1

The Love Slave

Copyright © Sarah Kernochan

http://www.sarahkernochan.com/
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Chapter One

CONNOR BLAKEY

Connor Blakey limped through the crowd of New Year’s revel-

ers in the lobby of the Pierre Hotel. It was just as well eve-

ryone was too drunk to notice the blood on her leg, she

thought, heading for the elevator. She glanced at her watch:

eleven-thirty. In a half hour the whole depressing year would

be over, definitely something to celebrate. The next thought,

that 1978 could turn out even worse than 1977, was too demoral-

izing to dwell on.

She felt the eyes of the hotel staff on her. She knew they

were worried to see her alone. Her family had paid them not to

report her exploits to the gossip columns; what would happen to

that extra income if she became celibate?

She rode up in the elevator with an unaccompanied male. By

the time he got off at his floor, he was also unaccosted. Con-

nor had a rule: She never offered herself to a man over forty.

The elevator doors closed. She was rich, beautiful, and easy;

and now, outrageously, she was alone again.

She unlocked the door to the apartment she kept in the ho-

tel, flinging her purse onto a chair. It fell to the floor,

 3

spilling out her lip gloss, artificial sweetener tablets, and

empty diaphragm case. I’m just like Willy Loman, Connor thought

as she eyed the mess. Trudging home with his sample case after

another desperate outing and no sale. Only with Connor, it was

Death Of A Slattern.

Collapsing on her sofa, she watched her ginger cat,

Simone, turn circles in the middle of the rug, her fluffy be-

hind lifted high in the air, making low moans in her throat, in

a parody of lust. According to the vet, there was some problem

with her ovaries, which he could only identify by cutting the

poor animal open.

The cut on Connor’s leg had stopped bleeding but throbbed

with an insistent beat. Connor didn’t mind getting wounded on a

successful mission, but failure made the pain pointless.

If she hadn’t gone to that screening, then broken her rule

about no actors, she wouldn’t now be alone and mangled on New

Year’s Eve. The one night when you rightfully expected to be in

flagrante.

Connor had been invited to the screening along with some

other rich people; the producer was angling for money to back a

New York opening. The movie had been forgettable, except for

one scene which held her rapt.

 4

The heroine was a widow, a recluse who hadn’t left her

house since her husband’s death. Every day she stared out the

window at her garden falling into neglect, until at last she

called a landscaping service. They sent over a gardener.

Day after day she watched him work: the careful way he

cupped a seedling, sliding it into a fresh hole; the muscles

bunching on his shoulders out as he spaded; his sure stance,

legs apart, as he held the hose, covering the opening with a

thumb and producing the finest spray on the new flowers.

One day she heard her back door open: He was in the house,

she realized. Clothed only in a light robe, she hurried down

the hall to her bedroom, when she saw him coming toward her.

He asked for water. She pointed him toward the kitchen,

then turned to the wall to let him pass. Instead he pressed her

against the wall with his body, his groin against her buttocks.

Her face was forced sideways, mashing against the plaster. She

cried out. His hands grazed her breasts, traveling down to the

hem of her robe. They slipped under the fabric, and he stroked

her thighs, slowly moving higher and higher. He gazed medita-

tively at a speck on the wall, taking his time. His fingers

found the join of her legs and coaxed them apart; all the while

he rocked his groin into her, pressing her mound against the

wall, until she grew silent, hypnotized, almost not breathing

as she waited for the shock of his hardness inside her—-

 5

At this point the film cut back to the widow’s face at the

window. It was only a fantasy. Connor could have screamed.

Months later, making the rounds of New Year’s parties, she

ran into the film’s producer and recalled the scene. “Anyone

who can ram a woman against the wall with such skill and ten-

derness should be bottled and sold.” Just as she said it she

saw him over the producer’s shoulder: the actor who had played

the part of the gardener. He’d grown a beard, but she recog-

nized his eyes, which were now studying her with the same in-

tent focus he had previously devoted to a spot on the wall.

Someone was telling him who she was.

Actors were constantly switching characters without warning,

Connor reminded herself, and the only time they shut up was to

hear themselves praised. She turned back to the producer, who

was hitting her up for money the thousandth time.

Later, on her way to the bathroom, it seemed inevitable

that she pass the actor in the hallway. She paused, pretending

to study a framed picture, then felt his body settle into hers,

pressing her to the wall, mashing her cheek against an oil por-

trait of the hostess’s dog. Hands slid over her hips, her

thighs, found the hem of her skirt and slipped under, moving

slowly up her legs.

 6

“You really turn me on,” he murmured into her hair. Connor

mentally deleted the bad dialogue as his hips began to rock

against her.

“Let’s find a more private wall to do this against,” she

said. “Your place?”

If only she could keep him from talking.

He gave the cab driver his address. Before he could say

another word she dammed his mouth with her tongue and hooked

one long leg over him. By the time they reached his apartment,

he was distinctly alarmed. “What sign are you?” he asked,

unlocking his door.

“Scorpio,” said Connor. “Scorpio sun, Gemini moon, Sagit-

tarius rising, retrograde Mercury in Scorpio, Venus in Scorpio,

Mars in Leo, Jupiter in Sagittarius, Saturn in Leo, retrograde

Uranus in Gemini, Neptune in Libra, and Pluto in Leo. I haven’t

a single planet in an earth sign, no earth at all, so I’m im-

practical and insecure and really impatient,” she flung her

wolverine coat over his sofa and grappled his belt buckle open,

hoping the door she was pulling him towards led to the bedroom

and not the closet.

Inside the bedroom, a framed handstitched sampler on the

wall caught her eye. It read “Life Is A Colored Waitress.”

Without thinking, she asked, “Is that really your motto?”

 7

She could have bitten her tongue off when she realized

what she’d done.

It was a prop from a play, he said, which would have been

his ticket to stardom if not for the Times review, though he

had been singled out for the scene in which he caressed the co-

star’s knee and delivered a speech about the disappearance of

the small farm in America. The reviewer said he was “eerily

menacing,” so after that he started being typecast as the

heavy, like in that movie she’d seen him in. It was a drag to

be eerily menacing in role after role, since really his best

performance had been as a sensitive effeminate Greek immigrant

on the brink of madness. He proudly lapsed into the lisping

Greek accent he’d perfected by hanging out for weeks in lunch-

eonettes.

Connor went to sit on the bed. Clearly the wall was out.

By the time all the characters had been exorcised from the

actor’s body and he was at last aware of someone other than

himself, Connor was naked, stretched out on his bedspread, her

caramel-colored hair waving over his pillow. No matter how many

times she had done this, it was still a moment she prized: when

a man first saw her pink-tipped breasts, her long creamy limbs,

the soft fluffy triangle, and became awestruck.

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After an all-too-brief moment of amazement, the actor

primly turned off all the lights, then took off his own

clothes, climbing in next to her and pulling the sheet up

around his neck. With one hand he traced the curve of her

breast, the gentle indentation of her waist, the swell of her

hips. When he ducked his head under the covers, Connor sighed,

parting her legs.

He began sucking on her knee. She sensed him thinking of a

small farm in America.

“Let’s be different and just start right in,” Connor said

after a minute, pulling him up onto her bosom. “Foreplay is

such a yawn now that everybody’s doing it.”

Another few minutes later, Connor blurted: “Not you, too!”

It was the wine, he muttered, or the coke—-it was the can-

apés. It’s me, thought Connor.

It was happening a lot to her lately: Men were lying down

on the job. Her astrologer, Larry, had warned her: She had a

grand square between Saturn and both moon nodes and Pallas

Athena, which made her a habitual ball-buster. “If you don’t

stop, in your next lifetime you’ll have a pair of your own,”

he’d said. “Then someone will come along and cut them off, and

you’ll see how you like it.” (Larry subsisted chiefly on beer,

which made him fairly rude.)

 9

As the actor shut himself in the bathroom with some inspi-

rational magazines, Connor quickly dressed, sitting on his

glass-topped coffee table to pull on her boots. It shattered.

Hopping off the jagged shards, her leg bleeding, Connor fled.

He had seemed so beautifully adept in the movie, she

thought sadly. But this was the Age of Impotence, and compe-

tence was just a special effects trick.

In thirty-one years, Connor Annette Blakey had only found

thing that interested her. When people asked her what she did,

she said, “I sleep around.” If she’d had a needlepoint pillow

with her motto, it would have read: “Life Is An Elaborate Plan

To Get Laid.”

She was too rich to work. Her relatives, all the other

Blakey women, sneered at her lack of endeavor. They were rich,

too, of course, but they worked incredibly hard. They had a

kingdom to protect. Or, more specifically, a queendom.

Thisbee Blakey started the legend in 1586, at the height

of England’s famine, peddling her “Blakey’s Marvelous Mustard”

while simultaneously encouraging sly gossip about herself and

the Prince of Wales. The little mustard crock, and the stories

about the beautiful adventuress who created it, took the na-

tion’s mind off its hollow belly.

 10

She was the first in the long Blakey line of mercantile

matriarchs. Through the next four centuries, generations of

Blakey women expanded Blakey’s Mustard & Condiments to Blakey

General Products to Blakey Industrials. They were handsome and

piquant, brigands in business. They devoured the competition,

snapping wolf-like at the air, hungry for more. Their greed

was glorious, uncompromising, as if the memory of famine had

been imprinted on their genes. Once America offered them free

enterprise, they quickly transferred to the New World and built

their industrial storehouse, stocking the larder with politi-

cians, mobsters, and journalists for future use.

Though greed was the prime motivated force, the typical

Blakey female pretended she wasn’t hungry, and was always thin,

with a brittle sheen of charm, class, and courage. Her approach

to marriage was pragmatic. Though a man could marry a Blakey

for her money, and encourage her tenderly from the sidelines,

he was barred from working in the family firm; his clumsy male

psychology made him incapable of understanding Blakey business

methods. A man could strategize, but not connive. So the matrix

of the mother company was off-limits to sperm-mongers.

A man cum sperm was important to the continuation of the

Blakey line, of course, provided he signed the elaborate pre-

nuptial contract, stipulating that children would only bear his

family name in two places: either as a first name (thus the

 11

preponderance of children with names like Connor) or trailing a

hyphen (as in Blakey-Vandermuffing).

Once a Blakey bore a female heir, her duty was discharged

(Connor’s mother had stopped with one). This meant Blakey off-

spring were predominantly female. It was just as well, as

thanks to a treacherous Y-chromosome in the women’s blood, most

male Blakeys suffered from eye problems. They were usually as-

tigmatic, colorblind, cross-eyed, and ignored.

The pure family name was regained when Connor’s mother,

Annette Blakey-Fitzsymingdon, married her distant myopic

cousin, a full Blakey, who died when Connor was eight. A Tau-

rus, Connor’s mother specialized in plants. When she wasn’t

outdoors serenely tending her own garden, she was touring the

gardens of the various Blakey estates or designing the grounds

for Blakey Industrials in eighteen major cities. Once in a

while, when a pride of Blakeys got together for a tax write-off

and donated a park, Annette created the landscaping.

When it came to the animal kingdom, however, Annette was

quite vague. That she had a daughter pretty much escaped her

notice.

The other Blakey women were more attentive; they could see

from early on that the girl was not going to amount to any-

thing. At Blakey family reunions, little Connor showed no in-

stinct for where the power lay; she would come into a room and
 12

climb into the uncles’ laps. In the ten years since her gradua-

tion from Sarah Lawrence, she had borne out their predictions:

She had never achieved anything, never found a project which

might fulfill her.

Of course, as far as Connor was concerned, sex was her

project, one she’d spent years perfecting. That she had reached

a level of breathtaking skill was no small achievement, she be-

lieved, no matter what her aunts might think. It hurt that they

considered her an aberration. Couldn’t they see that, in her

own way, she was every inch a Blakey, greedily gobbling the

competition? Like them, she’d sought power-—the kind she could

grasp in her hand, and straddle, and subdue. Over the years she

had made legions of men surrender, in buckets.

Still, the project wasn’t going too well lately, something

she was not about to admit to her family. In the sixties, sex-

ual opportunity and mass nudity had been rife, but now, in the

late seventies, she seemed to be facing a famine. Not only men

who couldn’t get it up: men who didn’t even want to get it up.

It was a mutiny, Connor and all her unmarried friends

agreed. Today’s men were sailors sick of rowing on the pelvis

of the insatiable sea. There were no more virgin shores, and

everywhere they landed they were greeted by cynical bare-

bosomed natives demanding insane prices for their fruit, even

 13

though it grew everywhere. Small wonder these men now preferred

to stay at home with their wives and boyfriends.

What would she do with her gift? Connor wondered. The gift

of giving herself was her sole pastime and passion. She

switched off the television and the tired spectacle of Times

Square crowds waiting for the ball to come down. Who else might

be home on New Year’s?

Picking up the phone, she called one friend after another.

“What are you doing home?” she asked, when she finally got her

friend Wren.

“I have agoraphobia.” It was always some disease with

Wren, the more fashionable the better. “I also have a split of

Mumm’s and two Quaaludes coursing through my bloodstream.”

“What’s to become of us?” Connor tried to keep her tone

light.

“I don’t know. What did Larry say?”

“Larry died last week.”

It had been a huge shock to Connor, after eight years of

relying on her astrologer’s counsel. On the other hand, you

didn’t have to be psychic to know that a person who lived on

beer was bound to die.

As a child, Larry had played one of the little Siamese

children in The King And I, supporting his family for the

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eleven-odd years the show ran on Broadway. To keep him tiny,

his mother had fed him nothing but Minute Rice and tomatoes, so

by the time he quit show business for astrology, Larry had de-

veloped a loathing for food. One day after years of subsisting

on beer, he passed out in front of a client, who called an am-

bulance.

In the emergency room, the intern was checking Larry’s

pulse, when he heard a gurgling sound, and put his hand gently

on his patient’s abdomen. Larry died instantly. With that

slight pressure, his stomach had dissolved completely away.

“I haven’t left my apartment in a week,” Wren said, chang-

ing the subject. “What’s out there, manwise?”

“I don’t see anything I want any more,” said Connor.

“I knew it. The place is fished out.”

“You know what I’d like? Someone who just comes in, does

exactly what I want and is grateful for the work, and then

leaves.” If only you could pull a tasseled rope and some noise-

less, naked, and infallibly erect hireling would appear, a man

of silence, decorum, and solid expertise, doing his duty in an

atmosphere of worship. . . .

“I know. Preferably someone who doesn’t talk. Maybe lost

his tongue in an accident.”

“No, we need the tongue.” Connor patted a cushion to get

Simone’s attention, but the cat only hoisted her butt higher.
 15

“How about gigolos? Some of them don’t speak English.”

“But they always want money. Who needs the extra aggrava-

tion of having to do bills?”

“I miss Bert.” Wren’s voice wavered. She had just been

jilted by an art historian. “Connor, I tried to be what he

wanted. I think I gave him too much freedom.”

“Men already have too much freedom as it is.” Connor could

hear her friend sniffle, trying not to cry. She felt a surge of

rage: Why should men have the power to inflict such tortures?

Out of nowhere, a thought struck her, an idea so dazzling

she felt faint. The death of her astrologer hadn’t been a ran-

dom event, she realized. It was a sign that she was now free to

invent her own fate, to soar through an open window into a law-

less, godless, guideless universe. She could do anything. Even

something wonderfully terrible.

“I’m going to find him,” she announced.

“Who?”

The cat wheeled round and round. Connor’s cheeks were

flushed pink. “I’ll only tell you this: In 1978, I’m going on a

long trip.” She hung up.

Outside her window, cries resounded: The New Year had ar-

rived. In the midnight sky above Central Park, stars flickered

and shifted, promising good fortune, strange encounters, and a

wish fulfilled. (“Just don’t overindulge,” she could almost

 16

hear Larry scold.) As the heavens’ minute-hand passed midnight,

Connor Blakey was on the cusp of an extraordinary adventure,

one that would be set in motion not by the stars but by a sim-

ple act of will. And a gold credit card.

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Chapter Two

AIR WAZZ

Clouds covered the Cairo runway. The pilot announced that

the plane would have to hover until dawn, when the rising sun

would burn off the veil of moisture and he could see to land.

The atmosphere in first class was convivial. The two Saudi

businessmen had made friends with the two German whores and had

persuaded the Air Wazz hostesses to break open the reserve

champagne after the whiskey ran out. Everyone came into the

aisle, traded names, and toasted the sunrise. But after three

hours the clouds hadn’t burned off, the champagne ran out, and

the spirit of entente faded. The twelve passengers fled back to

their seats, wishing they hadn’t revealed so much.

The American salesman went back to memorizing party jokes

from a paperback anthology. The hulking Russian, who claimed to

be with the Bolshoi and smelled horribly of fish oil, returned

to smoking black Turkish cigarettes, clearing his throat re-

peatedly of the same fertile puddle. The Danish woman, flying

to meet her architect husband in Masmoudia where he was design-

ing a soccer stadium, murmured false encouragement to her two

small children. The two representatives of a Hong Kong wax-

 18

fruit and party-favor company resumed testing each other’s con-

versational Arabic with flash cards. The hookers bent their in-

destructible heads together and slept. Malcolm Pugh, the cele-

brated British adventurer-anthropologist-geologist, gripped the

arms of his seat until his knuckles blanched.

It was the seventh time Pugh had made the trip between

London and Masmoudia. This last trip would mark the end of his

exploratory study in the Dar Loosh Mountains. The Crown Prince

of Masmoudia had hired him to search the sedimentary strata of

the interior for traces of valuable ore, in hopes of discover-

ing some commercial resource for the country beside roses.

The ruling family of Masmoudia were Arab Bedouins, but the

mountain people were Berbers, a different ethnic tribe alto-

gether. During Pugh’s two years’ work in the mountains, the

scientist had lived among the Dar Loosh Berbers and could speak

their language as well as Arabic. Since he had reported his

findings to the royals, however, word had gotten out that Crown

Prince Rassan planned to blast mines on Berber territory. Vio-

lence would probably ensue, and Malcolm Pugh would be bidding

Masmoudia farewell just when things got exciting.

Pugh craved novelty, and the world supply was low. He’d

done all the really odd civilizations, the aborigines, the Ma-

sai, the Yaquis, and also the uninhabited regions of the Ama-

zon, Sahara, Antarctica, and so forth. Now, after several dec-

 19

ades of adventuring, his native curiosity was losing the battle

against his worst phobia, boredom. Clutching his armrest, he

looked around the plane in search of amusement.

Across the aisle sat that lovely tall American in the em-

erald-green-dyed wolverine coat whom he’d met earlier drinking

with the Saudis.

“You’re a scientist?” she had said. “I suppose you’re an

Aquarius.”

“Is that good or bad?” He’d awaited her reply, bracing

himself for a sickening wave of boredom.

“Good for science, but they make lousy boyfriends. It’s

the scientific side of them that’s so vile. They like to find

out a) how everything works, and then b) how it works when you

remove one leg.” She’d turned and gone back to her seat, with-

out another word, leaving him heady with surprise.

At the moment she looked cool and unruffled, despite the

stuffy cabin, the dawning Egyptian heat, and her lurid fur

coat. She was reading a book: Inside the Arab Mind: A Business-

man’s Guide to the Middle East. He slipped into the seat beside

her.

“Bloody awful airline,” he said. “Can’t think when we’ll

put down in Masmoudia if we’re already five hours late to

Cairo.”
 20

Connor looked up to see a tanned, raw-boned face with

close-cropped white hair. The man looked older than she by at

least twenty years, so she decided not to have sex with him.

“It’s not the airline. It’s me! My family thinks I attract eve-

rything from minor annoyances to major calamities. They even

blamed me for the time I was camping out with this arms smug-

gler on Maui near a totally extinct volcano and it erupted-–

The pilot interrupted to announce that the plane was

nearly out of fuel and he would have to fly all the way to Jed-

dah to replenish the tanks. The Danish woman burst into tears

as her children watched blankly. Bar service abruptly ceased.

The two Saudis went rigid, and clapped for black coffee.

“If we all have to get off the plane in Jeddah and those

two are still reeking of alcohol, they’ll get eighty lashes on

the backside,” Pugh told Connor. “Their home country takes

rather a dim view of besotted native sons. Not that you and I

need suffer.” Discreetly he emptied the two miniature bottles

of cognac he’d pinched at the beginning of the flight into

their coffee cups.

“Arabs seem to have an awful lot of bizarre rules. I’ve

been reading about them.” Connor closed her book.

“Well, a lot of it’s just stuff your mum told you never to

do -- drinking, gambling, whoring. Then there’s the list of

 21

things the Prophet calls ‘unclean’ – the left hand, the sole of

the foot, pigs, blood, women. . . .”

“I just hope none of it applies to tourists.”

He sputtered, “Don’t tell me you’re going to Masmoudia to

sight-see!”

She turned to stare at him. Suddenly aware of the extraor-

dinary fullness of her pupils, Pugh was strangely immobilized

and a little afraid. It was like being observed by a total

eclipse. She giggled as if embarrassed, though it rang a little

false; she didn’t seem the type to be embarrassed by anything.

After a few moments’ hesitation, she said: “I’m going there to

buy a slave.”

“Hmm,” he said.

She seemed surprised that he wasn’t horrified. “Somebody

told me you could find them in Masmoudia,” she went on.

“Who?” He couldn’t help grinning.

“An old friend.” She looked annoyed. “I’m not telling you

any more.”

“But you’re very clever! Masmoudia’s the perfect place;

they’ve got some uncommonly good ones, very loyal and so forth.

The ones from the mountains are particularly attractive, boys

and girls both, some with absolutely milk-white skin, and blue

eyes.”

“You’re not shocked?”

 22

“Not a bit. I’ve spent enough time in certain Arab coun-

tries to know slavery’s a thriving institution. Even if the

United Nations thinks they’re ‘bonded servants.’”

“Well, I think it’s shocking. Why isn’t that on their list

of unclean things? I thought in the twentieth century we’d re-

alized it was uncivilized to buy and sell human beings.”

“I’ll have you know, slavery was considered one of the

great civilizing advancements of Islam. At the time of the Mo-

hammedan conquests, it was hugely humanitarian not to kill off

all one’s opponents, but rather spare their lives and enslave

them. Unlike America where the settlers simply killed all the

Indians who resisted. And Arabs give their slaves a great deal

of status. They’re protected by all sorts of laws in the Koran.

Some of their rulers treat their slaves even better than mem-

bers of their own family, since slaves are usually more trust-

worthy.” He tapped Connor’s book. “A good slave would willingly

kill or be killed for his master’s sake. Unlike America in the

last century, Islam even makes it relatively easy for a slave

to gain his freedom, if he wants it, though many don’t — “

“What mountains did you say the ones with the blue eyes

come from?” Connor interrupted.

But Pugh was looking out the plane window. “Hullo, here’s

Jeddah!”
 23

Syrupy waves of heat rose off the Jeddah runway. After the

pilot announced that no one was to leave the aircraft, the

Saudis relaxed visibly. A desultory ground-crew of Palestinians

in checkered headcloths began refueling and the doors were

opened, blasting a torrent of scorching air on the passengers.

Pakistanis entered with pails to wash the lavatories.

“. . .you’ll have to be terribly subtle in how you go

about it,” Malcolm Pugh lowered his voice. “I doubt they’ll

permit you to take a slave out of the country. They do, of

course — I’ve seen the little buggers in their white shifts

carrying packages for their mistresses in Harrods. Once they

get to London, it seems, all sorts of things are no longer un-

clean: casinos, whores, booze, bacon. Of course a dog or cat is

still-—where are you off to?”

Connor was climbing over his knees. She pushed past the

stewardess and stepped off the plane, where her boot heel

caught on the loading stairs and hurtled her downwards. At the

bottom, she regained her balance, heading toward a ground-crew

member crouched by the fuel line.

Watching through the window, Mal Pugh saw her loom over

the Palestinian as if she were about to sink her country’s flag

between his shoulderblades. It was thrilling to behold. She

bent and lifted him firmly by the arm. Looking up at the six-
 24

foot genie covered with green fur who had seized him, the man

nearly fainted.

Connor pointed urgently at the baggage hold in the under-

belly of the plane. “Meow, meow!” she shouted. “Open please!

Ouvrez la porte!”

“Thanks for reminding me,” Connor said, as the plane took

off for Cairo. Inside a cage on her lap a ginger cat lay rum-

pled and near swooning. “God, she was in the hold for eleven

hours straight. She’ll be all right. She has an amazing capac-

ity for suffering.”

“What’s the poor thing’s name?” Mal asked politely. Aller-

gic blotches were already blooming all over his neck.

“Simone Weil.”

The bar service re-opened, though by now there was nothing

left but beer and canned gin-rickey. Connor was sorry when the

British scientist’s cat allergy got the better of him and he

had to change seats to nurse his cat allergy. She drank a beer,

and allowed herself to picture her ideal slave. Age: around

twenty. Height: tall. Eyes: don’t care. Hair: black, straight,

with a single wave at the temples. Skin? White stained faintly

with maple, like a fading tan. He’d have the strong, long, ta-

pering cheekbones of Andalusian horses, a small chiseled mouth.

When he knelt to stroke her feet, svelte ropes of muscles would

 25

gather on his thighs. The sinews in his back seemed polished

and beveled, and his hands were deft. He would forever be

watching her, hungrily but respectfully.

“Stop staring at me,” she’d say.

“I can’t,” he’d murmur. (Maybe she’d let him talk after

all.)

“Come here,” she would command.

“Ah, mistress,” he’d groan, entering her again. “Princess,

lady, queen. . . .”

“Where did you find him?” her friends would cry out, when

he took off his shirt at the pool and revealed his beautiful

chest. (She couldn’t decide if it had hair.)

“I turned the corner and there he was, in some little out-

of-the-way shop I never noticed before.” The fantasy faded as

Connor fell asleep.

