nearly choke. I can hardly hold back my
tears. It is true after all. I did not believe them. They said she would recover. That
the brain was undamaged from the meningitis. The temperature almost normal. I
am thirsty, John, the first coherent words in three days of mumbling and cries of
the coma. I bring to her lips the sterilized bottle of water with the straw. She takes
a few gulps.
“Where‟s mother?”
“She‟ll be here in the morning.”
She goes back to sleep.
I go out in the corridor and walk rapidly along its length. I am wearing
rubber soles so as not to make a noise. Just a slight squeak on the marble floor.
The two nurses on night duty at the desk ask me if I need anything.
“No thanks. I‟ll go for a short walk. The girl just came out of the coma. ”
They smile unconcernedly.
I go out on the street and start running in the chill air and slight drizzle
crying, thank God, thank God, working out my elation. I return drenched and
exhausted. The nurses stare at me. I go into the room. Chris is sleeping peacefully.
For a moment, I panic. I go up to her. I caress her hair.
“Chris?”
She opens her eyes. I relax.
“Go to sleep, baby.”
I take a towel and dry my hair and face. I sit on the armchair. Back to my
reveries. I have been doing that, nightly, for almost a week, ever since we brought
Chris to the hospital. Trying to appease my agony. Brooding on my life. My
favourite pastime in these last few years of my retirement. It was not a life to be
proud of.

The getaway from Egypt on the Andalusia. It was peaceful for a short
while before my encounter with Carlos and his three thugs. The engine room
where I worked almost twelve hours a day. My bunk with my wonderful, beloved
porthole next to my pillow. How one feels lucky and grateful for such small
mercies. What a companion and pastime that porthole was. It was my tranquilizer
and breath of fresh air. My window to the world of dreams and thoughts, hopes
and longings. A world as turbulent and as calm as the waves that passed by. As
exhilarating and graceful, sometimes, as the glimpse of a dolphin which sought
our companionship for a couple of miles. As black and frightening as a heaving,
moonless sea.
The harassment of Carlos and his three companions. The cornering in the
engine room and the rape. The opportunity I did not miss when I found him alone,
late one night, lurking outside the engine room for another try. I picked the big
monkey wrench, crushed his skull and threw him overboard. The inquiries. The
certainty in the eyes of his companions that I had done him in. Their fear and hate.
L’enfer c’est les autres, wrote Sartre. Oh, yes, so true. I would have done it again.

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Not only that. I would have liked to bring him back to life, to kill him anew. I
never really knew what hate meant before. Theoretically, yes. Theoretically. Not
the real, gnawing feeling that eats up your insides. That floods your brain with a
single overwhelming thought. That gives meaning to the phrase, revenge is sweet.
Hate and revenge. Almost as satisfying as love and lovemaking. When you have
them paired. Almost as blissful.
The jumping of ship in Mumbai to avoid being knifed in the back.
Followed, briefly, by the three companions of the disappeared Carlos and
managing to lose them. Hiding out for a month in the slums of Dharavi. The
peripatetic year in India. The fascinating travels. The discovery of a new country
and culture; the exquisite tantric temples and erotic sculptures at Khajuraho and
Konarak. The nayikas (heroines), apsaras (celestial beauties) and devadasis (erotic
temple dancers, women of loose morals), the gurus and the sadhus. The religions
and philosophies. The languages, the tribes, the castes, the animosities. The
eroticism of the tantric culture in the tenth to thirteenth century India. The ever-
present lingam and yoni in the temples. The holy Ganga and the ritual bathing at
the ghats of Varanasi. The ashrams and spiritualism. The fanatic, colossal
ignorance.
Meeting Rami and his extraordinary wife, again, on my return to Mumbai.
Forming a joint venture for the exchange of goods. Spices from India; olive oil
from Greece. Returning to Cairo by air to collect my money. To get the business
going.

“John, I am thirsty again.”

I give her some more water.
“Am I going to get well?”
“You are already well, my baby. In one or two days we shall be out of
hospital.”
“Have you been sleeping here every night?”
“Every single night. Would I leave my baby alone?”
She smiled. She was thin and exhausted from the fever. Her cheeks sunken
and her short, brown hair sticky from days of perspiration but her face, finely
chiselled and beautiful. As beautiful as her mother‟s.
“Did father come?”
“He will probably come to see you when you are at home. Try to sleep.”

In Cairo, I returned to the small hotel at Soliman Pasha where I stayed for
two weeks or so when I first arrived in the city after Antigone‟s death. Two
pilgrimages were on my mind. For one love departed and another alive. I took an
early train, next day, to Port Said to visit my mother‟s grave. I stayed with her all
morning. I sat on the marble slab of the grave and talked to her. I gave an account
of my travels.
“I shall be back again Antigone,” I told her, “as soon as I possibly can, to
give you my news and my love, to confess my innermost feelings and
confidences. We have no secrets from one another and you shall always be alive
in me. My soul is yours.”
On the train back I was depressed because I realized the futility of what I
had done. I just had no choice.

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 In the evening, I took a long, slow walk to Shoubra. My heart constricted
with memories. On the way, I passed by aunt Ioanna‟s flat on the off chance that
she and Vassi were still there. A servant opened the door.
“Is the lady at home?” I asked. An elderly woman came out in a robe de
chambre. “Forgive me,” I told her, “I must have mistaken the flat.”
In Shoubra, nothing had changed. A slightly better, less jam-packed and
bustling version of Dharavi but just as depressing. My old flat had lights and
children‟s voices and they mingled with the nostalgia of my happier days there,
my loves and casual one- night stands. At the flat opposite, Shadia opened the door
and stared for a few moments at the apparition from the past. She invited me in,
politely, but I did not stay longer than the obligatory cup of tea. Samia had been
married for a year and lived with her portly prince in a villa in Zamalek. I took her
phone number and a taxi back to my hotel.
I called her as soon as I arrived. Prince Amr answered the phone and for a
moment could not make out who was calling.
“John Zimit?”
She was next to him. She grabbed the phone.
“I don‟t believe it,” she cried. “Is it really you?”
“It is my Cinderella and I can‟t believe it either that I am actually talking
to you. Hearing your voice and your laugh.”
“I‟ll send the car over.”
“It‟s ten o‟clock, for heavens‟ sake and I‟m pooped. I‟m just back from
Port Said. Shall we meet at Lappas tomorrow at eleven? ”
She arrived on the dot in a chauffeured limousine looking exquisite. Made
up, dressed to perfection, drawing all eyes. She had put on a little weight and her
face was shining. It lit up Lappas. We fell into each other‟s arms. We could not
take our eyes off each other.
“You really have a deadly grip on that fairy godmother my Cinderella. ”
“You don‟t look too bad yourself, Johnny.”
We sat down and started an animated, happy chatter that went on and on
until two and then drove to the Hilton for lunch. My news, her news. She was in
her last year in Medicine. Next year she would have to do her co mpulsory year of
service in the provinces and she was trying to wangle a post at the village in the
Said where they had their farm. After that, she would consider having a baby. Not
before.
“Are you happy with your prince, Cinderella?”
“He is a wonderful husband, fully domesticated by now, let me tell you,
and he anticipates my slightest whim. I have what I have always needed, this
absolute sense of security. Of a man taking care of me. I am at peace, Johnny. ”
She laughed.
“The only promise he has not kept was to lose weight.”
“That must weigh on you, Cinderella.”
She laughed again merrily.
“On my mind or on my body?”
“It is not for me to say.”
“On the other hand, did you know that plump men are usually oversexed? ”
“No, I didn‟t. Are they really?”
“I am not giving my marital secrets away.”
“Miss anything from your former life?”

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 She looked at me for a few moments with her almond eyes and clear gaze,
then, she smiled.
“The fun we had.”
“The hotel I am staying at is nothing special but it‟s close by.”
“No, Johnny. I do not break my contracts.”
“Whereas…”
“Yes.”
“So you did not take a bath this morning.”
She smiled again.
“No.”
“You smell wonderful all the same.”
“It‟s the same perfume.”
“To torture me a little? Revenge is sweet.”
“I was heartbroken, Johnny, despite all our talk of not being in love.”
“So was I. Do you believe me?”
“Against all logic, yes, I do.”
“So let‟s just say, I am on the menu. Always shall be, for you.”
“Let‟s keep in touch, Johnny. Exchange a few letters a year, a few phone
calls”
The next day I withdrew all the money I had left in a savings account in
the bank and bought dollars in little fractions at the illegal moneychangers that
loitered, as usual, outside the big hotels. Once this was settled, I booked a flight to
Athens for early the next day. I called Samia in the afternoon to say goodbye. She
asked me to go and visit them at home but I did not feel like seeing Amr and
declined on some innocuous excuse. I promised to return to Cairo within a year to
see her and to visit Antigone‟s grave. Meanwhile we would keep in touch.
In the evening, I felt lonely and went to the nightclub where Anita danced.
The usual hubbub but with a strange aridity for me and the sense of something
missing for I no longer knew anyone and the one or two familiar faces were those
of the waiters and the darkie barman. I offered a few drinks to the itinerant
„consommatrices‟ and eventually chose a girl and asked her if she would come
with me to my hotel. We went in at about one and the lobby was empty, which
facilitated the transaction with the lone employee at the reception desk to let the
girl into my room. An instant, almost wordless and happy exchange of ten pounds.
In the room, we talked a little and then I kissed her. She was surprised. She
was, perhaps, not used to such gentleness. I kissed her many times and then
undressed her, caressed her and made energetic, liberating love to her for I had not
been with a woman for some time.
Months ago, in India, I met an Englishwoman with whom I travelled for
almost a month up the pristine mountainous sources of the Ganges in the
Himalayas and down to Varanasi, otherwise known as Benares, where we bathed
early one morning in the Ganges with the pious Hindus. She was a little mad this
Marjorie Swinburn, just as I was but she was bright and taught me many, many
things about India, being an anthropology lecturer at Sussex University. She was
forty- five or so, a little stocky, with a pleasant face, a nice smile, married, with
two teenage daughters. She was on a sabbatical on her own in India. We talked a
lot about culture, religion, lingams and yonis, Indian eroticism, which fascinated
us, inspired us and caused us to practice a good deal of it ourselves. And then,
when Marjorie left, an affair with an Indian woman, almost a legacy from
Marjorie, a month or so before I left the country.

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 This girl without a name stayed with me until four. We had laughs and fun
and I think she enjoyed the sex as much as I did but then one can never be sure. It
might have been just business. But she did kiss me back. Does that not mean
something? I paid her twice what she asked because she treated me like a human
being, not as a client. Then I had a shower, shaved and left for the airport.

I must have dozed off on the armchair because when she called my name
again, daylight was filtering through the curtains. She was thirsty and wanted to
pee. I gave her the plastic bottle of water and she took a few sips with the straw
and then I helped her walk to the toilet, holding the bottle of serum that was
dripping in her vein. She could barely stand.
“My arm hurts terribly, John.”
“Oh, I‟m sure they will remove the serum now that you a re drinking
normally.”
“Shall we call mummy?”
“It‟s still too early, my love. Try to sleep a little more.”
“I can‟t. I have been sleeping for days. Haven‟t I?”
I sat next to her and held her hand. I caressed her hair and her forehead
was cool. My relief, my happiness, was indescribable. I did not want to show it, to
have her realize the danger she had been through. After Chris and another pupil
were diagnosed with meningitis, the government health services shut the school
for a week to disinfect it. It was as serious as that. We were silent for a while.
The hospital was stirring. I could hear the nurses changing shifts and the
housekeepers mopping the corridors outside. Soon they would barge in the room
to clean and disinfect it followed by the nurses with the antibiotics, injections,
thermometers and blood pressure measurements. A little later, tea and toast for
breakfast. But the anxious, almost desperate wait for the doctors to come around
was over. Today Chris was on her way to recovery and so was I.
She smiled at me.
“Tell me a story, John.”
“Isn‟t it a bit early for that?”
“No.”
“Okay. Which one do you want? Cinderella or the three little piggies?”
She laughed.
“Don‟t be silly. I am eleven and a half. One of your travel stories, as
usual.”
“But my darling, I‟ve told you most of them. Some of them, more than
once.”
“Tell me one about Africa with wild animals.”
“I did not see many wild animals in Africa. Mostly, I saw poverty and
ignorance and misery.”
“Never mind.”
“Okay, but don‟t close your eyes and go to sleep because I shall stop. ”
She smiled.
It was my pill of happiness this smile. My magic potion. It brought
normality to my life. Pierced my cocoon of isolation and thoughts of the past. The
world of hunger and misery, of wars and suffering, of greed and drugs. My heart
and the core of my soul had congealed by the life I led. Terrorists did not revolt
me. They had their reasons. Torn bodies and death left me indifferent. Genocides

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were past, present and probably the future and they were far away. Would the
folly of humanity ever cease? I had not opened the television in years.
“Remember Rami, my business partner?”
“Yes, the elderly Indian with the beautiful wife you fell in love with.”
“That‟s right.”
“You are always falling in love with the women in your stories.”
“What can I do? I can‟t help it.”
“You are such a baby.”
“Yes. And now I am in love with a young lady called Chris.”
She smiled.
“Don‟t be silly,” she said.
“If you keep on calling me silly I won‟t tell any stories. ”
“Okay. Go on.”
“After about seven years my partnership with Rami broke up.”
“And you did not see his wife any more?”
“That has nothing to do with the story.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“I traveled around central Africa looking for business. Oh, anything,
nothing in particular. Something to make money with. ”
“Didn‟t you have any money?”
“I had already made quite a lot but I wanted to become rich to be able to
win the woman I loved.”
“There you go again.”
“Yes. Like the Great Gatsby.”
“Who?”
“It is a character in a wonderful book you shall read in a few years. ”
“Can‟t I read it now?”
“Yes but you will not get much out of it. Anyway, to get on with our story:
I had some African connections from Brussels, the capital of Belgium, which at
the time was a sort of base for me. In one of those chaotic, jungle-choked, newly
created African republics with twenty revolutions on its hands, I was introduced
to a chap, an African businessman, who was interested in buying arms for a rebel
group. These guerrillas were always in need of a European intermediary because
the arms manufacturers in Brussels would not deal with them. It was not only
official Belgian policy but also because they did not trust African insurgents who
rebelled one moment and might be exterminated the next leaving contracts and
debts pending.
“The businessman gave me a list of their requirements and I flew to
Brussels to get prices and back again. I met the gentleman and he said he was not
authorized to deal with me. I had to see the rebel leader. We left the capital and
traveled by car, a reinforced, ancient Willy‟s Overland station wagon, for two
days in the jungle.”
“Did you see any animals?”
“Very few. A few gazelles, a few zebras and a herd of gnus.”
“Any lions?”
“No.”
“Tigers?”
“There are no tigers in Africa. Their habitat is in the jungles of Asia,
mainly India.”
“Oh, okay. Go on.”

