Girl Trade - full length erotic adventure novel (Xcite Erotic Romance Novels) (13 page)

I was making up for lost time. All those lost orgasms. All those men who had slipped by like ships in the night. It’s easy to lose yourself, that inner thing that’s you and become a puzzle of pieces put together by the hands of others, a vector of their opinions, a cut-out from a magazine. Boarding school, uni, a job in publishing arranged by Daddy. I had done nothing, achieved nothing. Doors had always been opened for me and on the long swim from La Gomera those doors closed and others swung open. I had learned in biology about left-brain, right-brain activity, and recalled that the two different hemispheres are responsible for different modes of thinking. The left brain is logical, sequential, analytical, objective. The right brain is random, intuitive, subjective, capable of being a complete and utter slut.

I watched as Hanif traced his fingers over the bulbous lip of the conch, it was pink and shiny as if wet. His fingers slipped into the mouth of the shell and his gaze strayed to my face. I unhooked the tail of the turban and turned to Samir, who seemed to approve of this game of eyes. I belonged to him. He was showing me off.

Like the conch, I was a rare object. We had made the same journey. Now we would part, move like the wind further and further from where we came from, seashells in the desert as precious as water, shade, white girls from the north. Like the shell, I was a commodity, I could be bought and sold, as could everyone and everything, but it was different here in this land of barter and trade. These people made their wealth by what they did, what they made with their hands, what they exchanged and transported, while we had found ways of making money from moving money, from debt, from celebrity biographies with the lies I composed for the back cover. I had felt in London shallow and cheap, a cipher. Barefoot with a wet pussy among strange men in the middle of nowhere, I really did feel that I was me, that I had crossed the Rubicon from my left brain to the right.

We moved to the corner where divans and low tables had been set up on a platform of some ten or twelve carpets below the sails of a wooden fan that revolved lethargically above our heads. This, I assumed was the office, the place where Hanif made his deals and did his business. A servant brought tea in a silver pot with a curving spout that stood on a tray with glasses and a bowl with cubes of sugar. There were some hard biscuits that could break your teeth, which I ate out of politeness, and the men avoided.

We lounged on the divans listening as Samir and Hanif talked like eager boys. They had similar voices, low but melodious. I tried to imagine what it was they were saying, but had no idea what it is men said, what Bobby said to his friends. Men were a mystery. Our connection was physical, sexual. It didn’t matter what they said because what they said seldom had anything to do with what they meant.

I looked down at my filthy feet and couldn’t imagine that they would ever be clean again.

Mo and Azar lit cigarettes. Mo and Umah never spoke, but Azar would occasionally say something and the others would roar with laughter. His face was filled with life and his lips were crimson like a strawberry in the nest of his wiry beard. He seemed more at ease with me dressed, and it occurred to me that a naked girl without inhibitions could be less pleasurable than painful for a man like Azar, that those weeks on board the boat he had remained below decks to avoid glancing in my direction.

Time slid by like the blue smoke agitated by the fan and sent off to slide across the low ceiling. There was no hurry. There was never any hurry, and the men finally shuffled to their feet as if guided by an inner clock. We made our way out through the back entrance where a Toyota pickup was waiting with a driver. Samir climbed in the front and I scrambled into the open back with the sailors. Hanif shook Samir’s hand through the open window, but he was glancing at me. I was sure they were talking about me and wondered if this were conceit on my part. Without language, I had begun to believe that the words turning around me was the cosmos turning with me at its centre.

The town vanished behind us in a matter of minutes, the track climbed a faint incline and suddenly there was nothing before me but the desert, wave after wave of red sand rolling out endlessly like the waves of the sea, and it seemed as if the wave was the fundamental form of the universe, curving, changing, driven by the winds, appearing and disappearing without trace, as do all things, that there is only this moment and we must make of it all that we can.

The road was bumpy. I was sitting on the ridged metal surface of the flat-bed leaning against the cab. Each bump inflamed the tender stripes across my bottom and a delicious pain ran up my spine. A particularly vicious bump made me wince and Azar rolled up the sack he had been sitting on and gave it to me.