Connor woke from her nap to the sound of Simone mewling

from thirst in her cage. Night had fallen; the airplane was

nearing Masmoudia. There was no sign of any of the steward-

esses. While Connor had been asleep, the two Saudis had disem-

barked in Cairo, and a pair of Masmoudian pashas had taken

their seats; when they’d begun obstreperously objecting to the

lack of whisky on board, the beleaguered Air Wazz hostesses had

 26

locked themselves in the cockpit with the pilots and refused to

come out.

Connor went back to economy class to find some milk for

her cat. Only half this section was filled, mostly with the

wives and children of the two pashas. The rear galley was

empty. Connor rifled through the lockers.

“Hello how are you feeling fine!”

Startled, Connor peered into the shadows near the toilets.

All she could make out were some grinning teeth.

“What you want, milk?” The overhead light caught the waxy

surface of a milk carton in the speaker’s outstretched hand. He

stepped out of the shadows. He was a tawny little man with a

sparse gray beard and a small puckered hole in one cheek. He

wore a blue headcloth, a goat’s-hair coat, loose blue cotton

trousers, and yellow pointed slippers.

“Thanks,” Connor said as he poured the milk into her plas-

tic cup.

Behind him stood a similarly dressed tall, gaunt boy whose

head was shaved, except where one long lock slithered down his

back. He stood on one leg, scratching his bare ankle with his

toes. All were dyed a bright blue.

Connor looked at the bearded man laughed; they too were

bright turquoise. “You are see my blue legs? I am blue leg man!

I am Berber man from Dar Loosh mountain where all mans have
 27

this things! You come, say for Habib! All what you want I find

for you!”

Before Connor could reply, a voice over the P.A. ordered

all passengers back to their seats. Connor hurried forward; the

Masmoudian wives were donning and their black georgette veils

and abayas, dense black cloaks which concealed the fashions

they’d bought in Rome. Connor tripped over the folds of some-

one’s abaya and fell headlong through the curtains into the

first-class section.

A stewardess appeared to mop up the milk as Connor sank

into her seat and fastened her belt. The pilot announced their

descent to Port-Au-Wazz, capital of Masmoudia. Connor’s stomach

lurched; she felt giddy. I want a love slave, she thought, with

blue legs!
 28

Chapter Three

SUNSET IN MASMOUDIA

A cool western wind floated dust from the cement factory

over Port-Au-Wazz, capital of Masmoudia; the particles settled

like drab snow on every orchard, roof, and washline. Every in-

tersection in the city had been torn up. Derricks bent their

horrendous bills over countless construction sites, like fam-

ished herons feeding off the skyline. Crown Prince Rassan was

building a modern capital.

The new clock tower on King Musa Boulevard announced seven

o’clock. A panel burst open, and a mechanical figure of the

King emerged bestride a camel, carrying a falcon on his wrist.

After sixty seconds of their painfully slow semi-circular

course, King, camel, and falcon were unceremoniously whipped

back into their chamber, to await the next hour.

As the lowering sun grew plump as an apricot, spreading as

if overripe when it touched the bay, the inhabitants of Port-

Au-Wazz began their exodus to the shore cafés. Fishermen and

pearldivers hitched their dhows to the quays, gathering around

braziers where pots of thick umber coffee brewed. Turbaned

Pakistani and Baluch laborers descended the scaffolding around

 29

the forty-two-story King Musa Trade Center, soon to be the

tallest building in the Middle East. (Crown Prince Rassan

dreamed of urinating off it, onto the head of the Sultan of

Oman across the bay; God willing, a felicitous breeze might

also carry his yellow stream to the pate of the Sheikh of Du-

bai, whose Trade Center stood at thirty-nine stories.) The

white people--French, British, Russians, Poles, Swedes, Ameri-

cans, Dutch, Belgians—-returned from their embassies and banks

downtown, negotiating the illogical detours in dusty cars.

As Venice had her canals, so Port-Au-Wazz would have

flyovers and tunnels. It was the Crown Prince’s dream that

streets would soar up and over intersections, or dip down and

under; and pedestrians with their donkeys could walk the level

surface in between. (Construction was being rushed to be com-

pleted in time for an Italian movie company that wanted to film

a chase scene on the rollercoaster-like thoroughfares.)

“Come to prayer!” the muezzin sang into his microphone.

“Prayer is better than sleep!” resounded from speakers hung all

over the city. Masmoudian Arabs, in ankle-length tan dishdasha

shirts and fringed gray headcloths anchored by coiled black

rope, stumbled over the mounds of rubble where the kasbah once

stood to the 14th-century mosque, soon to be leveled when the

new aluminum mosque was finished. Others stopped on the traffic

 30

islands and turned northwest to Mecca, facing into the con-

tracting sunlight as they prayed.

Mercenaries in magenta uniforms came down from the fort. A

once-coveted stronghold built by the Portuguese, it overlooked

the harbor where an artificial island with an elaborate amuse-

ment park was being built.

Packing up their scales, the moneychangers headed for the

café terraces, to drink glasses of cardamom-flavored coffee and

sugary jasmine tea, alongside mercenaries, Bedouins, laborers,

porters, poets, and feline acrobats with painted eyes. Men from

the Dar Loosh mountains, in long indigo shirts with curved dag-

gers at their waists and blue-dyed ankles and calves, Arab

traders from Salala, Basra, Addis Ababa: All drank coffee in

the twilight, except farmers and taxidrivers, who preferred to

chew wads of the green plant qat, drooling chartreuse streams

down their chins.

All over the eastern hemisphere, the sun vanished on its

way to the west.

The Beni Wazz family had ruled the island of Masmoudia for

six centuries. In the beginning was Mabruk Beni Wazz, the pa-

triarch of a small Bedouin tribe from the oasis at Dugagah, who

chased the Turks off Masmoudia, corralling the other sheikhs

under his rule. This he accomplished by a combination of atroc-

 31

ity and baraka, or God-given magical powers (he was reputed to

bring the dead back to life, for instance, by putting live

coals in their armpits). Mabruk was small, stocky, with an

enormous ribcage and the briefest of necks. Tiny black eyes

restlessly dodged the heavy drooping eyelids, in a round, am-

ber-skinned, cheek-dominated face. These traits were inherited

not only by the Beni Wazz born of incest and intermarriage but

by every descendant of the royal seed; even the children of

concubines and slave-women had the look of moody rodents.

For four hundred years Port-Au-Wazz had been their capi-

tal, set where an immense gravel desert met a lackluster bay.

It existed chiefly to be a pawn between nations. Any seaworthy

power occupying Port-Au-Wazz gained a natural harbor and a

sanctuary from the perilous Indian Ocean currents; strategic

access to Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, and the Gulf sheikhdoms on

the Arabian peninsula, access to Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, and

Somalia on the African mainland; and all shipping routes to

Iran, Pakistan, India, and the Orient.

The Beni Wazz family invited foreign occupation. They had

learned that the Great Powers had a way of removing each other.

In the 16th century, the Portuguese had built the fort and na-

val base, insuring native obeisance by cutting off all the old

men’s ears, then set off to quell barbarous Arab traders and

pirates in the Gulf of Oman. Next, the British and Dutch liber-
 32

ated the island, fighting for the next century over the spice

and silk trade in the Indian Ocean. At last the British decided

they liked the view from Muscat better, and moved across the

bay. In 1749, the French attacked the British in Muscat, oust-

ing the Dutch from Masmoudia.

Subsequent treaties left the island uncolonized until the

early 1800’s, when the Wahhabis, an exceptionally cruel tribe

from central Arabia, seized Port-Au-Wazz, the better to strike

the Imam of Oman (himself aided by the British and Iranians).

The ruling Beni Wazz sheikh invited Napoleon to conquer Mas-

moudia and expunge the Wahhabis, but after Waterloo the French

were obliged to leave the island.

Before leaving, the French encouraged the Beni Wazz sheikh

to proclaim himself monarch of all Masmoudia. Their hopes were

for a tribal revolt so that French would have to return in the

form of a Protectorate. Instead, the tribes had gone crazy for

the monarchy’s pomp and pageantry, vying with each other on the

King’s Birthday with folkdancing, staged battles, ecstatic

trances, and camel races.

King Musa ruled Masmoudia much as his ancestors had done,

Touring his five palaces, he sat amid his brothers and sons and

secretaries in daily majlis, where he allowed citizens to peti-

tion him in person. He helped solve property disputes, blood

feuds; he might give someone money to make the pilgrimage to

 33

Mecca, or to buy a child glasses. He married his brothers’ sons

to the daughters of the lesser sheikhs, and his sons to his

brothers’ daughters and the sons of the greater sheikhs. Re-

nowned for his baraka, he effected miraculous cures while in a

trance. He taxed, tortured, and imprisoned arbitrarily. And

like all the Beni Wazz rulers before him, he left the formida-

ble mountain tribes alone to rule themselves.

In 1914, needing an additional naval base during the war

in Mesopotamia, the British returned and promptly abolished

slavery. For the next four years, Masmoudian slaves were bewil-

deringly referred to as “maid” and “valet.” When the British

left, foreign activity in Port-Au-Wazz dwindled to the humdrum

plotting of consuls and ambassadors and spies. They kept the

same hours as the natives: Between the hours of one and four,

even the liveliest agent provocateur was napping.

Then, in 1977, King Musa suffered a stroke. His entire

right side was paralyzed and he was unable to speak. All eyes

turned to Crown Prince Rassan, the son of the King’s first

wife, who stood next in line for the golden head-rope.

As the years passed, the Masmoudian populace waited in

vain for the King’s recovery. They had little understanding of

the bachelor Rassan (thirty-five and not even one wife!), with
 34

his University of Southern California education and his mania

for modernization. It was Rassan’s bittersweet nostalgia for

his college days that inspired all this reconstruction, in

fact: If Mohammed couldn’t come to the mountain, then L.A.

would come to Masmoudia.

Rassan’s conduct in majlis was eccentric. In the old days,

if a man had come before the King claiming that his brother had

shamed the family name by stealing goats, King Musa might have

buried the defendant up to his neck in the sand. If the royal

prostate was acting up, he might place an inverted bowl over

the plaintiff’s naked buttocks with a rat inside; the rat would

mistake the man’s anus for the only exit and gnaw its way to

freedom. The King’s son, faced with the same complaint, would

tell the two brothers that their problems stemmed from feelings

of sibling rivalry. Thanks to his years of group therapy in the

U.S., his goal would be to get them to express their destruc-

tive emotions, purge their hostility, and sit down to discuss

the matter like adults. The first time the Prince put these be-

liefs to into practice, the accusing brother got rid of his

hostility by disemboweling his brother on the spot.

Under the Crown Prince, the foreign community of Port-Au-

Wazz stopped being a sleepy little windowbox of intrigue. Ras-

san needed money for his modernization programs, and Masmoudia

sat in the tender groin of a balance of power between Communism

 35

and Western diplomacy in the Middle East. Overnight, the capi-

tal’s one hotel flooded with aliens with clashing ideologies

and open checkbooks. The oil-rich Saudis ultimately outbid the

competition, trading vast sums of rials for the promise that

Rassan would abominate Communism and not build casinos. Crowds

of cosmopolitan hustlers arrived to spend his money -- after

convincing him to build a better hotel to house them. Rassan

soon acquired a reputation as an expensive but harmless whore.

Recently the Crown Prince had been overheard casually de-

bating the purchase of nuclear warheads as if they were a pair

of endtables. Privately, the Americans joked that a pair of ex-

ploding ICBM’s would be the perfect gift for a man who was

“crazy as a sack of assholes,” and international sentiment ran

along the same lines. Diplomats and salesmen alike thought Mas-

moudia would be better off as a crater. They were all convinced

that the island was good for exactly nothing; drilling in the

desert and offshore had yielded no oil, and Masmoudia’s only

export was rose attar, a uniquely vulgar essence, very popular

in India.

Nor was the Masmoudia terrain alluring. The northern por-

tion of the island —- one-third of its 130,000 square kilome-

ters -- was sand desert and gravel plain. The south was marsh

and loess plains bisected by two great wadis that joined in un-

holy flood during spring. Once a year, monsoon rains trans-

 36

formed the east into lurid jungle. Stretching east to west

across the center of Masmoudia were the Dar Loosh mountains,

where the Berbers lived. At the foot of the Dar Loosh were kas-

bah settlements; on the peaks were the cliff-squatters in their

ksars, and the burrowing cave-dwellers. From below, the north

flank of the range seemed jolted together like ghastly dragon

vertebrae.

Nomad herdsmen and sentinel armies of the Berber chiefs

roamed the crags. Barely tolerating the posturing of the Beni

Wazz royals, the Berbers had their own councils and leaders,

their heroes and saints. (One of these, Babas Umaloo, the “Fa-

ther of Shadows,” was rumored to be captivating all the moun-

tain people with his baraka of visions, healings, and rescues.)

Agriculturally self-sufficient, the Berbers met with the Mas-

moudian Arabs only to trade rose leaves, silver jewelry, blan-

kets, and slaves for coffee, sugar, and a cheap cotton cloth

dyed bright turquoise-blue, which their women sewed into loose

trousers the men wore under goat’s hair coats or billowing

striped dishdashas. Eventually the dye would get into their

skin and tint their legs a rather fetching blue.

 37

Chapter Four

WOMEN’S QUARTERS

“Groovy, we are grooving and mind-blowing. Well, I wet my

pants I laughing so hard.”

In the women’s palace, overlooking the muddled Port-Au-

Wazz harbor, Rassan’s sister the Princess Awisha was practicing

American conversation, circa 1968 and her former roommate Con-

nor Blakey.

In the great tradition of Arab hospitality, and in tender

memory of Connor’s finicky tastes, the Princess had flown in a

typical college girl’s buffet, or what she could remember of

it, by special chartered jet: cases of coffee-flavored yogurt,

cottage cheese, and TRIM diet soda. (The latter had been con-

fiscated at the airport because the soda company was deemed to

be pro-Israel.) Connor herself was about to arrive on the

weekly plane from Cairo.

Awisha awaited her friend’s appearance with mounting ex-

citement. Connor represented one of two experiences that had

lit up the Princess’s life: the Girl Scouts, and Sarah Lawrence

College. A natural athlete, Awisha was squat, compact, and ver-

satile; at twelve, she marched in the Birth of the Prophet Pa-

rade as national girls’ champion in swimming, archery, gymnas-

 38

tics, marksmanship, and track. King Musa had watched with tears

of pride as his daughter’s tangerine Scout bandanna flickered

in the hot eastern wind off the desert, her young lips pressed

together, her faint mustache drenched in sweat, her robust legs

pumping under her brown gabardine skirt. A year later, when a

rich ruby drop of blood seeped through her Scout uniform to

herald her womanhood, she joined the royal women huddled in-

doors for a life term in purdah.

Born to be physically brisk, Awisha had to learn a strange

new ballet of stillness, waiting, reclining, to the gazelle’s

lesson of dip, scurry, and glide. Upholstered in petticoats and

dresses, caftans, aprons, and veils, she was rarely allowed

outside the walls of the women’s palace. Then she sat, envel-

oped by fabric, behind a chauffeur, and saw the world as if

through a mattress. The only physical education was to prepare

her for the marriage bed -- mainly lessons in submissive roll-

ing and lolling, and some exercise of interior muscles – and to

transform her into an ethereal creature. The transformation

didn’t quite take: Awisha became merely meek.

At first she wasn’t aware that she was miserable. Then, in

1969, her father sent her for an American education to Bronx-

ville, New York. For nine heady months she immersed herself in

basketball, tennis, wrestling, karate, acrobatics, and hand-

ball. An unfortunate incident involving her roommate resulted

 39

in her being removed from school; she returned to Masmoudia and

seclusion. For the next ten years she waited and glided and

lounged and bore the fruit of her husband’s occasional visits

to her bed.

At twenty-nine, after the birth of her third child, her

spirit finally made a leap to freedom. Early one morning her

mother-in-law discovered the Princess in the men’s reception

salon, naked except for a cloak, chattering disconnectedly and

taking potshots with a rifle out the window at the peacocks.

Prince Azadin, her husband, brought in a modern doctor,

providing him with equipment, three comely slave-boys, and an

office in the central palace. He was escorted to the women’s

quarters, where all the women were locked in their rooms except

Awisha, who was walking on her hands in the garden. The doctor

promptly started her on a course of tranquilizers and shock

treatments.

The following week, as the Princess lay in a profound

sleep disturbed only by flashes of intelligence, the Queen

Mother brought in a sehúra, who threw herbs and vermin on a

smoking brazier, slew a horned sheep and spat a piece of its

liver down the Awisha’s throat. Soon the Princess was back on

her feet, pelvis nudged slightly forward in obedient imitation

of birds and boats, traveling from cushion to cushion along the

limitless horizon of carpets.

 40

Now Awisha could feel the manic energy rising again. Con-

nor’s plane, due in at two a.m., had not arrived by dawn. The

Princess paced the corridors, playing billiards, pasting reci-

pes in her scrapbook, dancing with her scarves from Paris, tak-

ing baths and designing a few dresses for herself. Aunts, sis-

ters, cousins, children, and slaves steered clear of her in

nervous whispering waves as she broke into a trot up and down

the corridors. Returning to the billiards table, Awisha played

a game of three-cushion caroms by herself in the vast central

reception hall.

By noon Connor’s plane had still not come. Awisha ad-

dressed the object ball, bisected the angle with her cue, and

crouched delicately for a running english shot, her black veil

stamped with gold stars sweeping over her poised elbow. She

tossed the glittering net behind her shoulder, narrowing her

kohl-smudged eyes.

At three o’clock the chauffeur returned from a fourth fu-

tile trip to airport to find the women’s quarters in an uproar.

The Princess had been vaulting settees and chinning herself on

the high window sills, bouncing around the central hall like

one of her cue balls. The American doctor gave her a massive

barbiturate, before returning to his boy-strewn quarters in

 41

time for a nap; and the children and the hareem were sent east

to the Spring Palace at Ajuz’.

Awisha curled, whimpering, on a divan in the empty women’s

reception salon, and beckoned to a young slave-girl. Shammar

slipped under the sheepskin blanket and bit her mistress’s

breast consolingly. Looking out the north window, over the ten-

foot wall surrounding the women’s palace, all the Princess

could see of the city were the derricks and cranes. Where is

Connor? she wondered, before her eyes finally closed.

 42

Chapter Five

TWO ROOMMATES

The new moon enshrouded the women’s palace in darkness.

Toting her cat’s cage, Connor followed the chauffeur up the

marble steps to the immense brass-studded door. Inside the pal-

ace a servant woke Awisha from her barbiturate-laden sleep.

As Connor stepped into the foyer, a wave of embroidered fabrics

and pearls hit her. Dropping the cage, she stumbled into the

arms of her old roommate, who assaulted her with kisses. Little

maidens in silk shifts clapped and giggled, sprinkling the

visitor with Masmoudian Rose perfume.

“Everything is yours,” Awisha cried. “I am the guest and

you are the real mistress of this house. Oh Connor, I’m so

happy to see you I wet my pants!”

“Same old Wishy,” Connor said.

“You remember what you call me? Same old ‘butt-face’!”

Awisha laughed wildly.

“Can you make them stop spritzing me with that horrible

dime-store stuff and point me to a bath?”

The Princess clapped her hands and jabbered something in

Arabic; instantly the luggage and the chauffeur disappeared.

The remaining nymphs were dispatched to prepare the fire in the

 43

bath, Simone was dispatched to the kitchen, and Awisha led Con-

nor into the women’s reception salon, which had been recently

redecorated in purple, gold, and white. “Louis Quinze?” Connor

eyed the antique reproductions, which struck her as closer to

Louise Katz.

“My husband likes modern things. Please sit down.”

“Where is the Prince, anyhow? In bed?”

“Oh no, he does not live here. This is the women’s house,

but you and I are all the women here now. The others are gone

to the Spring Palace. My husband, he lives with the other men

in the big palace across the city. If he comes to see me he

comes to the other side of this house to the salon where we re-

ceive men, and there is also a bedroom for us there if he wants

to ‘ball.’ See, I don’t forget your expressions!”

“It’s like dorm life in the fifties,” Connor remarked. It

didn’t bode well, no men. Oh, well. Send in the eunuchs, she

thought.

“Would you care for some cottage cheese from California?”

“Thanks, I’m not hungry.”

They sat: Connor in green wolverine, a football jersey,

gaucho pants tucked into tall chamois boots, one leg sprawled

over the arm of a rococo loveseat, tapping her teeth with a

thumbnail; Awisha below her on an ottoman, in a yellow satin

caftan under a gossamer embroidered mantle girdled in gold, her

 44

black hair loose and snarled down her broad back. In a palace

on a desert island, surrounded by French furniture that looked

like half-digested petits-fours, sheltered by an ancient ceil-

ing of dizzifying carved arabesques twined with verses from the

Koran in green, gilt, and scarlet; two women too different for

words, remembering in silence the first day they had met.

King Musa had learned about Sarah Lawrence College from a

beautiful American journalist, who had come to Masmoudia in the

‘50’s to research a magazine article on whether Arab sheikhs

made good lovers. Even after her article rated the King’s amo-

rous performance far below the sheikhs of the Lower Gulf, Musa

still pined for her and never stopped sending her presents.

In his love’s memory, he decided to send his eldest daugh-

ter Awisha to Sarah Lawrence, after the girl married his nephew

Azadin. Since Islamic custom provided a waiting period between

the wedding and the marriage bed that could last anywhere from

ten minutes to ten years, depending on the parents’ decision.

Thus the consummation of Awisha’s marriage with her cousin was

postponed until he finished his studies at the University of

Oklahoma. Awisha was a virgin, albeit a married one, when she

joined the Sarah Lawrence class of ’69 as a junior.

A Masmoudian intelligence agent met Awisha at the New York

airport and drove her to the campus in Bronxville. She had been
 45

assigned a double room in Twill House, a charming Tudor cottage

that had once been a private home and now served as a dormitory

for nineteen girls. Awisha’s room was on the second floor. The

agent deposited her luggage there, bowed, and left. Then he hid

in the bushes to watch the arriving students and make his re-

port on the Princess’s future companions.

Awisha sat on one of two unmade cots, dazed with jet-lag,

kohl dust mingling with international grime under her eyes.

Hives dotted her arms; she was allergic to the polyester in her

modern travel outfit. Her face bubbled with acne from the sev-

eral baskets of courtesy chocolates she’d eaten during two days

of travel. The candy had kept her from screaming: She had never

flown before. The stewardesses had fussed over her, offering

her as many meals as she wanted, sewing the zipper on her skirt

shut when it burst. (Later, in the galley, they snickered

amongst themselves about how little like a Princess she

looked.)

Two cots, an open casement window, a delicate breeze,

girls shrieking recognition, Volkswagens throbbing. Awisha

opened one of her steamer trunks, then slumped back heav-

ily on her bed, gaping, as her new roommate kicked luggage

across the threshold. A rich aroma of suntan lotion filled

the room. The girl’s legs were endless, and naked from her

square-toed pumps to the hem of her micro-miniskirt. Her

 46

hips were encircled by a mod vinyl target belt. Her cara-

mel-colored hair swung to her waist. Her arms, covered in

livid scratches, tried to restrain a monstrous spotted

rabbit from lunging for his freedom.

“Ack! Quit it! He’s just hyped up on all the cookies

he ate in the car. Hello, I’m Connor and this is Rabbit

Penn Warren.”

She lowered the beast to the floor. He took two lum-

bering hops, sailing into Awisha’s open trunk.

“Rabbits are very clean animals and you can house-

train them in no time at all. People think they’re stupid

but really, they don’t care what anybody thinks, which is

so smart, right? You know, rabbits are never supposed to

make any sound their whole lives except when they die,

they scream. But R.P.W. makes this sound, a very faint

sort of honking noise, when he’s aroused-–it’s like when

you press the tummy of one of those stuffed animals. Whoa.

I hope you’re not very fond of that dress in there. Is it

a dress? Oh, is this one of those veils you wear over your

face?”

“No,” said Awisha carefully. This was her first

American conversation. “He is a garment.”

“Well, why don’t I buy it from you, because, I speak

from experience, R.P.’s wee-wee does not come out of silk

 47

even if you dry-clean it. Looks like it soaked through

this, too. What is it, a skirt? Pretty see-through.”

“Yes. She is a veil.”

“Oh God, he’s really done his monsoon number all over

everything in here. Bad rab. Bad, bad bun. Listen, I’ll

buy the whole trunk from you and we’ll just empty it out

and put cat litter in it. Even if you shut it now he’ll

gnaw through the lock to get back inside, because now he

considers it his personal john. They always return to the

first place they go. Anyway, you won’t have to wear a veil

around here. The townies are scared to death of us. I’ve

got to get out of these grungy clothes.” Plucking off her

miniskirt -- she was not wearing any underwear -- she put

on a pair of ragged dungarees with holes on each thigh and

a loose cotton shirt the Princess recognized as customary

attire for the lowest caste of Pakistani laborers.

“Aren’t you going to change?” asked Connor.

The upheaval implied by this question left the Prin-

cess speechless.

“Well, I guess you’re okay as you are,” said Connor,

her nostrils flaring. Rabbit Penn Warren was munching on a

bureau leg. “We’re supposed to be at an Orientation meet-

ing in ten minutes, so let’s go into town until it’s over.

I don’t have to call you Your Highness or anything, do I?”

 48

“No, please. I must rest.”

“Let’s go find a bar and get crazy.”

Awisha followed her out. Connor was man; in Mas-

moudia, only the men were so tall, slender, and deaf to

protest.

They met another girl in the hall. “We’re going out

for a beer at Mike’s, Ronda. Come with?”

The three stopped to look into the next room, where a

girl in a top hat and whiteface clown makeup was juggling

her naked breasts in front of the window. “What are you

doing, Wren?” Ronda asked.