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 “We slept in the car at night with closed windows for fear of snakes and
scorpions and roving monkeys, sweltering in our sweat and with the eerie sounds
of the jungle driving us crazy.”
“I would have liked a little monkey for a pet.”
“Oh, please! Aren‟t the cats we have enough? Do you want our house
completely demolished?”
“Go on.”
“It was the most uncomfortable trip of my life. I had no idea of our
destination and often wondered if I would come out of it alive. At long last, we
reached an area that was clearly controlled by a ragtag army that was not the
government and in a very small, impoverished provincial city, I was driven to a
heavily guarded villa where his Excellency the rebel president lived. I delivered
my price list, which, by the way, was well padded with profit, and waited for two
days, housed in a nearby villa with very little to do except sweat it out, go for long
sweltering walks and wonder if hell was a worse place than this. ”
“Is hell full of fires?”
“Don‟t interrupt.”
“Our teacher says that if we don‟t ask questions we‟ll never learn. ”
“Okay, sorry. There is no hell with fires and devils and tortured souls in
heaven, Chris, but plenty of hellish places on this earth of ours. ”
“You mean, horrible places?”
“Exactly. Just like the utterly dismal little town I found myself in. Well,
finally I met the president in his office. We Europeans have a caricature image in
our minds of such people. Strangely enough, that was how he was. Not good-
looking like the maximum leader Mobutu or his tall, skinny, murdered
predecessor Lumumba but a pot-bellied, bald, thick lipped, utterly unpleasant
looking man with thick bifocals out of which peered two piercing, shrewd eyes.
That is a leader, I thought. Intelligent, utterly ruthless and unfeeling with an
enormous ego and thirst for power.”
“He was horrible, was he?”
“You bet. He did not waste much time. We spoke in French. ”
“I hate French.”
“Oh Chris, it‟s a wonderful language.”
“I still hate it and our teacher is so fussy with our pronunciation. ”
“Well, good for her. It‟s not very pleasant to hear French being spoken
with a thick Greek accent.”
“The French cannot even pronounce the letter R properly.”
“I think the story is boring you.”
“No, no. Go on.”
“„Mr. Zimit,‟ the horrible president told me, „we shall not argue about the
price. The arms are far too expensive but you are taking a risk and I respect that.
Send us the merchandise and come back for the payment.‟
“Your Excellency, I said, I shall need an advance.
“„How much?‟
“Half the amount.
“„Out of the question.‟
“I have no way to finance such a huge order.
“„I‟ll give you a quarter.‟
“I am afraid this demand is not negotiable.”
“„Then there is no deal.‟

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 “I got up. I was inexperienced and naïve at the time in the ways of the
jungle. I thought, no sense haggling since I could not increase the advance
payment.
“„Forgive me for taking up your time,‟ I told him. „I shall leave directly.‟
But I was trapped.”
“Why?”
“My connection, the businessman, would not drive me back. He told me
he was not authorized. There were no communications. Because of the war, the
commercial riverboats had stopped coming. I did not even know exactly where I
was. I stayed at the villa. All I could do was walk about the hellish, poverty-
stricken, mosquito infested village hoping that a drunken, undisciplined soldier
would not take a pot shot at me and that, at least, they would continue feeding me.
After three days, I tried to see the president but he would not receive me. A week
or so later, I was summoned. He was cold as ice.”
“Why?”
“Because he was angry I did not agree with his terms straightawa y.
„Listen,‟ he said to me, „let us stop this ridiculous business. I‟ll give you thirty-
five percent of the amount. Take it or leave it. Otherwise I shall not see you again
and you can find your way out of here on your own. ‟
“You are twisting my arm, your Excellency.”
“Was he twisting your arm?”
“Figuratively speaking, Chris. I meant he was intimidating me because I
had no way to escape from him. No way to get out of that awful place.”
“I see.”
“The president laughed loudly. „And you are twisting mine,‟ he said.”
“Was that funny?”
“Well he thought it was funny because he had me in a corner and I could
do nothing about it. But he also needed the arms so he had to compromise. Please
make it forty percent, I told him.
“„Ah, that‟s better,‟ he said. „I like the word, please, Zimit. Especially
coming from a white man‟s mouth. Your arrogance to get up and leave the last
time annoyed me very much. Here take this. If you play your cards right, it might
be worth more than forty percent.‟ He handed me a small leather satchel. I opened
it. It was full of opaque stones of different sizes. Rough diamonds.
“Are they real? I stammered.”
“Were they?” said Chris.
“„I want my arms Zimit,‟ he said. „I would not give you worthless stones.
If this deal goes well, we might do more business together. On the other hand, if
you disappear, you are a dead man. We are not apes in the jungle, at least not all
of us. I have a network of agents all over the world. I shall find you and
exterminate you.‟”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he would kill me.”
“Wow!”
“That‟s fair enough, I told him. When you get the arms I shall be back for
the rest of the money.”
“„That, too, is fair enough,‟ he said.”
I got up and shook his hand for the first time.
“„Ah,‟ he said with an ironic smile, „the Englishman‟s handshake. The
unwritten contract based on the word of honor.‟

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 “I am not an Englishman, your Excellency.
“„I know what you are Zimit. You were born to a Maltese father and a
Greek mother. You lived your early years in Egypt, Port Said to be exact, and you
hold a British passport.‟”
“How did he know?” Chris asked again.
“I don‟t know, baby. Perhaps the African businessman inquired about me
in Brussels to be sure I was reliable and not a crook. To make a long story short, I
was driven back to the capital, took the plane to Brussels, and started selling the
diamonds a small batch of stones at a time for maximum price. I even traveled to
New York to dispose some of them. I became quite an expert on the stones and
the international diamond market. Finally, I placed the order with the arms firm
and in a few months with the most devious means and a thousand precautions
shipped them to Mr President. I flew back to the African capital and telephoned
the businessman. He said he would be in touch with the president and would let
me know. To get things moving I told him I would put aside a good commission
for him but, strangely, that did not seem to interest him and it worried me.”
“What‟s a commission?”
“It is a small amount of money which is given as a sort of present or
reward to a person who helps along with the deal. In a few days, we met again in
the lobby of my hotel. He was stiff and unfriendly. He told me that the president
advised me to just pack up and leave the country before he had me killed.
“Why, I asked, did he not get the arms?
“„You would not be alive if he had not.‟
“So?
“„He considers the deal closed. You have been amply paid. Did you expect
to make a five-hundred percent profit? This is what infuriated the president. But
he was hard pressed and had to go through with the deal.‟
“I have done a good job. I took risks all the way. Transporting the
diamonds, selling them, ordering the arms under false names through other
dealers, shipping them illegally with vagabond shippers knowing that if they did
not reach their destination I would be in deep trouble and now this: I have been
amply remunerated!
“„Indeed, you have been amply remunerated. We are not idiots John. We
know the price of every single item on the list we gave you. We weighed the
diamonds and knew their approximate value. We calculated everything, estimated
your risks and we think it is a fair deal.‟
“You have a much distorted view of what is fair. I am sorry to tell you, I
was warned about doing business with African warlords. They very rarely keep
their word.
“„It is the only way to deal with greedy, thieving Europeans.‟
“Greedy, perhaps. It‟s a matter of opinion. But thieving, no. I do not
accept that.
“„We have had very bad experiences with arms dealers. For every one like
you who concludes a deal, there are ten charlatans who disappear. Oh, we killed
some of them but not all. Take my advice, leave the country immediately.
Tomorrow.‟
“He got up and shook my hand. I left the country the next day. Still, Chris,
despite everything I made a good profit on that deal and part of it I used to buy the
house we are living in. I was lucky, I suppose. Greed does usually end you up a
loser.”

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 “What a story,” Chris said. “Really wild.”
I smiled. I wondered if she really got anything out of it.
“I don‟t think you liked the story very much,” I told her.
“It was okay. Not many wild animals in it. Isn‟t Africa called the Black
Continent?”
“Yes, baby. The Black Continent. I went back to Africa on several
occasions after that but always with misgivings. I made some mone y there but
there was never a deal that was concluded as originally planned. Always the
chiseling and bad faith. The going back on agreements and demands for new
terms in the middle of a job. Central Africa is a jungle. Even the so-called
civilized part of it. A fascinating and horrifying place. It is the place where man
started evolving from the apes. The continent of glorious nature and wild animals
where man is steadily encroaching on their habitat and exterminating. It is a place
of hideous poverty and ignorance, of diseases and ancient tribal hatreds. They
giggle and laugh very easily in that part of the world. It is the merriest of places.
The African has the heartiest and most innocent laugh of any other people I have
known. And the most beautiful white teeth. Laughing is, perhaps, their only
defense from misery and their precarious existence. ”
“But you did go back there, again.”
“Yes. I worked with the countries neighboring the old Belgian Congo on
and off for ten years. Then I caught a dose of malaria in Kampala in the early days
of Idi Amin Dada that nearly killed me and I decided that, that was that. Good bye
Africa.”
The housekeepers came in and then the girls that changed the sheets and
the nurses with the medication and they all fussed over Chris and removed the
serum from her vein. When they left, Chris phoned her mother but her mother
could not come to hospital. She was very happy and relieved that Chris was so
much better. Unfortunately, one of the kittens was very sick and had to be taken to
the vet.
I went home, had a shower, and returned to Chris a couple of hours later
with a few books, the Monopoly set and the Time Magazine with Bin Laden on
the cover. A sweet, serene, kindly face. We spent the day and afternoon playing
Monopoly, talking, and dozing because I, too, needed sleep and kept drinking
cups of Turkish coffee to keep awake. At ten, it was lights out and Chris went
peacefully to sleep. I tried to sleep as well on the armchair. How funny that I
could not. The past, as usual, was hounding me.

I arrived in Athens with two suitcases and a hidden belt strapped to my

body with a few thousand dollars. It was a lovely spring day. The skies were clear,
the atmosphere fresh, and coming in for the landing I peered from my seat
window at the shoreline of beaches and bays and small pleasure-craft harbors, at
the suburbs that seemed so peaceful and the city that was built on a wide, flat
basin surrounded by hills. It was exhilarating and it felt like a new beginning in
my life. There would be many more but I did not know it then. I took a cab to the
city centre and asked the driver to take me to a cheap hotel. On the way there, I
saw the beautiful columns of Olympius Zeus and the wrenching sight of the
Parthenon dominating the rocky outcrop of the Acropolis high above the city.
I checked in at a hotel near Omonia Square, housed in an aged, run-down
building with large rooms but I was too tense to stay in my room and rest. It was
my first visit to Athens. The city seemed pleasant and lively and I felt comfortable

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in it for I definitely felt more Greek than Maltese. Comfortable and lonely and a
little lost. The task confronting me seemed enormous. I had signed a statement of
understanding with Rami outlining the mode of our collaboration. It was hard ly a
binding contract and would depend on the good will of both parties and obviously
on the success of the venture.
I met Rami while in Varanasi with Marjorie Swinburn. His brother who
was an anthropology professor at Mumbai University, was a onetime colleague of
Marjorie‟s in England and through him, she met Rami. Rami was a rich
businessman in the import-export trade and kept a villa in Varanasi where he
would go a few times a year for rest and spiritual contemplation. He happened to
be there at the same time as us and he invited us to his house for dinner. He was a
tall, dark aristocratic- looking man of about sixty or so with white smooth hair,
exquisite manners and a piercing gaze.
His wife Tahira was a beautiful young woman, also dark of complexion
and probably as much as twenty-five years younger than he was. I did not find
Indian women beautiful but the few pretty ones I met seemed to have a special
kind of femininity and eastern allure. Perhaps it was the sari they wore or their
swarthy skin tone coupled with beautiful features or the fact that beauty was rare
in that part of the world. She was not only beautiful this Tahira, she was also
bright and witty and had a way of looking at you provocatively and ironically at
the same time. One did not quite know where one stood in her estimation.
She treated her husband in the same offhand manner, which his serious
demeanor would not seem to tolerate but which he did with a good-humored show
of indulgence. I do not think he liked it but they had reached a modus vivendi
because each had something the other needed. Youth and beauty on one hand,
money and luxury on the other. They did not have children together though he had
a son and daughter from a previous marriage.
They were vastly amused when we told them that we had bathed that same
morning at daybreak in the ghats of the holy Ganga with the teeming populace
and the fires cremating corpses.
“Well, I hope you don‟t contract a dose of cholera or diphtheria,” Tahira
told us laughing. “Though to tell the truth, Rami goes regularly for his ablutions
when we are in Benares and he has, so far, survived. He is a perplexing man, my
husband. He believes in all our Hindu gods but most of all he worships Mammon.
I do not know if the waters of the holy Ganges are beneficial in this particular
quest.”
Rami smiled apologetically. “You must not take Tahira‟s comments too
seriously. She is somewhat outspoken in her views and enjoys disconcerting
people.”
She eyed me strangely all through our drinks and dinner. I am sure she
was wondering how Marjorie and I got together. Wondering whether we had good
sex for she obviously did not doubt that we did. I had an irresistible urge to turn to
her and say just two words. “Yes, terrific.” I am sure she would have understood.
In any case, it was there that Rami broached the subject of a possible
cooperation in an exchange of goods between Greece and India.
“I have been interested for a long time in Greek olive oil but never had the
time to get involved with it,” he said.
“This is the kind of statement that drives me mad,” said Tahira with a
laugh.

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 “Would you be interested to do a little business in that field?” Rami asked
me, ignoring her.
“I know very little about it and I hardly have any capital,” I said.
“Oh, you know what they say. All the capital a shrewd businessman needs
in the import-export trade is a few farts.”
“I think I can manage that,” I said laughing.
“How gross you both are,” exclaimed Tahira unable to restrain a smile.
“For sure I would never make a good businesswoman.”
“And yet, my dear, being a human being you must fart sometimes. ”
“Rami, please!”
“What I‟m trying to tell you, John, is that one does not need all that much
money and anyway we shall start in a small way and see how it goes. ”
“I like the idea,” I said. “I like it very much. Especially as I have nothing
in mind just now. Let me think about it, Rami.”
“Listen, when you finish wandering around India with Marjorie come and
find me in Mumbai. I shall have a plan ready.”
“If you are not too exhausted by then,” added Tahira with a smile.
I went to Mumbai six or seven months later. Marjorie left India two
months earlier and I continued my rootless drifting around the country. It was a
sad parting for both of us because we had a happy, instructive and passionate time
together. The only time our relationship was strained was when I confessed to
having killed the man who raped me on the Andalusia. She was horrified and for a
moment, I thought she would not want to continue our travels together. We
discussed it and she eventually came around to my point of view that it was a case
of self-defence and self-respect.
I first met Marjorie in Mumbai at Juhu beach at the time I was hiding in
Dharavi when I jumped ship. After a few weeks of not venturing out of my
miserable neighborhood, I worked up my courage and started going by bus to
swim at Juhu. She was in one of the luxury hotels just beyond the beach but
preferred to trot to the sea rather than spend her day at the hotel swimming pool.
We started talking and she enthralled me with her culture and scholarship. I asked
her about the Indian temples and she understood that I was interested in the erotic
sculptures.
“Well, yes,” I said. “It is most unconventional, you must admit. There is
nothing like it in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”
“And sex interests you, of course.”
“Doesn‟t it interest you?”
I remember her answer, which was so frank and surprising.
“As I grow older and my sex life diminishes,” she said, “it interests me
more and more.”
“Really, Marjorie? I would have imagined the opposite.”
“In my youth I was so engrossed in my studies and later when I got
married, so preoccupied with my family life, that I feel I missed not so much the
sex but the passion that ought to accompany it. The eroticism depicted on those
temples tells of an existence where the sexual game was central to the
consciousness of the Indians. We do not know if that, in fact, is true though it
seems to be so, at least, for a part of that society that had time, leisure and wealth
to indulge in it. It is a concept quite foreign to the western culture in which we
grew up, where being successful in other fields of endeavor overshadows sex and
makes it almost peripheral to our life.”