‘
Shukran,’
I said.

‘
Assalamu alaikum,’
he replied.

Our eyes met for the first time. Under all that hair, Azar’s features were delicately carved and his eyes were the colour of dark honey, liquid, sensitive, filled with longing and passion. It was obvious what he wanted and it was such a small thing it made me sad that I would never be able to provide it. Well, never say never.

A few minutes later, he said something and pointed ahead. He scrambled to his feet and gave me his hand, steadying me as I stood and leaned against the cab. I shielded my eyes. Azar’s grip tightened about my waist and I gazed across the sea of sand. From out of nothing, a mirage had materialised on the horizon, a shimmer at first, movement, forms, then lines growing cleaner as we drew nearer.

Rising out of the desert was a red fortress with slender turrets and broad towers, the tallest of the towers capped in a golden dome. Around the walls, the caravanserai of shacks and tents seemed deserted in the burning heat. Trucks and pickups were parked randomly as if abandoned, and I could see hobbled camels and donkeys harnessed to carts like chimeras, like creatures in a painting by Goya. Beyond the caravanserai the dry dead waves of red sand rolled out endlessly in their burning glory.

A man in long cloak emerged from the heat haze like a genie appearing from a lamp.
What is your wish? Ask and it shall be given.

I recalled this setting from a dream, from a glimpse of déjà vu, and remembered waking in my bed in my flat in Fulham, Bobby dressed in my clothes, fast asleep, makeup on my pillow, and me wide awake telling the genie that my wish was to have an adventure that I would never forget. Beware of what you wish for! How silly Mummy’s sayings were, I thought.

The man in the long cloak disappeared and may never have been there. I pushed closer to Azar, his warm flesh smelling of the engine room. Already I was nostalgic. Life was slow, but the driver kept a heavy foot on the accelerator pedal and I felt safe with Azar’s strong arm about me, the vehicle turning with a sudden jerk of the wheel and careering towards the red building. Beyond the thick walls I could see an oasis of thorn trees, eucalyptus, banana plants, date palms, a stretch of reeds that must have been growing along the banks of a river.

We passed through the open gates and entered the compound. Azar gave me one last squeeze that I’m sure bruised my ribcage and leapt over the side of the truck as it skidded to a stop.

Women and children ran out from every corner clicking tongues, kicking up little cyclones of dust. They flocked about Samir as the enchanted children gathered to the Pied Piper, or Father Christmas, not that he was bearing gifts. On the contrary, he carried nothing, no clothes, no cases, just the Kalashnikovs on the shoulders of his men and the leather wallet buried in his tunic.

Two older men with teeth stained red from betel joined the crowd; they both spat heartily into the dust and pushed the women aside to welcome the sheikh,
salaaming
, bowing, gesturing to their heads and hearts.

Samir patted the children, saying a few words to each one, a star on the red carpet greeting the crowd. Some of the women were growing hysterical, tears welling into their eyes, and refused to budge when he waved them away. A much older woman with wizened hands, her white hair uncovered, fell to her knees and held the hem of the sheikh’s
djellaba
to her lips.

Mo and Azar drifted away from the throng. Mo was listening to a woman all in white speaking without pause as she moved backwards before him. Her eyes danced with that fusion of laughter and light that said Mo was her man, her husband, and she loved him.

Following behind them was a cluster of children of various heights like a collection of Russian dolls, the boys small and wiry, images of Mohammed, the girls with the same open faces as their mother, their pastel
djellabas
stitched in a variety of colours, the fabric light as air. As they disappeared into the building, it occurred to me that Mohammed and the woman were not as old as I had assumed but the sun and wind and toil made them appear that way.

Azar had grabbed the arm of a girl. They hurried across the courtyard, the bells about her ankles ringing as she skipped along at his side, and I couldn’t help wondering if Azar would think of me as he peeled off her clothes and took her in his arms. Would he drink from the cup of her warm vagina? Would he spank her and caress her, fill her every orifice with the creamy seed that must have been mounting inside him since we left the island? I would have adored being there to watch.

Ojala!

If only!