“There’s a man out there in the bushes.” Wren ma-

jored in children’s theater. “I’m entertaining him.”

“Come join us at Mike’s when you’re done.”

Mike’s was very dark. They were the only women there.

The town males huddled around the bar and pooltable, cast-

ing resentful looks at the girls’ booth.

“Wishy is a weal woyal pwincess fwom Awabia!” Connor

called to Ronda over the jukebox music.

“She wooks wike a dwowned wat,” Ronda replied. “Is

she buying our beer?”

Unable to understand the strange collegiate dialect,

Awisha examined her glass of amber liquid crowned with

foam. It was clearly alcoholic, forbidden by her religion.

 49

She drained the glass with the whole and perfect thirst of

an athlete and was instantly sheathed in sweat, her skin

flushing a rosy orange.

Wren arrived, radiant in a velvet renaissance gown,

two cloth orchids tucked in her golden Botticelli hair.

“You all look wonderful.” She had taken LSD two hours ear-

lier. “This is going to be the most beautiful year.”

“One thing I know about Arabs,” Connor said. “If you

admire something of theirs, they have to give it to you.

Watch. Why, Awisha, what a terrific polyester suit you’re

wearing, I just love it.”

“Ignore them.” Wren reached across the table and cov-

ered Awisha’s hand. “You have your own music, so you just

flow. Honestly, Connor, can’t you stop being ruthless for

one minute?”

“We’re a really grabby bunch, our generation.” Connor

explained to her new roommate. “We were all born with

Pluto in Leo.”

Stoned-out Wren was staring at her hand next to Awi-

sha’s. “Oh, wow! Look at our two hands! Mine is so white

and hers is like, like. . .”

“Lox,” Ronda said.

 50

The next day, the Princess joined twelve other for-

eign exchange students for tea with the Dean, Mrs.

Duckworth.

“We have high hopes for you, Miss Wazz,” Dean

Duckworth drew her aside. “We realize that women in a Mos-

lem society don’t enjoy a great amount of personal free-

dom, but there are many ways of serving or leading a com-

munity without overstepping one’s bounds, and we’re hoping

to give you a core of strength, an individuality, that you

can always draw upon. If there was ever a plane crash or

. . . or a sandstorm that removed the male heirs, you’d be

Queen of your people, and we have to make you equal to the

task. I selected Connor Blakey to be your roommate, be-

cause her family has always produced strong women leaders.

She’ll help you over the bumps and hurdles—-you’ll be a

special project of sorts for her. Connor knows a great

deal about your culture; she took a course last year in

Oriental Mysticism, and I know they covered the Middle

East in the second term.”

Next Awisha had a meeting with her faculty advisor,

who told her she’d enrolled in too many sports classes. He

advised her to eliminate psychology, Ibsen, the American

Civil War, and city architecture. That left Queens of the

Nineteenth Century, and sports, a program that acknowl-

 51

edged Awisha’s individual strengths while preparing her

for leadership in the nineteenth century in the event of a

sandstorm.

Her advisor was a very nice man, clean-shaven, prema-

turely bald, with an air of youthful apathy. When he

learned who Awisha’s roommate was, he grew wistful. “I was

her advisor last year. She is quite. . . something,” he

sighed. “An odd choice for a roommate. Dean Duckworth must

be out of her tree. Oh well, I’m confident Miss Blakey

will entertain you. Just be careful not to leave your

crown lying around.” He winked.

Later, when Awisha returned to Twill House, she found

a sign on her closed door that said “DO NOT INTERRUPTUS

COITUS.” Awisha opened the door.

Rabbit Penn Warren popped his head up from her trunk

and glared indignantly at her. Connor lay on the bed, her

long legs wrapped around the bearded head of her new fac-

ulty advisor. “God, Wishy, can’t you read English?”

Awisha closed the door and walked into town to

Mike’s, where the pool table reminded her of home and the

hareem, so far away. She craved a beer to drown her heart-

break: She was in love with Connor.

When she returned to Twill House later that night, she

had won $30. (Gambling was against her religion, but it

 52

seemed to be the only way to get the townies to play with

her.) Up in a third-floor window, Wren was just beginning

the evening performance for the man in the bushes, accom-

panied by two equally naked friends on flute and guitar.

Weeks later, a security guard discovered the Mas-

moudian intelligence agent in an advanced state of starva-

tion under the hedges outside Twill House; the wretch was

deported.

Awisha soon settled into her new life. On weekdays,

she studied a little and trained in every sport she

wanted; on weekends, when other girls had dates or mesca-

line trips, she was happy playing the locals at Mike’s for

beer or a few bills. However, once Connor started coming

along to the bar “to unnerve the competition,” things took

a downward turn. Lounging over a crucial pocket in the ta-

ble, in scotch-tape miniskirts, her legs swinging in mod

yellow tights, she downed Black Russians and then offered

her opinions on pool: ”I don’t see the fun of it. I mean,

everyone takes their little stick and tries to cram their

little balls into a hole, and meanwhile everybody else is

outside getting the real thing. I mean, why would anyone

spend their time doing metaphor when they could be doing

 53

IT?” After a few such episodes, Awisha became persona non

grata at Mike’s.

But it was, as Wren predicted, a wonderful year,

filled with stirring activism and artistic endeavor. There

was a big fast: upset about the famine in Africa, students

went for a week without eating in the cafeteria, demanding

that the money saved by the administration be sent to the

victims. (Most of the school preferred “The Coachman’s

Grill” in town to the cafeteria’s jello and “mystery meat”

anyway.) To protest the war in Vietnam, Ronda composed a

cantata without words for the college chorus entitled

“Fifty Tongueless Peasants” that got a write-up in the

Village Voice. After Wren Ellis acquired a turtledove,

which Rabbit Penn Warren maimed, she dyed half her pubic

hair platinum and posed nude for a poster, implying she

would ball any guy who dodged the draft. Then, in a freak

blizzard, Twill House was snowed in for days, and Connor

Blakey revealed she had been keeping a young man in the

attic for just such an occasion.

There was a black-magic coven for girls without dates

on Saturday nights, while the Bible enjoyed a rapturous

revival among the acidheads; one senior even got stigmata.

Then Ronda led a protest against “elitist alumnae, deca-

dent faculty, and spineless bookkeepers.” A steamy love

 54

triangle involving Connor and two teachers from the thea-

ter department ended in Mr. Sadler and Mr. Buck splitting

up after twelve years of togetherness; and in a “Battle of

the Sexes” wrestling match, Princess Awisha Beni Wazz de-

feated a Yalie.

In the spring, Connor’s fancy turned to black musi-

cians. One of her lovers, learning of Awisha’s prowess at

pool, arranged a billiards match between Awisha and a

player of some fame in Harlem. To protect the Princess’

anonymity, Connor covered her in her veil. “It’ll psyche

‘em out,” Connor said, her judgment somewhat warped by the

potent reefer her musician brought her. “We’ll call you

the Veiled One.”

At first Awisha was frightened to leave behind her

cozy suburban set-up in Bronxville, but when she walked

into the warm smoky room in Harlem and found herself sur-

rounded by deferential opaque black faces like the slaves’

back home, she relaxed.

Though Connor started things off on the wrong note,

complaining that there were no Black Russians to be had,

and Awisha’s dense veil impaired her vision, the Princess

began to win. While Connor’s lover overdosed in the toi-

let, Awisha won a few more games and a great deal of

money. After she politely said goodnight to her opponent

 55

and his friends, the evening more or less hurtled down-

hill.

The next morning, when New York policemen picked up

the two girls on the steps of an abandoned tenement build-

ing in North Harlem, an unveiled Awisha was sobbing over

her pool cue, which had been broken into eight pieces.

Connor’s ocelot coat had been stolen, though she was too

stoned to feel the cold.

Shortly after the New York newspapers broke their

stories about “The Poolshark Princess” and “The Hustler

From The Harem,” the Masmoudian ambassador arrived by or-

der of His Majesty King Musa at Twill House. As he waited

downstairs in the official limousine, Awisha packed for

the jet flight home. The phone rang,: long-distance from

Oklahoma. Awisha listened meekly. After hanging up, she

sighed to Connor, “My husband will not divorce me, thanks

to God.”

“It’s a raw deal, butt-face.” Connor had give up try-

ing to convince her roommate to go underground. She sat

sprawled in her study chair, her thumbnail tapping her

teeth, as Awisha hugged her knees tightly to her chest on

her stripped bed, swallowing hard on the hopeless longings

that lodged in her throat. Rabbit Penn Warren made a faint

sort of honking noise and clawed frantically at the locked

 56

steamer trunk, then gave up and launched a pond of murky

yellow urine at its base.

Ten years later, the reunited roommates lounged in a

shallow tiled bath, talking through roiling masses of

steam. Three maids massaged the dirt off the American

limbs with crepe cloths, awed by the foreigner’s extreme

length and slimness, as well as by the fresh plum-colored

bruises on her knees. The skin covering Connor’s belly was

so smooth it was hard to believe there were vital organs

conspiring beneath.

“It is ten years and you do not change, darling.”

Sadly Awisha gazed down at her own body; after the births

of three children, it was like a cloth hastily wadded af-

ter vigorous use.

The maids sluiced Connor with hot water. “I feel like

I’m in a car wash,” she said. “All through, girls?”

The trio transferred their ministry to their mis-

tress. Connor sat letting her pores bloom in the steam.

“Awisha?”

The Princess tensed. Connor never called her by her

formal name. “Yes?” Through the mist she could make out a

pair of eyes searching for the perfect place to make an

incision.
 57

“I’ve just got to have a slave.”

Relieved, Awisha gestured toward the three sylph-like

maids scrubbing her back. “Which one do you like?”

“Don’t be so kinky. I want a man.”

“But there are no men here.”

“I don’t mean just for one night. I want one of my

own. This is a take-home order. Money is no object, of

course.”

Her friend’s determined tone made Awisha tense up

again. “My brother the Crown Prince has forbidded slavery

in this country.”

“Bonded servants, whatever you call them, I know

you’ve got them. I promise I won’t tell the UN. I only

want one, for God’s sake.”

The Princess asked cautiously, “But why?”

“I want to have sex with him.” Connor hoped Wishy

wasn’t going to make this difficult.

“My husband will not like this. He wants interna-

tional people they are thinking we are very modern here

and we have no slaves.”

The steam was beginning to make Connor irritable.

“Now that you mention it, the rest of the world has re-

frained from buying and selling human beings for the past

hundred years.”
 58

“But we are not the only country! Many still have

slaves and say nothing.”

“Well, bondage must have its good points. Far be it

from me to criticize.” Connor stood dizzily. “Wishy, I’m

melting in here.”

The floor of the women’s sleeping chamber was covered

by opulent carpets, layered to such softness that Connor

felt as if she were treading an intricate crimson fog. The

slave-girls flitted about, creating mounds of cushions

like plump clouds for Awisha and Connor to lie upon. Silky

spreads billowed and settled over them. Then the little

maids blew out the tapers; spinning themselves inside

blankets against the far wall, they curled together and

slept. Simone had already puked on her very own brocade

pillow.

“You really mean it?” Connor’s voice cut through the

darkness. “I can have one?”

“You are my friend, you are my guest.” Awisha felt

waves of apprehension, as if the carpets were undulating

beneath her. “It is my delight to give you every enjoy-

ing.”

“To sleep with whenever I want?”

 59

“You may do anything to him. It is why they are

slaves.”

“I want a tall one. And he should be about my age or

a little younger, strong but not husky, and built big but

not jumbo. Oh!--and long black eyelashes would be great.”

“If God wills it.” Awisha was miserable, and groped

for her pills.

“A Libra, if possible,” said Connor.

 60

Chapter Six

MAJLIS

Outside the central palace, the clocktower struck

four; the figurine of the King, falcon, and camel trundled

out, listing dangerously as it rounded the track; and the

afternoon session of majlis began.

At the far end of the reception hall, Crown Prince

Rassan sat surrounded by a crowd of male relatives clad in

the white robes, black headcloths, and gold mantles of the

ruling family, all bearing the same cheeky, droopy facial

traits of the Beni Wazz. The huge portrait of King Musa

stared down over them with the air of a disappointed chip-

munk. Though modern couches lined the white marble walls

for the international bankers and hustlers, the Masmoudi-

ans preferred to squat on the splendid carpets spanning

the vast floor. Servants moved about noiselessly, pouring

coffee as soldiers shivered in the arctic temperature.

Supplicants were instructed to speak loudly to be heard

over the roar of the outdoor generator that powered the

palace air-conditioning system.

As an old man slowly set out on his long journey up

the carpets to the throne, the venerable slave Suleiman

 61

leaned over and whispered into the left ear of the King’s

son. This next petitioner was a poor stone-mason from

Port-Au-Wazz, he said, rattling off the names of the man’s

ancestors, wife, fourteen children, and the number of

times he had been to majlis before.

The stone-mason saluted the Crown Prince. “God’s

peace on Your Royal Highness, may your life be long, and

God’s peace on your family and on His Majesty the King,

Commander of the Faithful, Protector of the Poor.” After

an exchange of salutations and some brief gossip about the

old man’s neighborhood, the mason mentioned that he did

not have enough money to pay for his son’s circumcision

ceremony. Rassan wished God’s favor on his son’s day of

manhood, promising him the money he needed, then mentioned

that the old man’s neighborhood, where his family had

lived for two hundred years, was about to be razed to make

way for a soccer stadium. The mason and his family would

be moved into a modern villa with a swimming pool provided

at no cost, where he could live and prosper to the end of

his days, God willing.

The next petitioner was an American salesman, Mister

Ralph Shunt. He complimented the Prince on his makeover of

the capital. “Reminds me of Los Angeles, without the free-

 62

ways and smog.” Rassan beamed. Then Mr. Shunt brought up

the subject of hot-air balloon transportation.

The third petitioner was a pesky Dutch bank manager

who, after salutations and chitchat, demanded to know why

the Crown hadn’t met its latest payments on the loan for

the King Musa Route One, the new freeway under construc-

tion.

Connor waited the better part of the day for the se-

dated Princess to wake up. None of the maids except the

one called Shammar spoke any English, and all the girl

could offer was more food or another bath to pass the

time. Less than thrilled her choices of walking in the or-

chard, pedaling an exercycle, playing pool, or watching

old movies on the video-cassette machine, Connor finally

decided to go for a walk in town. Before anyone could stop

her, she was out the door.

As she passed the guards and turned onto a frangi-

pani-lined boulevard, she noticed a black fellow in a long

white shift following her at a careful ten paces. Connor

hailed a petit-taxi. “Kasbah,” she told the driver, and

they sped off, leaving the crestfallen slave enveloped in

clouds of exhaust.
 63

Through the taxi window Connor saw the sights of

Port-Au-Wazz: the fort and the Ferris wheel, the steam-

shovels and minarets, the skeletons of the half-completed

flyovers, the chasms of the half-excavated tunnels, the

towering scaffolding around the Trade Center with workers’

jumbled shacks at its base, the crooked wing of the drive-

in movie screen next to the camel market.

Two clacking storks careened overhead, following her

taxi all the way to the souk, where the driver left her

off. The kasbah had long since been bulldozed.

She proceeded on foot through the arched portal to

the market. A canopy of woven palm fronds shaded the nar-

row avenue of shops and stalls; a crowd of peddlers,

black-swathed women, porters and donkeys parted as she

came through. Shopkeepers leaned out over their counters

to stare at her outrageous legs. Connor paused to listen

to the quaint singsong of little boys chanting Koran

verses inside a mosque.

Suddenly the recitation stopped. A flurry of old men

burst from the mosque and started beating her with sticks;

the little boys swarmed about throwing stones at the

Christian slut-sorceress. “Ow!” Connor pulled an anti-

mugger spray disguised as a ballpoint pen from her purse.

After a small noxious explosion, the old men stumbled

 64

back, temporarily blinded and mildly paralyzed, and the

screaming children fled.

Rubbing her mauled arms and frowning, Connor walked

on. The marketplace was suddenly vacant, she noticed. She

paused and looked behind her: All the shops were closed

and everyone was hiding inside.

“Hello you crazy too much!” She wheeled around

again. The tawny little man with the gray beard and the

hole in one cheek she’d met on the plane was standing

there. “Why not you for saying your friend Habib and you

walking your self in souk with bad peoples?”

“Oh Habib,” Connor breathed. “I’m so glad I ran into

you!” His companion, the boy with the snakish lock of ra-

ven hair flowing from the back of his shaved skull, hov-

ered behind him. He grinned, revealing four tangled gold

teeth. “Hi there,” Connor said.

“You see Blek! His name Blek!” Habib laughed and ca-

pered. “We going now, show you souk and all city.”

“Did you see what they did to me? All I wanted was to

come in here and buy something, for God’s sake.”

“Eat money,” said Blek.

Habib giggled. “He know only two words English.”

Connor linked arms with her new blue-legged friends.

“Let’s go, boys.”

 65

“I see you’ve met my peerless guide Habib,” said Mal-

colm Pugh.

They ran into the scientist on King Musa Boulevard in

front of the central palace, where he’d just finished pay-

ing his respects to the Crown Prince in majlis before

heading back to the mountains to complete his survey. “Ah,

been to the souk, have you? Good lord, did you go in there

dressed like that? Must have given them quite a turn.”

Habib explained, “Her mind not with her today. Mind

like knee.”

“Habib has been a peach,” she said. As they moved to

the fountain under the clocktower’s shade, Connor looked

over her shoulder for Blek. He was standing on one leg

across the street, facing into a bit of abrasive wind

which had just sprung up. “Habib got all my dollars

changed to rials, and we bought this camel tether I

thought would make a cute belt. Look at this fabulous

curved dagger I bought from a guy with one hand. Some ri-

diculous old men attacked me with sticks--didn’t I tell

you I attract this stuff? I’ve got a bum aura. What’s

wrong with how I’m dressed?”

“Nothing.” The scientist’s eyes twinkled. “The Arabs

fancy a touch of mystique in a woman, that’s all.”

 66

“It’s time they came out of the Middle Ages,” Connor

said hotly. “We have no mystique, we’re just people.” The

sun disappeared suddenly, turning the sky a mean ochre. A

burst of violent wind lifted her gauzy tent-dress; all

that kept it on her body the strings crisscrossed over her

bare back. “But I see you’ve gone native,” she noted.

Like Habib and Blek, Pugh was dressed in a grown goat’s-

hair coat, turquoise headcloth and trousers. Sand and dust

writhed like serpents around his pointed yellow slippers.

“Bad wind coming,” said Habib.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to hijack Habib from you, Miss

Blakey. We’ve got to buy several months’ supplies for our

trip to the Dar Loosh mountains tomorrow.” The scientist

shook her hand.

“Bye.” As Connor gave Habib her hand, he turned it

over, examining the lines on her palm. “You meet man what

you dream, here in Masmoudia!”

“Habib reads palms, too,” said Mal Pugh.

“Why does he have a hole in his cheek?

“Comes from a very religious tribe. They like to mu-

tilate themselves at the height of trance. It’s rather fun

to watch. Habib’s a bloody marvel, really. He can get you

anything, take you anywhere, knows everybody, and often

has been seen in two places at once.” He leaned in. “Also

 67

number one sahab in the black market. Might be the sort of

chap you could ask to bring you a slave.”

”I’ll keep it mind.” In case Awisha’s husband didn’t

pan out.

Blek’s rope of hair flapped wildly. “Bad wind, we

go!” cried Habib. The men sprinted away to the souk. Then

the sandstorm drove down, hurled high the fountain spray,

and slapped wet sand all over Connor as she reached the

marble steps of the central palace.

Prince Azadin Beni Wazz, Minister of Defense and

Chief of Protocol and Police, left his furniture showroom,

sped his Thunderbird through the streets, and made it to

his office in the palace just before the storm descended.

Heedless of the sand seething on the windows and the

blustery air conditioning, he tenderly unwrapped the bun-

dles of shares which had just arrived from the printer. In

green and gold, English and Arabic, worth one thousand ri-

als apiece, here were the share certificates for the King

Musa Water Utility Project to harness the two great wadis

that surged from the Dar Loosh mountains. Here too were

the shares for the new Wazzco shipping firm; the ones for

the real estate company formed by Azadin with all the

other sons of the King’s third wife; and those for the new
 68

Popular People’s Bank of Masmoudia. Here were the shares

for Azadin’s pet enterprise, Kurry King, a projected chain

of fast-food parlors for the imported foreign labor force.

The Prince had already signed a contract with Blakey Big

Fry International for the Masmoudian rights to their bur-

ger franchise, and they were sending him skilled manage-

ment from the U.S. to oversee the openings of both the

Juicy Jack and the Kurry King chains.

He phoned his German broker at the new Masmoudian

stock exchange. “Buy two hundred shares of Kurry King.”

“Your Highness, no such company is listed on the ex-

change.”

“I have the shares here in my office. I will send my

steward to you with them.”

He counted off two hundred Kurry King certificates

and dispatched his trusted steward Sidi Messoud to the

stock market.

Prince Azadin never ceased getting ideas for making

money —- when he was driving, praying, hunting, at majlis

or at the baths, making love, even when he was asleep. (He

dreamed often about fish, and fish meant money.) This

morning at the baths, as he was having his body hair re-

moved, he’d gotten the idea to close his furniture show-

room, dismiss the employees for the day, and pocket the
 69

payroll money. Such a beautiful, simple idea would never

have entered the pathetic effete mind of an American busi-

nessman.

Azadin loathed America as violently as his cousin the

Crown Prince yearned for it; his own college experience,

as a business major at the University of Oklahoma, had

been torturous. Despite his eagerness and initial apti-

tude, he was forever getting lost in the American theories

of business. He’d stride forcefully into a concept, only

to panic, as if he was stranded in a vast labyrinthine

palace not of Arab design, lacking a central courtyard by

which to orient oneself. When he failed to pass a single

course, his family was forced to build a new lake for the

rowing team to ensure Azadin a diploma.” But Azadin knew

the problem was: He thought like an Arab. Whenever he

tried to think like an American, he foundered.

Azadin was the busiest man in Masmoudia. Struggling

to solve the Crown’s most critical financial problems (the

new Popular People’s Bank could not charge interest on

loans because the Prophet Mohammed forbade usury), he had

another golden idea. The bank could turn a profit to the

Crown while helping to boost the real estate market! His

cousin Rassan’s current policy increased the standard of

living by donating new villas to the people, who could not

 70

possibly afford the switch to modern housing. What the

bank should do was loan them the money, at no interest, to

buy villas from the Crown, on the condition that they sell

them the next week for a higher price. They could pay off

the loan with the profit, and the higher price of housing

would force up the real estate market, which would benefit

the Crown Prince’s real estate company managing all these

purchases and sales —-

Changing tracks mid-thought, Azadin drew up a list of

requested missiles to present to the French delegation

when it arrived next week. He started multiplying each

item in France’s missiles force by two when the guards

brought in the beautiful American assassin.

Examining the confiscated dagger and anti-mugger

spray, Azadin dismissed the guards and clapped his hands

for some tea for his prisoner, who was shivering with cold

and rage. Her hair was matted with wet sand and one knee

was scraped and bleeding above day-old bruises on a long

creamy shin; there had evidently been a struggle when she

tried to enter majlis.

She scanned the office. “The joint is teeming with

these butt-faces,” she muttered, noting Azadin’s resem-

blance to Awisha and the King, whose photograph hung above

the Prince’s desk.

 71

“You have upset all my men.” Azadin attempted a teas-

ing, seductive expression, confident his robes hid his

paunch and his headcloth covered his bald spot; the plat-

form boots from his own shoe store made the London show-

girls swear he was sexy. “The royal majlis is forbidden to

women.”

“My Aunt Packard Blakey always says that men want to

keep women out of the room because they’re afraid we’ll

start laughing. Listen, we know what you’re doing with the

money and the power. You’re putting it in your mouth,

you’re throwing it at each other, you’re smearing it on

the wall. And when you get all tired and cranky we have to

march in and put you to bed before you destroy the place.”

“Miss Blakey, I hope you will forgive us for today’s

accident, though you are very beautiful when you are an-

gry, and I hope you will stay on and perhaps learn to un-

derstand our customs--”

“There’s one custom I’d like to get in on.”

“When I look at such a beautiful woman,” Azadin

sighed, “I feel all this business and politics is non-

sense. I feel God has given us these gifts -— time, a

beautiful woman, a beautiful place, like our Samra desert

on the night of the full moon which I must show you —- He

gives us all these things and we use them badly.” The

 72

American woman seemed tired and overexcited and cranky, he

thought, as happened when women had not been paid enough

attention. He would do something for her later.

Meanwhile in majlis, the next petitioner, a young

blue-legged Radif tribesman, complained passionately about

explosions in the Dar Loosh mountains, poisons in the

wadis, and foreigners in the pastures. Before the Crown

Prince could explain about the wonderful dam the govern-

ment was building —- and the four converter stations which

would give all Masmoudians twelve million kilowatts of

electricity -- the young Radif drew a pistol from his

dirt-clotted cloak, crying “God is great!” and pulling the

trigger. The barrel exploded in his hand, taking off the

fingers that held the gun, which had been purchased that

morning from a Russian arms salesman who smelled horribly

of fish oil. The weapon fell to the carpet.

Interrupting the Minister of Defense’s meeting with

the beautiful American woman, the guards brought him the

assassin. Apologizing to Connor, Azadin had his chauffeur

drive her back to the women’s palace. He would be tied up

for a long time with the assassin. Since Crown Prince Ras-

san had abolished capital punishment, they would be hours

at battering their prisoner. There were also the guards to

 73

be flogged for having let the young man into majlis with a

gun.