144
 When we said goodbye, she said that she was happy to be returning to her
family and university career. This interlude in India with me, which in any case
could not last much longer, had liberated her from the apprehension of not having
tasted the strong sensual experiences that nature bestowed on us and were not
always prescient enough to take advantage of them.
In Mumbai, I spent a whole day at Rami‟s office not so much negotiating
as noting his advice as to how I should get started. In the evening, he invited me
to dinner at one of the fancier hotel restaurants in town. Tahira was with us
dressed in a brightly coloured silk sari with yellow predominating and made up to
kill. She reminded me of Samia though her face was not as exquisite and there
was a bitchiness about her that disconcerted me. At the same time, she had an
attractiveness that sprang from a lively and alert personality. A sparkling look, a
rather too obvious intelligence that kept you uneasy because you were never sure
you could match it. A twinkle in the eye that made you constantly suspect irony
behind the sense of humor and easy laugh. Marjorie had called her catty and that
was a lenient appraisal. When she saw me, she said,
“Hello, John. I‟m happy to see you again. You seem to be in very good
shape. Marjorie must have left.”
“Quite a few months ago. Why? Did I look worn out in Benares?”
“Perhaps it was just imagination. It must have been. Marjorie was hardly
erotic, was she?”
“Well, she wasn‟t exactly another Tahira but she was very cultured. She
taught me a great deal about India.”
“Thank you for the implied compliment. So, it was a meeting of minds,
was it?”
“Not only that.”
She looked at me with feigned interest and waited for me to elaborate but I
did not. I did not want to provide openings for her to taunt me. I kept silent.
“You must tell me about it sometime,” she said after a moment‟s pause.
I smiled. This, sometime, was when?
During the meal, her eyes were on me. Not naturally so. I felt she was
deliberately trying to disconcert me. I tried ignoring her and kept up small talk
with Rami but felt uncomfortable. Whenever I looked at her, she smiled and those
twinkling eyes and teasing look made me blush. I had not blushed in years and
now this peculiar woman made me perspire.
“Are you feeling warm, Johnny? Your face is all red, she told me several
times.”
“Leave the boy alone,” Rami told her.
“Boy? I would take offence at such a designation, if I were you, John.”
There was a bottle of whisky on the table and she kept helping herself. She
drank more than both Rami and me and at one point Rami told her, „That‟s
enough Tahira.‟ She did not participate in the generalities of our conversation but
kept up a barrage of snide, witty remarks. When we rose to leave, she asked Rami
if they could go upstairs to the nightclub for just an hour. She was in the mood for
dancing.
“Just for an hour, Rami, please.”
The nightclub was typical of all international hotels except that most of the
clients were well-to-do locals. Some dressed in tuxedos and some in an elegant
Indian style with the women mostly in saris. A band was playing western music
and a European woman was singing the hits of the day. We sat at a small table,

145
Rami ordered a bottle of champagne and Tahira got up and pulled him to the
dance floor. They danced well both of them. Not close and romantically but
formally and with flourishes.
I had a feeling I would be next. I had a feeling we had come here for this
but she was sly enough to start dancing with her husband. What was on her mind?
Why was she provoking me in this manner? Did Rami not notice all the staring
that was going on at dinner? She was gorgeous, this Tahira and her body was slim
and perfect. She kept her yellow veil over her jet-black hair while dancing. Very
demure and all, though it tended to slide down, sexily, during the fast dances.
They danced for a long while and I started thinking I was wrong in my belief.
They danced the slows, the shakes and the rock-and-rolls and then, suddenly,
when the lights dimmed at the start of yet another slow they were back and she
pulled me by the hand.
“Your turn, little boy,” she said smiling.
I held her in my arms and she stuck to me. My arm went right around her
waist and rested on the uncovered bit of flesh that is the charm of the sari. Her
perfume, her eyes, her slightly large and thin Indian nose unsettled me. If I felt
more comfortable with her, I might have been aroused as her legs, belly and
breasts brushed on me and the tactile sensation of the silk sari felt terribly sensual
but as it was, I had a sense of uneasiness. We danced for a while silently. She
looked at me now and then and smiled. I could not make out whether the smile
was friendly or one of mocking amusement.
“You don‟t dance very well, do you?” she said.
“No.”
“Why are you so tense? Relax. To dance well you must be relaxed and
supple.”
I had the feeling she was disappointed with me. She expected a polished
debonair to twirl her round the dance floor like Rami. I had a hunch that my affair
with Marjorie had aroused her interest and now it was fast frittering away. I did
not like the idea. I did not think anything would come out of it but after attracting
her, it would be sad if she classified me a dunce. I had to do something fast before
indifference set in. Something daring and blast the consequences. Anything is
better than indifference. We were in the thick of the dancing couples. The dance
floor was crowded as it usually is in the slows. I did not think Rami could see us. I
tilted my head and kissed her on the mouth. She opened it and my tongue tangled
with hers for a moment. Then she pulled back.
“Why did you do that for?” she asked.
“To show you there are no hard feelings for making me so uncomfortable
all through dinner.”
She laughed.
“Rami might have seen us.”
“So?”
“He might be annoyed and annul the partnership.”
“I would be losing something I did not have in the first place for the kiss
of a beautiful woman.”
“So it was worth the risk?”
“It always is. Especially since that kiss was so marvellous.”
“Yes?”
She was flirting with me condescendingly.

146
 “Yes. It was furtive and short but it made me very happy because I did not
get a slap on the face. On the contrary.”
“On the contrary?”
“I perceived a response.”
“Don‟t kid yourself young man,” she said laughing.
We were moving with tiny steps, a perfumed, heavenly, apsara in my
arms. The music was dreamy and Tahira bewitching. I pulled her tighter on me.
“Am I still tense?” I asked.
She laughed.
“No, but you still dance badly.”
“If you consider what we are doing dancing. ”
“What else is it?”
“I don‟t know. Whatever it is, it‟s very nice.”
We danced a while longer and Tahira held me as firmly as I held her. Then
the lights were on and a rock and roll started pounding.
“Shall we go back to Rami?” she proposed.
We left very soon after that and I wondered if Rami ever suspected the
goings on. Sometimes older husbands resign themselves to that sort of thing. They
consider it a harmless flirtation of their wives. Giving off a little steam. He told
me he was to leave next day for Delhi where he had a branch office and that
Tahira would join him a few days later. On the street below, I said good night but
Tahira insisted they drive me to my hotel. I tried to dissuade them because my
hotel was miserable in a shabby part of town but Tahira was adamant and I sat
with them in their chauffeured stretch limousine and small-talked with Rami
while the driver tackled the narrow, crowded streets to my hotel. We agreed I
would get in touch with Rami in a few months when I would have settled in
Athens. I shook hands with them, thanked them for a lovely evening and said I
hoped we would meet again in the not too distant future.
The next day at nine just as I was contemplating what my next move
would be, the phone rang next to my bed. I picked it up wondering who it could
possibly be.
“I just took Rami to the airport.”
“What a surprise!”
“But we told you yesterday that he was leaving. ”
“No, I meant your phone call, Tahira.”
I should have guessed that her insistence that they drive me to the hotel
was to find out its name and hence the phone number. She could have asked but
that would have been too obvious. She liked to keep people on their toes.
“Yes? I thought of poor you alone and lonely in town and wondered if I
could brighten up your life a little. If we could meet for a coffee.”
“You‟re terribly sweet. Of course, you will brighten up my life. I would
love to see you. Actually, I was planning to leave Mumbai. I have a map on my
lap and was trying to decide what direction to take. ”
“Oh stick around a few days.”
“How many?”
“Until I go to Delhi.”
“Your request sounds intriguing. Full of veiled promise.”
She laughed.
“I don‟t know what you‟re getting at, young man. ”
“Never mind. It will be lovely to see you again.”

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 “In the afternoon, then? At four?”
“Sure.”
“Have you heard of Shelley?”
“The poet?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. There‟s a hotel called Shelleys overlooking Mumbai Harbor. You
cannot miss it. We‟ll meet at the lobby.”
I spent the morning wandering about Colaba, the retail strip of Colaba
Causeway and its frenetic activity and the monuments of Apollo Bunder. Rubbed
shoulders with the natives, that vast assortment of Indian populace. People of
different races, hues, castes, religions, of wealth and abject poverty. Sat for some
time in the neighboring maidans and when I got hungry, had a bite and a coffee at
a snack stand nearby. As four o‟clock approached I found the hotel, entered the
lobby and sat there for a while gazing at the people. People watching, an
absorbing distraction. It was a nice hotel, oldish, with a hint of the Raj about it. I
sat on a leather armchair facing the door so I would not miss her. I sat there for
two hours and at six, I left and ambled around the city until nine and then took a
red London-type double-decker bus to my hotel. I was not angry with Tahira for
having stood me up. I was both disappointed and in a sense relieved. She
intimidated me somewhat even if I put a bold front with her the previous evening.
In the morning, as I was once again looking at my huge map of India, the
cities south of Mumbai, and estimating distances, the phone rang. Tahira of
course, with breathless apologies.
“It‟s quite all right,” I said. “No harm done.”
“You‟re not angry? Good sport! What are you doing today?”
“I was about to leave Mumbai.”
“What, again?”
“Well, I can‟t wait for you forever.”
She laughed.
“One missed appointment is forever?”
“I realize the treasures of this world are worth waiting for but I didn‟t
think you were interested.”
“Treasures of this world? My, my, are you referring to me?”
“Yes. After the dance I did not get the opportunity to tell you that you are
stunning, that you make my limbs weak.”
“Why, thank you, John. I must say, you, too, are handsome though there is
something prurient in that air of innocence you exude. Am I wrong? ”
It was my turn to laugh. There was a sting even to her compliments.
“That is presumably what interests you,” I said.
“Hints are always intriguing. One feels the need to verify them.”
“So are mysteries.”
“I presume you are referring to me.”
“Yes. And so I think we have established a sound footing for our possible
next meeting. What will it be? A coffee in the afternoon or another desolate wait
at Shelleys?”
She laughed light-heartedly.
“How about a swim? It‟s a lovely day outside. Warm and not likely to
rain.”
“I‟d love to.”

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 “Meet me in an hour on the street in front of the main entrance at
Shelleys.”
She arrived in a red Carrera. Simply dressed in a red and yellow silk shirt
with psychedelic vortexes and tight body-hugging jeans, her hair, jet-black,
thrown back like an unruly mane she was no more the genteel but catty society
woman but an Indian tigress. I entered, said hello, made to kiss her and she
extended her cheek sideways as she gunned her car off immediately.
“You look terrific,” I told her.
“Thank you. You‟re very tactful,” she said. “Just dressed for a day at the
beach and not a spot of makeup. I probably look wild. ”
“Wild and dangerous. “
“Afraid I shall devour you? Relax; we are just going for a swim.”
“Where?”
“Juhu beach.”
“Ha! I met Marjorie there.”
“Oh, don‟t spoil my mood, John. Leave that chunky, unappetizing
Englishwoman alone.”
We drove towards Chowpatty Beach at the foot of Malabar Hill and then
along the coast, past the Nehru Centre and Planetarium, around Mahim Bay into
Bandra, an up-and-coming, prosperous middle-class suburb and again along the
coast to Juhu. Juhu is about 25 kilometers north of the city centre. There are
luxury hotels fronting this long stretch of sandy beach. Rami and Tahira owned a
weekend bungalow on a little hill just off the beach. Tahira explained that the
beach is quiet and pleasant during weekdays but gets unruly on weekends
especially in the evenings. There is a carnival atmosphere with huge crowds
strolling along the shore, playing beach cricket, eating snacks and fruit from a
mobile army of itinerant sellers, entertained by fairground rides, fortunetellers and
yarn spinners.
“That‟s why I‟m happy our bungalow is out of the madding crowd, ” she
said.
“And it‟s ideal for erotic rendezvous,” I ventured casually.
“Young man,” she answered with a smile, “stop insinuating what is none
of your business.”
The bungalow was almost a small villa with a fence around it and a small
garden. Tahira gave me the keys, I unlocked the garden gate and she drove the
small Carrera, which fitted snugly inside the garden. The bungalow had one single
bedroom, a sitting room with a fireplace, which seemed superfluous for Mumbai‟s
climate, a luxurious bathroom and a small, well-appointed kitchen. It was clean,
orderly and the furnishings modern and expensive. She entered the bedroom to
change into her bathing costume and I used the bathroom. I changed quickly into
my bathing shorts and she came out smiling in a short yellow towel-burnous over
her costume. Wonderful, long, brown limbs ending in a pair of yellow beach
sandals.
“So yellow is your favourite colour,” I said.
“Not necessarily. It goes well with my brown skin. Here, take Rami‟s
sandals for the walk to the beach.”
We crossed the street and went down a gentle gradient of sand dunes and
patches of dry kelp. A very calm blue sea shimmered beyond the wide sandy
beach, which stretched for miles to the left and to the right in a broad semi-circle.
It was almost deserted. To the right, for at least two kilometres, a series of luxury

149
hotels dotted the skyline. The hotels had their own swimming pools but also on
small sections of the beach their umbrellas, which were mostly unoccupied.
“Let‟s go there and sit under an umbrella. No one will bother us, ” said
Tahira.
We sat down. Tahira in the shade of the umbrella on an easy chair and I on
the sand in the sun. She did not fancy, she said, getting any darker than she was.
The sun was fierce and I soon moved in the shade right next to her chair. As we
talked casually in a playful vein, we were acquainted, little by little. We broached
many subjects with the insouciance and candor that sometimes comes in the
company of a stranger, an outsider, with whom we would be unlikely to be
involved in the future. I started being a little fresh as well, a little bold. I held her
hand, told her it was beautiful, which it was. Told her it must have made many
people happy and she asked how? I took it and caressed my face.
“That‟s how.” What did she think? She laughed.
“Cut the doubletalk, Junior,” she said.
I lifted her burnous to look at her legs and then told her she had the most
perfect legs and feet I had ever seen. I said human physical perfection excited me
sexually more than vulgarity and she said,
“Either you are a funny fellow or a liar. Most men get aroused by
vulgarity.”
“Not me,” I said. “Now you understand why you have me drooling?”
“Cut it out,” she told me laughing, “you are not original.”
“Of course not,” I said, “the truth is usually banal; it is the convincing lie
that is original.”
With these little witticisms and jokes, a creeping familiarity softened the
social and psychological gap between us. For even if our desires and goals
coincided, she was the rich, superior older woman dealing with not more than a
brash young bum. The cattiness gradually diminished and I felt much more at ease
with her. The tactile contact I initiated was perhaps a little suggestive but not
vulgar and produced a surprising rapport between us. It bridged the gap, to some
extent, of the ten years that separated us. She confessed a few things about herself
just as I told her part of my life.
I learnt that at Mumbai University she met Rami‟s younger brother, the
anthropology professor, Marjorie‟s former colleague, who happened to be her
student advisor. They met often, started going for coffees to discuss her thesis and
they eventually ended up having an affair. Apparently, not an unusual occurrence
at the university, which was the heart of the progressive and liberated part of
Indian society. She met Rami at a party in his brother‟s house and Rami fell head
over heels in love with her and whereas the brother had no intention of marrying
her because he had a young wife and infant children, Rami proposed and, when
she accepted, divorced his wife and married her.
“That was a decade ago,” she said. “He was handsome, distinguished and
very rich. I was from a relatively poor family and the temptation of so much
wealth was very seductive.”
“No regrets?”
“No. I am used to him. I care for him and his well-being. We had a good
ten years together because he has always been understanding and generous with
me. His demeanor may seem a little forbidding but in reality, he is patient and
tolerant. I am not always easy to be with. I have a tart tongue. Unavoidably, now
that he is getting on in age things are changing. I try to compensate because, what

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the hell, I do not believe in regrets. I do not want to have any by the time I grow
old. I go by the motto that what he doesn‟t know won‟t hurt him. ”
I did not comment on that but I was getting a clearer view of where she
stood. Of where I stood as well.
“Shall we swim?” she said.
We left our belongings under the umbrella and walked to the sea. Tahira
was wearing a two-piece bikini and was statuesque. I just looked and looked.
Long legs, slim waist, perfectly proportioned, ample breasts and a sexy walk, not
intentionally so, part of the package. The last few metres we ran and plunged in
the sea, which was calm and pleasantly warm and swam out in the deep. She
swam a perfect crawl obviously taught by a professional. After swimming for a
while, she started fooling about, ducking me in the water and I did the same. In
the shallow waters, I tried to kiss her but she slipped away with little struggles and
laughs. The message was tantalizing. It was vivid enough to get me aroused.
When we came out we lay for a while in the sun to dry and she asked me if
I wanted to have lunch in one of the hotels nearby.
“On the other hand,” she said, “I have brought some sandwiches along and
we can slum it at the chalet. We have champagne in the fridge.”
“Great,” I said. “Slumming with champagne, that‟s quite original. And the
chalet is so much cosier.”
I was purposely taunting her with insinuations and she smiled without
looking at me. I still was not one-hundred percent certain of her intentions. She
seemed perfectly capable telling me, at the last moment, “Okay, young man, have
a shower and get dressed, we‟ve had our swim, we‟re leaving.” But I did not think
so. Not with champagne in the fridge.
We trudged to the bungalow up the hill. The sun was hot and our mouths
were parched from the salty sea. As soon as we went in, she went to the
refrigerator and brought out a bottle. I undid the wiring of the cork and as it
opened with a loud pop and gushed from the opening, I sprayed her with it. She
squealed, grabbed the bottle from me, shook it violently and sprayed it all over
me. I ran to her, held her and licked the champagne fro m her face and neck.
“We can‟t let French champagne go to waste,” I said laughing and with
little screams and giggles, she did the same to me.
We filled our glasses and sipped thirstily, glass after delicious glass, fast
depleting the bottle. It went straight to our head. A pleasant dizziness glazed our
eyes. We were still standing, tittering mirthfully and I approached her, held her in
my arms and kissed her lightly, tenderly. She swayed a little and smiled because
she could not keep her balance. I could barely keep mine. I kissed that smile
repeatedly until she started laughing again. I was annoyed and wanted to throw
her on a bed but I figured this nervous, juvenile eagerness might not be the right
touch with Tahira. She was not only ten years older but probably ten times as
experienced in sex. I had to be her equal, calm and suave. As I held her my brain
was computing probabilities, will she, won‟t she? I felt her slim shapely body
beneath the burnous. My God, I wanted her so much.
“You are so gorgeous, so appetizing,” I told her, “you make me want to
bite you.”
She giggled.
“Sorry,” she said. “It‟s the champagne. I get the giggles when I drink
champagne on an empty stomach. Let‟s have a sandwich.”
She went to the bedroom, got her handbag and brought out a package.

