Cinnamon (15 page)

‘How could you have let yourself stay in my bed until morning?'

Aliyah gazed perplexed at her crazed mistress and scrambled off the bed. As she pulled on her clothes, she felt her eyes welling up, as if about to erupt. Retreating from the room to her own, she locked the door behind her, threw herself onto the bed and started to sob loudly, that animal viciousness stirring inside her.

From that moment on, Aliyah would make the mistress pay a heavy price for humiliating her, she decided, but with a method that wouldn't force her to leave the house forever and become a beggar getting fucked by other beggars.

Aliyah started to mess with Anwar, brushing past him on purpose, bending over him to pick something up from by his side or to open the curtains. She would spend a few minutes cleaning his bathroom, then come out half-naked, humming loudly. Anwar would open his eyes and remain frozen as he watched her move about his bedroom. When Aliyah could sense his eyes on her, she would start to make strange noises like a cat's miaul – sounds she had learnt in her mistress's arms. At other times, she would intentionally trip over his feet, then sigh and apologise, and tenderly smooth his clothes. She would gyrate her behind with delight as his chin rocked with pleasure and he stared at her in silent alarm. Yet he did not remain like this for long, since the maid was capable of reviving the faded voice of his masculinity.

Aliyah's efforts bore fruit in returning to Anwar a part of his strength. She continued her games, not merely as an act of revenge against Hanan, but because the idea of mounting both master and mistress, of toying with them both, pleased her. In one day she would make the mistress sit before her on all fours, then later play with the master in the same way. Aliyah simply continued her games, which never went beyond the bed – the only place where she had ever felt that she was queen.

When she got out of bed in the morning, Aliyah would stand before her mirror, staring at her own face. She would take hold of the end of her chin and raise it upwards and, with a smile, place one hand on her shoulder, as though wearing a sash and holding herself erect.

‘Lady Aliyah!' she repeated aloud.

Aliyah turned towards the door. ‘The day's begun,' she said. At night she would continue to rule in both beds, on both floors of the villa, with only a trivial difference. When she was with Anwar, it was he who stayed silent whilst she chattered on, particularly once she had begun to sense her own power. With Hanan, things were a little different; Aliyah had taken to silence, knowing how much it tortured her. She no longer displayed any sign in her movements; neither of indifference nor love. Their relationship was closer to a battle, a vengeful coup that was Aliyah's response to the betrayal Hanan had announced on one occasion far from her bed. But then, unlike now, Hanan hadn't thrown her out on the street.

After Hanan had turfed her from her bed, Aliyah stopped responding to her night-time calls. Eventually Hanan gave up hope and took to sleeping the whole day. One evening, the room bell rang. Aliyah jumped at the sound, gripped by a surprising chill. She bounded out of bed, opened the door and tiptoed out. Normally, she would open Hanan's door without knocking, but this time she lingered until she heard Hanan's voice croak from inside the room.

‘Open the door.'

Aliyah entered and stepped towards the bed. The mistress was lying on her back and Aliyah could see nothing but her gaze, burning bright like a cat's eyes on a dark night. Sensing a ghostly figure brush against her skin, she stood shaking.

‘Scared?' Hanan cackled.

As Hanan reached out her hand, Aliyah surrendered, the mistress gently pulling her closer. Aliyah wanted to strike her, to attack her with her knife and then leave the villa forever. Yet instead, she yielded.

There was one particular moment which Aliyah remembered, and which she would continue to recall for a long time to come. As she was recollecting the long conversations on those cold winter evenings about women humiliated by men, how Suzuki had once humiliated her and how Aboud had brought shame on her sister, Aliyah had felt as though her body were unfurling into strange protrusions. And in that instant she recognised all of those things that had happened for what they were. She had no desire to do the same herself, yet this was the only way for her to make her own way, to create her own games. Aliyah kissed her mistress ferociously and, just her father had forced himself on her mother, she now did the same. She threw Hanan down and mounted her, an act that gave her a feeling of power. Hanan cried out, staring fixedly at her maid but Aliyah didn't let up. From the verge of rage, Hanan's anger turned into sighs and moans, punctuating Aliyah's movements as she kissed her mistress's body and bit her flesh. Under the control of her lust and the pain she felt, Aliyah was unaware of what she had done. She was waiting for her mistress to stop shaking and screaming, so she could do it again.

Hanan was teetering on the point of sweet exhaustion. The servant girl had changed for good, she knew it. Too late to win her back. Although she assented to the maid's violence, Hanan still cried out to her each night, hoping to catch a glimpse of tenderness in the girl's vicious eyes. But as her mistress was becoming all the more affectionate and submissive, Aliyah's maliciousness was strengthening.

The night before, Aliyah had abandoned Hanan in deep sleep. She took a long cigarette from the supply that Hanan kept as a treat for her, lit it and went back to her room, exhaling the smoke as she stood in front of the window. Aliyah drew back the net curtains. The place was in darkness and, except for the soft glow of the garden lights, it seemed there was no world beyond the walls of the house. She drew slowly on the cigarette, like she'd seen women in films do, absorbed in their illicit pleasure.

‘These pleasures are yours – you deserve them,' she told herself. ‘The filthy alleys of al-Raml are far behind you now.'

With one hand on her hip, Aliyah span around like a ballet dancer, drawing the cigarette close to her eyes.

‘You're the woman in charge around here,' she whispered.

Aliyah had started to gnaw at the heavy cigarette. She moved towards the window and drew back the curtains, bending forward a little to lean out of the window. Aliyah took a long breath, then stood up and tip-toed back across the room.

‘Lady Aliyah, the day will never break again; everything you see is under your command.'