Later that evening, Princess Awisha sat before her

husband in the salon where the women of the hareem re-

ceived male visitors. Vapors of mint and wormwood filled

the room as she tipped the gold spout and directed a long

skein of tea at the glass. The tea struck the rim of the

glass, splattering all over the tray and the charmeuse

dress Azadin had brought her from Paris.

What a pig! thought the Prince, fidgeting with his

robes on the spindly Louis XV chair. He hated to be alone

with her. The last time he had visited her, a month ago,

she would not stop tossing a round sugar cake in the air

and catching it, one-handed, then back and forth between

her hands, around her head down into a hand in her lap,

then straight up in the air with a spin on it to catch it

overhanded. The whole time she’d worn an expression of

disdainful superiority on her puffy face. After her numer-

ous breakdowns, she was barely presentable, but he didn’t

dare provoke her while her father the King was alive. Nor

could he divorce her until his uncle the King died, and

one could not take a second wife in this day and age.
 74

These days polygamy was considered bad form, like slavery

and gelding.

He slipped his tea. It was too hot; she had not even

tested it. He dashed it onto the rug. She seemed not to

notice. She did not offer him the plate of sugar cakes but

instead leaned back in the couch, folding her arms over

her stomach with its damp tea stains, absently gnawing on

her lips.

He asked after the health of their three children,

who were at the Spring Palace in Ajuz’ with the hareem.

“All are well, thank God,” she answered mechani-

cally.”

He had to look away from her knees drifting apart,

her ankles caving outwards so that her Italian high heels

pointed at each other. She was mad, insane.

She didn’t react as he talked about the assassination

attempt in majlis, the Berber problem, the troubling re-

ports about the Berbers’ new saint Babas Umaloo. Nor did

the state of the stock market or the debut of the new

television station the next evening seem to interest her.

“And how is your guest, the American?” he asked at last.

“She tried to come to majlis today. You must explain our

customs to her or there will be more embarrassing inci-

 75

dents. We must make certain that any foreign guest leaves

Masmoudia with happy impressions.”

The new hypnotic drug that Azadin’s American doctor

had given her that afternoon made it difficult to think;

Awisha would have preferred to fall back to sleep than to

sit having tea with her husband. She struggled to gather

her wits, then remembered her promise to Connor. “I would

like to make a gift to her. She wants to have a manser-

vant. I thought your steward might go to Tittawen and pick

out a suitable man. She wants one who is light-skinned and

tall, not too young, with dark eyelashes--“

If she were not the King’s daughter he would have

slapped her. “A love slave? Do you realize how it would

look to the international community if it were known?”

Masmoudian Intelligence had told him that his wife’s

friend was related to Blakey International, with whom he

had many important contracts. All he needed was for the

woman to report to her company’s magazines and newspapers

about the slave she bought in a Masmoudian souk. “And do

not mention to her the assassination attempt of today.

Port-Au-Wazz is not stable now. Take her to Ajuz’.” In the

hareem the crazy woman would forget her idea —- American

women didn’t know what they wanted. “She doesn’t want a

slave. She wants a man.” One night with a real man, and
 76

American women learned what it was they didn’t know they

wanted.

He pictured it: one night in the desert, in the Samra

sands, near Ajuz’, under a full moon like an unthreaded

pearl. He would give the American a gift she would not

forget.

“Go with her to Ajuz’ tomorrow,” he told his wife.

 77

Chapter Seven

TO THE SPRING PALACE AT AJUZ’

“What?”

“. . . .”

“I can’t hear you through that ridiculous veil.”

The Princess peeled back the two layers of georgette

to reveal puffy, unfocussed eyes. “My husband says no.”

“So what? We don’t need his permission.”

“But Connor, I can’t go against my husband.”

“What’s he going to do, throw you in the dungeon? As

far as I can tell, you’re already in the dungeon. Anyway,

weren’t you our school wrestling champ? You can get him

down on the mat and yank his face off any time it suits

you.”

“But darling, I have sweared by our God I will not

help you to have a slave.”

“Then I’ll go over his head. How about the King, is

he more enlightened?”

“My father, God make his life long, he is very sick.

He can’t even speak.” Awisha began to gnaw at her raw

lips.
 78

The royal sedan, followed by a military escort jeep,

traveled west on the fifteen completed kilometers of King

Musa Route One, then continued on the sand, following the

beach coastline.

Connor noticed the cat shedding profusely all over

the seat of the limousine. “I don’t think this climate is

going over big with Simone.” She turned to her friend.

“You don’t look at all happy with your life, Wishy. Why

don’t you divorce the guy, or take a lover? You could al-

ways buy a brace of slaves -— I’ll split it with you.”

If her marriage was unhappy, it was God’s will, Awi-

sha said. Besides, the only grounds for a woman divorcing

a man were sexual impotence, and even then he would keep

the children. If she were caught in adultery, she would be

stoned to death. “Our punishments are hard because God

wants us to be good. We are not so different from America:

We have laws so that people will try not to be bad, and we

have punishments if they do not try, yes? This is right?”

She rummaged in her little jeweled box for a pill to ele-

vate her mood.

“So long as it doesn’t apply to tourists. Is there a

doctor where we’re going?”

“No. Why, my friend?”

 79

“Good.” Connor snatched the little box of pills, low-

ered the window, and hurled it out. Tablets and capsules

twirled away and danced briefly on the windshield of the

jeep behind. Connor imagined some lucky Bedouin finding

the Dexedrines and making it to Mecca in half the usual

time. “You should see the expression on your face. Por-

trait of a junkie. I’m sure it’s taking all your royal re-

straint not to strangle me with your veil. Listen, those

pills are bad news. Think of them as unclean.”

“But the doctor says I must have these —-“

“Wish, you’re suffering from post-partum depression.

It’s fairly common to flip out after you have a baby. But

if it’s ten months later and you’re still living for your

next upper or downer, it’s the pills that are the problem.

Go ahead and take drugs if you want to get high, but don’t

take them because some doctor says you’re crazy.”

Awisha was already feeling better when they reached

the northwestern tip of the Masmoudian island. Transfer-

ring to Landrovers and jeeps and turning inland, they

crossed the upper corner of the Tannur, a cracked and peb-

bled plain of slag. From there the caravan moved on to the

Samra, the eastern desert, flat sandscape that rippled and

turned from gray to yellow, tufted by camelthorn. From

 80

time to time they saw a walled town off in the distance, a

cluster of nomads around a well.

The first few scrawny trees appeared, then meager

groves in the wandering sand. At last the dunes leveled

into a broad plain. Here, a sudden chaos of jostling date

palms and orchards of olive, orange, almond, and clove

trees crowded like an intoxicated mob around to Ajuz’s

wall, a thick rampart the same honey color as the soil.

Soldiers on horseback galloped out to meet them. Passing

through a great arched door guarded by Yemeni mercenaries

in magenta uniforms, and through a small shuttered kasbah,

the motorcade entered the castellated walls of the Spring

Palace. Tame zebras, antelope, apes, and flamingoes roamed

freely on the grounds. The jeep escort remained at the

gate of a third wall, as the royal Landrover continued on

alone, under an arcade of jacaranda and oleander trees, to

the steps of the women’s palace. A band of miniature

horses and dogs trotted up to stare curiously at the new

arrivals.

Connor woke, sweating, in a windowless room. The in-

tricate stucco carvings on the ceiling spun and reversed

like the insides of a watch. Where was she? Throwing off

the sheepskin coverlet, she sat up, searching for her

 81

shoes in the darkness. Her suitcases were lined up at the

foot of the divan.

When she opened the door into the corridor, she found

herself in a second-floor gallery that overlooked a court

paved with elaborate tiles, echoing with the splash of wa-

ter in mosaic’d basins. Through narrow casement windows,

Connor could see past the maze of walls that enclosed the

palace, out over the town. A halo of dust clung to the de-

sert horizon, where the sun had recently set. Muezzins

called the evening prayer, their voices faint in the vio-

let air, whirring upwards like gnats eager for dark.

Connor continued down the gallery. Through open doors

left ajar she could see more dim, close apartments like

her own, each furnished with carpets and divans and muslin

pillows, plus the occasional domed hairdryer or exercycle.

As she went down a staircase, through catacombs, kitchens

and laundries, steambaths, slaughter-rooms and bakeries,

servants flattened against the walls, averting their eyes

when she passed. A tall ebony-skinned man in a white shift

appeared, smiling, at her side, and wordlessly led her

through a columned arcade lined with canals from the foun-

tains. The sound of water gushed and trilled, accompanying

the clack of Connor’s high-heeled mules and the slap of

the black man’s slippers. Another sound, distant and

 82

treble, grew louder as they approached the heart of the

palace.

Suddenly Connor was standing in the entrance of an

immense atrium. Alabaster columns rose to a ceiling laden

with chandeliers, clumps of brilliant crystal sagging like

huge twinkling grapes. Along the rosy marble walls, hun-

dreds of women sat on plump gold-brocaded divans, a clam-

orous soprano din rising through the fog of musk. Some

wore sumptuous caftans of maroon, lime, saffron, coral,

indigo, and flame, their hems dragging from the heavy gold

stamped into the cloth, silk ropes and seed-pearls looped

in their hair. Others were clad in ruffled chiffon fanta-

sies by Milanese couturiers. Hundreds of little children

tottered across the carpets while laughing maids kept them

from colliding with the tea services.

The women fell silent and fixed their kohl-lined eyes

on Connor. Princess Awisha called her name, patting the

cushion beside her. Feeling about as elegant as a carhop,

Connor sat and accepted a glass of tea.

These women were all soft textures and hidden pins.

Removed from the outside world and raised in captivity,

the wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, and concubines of

the royal family had been cruelly overbred for femininity,

diminished to glints and points. Connor glimpsed the sub-

 83

terfuge in their obedience, greed in their surrender, hys-

teria in their poise, madness in their sensitivity. Held

within walls, far from the desiccating elements, yet they

appeared as pliant as willows, their mouths mimicking the

spicy nonsense of birds in their branches.

“Mutluq wants to kiss you!” Awisha laughed, restrain-

ing a baby whose jowls were prickly with sugar crumbs.

“And Rashida, she is dancing for you!”

The little princess had stretched her mother’s veil

above her head and began to revolve her pelvis; a concu-

bine started to pluck an oud while the exultant hareem

clapped and beat their gold spoons on saucers.

Then Queen Johara arrived.

The children vanished; cushions were laid; low tables

were placed end to end down the center of the hall, and a

gold cloth was spread over the tables’ acre-long surface.

The maids circulated with towels, silver basins and pitch-

ers for the women to wash their hands for dinner. Queen

Johara sat at the head of the table, completely enveloped

in fabric save for her toothless mouth.

“Can she get me a slave?” Connor whispered. Surely

the Queen had some clout.

Awisha petted her friend’s hand nervously.

 84

The royal hareem had always been a velvet battle-

ground, and Johara, most languid and subtle of generals,

preferring betrayal or poison to bludgeoning, held the top

of the silken heap not by beauty but by her sheer feroc-

ity. She would have mounted the throne herself when Musa

was incapacitated by his stroke were she not so advanced

in years that her own faculties had also frayed.

The Queen had never been far from the center of

power. Before wedding King Musa, she’d been married to his

brother. To him she’d borne Azadin, who as an infant be-

came engaged to Musa’s eldest daughter Awisha, placing him

next in line to the throne after Rassan. During the first

seven years Johara’s sons lived in the hareem, she had so

terrified them that even now they felt unable to act with-

out her leave. It was not unusual for the princes to visit

the women’s palace solely for an advisory sitting with Jo-

hara, never once asking to see their wives and children.

Her judgment was the shrewdest in all Masmoudia; her mas-

tery of the Koran and the poets stupefying. She was truly

influenced only by one man, however: a palm-reading magi-

cian from the Dar Loosh.

The meal began with bowls of soup, daintily eaten

with spoons. Then utensils were abandoned as platters of

halved sheep’s heads in sizzling leaves arrived, then the

 85

remaining bodies roasted whole on platters of rice. Dove-

like hands plunged to the wrists into steaming dunes of

rice, tearing the sheep to shreds. Grease dropped like

glass baubles from chins; mouths chewed energetically

while maintaining deafening conversation. Connor contented

herself with defoliating an artichoke.

Two girls further down the table watched her, then

fell back on their cushions, laughing and pinching each

other’s bosoms until the Queen called them whores and

daughters of sluts.

“You must at least taste a little bit of everything,”

Awisha said. “It shames us if you refuse.”

Connor sighed. Half-heartedly she nibbled some roast

mutton, goat’s-liver brochettes, chicken with pickled lem-

ons and onions in oil, sweet pigeon pie, eggplant paste,

buttered semolina studded with dates and hard-boiled eggs,

sour goat-cheese in pools of buttermilk, grated carrots in

sugared orangeflower water, pastel sherbets in flavors of

mint, almond milk, tangerine, and rosewater, tiny pears,

walnuts, and jasmine tea with sticks of absinthe poking

out of the teaspouts.

At last the service was cleared. As everyone drifted

back to the divans along the wall, maids appeared with in-

cense burners in the shape of crouching lions. The women

 86

flapped their garments in the sandalwood smoke, opened

caskets of perfume and daubed each other with little gold

wands dipped in fragrance. The room grew hushed as a ser-

vant removed the embroidered drape from a large television

set. “We watch the first Masmoudian news program,” whis-

pered Awisha, “produced by my husband’s brothers Hamad and

Fuad.”

“Good evening in the name of God,” said an attractive

unveiled anchorwoman on the screen.

“Whore! Filth from a dog’s uterus,” said the Queen,

maintaining a stream of curses through the entire fifteen-

minute news report.

The lead item was an action by Berber saboteurs in

the Dar Loosh mountains: A bomb had exploded at the King

Musa Water Utility Project and destroyed a cement mixer

and a Pakistani. The next item was a false report (written

by the Minister of Defense) stating that the great saint

Babas Umaloo had passed away. “. . .and the Masmoudian

stock market closed today up 75.3 points,” the news con-

cluded.

Queen Johara ordered the tall black steward to put a

film in the video cassette machine. Some women excused

themselves to pray; the rest stayed to watch a scary

American movie about zombies.

 87

On her way to bed, the Princess stopped by Connor’s

room.

“Did you ask her?” Connor sat up in bed. “Did she say

I could have one?”

Awisha looked glum. “The Queen, my mother-in-law, my

aunt, she is not well. She says you are a whore and other

things.”

“Okay, but is it yes or no?”

“This means no, darling.”

“How about all these guys running around in white

shirts, then? They’re kind of old, but—-“

Mortified, Awisha explained about the eunuchs. “Why

don’t you just stay to have enjoyment with my family and

forget this idea?”

Connor frowned. “How long do I have to stay in this

House of a Thousand Yentas?”

“Until my husband sends for us to return. Days or

weeks or months, only God is knowing.”

How much more barbaric treatment could she and Simone

take? Connor punched her silk pillow as Awisha left.

In her room, Awisha found a case of German beer hid-

den under the rows of beaded slippers in her closet. The

little old blue-legged palmist-smuggler from the Dar Loosh

 88

had made his usual delivery to her maid Shammar. She

popped open a can. If only Connor would leave matters to

God, the Princess thought as foam spurted onto her sleeve.

He always took care of everything.

 89

Chapter Eight

THE THIRTY-SIXTH NIGHT

It was well after midnight when the eunuch woke Con-

nor up, delivering a hand-written note from His Royal

Highness Prince Azadin. Dressing quickly, Connor slipped

out of the palace.

Standing on the marble steps, she peered around the

moon-blanched esplanade. A man’s white robes and headcloth

glowed beside a parked Landrover. He bent to caress one of

the miniature saluki dogs.

“You’ve come to take me away!” Connor nearly danced

down the stairs to the Prince, who straightened to his

full height below her chin.

“My brothers are falconing south of here, but I left

our camp tonight to find you. I have promised to show you

the full moon over the Samra desert. When I give my word I

am slave to it.” He grinned at her, his teeth a white

scimitar under his shaggy mustache.

“You angel!”

They drove through the empty kasbah. Soldiers si-

lently swung back the great door of Ajuz’, and the two

left the city, chugging through the dark tousled oasis,

 90

out onto the open desert. Azadin stopped to open a bottle

of champagne, which Connor held between her blue-jeaned

thighs as the vehicle jolted onward. “I don’t know how I

stood the past two weeks,” she shouted over the engine.

“No phones, the worst TV programs, or it’s video ping-pong

or old horror movies. My T-shirts were ruined in the laun-

dry. . .” The final straw had been when Simone Weil’s ova-

ries started acting up. “It makes her go ‘round in circles

and scream, so the maid thought Simone was possessed by a

devil and started beating her! I mean, that place is like

a snake pit! Those women are getting really twisted in

there.”

“The enemy of women is solitude,” quoted the Prince.

“Don’t forget men. And women. And carbohydrates!”

They stopped at last in a valley, where the moon

shone like an unthreaded pearl. Azadin unpacked camping

gear: carpets, embroidered pillows, several jars of cav-

iar, tinned fruit salad, crackers and cheese, tea bags,

styrofoam cups, plastic forks, a jar of sugar, a bottle of

mineral water, a quart of whiskey, and a handgun carefully

wrapped in a paper towel. The air was piercingly cold.

Spreading the carpets on top of each other, he set about

creating a fire from a packet of charcoal and a cigarette

lighter, breathing heavily from his exertions. This was

 91

the last time he’d try to entertain a woman in the desert

without his steward.

Connor swung the champagne bottle, twirling in place.

The seamless landscape whooshed around her, the dunes’

backs arched like whales and coated by the ivory

moonlight. “Forget the fire,” Connor said, “and come under

the carpets with me, Prince.”

He tittered, brushing soot from his hands. “I am

sorry. They didn’t teach me to makes fires at the Univer-

sity of Oklahoma.”

“You’ve never done this before?” She lifted the cor-

ner of the top carpet and slid under.

“I am not a Bedouin. I am a city Arab.”

“Then I’m your first desert date, ha ha.”

He glanced around the desert uneasily, burying the

gun in the sand at the corner of the carpets before he

slipped between them beside her. Connor handed him a cup

of whiskey. “Here. Now we can relax and get loaded.”

The liquor kindled their cold faces. On her back,

Connor stretched, then went limp, as though crushed by the

warm heavy weight of the carpets and the granite light of

the moon.

The whisky caromed through Prince Azadin’s veins. As

he gazed at Connor’s beautiful profile, his chest swelled

 92

unbearably. He considered the terrible grace and mystery

of all life. The desert, the stars, the woman, the forbid-

den liquor, and all God’s fathomless designs: To know

these things only increased one’s ignorance, for to arrive

at the heart of anything was to be completely lost; truly

God was everywhere and nowhere!

He moved closer to Connor and drank some more.

Abruptly he burst out in a flood of Arabic, spontaneously

composing a love poem.

“Wish those stars would keep still,” said Connor,

when she was pretty sure he was done. “I must be smashed.”

“I am telling you,” the Prince pressed on, “in Arabic

which is such a beautiful tongue, that I am in love with

you, and you are like a bird, so fly away with my heart to

your nest and let’s make love.”

“I wouldn’t waste this scenery for anything, what a

perfect place to get laid! But first you have to promise

me something.”

He winced at her lack of poetry. These American women

trampled all over the grace and mystery of life like

driverless mules. “What, darling?”

“Promise you’ll give it to me, first. Swear by your

God.”
 93

“I swear by God, His name be praised, darling.” His

conquest assured, Azadin’s mind began to wander.

“Swear by your mother,” Connor said craftily.

“Anything you want, my sultaness,” he said, startled

out of a daydream about charging more money for larger

shoe sizes in his store, “I swear to give to you, by my

mother, God keep her, and by God, his name be praised.”

“I want a slave.”

“I will be your slave.”

A hyena chuckled in the distance, raising Azadin’s

anxiety. He wished he were anywhere else but this Godless

place.

“A real one,” Connor said firmly, pouring more whisky

into their cups.

In the spring palace, the achingly gibbous moon kept

the princesses awake. ”What does he see in her? That skin

like a rag faded by the sun.”

“She is a pond whose surface shines and whose bottom

is filth.”

“She has made some sorcery on the Crown Prince. He is

going to take her as his only wife.”

“She wants to be Queen. She has done some Christian

magic to make the King die. This morning they opened a

 94

goat in the slaughter-room and its liver was shriveled up

into a human head resembling the King.”

“God protect us!”

“Right now the faithless slut has sneaked out to meet

Awisha’s husband,” hissed Khadija, one of King Musa’s an-

cient concubines. Secretly she rejoiced in the outcome of

her latest spell to separate Azadin and his wife. Khadija,

a towering Sudanese, had borne the King three sons, but

Queen Johara had had them all burned at birth. Thus

Khadija became the enemy of all Johara’s sons, especially

the eldest, Prince Azadin. She had burned incense with fur

from a black cat and fur from a dog and the outer layers

of an onion and a garlic, then she had written a verse on

a strip of paper that she paid a eunuch to bury outside

Azadin’s villa:

The sun is upside down

The moon is upside down

God, as you have turned

All these things upside down

Do so also this couple, Awisha and Azadin

Make her see his face as a monkey’s

Make him see her face as a donkey’s

When he leaves, she comes

When she comes, he goes

 95

In Connor’s absence the concubines stole into her

room, laying a dried lamb’s tail by her pillow, sewing in-

cantations and long black hairs into her pillowcase, and

slipping a scorched pan under her mattress. When Simone,

the devil cat, mewed weakly from her cushion, they

clutched each other, whispering, “In the name of God, the

Merciful, the Compassionate!”

Later that night Awisha was visited by her young

cousin Princess Najiba, who told Awisha that her husband

and her friend had run off for a night in the Samra. Her

pretty complexion lurid with triumph, she lit an Egyptian

cigarette and waited for Awisha’s response.

Awisha offered her a beer. Perhaps Connor would pull

one her pranks on the Prince, she thought, like the time

she’d tied up a concert pianist in their room at Twill

House. Preparing him for sex, she’d gagged her enthusias-

tic partner with his cummerbund, fastening his feet and

hands with his dress hose, then gone down the hall to bor-

row a joint. Getting stoned in Wren’s room, she’d forgot-

ten all about the musical prodigy, who completely missed

his recital in the college auditorium.

 96

Awisha shook with laughter at the memory. Najiba fell

back on the carpet with her, the two hooting like idiots,

until Najiba nestled her tobacco-flavored tongue inside

Awisha’s lagery mouth.

The slave-girls slumbered through the night, rolled

up in their soft muslin spreads along the walls of the

communal quarters, like cocoons along a branch. The one

from Marrakesh moaned and rocked her hips in her sleep:

She was making love with her handsome jinn, the spirit who

came to her nightly, starved for love, from a world of

restless spirits all said to be composed of pure flame.

The palmist squinted over the Queen’s outstretched

hand, kneading his gray beard and scratching the hole in

his cheek. “The man who rules Masmoudia does not rule the

mountains. Let him scratch in their shadow but not climb

into their eye. . . .”

That meant her stepson, the Crown Prince. His pro-

jects in the Dar Loosh were insane, he had as much sense

as a lamp at midday, whereas her son Azadin —-

“One night your eldest son will fly without wings,

and he will be lost.”

 97

She sucked in her breath. Azadin in danger? She would

make him swear on her life never to take an airplane at

night.

“Do not eat so much and so quickly,” he giggled.

She overturned her palm and slapped his wrist

lightly. Habib’s predictions were uncanny, but sometimes

the little blue-legged man went too far.

Far to the southwest of Ajuz’, horses’ hooves scrab-

bled over the high ridges of the Dar Loosh. Berber warrior

chiefs swarmed down the mountainsides to Tittawen, the

town in the foothills where the two great wadis joined.

The chiefs would convene there at dawn to witness the su-

pernatural baraka of Babas Umaloo, the saint calling the

Dar Loosh tribes to evict the Crown Prince’s soldiers and

foreigners from the mountains.

To the north, in Port-Au-Wazz, the Polish embassy’s

party was still in full gear. An era was ending. At the

royal press conference the day before, the Crown Prince

had announced the discovery of rich and unparalleled de-

posits of bomb-grade uranium in the Dar Loosh mountain

range. As Indian servants twirled about the guests with

trays bearing glasses of the new gin, secretly distilled

 98

from turnips in the embassy’s kitchen, an American sales-

man named Ralph Shunt regaled everyone with Baluch jokes.

There had been trouble that day with the harbor

amusement park’s new Ferris wheel. During a maintenance

check, four Pakistani laborers had been flung to their

deaths from the cars of the wildly spinning machine.

“I hear the wheel’s back in action,” said Ralph

Shunt. “Just needed oiling, so they threw in a Baluch.”

“Drink!” called the Polish ambassador, at once giddy

and morose. “We may never be friends again!”

In His Majesty’s chambers in the central palace, King

Musa was propped up on a divan before a vaulted window,

his old slave Suleiman at his side feeding him mashed

dates and almond paste. Since his stroke, Musa had learned

to chew again.

Rassan sat at his father’s right hand, recounting the

day’s events in a monotone. Musa preferred the beautiful

newscaster on the new nightly television program, but her

version of the news was censored and mostly fanciful.

Calls, telegrams, and invitations had been flooding

in from all over the world since the press conference,

Rassan explained. The capital wasn’t ready for a thick de-

scent of foreign envoys. The flyovers and tunnels were far

 99

from completed, and the amusement park’s machinery was

suffering the ravages of sandstorms. Berber terrorists had

captured some Japanese contractors overseeing construction

in the Dar Loosh, and were trading them as domestic

slaves. The stock market was up 108 points.

With all the international visitors expected, plans

for the King’s birthday would have to be expanded to in-

clude a son et lumière, tours, and cook-outs in the de-

serts, said Rassan. A New York press agent was being

hired.