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 “Here,” she said, “undo these while I take off my costume. It‟s still a little
humid.”
She came back wearing the burnous, took her glass and sat on the couch. I
sat next to her and caressed her sea-tangled hair and her arm closest to me. I kept
thinking: she is wearing nothing underneath.
“Eat,” she said and we started on the sandwiches. Salmon and caviar.
“Slumming it! My God, Tahira. Even your sandwiches are sexy.”
Finished the sandwiches; opened another bottle and sat sipping the
delicious wine slowly. It kept buzzing in my mind that she had not a stitch on
under the burnous. Kept looking at that beautiful Indian face and kissed her gently
on her arm. She had lain back on the couch with her eyes closed.
“This champagne sure has a punch,” she said. “I am so bloody sleepy. I
might drop off any minute.”
“Oh stick around,” I told her and she slapped my leg with her free hand,
eyes still closed.
Her legs were stretched and crossed in front of her. Her dressing gown had
opened with the movement of the slap nearly to her waist, her pubic patch
peeking, and those crossed, brown, willowy legs took my breath away.
“I must go for a quick shower,” she said making an effort to get up. “I feel
so sticky.”
I pulled her back by her arm. Opened her burnous and licked her nipple.
“Oh Tahira, you are absolutely piquant. You are salty, sultry and tasty.”
She put her lips to mine. Her champagne-tasting kisses full of fire. Her
tongue, an explorer, a conquistador, a predator. We kissed and I fondled youthful,
brown, heavenly breasts with very dark upright nipples. Somnolence was being
replaced by a slow, comfortable arousal.
“You are heavenly,” I told her. “Why am I so lucky? What does a divine
apsara find in me?”
“Are you fishing for compliments, dear boy?”
“No. I mean it.”
“Then let me give you a lesson on life and deflate your ego a little at the
same time, laddie. You have something very temporary, which I had; still have to
a lesser extent, and which is vanishing all too fast from me but also, before you
know it, will vanish from you as well. Youth. Youth is so elusive you don‟t think
about it until you reach my age when, quite suddenly, to your horror, you actually
perceive it fade away. You try to restrain its flight. You search for it desperately,
try to recapture it. It is an eternal quest, the search for youth. For energy. And
when you lose it you can acquire it indirectly, get a taste of it from others. Youth
is rejuvenating. With the young, one feels young; the oldsters sap your energy,
your desire. I should know! I was born for love, for sensuality. I was born a
devadasi.”
“So you must come here often in search of rejuvenation,” I said with a
smile.
She looked at me with an ironical and challenging look.
“Yes I do. Does it excite you?”
She was mocking me and waited for my reaction. I said nothing because I
figured each finds his own way in life and it is only the mean, the weak, the
corrupt and the hypocrites who are quick and eager to criticize. Morality is so
malleable and so changeable with each age, culture and the needs of human
beings that there is no absolute.

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 “So what do you think of me, my prurient innocent? Am I despicable?”
she asked.
“No Tahira. You hold life by the balls. You know what you want and you
snatch it. You are a winner and what a winner! A winner whose armory is your
beauty, your intelligence and your lust. I really admire you.”
It was the first time and perhaps the only time she ever showed
vulnerability. She looked at me searchingly.
“You‟re not just saying that?”
“Cross my heart.”
She laughed and got up, unsteadily, to refill our glasses. After another cup,
we were almost drunk, useless for any human activity other than the finest joint
venture that human beings can indulge in. She turned on a small recorder that was
on a table. How appropriate that the song began with the words: I‟m in the mood
for love, darling when you‟re near me. A great hit a few years ago.
“Shall we dance?” she said.
We danced for a while, barefoot, closely, dreamily, kissing long
languorous kisses.
“Oh, release the poor prisoner,” she said suddenly laughing.
“What?”
“It will tear a hole in your costume.”
I took off my bathing shorts. She hugged me firmly, laid her head on my
shoulder. She was not completely steady. We danced with tiny shuffling steps to
the dreamy music. Kissed and danced. Danced and kissed. With my support.
“Don‟t go to sleep,” I told her.
“No fear.”
“How‟s my dancing?” I asked.
“Prodding and penetrating,” she said with a laugh, “and above all,
resurrecting.”
She took off her burnous. Oh, what a luscious body that was. What perfect
proportions, what lovely, succulent young breasts, the legs, the back, the waist,
the backside. Despite my squashed erection, we danced for a while slowly,
calmly, to the music and caressed and kissed and then, little by little, her fires
were stoked, her agitation surfaced, her breathing turned audible, her moans soft
and sensual. We sucked and licked and squeezed, entered the bedroom and fell on
the bed to try out all possible combinations of contact and friction and penetration
and acrobatics with genitals and tongues and hands and noses until the explosion
shattered us and we collapsed in sweat and secretions, and odors, panting and
slumber.
We made love many times that afternoon and evening. The insatiable,
inimitable Tahira, this goddess of sensuality and veritable descendant of the
Khajuraho temple devadasis introduced me to all sorts of so-called perverse acts.
The fact is, I never in my life accepted the word perversion as it is commonly
used. For all that has consent, gives pleasure and does no harm brings you closer
to your beloved. Brings tenderness and intimacy, satisfaction and gratitude. Is that
not love? The different postures, the employ of lips, tongue and taste, the
application of dildos and vibrators, the practice of oral and anal sex, the golden
showers of urine, the exciting spanking, the thousand variations on a single theme
that revive desire and chase away boredom? Are they not love?
As a finale, after all she taught me and in gratitude, I needed to give her
something back from her own country no less.

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 She was stretched face downwards on the bed. A lovely dusky back, a
heavenly behind. I sat next her, caressed and bit the twin mounds. Her legs parted
inviting a caress, a hand, a tongue. I touched and felt the warm stickiness, the
emissions of love, the flesh, the opening, the silkiness, the only heaven I could
envisage. She turned her head slightly.
“Turn around, my apsara” I told her, “I want to thank you in the special
manner of the tantrika for I am a disciple of their philosophy.” She turned and
looked at me with questioning smile.
She moaned as I entered her and slowly started my favorite tantric tempo,
andante con frustrato, one, two, three…….four; one, two, three…….four, on and
on, building frustration, building tension, enjoying the agony of a connoisseur, an
aficionado of sexual recreation and youthful regeneration, my Tahira, my fiery
devadasi, her bites and screams and scratches and agonized exhortations,
“You are driving me crazy.”
One, two, three….four. One, two, three….four.
“Let‟s get going, for heaven‟s sake.”
One, two, three….four. On and on. One, two, three….four.
“Will you bloody fuck properly?”
Until I did, until we nearly died, the both of us.
I gave her a bath after that. After we rested. After she was so tender and
kissed me and hugged me. After I told her I had never met anyone like her and
probably never would. After we promised, by hook or by crook, to keep in touch
across the continents and oceans.
We met again the next day and the day after, then she flew to Delhi to join
Rami and I took off for Southern India for a couple of dreary weeks with haunting
daydreams of Tahira.

“John, can I have some water, please?”

“Yes, my darling.”
She draws a few mouthfuls. I put my hand on her brow. Nice and cool.
“Haven‟t you slept at all?” she asks.
“No. I was thinking.”
“Do you want me to keep you company?”
“No, baby. Go back to sleep.”

I rented a tiny flat in Pangrati and bought the barest minimum of furniture.
Ran around the OTE bureaus for a telephone line. I searched for a warehouse and
found one just about suitable in Keramikos, a rickety district near Omonia. It was
for sale, not for rent and I took the plunge as Rami advised me to, since it would
serve as collateral for eventual bank loans. More running around to register it, to
register our company with the Eforia, the Greek IRS. All this in two weeks. Then,
the legwork of market research. To find and talk to wholesalers of olive oil. To
find outlets for the spices I would be receiving from India. I was forming some
idea of the market. Hazy and uncertain at first but clearing up day by day.
Finally, when the initial anxiety eased, I went to the Athens Hilton. Vassi
at the reception desk looking gorgeous. She happened to glance up and noticed me
coming and stared for a moment astounded, doubting what she saw. Then she
smiled, moved out of sight and came out of a side door. We fell into an emotional
embrace. I could not let go of her and she held me tightly. My hopes soared. Well,
at least she was not sore at me. But what the hell, nearly two years had gone by.

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She told her colleagues at the desk she would take a ten- minute break and we
moved to the Byzantine café ten steps away. We sat down at a small table and I
could not take my eyes off her. She was as beautiful as I remembered. My love
rekindled. It had never died but it suddenly flared up again.
“Where have you been, you crazy boy? We thought we would never see
you again.”
“How‟s aunt Ioanna?”
“Quite well, considering.”
“Considering?”
“Well, she is getting on in years and she has developed diabetes. We live
next door, you know. On Sisini street. You can go and see her right away. Only
I‟ll give her a call so she won‟t get a heart attack. ”
“And you, Vassi, are you happy? Have you adapted well in Greece?”
“Yes, I‟m very happy at this job. I am also going steady with a chap from
the hotel. He‟s the general manager‟s secretary. It‟s an important post. He‟s the
eminence grise of the hotel. You surely will meet him sometime.”
My heart sank. It must have shown on my face.
“Life is strange, isn‟t it John? Sometimes when something is within reach
one throws it away.”
I knew what she was referring to.
“It never was within reach, my Vassi, and it still isn‟t. ”
She smiled and kept quiet. It was pointless to say more.
I went directly to aunt Ioanna and to another emotional reunion. She had
aged in those two years. The diabetes was eating her insides was how she put it.
We talked and I told her some of my experiences in India and that I was about to
start a small business and she confirmed that finally Vassi had found a good boy
and they were planning to get married. I had a bite with her for lunch and stayed
until Vassi returned from work at four and then I left. I saw no point in torturing
myself.
Four years went by. My business was building up. Rami was right. Olive
oil was very interesting and so were spices from the east. I was making enough
money to live comfortably. I changed my flat to a bigger one and bought a car. I
fooled around with a few women but never seriously. Vassi married her colleague
a year after I first saw her and they moved to a flat in Glyfada, a suburb on the
coast. I was invited to the wedding, of course, but took a short holiday so as not to
be there. I saw aunt Ioanna occasionally but I unfailingly called her on the phone
once a week. Always on a Monday, so I would not forget.
I went back to Mumbai nearly a year after we set up the partnership, for
consultations with Rami. They were not really necessary but I had this mad desire
to see Tahira. Our mad, wild, passionate love affair resumed and we managed to
spend a week together in Goa while Rami flew to Europe for business. The sex
blinded us and we could not tell if this passion, this stormy exhilaration was love.
All we knew for sure was that our sex was an addiction like heroin, which is
merciless, and once it gets its claws in you there is no way out. Antigone once told
me that love was complicated and that there were so many kinds, so many shades
of love. Ours was beyond the bend. On the way, back I stopped in Cairo to visit
my mother‟s grave in Port Said and to see Samia. We met once again at Lappas
and she arrived with a huge belly. She was literally glowing. Well dressed and
wonderfully made up, I had rarely seen her more beautiful. Hardly ever seen a
more beautiful woman.

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 “My hotel is round the corner, Cinderella,” I told her again.
“My God, you really would take me as I am, you satyr,” she said laughing.
“You bet I would. I have never seen you so alluring.”
After the year she spent in the countryside, at the farm, she decided to
work at the Kasr el Aini university hospital at a nominal pay, treating the poor
rather than open a private clinic, which would have taken too much of her time
and, anyway, she did not need the money. I did not see Amr. She was not happy
with his health. He was putting on weight and he had developed diabetes. It was
Egypt‟s scourge.
“And he still drinks,” she said, “can you imagine? Not much, but he does,
despite my pleas. You must see him the next time you come to Cairo.”
I never did. He died four years later of a heart attack when his son was
four.
I want this recounting to be coherent and orderly but that is very difficult. I
fear, unavoidably, I shall bounce back and forth in time. I cannot remember dates
and years any more. I can no longer tell when one event happened and another
occurred. Not precisely. Sometimes, not even approximately. My memory blurs at
times. I forget to take my pills. I forget what I wanted to put in the short stories I
write by the time I reach half way. I forget words; the right words and I search my
brain for hours. They come to me when I don‟t need them. Sometimes, but not
often, I forget to shave. And it shocks and worries me. Still I must try to be as
precise as I can. To give the whole picture.
I stayed in Athens for a little over seven years. My business, our business,
Rami‟s and mine developed nicely and the volume of our exports and imports
expanded steadily as time went on. I led a busy life, perhaps a little lonely, apart
from the explosive reunions with my Indian devadasi. After the second year, I had
enough money to take furtive trips to Goa every few months to see her for a week
or so, to work out my pent up craving for her. I did not lead a monk‟s life in
Athens but the casual affairs I had did not fulfil me. I did not find a woman to grip
me, to put a stranglehold on me as Tahira did. Vassi could have done it but Vassi
was out of reach. She was to all appearances happily married. Then, suddenly,
unexpectedly, a few years later another woman entered my life. Another woman
across another sea.
Samia telephoned me to announce Amr‟s demise. We had kept in touch all
the while with occasional telephone calls and she had phoned me soon after our
last meeting at Lappas to announce her son‟s birth and her resignation from her
work at the hospital to take care of the baby. After that, a few calls every five or
six months for a greeting and the exchange of news. And then, bang, Amr‟s death.
She seemed lost and bewildered by the enormity of his affairs, his horses and stud
farms and her new responsibilities. I was sorry for her and I promised to go and
see her soon. But soon, turned out not to be very soon. To tell the truth, part of the
delay was intentional. I had no wish to go and find a mourning Samia. I could not
imagine Samia in black. I had known and loved a happy, gay person and I wanted
to see her after she had recovered from the shock.
I arrived in Cairo one evening, many months later, and checked in at the
Nile Hilton. Oh, yes, in grand style. I could afford it by then. A room with a
balcony on the Nile; a superb view at night when Cairo and its river are at their
best. A drink in the fresh breeze and a dreamy nostalgia that lasts until the
following morning when Cairo shows its true and hectic face. Next day I went to
Port Said in the morning to visit my mother. I sat all morning on her grave and

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talked to her. I gave her my news. I did not cry. I loved her and would never
forget my darling Antigone but life had sucked me in her maelstrom and time had
dried up my tears. I was back late afternoon and I called Samia up. She was
overjoyed.
“So you have finally come! When shall I see you?”
“Same time, same place, my Cinderella. Eleven, tomorrow, at Lappas.”
“How boring you have become. Why not in a couple of hours? Enough
time for me to take a bath.”
“Samia, my darling, are you telling me something in code?”
“Yes, Johnny The contract that bound me has expired. One learns that in
life nothing is eternal. That you must snatch the opportunities that pass you by
because you never know when death will strike. My poor Amr was still quite
young and he had so much to look forward to in life. At least he left little Sami to
enjoy the fruits of his endeavors.”
I met her at the lobby. I was wondering what changes five years had
wreaked. She came in with an expectant look and when she saw me, her face
shone. I am sure so did mine when I saw the beautiful woman she had become.
No more the tall thin girl I knew. She had put on weight. The right amount her
long legged body needed to add a rousing voluptuousness to her exquisite
femininity. Yes, she was a woman now, a mother, striking and desirable. We fell
into an endless embrace with looks and smiles, with Johnnies and Cinderellas;
with compliments how well we looked, with the love and tenderness of the days
of Shoubra. We exchanged a few words and moved automatically to the elevators.
She asked, “Where are we going?”
“To the Grill Room.”
She brought her lips to my ear, kissed it lightly and whispered,
“We can eat later, can‟t we?”
I looked at her, embarrassed.
“I was just trying to be a gentleman,” I said smiling lamely.
“You don‟t love me, that‟s the trouble,” she said with a smile and a
searching look into my eyes. Reminding me of other moments from our past.
“You know I adore you.”
“Yes, you adore me but you are not in love with me. Whereas when we
separated I knew I loved you. I married Amr out of pique more than anything else.
He was a good husband and I hope I was a good wife to him but I lived my
married life in love with you, thinking about you, unable to get you out of my
system. I gave birth to my son and I was still in love with you. What a strange
world this is. What a perplexing creature the human being. ”
We did not go to the Grill that night. We made love until two and then she
took a cab home. We had resumed our merry sensuality, our tantric practices, our
jokes, our gay conversations while attached in copulation and added quite a lot to
our repertory from the vast experience I had acquired from my devadasi. I thought
it funny, though I did not mention it, that an unfaithful wife from India was
enriching Samia‟s knowledge in the art of sex through me.
“Oh my darling Johnny,” she kept saying, “I‟m having fun again. Won‟t
you marry me? I‟m rich.”
She had managed to get familiar and cope with Amr‟s business and had
long acquired the love of horses. She kept prattling about them in moments when
our passion was not consuming us. Again, I thought of the shades of love. Samia
was gorgeous and sexually more thrilling than she once was and I definitely loved