I had noticed the girl the moment I stepped down from the pickup. Drop earrings patterned with green stones fell like constellations from her ears. Her face and hands were decorated with henna and her eyes as they met mine contained a glimmer of recognition and rivalry. Inside the walls of the fortress she was that obscure object of desire, the femme fatale
,
and my mysterious arrival disturbed the sexual equilibrium. The girl would have sensed Azar’s hunger, smelt it on the air, felt it in her groin. The female is born knowing. She bares her backside as a symbol of empowerment and every line left by the whip and cane are the strands of an invisible basket she weaves to make marriages, build dynasties, rear sons. If a vision of me diving naked from the side of the boat slipped into Azar’s memory as he made love to her, my only desire was that it would be the best fuck of her young life.

My cheeks burned as these thoughts entered my mind. The warm air, the muted colours of sand and sky, the smell of men, the dancing fabrics of the girls’ dresses as they glided through the red dust combining in a cocktail of intense sensuality, and it occurred to me in this place with long hot nights and endless time there was no shortage of the pleasures of flesh meeting flesh. We imagine in the west we have cornered the market in sex but isn’t it merely the idea of sex that we celebrate, the Photoshop vision of sex, the YouPorn version of sex?

I turned my attention back to Samir as he spoke to the driver. The pickup then turned in a circle, throwing up dust as it left the compound, and the sheikh clapped his hands in such a way that the women and children got the message that the greeting was over. They scurried back to where they had come from, vanishing through open doors and into shady passageways.

Just the older men chewing betel remained. Samir spoke to them briefly and their myopic eyes turned suspiciously in my direction. One of the men said something that sounded like a reproach and Samir was clearly irritated, raising his voice and brushing away his remark as you would brush at a bothersome fly. The man looked at me in my white suit of clothes, my face uncovered, shook his head and walked slowly away. The other man joined him without a word.

The sheikh called after them, but they made no acknowledgement and one spat again into the dust.

Samir shrugged as if what they had to say was of no consequence. He strutted across the compound, his robes swaying, and I trotted in small steps behind him. Just as he had taken me on a tour of the boat that first night at sea, he guided me through the maze of rooms, courtyards, corridors, flights of roughly hewn steps. The fort was a labyrinth from which my one escape would be among the crew when the boat next sailed and, should I be left behind, I would be devoured by the Minotaur of boredom and despair. On board the boat with the horizon always ahead I had been living fully in the present, but in the shade of that warren of thick walls and small shuttered windows, of old men and flapping women, the future appeared unformed and uncertain.

The rooms we passed through were bare except for a carpet or straw mat, a solitary piece of home-made furniture, a spinning wheel, brass and copper pots and pans, bead-covered gourds. There were no photographs in frames or pictures on the walls, no mirrors. Everything was clean, but the walls and floors had been shaped from the sand of the desert and the desert was encroaching on the space, slowly crumbling, claiming it back.

We rose up to another floor where the arch-shaped windows offered a glimpse of eternity, the surreal beauty of the desert beyond drawing the eye and mind and soul. The sun was past its zenith and the sand was darkening. We climbed another flight of stairs and he unlocked a door that gave on to a walkway with crenulated battlements decorated in earthenware tiles with a pattern of spiders.

I was wearing a spider brooch. The sheikh wore a spider pendant. I wanted to know what the spider signified, why the spider tiles and the walls in which they were set were the same colour, as if subtlety and discretion were more important than show and embellishment. Everything I saw challenged my formerly held ideas and opinions, the very culture of the west. In my world boasting, exhibiting and flaunting were expected and encouraged; your accomplishments, possessions and 34C-cup breasts in an uplift bra being the sum total of who you are.

The domed roof of the turret at the end of the walkway was decorated in gold and I imagined at night the light of the moon made the dome shine like a beacon. Windows like the arched slits in the walls of Norman castles circled the turret and, to one side, a ladder with the wood bleached white as bone climbed up to what turned out to be a stone tank. A bung cut from a car tyre was set in the bottom of the tank and, when Samir pulled it out, water clear as crystal poured from the hole.