“. . .which reminds me of the time I was stuck in a

rented bungalow in Baja with a team of father-and-son rap-

ists,” Connor said. After she’d told the Prince she was

having her period, he’d refused to have sex with her be-

cause she was “unclean.” She’d thought that was rather

finicky of him. Still, she cheerfully entertained him un-

til dawn, spinning tales and plying him with drink.

By the time the morning star rose and the moon had

gone gauzy in daybreak, the Prince had passed out. Connor

tossed the empty whiskey bottle at a dune, exhilarated by

her success. He’d promised her a slave.

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Chapter Nine

A POUF IN TITTAWEN

The Berbers of Masmoudia had survived one of the

grimmest transplantations in the history of religious war.

In the eighth century AD, the Moslem Arabs who’d con-

quered North Africa had been unable to extinguish or con-

vert the pagan Berbers inhabiting the plains and mountains

of what would become Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. By the

time the invaders took up residence in neighboring lands

and the compromise of co-existence was achieved, the re-

calcitrant Berbers had been re-conquered and re-converted

some twelve times.

One of the Arabs’ fleeting victories involved a group

of Berber tribes called the Masmouda. Unlike the rela-

tively sickly, swarthy Arabs, the Masmouda were gleaming

with health, clear complexions, and the incidence of light

hair and blue eyes was mysteriously high. From among their

prisoners the Arab generals selected five thousand of the

most beguiling youths and maidens, blonds, redheads and

ravenhairs whose skin ranged from apricot to milk, and

drove them out of the high pastures of the Atlas Mountains

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to be sold as slaves in Medina. The Arab command was puz-

zled by one thing: All of the blue-eyed captives were all

hard of hearing. (Unbeknownst to their captors, they had

imbedded chalcedony gems, then considered priceless

stones, into their ears.)

For seven months the caravan straggled across the

Mediterranean coast. Two thousand young Masmouda perished

of heat and starvation in the Libyan and Egyptian deserts;

then fever swept through the Arab command, who began to

reel with delirium and vomiting. The prisoners, who had

not shared the soldiers’ food, bribed several guards with

chalcedony, gained their swords, then massacred the entire

escort, fleeing on camels through Abyssinia to the mouth

of the Red Sea. With their remaining gems, they bought an

old dhow and sailed into the Indian Ocean.

After the boat ran aground in shallows off an island

shore, the fugitive slaves waded to the beach onto a dis-

mal flat landscape of sand and loess. Just as they were

giving in to despair, they saw a distant shadowy diadem:

mountains.

The great mountain range so resembled the Masmouda’s

homeland in the Atlas mountains many thousand of miles

away that all the survivors fell in their tracks to praise

Allah, whom they had accepted during their captivity. They

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marched toward the sight. Fortunately, the hostile Bedouin

nomads who roamed the desert had no innate skill for farm-

ing mountain slopes and no inherent resistance to the

moist cold and snow of the Dar Loosh winters, so the Ber-

bers found an unclaimed sanctuary. Free at last to serve

the one God along with the trees, streams, and stones they

had always worshipped, they ascended their new mountain

home.

The island Arabs maintained an uneasy détente with

the mountain tribes. Both benefited from trade: In ex-

change for such things as the blue cloth for their trou-

sers, the Berbers traded grain, rose oil, occult aphrodi-

siac powders, and the eerily beautiful adolescent boys and

girls sold in Tittawen.

These offspring were an important source of income

for very poor families, families with too many children,

or those in which a second husband was not eager to have

his predecessor’s litter in his household. An unusually

pretty child would be raised among the women under quaran-

tine, grown like a rare seedling in dark rooms, fed sweet-

ened cream to plump its buttocks, its skin never contact-

ing any fabric harsher than muslin. Later the child would

be schooled in the art of entertainment -– singing, poetry

recitation, dance -– and watched for signs of puberty.

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Then instruction in the arts of pleasure would begin --

semen retention, use of potions, feigning the emotion of

love – and a fee was fixed. The young floret was then dis-

played at the agent’s house.

Legally the boy or girl was an indentured servant

whose parents had consented to wages of usually two rials

a year. These wages were withheld until the youth had

earned back his purchase price. At that point he was free

to quit the household, but since it would have taken three

lifetimes to earn back a price that was never less than

two hundred rials, the servant was forever a slave.

It was the fashion to grant love slaves their freedom

after five to eight years: According to the Koran, the

true believer who freed his slaves would be summarily re-

warded in the afterlife. They were past their prime of de-

sirability, anyway, and ready to move on to other func-

tions. After the emancipated slaves returned to their

families, the money from their original sale often went

toward a good marriage.

Some chose to remain even after they were freed.

Sometimes a master loved and valued his slave above his

own children (a slave was more loyal), and placed him in a

position of considerable power. A slave could become a

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minister, steward, counselor, captain —- even rich and

powerful enough to keep slaves.

The muezzin’s call to prayer woke Sidi Messoud, con-

fidential steward to Prince Azadin. It was dawn in the

Tittawen kasbah. As a special guest, Messoud was given his

own chambers in the governor-pasha’s villa. Washing his

face, hands, and feet, he bowed in prayer northwest to

Mecca. A slave-girl brought him the morning meal. When he

finished eating, the girl returned and removed the tray,

hesitating in the doorway with lowered eyes; he made no

sign of wanting her, so she slipped away.

The kasbah stood at the base of the Dar Loosh foot-

hills; undulating orchards of peaches, figs, walnuts,

pomegranates, and olives rose to meet steep slopes climbed

by steps of glistening green terraced fields where Berber

farmers tilled wheat, maize, barley, and alfalfa. Herdsmen

lived on the rocky pasturelands; cliff settlements and

caves dotted the hoary peaks of the mountains. Spring

would soon erupt with blood-black flowers, and the streets

of Tittawen would be filled with the scent of Masmoudian

roses, signaling the advent of the flood season.

A slave-boy came, carrying a stringed oud. As he

knelt and tuned the instrument, Messoud was struck once

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more by the beauty of the Berber race, their brilliant

blue eyes and elegant features. The Prince had chosen Tit-

tawen wisely; the best slaves were to be found here. This

boy had tawny blond curls and coral-pink skin, as if he

had been reeled in from the ocean floor. Yet Messoud knew

his delicacy was artificial; the boy had been reared in-

doors, knowing neither sun nor work, to produce just this

pink-and-gold effect, but Messoud could see the tough re-

silience of his race shining in the boy’s metallic blue

eyes.

Messoud nodded tenderly as the lad’s head bent over

his plucking fingers. As he sang to the older man, himself

a former slave, the boy glanced up, his eyes supplicating.

Messoud motioned him, and the boy rose and approached,

turning instinctively when he reached Messoud’s knees.

Truly the real loveliness of the human body was not re-

vealed when it approached, thought Messoud, but when it

turned to leave: two incandescent globes, buoyant fastened

bubbles, sailing sun and sun, moon and moon. It was a good

practice to have sex before viewing prospective slaves,

Messoud felt, so that personal emotion wouldn’t cloud his

judgment. Lifting the slave’s white shift, he gathered the

young marvel into his arms.

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After the boy had left, the steward washed thor-

oughly, shaved, put on fresh robes, and left for the

slave-agent’s house.

The houses of Tittawen were the same pale coffee

color as the soil, with ruggedly carved lattices and

doors. Their corners were melted and crumbling from the

annual floods; occasionally a gouged scar showed where

torrents had wrenched off a balcony. Messoud enjoyed the

early spring sun and mountain-cooled breeze as he walked,

watching the long canoes skim across the wadis’ glancing

sapphire ripples. A black-skinned slave in the traditional

white shift preceded him as he strolled into town.

A group of unveiled Berber women, tattooed on their

chins, stared at him with derisive blue eyes, then disap-

peared into a white-washed chapel, where the local folk

sought the advice of a living saint. Children carrying

pans of raw breadloaves scampered through the alleyways to

the communal ovens. The smell of roses trailed from the

rose-attar factories, overpowering even the rancid fumes

of the tanneries.

The slave-agent, an energetic little gray-bearded man

with blue legs and a hole in one cheek, received Messoud

in a modest salon. After the customary glass of cardamom-

flavored coffee, they passed a few hours smoking a water

 107

pipe and idly talking. Messoud asked where all the men in

town had gone; the agent explained that they had left to

pay respects to a new saint in the mountains, a man named

Babas Umaloo, who was said to be as huge and as bald as a

Dar Loosh peak and yet was capable of flying like a swal-

low. Conversation drifted to the stock exchange, televi-

sion programs, and problems with domestics, at which point

Messoud mentioned that his lord Prince Azadin needed a

male servant.

A strong worker? The agent had a Somali as black as a

goat’s liver and with muscles hard as anthracite. Or a

handservant? He had a rare pair of Japanese, if one did

not mind shortness.

No, Messoud explained, the Prince needed a tall

light-skinned young man for private service and festivity.

The agent nodded at his assistant, a lanky boy whose

head was shaved except for one long thick lock flowing

down his back. (The Berbers believed that their boys

needed this dangling rope so that they could be yanked out

of danger -— or towed up to Paradise, if they died in bat-

tle —- by their ever-vigilant jinns.) The boy left the

room.

After the noon prayer and a lunch of grilled kid with

rice and wild duck stewed with olives, they washed again
 108

and sipped several glasses of sweet lemon-balm tea. At

last Messoud was ushered into a windowless carpeted cham-

ber. A dozen naked youths huddled on a round brioche-like

cushion with a raised knob. Their flesh gleamed; they had

been prepared by baths, unguents, and depilatories. Their

hands covered their genitals and their heads tilted back,

so that all parts save the face were in shadow.

Messoud circled the pouf. An experienced buyer first

assured himself that a slave’s face was a whole and harmo-

nious planet whose features did not compete for attention.

He clucked his tongue at an Egyptian whose nose and lips

were separately splendid, but together too grotesquely

dramatic, ruined further by eyebrows that nearly flew off

his face. He paused before one copper-haired boy who

smiled, revealing rows of marvelous white teeth like rice-

grains swollen in milk. Seeing Messoud’s interest, the

agent told the boy to stand. As he did, his hands left his

groin, and Messoud noted with favor the ‘cucumber skin’ on

his penis and its healthy wine undertone. The boy was also

tall, with a waist as slender as cane; his skin was firm

and fresh but had a peculiar dusty hue that did not com-

plement his golden-flame hair. The steward moved on.

All the youths were standing now; at a word from the

agent, they turned and knelt on the pouf and bent their
 109

heads down on the central cushion, forming a flower, each

of whose petals ended in the double lobes of their raised

buttocks. Messoud grazed his palm over their texture, now

and then dipping between the thighs to cup their testi-

cles.

Once more he stood before the copper-haired one, who

lowered his lashes until his aquamarine eyes conveyed a

languorous plea. He opened the boy’s mouth, and started at

the sourish smell that greeted him, betraying a treacher-

ous tongue. “His father was a Hindu slave,” the agent

said. “The mother was a fair Radif Berber, and he has a

wonderful gift for—-“

Messoud stopped him. “These are too young. The Prince

needs a man, not a boy.”

The boys subsided on the pouf in pouty bewilderment.

The agent looked perplexed. In a love slave, one always

preferred extreme youth. To buy an older slave meant to

inherit the indelible gouges and scuff-marks of previous

masters, as well as absence of virginity.

“A manly young man,” Messoud added. “Such as a woman

might favor.”

“Ah!” The agent sighed: One gained nothing by at-

tempting to decipher the tastes of women. He did have a

very comely servant whose testicles had been removed,

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suitable for the women’s quarters, but he was no more than

fourteen now; perhaps the Prince would be satisfied to buy

this one and wait a few years for the desired effect of

manliness. Buy seeds, the Palestinian proverb cautioned,

but do not eat them. Wait, and you will have grapes.

“The Prince needs a servant now. It is for his new

villa in Zhubba,” Messoud said. Privately, he shared the

agent’s view: Purchasing a grown man for pleasure greatly

reduced the opportunity for control. After twenty summers

a slave’s character was irreversible, a man had become

such as he always would be. But the American woman wanted

grapes out of season, and did not care if they were ripe

or even fermented: She was a Christian, after all.

Sadly Messoud retired to the salon, where the assis-

tant served them more tea and honeycakes. “Now it comes to

me,” the agent said at length, “there is one who might do

very well. An unusual, pitiable case I saw recently when

he stopped at my house.”

The agent went on to tell of a Berber of the Wilad

Jebel tribe between twenty-two and twenty-five years of

age. “He is as handsome as the rising moon on its night of

complete fullness, and he is the youngest and most beauti-

ful of eight sons. The father died early in his life. His

name is Selim, he was raised here in my house until his

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manhood grew upon him, and he was sold to a merchant in

Tittawen. Both the merchant and his wife were very fond of

Selim, but after six years, Death which ends all enjoy-

ments claimed the old man. His wife, reluctant though she

was, freed Selim, because she had promised his manumission

to her husband as he lay dying.”

Selim had returned to his home in the mountains to

find all his brothers dead from a blood-feud with a family

of the Al Gouni tribe. The sheikh of the Wilad Jebel and

Selim’s aged mother made the boy promise not to seek

vengeance. The feud was over and the other family had paid

the blood money. Selim, the last living son, would surely

have been killed if he had attempted revenge. He had no

experience with weapons. He had been schooled in one craft

only: that of giving pleasure and delighting the eye. Un-

skilled at farming, he sat at home, while his mother and

sisters worked in the fields, until floods washed away

their seed and their wheat crop was lost. The family moved

farther up the Dar Loosh, into the caves, his sisters

weaving blankets to support them.

“By now the mother is very old and sick,” said the

agent. “and Selim feels useless. Last month he made a trip

down the mountain to see me. He believed he might become a

slave again, in the hopes of changing his circumstances

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and finding as generous a master as his first. He wants to

become the source of money to his family he was before,

and to take up once again the art in which rested his

pride. He is a very proud young man, and he does not want

to learn a new trade. I am afraid he will take to the

streets, if he has not done so already, with the many

young men wandering about, waiting for Fortune to reverse

their luck, or a jinn to swoop down, pluck them up and

toss them into the garden of a beautiful princess with

skin as white as cream—-you know these dreamers.

“I know of no one so marvelously handsome or adept as

Selim. When he was in my house, he was the best of them

all. I made a fine profit when I sold him, but it is my

heart, not my purse, that wishes for him a second happi-

ness in as illustrious a household as the Prince’s. If God

wills it, you might see Selim tomorrow, if my assistant

finds him still in Tittawen.”

Sidi Messoud was encouraged. He would take his time

inspecting the slave, he knew, dining and drinking tea

with the agent for several days more if the young man

seemed promising. Sometimes faults not apparent in the

first encounter showed on later visits. Virtues emerged

that had first seemed to be faults. Time and beauty were

the gifts of God to be exchanged between men. Now it was

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time for the afternoon prayer. Rising to leave, the royal

steward promised to come back the next day.

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Chapter Ten

THE LOVE SLAVE

Connor turned down the straps of her maillot, lay

back onto the beach, and positioned her limbs for a fine

suntan. Wisps of caramel hair wavered in a breeze she

tried to pretend came from the Côte d’Azur and not the Bay

of Two Dogs.

She deserved this holiday. Life in the hareem had

been intolerable after she returned from her little over-

night camping trip with Prince Azadin. No one seemed to

appreciate that she had nearly died out there. The Prince

was so hungover he could barely see to drive, so they got

lost in the heart of the Samra desert, where the dunes

rose like cliffs that a clever eastern wind remolded into

craters one minute and then whipped up into cliffs the

next. If they hadn’t chanced upon a Bedouin scout, the

would never have found their way back to Ajuz’.

When Connor finally staggered into her bedroom, she

found a desiccated piece of some creature’s anatomy under

her pillow, a charred frypan under her mattress, and

Simone unfed and bawling in the closet. In the morning,

she stepped into her favorite espadrilles and found the

 115

insides coated with an odiferous mung. The only person who

would speak to her was Awisha, who sat nobly by her friend

and flexed her biceps menacingly, provoking Princess Na-

jiba to fits of jealousy. Awisha had not yet learned about

the promise Connor had extracted from her husband.

Two days later, one of the maids entered Connor’s

bedroom, ostensibly to clean it, and suddenly began to

scream, as if in fright, and to beat Connor on the head

with a broom handle. For every whack she gave to Connor’s

head she dealt another blow to herself on the arms or

legs, so that when the other women rushed in, the maid was

seen to be covered with welts and crying, whereas Connor,

who had been too astonished even to yelp, had no visible

signs of injury, her long hair covering her own bruises.

The husband-stealing devil-sponsored American had tried to

kill a poor servant!

Could Queen Johara be behind this? Connor wondered.

At meals, the old woman would look up from her grilled

sheep’s groin and drench the tablecloth with a volley of

Arabic that Awisha was too embarrassed to translate. Con-

nor endured a week of such harassment, waiting for the

Prince to make good on his promise. But at the end of the

week, Azadin left for Paris to stump for guided missiles,

without sending her a word. Crown Prince Rassan summoned

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Awisha to Port-Au-Wazz to entertain the wives of the daily

arriving international delegates. Fearing Connor would be-

come bored and misbehave at these official functions, Awi-

sha sent her friend to their now-vacant villa in Zhubba.

The Mediterranean-style villa was brand-new, gleaming

white, and completely isolated on its vast strand of

beach. It had a walled garden, a tiled inner courtyard,

and a balcony-terrace overlooking the water. Azadin had

left a skeleton household staff: a military guard, a cook,

two housemaids, and a middle-aged black slave named Sayed

who served as gardener, chauffeur, and maintenance man, as

well as serving meals and fetching supplies from Port-Au-

Wazz. Awisha also loaned Connor her young slave-girl,

Shammar, who spoke a little English, as her personal maid.

Slightly hurt that Connor seemed so eager to be alone,

Awisha said she’d visit soon; Zhubba was only fifty kilo-

meters down the coast from the capital.

As the royal limousine drove off into the dusk, Con-

nor went upstairs to the master bedroom. She slept heavily

until the following morning.

For the next eight days, she woke in the capacious

bed, Simone lifting her head from the woven coverlet and

purring idly, her eyes in slivers. All around the bed on

its raised platform, ivory silk-embroidered hangings bil-

 117

lowed and swirled, and across the delicately veined pearl-

gray surface of the marble floor, sheepskin rugs puffed

like scudding clouds. Finding a trove of Parisian oils,

soaps, and cosmetics in the adjoining bathroom, Connor

paddled through drifts of perfumed bubbles in the oval

bath, squirmed happily on the bidet. She painted her

nails, donned the airy caftan Shammar had laid out for

her, and stepped out onto the terrace, where Sayed was

waiting to serve her breakfast in a corner pavilion.

“Good morning, Marvin.” Connor never remembered his

name. Sayed bowed, ducking his long baboon nose, and

poured her tea, unveiling a bucket of iced fruit, honey-

soaked sponge-cakes, smoked fishes, and coffee-flavored

yogurt all the way from New York. He hovered until she

snapped her napkin at him, then disappeared in a murmur of

white shift and bare feet.

Each afternoon she strode out onto the beach, turning

down the straps of her maillot and lying back on the

coarse sand. Watching the shark fins slice the waves like

a regatta of black sails, she strolled up and down the

shore. Sometimes she noticed Sayed walking a vigilant

fifty paces behind her, until she flapped her towel at him

-- “Go home, Marvin!” – and he retreated. After an hour or

so in the sun, she went to her room for an afternoon nap;

 118

then Sayed served her supper in the downstairs salon. Con-

nor took one bite of everything, then motioned him to take

away the rest. Sayed bowed his head, his bosom brimming

with hopeless love.

Later Shammar read her fortune from Arab playing

cards. “Man coming, man coming now,” said the laughing

black-eyed girl.

The third afternoon Connor was sunbathing on the

beach when a shadow covered face.

“American crazy taking off clothes in hot sun is

funny too much!”

“Habib!” She sat up. “How did you get here?!

Giggling, the little gray-bearded man flapped his

goat’s-hair cloak, his pointed yellow slippers slapping on

the sand. “Fly!” Off on a distant dune his lanky sidekick

perched on one leg, his shaved head glowing.

“I thought you and Blek were in the Dar Loosh with

Malcolm Pugh, discovering uranium and all that.”

“I am in the Dar Loosh. I have eating the food and

right now sleeping under tree. I am dreaming I bring you

something.” Out from under his cloak he brought an ice-

cold can of TRIM diet cola.

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“Habib! If you only knew how I missed this!” She

popped the can open and gulped down the delicious carcino-

gens.

“You happy, you not believing your self!” The hole in

his cheek deepened as he grinned.

“I haven’t had any chemicals in so long! Can you get

more? I’ll pay anything.”

“All you wanting, but very expensive. Twelve rials

for one like this.”

“That’s three dollars a can! Oh well, you bring me

lots, I pay you small fortune, you wonderful man. Hello,

Blek.”

The youth was motioning to Habib that they should go.

“Come back soon,” Connor waved as the two Berbers

walked back across the dunes.

Blek turned his head; his four gold teeth gleamed.

“Eat money.”

Connor gulped the rest of the TRIM. When the men had

diminished to two dark specks on the horizon, she lay back

and closed her eyes. Just like a hustler, to walk a couple

hundred miles just to sell a can of soda.

That evening Shammar tapped her cards importantly.

“Man coming!”

“He came,” said Connor, “today. Past tense.”

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“No, no, coming,” Shammar insisted. “Man coming.” She

hugged her shoulders and made kissing sounds.

Five days later, as Connor turned down the straps of

her maillot and lay back, Shammar appeared to tell her

that the man from the Prince was waiting for her in the

salon.

Sidi Messoud was not surprised at the sight of Miss

Blakey, who was Prince Azadin’s preferred type in a West-

ern woman: beautiful, big, leggy, graceless. The royal

steward hoped she would be less trouble than the English

nightclub dancer who had wept and screamed and entreated

not to be sent home.

Western women never wanted to leave, once they dis-

covered Azadin’s talents as a lover. Messoud’s own mother,

God give her peace, had prepared the Prince in the art of

lovemaking when she was a slave in the Queen’s household.

It was ironic; both the Prince’s and Messoud’s wives dis-

dained these talents, shunning sex with their husbands,

while Western women begged never to stop. It wouldn’t take

Azadin long to grow bored with this latest giantess, as he

had with the others. Since the Prince was going to ex-

traordinary lengths to please this American, he obviously

hadn’t had her yet.

 121

She sat on a sofa in the salon, crossing her legs un-

der her filmy caftan. Messoud remained standing. “His

Highness the Prince has instructed me you have need of a

servant. He has allowed me to find you a proper boy.”

“Not too young,” said Connor. “And he should be

taller than me. Please check his birth certificate to make

sure he was born between September 24th and October 23rd.”

“But it is done. I have brought you a young man and

he is here.”

Connor’s head snapped up. “Here?! Where?”

She was in a panic. The whole idea of a slave had

really been just that, an idea, a passing mania. She’d

been in the mood to get out of New York anyway, a very

naughty mood that her astrologer would have picked up on

and snapped her out of. But Larry was dead and here Connor

was, faced with the prospect of actually having to go

through with it. What should she say now? “Very nice,

stick him over there, would you?” She’d have to stall for

time, think of how to stop this situation before it got

any more absurd. “I just have to run out for a minute. To

America.”

Messoud led her to the door of the salon.

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A young man in a white shift squatted on his heels by

the fountain in the courtyard. Near his bare feet lay a

small cloth bag containing a few tools and condiments of

his trade; his face was tilted up at the late afternoon

sky as if he knew he was being watched. Indeed Sayed, face

contracted in hatred, was watching him from kitchen win-

dow.

Connor stood close to Messoud. He smelled her suntan

lotion’s damp smutty odor, her fear, and something else.

“God, he’s gorgeous,” she breathed. “What’s his

name?”

“Selim.” The steward was glad she was satisfied; to

his own taste, the new slave fell wide of the mark. The

agent had lied: Selim had plainly been working in the

fields since his liberation. The skin which had once been

white was now lightly tanned, as if stained with nut oil;

the slender lines of his body swelled here and there with

knotty sinews that scarcely befitted a domestic consort;

and although he had evidently managed to soften his hands

with rose oil, the plow had forever destroyed their yield-

ing grace. The look in his blue eyes showed none of the

diffidence of the years of slavery, but rather the autono-

mous steel of his people. Everything spoke of a free man:

the toughened hands dangling over his knees, the curved

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shoulders of an archer, not a minion, the glossy black

hair swept straight back from a moon-proud forehead.

However, there was no denying he was breathtakingly

handsome; Messoud himself had been impressed the first

time he saw him. And his penis was the ideal length, two

hands and two fingers. It was a pity the American spoke no

Arabic, because Selim could recite and improvise excellent

love poetry. He seemed genuinely eager to serve again, his

expression charmingly compliant, long feathery raven

lashes gentling those metallic eyes.

“When’s his birthday?”

Messoud chuckled politely. “Here, a man is lucky if

he knows if he was born in the summer or winter, because

his mother tells him it was a very hot day or a very cold

day – ”

“You mean you don’t know when you were born?”

“What does it matter for a servant? If this one does

not please you —-“

“It’s not that.” Connor peered again into the court-

yard. The young man had looked directly at her. She

quickly stepped back into the salon, unnerved. “No, he’s,

he’s really cute.”

“If you decide you do not want him, send your servant

Sayed to me in Port-Au-Wazz and I will do everything pos-

 124

sible to bring you someone of more satisfaction. Or per-

haps you can telephone me.” He beamed proudly. “Very soon

we will have telephones all over Masmoudia, not only in

the city. I have bought stocks in the company that is mak-

ing them.”

“I was thinking of going home in a few days.”

Messoud tensed. If Prince Azadin returned from Paris

to find her gone, the blame would fall on him. “But there

are no airplanes for a week or more.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“They are all full. We have many delegates from for-

eign countries coming and going every day.”