157
her more than Tahira, however she did not fire me in that agonizing, licentious,
fashion that Tahira did. It seems true, finally, that an idealized woman is loved
deeply but not lusted after, while an immoral or hedonistic one is lusted after but
rarely deeply loved. Samia was my ideal woman, extraordinarily beautiful,
intelligent, educated, gentle and principled, for twice she had refused my
adulterous offers despite the fact that she was in love with me. But not for a
moment did I think of marrying her. I could not envisage myself leading an idle
life and depending on the wealth of a rich woman. I was not macho. I loved
women too much for that. I just could not do it. I stayed four more days in Cairo.
Four days of marathon lovemaking to dissipate our pent up sexual drives, mine
and hers, and then an emotional but happy parting with promises to meet again
soon.
Although Rami travelled often to Europe, he first came to Greece round
about the fifth year of our collaboration. Before that, he found it unnecessary
because I went so often to Mumbai. He told me he had some contacts to establish
but was tight-lipped about them. Tahira, of course came with him and I took her
sightseeing while Rami was making his contacts. Sightseeing mostly in my flat
needless to say. Five years had not dampened our lascivious passion for one
another. Like Johnnie Walker, it was still going strong. She told me Rami was
becoming exceedingly wealthy and that he had started dabbling in drugs. Heroin,
to be exact. She did not understand this madness, this increasing thirst for money
when he already had so much.
“Did you see him?” she asked. “He is getting decrepit. He hardly makes
love to me. Not that I want it. He gives me the creeps. He can barely get a proper
erection. When he gets the hots he comes to my room, has me strip and lies in bed
looking at, sucking and fingering my cunt. I have to jerk him off because his prick
is never firm enough to enter me. One passion dying out, another flaring up.
Money, money, more and more. That‟s the only thing that interests him, that gives
him an energy that sometimes astounds me. Energy to fly around the world, to
keep him at the office twelve hours a day. No holidays other than going to
Benares to bathe in the Ganges. I suppose he prays there for more money. It is the
affliction of old, rich men. And the older they get, the shrewder they become and
the more greedy.”
As business protocol requires, I gave a grand dinner in their honor in the
Grande Bretagne where they were staying. I invited my major clients and Rami
asked me to invite a certain Mr Stavropoulos whom he engaged in conversation
most of that evening. A strange man, this Stavropoulos. Short, plump, a typically
Greek face with a bushy moustache and hard eyes. A frigid manner, an almost
rude impatience with small talk with my guests and me but a fawning, smiling
comportment with Rami. I also invited Vassi and her husband whom I had met
once or twice before when I visited her at the Hilton prior to going to aunt Ioanna.
Nothing much to say about the dinner except that I sat next to Tahira and she
amused me with a non-stop chain of caustic and jocular remarks about anything
and everything that attracted her attention.
After dinner during brandy, coffee and cigars the business bla-bla went
into full swing and Tahira whispered in my ear,
“How about going upstairs for a quickie. I‟ve had enough.”
We got up together and said we would go out for a breath of fresh air and
left. Up the elevator to Rami‟s suite with mad laughs and kissing. Inside, she
undid the bottom part of her sari, oh, those perfect dusky legs; took off her culotte,

158
lifted and spread her legs offering her heavenly furnace while I lowered my
trousers, and we had a wild, violent, noisy bout on the bedroom table. It was
amusing, electrifying and very enjoyable for both. We went down again being
away no longer than fifteen minutes or so. As soon as we returned, Vassi and
husband thanked me, said good night to my guests and left. Vassi had a barely
concealed expression of vexation on her lovely face. And to tell the truth I was
very happy about it.
A few months later, when I met Vassi again at the Hilton, on my way to
aunt Ioanna, the first thing she asked me was, “Who was that Indian slut at your
dinner?”
“She‟s the wife of the white-haired Indian gentleman.”
“Well, the poor cuckold, if he didn‟t get it, I did.”
“Get what, Vassi?”
“What your breath of fresh air was all about.”
I did not want to discuss it. I just shook my head with an exasperated
expression as if she was imagining things.
She was not amused and gave me a frigid stare.
“Didn‟t anyone tell you, it‟s bad manners to leave your guests at table and
disappear?”
“I suppose it is. I was getting bored,” I said.
“So was I.”
“I‟m sorry, Vassi.”
“Mother is expecting you,” she said without more ado. “And by the way,
I‟m pregnant.”
“Oh, that‟s wonderful. Congratulations. Are you happy?”
“Yes.”
“Good. If you‟re happy, I‟m happy.”

“Wake up, John.”

I jerked out of sleep and felt the perspiration on my shirt and collar.
Daylight was coming in through the curtains. I felt sleepy, tired and stiff. I slept in
snatches for a week or more. For days, even before we brought Chris to hospital.
When she had started running a high fever.
“The girls will be coming to clean the room any moment,” she said.
She seemed well and relaxed. She had propped up her pillows and was
sitting upright on the bed. She looked at me and gave me my reward. A smile.
“How are you my darling? Have you been a long time awake? I am sorry I
went to sleep.”
“Don‟t be silly. I feel fine.”
The parade of the nursing staff started and I went to the refectory for a
coffee. She had taken her medicines by the time I returned and I helped her with
her breakfast urging her to eat the second bit of toast. We waited for the doctors
and when they finally came, they told us we would be able to leave tomorrow and
that today Chris should walk around a bit. I asked them if she could have a bath
and they said of course.
She was unsteady on her legs and she held my arm when we started pacing
outside her room in the corridor. We walked for twenty minutes and she said she
was tired and we returned to our room. She called her mother on the phone and
told her she would be leaving the hospital the next day and her mother was
pleased and told her she would stay to tidy the house and her room for her. We

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talked and played Monopoly and it was lunchtime before we knew it. I did not go
home for a shower and just freshened up as well as I could in the bathroom. After
her meagre, unappetizing lunch, she started reading a book and dozed off and I
slept on the armchair for a couple of hours.
Later in the afternoon, after another twenty minute pacing out in the
corridor I helped her take a bath. She was so beautiful and delicate with her long
legs, her tiny just-budding breasts and nascent pubic hair. So innocently, so
touchingly unselfconscious about her nakedness. I shampooed her hair and dried it
and because we did not have a hair-dryer, I towelled her hair violently which both
annoyed her and made her laugh. She put on clean underclothes and pyjamas and
sat on the bed and I combed her hair. I told her she looked smashing and she
laughed and said she did not know about that but she definitely felt much better.
She settled comfortably on her bed, sitting upright leaning on her pillows and
looked at me expectantly. In a way, I was her jester. I took it upon myself to keep
her amused.
“Do you want to play Monopoly, Chris?”
“No. I‟m fed up with it. I don‟t know if you do it on purpose to let me win
every time or if you‟re stupid.”
“I think I am stupid.”
She laughed.
“I doubt it very much. No. Tell me a story.”
“Oh sweetie pie, I have told you most of the stories I know or remember.
Give me a break.”
“Tell me about your travels in India.”
“Heavens, that could take all night.”
“Come closer. “
I got up from my armchair and went up to her. I knew the routine. She
gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“Thank you,” she said.
“My God, you really are a sly, presumptuous little devil. Do you know
what presumptuous means?”
She laughed again.
“It means I know you will tell me the story.”
“Yes, very roughly. But you see Chris, to talk about India and to
understand what I have to say one must be grown up. ”
“I am eleven and a half for heaven‟s sake.”
“At eleven I still thought babies were brought to happily married couples
by the stork.”
“Boys of eleven, nowadays, steal their parents‟ porno cassettes and watch
them secretly. I have seen one or two myself.”
“My God. “
“So go on.”
“Where shall I start?”
“At the beginning, silly.”
“Okay you‟ve had it. No story. That‟s the last, silly, I‟m taking from you.”
She laughed.
“Oh Johnny, you are the sweetest, nicest silly man I know. Please go on.”
“Last time.”
“Okay.”

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 “When my mother died I could no longer bear to stay in Egypt. I
embarked on a ship going to India as an assistant engineer. Something awful
happened on board and I had to leave the ship as soon as we reached Mumbai,
which is the city that was once known as Bombay.”
“What happened?”
“I‟ll tell you some other time.”
“You always leave the most interesting parts in the air. ”
“Take it or leave it.”
“I‟ll take it.”
“There, I met an Englishwoman called Marjorie and we became friends. ”
“Obviously.”
“Cut out the comments, please.”
“Okay.”
“This Marjorie was a university lecturer and she knew many things about
India and we talked a lot. We decided to travel together for companionship and
visit the mountain where the sources of the Ganges were. ”
“Was she beautiful?”
“No.”
“Oh heck.”
“Why does it bother you?”
“Because when you tell me a story it is as if I am seeing a film and it
would have been nicer to imagine a beautiful woman rather than an ugly one. ”
“She was not ugly. Not in the least. She had a sweet, serious smile, blond
hair and very blue eyes.”
“I wish I had blue eyes.”
“Aren‟t we getting off the point?”
“Sorry.”
“India, Chris, is a vast country with many, many tribes and different
people, with many languages and religions. Buddhism was born there thousands
of years before Christianity but now the main religion is Hinduism and there are
many Moslems as well as Christians, Jews and other minor religions such as
Sikhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism and probably a few others I forget. Hinduism
has an array of Gods and Goddesses and even a God called Ganesh with the head
of an elephant and body of a man.”
“That‟s very silly. We have enough of a problem with one God. Some
people say he exists, some say he does not. I don‟t even know what to believe any
more.”
“The point is Indians are a very spiritual people and take religion
seriously. In addition, the Hindus consider the Ganges to be a holy river. It is a
river that captured the hearts and minds of India and for that reason we decided to
travel to the mountains from where it begins, the Himalayas. It was a fantastic
trip. One feels awed by the silence of the mountain, its invigorating coolness, its
mystery, its permanent snows, its forests, its waterfalls and roaring rivers. It is a
place for meditation and it attracts the holy men of India. Then we went
downriver from town to town, where its life-giving waters nurtured the
civilization on the Gangetic plain to reach eventually the holy city of Varanasi,
which is also called Benares and is the holy city of Hinduism. It was there that I
met Rami and Tahira for the first time.”
“Is it the place where you told me Indians wade in the river with their
clothes on?”

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 “Exactly.”
“And how are the people?”
“They are mostly a dark brown colour and they are not very good-looking.
You will find, generally, that the populations of poor countries are not attractive.
Hardship, hunger, poverty hardly make for a handsome race. There is terrific
poverty in India and terrific overcrowding. It is depressing for us Europeans to see
it though the Indians take it in their stride probably because they have no other
choice. Their path to holiness is also through deprivation and asceticism, of ash-
swathed nakedness, of begging and hunger, of inactivity and meditation. It is so
different from our western culture.”
“How did you travel?”
“On very crowded buses. Usually packed like sardines. ”
“And where did you stay on this trip?”
“In small hotels on the way.”
“In the same room, you and Marjorie?”
“Yes.”
She smiled at me.
“I see,” she said. “And this Marjorie, was she married?”
“Yes. She had a family in England.”
“So you must have slept on separate beds,” she said with a crafty smile.
“Let me get on with the story, for God‟s sake.”
“Always leaving out the interesting bits.”
“From Benares we travelled to Konarak to see the famous Sun Temple. It
is called the Parthenon of India. We were absolutely thrilled. It is truly superb.
Built in the 13th century, it is fashioned as a chariot driven by seven pairs of
caparisoned horses and the architecture and workmanship is absolutely fantastic.
Next, we travelled to Khajuraho where there is a group of equally fine temples
with erotic sculptures.”
“What do you mean erotic?”
“Friezes depicting lovely, sensual women and also the act of love.”
“You mean couples making it?”
“Yes, and this is supposed to celebrate life and the duality of the self. The
earthly and the divine. That this earthly pleasure brings one as close to divinity
and liberation as a human can achieve.”
“I don‟t understand.”
“That‟s why I told you that you are still too young for this.”
“No, I am not too young. I would have liked to see the sculptures as well.
But why were you so interested?”
“The architecture of the temples has an elaborate eastern beauty with
soaring towers and the sculptures on the outside are elegant and sensuous. Apart
from the erotic scenes and the graceful, uninhibited female forms there are long
bands of friezes showing scenes of royal hunts, wars, domestic life, nymphs, gods
and goddesses and mythical animals, all rendered with meticulous detail. The
temples attract art lovers from all over the world. I, personally, was fascinated by
the idea of erotic sculptures on temples of worship. But you see, Chris, they are
not there to titillate one‟s sexual fancies, they are meant to celebrate the
exuberance of life. Sexuality has always played an important part in the religious
life of primitive society.”
“Why?”

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 “I suppose because sex is as important an instinct of the human being as
the struggle, the will to stay alive. In fact, it is nature‟s way of ensuring that all the
different species reproduce. It has tied this reproductive process to a compelling
need for the male and female to join physically and pass the reproductive seed
from one to the other and has given it the incentive of a very intense physical
pleasure derived from this act. Can you imagine what life would be like without
the pleasure of sex?”
“No.”
“You‟ll know well enough in a few years.”
She smiled.
“In ancient India,” I continued, “erotic art was regarded as a sexual
stimulus that generated divine pleasure and led to the union with the Supreme
Being.”
“I told you, I don‟t understand this Supreme Being business.”
“Just listen for a while. The tantric tradition, which was the main Hindu
trend between the 10th and 13th centuries, considered sexuality as the fusion of the
magic of sensuality with spiritual fulfilment. The union of sexuality and religion,
in fact. Erotic art became indispensable in the ritual practiced in Hindu temples.
And because the tantric practices interacted with yoga, you get some very strange
erotic postures in the sculptures. I cannot make it any clearer than that, Chris.
Lovemaking is such a powerful source of pleasure that, as the saying goes, it
makes one feel like a god. It allows you to forget your earthly woes and makes
your spirit soar. It liberates you. Do you understand, at all?”
“A little.”
“According to the tantra, woman is the primordial force in life. She has a
dynamic and dominant role. The tantric rituals are dedicated to this cult of
femaleness and elevate her to a cosmic force. Woman is the source of all aspects
somber and luminous: she is creator and destroyer, sensual and sublime, good and
horrific. The tantric philosophy emphasizes that the training of systematic breath
control, which is a technique of yoga, can arouse the fundamental and supreme
energy. It goes as far as to deem sexual intercourse a conduit to the ultimate
felicity associated with the Divine. There is a sexual energy so intense that can
liberate the psyche. In the tantric beliefs, sexuality is neither moral nor immoral; it
is amoral.”
“Is that why you were constantly falling in love?”
“One does not will it to fall in love. It just happens.”
“Do you believe that woman is the …what did you call it?”
“The primordial force in life?”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely. You must always remember that, Chris.”
“Yes, but what does primordial mean?”
“It means fundamental, ancient, primeval.”
“Okay. What happened then?”
“After Khajuraho, Marjorie took a plane to New Delhi where she had to
meet an old colleague of hers and then flew off to England.”
“Were you both sad?”
“Yes, but there was no other option. She had to go back to her family and
her university career. We had a good, companionable trip together. We were not
in love.”
“Oh, she must have loved you just a little.”