Aliyah headed down towards the master's bedroom, where Anwar was snoring loudly, oblivious to the creak of the door as she entered, closing the door behind her. In silence, she slid in beside him and stripped off her clothes. Anwar stirred peacefully and turned towards her. Realising that the vision before him was true, Anwar sat up, his gaze devouring her body. With a shudder, he backed away. Aliyah drew herself closer in silence, clinging to his body and twisting her own as she lay in his arms. A few stammered words fell from Anwar's lips as beads of sweat slid over his forehead, gathering at the base of his back. Aliyah did not know what she had said, that had almost caused him to fall on the floor as he fled to the farthest part of the bed and she followed.

 

‘You deserve everything you get,' Aliyah chastised herself, holding back a tear which glistened in the corner of her eye. She recalled how Anwar had been so frightened of her that he fell out of the bed. Aliyah wiped away the tear and continued onwards, stumbling from the weight of her bag.

Another ring. The house phone this time.

It had to be Nazek. She must have given up on her answering her mobile. Hanan reached out her hand for the receiver and thought about asking her to come over, or perhaps just crying into the phone. She hesitated. She could ask Nazek to help her to look for Aliyah. Nazek could do anything.

The phone stopped ringing. From behind the curtains, the sun had launched its attack on the room. The streak of light that had turned her life to a nightmare had vanished beneath the rays of sunlight dancing in the air. Hanan decided not to pick up.

She went out onto the balcony, breathing in a little fresh air and watching the flocks of birds. Hanan's heart jolted beneath her ribs. She remembered the illuminated patch of ground at the base of Mount Qasyoun, where the cooing pigeons gathered. The gardener had started to cut the grass in the villa garden and the noise startled the birds, who scattered in every direction, leaving just a single flock to hover over the place. Hanan breathed softly as she remembered the days when she would watch the pigeons from her partially open window. Perhaps she should concentrate on the flock of birds, on anything that might take her mind off Aliyah.

 

In those days, Damascus winters were white, not cloaked in black. The rain would run from the foot of Qasyoun, passing beside the stone staircase and beneath Hanan's window. Hanan loved to hear the roar of the water, especially as she went to sleep. She would listen to it beating against the side of the house, great droplets hitting the glass of the window. As she wrapped herself up in her covers, she felt happy and refreshed, as if sleeping on a cloud.

Hanan was fifteen years old and still learning how to be a woman from the girls at school, from her trips to the public baths and the women's coffee mornings in Damascus. Hanan's mother had never taught her the art of femininity; she simply gave orders and expected to be obeyed. She went to the most well-respected seamstresses to commission the most beautiful dresses for her only daughter, whom she would force to accompany her on her visits to other families. She would never forget to tell the women what great lengths she'd gone to for her daughter's dress to look just so; she had had the dress made to order so that it would be unique. Then she had taken it to a special embroiderer, and afterwards gone round all of the seamstresses one by one, until she was convinced that she had found the right design – exactly what she had in mind. Even though she had her own seamstress, she had wanted to have something particularly special made for her daughter, she told the women, who were growing weary as they listened jealously. As she spoke, she would order Hanan to stand and parade around in front of them, to demonstrate the beauty of the new style on her. Hanan was always quick to obey her mother, with a dignity beyond her years. Her obedience was another source of jealousy to the other mothers, who wished their daughters were as well-behaved as Hanan al-Hashimi.

Hanan was her family's pride and joy, attracting the enchanted gazes of others. As she grew older, she learnt to use their eyes as a mirror. Eyes ready to be dazzled by her presence. Yet those Damascus mornings when she opened her window and the rain had stopped falling were among the few instances when Hanan felt out-of-place. She focused on a spot of sky stealing through the gaps between the leaves of the Quina trees lining the pavement. The sight of the white pigeons hopping from one roof to another took her heart even further away. There was nothing more beautiful than the sight of a cooing pigeon in the Damascus sky, rising up to Qasyoun, and then soaring back down to the neighbouring houses.

One day as Hanan was sitting in her room watching the white pigeons, her mother opened the door. She stood in the doorway, rubbing her fingers with uncharacteristic worry. As she entered the room, Hanan closed the window and the birds vanished.

‘How are your studies?' her mother asked.

‘Fine,' Hanan replied succinctly, her hoarse voice trembling.

Hanan's mother spent no time skirting around what she had come to tell her daughter; she was to marry her cousin. Hanan was speechless. How could she possibly marry Anwar? The man she'd grown up with as his little sister. As her mother sat down beside her on the bed, Hanan backed away and went to open the window. A cold breeze blew into the room and gave her mother a chill. Hanan stood motionless in front of the window, her hair dancing in the wind. She thought about how Anwar had divorced his first wife only a month ago and how the news had worried the family, who so badly wanted a child to ensure the family's future. The matter had made the family quite restless, since Anwar refused to marry again. Hanan had heard the fights between Anwar and her uncle, but was excluded from knowing the family business. Even if she had an interest in what was being said, nobody would listen to her.

Hanan was certain there must have been some mistake, but she wasn't in the habit of discussing matters, nor was she used to opposing her mother's will. She hadn't expected – and certainly couldn't imagine – that Anwar, her big brother, could become her husband. Hanan fell silent, leaving her mother's decision unchallenged. Her mother drew towards her and patted her on the shoulder.

‘Nothing will change,' she said. ‘You'll just have to move rooms, to Anwar's. You can continue your studies. That I promise.'

At that moment, Hanan turned towards her mother and stared directly at her, her own expression sketched with bewilderment. She couldn't stay silent; the self-control that her mother had trained her to employ with others was powerless now. Tears welled in Hanan's eyes.