“Now that you’ve got heaps of uranium. Soon you guys

won’t need electricity, you’ll all be glowing in the

dark.” She wanted him to leave. Her heart was pounding so

hard she needed to lie down.

“I am always available for any problem you may ex-

perience.” He bowed. “God keep you, and peace be with

you.”

“Ciao.”

Messoud left instructions for the new slave to be

given a room in the servants’ quarters, where he should

remain until Connor summoned him. The steward wondered if

 125

she ever would; she appeared rather afraid. What a waste,

what an atrocity it would have been, to deliver a perfect

pristine young virgin to a Christian mistress whose fri-

volity was exceeded only by her ignorance. Love slaves

were artists, raised in the expectation of a master or

mistress who knew the art of sovereignty as well as a

slave should know the art of submission. It was a mutually

dignifying relationship.

Yes, thought Sidi Messoud, Miss Blakey deserved

Selim, flawed as he was, past season, used. She would

probably think him wonderful, having never known anything

better.

Connor lay down on her bed. When at last her heart

slowed to a normal rhythm, she fell asleep.

When she awoke, she saw the arched window framing a

lilac sky; dusk had spread its fawn-soft stain in the

room. As the shadows gathered, only the white things in

the room were visible, gleaming as if lit from within: the

coverlet, the sheepskin rugs, the towel on the floor, the

wall opposite the bed, the white shift crouched against

the wall opposite the bed, the white corners of the eyes

in the young man’s darkening face.

Connor gasped. “What are you doing here?”

 126

The hint of a smile tempered the severe elegance of

his face. Under the long black lashes, the look was defer-

ential, if uncomprehending.

“Do you speak English?” Connor sat up against her

pillows. “Parlez-vous français?”

He stared warmly at her.

“Well! At least you’ll never say the wrong thing!”

Connor let out a nervous laugh.

He echoed her laugh. His white teeth glowed. Then the

sky sank through blue to black and all the incandescent

white things faded into darkness.

They moved at the same time, she swinging over the

side of the bed to get the light switch, and he kneeling

and catching her foot before it touched the floor.

He had an oil on his fingers, orangeflower and musk.

He traced the stem of the tendon in back of her ankle,

moving gently upwards, then joined the tips of his thumb

and index and touched the fragrance to the center of her

forehead, the back of her neck under her hair, each of her

nipples through the caftan, swiftly, with the ghostly pat-

ter of a moth. The fingers came down to cup her heel again

and she felt his lips softly nestle on her foot while he

stroked oil into her heel, as if he were soothing the ruf-

fles of a bird.
 127

She heard a low lyric man’s voice, speaking in an

alien tongue. “Courage, little dove,” he said in Arabic.

Behind the breasts his fingers had grazed, Connor’s heart

shivered like the delicate jangling of wind chimes.

Connor could see nothing; could only feel the caftan

passing over her head, like a slippery wave, lifting her

arms with it; could not understand the language in which

the voice beseeched her to command him perilous missions,

for the right to caress each part of her. Soon his hands

were a drove of nocturnal beings which flittered,

smoothed, scratched, glided; her skin shuddered and

blushed. When he stooped and raised up her breasts and his

thumbs discovered her nipples, he lamented the broken

stems of these two enchanted pears, swollen so with syrup

and cream they had dropped from the tree. Did he have the

right to taste them? he asked her, but she didn’t under-

stand. If he touched them to his mouth, he said softly, he

would be forever under the spell of the angel who grew

them. But he was a fool, and rolled them over his tongue,

mad with the fruits’ liquor and flesh; and it was his

folly, also to, to drink from the glistening pool in this

place. His love was a star; when he saw her mirrored fire

in the water, he imagined he could imprison her between

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his cupped hands and bring her to his lips. So he tipped

Connor’s head back and drank, while she sagged back on the

pillow and opened her mouth wide to his flowing tongue.

At length he lifted his head, and continued his story

in a soft voice and a language that she would never com-

prehend. While he was drinking, he said, a gazelle had

crept up to the pool and sucked from the precious swirl,

and now she too raised her beautiful brown velvet head and

met his eyes. If he inched toward her, with tender words,

she might trust him. His tongue waded slowly down Connor’s

belly, pausing now and again to murmur reassurance, and

the gazelle allowed him to come so close he could stroke

her muzzle, still pearled with the delicious water from

the pool —- they had both drunk from it, they were both

bewitched, they mingled their liquid exultant remorse when

he kissed open her matted lips. She trusted him now; she

would let him ride her away.

The words were strange, they became music without

words in Connor’s ear, music which held and entered her.

Then she was riding away; she was past understanding, past

the bed, the ground, the bay; was climbing the air, beat-

ing the wind, and clouds rioted past her striving head

like hectic surf. He guided her legs to reach and reach,

he prodded and dug at her ribs and buttocks; her flanks

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foamed, but he was urging from her a rarer lather from a

deeper pore, and when they breached the firmament he said,

“Look, we are here, my star, my gazelle, this is your

place in the sky,” and she gave out the last of her

spirit, a blaze of light, diminishing to a point of radi-

ance in the dark.

The cook kept Connor’s supper warm on the stove, lay-

ing out dishes on the mat for the servants. When she sent

Shammar to fetch the new slave, the girl returned alone to

say he wasn’t in his room or in the garden.

“Isn’t she coming down for the meal tonight?” the

cook asked.

Shammar shrugged. Squatting on the mat, Sayed rolled

some rice into a ball with his hand. “He is with her,” he

said darkly.

The cook looked bewildered. “She didn’t ask for him.”

Sayed dipped his head, frowning; his thick black

brows merged. Shammar giggled.

“She didn’t summon him,” the cook repeated. “He had

no right to go to her.”

Did she weigh nothing, that he could roll her in mid-

air, turning her hips with a potter’s hands? The blind

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potter and his treadle, in the black night; inside her he

was hollowing a new vessel, she could feel the form

change, the wheeling course of perfection and its pain —-

something harder than his softly sheathed hardness was

stirring her. He lifted her in midair and spun her to the

overrunning brim.

After, he eased off the collar of silver with em-

bossed silver beads from his still-hard column. Putting it

back in his cloth bag, he brought out a long strip of

silk.

Lying on his side, he slowly knotted the middle of

the scarf, watching her with a faint smile, long lashes

hung halfway as if to shield her from the mica sheen of

his blue eyes.

She could see everything now. The oyster shimmer of

dawn lit the straight lean lines of his body, which had

been plucked clean of hair. His skin was luminous, like a

tree peeled by lightning.

He lay back, pulling her onto him so that her back

rested on his chest, as if she lounged on a long branch.

Her legs parted, the wet root of him sliding into her. He

made low dove-purr sounds in her hair as he rocked in and

out of her, stretching the silk strip between his hands

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and sawing it lightly on her mound, the soft knot burrow-

ing deeper each time it glided by.

His arms circled her tight when she started to trem-

ble. The tree shook her madly until the quake passed.

When the blue of midmorning shone through the window,

Connor was dazed with hunger: He plucked a rose from the

garden, dipped it in a saucer of honey, sprinkled some-

thing crumbled like cloves on it, and fed it to her.

She drank from a bowl of water. He put little pas-

tries in her mouth, pecking seeds off her cheeks with his

lips, brushing the snarls and burrs from her hair. Then he

fed her a glass of cold milk thickened with almonds and

sugar, tipping the last of it onto her bosom. The drop

paused like a heavy pendant, then meandered lazily down

her stomach, until it caught in her tamped curls, and his

tongue vanquished it. Her ribs ached from panting. He

lifted her up and brought her into the bath, where he ran

steamy water, and caressed the sweat and labor from her

body with a white stone from his bag. He had a poem and a

twist for each toe, long songs for her legs and back, si-

lence before the fragility of her breasts, and low-bowed

string hums for the rubbing of her head, while he worked.

Then, after sweeping over her a froth of soap, a dancing

 132

dash of water, and oil smelling of amber and the nibbled

rose, he took her back to bed.

The cook was indignant. “He just walked in and or-

dered me around, had me making cakes and almond milk. How

do I know it’s what she wants? We haven’t seen her since

yesterday afternoon.” She told Shammar, “When he thought

my back was turned he sprinkled something from a bag onto

the pastry—-in God’s name, he’s putting a sehúr on the

poor woman! All those people from the Dar Loosh are mixed

up with sorcery.”

Shammar shrugged at the cook. “I talked with him this

morning in the garden when he was picking the new roses.

He’s so handsome.”

Sayed slammed out of the kitchen.

In the lavender shadow of that afternoon, Selim

plunged once more into her and dislodged love from his

mistress. She wrapped her legs around him and delivered

it. The sweet welter scented the bed. Yet he had surren-

dered nothing, not a drop of his seed. He smelled only of

spice, saddles, and smoke.

 133

Chapter Eleven

A WASTE OF STAMPS

BLAKEY PUBLIC RELATIONS, INC.

One Lincoln Court

Suite 1405

New York, N.Y. 10019

Tel. (212) 637-7000

Cable BLAPCO

Albright Blakey-Vandermuffing, Pres.

March 5, 1978

Dear Connor:

What a coincidence to find out my little niece (I still

think of you as little) is in Masmoudia of all places! You

may wonder how I know that you’re a guest of the royal

 134

family, but just remind yourself that Blakey Industrials

is a worldwide corporation and not some lemonade stand! At

any rate, I felt sure that if I sent this letter c/o His

Royal Highness the Crown Prince, it would find you in due

course.

It’s so exciting to think of you gadding about the shim-

mering sands and minarets, and I’m sure they’re giving you

the royal treatment. You must be quite tanned by now —- I

understand the beaches there are out of this world in the

spring, or at least that’s the kind of word-of-mouth I’m

helping to cook up on the first leg of my “See Masmoudia”

campaign! I’m terribly high on it. You can imagine what an

honor it was to be approached by an emissary of His Royal

Highness the Crown Prince and to be told that I’m the one

they want to take charge of improving His country’s image

abroad and promoting tourism.

I’m sure you can appreciate what a plum account this is

for me. I intend to make Masmoudia the place for out-of-

the-way fun, finance, glamour, whatever. And Masmoudia

sounds so much more laid-back than Abu Dhabi, which I hear

is quite prissy about foreigners, liquor, dancing close,

gambling, etc. His Royal Highness the Crown Prince sounds

 135

much more hip, and He has already instituted many projects

to lure tourist capital—-have you seen the amusement park

and those “flyover” streets? We’re not starting from

scratch, though as you can imagine this job requires Maxi-

mum Finesse.

You’ll probably be bowled over to learn that I am coming

to Masmoudia very soon. (With Blakeys trotting all over

the globe, it’s not only become a small world it’s posi-

tively microscopic!) I’m arriving mid-April with a group

of travel agents to kick off the Masmoudia campaign. I’m

bringing them to the King’s Birthday Expo and Son et

lumière.

I’m sure you’re also wondering what all this spiel has to

do with you! You’ve probably guessed correctly that I want

a favor from you.

You know, Connor, our little office is just a baby finger

of the giant mother company, so it is highly unusual for

me to get a personal call from the Chairman of the Board

of Blakey Industrials! When your Aunt Packard called me in

person, I knew it had to be important. To make a long

 136

story short, we had a long talk about Masmoudia and, you

might as well know, you.

Masmoudia is one of B.I.’s most promising new Third World

markets. The Big Fry division, for example, has already

signed a deal with His Royal Highness Prince Azadin Beni

Wazz for the Juicy Jack franchises, and since the discov-

ery of uranium Masmoudia has also naturally become very

attractive to our pharmaceuticals, equipment, aerospace

etc. divisions.

Net-net, Connor, we don’t know what you’re up to over

there, but Packard and I want you to get out of Masmoudia

the instant you receive this letter. We can’t afford to

have a Blakey with your particular history of indiscre-

tions loose on the scene. We understand about you and Her

Royal Highness Princess Awisha Beni Wazz having a little

auld lang syne over your Alma Mater -— although we’re not

quite clear why the Princess should want to reminded of

that horrendous Harlem debacle and those horrible head-

lines. Since you’ve been over there a month and a half

now, we don’t believe we’re being unjust in asking you to

cut short your visit.

 137

I don’t mean to come down on you, Connor. You and I have

never personally locked horns before, and to be perfectly

fair at least some of the catastrophes you seem to attract

appear not to be completely your fault, as far as we know

(i.e. the volcano episode in Maui, which was clearly out

of your hands). Packard of course has her own irons in the

fire and she wants you out immediately, but if you want to

take a week to round up your things and do some last-

minute shopping and make your farewells, it’s all right

with me. With all we have at stake, I’m sure you can grasp

that we’re not taking any chances or accepting any ex-

cuses.

Your mother wants to know if you’re coming to the Quogue

compound for the big Blakey oyster contest in May. Sounds

like fun!

Love,

Aunt Muffie
 138

Chapter Twelve

PORT-AU-WAZZ

On the advice of her palmist, Queen Johara collected her

retinue of princesses and servants and left the Spring Palace

at Ajuz’ for Port-Au-Wazz. It was time for her to bring a halt

to her stepson’s policies, his absurd infatuation with for-

eigners and modernization.

A few concubines, slaves, and unwanted wives were all

that remained in the women’s palace at Ajuz’.

Crazy Khadija, the old Sudanese who had sworn to destroy

Johara’s sons as the Queen had incinerated hers, embarked upon

the deadliest sehúr her African magical arts could manage.

First she burned pepper, musk, and frankincense, and placed a

saltless dish of stew near her door, to please the household

spirits. Then she consulted a chart to see which jinn was

available during this particular hour of the day in this week

in March, and what direction she must face in order to conjure

the demon.

She took three paces to the northeast, recited a surah

from the Koran, and called upon all the jinns: “In the name of
 139

God, calm our hearts which are afraid and guard us from ene-

mies without, and enclose us by a wall without lock or key.”

Since it was a sehúr for evil, the jinn appeared behind

her. In the little round “devil-mirror” she held up she could

see his beautiful steaming black fur and his yellow globe

eyes.

On the afternoon of the day of the tragedy, another

planeful of VIPs landed in Port-Au-Wazz. The line of black

limousines, stretched like an eel in front of the airport for

hours, quickly broke apart, each sedan heading for a different

destination.

“Let me give you one of our few Masmoudian thrills.” The

American consul told his chauffeur to drive over one of the

completed flyovers.

“Whee,” his old friend the German ambassador said. “How

much was that?”

“A million bucks apiece. Likewise the tunnels. My kids

are already skateboarding on them. When everything’s finished,

you’ll be able to drive up and down flyovers clear across the

city going east-west, or if you drive north-south you’ll be

doing the tunnels, down and up. If everything gets finished.

The architect who talked the Crown Prince into the flyovers

and that artificial island you saw in the harbor just skipped
 140

the country, and we hear he’s in the Seychelles having himself

a frozen daiquiri and a good laugh. I’m sorry to say our banks

loaned Rassan the money for the flyovers, and they’re really

sweating the next payment. All these con artists have to do to

gain access to the Crown Prince is show up at majlis and wait

their turn. By the way, are you planning on going to majlis

today after lunch?”

“If Allah wills it. They say that quite a bit here, don’t

they?”

“I’d sooner Allah was in charge than Rassan. We call him

the Crown Prince Rat’s-ass. You’ll see the resemblance. Hey,

did you bring the knockwurst? We’re climbing the walls for

some pork. Betty’s pregnant again.”

Looking out over the harbor, the vice-president of a Ger-

man brokerage house sat as his limo took the route along the

port to the Grande Wazz Hotel. The harbor was glutted with

boats: deliveries of a hundred police cruisers and a fleet of

new freighters for the Wazzco Shipping Company. Because the

artificial island with its vacant amusement park occupied most

of the boat basin, the ships that came daily couldn’t reach

the quais to unload their cargoes of furniture, appliances,

automobiles, and food. “I was expecting something more like

Kuwait,” the VP said to the junior stockbroker who had met him
 141

at the airport. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a country

quite like this one.”

“Oh, Masmoudia’s not a country,” said his subordinate,

who had been here a month. “It’s a piece of strategically lo-

cated land, not a nation. Except for the royal family, and

some Bedouins who pass through on occasion, there aren’t any

people. Oh, there’s one.” In front of a desolate housing pro-

ject, a nomad let his camel drink from the swimming pool.

“Otherwise there’s no one living here but foreigners. The Na-

tional Guard are Yemenis, the engineers are Jordanians, the

contractors are Koreans, the hotel staff are Indians, and the

crooks are American.”

The two men chuckled. Thanks to the success of the new

stock market, all the European brokers in Masmoudia were in

high spirits. After rapidly buying and selling the same land

and utility commissions, they’d driven share values to artifi-

cial heights. It was a wondrous illusion of volume and activ-

ity, like selling tickets to a mirage.

In the limousine behind them, the British consul chatted

with an eminent geologist he had picked up at the airport.

Their driver claimed he couldn’t tell which flyovers had been

completed, in all the rubble of construction, so he was taking

the long way about to the consulate, along the chaotic docks.

The scientist stared at the tons of cement, sugar, rice, and

 142

flour in bags, dumped in bloated pyramids so high that the

bottom bags had split, rats teeming around them. The food and

merchandise was arriving so fast that dockworkers could no

longer scale the piles to get near any ship that managed to

berth; instead, the workers, Pakistanis and Baluchis, slept or

brewed tea in the doorways of shacks improvised from corru-

gated tin and crates.

“There’s not much room to live in this city anyhow, for

the lower classes,” the British consul was saying, “and

there’s no middle class any more, since they demolished the

kasbah. The big population here is the royal family-—thousands

of them! And they’re always tootling off to Europe themselves.

There are some people in the mountains. Unfortunately they’re

right bang on top of the uranium. And now, with Pugh

missing -- ”

The week before, blasting for the first uranium mine had

begun in the Dar Loosh. The engineers were driven away by Ber-

bers on horseback, and the Crown’s key scientist, Malcolm

Pugh, had disappeared in the fracas. “. . .We can’t create a

stink over Pugh’s disappearance until we’re sure it’s foul

play, because our relations with that damned Rassan are rather

good and we’d like a whack at mining concession.”

 143

“I don’t mind risking my neck.” The geologist had known

plenty of exotic peril in his career. “I only hope there’s

enough uranium to be worth all the trouble.”

“It’s rather a lot. Rassan is holding out for an ex-

change, just a few knickknacks like atomic submarines and air-

to-air missiles, before he grants mining rights. No one even

knows if he’s got control over the uranium-—he can’t keep the

bloody Berbers away from the site for two minutes. And no one

fancies giving a load of nuclear weapons to a man who can’t

even put up a proper Lunapark. The Soviets sent him some jets

and tanks but the carriers can’t get into the harbor, so even

the Russians are rather off Rassan at the moment. Wish the old

King would get better. He was rather all right—-“

The clocktower clanged deafeningly.

“Two more hours ‘til majlis,” said the consul. “I’ll trot

you in to see the Crown Prince and we’ll get you up into the

Dar Loosh as soon as possible to have a look-round. And find

Pugh, if you can.”

Another limousine contained three Beni Wazz princes in

Italian suits and dark glasses, who’d been drinking heavily on

the plane. Their mother had dragged them from their business

abroad-—Azadin from Paris, Hamad and Fuad from Rome, where

they’d been scouting locations for a spy thriller “Rendezvous

In Masmoudia.” Annoyed that they’d have to wait until much

 144

later when they were inside the lofty walls of their private

villas to have more whiskey, they glowered at their native

land through the smoked windows.

As their car drew up in front of the women’s palace, they

were startled to hear the hearty thock of a tennis ball. “Good

shot!” said a foreign female voice in the garden.

During the weeks in Ajuz’, where she ended her dependence

on pills, Awisha had recovered her natural vigor; she was now

attacking her duties as official hostess with exuberance. At

her first tea for the wives of the consuls, visiting dignitar-

ies, and businessmen, she learned that most of the women

played tennis, or loved flowers, and all enjoyed martinis.

Awisha borrowed a construction crew from the King Musa Trade

Center site. After a long night of hammering and bulldozing,

she looked out her window to see a splendid shimmering new

pink-and-white clay court.

The Queen’s personal palmist brought her cases of vodka,

gin, and vermouth -- along with her usual consignment of beer.

The Princess was playing a round-robin doubles tournament

alongside a Brazilian steel magnate’s wife when the three

princes arrived from the airport. Other women strolled in the

garden, admiring the roses. A trio of slave-girls played Bed-

ouin music as several Beni Wazz princesses showed a group of

attentive Japanese ladies how to dance with scarves.

 145

In a private room adjoining the men’s reception, Queen

Johara met her sons by King Musa and his deceased brother. The

eight men sat submissively while she poured out her disgust

for her stepson Rassan. As coffee was served, Azadin excused

himself to send his steward to his villa and tell the American

that he would arrive that evening for dinner alone with her.

Sidi Messoud reached Zhubba at five that afternoon. He

told the cook to prepare a superb champagne supper for Connor

and Azadin, with grilled shark’s meat for Highness to eat im-

mediately on arrival, to insure his virility. Then he sent

Sayed to bring the girl downstairs.

As he waited, he could hear some monotonous American mu-

sic being played up on the terrace: “I’ve traveled each and

every highway. . . I did it my way. . . .” He was anxious to

get back to the capital; something momentous was taking place

at the Queen’s conference.

After an hour, she finally appeared. Messoud was now fu-

rious. “Oh, hi,” she said, as she was just wandering through.

“Good afternoon, Miss Blakey.” He stood, and waited for

her to sit down. She did not. Drinking from a can of American

soda, she shuffled absently around the room, periodically

bumping into a table. She was bony, and very pale. There were

lavender smears of fatigue under her eyes; her caftan hung

strangely in the back, wrinkled and stiff with patches like

 146

dried milk stains. “I am happy to inform you His Highness

Prince Azadin has returned from Paris and will dine with you

this evening.”

“Tell’m I’m unclean, will you.”

Messoud smiled indulgently at the lie. “You are haram?

What does this mean to you? An American does not believe in

haram. Or perhaps you are saying you need to wash?”

“Believe me, even by American standards I’m unclean.

Look, I just can’t see him, that’s all.” She winced as she

walked to the sofa. “He can’t just snap his fingers. . .open

your legs and close your eyes. . .I just can’t. . .any more.”

She sat stiffly, as if her back bothered her. “Did I get any

mail?”

“You cannot refuse to see the Prince in his own villa,

Miss Blakey.”

For the first time she looked at him directly. His ex-

pression held barely restrained brutality. She curled up on

her side, taking refuge under a pillow. “If he comes, he

comes,” she said, falling fast asleep.

“It turned out so right,” the American singer sang as

Sidi Messoud left, “for strangers in the night.”

Selim strolled in, wearing nothing but a pair of wet

jeans that Connor had bought for $200 from Habib, who’d magi-

cally turned up the week before. (Selim liked to wear the

 147

jeans wet so they would turn his legs blue.) She’d also paid

an outrageous price for a tape recorder and a couple of Frank

Sinatra tapes to help Selim learn English.

Selim bent down and woke his mistress by stroking the

backs of her calves. “Lady,” he whispered. (He had learned

that one word so far, from “That’s Why The Lady Is A Tramp.”)

She uncurled, opening, with an awful groan. He gathered her

up, making soft clucking noises of encouragement against her

neck as he carried her back upstairs.

When Messoud got back to the women’s palace in Port-Au-

Wazz, Queen Johara was still in conference with her eight

sons, who were urging a bloodless coup. She listened petu-

lantly: A coup without blood was soup without salt.

Oblivious to the meeting of his kindred, the Crown

Prince welcomed envoys, press representatives, and the usual

native petitioners. Scanning the broad spectrum of foreign na-

tions, he wondered which one among them was supplying the Ber-

ber rebels with arms and explosives.

There was an hour remaining to majlis before the evening

prayer, as he listened to a poor tanner complain about the

bread shortage in Port-Au-Wazz. There was no flour (though

 148

Rassan knew it was spilling from thousands of sacks on the

docks) and inflation had risen forty percent in a month.

“It is because our stock market is doing so wonderfully

well,” Rassan explained. “Everything is going up.” To help

Masmoudian residents weather this temporary effect of prosper-

ity, he offered coupons entitling them to food discounts from

any Beni-Wazz-owned King-Save Supermarket.

At the entrance to the hall, guards searched a petitioner

for weapons. Rassan noticed the man towering over them, hold-

ing up his hands and biting his thumbs in the ancient pose of

surrender. He met the Crown Prince’s eye with a coarse famili-

arity.

“Who is that Berber giant?” Rassan whispered to the old

slave at his left.

Suleiman pursed his lips anxiously. “I have never seen

Babas Umaloo,” he said. “I have only heard him described.”

The entire room grew hushed. The guards glanced anxiously

at Rassan, waiting for a signal to arrest the rebel leader.

The man’s bald head emerged from an immense goat’s-hair coat

like a buzzard perched on a tent; the foreigners present noted

his blue ankles with curiosity.

“I come to you unarmed and in peace,” the barefoot giant

said in loud English, as he passed by envoys who had been

waiting for hours to see Rassan. “Prince, I am in your power,

 149

but I too have power. I am the mountains, you are the wind.

Between us we can make great disasters. But we are different.

I, the mountains, go nowhere. I belong in my place. I am the

pegs that God hammered into the earth to fix the tent of his

universe. But, the wind, go everywhere and belong nowhere.”

The big man reached the throne. Speaking in Arabic, Ras-

san pointed out that the whole world looked to Masmoudia for

this wonderful resource in the Dar Loosh mountains, and that

the uranium mines would mean one hundred percent employment

for the Berber tribespeople. The ogre continued his harangue

in English as if he was deaf to the royal remonstrance. Rassan

could only sit and suffer alarming bolts of pain in his si-

nuses (he had caught a cold from the air-conditioning) as the

man shouted on and on, in the unmistakable hoarse adolescent

pitch of a eunuch. If Rassan ordered the Berber arrested there

and then, the Western reporters present would charge the Crown

with repression of human rights and the free speech supposedly

guaranteed by majlis. “We are a cultural, ethnic, and reli-

gious entity which seeks its own preservation,” the speech,

clearly memorized, finally wound down, “and you are abusing

our rights as an autonomous people. If you withdraw and make

no further penetration, there will be no trouble between us.