163
 “Perhaps. I loved her a little too.”
“I told you before, you are such a baby.”
“If I were not such a baby, I would not be in love with a young lady called
Chris.”
“Oh come on, I know who you‟re in love with, so get on with the story. ”
“When Marjorie left, I continued my travels visiting this huge country in
suffocating, jam-packed buses and cheap hotels. I visited Delhi, the capital of
India, Agra, Jaipur, Calcutta and then went back to Mumbai, where I met Rami
again.”
“And Tahira,” chimed in my little Chris.
“I stayed there a week and then went to the South for two weeks.
Mangalore, Bangalore, Mysore, Madras. A jumble of heavenly temples, of history
and the strange liberated civilization of the past, of heat, teeming humanity,
poverty and ignorance. India, a huge country of the third world that seems
hopeless and doomed by the fact of its rapidly multiplying millio ns. A country
that frightens, that threatens humanity. Another China. But then do not the
industrialized countries threaten humanity as well by their technological advances
and gobbling up of the earth‟s resources? So we are all, after all, creating and
heading for our doom. The rich with their inordinate consumption of raw
materials, their impossible proliferation of goods, cars, traffic jams, refuse and
pollution, and the poor with their proliferation of babies.”
“Explain, please.”
“Another time, my love.”
“Okay.”
“Then I flew to Cairo, collected the little money I had and went to Athens
to start off the partnership with Rami that lasted some seven years.”
Supper arrived. A little breast of chicken and soup, two pieces of toast and
an apple. I had to be stern because Chris had no appetite but we talked and joked
and she finished her meal. Then she took a book more suited to her mind than
tantric philosophy and erotic art and I went to the refectory for a sandwich and for
a walk outside in the street because my body was stiff and aching. When I
returned an hour later, she was asleep and I sat on my armchair for my vigil. The
next day our perilous ordeal was over and I took Chris home.

Seven years I lived in Athens. Was it a happy life? I suppose not better,
not worse than most people‟s. For, as Anita once said, very few have a talent for
happiness. Very few are satisfied with what they are and what they have. It is
human nature to always strive for something more. Never to be satisfied. I am not
a thinker and generalities are not my strong point but this sense of dissatisfaction,
of thirst for money, of excess energy has hounded me most of my life. Even when
I was reasonably successful in my work and reasonably happy in my sexual and
emotional life, I still felt the need for change, contempt for routine, and a
childishly romantic craving for adventure.
In those years, I started making some money. It never seemed enough
though I lived comfortably, to say the least. The business expanded steadily even
if not spectacularly and I opened an office near my flat and hired a young man and
a secretary for help. I also rebuilt the warehouse to increase storage space. My life
was calm without overriding problems but plenty of hard work. I often felt in a rut
but then, I suppose, most people without a family and children feel that life passes
them by without much meaning or sense. My love life was stunted and sporadic

164
but not inexistent. For even in Athens, despite my two steady loves across the
seas, I had some casual, short- lived affairs.
At least twice a year, by hook or by crook, as Tahira and I promised
ourselves, I managed to take a trip to India where we would meet sometimes in
Mumbai but much more frequently in Goa. I would spend a heavenly week with
my devadasi at a seaside hotel and enjoy the sun, the sea and the hallucinatory sex
that we, but mostly she, devised. In retrospect, I do not think this relationship
could have lasted so long if we had met more often. It would have been too much
to bear. Paradise would have turned to purgatory. Passion to weariness. Love to
bickering and contempt. It would have burnt itself out in a year.
I cannot say the same about my love for Samia. After Amr died and our
love affair resumed, I began travelling to Cairo to see her roughly every couple of
months. It was a different type of relationship. I think her avowals of love were
genuine and my avowals of affection were turning to love. S he kept up the banter
that I did not love her but she believed it less and less. I was getting used to her.
To her intelligence, her gentleness, her increasing beauty as she matured, and her
addiction to our physical relationship, which if it had not the wildness and
perversity of my devadasi, had, nevertheless, a sense of fun that was less stormy,
of passion tempered by humor and yet an equal lack of inhibitions. My Cinderella
asked me many times to marry her and while I shared her conviction that it would
be a happy union, it always remained an arrangement I could not abide.
In Athens, I was in close touch with aunt Ioanna. I could never trivialize
the sincere interest she took in me after Antigone‟s death. It was a debt I felt
obliged to repay. She was getting old, white haired and shrinking and could barely
shuffle here and there with a walking stick. It was a blessing that Vassi‟s work
was so close to her home, which enabled Vassi to visit her every day and do the
daily shopping of food and whatever else she needed. She was exultant when
Vassi‟s baby girl was born and for the first time she confided to me that Vassi‟s
marriage was not altogether happy. She hoped the child would bring a new
stability to it. I was curious but did not want to pry.
I usually passed by the Hilton to see Vassi whenever I visited Aunt Ioanna
and she had never given me the slightest hint about it. After that famous dinner
with Rami and Tahira, Vassi was pointedly remote with me and yet I never failed
to feel my heart tighten at the sight of her. It was as if something very precious I
once owned, that was mine, was now out of my reach. During her pregnancy with
her huge belly, she was blooming. After the birth of the child, she lost weight and
there was something melancholy in her bearing. Post-natal blues they sometimes
call this indisposition. But was it that? I could not tell. Her beauty seemed even
more poignant than before. Again, aunt Ioanna‟s proximity to Vassi‟s work was
very convenient. She came to work with the baby, left it with her mother and
picked it up again going home. I was invited to the christening. I went, bought a
batch of baby clothes and hauled them to church for Vassi. She took them, smiled
and kissed me saying,
“What a peasant you are, Johnny. Civilized people make a present of one
single item not a bagful.”
“I am not civilized,” I told her.
“I know,” she said. “You continuously display your lack of manners. You
are a little mad. Always have been.”
Rami‟s dealings with Stavropoulos began a few months after he visited
Greece. He told me at a meeting in Mumbai that Stavropoulos would distribute for

165
us a good part of the spices he would ship to Greece. He had his own clients and it
would be a welcome expansion of our business. He would not be undercutting my
share of the market but, in fact, would be supplementing it. He would buy from
me the merchandise at my normal prices and would be free to dispose it as well as
he could. I had no reason to object and, soon, crates earmarked for Stavropoulos
started arriving. I hardly ever saw him. He sent his employees to collect the
merchandise and paid me with three-month post-dated cheques, as was the usual
practice. It was a smooth transaction with no problems and no bouncing cheques.
He usually placed his orders directly to Rami‟s office.
Stavropoulos‟s business was expanding and I could not figure out where
he disposed his merchandise. I knew the market well, after half a dozen years in
the business, and at one of my clandestine escapades with Tahira, I mentioned it
to her. She advised me to be very careful with both Rami and Stavropoulos, as
Rami was increasingly involved in drug dealing. She told me he now employed
two armed bodyguards and their home was guarded around the clock by a security
detail.
The merchandise from India usually arrived at four-monthly intervals. As
soon as it arrived, the first crates to go were those of Stavropoulos. For the next
shipment, I had to wait a few months. When it arrived, I went the same day, at
night, alone, and with a crowbar opened one of Stavropoulos‟s crates. Sure
enough, inside, amongst the strong plastic bags of pepper, of cinnamon, of curry,
cumin and oregano were a dozen, small, quarter-kilo pouches of white powder.
Heroin. I was furious. I hammered the crate shut and my mind started spinning.
Stavropoulos and Rami were making their millions and I was the fall guy who
would find himself behind bars if anything went awry. I did not know how to
extricate myself from this fix. If I went to the police, I would land in a mess that
would take years and lawyers and interminable inquiries to clear. If I revealed to
Rami and Stavropoulos that I discovered their game I might be blackmailed or
even killed. I decided to play the fool.
I phoned Stavropoulos, delivered the merchandise and a month later flew
to Mumbai to see Rami. To see my devadasi, too, mixing business with pleasure. I
told Rami I was getting restless and would sell my business and I wanted him to
know in good time. He became very agitated and tried to tempt me to keep it
going with better prices and bigger profits.
“Sorry old chap, my mind‟s made up.”
“Okay,” he said, “Stavropoulos will buy the business.”
“I already have a buyer who‟s offering me a fantastic price. ”
“Stavropoulos will buy the business. We have been collaborating for two
years. You owe it to him and you owe it to me.”
“I told you I have a fantastic offer. What difference will it make to you?
You will be dealing with the new man just as you were with me. Nothing will
change for either of you.”
“We‟ll match the offer, John. I‟ll be in Athens within a month to settle
things.”
“Bring Tahira along. I promised to show her Delphi, where the Delphic
Oracle stood. The ancients considered its emplacement to be the center of the
world. And the Meteora, which are huge rock outcroppings with monasteries on
top. It will only take a day or two.”
“Okay, okay, but not a move until I come.”

166
 In the afternoon, at Shelleys, a fantastic view of the harbor from my room,
witty repartees, champagne, romantic music, a slow, tight shuffle skin-to-skin,
unending kisses and lascivious caresses. I kissed and licked, sucked and spanked
all of my devadasi for being such a naughty wife and such an exhausting partner
and told her I had arranged for her to come to Athens for some more spanking,
sexo- yogic contortions and tantric cadences. She was delighted and asked me to
have a huge dildo ready, as big as Priapus‟s prick. I asked her why mine would
not do and she laughed and giggled and said she normally needed two.
A month later, I sold my business for almost double its worth. Not as
much as I asked for. Dirt cheap for Stavropoulos and Rami but they were
seasoned bargainers. I was happy. I had Tahira to sweeten the deal.
All of a sudden, I was free and quite rich and thirsty for adventure. The
money virus was creeping into my blood and multiplying prolifically. What I
found inexplicable and despicable in the past had become almost an obsession.
The need to become very, very rich. I would never consider delving into drug
trafficking. It was something that revolted me and I started contemplating arms
dealing. Perhaps the ethical dividing line between the two is hazy but it was a
business I could accept. It was the path to quick enrichment. I traveled to Belgium
and England and the US to try and be acquainted and develop contacts with small
arms manufacturers and dealers and settled in Brussels, which seemed to me to be
the centre of this commerce. Belgium had just extricated itself from the Congo
leaving behind a political mess and many new West African states were gaining
independence with accompanying political turmoil, small rebellions and larger
revolutions.
I opened an import-export office and for a year or so made a pest of
myself with the people involved in this part legal, semi- legal and illegal trade. I
travelled to Africa, the Arab states and Lebanon and I eventually started off with
harmless contracts for army uniforms, spares and equipment. A few years later I
managed a few minor arms deals and as my contacts widened so did the
magnitude of my business. These were mostly illegal in nature and my clients
untrustworthy and consequently not all my deals ended well. I made millions and
lost millions. What sustained me was the excitement, the ever-present conviction
of the gambler that the next deal would launch me in the sweet world of multi-
millions. It was not to be, though I must not complain. After nearly a decade in
Africa and an almost fatal illness, I gave up the Dark Continent and concentrated
on the Lebanese civil war working mostly with Palestinians and Moslem
fundamentalists.
Sometime in the middle of those African years, I bought a house, a villa,
in one of the Athens suburbs by the sea. I spent many months in Athens rebuilding
it, adding bathrooms and extensions and wondered if I should not give up this
mad chase of lucre. I had a lovely house, enough money to last me a lifetime and
a creeping weariness. Still I felt too young and too energetic to retire and back to
Africa I went for another few years of flying back and forth from Brussels to the
various African capitals and jungles and centres of subversion. I had a sizeable
fortune, not enormous but more than I ever dreamed I would make. It egged me
on this money and in moments of introspection, I often thought of Rami. It was
like an illness, an addiction, whose only palliative was more of the same.
After Africa, I directed my business ventures to Lebanon. The PLO and
the various fundamentalist groups like the Hezbollah needed arms and they could
not get them legally but only through middlemen like me due to an international

167
embargo on arms sales to the area. My knowledge of Arabic was a big plus in my
dealings there. They seemed to trust me more than the other shady Europeans who
were fishing for business at the same time. I made four or five big deals and a lot
of money. Each contract took many months to conclude from the start of
negotiations to the final delivery of the merchandise and payment. In my last
contract a small procedural mistake in the Belgian customs led to a police
investigation, which uncovered the illegality of the final destination. The arms
shipment was confiscated and I was arrested, tried and sentenced to five years
imprisonment.
There is a Greek saying that states that there is no great misfortune that
does not contain a tiny measure of good in it. I lost the bulk of my fortune, which
was used to finance the purchase of arms, but perhaps I was lucky because, by
then, the Mosad had gotten wind of my dealings with the Palestinians and would
have probably finished me off as it did with a few other arms dealers I knew who
furnished arms in the area.
I remained in prison for a year and eleven months. I was fortunate I was
not in an Arab or an Israeli jail but in the relative luxury of a Belgian jail. There
was very little to do in it though there were workshops of every sort to interest and
distract the prisoners but I asked to work in the jail‟s library. It was a calm place.
Not many of my fellow jailbirds were interested in books. They called me
mockingly Monsieur le Philosophe. I picked up my Proust again and as a pastime,
I started my very own A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, writing short memoirs,
incidents of my chaotic life and short stories. It started as a pastime and became a
passion. It sustained me in reasonable mental health in those near two years I
spent in jail and a feeling of not having totally wasted my time. I was released
early for exemplary conduct but on condition I leave the country.
I returned to Greece, to the home I had providently bought, renovated and
partially furnished a decade earlier. It looked like a palace to me. It was to be the
shelter of my retirement and old age because I had decided to throw in the towel. I
was only in my middle forties by then but could not envisage any more forays in
the jungle of illegality and even less to pursue a legitimate occupation. No, all this
hustle was over. I had enough money not to care and a new interest to nourish me.
Two years in jail had relocated my centre of gravity from my heart to my brain.
My heart seemed to have lost all feeling. Only memories ignited the little warmth
that came out in my memoirs and short stories.
I moved in the house, had it cleaned thoroughly, bought the rest of the
furniture it needed, bought a car, a computer for my writing and lived for a few
weeks without contacting anyone. It was a strange contradiction. I wanted the
peace to think and yet at times I felt a terrible loneliness. I went a few times to a
bar I knew with the appropriate clientele of available women to pick one up and
on to a hotel to work out my two-year sexual starvation. I thought of Anita often
and wondered where she was. Every time I entered a bar, I looked around
expecting to see her. Hoping to see her. By God, if I found her I would marry her
on the spot. I felt even lonelier in Athens than I was in jail. Was it too late to start
a family?
Aunt Ioanna died two years before I went to jail. Luckily, I was at my
office in Brussels at the time and received Vassi‟s call. I left Belgium the same
evening to attend her funeral. Vassi was a wreck and I assumed it was the pain of
her mother‟s death. The little girl was there too, about five years old, crying her
heart out. She was a pretty little girl.

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 After the entombment at the cemetery, Vassi told her husband to take the
girl home because she wanted to go for a coffee with me. He seemed annoyed,
took the girl and walked away without addressing me. We took a cab to a coffee
bar near her house in Glyfada and settled in a corner. Vassi was pale and thin and
her evident depression brought back my affection, my concern, the feeling that
between this woman and me was a bond that could not be erased and that I still
was responsible, whatever the circumstances, for her wellbeing. Her unhappiness
gave off heart-rending vibrations that touched my soul.
“We all have our turn, Vassi. This is life. It seems so meaningless at times.
Did aunt Ioanna suffer?”
“She was very weak this last year. She could hardly walk. But, no, she did
not really suffer. She died peacefully. The thing that saddens me is that she died
alone. Yesterday morning I called her from work and she did not answer the
phone. I went immediately to the house and found her dead on her bed. I called
you right away and arranged for the funeral. The other thing is that she died with
the chagrin that my marriage was not working out. It has been dragging along in
this manner for years. Christina is suffering terribly. She gets terrified when we
have our fights with Nicos, which, unfortunately, have become a daily occurrence.
You can see it in her eyes, in her cowed bearing. I don‟t want to go into details but
Nicos and I are finished. We cannot stand each other. We cannot exchange two
words civilly. I can no longer bear the sight of him. I am keeping mother‟s flat as
it is because I am seriously thinking of moving there with the girl.”
I felt sorry for Vassi but what could I do? I advised her to be patient for
the girl‟s sake. Things might improve. A stupid, conventional piece of advice,
which I did not believe in. We talked and talked and then, she got up suddenly and
left. I sensed her disappointment in me, her disillusionment. As if she hoped I
would solve her dilemma. It brought back memories of our break in Egypt. It was
the second time she needed me and the second time I had nothing to offer. Later, I
took an evening flight back to Brussels and on the plane I could not get her out of
my mind. Did I miss another chance to get back my Vassi? It was not an option,
though. I was in the middle of an arms deal and I could not very well abandon it. I
had a large amount of money on the line. I called Vassi regularly every few weeks
or so at the Hilton after that but she was uncommunicative and cold and I could
not get much out of her. She was still with her husband at the time I went to jail.
Rami died earlier. About two years after I sold my share of the business to
Stavropoulos. Tahira phoned me to give me the news. I had not the time to travel
to Mumbai and, in any case, they took his body to Benares to cremate it on the
banks of the Ganges. That was his wish. I went some six months later, in between
jobs, to see Tahira.
Tahira had sobered up considerably. She must have been, after all, in her
early fifties at the time of Rami‟s death. Still a well-preserved, striking woman.
We still made love together when we met but the frivolity, the madness and
cattiness that were her trademark had almost disappeared. She was, now, a very
rich woman and seemed to have inherited, together with Rami‟s money, his
hunger, his greed for more and more. She had reached an amicable arrangement
with Rami‟s children as to the division of the spoils. They divided the real estate
he owned, giving a slight advantage to his daughter because she did not
participate in the division of the business ventures. As for the latter, the son took
over all the commercial ventures and Tahira, to my vast surprise and shock, the
drug trafficking.