But if you persist in this evil which you perpetrate against

all universal standards for human freedom, blood will rush

 150

down the sides of the Dar Loosh, for every Masmoudian Berber

will die to protect his independence and every Masmoudian Arab

will die trying to take it from him.”

The giant wheeled and left the hall. A flurry of foreign

languages sprang up in the hall after the man exited.

Suleiman turned to look at his master. The Prince’s ex-

pression was magnificent. He looked like his father the King;

his Western education had fallen away and his Bedouin ancestry

was calling him, filling him with bloodlust, the exquisite

horror of vengeance. The Crown Prince turned to his venerable

slave. “Bring me the head of Babas Umaloo,” he commanded.

The British consul and the eminent geologist, who had not

succeeded in speaking with the Crown Prince before majlis

ended, walked down the Palace’s front steps. The consul apolo-

gized. “Rather a good speech that big bloke gave, I thought,

for a yokel. Still, if the rebels were holding Pugh hostage,

don’t you think he would’ve said something? Perhaps brought up

a ransom?”

“Come to prayer!” called the muezzin, his amplifier sput-

tering. “Prayer is better than sleep!”

The men strolled through the narrow streets of the fruit

and vegetable souks, the voices of Arab women rising as they

haggled behind black veils, and men praising the beasts loom-
 151

ing over them in the camel market. The sun’s rays faded on the

empty drive-in movie screen as a family of seven squatted in

the dust, eating kebabs beside a parking post. The father un-

hooked the speaker-box and banged it with his palm to make the

movie begin sooner.

The scientist and the consul walked on through the

neighborhoods of modern villas in the process of being built.

It seemed to them that the high walls surrounding Arab dwell-

ings strove to create some mystique in this landscape that of-

fered the senses and the imagination so little. Walls and

veils and opaque language and maze-like designs provoked trav-

elers to dream that a beautiful woman, or enchanted garden, or

perhaps salvation, was hidden inside. Outside the walls, teth-

ered goats efficiently consumed rubbish.

The two men reached the shore and turned to watch the bay

suck on the last morsel of orange sun. The scientist’s eyes

roamed over the skyline, from the elegant silhouette of the

King Musa Trade Center to the brute crouch of the old fort and

huddled ships. In the middle of the harbor, the Ferris wheel

glowed in the twilight. Newly installed streetlamps lit up si-

multaneously along the docks.

“It could work, you know,” said the geologist. “Just

wants a spot of organization.”

“It needs us.”

 152

At the women’s palace, the meeting between Johara and her

sons adjourned. At last they’d decided Prince Azadin was to

march the police into majlis, and force Rassan to renounce his

succession to the King. He would be exiled to the royal

compound at Ajuz’ for life, and Azadin would gain the golden

headrope, Masmoudia’s new Crown Prince.

After the meeting broke up, Azadin’s mother kept him be-

hind and made him swear on her life never to fly at night. He

agreed, kissing her. On a guilty impulse, he went to men’s re-

ception and asked to see his wife.

Awisha bounced into the salon, flushed in a glittering

purple caftan. Plunking down on the sofa, she poured the tea,

landing a verbena-scented stream neatly into each slender

glass from three feet away. Azadin wondered if she was on the

verge of another manic fit, and if now was the moment to bring

up the American doctor’s recommendation that she have a hys-

terectomy.

Listening with a yielding delicacy, she responded animat-

edly and cleverly, though her gestures were a bit athletic.

Azadin found himself eagerly telling her about problems of

state, his plans for the King’s birthday exposition, his

health, the planned coup, his dream for a healthy, progres-

sive, neutral Masmoudia, and his ultimate ambition to become

 153

the mediator of peace between the Arabs and Israelis, Africans

and Afrikaners, Soviets and Americans, Protestants, Catholics,

Muslims and Communists.

With whom but one’s own cousin could one feel so close,

so safe? he thought, for the first time realizing the wisdom

of his marriage. He and Awisha had both been raised for un-

usual duty, both traumatized by their American education; both

shared the same tenderness for their Arab heritage—even the

same physical features. In a surge of affection Azadin desired

his wife, warming to her as to his own self. He sat down be-

side her on the brittle French baroque sofa: The American girl

in Zhubba could wait another night. “Have the slaves prepare

our private quarters,” he said, “and have some musicians

there.”

She rose, flustered. “I cannot, my husband.”

“You are haram?”

She was incapable of deception. “I don’t want it.” There

was a trace of anger in her voice.

He stepped forward to grasp her wrist and conquer her re-

straint with a kiss. She shook him off. What was happening? He

couldn’t hit her—-she was the King’s daughter-—though he would

so soon succeed the King. . . ’If you strike your wife and

know not why, don’t worry. She always knows!’ the proverb

said. He slapped the Princess’s broad cheek.

 154

Conditioned by tennis, her arm drew back instinctively

and delivered a fist into his solar plexus. He doubled up with

a grunt and fell to his knees on the soft carpet’s labyrin-

thine scrawl. Terrified, Awisha ran from the salon, vanishing

deep into the women’s quarters where he was forbidden to fol-

low.

Prince Azadin collapsed into his Thunderbird, switched on

the headlights, and leaned heavily on the steering wheel to

ease his bruised organs. Then he gunned the engine to life,

squealing away from the women’s palace. He was in a hurry. If

he reached Zhubba too late at night, the American woman might

feign fatigue. He envisioned Connor’s long thighs like alabas-

ter columns mounting to the arched entrance to the baths; like

the moonlit streets skimming under his hands as he guided the

wheel. Giddily he honked the horn, which played “La Cucaracha”

in roistering staccato.

Instantly, as if in remonstrance, all the electricity in

Port-Au-Wazz flickered and went out. The new streetlamps and

the full capacity crowds at the Grande Wazz Hotel and the em-

bassies had overburdened the system. Azadin’s headlights illu-

minated the approaching intersection; he turned east for the

beach and Zhubba.

 155

As the Thunderbird sped up the ramp, Azadin felt as if he

were soaring aloft over the darkened city, as if he had been

plucked up by a great black winged jinn. Then the car began

its fatal descent.

When she heard the news that her son had driven off one

of the unfinished flyovers to his death, Queen Johara choked

on a knob of lamb gristle. She died at the table, in front of

a horrified hareem.

By Islamic law, Azadin’s widow and daughter received

nothing at his demise; all the property, houses, and wealth

went to his two baby sons. Only one man stood able to assume

the Prince’s roles as Minister of Defense, Chief of Protocol,

Chief of Police, owner of Kurry King, local operator of Juicy

Jack, co-owner of Wazzco Shipping, King-Save Supermarkets,

Musa-Vista Real Estate, Beni Wazz Furniture, Wazz-ease Shoes,

Worldwide Wazz Travel, member of the board of the King Musa

Water Utility, Popular People’s Bank, and Wazz-Loosh Mining

Authority. Crown Prince appointed Azadin’s steward to fulfill

his deceased master’s duties.

Sidi Messoud gave Awisha the Swiss bank passbooks the

Prince had stored in his office safe. She thanked him gra-

ciously and he decided to wait a year before proposing mar-

riage to her.
 156

Sidi Messoud accepted his good fortune with the proper

humility. It was true, he marveled, in God’s world anything

was possible. A slave could become king.

 157

Chapter Thirteen

MAROONED

She clawed at the lizards climbing her legs. They were

grinning; it was absurd that they could smile. She realized

she must be dreaming, and tried to wake herself by shouting

for help. But her outer body slept on, encasing her scream

like a sarcophagus. Wake up! She strained against the heavy

lid of the dream until it gave way, and she tumbled out.

She opened her eyes. She lay on vast sheets, embroidered

hangings all around. An arched window framed a pond-green sky,

warped as through a bottle-bottom. Where was she? Something

was still undone. Selim entered from the terrace. She wailed

his name, wanting him to cradle her. Instead he climbed on top

of her and lunged inside, with the cool probe of a profes-

sional ransacking a tomb. His implacable blue eyes stared down

at her and he pushed her breasts in circles; then his over-

whelming shape blocked out all light. He drove at her in dark-

ness until she came. Then he disappeared, leaving her

stranded.

She was still dreaming. She struggled to surface a second

time, waking onto the same sheets as before. The silk hang-

ings curled in a salt breeze from the arched window. Empty

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diet-soda cans littered the bed or had fallen onto the marble

floor. Simone let out a cry, working her claws into the sheep-

skin rug. Connor could hear her maid Shammar giggling out on

the terrace. Frank Sinatra was singing, “The record shows, I

took the blows,” as Selim’s voice joined in, “Undid it my

way. . . .”

He had kept her awake a long time, Connor remembered,

days and nights of plunging and thrusting and coaxing. Now all

she did was sleep and he didn’t come to her at all. Whenever

she disengaged her tongue from the parched roof of her mouth

to call, Shammar would wander in with a cold can of TRIM. Con-

nor would drink, and sleep again, then wake with another

ghostly orgasm, the same pestering phantom of need.

Her backbone was scraped raw from receiving him. She had

given him so much fluid she was gnarled from dehydration, yet

still there was more, her juices swamping her thighs, caking

the sheets and caftan, the blowzy bruised petals of her cunt

sobbing. Could you die from lust? she wondered, fighting to

emerge from this dream, and falling back under in defeat.

She slept through the servants’ orgiastic wailing. Sayed

had returned from his errands in Port-Au-Wazz with news of the

deaths of Queen Johara and Prince Azadin. Sayed would be

freed. Usually slaves were given manumission at the master’s

 159

death to help guarantee a choice seat for the deceased man in

Paradise: where, by the eternally flowing springs, he would be

served unending refreshments by the dark-eyed houris and

slave-boys.

Selim crept into his quarters, sat on the mat he had yet

to sleep on, and stuffed the tape recorder and some of Con-

nor’s money into his cloth bag.

“Why doesn’t he come?” Connor’s voice came from leagues

under. “I called and called. Is there any mail? Don’t, don’t

turn the tape over, there’s. . .bruises on the other side, oh,

sore everywhere.”

“My poor darling!” Awisha stood gaping at her girl-

friend’s ghoulish appearance, the rifled closets, the cans

everywhere, and the moaning cat rotating in the middle of the

floor with its hindquarters raised. She had not been able to

visit Connor until the funeral rites for her aunt the Queen

and her cousin the Prince were over, arriving at the beach

villa to discover Connor in bed, wasted and delirious.

The Princess questioned Shammar, who said Connor had been

on one of her strange diets, refusing all food but the Ameri-

can soda. “She wouldn’t see anyone except for her new slave—“

“Her slave?!” Awisha cried.

 160

Shammar stopped, frightened. Tearing her hair and

clothes, she began to scream, “God spare her! He put a sehúr

on her!”

Awisha wasted no time in making a decision. Sayed was

sent to Port-Au-Wazz with orders to drive back a certain se-

húra to cure Connor.

That evening, the venerable witch sat beside Connor’s

bed. Reaching into her King-Save shopping bag, she took out

some string, measuring each of Connor’s limp fingers. When the

total length of all five failed to reach from the inside of

the patient’s elbow to the last joint of her middle finger,

the sehúra sucked in her tattooed cheeks. “Sehúr,” she de-

clared.

“How?” Awisha asked.

“In something she has eaten or drunk.”

“God’s name,” Awisha and Shammar breathed in unison.

The sehúra descended to the kitchen, where she three

handfuls of herbs into a pot of boiling milk. “In God’s name,”

she began the incantation, stirring the pot. “It is the hand

of Our Mother Fatima which stirs. . . .”

Forcing Connor to drink the infusion, she held her head

and stuck white rooster feathers down her throat until Connor

had vomited everything up. Shammar washed Connor in another

infusion the witch prepared in the bath. Afterwards the old

 161

woman pitched herbs and incense onto the coals in a brazier

and had Connor stand naked over the fumes. When she was done,

she hung a silver lavaliere around Connor’s neck, filled with

a preparation she had made of seeds, herbs, bark, animal hair

and brains.

Connor went back to sleep.

The sehúra packed up her shopping bag. “God forbid that

it happens again!”

“God reward you.”

After the old woman had left, the Princess had a long

talk with Sayed about this other slave, the young man from the

mountains. He told her all he knew, then begged not to be

freed, but Awisha did not have the power to grant his wish.

“Well, I feel absolutely marvelous.” Connor plumped a

pillow and slid it behind her back. “Strangest flu I ever had.

You little sneak, sitting there so quiet and watching me

sleep. How long have you been there?”

“A little time,” Awisha said. Sitting on a banquette near

the bed, she picked up an empty can of TRIM, studying the la-

bel. “Darling, where did you get this drink? You know, it is

forbidden in our country because the company send money to Is-

rael.” Perhaps the Israelis had put something in the soda to

make Arabs crazy, she thought.

 162

“I buy it from a friend, this little old man with blue

legs and a hole in one cheek. And I’ve seen you sock away too

much beer for you to give me that ‘forbidden’ stuff.”

“A hole in the cheek? The same man who brings me beer? He

reads hands to see the future, too?”

“He said I’d meet the man of my dreams here. Ha!”

“Connor, perhaps he put something in the drink to make

you sick.” Awisha grew excited. “There is big trouble between

us and the Berber peoples, and they know a lot of magic for

having control of someone. This old man Habib and this bad-

news slave are both from the Dar Loosh!”

“You think it was magic? Like some kind of poison or aph-

rodisiac?”

“It is wacky. But perhaps it is possible.” The Princess

turned the can, studying it. “It’s saying here this drink

‘causes cancer’!”

“I know that, I’ve been drinking it for ten years. More

to the point, was it making me horny?” Seeing Awisha’s bewil-

dered expression, Connor laughed until pink flared on her

cheeks. “I know how we can find out. We’ll make him drink

some.” She smiled coyly. “I guess you know about Selim by

now.”

“Yes.”
 163

“Isn’t he beautiful? Come on, let’s get him in here. If

he put something in the soda then he won’t want to drink it,

and if he does drink it and it has the same effect it did on

me, he’ll start coming buckets—-“

“He is gone away,” Awisha interrupted tersely.

“Gone!” Connor leapt out of bed, running to scan the ter-

race, the beach. “Where, where?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he go back to the mountains. They

tell me he takes all his things, and the gifts you give him.”

She didn’t conceal her disapproval.

“Since when does he have the right to just pick up and

leave? This is just my luck. I only have him a couple of weeks

and he runs away.”

“Thanks to God he is gone! Look what he does to you.”

Connor limped back to bed. “He was just doing his job. I

guess it wasn’t any fun for him, if he’s gone. Tell me, maybe

this is nit-picking, because he really was otherwise perfect,

but don’t you think it’s weird if the guy never comes?”

The Princess’s face went stony. “He is taught this, to

hold himself. A slave must not come.”

“Maybe I’m romantic,” Connor sighed, “but why shouldn’t

he?”

“Because it is not right. For you the pleasure, not for

him. His pleasure is to serve you. That is the way.” Awisha’s

 164

voice rose until she was shouting. “Oh Connor, I am very mad

at you! You come to this country and you want to do everything

your way! And then you say everybody is the same and why does

a slave not have sexual pleasure from you! Well, if you want

to be a queen and have slaves, you must understand there is a

difference between you and they!”

“Keep your shirt on—-“

“You don’t understand us! I know in America and Communist

countries they say everybody is equal, but here we say, yes,

equal, but they can’t be the same. It is impossible. A man is

not a woman, the donkeyman is not a king, a daughter cannot be

her father’s mother, the sand is not grain for bread. Yes, if

God wills it, it is possible one day the donkeyman can be

king. But they can’t both be king, or who will drive the don-

keys? So, between a person and his slave is this space. It is

not shame. You can even love each other, but he still serves

and you command. You are not better than he, he is not better

than you, but you can’t be the same. I know you were having

your slave in your room all the time and sleeping in the same

bed until you are crazy. You give him things and let him tell

you what to do, and this is bad. He must stay in his room, and

when you want him, you call, and when you don’t want, you send

him back to his room, and if he steals or makes you trouble,

you have him beaten. Sometimes he is like a little child, to

 165

test you. He want you to show him: Here is pleasure, here is

pain, this is the way the world is. But I tell you, Connor, if

a slave takes from you his pleasure instead of he gives it to

you, then he is not a slave any more and this world it breaks

in pieces. I am happy he did not come and I am happy he goes

away. It means to me he is perhaps a good slave and he knows

what is wrong. We have a proverb: When you beat your slave and

you don’t know why, he always knows!”

Exhausted, the Princess sank back onto the banquette.

Connor’s face was crumpled with contrition; tears hung in her

lashes. It was her fault that it had all gone wrong; she’d let

him go too far.

She remembered letting him put on one of the Prince’s

three-piece suits from the closet, and kneeling before him,

unzipping the trousers, when his open palm swatted her head to

one side and she toppled to the floor. Then he was on her,

heavily, muttering defiantly in his own language, the sounds

sticky and tangled with insult, no longer the lilting croon of

poetry he’d spoken their first nights. She felt the scrubbing

of cool buttons and linen and bared zipper-teeth on her skin,

and a treacherous rapture climbing her thighs. The deeper he

pushed the more she pulled him into her, until they had inched

to the wall; yet again it was she who surrendered, groaning,

her head bashing against the wall as he continued to lunge.

 166

She woke some time later on the floor, the arched window

framing the yellow afternoon. He was naked, eating bread and

grilled meat, on the bed. His greasy fingers, flecked with

charcoal and pepper, brushed crumbs from his chest. After a

while he grew irritated by her staring at the wolfish rolling

of his jaws and put the food down on the tray. She watched him

will himself to hardness, the cudgel shape lifting off his lap

in perfect obedience to its master. Then he picked her up and

planted her on it, walking her out onto the terrace and moving

her up and down under the steely sun.

She scrambled all over him, to shake off the terrifying

pleasure and fall away free but he held fast until she came;

then he removed her and propped her on a chaise long.

She would have slept a little were it not for the tape

player squalling Sinatra: “Through it all, when there was

doubt, I ate it up, and spit it out!” In her delirium, Connor

imagined the voice was coming from her cunt, the empurpled

ridges swelling with the orchestra, “I tasted all, and I stood

tall, and did it my way!”

Later he crammed a half-eaten orange there as if silenc-

ing the nether voice: scooped the orange wedge up from the

rattling tray on the mattress as he covered her like a dog

from behind, reached under her and smudged the fruit’s pulp

into the cleft. His other hand scratched, thumped and slapped
 167

her buttocks as he thrust, not letting her collapse no matter

how many spasms she gave out.

Later she woke to see him kneeling in the far corner by

the light of a candle, with her paper money in his hands, a

thousand rials or more, and the contents of her purse scat-

tered onto the satin lining of her fur coat on the floor. He

looked back at her expressionlessly. Downstairs in the kitchen

a pot clashed with a pan. “Take it,” she said, trembling in

the cool night. He seemed to understand, blowing out the can-

dle with a gust of contempt.

He’d stolen her coat, too. Was Awisha right? Had that

been all he wanted, Connor wondered, for her to say “stop,”

“no,” “go to your room,” or smack him with a rolled-up maga-

zine? He was an exotic mechanism she had wound too tightly,

she supposed, and failed guide as he ran through all his

tricks at dangerous speed. She hadn’t thought to ask for an

instruction manual.

Of course, this was a different part of the world, and

she was an innocent tourist. Maybe he was disappointed that

she hadn’t acted her role as mistress properly, but it served

him right for doping her up. Once she got him to America, she

could make him relax. She’d show him how roles didn’t have to

be quite so defined, and he would be free to come at last.

“Do you think he’ll come back?” she asked Wishy.

 168

“If he does return, I will have him punished.” Awisha

didn’t think he would; a slave who wanted to serve always

stayed. “If he wants to run away, then we must sell him or

free him, because he is not good to us any more. We are fair

with our slaves in Islam. It is best to free these ones who

wish to be free.”

“Free him!” Connor cried. “But then he’d be. . .free like

everybody else! Why would I want to drag him back to the

States then?” Guiltily she added, “I would free him after I

showed him to the girls. I really don’t believe in slavery,

but I just wanted to make a point.”

“I cannot let you to take this man out of my country if

you do not free him. If you show him to everybody in America

and you say, ‘This is my slave from Masmoudia,’ what will hap-

pen to the international opinion? No, if you want to take him

with you, he must be free, he can be your boyfriend. If you

want him as your slave, you must stay here.” She added dubi-

ously, “If God wills he comes back.”

There was no use arguing with Awisha, Connor could see.

“Hey, have you seen your husband lately?” she asked, wondering

why the Prince hadn’t stopped by.

Shammar packed Connor’s bags for the journey back to

Port-Au-Wazz while Sayed prepared the royal limousine. The two

 169

former roommates walked along the beach, sharing a bottle of

champagne from the departed Prince’s collection. Who would she

get to help her find Selim? Connor wondered, annoyed by

Azadin’s death. And how could she get around these pointless

statutes about slavery? If he comes he’s not a slave and if we

go he’s not a slave but then he’s free, a sort of song rattled

around in her brain, and if he’s free he’ll come but also go.

Can’t he both come and not be free, or would he rather run

than come?

Connor’s silence worried Awisha. “Darling, I’m sorry I

did not keep my shirt on with you.”

Connor handed over the bottle. “Pals, okay?” The Princess

nodded eagerly. “Don’t forget, you saved my life just now. I

could have died of erogenous arrest. I’m sorry about Azadin,

though. What will you do now?”

The Princess swigged on the bottle, wrinkling her nose at

the bubbles. “I think I will get drunk.”

“You’re not going to stay in this ridiculous junkyard.

Why don’t you come back to the States?”

“It is God’s will I stay. One of my sons may be King one

day. Even if I am not happy to stay I must try to be good,”

she handed the bottle back to Connor guiltily, “and if I fail

it must also be God’s will.”

 170

“Oh Wishy, you are good.” Connor gave her a kiss. “Never

mind what God thinks, I say so. You’re just not much fun,

that’s all.”

“Masmoudia is not for fun. And still, I love my country.”

“And I’m madly in love with Selim. None of it makes any

sense.”

Awisha started to giggle. “If you want a slave who loves

you, you take Sayed! He adores you!”

“Marvin, that old guy back at the house? He just serves

my meals and stuff. I totally ignore him.”

“You see? That is why he loves you.” Awisha stumbled in

the sand, laughing. “That is the secret!”

Connor shook her head. Her late catastrophe had not

erased her mania. Possession was nine-tenths of love, and

proof of ownership was the glorious cascade of sperm. Even

though Selim was her chattel, she had not yet truly owned him.

He kept denying her the precious element, the molten pool

glowing under its layer of protective rock. It was maddening:

She wanted it all, for him to pump out every drop until he had

no more.

Flinging the empty bottle into the sea, they turned back.

Perhaps she should ask Habib for help; as a Berber from the

mountains, he would know where to look for Selim, just as he

always knew where to find Connor whenever he had something to

 171

sell. It was just a matter of time before Habib traced her to

the women’s palace in Port-Au-Wazz; she’d ordered some more

black market tapes a week ago. She fingered the silver lava-

liere of herbs around her neck. “Everything will work out,

you’ll see.”

“If God wills it,” Awisha said with an indulgent smile.

“Don’t worry. We Scorpios are master strategists.”

“Don’t you believe in God?” the Princess asked wistfully.

“Do you only believe in the stars?”

 172

Chapter Fourteen

DAR LOOSH

It was not a propitious time for the Crown Prince to

visit the Dar Loosh mountains, even if he only intended to

stand ceremoniously at their base. One omen after another

warned against this journey.

First His Highness’s helicopter was shot at by a band of

Bedouin horsemen as it passed over the Najiz desert. Rassan

couldn’t tell who they were, and realized too late how little

he knew about his own people.

His father the King would have known the tribe of his at-

tackers simply from the style of their turbans. He would have

called a council of sheikhs (those wed to his daughters and

nieces, and to whose daughters and nieces he’d married his

sons and nephews). At dawn, amid the armada of black tents and

the surging dunes, he would have delivered a ferocious speech,

swearing all to punitive action against those who had dared

fire on the royal helicopter. The temporary army of tribes

loyal to the Crown would have raided the rebel clan’s camps,

caravans, and settlements, slaughtering even women and live-

stock, until the recalcitrant sheikh crawled before the King,

 173

begging to have his life traded for sparing what remained of

his family.

Rassan would have to find a different approach, he knew.

His own popularity would come, provided he was patient, as a

result of hospitals, trade schools, and high employment,

rather than atrocity.

When his helicopter landed, a Landrover and police escort

brought him to the tiny Berber kasbah at the foot of the Dar

Loosh. The north side of the mountain range was rocky and in-

fertile; yet here it was that the British scientist Malcolm

Pugh had discovered sumptuous deposits of copper, silver, man-

ganese, and uranium.

None of the villagers had turned out in celebration of

his arrival, Rassan noticed; nor was there any sign of mourn-

ing for the deaths of his stepmother the Queen and his cousin

Azadin. The villagers would have to be fined. By the time the

motorcade passed through the dreary kasbah, Rassan’s fury was

building toward the governor-pasha, an Arab he had appointed

only last year, for whom he had built a modern villa outside

the town walls.

As they reached the entrance to the villa, the Crown

Prince saw that it was bedecked with palm fronds, red and

white bulbs, cardboard portraits of King Musa, and black rib-

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bons for mourning. Apologizing profusely, the governor-pasha

invited the Crown Prince inside.