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 “Are you completely mad?” I asked her when she told me how Rami‟s
legacy was apportioned.
“No it was a very sober decision. I am getting old. I need to occupy myself
with something other than my cunt. I figured instead of dealing with hundreds of
items and tiny profit margins I would take on just one item with huge returns. In
any case, Jojo hasn‟t the stomach for it. He was thinking of breaking up the
organization, which perhaps would have been even more dangerous. It is one of
those games where once you‟re in you can rarely get out. Alive, that is. ”
“But it‟s unethical, Tahira.”
“When was I ever ethical in my life?”
“And it is illegal and dangerous.”
“Even that is a plus for me. I have been outfoxing Rami for years, now I
shall be doing it with the police.”
“Good luck, is all I can say my dear.”
“The organization is there, John. The suppliers, the clients, the routes, the
ins and outs, the officials on the take. I shall never touch the stuff. Never even get
a look at it. I shall work with money and the telephone. A sort of commodities
broker. It‟s too good to let it go to waste.”
“But you are so rich. Why do you want more money? What good will it
do?”
“You know what they say, you can never be too thin or too rich.”
So money took the place of sex as Tahira‟s main preoccupation. The sense
of fun was lost in this switch of priorities and despite the fact that our lovemaking
had a tradition to sustain it, it had reached the end of the line.
“If you need any money, just let me know,” she told me with a smile the
day before I left Mumbai. I thought to myself, of the three women I had loved
steadily for years, two offered me money or a life of ease and the one I cared for
most, needed me, needed my help and I was unable, on two occasions, to provide
it. These are the tricks life plays on us. But then, why do we always blame fate for
our own stupidities?
I kept in touch with Tahira for a year or so. We were constantly trying to
fix the date of our next meeting. Either I was in the middle of a transaction or she
was too occupied and asked me to contact her later. The magic, the thrill of our
relationship had evaporated. Was it the attrition of time and our diminished libido
or had money taken precedence to passion? Undoubtedly, half the blame was
mine but she no longer urged me to come to her as desperately as she previously
did. I did not really care all that much to see her either. It was habit and loyalty
more than anything else that kept us in touch.
It all ended with a telephone call from Mumbai. It was Jojo, Rami‟s son.
He told me Tahira had been shot and killed a few days ago as she was coming out
of her house in the morning to go to her office. The who and the why were being
investigated by the police but he doubted anything much would come out of it. In
any case, did it matter? She was gone. Nothing would bring her back.
“In this business death is commonplace,” he said. “It‟s an occupational
hazard.”
I felt sad for the woman who fired so much passion in me. A woman,
finally, I never got to know. Never really and truly found out what made her tick
apart from the sex that seemed to dominate her life. Even about that, I was not
sure. I did not know enough about her. Her everyday life. The rest of her
humanity: her family, her friends, her ambitions, the details of her marriage. I just

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knew a gay, frivolous, intelligent, and educated person who was terrific fun to be
with. I saw her for a few days at a time in between long intervals and I did not
want to get emotionally involved in her affairs, in her life and her men. Yes, her
men. Because she must have had others. I did not want to know their number,
their make, their model, their horsepower. I certainly did not want to know what
attracted her to them, to be compared, to feel jealous, inadequate or even superior.
I had her for this madness, this twice-yearly de- intoxication. It was enough she
was as drunk with lust and passion as I was and wanted me as much as I desired
her. When that started dying out, so did the need to see her, to be with her. Our
sex was too overwhelming to distill and separate love, pure and simple, from it.
And Samia?
She remained my constant, my gentle love, my faithful Penelope until I
went to prison. I was steadfast in my bi- monthly visits to Cairo until then and she
came to Brussels to see me on numerous occasions but she had a son and her
horses on her mind and could never stay longer than a week. We had wonderful
times together in Cairo but especially in Brussels and she always cried when we
separated. “You just don‟t love me,” she would say. “If you did, you would marry
me. My family is putting immense pressure on me to get married. A single woman
in Egypt is considered immoral, a tramp even if she is as virtuous as a nun. One of
these days you will call and I shall tell you I am married. ”
I called her a few months after I was released from prison and settled in
Greece. Our talk was emotional, full of tears and relief and regrets. She had not
heard from me for over two years. She tried calling my phone numbers in
Brussels but no one answered. She presumed I had died in one of those dangerous
missions in Lebanon where war was raging, Beirut in ruins, snipers shooting at
each other from rooftops and firing mortars blindly in the streets. There could be
no other explanation. I would not have left her without a word, a sign, a message.
She was so unbelievably happy, so exultant to hear my voice again. She had never
stopped loving me.
“But,” she laughed and I could see the tears mingling with her mirth, “it
happened, John. You would not believe me but it happened. I am married. You
cannot blame me, can you, my darling? God, I must not call you that any more but
you are. You are. I am married to a nice man. The veterinary doctor that takes
care of my horses. He is a little younger than me.” She laughed. “You are not
angry, are you? We shall always be friends. Sami has grown. He is sixteen. A fine
horseman and I have some fine animals. The best in Egypt. You shall come to see
them, won‟t you? How stupid I am. To see me, my love. Your Cinderella. But,
bear in mind, no more tantra. I honour my social contracts, remember? I want to
see you, John. Promise me you‟ll come soon. We shall spend hours talking.
Promise.”
Meanwhile things had happened in my life. A few weeks after I settled in
Athens, after a good rest, not so much physical as mental, I went to the Hilton.
Vassi at the desk. Beautiful in her early forties. Absolutely gorgeous. Unhappy. I
could tell. A detached, mocking smile on her lips when she saw me.
“So you‟re back! Where were you?”
“In prison.”
She laughed.
“By God, you deserve it.”
“Why, Vassi?”

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 “I don‟t know. I hate you. I don‟t even know why I hate you. Except
you‟re never there when I need you.”
“I know.”
She looked at me, her eyes frigid.
“How are you?” I said.
“Shit.”
“Will you come out for a coffee?”
She disappeared in the office and came out of the side door. I made to kiss
her.
“Cut it out,” she said.
We walked to the Byzantine café and sat down.
“What‟s wrong, Vassi?”
“I left Nicos a few months ago, with Christina. We are next door in
mother‟s flat. How I managed to put up with him until now, I shall never know.
But we are in a mess. Christina is lonely and misses her daddy and her friends
because she has changed schools and I cannot settle down. The house is a chaos
but although we are not at our best, at least I do not have to face him every day. I
see him now and then here at the hotel strutting self- importantly and he turns my
insides. I have not yet found a maid and I have to do everything at home. Only I
don‟t. I am not well. I need psychiatric care. Honestly, I do. I cannot even take
care of Christina. I hardly talk to her and I have been feeding her hamburgers and
sandwiches from the hotel for months. I have been neglecting her inexcusably but
I cannot help it.”
My heart started an intense, rapid ticking. I could feel it in my ears. My
breath shortened, my mouth dried up. Tiny beads of perspiration formed on my
forehead. Vassi noticed.
“Don‟t you feel well?” she asked.
It was my last chance. I grasped her hands, which were forlornly resting
on the table, almost despondently articulating her helplessness and squeezed them
tightly.
“Listen Vassi,” I said, “please listen carefully. I am back in Greece for
good. For good. Do you understand that? I have a lovely little villa in Voula,
spacious, with a garden, with three bedrooms, each with its own bathroom. Come
and live with me.”
She stared at me nonplussed.
“You are crazy,” she said.
“No I‟m not. I have a maid coming in twice a week to do the house and the
ironing and to cook a little something. Christina will go back to her old school and
I shall take care of her. I promise you I shall become her nanny. To start with, it
will be a more normal existence for both of you. For all three of us.”
“You don‟t understand, John. I am not well. I am in a mental depression. I
am moody, surly and bad tempered and at times, I don‟t want anyone near me. I
can go for weeks without uttering a word. My poor Christina can tell you all about
it. I will make your life hell and in the end, you will throw me out. Besides, if you
have the idea that we shall be a couple again, forget it. I have had my fill of men,
and boy, that is it! I need a rest.”
“Oh Vassi, I shall not make the slightest demands on you. We are family.
My home is your home just as your mother was a mother to me for years. You
have permission to vent your bile on me or on men in general as much as you like.
You have my permission not to speak to me ever again. Please come and live with

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me. As brother and sister. Even as enemies. Please, my dear. I beg you. I implore
you. Please come to me. I want to make it up to you for the times you needed me
and I was unable to respond. Please deliver me from this guilt.”
She was silent for a moment looking at me straight in the eye. Then a look
of hostility hardened her face. She pulled her right hand from my grip and slapped
me hard across my face.
“Go to hell,” she yelled infuriated. “Why don‟t you leave me alone, you
son of a bitch. You confuse me. You muddle my thoughts. I don‟t know what to
say. You are as mad as ever. I must be realistic and refuse.”
“Please.”
“No. The answer is no, Johnny. No. Do you understand? No, damn, you.
Oh my God, I really don‟t know what to say. I really don‟t know.”
“Please, Vassi. I beseech you humbly. I beg you.”
“But I have five cats at home,” she screamed. She was almost hysterical.
The people at the Byzantine stopped talking and stared at us. I caught her
hand that slapped me. I squeezed both her hands very hard so that the pain would
restore her frayed nerves.
“Take it easy, I said. It‟s not the end of the world. ”
She looked at me silently then lowered her eyes. I heaved a sigh of relief. I
felt my offer had been accepted.
“And the cats, Vassi.”
“What about them?”
“Bring them along. There is a lovely, big garden for them.”

From the hospital at Marousi, we rolled with Chris on the new highway
towards our suburb by the sea from which the small villa I owned was a two-
minute walk. It had a garden and a fence with shrubbery. It was as close as I could
get to the sea. My love went a long way back. It was all in my stories. Through
fact and fiction, it was there, this love. Now that I had time on my hands, I swam
every day. In summer with Chris, in the autumn usually alone until the weather
turned cold. I walked to the beach with my bathing costume, a T-shirt and slippers
and I swam for hours wading in the deep.
At forty-six, I was still young but I felt my life was over. I started feeling
redundant the moment I decided to retire. It was a decision I took in prison. The
only thing that kept me going during my two- year incarceration was my writing. It
still does, though now I have Chris. Vassi too, undoubtedly. Oh, yes, even with
her whimsicality and her maddening indifference to Chris and me. All she cares
about is her cats. About ten of them roaming about the house and fifty dependents
in the neighborhood. She feeds them, takes them to the vet when they are sick,
neuters them to pacify them and keep their numbers down. She is passionate about
them. I think she is the greatest cat of all. She shares all their traits and their souls.
All nine of them.
The strange thing is, I am still in love with her. Unfortunately. Or perhaps
I should say, fortunately. I am not sure. Isn‟t it funny? Maturity has improved her
looks if not her fickleness. She has gained a little weight and she is more beautiful
than ever. For her, the clock has stopped. She is my paranoid angel circulating in
our midst. The adornment of our home. It is enough for me to be able to look at
her every day. When you have loved a woman as much as I have loved her and
she has exhibited such unpredictable behavior, offering and withholding her love
and her body as her whims dictate, continuously keeping you on your toes, you

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cannot easily get over her. She is, always has been, my greatest love, my ancient
vice.
Chris is quiet. I look at her as I drive. She is asleep. It is difficult to believe
we are going back home. For a moment back there I had lost hope. What would I
have done without her? Oh, better not think about it. Even the thought terrifies
me. So we shall resume our old routine. Chris to her school, studies and friends
and I, back to my writing, dreaming of the past. The past keeps coming back. I
live in it when I write. I dream about it when I sleep. I think about it constantly.
Reality is blurred. I can hardly tell what is true and what imagination. What
happened and what is fantasy. All the short stories I write and wrote confuse me
even more. Living with Vassi is no help. We are both living in dreamlike
isolation. We cross each other like somnambulists. Like ghosts. She rarely goes
out of the house except to go to work. In summer, we sometimes go to an open-air
movie all three of us. I never know if she enjoys the films. She does not talk to
me. Communication at the minimum.
She cannot bear me to touch her. It is her prerogative to come to me for
love whenever the firing synapses of her brain and her serotonin levels demand it.
Sometimes frequently, sometimes so seldom I get desperate. When she does
come, one never can predict her moods. Is that part of her lunacy? Is that what
fascinates me? She is passionate, she is cool, she is kinky. It is her choice. She
acts, I react. Perhaps, if she were normal I would ha ve tired of her, her manias and
eccentricities. Though I think not.
She is still so beautiful, so ripe and so desirable. I look at her when she is
not looking. She does not like me to stare at her. When she first came to stay with
me and I could not take my eyes off her she told me that if I kept it up she would
take Chris and leave. I have learnt to look at her furtively out of the corner of my
eye and pretend indifference. I get my fill when we make love. When we make
love, I have no doubt of her shattering orgasms. She always comes to me in need.
Her iron body-grip of arms and legs imprisoning me in her body and her little
screams leave not the slightest doubt.
We reached the house an hour later. The traffic outside the highway was
bad. In the garden about twenty cats were milling around. At the side of the fence
near the gate were neatly stacked tin boxes of Whiskers, the best cat food
available. I took Chris‟s suitcase up the few steps to the house and opened the
door. A kitty scrambled outside and Vassi rushed passed us to retrieve it. She was
disheveled and untidy. A work of art! She caught it, smiled at us, explained that it
was sick and should not be going out of the house. She then smiled at Chris.
“Welcome home darling,” she said. “You look well. Your color is fine but
you must have lost a little weight.”
Chris hugged her and kissed her. Vassi kissed her back in a bit of a hurry
and went inside to settle the kitten. We followed inside. Two or three cats were
walking about and another few slept comfortably on the armchairs and couch.
They are ruining the furniture. Cat nails have to be sharpened and vertebrae
stretched. Primordial habits of the wild surviving in sloth and luxury. A faint
cattish odor permeated the house. I was forever opening windows and smoking
cigars to drown it though, by now, I hardly noticed it. It was a condition for
having Vassi near me. When we made love, I smelled her body and genitals to see
if she too secreted it. No, she had her own exciting smell.
I took Chris to her room. I tried to make it as comfortable as possible with
her personal TV and a desk on which to study. I put her suitcase on the bed and

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noticed, with surprise, the flowers Vassi had brought in from the garden. Perhaps
she is happy after all. She must be, for heaven‟s sake, it is her daughter. And
things have definitely improved.

The first year was tragic. Vassi had withdrawn in an impregnable cocoon.
She seemed to have forgotten Chris, and I was completely transparent to her. As if
I did not exist. Lest I get any ideas? I wondered if she ever thought of me and
speculated as to why I was invisible to her. Little Chris was nine and it still pains
me to recall how she looked that first day. Thin, beautiful for a girl her age, large
anxious eyes, subdued, lost, unable to utter a single word. She seemed to like her
room with its private bath and TV and she was happy to be going back to her old
school and friends in Glyfada, which was the suburb right next to ours. We did
not talk much. I did not want to be overbearing with my unfamiliar presence. I
just helped her unpack and put her clothes in the cupboard asking her where to put
this and where that and this already started me off on the right foot. I left her alone
in her room for a while and later I laid the table in our large kitchen and we had
lunch together, alone, because Vassi was not hungry.
“Mister, can I have a coke?”
“Please call me John.”
“My name is Christina.”
“I know. May I call you Chris?”
She smiled.
“Some of my friends call me Tina but I also like Chris.”
In a few days, we were almost friends. She came to my room, timidly, the
next day.
“Oh, you have a computer,” she said.
“Yes. You can use it whenever you like.”
“I don‟t know how to.”
“I don‟t really know either. But I shall teach you the basics and you can
write on it.”
“What do you use it for?”
“I write stories.”
“Really?” She was surprised and pleased. “Will you tell me some of
them?”
“As many as you like.”
Relations took a new turn when I told her I, too, had grown up in a home
where my parents did not get along together and there were constant quarrels and
how frightened and miserable I felt in this atmosphere of hatred and tensions. She
was interested and I could tell she was inwardly comparing her case with mine.
“You know, Chris, sometimes people even after they love one another
very much find they cannot get along together and they start quarrelling. It is
rarely one side‟s fault. The two of them are usually to blame and it is better for
them to separate than lead an unhappy life. You are lucky to have both parents
whereas my father left us and went away. You will be able to see your father
often.”
Within a few months, I was a full- fledged nanny to my Chris. I bought
another car because I gave mine to Vassi to go to work with and I took Chris to
school in the mornings. Weather permitting, I would go for my daily swim as
soon as I was back and then to my miraculously cathartic and liberating
daydreams at the computer. She returned home with the school bus so I would not

175
take too much time off from my writing. I also had to prepare a midday meal for
her when Irini, the house cleaner, was not there. I made her sleep a little after
lunch and woke her up for her lessons. I helped her sometimes with her arithmetic
because my knowledge of written Greek was rudimentary and apart from French
was not much help in the other subjects. Sometimes when I raised my voice in
exasperation at something she did not understand she would tell me with
annoyance,
“Listen clever boy, I am sure you were not very clever at my age either.”
After her lessons, a little TV and then her daily bath. It had started on the
second or third day of their arrival when she asked her mother to give her a bath.
“Oh Christina, please leave me alone. Ask John. ”
I was sitting in the hall and was taken aback. She came to me with an
apologetic smile.
“Will you, John? Just my hair, please. I can manage my body but I can
never wash my hair properly.”
So a new expertise was added to the few I already possessed. What‟s
more, I got the hang of drying and combing it as well.
Vassi was in a separate world of her own. She went to work in the
mornings and returned at about five or six. Traffic both ways getting worse and
worse. First chore, feeding the cats, checking on them, going to the garden to
replenish the dishes. The meaowing rising in crescendo. Giving me the creeps.
Inciting me to make funny, exasperated faces and Chris to peals of laughter. Then
she would go to the kitchen for a meal on the go, and to her room where we
installed yet another TV. Before going to sleep, Vassi would finalize the cats‟
sleeping arrangements. It was an everyday routine. She separated the quarrelsome,
isolated the mewing prima donnas, sopranos and contraltos, to the far end of the
house and generally arranged for a peaceful night. On the weekends, we saw a
little more of her but not much more because Chris and I usually found something
to do together out of the house.
I should add that the members of out household that adapted instantly and
marvelously to their new environment were the five cats. They later doubled in
number and it was the only thing on which I put my foot down with Vassi. Not a
one more.
Nicos showed his face now and then to take Chris away for the day. The
divorce came out sometime during their first year at my place but Nicos usually
missed three of Chris‟s visiting days for every four he was allotted. It broke my
heart to see Chris jump in his arms so eagerly and I must confess to a little
jealousy. He had a new girlfriend or a new wife or something. I was not sure and
was not interested. Vassi never showed up to say hello. He was cool and polite
with me. That Saturday, it was his day again. He phoned he was coming. I went to
the kitchen to prepare breakfast for Chris. Stepped on a cat which let o ut a shriek
and I almost fell. Vassi to the rescue, emerged from her room in a transparent
nightgown, disheveled and beautiful. She was naked underneath.
“Good morning, Vassi.”
“Do be careful for heaven‟s sake.”
She picked up the cat tenderly and examined her.
“Sorry.”
“Did Christina leave?”
“Not yet.”

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 After Chris left, I sat and smoked a cigar in the lounge in the company of
half a dozen cats. Two of them snuggled next to me and went to sleep sharing my
lap and body heat. I tolerated them indifferently. They had become too much of a
good thing. The cigar both relaxed me and stimulated me. A contradiction in
terms? Not quite. It kept me awake. I got up to go to my room to read a little. I
heard giggles from Vassi‟s room. She did not put in an appearance when Nicos
came. I opened the door. She was on her bed in her nightdress. She was propped
up on two pillows, her legs apart and a half- grown kitten between them. She was
not wearing underwear. She smiled at me.
“She‟s gone,” I told her.
“I know,” she answered and giggled again. “He keeps smelling me there,”
she said.
“Perhaps he thinks you‟re a cat.”
She laughed.
“Have you had breakfast?” I asked.
“No.”
“Shall I bring you a coffee or something?”
“No.”
“A little milk for the kitty to get his mind off sex?”
She laughed.
I lingered looking at her. She did not seem disconcerted.
“So you don‟t want anything?” I said.
“No.”
“I was hoping you would.”
She smiled.
“See you later, then.”
I closed the door. I was aroused and could not do a thing about it. Strict
protocol dictated my behavior in our household as far as Vassi was concerned. I
had to be calm and casual. I could neither ask nor demand. I could only wait. But
what was this all about? The mysterious workings of her mind and eccentricities
were never easy for me to puzzle out. I tried to read but could not concentrate. I
kept seeing Vassi, legs wide apart and the kitten between them. I drank from a
bottle of whisky I kept next to my bed for my occasional insomnias and slid into a
troubled Saturday morning doze.
That evening, when Chris returned I decided to take her to a restaurant. I
had not prepared nor eaten any food all day and was hungry. She went to kiss her
mother and told her we were going out. I had not asked Vassi to join us. I did not
expect her to come even had I asked. The cats, ordinarily, had precedence. But my
unpredictable angel got dressed in a moment when we were almost ready to leave,
separated the cats in different rooms by unfathomable criteria and we all left
together. She dresses like a hippy with long, colorful skirts and a throng of long
necklaces, stylishly unkempt hair with perhaps a flower stuck in it. She always
looks gorgeous.
We drove by car to a restaurant at the shopping center of our suburb. The
main street wide, with wide pavements on each side and a pavement in the middle
with trees and tables of the various restaurants. The harassed waiters in perpetual
motion criss-crossing the street with trays, ferrying the food from the shop and
attending their impatient customers whose orders were constantly readjusted with
additional dishes and drinks. It was already past ten and the crowds were thinning
out but the restaurants and fast food joints were packed and noisy. Eating out is a

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national pastime. Food, wine and interminable chatter, a national delectation. As
we entered the shop a thousand eyes appraised us, appraised Vassi. Curiosity
killed the cat. It never touched a Greek.
We ordered food, wine and appetizers. I asked Chris if she had a good
time with her father.
“Okay,” she said. “So-so. I don‟t like to see him with another woman.”
“Well, you‟ll have to get used to it,” said Vassi. “After all, I‟m with
another man.”
“Who?” asked Chris bewildered.
“John, of course.”
“Then why don‟t you talk to him?”
“You wouldn‟t understand.”
“Try me. I am not a baby anymore. I understand many things about life.
But your strange behavior puzzles me. I understood some of your differences with
daddy but this isolation from us, especially from John, I cannot understand. We
are in his home and he is so good to us.”
I was surprised at my baby. All of a sudden so mature.
“I shall talk to you like a grown up person.”
“Yes, mummy, please do.”
“John was my first love, Christina. My first partner in lovemaking. I
provided the drive and curiosity. He, the trust and caution. We learnt to love our
bodies together and taste their pleasures. I think we were very lucky to have fallen
in love so early and to have satisfied our natural compulsions with so much purity.
Even when we were not together, in later life, there was always a feeling that we
ultimately belonged to each other. Not exclusively. Not even because we were
family. A kind of vague but enduring link. However, I do bear him a grudge. I
have borne it for over twenty years and it is still lingering. I still hate him
sometimes. He rejected me at a time I needed him, at a time I longed for him so
badly. Perhaps I am unconsciously punishing him for it with this silence, which is
a necessity for me, not a policy. I don‟t know. Since we moved in with him, we
have come to tolerate each other‟s needs and peculiarities, even if they may not be
to each other‟s liking. But there is also another reason. After my disastrous
marriage and the endless squabbling and quarrels with your father, I need this
detachment, this sense of self- sufficiency, which, in the last analysis, may be false
because I can no longer envisage life away from John. I am very peaceful and
happy now. I just do not feel the need to talk. Is there something wrong with that?
Probably. But I cannot bear interminable conversations for the time being.”
All of a sudden, she was talking my Vassi. An explanation of sorts for our
mute coexistence. She was talkative and pleasant throughout dinner. Something
was changing. Her eyes were alive and shining. There seemed to be something
new in her life other than the cats. She smiled, laughed, and talked that evening
more than she did in the past year. Had Chris‟s words touched a chord in her
heart? Chris was radiant. I wondered what was happening.
When I went to bed that night, the door opened and Vassi came in. She
was barefoot and naked. Her special smile of estrus hovering on her lips. I knew
and loved that smile of her need. It came all too rarely. I lived for it. Prayed for it.
Was often desperate for it. It had been our only communication in the past two
years. The only affirmation of our love in our world of cats and silence. Without
that smile, without Vassi, I envisaged no happiness in life. This love survived the
turbulence of many years and many women. Bless her dumbo husband who gave

178
her back to me. He deprived me of her voice but I might yet wrest it back. I now
have her beauty, her body, her need that quenches mine.
She came to my bed and stood looking at me. An apparition from the
profundity of my most extravagant dreams, of my most lustful sexual yearnings.
From a craving that would not wither. The woman that had ripened and
blossomed from a winsome teenage lover. My heart started pounding as I looked
at an angel‟s face with a wanton smile, at her full breasts and pubic hair. I reached
and ran my fingers in its curls in silent consent to her desire. I answered her smile
with a smile, without a word. My love, my awe, my craving and excitement, in
words, might put her off.
We looked at each other silently. Did we need words after all? I could look
for an eternity at that exquisite face, at the full, slightly sagging breasts with the
large brown nipples of a mature woman. The thin waist, the wide hips, the barely
protruding belly with a beauty all its own, the heavenly legs. I noticed the pubic
hair that was trimmed to bring out the genitals from the forest. A woman who
valued the appearance of her cunt, who wanted it unencumbered and visible for
her lover, for her lover‟s mouth. For me? Oh, my darling Vassi, let me be your
pubic coiffeur. I shall open your legs and shear and shave your secret chevelure
carefully, lovingly, strand by strand, curl by curl until your mesmerizing cunt
looks at me squarely in the eye, puffed and moist and ajar. And then I will
perfume this opening to your body and soul and massage it with ethereal oils until
they are replaced by your own fragrant, primordial secretions and moans. Until
you can stand it no longer and scream to me, fuck me, fuck me my lover, fuck me
my darling, I cannot stand it any more.
She bent and pulled my pajama trousers off; sat on the bed. Light, delicate
fingers held my penis, her shining eyes on mine. It had spectacularly awakened
and was stretching like a cat, almost purring under her expert coaxing. When it
was fully grown, she left it, stood up and straddled me carefully. She offered a
delectable backside and a pussy to my lips. That other mouth I loved to kiss and
lick and smell and sink my tongue inside. Her mouth was wet and warm as it
enveloped my erection. Her tongue engaged it in tricky maneuvers and then ceded
it to her lips and bobbing head. Her saliva, profuse, trickled down betraying her
excitement, her hunger and gluttony, as she swallowed it, whole, down her throat
biting it at the base. I did not know where to concentrate. On the sensations on my
cock or the mind-turning sight of her moist cunt? I opened it, stroked it, slipped
my finger inside and with the moistened finger massaged her asshole. I kissed her
cunt many times. I loved that female, fragrant rose, so hidden and intimate, and
used my tongue to slake my thirst for it, to circle and electrify her center of
sensation, her minute female penis, to penetrate her vagina in an inadequate but
stirring coital simulation, to lick her round, wrinkly anus and pierce it with a
tongue stiff and pointed. She stopped for a moment her oral exertions to enjoy
mine and moved her backside back and forth on my extended tongue. We had a
store of knowledge of each other‟s needs. We anticipated and reacted and were
awarded gasps and fitful cries.
Now, needing more than a tongue, she turned the right way round. Astride
on my body again, a droopy-eyed Amazon galloping on her penis. Now slow.
Now fast. Moaning and smiling. On a trot, up and down, on a fast walk, forwards
and backwards. Quenching her thirst on my saliva with wild, succulent kisses.
Searching my mouth for my desperate responses. Sucking my tongue to appease
her hunger. Offering her breasts as reward, her nipples for dessert. Then picking

179
up speed and galloping frantically up mountains and down valleys, faster and
faster, as she glimpsed the Promised Land, came nearer and nearer, entered the
gates and collapsed, with her steed, in a double orgasm of choking agony and
blissful release.
Orgasm achieved, she was motionless for a long while resting her head on
my chest and shoulder, my penis inside her. Then, as usual, got up and left as
silently as she came. I looked at her. My sperm and her discharge glistened as
they slithered down her legs. Her enduring radiance and allure kept my desire
alive. Made me feel young again.
The closed door left me to my reveries.

Chris was visibly tired when we arrived home. The drive from the hospital
was not long but the weather was warm and my baby was still very weak. It was
already nearly lunchtime. I helped her undress and put on a clean pair of pyjamas.
I took her soiled hospital clothing to the laundry basket in the bathroom and
opened the TV for her. She propped herself up on two pillows and watched. I sat
on the armchair next to her bed looking at her and nearly went to sleep. I felt very
tired. Suddenly, a shock for both of us. Vassi came in with a plate of chicken
broth and rice and finely cut pieces of chicken. She sat next to Chris and patiently
and insistently fed her like a child. Then we pulled the curtains so she could take a
nap. When we were out of the room, Vassi smiled at me.
“Thank you, John,” she said. “You are a much better mother than I am.”
In the early evening, I made Chris walk round and round the house for half
an hour. She grumbled a little but held on to my arm and kept walking. I gave her
a bath after that and dried her hair with the dryer. As usual, I told her she looked
very beautiful and as usual, she told me, “Don‟t be silly.” I brought her Vassi‟s
soup for dinner, toast and an apple and she said, “No, not that soup again. It‟s
deadly!” She was cantankerous my little baby but not very. I helped her to the
bathroom to brush her teeth and then she went back to bed and propped herself up
on the two pillows. I knew what was coming.
“Tell me a story, John.”
“Oh baby, you have no idea how tired I am. Why don‟t you watch some
television?”
A disarming smile.
“Please.”
“All right, but if I go to sleep half- way, please don‟t wake me up.”
She smiled again.
“Okay.”
I started on my dreams, my life, my mother, Port Said, Malta, Cairo,
Mumbai, Athens, Brussels, Africa, Lebanon, women, wars, hatreds, famine,
fanaticism, starving children with bloated bellies, ravages, terrorism. From one to
the other, to the next, haphazardly, perhaps incoherently but I felt my weariness
evaporate. I talked and talked. Chris did not utter a peep, her eyes round, fixed on
me. Suddenly I realized I must have been talking for hours. I looked at my watch.
It was past midnight.
“Hey, you must go to sleep, Chris.”
“That was fascinating, John,” she said. “Will you tell me the rest
tomorrow?”
“Yes, my darling. Good night.”
“Good night, my sweet.”

180
 My God, I thought. Why isn‟t she my daughter?
I shuffled to my bedroom. I felt utterly exhausted. The bedside lamp was
on. Vassi was asleep in my bed. I undressed and eased myself beside her. She
opened sleepy eyes and smiled. She was naked and we enlaced and went to sleep.
It was almost as good as making love. Sometime in the early hours, Chris called. I
put on my pajamas and went to her room. She needed to go to the toilet. I helped
her and put her to bed again. When I returned, Vassi kissed me and reac hed for
my penis. I put my hand between her legs. She was sopping wet. I caressed her
and kissed her and told her I loved her madly, passionately, more than my life.
Somewhere, in the softness of her breasts, in the tenderness of her embrace, in
that unholy hour, I lost my caution and damned the consequences.
She looked at me and said, “So do I, John. Always, forever. Didn‟t you
know?”
Sometimes, one need not understand the changes in one‟s life to feel an
immense happiness and gratitude. It seemed to me, I finally had a family.

181
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