After the construction crews had arrived in their town,

the Berber population of the kasbah had migrated to the upper

slopes of the Dar Loosh, he told Rassan, not mentioning that

the villagers had gone to the mountains to join the dissidents

who’d been sabotaging the government’s efforts to claim the

site of the future uranium mines.

It had been scarcely a month and a half since Rassan had

announced the priceless element’s discovery. The Crown Prince

was on an urgent mission to open and militarize the mines. Yet

the initial excitement was fast diminishing. Unconvinced that

the royal family actually ruled Masmoudia when the mountains

remained unbreached, delegates and envoys had begun leaving

the country in droves to confer with their governments.

With the King’s birthday exposition a mere three weeks

away, this exodus was affecting the Crown’s credit rating,

just when Rassan needed non-Saudi money for all his develop-

ment projects—money from the same fickle nations he’d been

paying homage to with his designs for modernization! The say-

ing was true: The one you ask to help you out of trouble is

often the one who helped you into it.

The Crown Prince’s frustration was mollified after tea,

when his party proceeded from the villa to the construction

 175

site. Steamshovels, caterpillars, bulldozers, derricks, and

trucks crawled about, starting construction on a luxury chalet

and an aerial tramway to transport tourists up seven thousand

feet to a spa situated on the peak, near the bubbling source

of a wadi. This project would not be completed for two more

years.

The titanic nylon breast of a hot-air balloon swayed

above the site. Here was Rassan’s answer to the problem of

gaining immediate access to the uranium site. It would si-

lently and gracefully bypass the treacherous paths and the

Berbers; it would simply float over them, and land safely

where a helicopter could not. As American sales rep Ralph

Shunt had relentlessly demonstrated, a balloon of the right

dimension could convey not only the new British geologist, six

Korean surveyors and all their equipment, but also a small

military escort, straight up to the site reported by the

still-missing Malcolm Pugh.

“Good morning, Your Highness, how are you?” called an

ebullient Shunt, striding out of the chaos of crews and trac-

tors around the balloon.

Rassan shook his hand. “Very well, thanks to God.”

“Hope you had a good trip. How’re things back in ol’

Port-Au-Wazz?”
 176

“Fine, thanks to God, the stock market is going through

the ceiling.” Even the deaths of Queen Johara and Prince

Azadin had not hindered the upward soar of activity on the

Masmoudian stock exchange; if anything, the index leaped

higher still the morning after the tragedy. The brokers seemed

to buy and sell more feverishly every day, as though (as the

Americans put it) there was no tomorrow.

“Ain’t she some babe?” Shunt and the Crown Prince stood

admiring the balloon tugging naughtily on its cable. The crew

had begun loading and in a half hour she would be launched.

Five of the Koreans posed and giggled in the bobbing gondola

while the sixth stood outside and took photos.

The new British geologist was climbing aboard to check a

kit when an errant D-8 caterpillar rode over the restraining

cable and snapped it.

The balloon, with its light cargo of five stunned Asians

and one eminent white man rose up the Dar Loosh and wandered

south before an officious east wind batted it all the way to

India.

In a Berber cave settlement high in the Dar Loosh, a

young girl on her way back from the springs spotted the fan-

tastical pink sphere with its tiny antennae (the Koreans’ arms
 177

waving) and ran home with her two clay jugs sloshing patches

of water in her tracks.

Ducking the hanging clusters of dried peppers and garlic

at the cave’s entrance, she scuttled through flurrying chick-

ens to where her mother squatted before a smoking brazier.

“I have seen Babas Umaloo in the sky! He’s taken the

shape of a giant flying snail!”

“He must be traveling to the men’s council, where they’re

all taking the Oath of War,” said the old woman. “Karima,

look. You’ve spilled the water. Your brother was planning to

wash when he wakes up. There’s hardly enough for his tea.”

Sending the girl back to the spring, she called softly for her

daughter Jalila to bring incense to soothe the jinns of the

cave, which had been agitated. She could hear their consterna-

tion in the cracks along the ochre walls carved with protec-

tive symbols. Sometimes she could see them, in human or animal

form or a combination of the two. Sometimes they walked at the

side of magicians just like ordinary folk.

The night her son Selim had appeared, his eyes haunted,

wearing an astonishing coat of green fur, she’d almost mis-

taken him for a devil. The day before, the slave-agent’s as-

sistant had come looking for her son, who he said had run away

from the Prince’s household.

 178

This puzzled the old woman; Selim had never been troubled

by his slavery, accepting it as his destiny—-his craft. After

he was freed by his first master, he had returned of his own

will to the slavemarket. Why should he now run away? He loved

all things loved by God —- submission, ritual, covenant, law —

submitting to servitude as a leaf curled around a stem in an

ancient design. In the days after he was freed, he’d even made

up a sad song of exile, praising the master as his mirror, in

whose silvery countenance he was defined, without whose re-

flection he was invisible. Selim was a Berber: He believed a

slave was free so long as he remembered honor. A heart which

ceased to care for its honor, to remember wrongs and to wish

for revenge, to remember favors and wish for their recompense,

did not belong in the breast of a free man. So what had he run

from, if not bondage?

When Selim arrived from his long journey, shuddering with

cold, his four sisters were asleep against the far wall of the

cave. “You ran from a royal prince’s house?!” his mother whis-

pered incredulously. “Where God, His name be praised, led you

in his great kindness?”

“The Prince, God’s mercy on him, is dead,” Selim told her

in a voice without emotion. “But the Prince was not my mas-

ter.” He crouched on the matting, poising his hands over the

bright coals of the brazier, his beautiful mouth slanting

 179

downward. “My mistress is a Christian. . .an unbeliever.” He

looked to her for sympathy.

“Is she very ugly, my son?”

“No, she is very handsome. . .but she is a whore. From a

bitch’s litter spawned with the flies in the compost heap -- ”

He stopped, seeing his mother’s cold expression. The jinns in

the wall scraped frantic messages over the shrilling wind.

“The boy from the agent’s house comes tomorrow again, to

bring you back,” she said. “He knew you would come here.”

Selim hastily shook out his bag, his still-stiff fingers

searching awkwardly for the bundle of paper money. “I will buy

my freedom.” He offered her the wadded rials. “See, there is

enough.”

“How did you get this money?” She made no move to take

them.

“I took it. She let me. Look, she gave me all these

things.” He spread out the contents of his pouch: the music

machine, the tight blue trousers, a bracelet, bottles of per-

fume; then suddenly, as if ashamed, he stuffed everything back

in his bag. “She lets me take anything, do anything with her,

the whore.” He flung his head into his mother’s lap, gazing up

at her in fear. “Mother, I think she is an ogress.”

“An ogress?! What do you mean?” He didn’t reply, curling

up in shame.
 180

There was a centuries’ old tale Berber women told their

children about the Ogress Tzeriel, who hungered for human

flesh and always managed to eat a few adults before the chil-

dren in the stories outwitted her. Did her son believe his

mistress was Tzeriel? There were also ogresses who took the

forms of beautiful women to entice the lone traveler, in the

desert, in the marshes, in mountain gorges—-but an ogress liv-

ing in a prince’s house in the big city? Surely someone would

have noticed her goat’s hooves!

She questioned him gently, as she would a small child

terrified by a nightmare. “Like Tzeriel, my son?”

Clutching her, he would say nothing more about what had

frightened him.

His previous master had struck him the very first day,

and he had been frightened then, too. But ever after that, the

older man and his wife treated Selim with such kindness that

he felt gratitude—-and more. It was a strange alchemy: Grati-

tude, because it was tinged by awe and the memory of the blow,

became love.

But his Christian mistress frightened him more, and in a

different way. She always seemed to want something more from

him, and he could not guess what it was. He tried everything:

increasing the aphrodisiacs, inner massages, different oils,

 181

making up longer more fanciful poems to her beauty. Sometimes

he went for days without sleep, but she still wasn’t satis-

fied, no matter how vigorously or often she climaxed. Some-

times he crouched at the foot of her bed, watching her sleep

and wondering: What did she want?

One night she put her mouth on him. Feeling the ridges of

her teeth on his skin, he was stunned, quickly withdrawing

himself before her jaws closed. She wanted to eat him! The

thought filled him with such terror he thrust it away. Other

times he imagined that one day she would reach inside his

chest and squeeze his heart until his being passed into her

hand. Then it would be hers, not God’s.

At dawn Selim’s mother wound a yellow string with cowrie

shells, old coins, and odd shirt buttons into her hair; yellow

was the favorite color of Lalla Mirra, the powerful jinnia who

had often plagued her in the past. She wrapped a blanket

around her waist, another around her shoulders, threw a third

over her head, and left the cave. Because of her aging limbs,

she rarely went out, but this was an errand she could not en-

trust to her four daughters.

Since all the men and young boys had gone to take the

Oath of War with Babas Umaloo, the settlement was deserted,

save for old people, women and children guarding the communal
 182

grain stored in the caves. She clutched at the sheer rock of

the mountainside as she descended the hewn steps of the path

to the cemetery cave. Inside, she sat praying for a while,

near the stones of her seven dead sons. Visiting the cave

where a saint was buried, she bought colored candles from a

beggar outside and gave them to the guardian, who recited a

chapter from the Koran as she kissed the four corners of the

green cloth covering the tomb and prayed. On her way back up

the path, she stopped by the cave of the fqih, a learned man,

to ask him what to do.

The fqih was insulted at the idea of an ogress, even a

Christian one. A jinnia was one thing; ogresses were nothing

but ignorant superstition.

When she returned, her one remaining son was asleep,

dreaming badly, his lashes pattering like blackbirds’ feathers

on the gentle ledge of his cheekbone, a pulse trembling in his

pale temple. His black hair was swept back from his brow, its

wine-purple luster and perfect straightness proof of a pure-

bred Berber strain that had never mingled with Arab or Negro

slave’s blood.

If only his mistress had been old and repulsive, or

starved him, gave him no clothes or bed, made him convert to

Christianity, beat him daily -- then Selim’s mother could hide

 183

him here, enduring the h’shuma his cowardice brought on her

family. But what would his life be, hiding in poverty, he who

had been raised in the luxury of the agent’s house in Tit-

tawen? He would end up joining the rebel army of Babas Umaloo

and die young not in a holy war but in a blood feud against

fellow Moslems, like all her other sons. Hadn’t God delivered

him to this mistress instead of to war?

“Whatever he does, he has not escaped danger,” the fquih

had said. “He cannot seek to live longer any more than he can

seek to die sooner, for no one dies before the hour inscribed

by God.”

When Selim woke, his mother called to her eldest daughter

Zayna to serve him his breakfast of bread, dried figs, and

tea. He averted his eyes, eating slowly. Zayna burst into

tears as she cleared the tray, and ran outside.

His mother said, “She thinks now that you’ve come back,

we’ll have to give the slave-agent back his money, and then

she can’t be married. Karima and Jalila are upset, too. They

aren’t young any more. Without dowries, who will wed them?”

“Don’t they know I wouldn’t do such a shameful thing to

them?”

“Haven’t you just run away from a beautiful woman in a

royal palace? Anything is possible!”

 184

He bowed his head. “Don’t be angry with me, my mother.

Tell me what to do.”

“You must return to your mistress and ask her to free

you. And if she will not free you, you must stay with her. Now

give me your word on it by God, and bring no more shame on

your family.”

She hoped never again to see him so unhappy as when he

swore it; she expected never again to see him after he had.

The rest of the day he lingered like some apparition, the

blue in his eyes congealing to ice as his mother tried to

smooth over the breach. He turned on the music machine to

amuse his youngest sister, but when Frank Sinatra blared sud-

denly in the cave, she cowered; Selim stabbed a button and the

cassette leapt in the air. Stuffing all his possessions into

his bag, he went to sit in the cave entrance.

The mirror is an upright well

She holds me drowning
But will not let me sink
Death is the real refuge
She will not let me grasp his hand. . .

As Selim sang, the slave-agent’s assistant bounded

lightly up the path to the cave, his long single lock of hair

floating in the wind. The Dar Loosh peaks tangled in the

melted gold of the sunset as Selim kissed his mother good-bye.

She fastened a silver chain with a charm containing herbs,

 185

seeds, bark, and hair around his neck to protect him from in-

fidel jinns and ogresses in case they did exist.

“. . .We will fight the way we have always fought-—we

will strike, and vanish!” Babas Umaloo’s shrill amplified

voice echoed off the walls of the canyon. “They will ask them-

selves, ‘Do the Radif have wings, that suddenly our horses

have fled, and our soldiers lie in heaps like cracked nut-

shells? Are the Beni Berih eagles? Suddenly our breasts are

torn open and our blood sprays forth like the Sultan’s foun-

tains! Are the Wilad Jebel invisible? Suddenly our sons falls,

they are dying around our ankles like the groundseed in a

flood!’”

Bonfires and thousands of torches lit the surrounding

rock face. A group of musicians played the phrase favored by

Babas Umaloo’s patron jinn on their oboes and drums and cym-

bals. Babas Umaloo began to bob, bow, and stamp convulsively

until he was in a deep trance. He lashed at his bald scalp

with sharp stones until it was scarlet with flowing blood. The

chiefs came forward and smeared their hands in the saint’s

blood; they touched red to their hearts and heels, and pledged

their nascent crops, their fruit-trees’ seed, their unborn

lambs and infant sons to him.

“God is great!” they shouted.

 186

“Hear, hear,” said Malcolm Pugh, who was holding the mi-

crophone cord so it wouldn’t crackle during Babas Umaloo’s

speech.
 187

Chapter Fifteen

RETURN OF THE LOVE SLAVE

Simone’s ovaries were acting up again. Connor took her to

the American doctor and asked him to tranquilize her “a teeny

little bit.”

“I’m not a veterinarian, you know,” the doctor said, a

white lab coat thrown over his wrinkled caftan, as he prepared

a syringe.

The ginger cat mewed invitingly, hunching down on her

forepaws and raised her torrid hindquarters. Connor noticed

the doctor’s attention drifting over to another rump, as his

assistant padded barefoot through the examining room. a young

Arab boy with languorous eyes, the assistant wore an American

t-shirt with the words “I Can’t Believe I Ate The Whole

Thing”; tight white duck pants restrained the rolling rebel-

lion of buttocks set so high on his trunk as almost to pro-

hibit his walking erect. The doctor followed the boy with his

eyes, his hands trembling.

Coonor recognized the signs. He’s got the love-slave

habit, she thought: He’s got it bad, and it’s eating him up a

little more every day.

 188

She gathered up Simone, in cat bliss after her shot, re-

turning to the women’s palace. There she discovered her faith-

ful maid Shammar running down the corridor, chased by an older

slave-woman who struck her shoulders with a carpet-beater,

shouting, “H’shuma! H’shuma!” Quickly depositing Simone on her

bed, Connor hurried to find Awisha.

The Princess and her daughter Rashida were passing

through the gallery on their way to a tennis lesson, preceded

by a slave carrying rackets and balls.

“Why is Shammar being beaten?” Connor asked.

“I have told them not to beat her very hard,” Awisha said

evenly, not stopping or looking at her friend. “I don’t want

to hurt the baby in her stomach.”

“Shammar’s pregnant?! She couldn’t be more than four-

teen.”

“The American doctor says he will take it out. But you

know she is like my child to me, and now she brings me this

shame! It is because I love her I am beating her.” Awisha

turned tearful eyes to Connor. “It is your fault because you

don’t take care of her! You are blind you don’t see!”

“Goodness, we are unclean. How, pray, am I responsible?”

“Because when I give her to you she must now be like your

child, too!” Connor stepped back nervously. “I’m so stupid to

let you have her, you who have no children, you don’t know
 189

nothing about slaves. It’s your slave Selim, God burn him, who

is the father of the baby! He was balling Shammar all the time

in the villa. Now I’m understanding why he runs away! I hope

they don’t find him, because if I see him I will kill him, and

I will never, never, never let him to go with you to America.”

Awisha stalked off, yanking Rashida with her.

Connor bolted to her room, crawling into bed and hugging

her cat’s stoned body. She remembered Selim and Shammar laugh-

ing on the terrace, in the hall, down in the garden. All day

and night he’d screwed Connor and then what had he done with

his time off? He screwed the maid-—and came! In the maid but

not in Connor.

She pictured him between Shammar’s tender adolescent

thighs, arching his beautiful back like a peeled birch-wand.

She saw the cool elegant face soften in defeat, his sleek

lashes sinking to close over the blurring blue eyes, his but-

tocks clenched; she heard him give way with wounded groans.

“Oh, Simone, I can’t stand it,” she cried into the orange fur.

For weeks she’d waited in the women’s palace for his re-

turn, shunned by all the women (who knew it was Connor that

Prince Azadin was rushing to meet the night he sailed off the

flyover). Retreating to her room, she had daydreamed for hours

about Selim, imagining his slender straight body standing over

her bed, his dear competent hands reaching to lift her, his
 190

eyes skimming over her to find the place where he’d left off.

She had the love-slave habit and she had it bad. “I want him

so much, and now I’ll never see him again,” she told her cat.

There was a tap on the door. Sita, a pretty slave-girl,

entered, indicating with gestures that two women wished to see

her. “I can’t get out of bed,” Connor said. “My heart is being

chewed to pieces.” She motioned for Sita to bring the ladies

to her room.

After a minute the women swept in, concealed entirely by

their black abayas and double veils. One of them closed the

door and stationed herself at the window. The other sat on her

bed.

Connor shifted uneasily. “Well?”

“Please your not shouting!” came a deep whisper beneath

the veil of the woman seated beside her.

“Darling!”

Habib threw back his veil with a grin.

“I’ve been waiting for you for the longest time!”

“I’m knowing this.” His turquoise eyes sparkled as he

scratched the hole in his cheek.

“I knew you’d find me eventually but-—oh, Habib, you’ve

got to find my slave! I’ll pay anything, anything! Bring him-—

not here, if Awisha sees him-—there’re so many problems I

don’t know where to begin.”

 191

He rocked with laughter. “With you no problems! Is fin-

ish! I have bringing to you Selim now today!”

“Where is he?” Her eyes shot to the veiled figure at the

window.

“No, not him. Good friend from Cuba.”

“Ai, ai,” moaned a voice behind the black shroud, “mi

corazon. . . .” He looked down into the orchard through the

carved lattices.

“He is never seeing women so much with all together! He

not believing himself!”

Connor tugged Habib’s cloak impatiently. “Where is

Selim?”

The little Berber leaned close. “You go now to the Grande

Wazz Hotel and stay in room. Wait and Selim he coming to your

room this night.”

Connor leapt off the bed, going to her purse. “You’ve

never failed me, you’re brilliant, and I love you.” She

pressed a huge wad of bills upon him, thinking that actually

she should be angry at him for selling her diet soda spiked

with aphrodisiacs that made her act like Simone-—but never

mind. “I’d better pack an overnight bag—-wait. How am I going

to stay out all night? They run a tight ship here. Bed check

and all that.”

 192

“You take this abaya and put it all on you and go now

like you are me.” Habib handed her his veil and proceeded to

remove the black cloak. His friend left the window and sat

heavily on the bed, with a mysterious clanking sound. Ripping

off his own veil, he revealed a young swarthy countenance

bathed in sweat. Adjusting his robes, he bent to rescue the

revolver which had fallen onto the carpet. “And me I sleep

here this night,” Habib went on, “and with me Ramon, we make

big fatty mountain thing everyone thinking is woman sleeping.”

“I’ll tell the Princess I’m not feeling well, and for no-

body to bother me—-where’d my deodorant go? And listen, if my

cat wakes up and starts crying, just open the door a peek and

let her out. This is so exciting! I don’t think I need my

bathing suit, do I? Where did you find Selim, by the way?”

“His mother very sick, he visiting her up Dar Loosh moun-

tain.”

“Oh, I can forgive him then. Quick, look at my palm. Tell

me how the love-line’s holding up.”

Habib glanced down at her outstretched palm. After a long

pause he said only, “You are get every thing you want.”

Swathed in the heavy abaya and head veil, Connor skimmed

past the gossiping groups of women on their way to the grand

salon for the early evening tea. She felt like a floating cam-
 193

era the actors have been directed to pretend isn’t there, and

barely smothered her laughter as she passed Princess Awisha

unnoticed.

Excitement gushed up in her, as her high-heeled sandals

tapped quickly across the floors. She was racing to see the

man she loved! Still, she probably should try to beat him this

time, show him discipline, take responsibility—-no more Ameri-

can egalitarian treatment until he shaped up. She’d raped men

in her lifetime, but never assaulted one. On the other hand,

she should think of him as a child, a naughty child.

Her thighs rustled, flashing in their black thundercloud

of fabric. He was no child, but a man, a perfect man! A rosy

fire of anticipation streaked up her body, carrying her down

the palace steps, past the Yemeni guards, to King Musa Boule-

vard, where she hailed a petit-taxi.

Hurtling through shortcuts, the car honked through the

crowds in the souk, speeding along the harbor until they’d

reached the porte-cochère of the Grande Wazz Hotel. Connor got

up and flew up the steps, her veil billowing, rushing to meet

her lover, racing to beat her slave. Before the Nubian atten-

dants had a chance to open it for her, she had run smack into

the plate glass door at the hotel’s entrance.

She was too stunned to feel pain immediately. The doormen

ran to help her, but Connor waved them off, staggering to the
 194

reception desk. “Have you got a double room?” When she flung

back the veil, a plummy red contusion bloomed in the center of

her brow.

“Indeed we have.” Anxiously the Indian concièrge handed

her a registration card. “But you are hurt badly? We are able

to locate an American doctor—-“

“That drug-crazed pervert?” Connor laughed wildly, pluck-

ing the pen from his lapel. A lone drop of blood welled and

stuck like an amulet in the middle of the bruise. “If I had a

headache, he’d give me a hysterectomy!”

The concièrge peered at her form as Connor scribbled on

it. “You are Miss Blakey?” I believe we have a reservation for

you.” Habib thought of everything, Connor marveled. “The Sin-

bad Suite, here it is, for Miss Blakey-Vandermuffing, our most

excellent best. We were not expecting you until tomorrow, but

no matter. Here is the key and we welcome you most pleasurably

as His Royal Highness’s special guest.”

Connor scooped up the key, fleetingly wondering why he’d

made the reservation in her Aunt Muffie’s name by mistake.

“Sin, bad! Perfect!” she laughed wildly, tossing her overnight

bag at the porter and lurching toward the elevator.

A little later, the pain in Connor’s head came on so

strong she could hardly see. Wincing, she patted foundation

 195

makeup over the big livid bruise, which made her forehead

stand out like a planked salmon. Taking her nail scissors she

snipped short wisps from her forelock to cover her wound.

The silver lavaliere didn’t go with her outfit, Connor

thought, removing the protective pendant of herbs from around

her neck and slipping off the abaya to reveal the nightdress

she’d bought in Paris for the occasion of her first night with

a slave. She hadn’t had a chance to put it on that first time,

when Selim woke her at dusk in the villa, his caresses shaping

his new goddess out of the darkness to worship. Tonight they

were going to begin again —- but this time she would command

her servant and he would come.

The long gown was violet-blue watered silk with slender

gold straps; her breasts were cradled by two crescents of

handwoven gilt lace. “The goddess of white supremacy,” she

joked, “a little banged up as usual.”

She would get him drunk, she decided, picking up the

phone and ordering one of the exorbitantly expensive French

wines the hotel offered despite the Moslem ban on alcohol. Her

head hurt horribly. The sight of the fruit in the hotel’s

courtesy basket made her nauseous, oranges and bananas bulging

behind green cellophane like embalmed deformities.

She went out on the balcony, shivering in the damp breeze

off the Bay of Two Dogs. In a minute she came back inside,
 196

paced around the suite, then turned on the television set in

the bedroom to watch the eight o’clock newscast.

“. . .And the Masmoudian stock exchange closed today down

108 points.” She snapped off the TV and approached the mirror.

Her fevered cheeks gave her a look of desperate beauty, but

she couldn’t see it: The pain in her head addled her. Suddenly

her image seemed as superficial as the quicksilver coating the

glass. She felt not beautiful, not worth loving, empty. She

saw straight through to her own dear soul--that hollowness

which only men, entering her, could fill. Why? Why was she do-

ing any of this? The reason escaped her—-or she had hidden it

too well.

Asking herself deep questions seemed to increase her

headache; re-focusing on the mirror, she told herself she was

a goddess, damn it, and this was her world. In her empire she

was capable of anything, and anything was possible for reasons

unknown to her. If there was a God, He was probably exactly

like her. He also made some mistakes in the beginning with his

slaves, and in those times they seemed to enslave Him: because

he was bound to them, by need.

They couldn’t both be God, though, in the end. Who then

would drive the donkeys?

And where was that ass, Selim?

 197

The room phone rang. “Good evening, Miss Blakey-

Vandermuffing. A young man is here to see you.”

“Send him up.”

“Perhaps you are expecting a friend? This boy is only

someone’s servant, perhaps you want to come down and—-“

“He is my servant. Send him up.”

She unlocked the door, leaving it ajar. Standing in flat-

tering lamplight beside a velvet settee, she tried to work up

a fury, but her legs were melting beneath her, her heart slam-

ming around her body. She pictured Selim buried in Shammar and

felt a brief outrage, but it evaporated when she heard the

muffled roar of the elevator discharging its passenger and the

feline whisper of bare feet on the hall carpet. “Come in,” she

called, her joy mounting.

He put down his pouch and tape recorder, closing the door

behind him, and stood, tall and straight in his long white

shift, staring at her without expression.

“Ol’ Blue Eyes is back,” she said.

He didn’t move.

Her bruise radiated fever; her heightened senses seemed

to leap out of the fiery corona and rush to Selim. He’s wait-

ing to be punished, she knew, as if he had murmured the in-

struction to her, as if her ear were pressed against his lips,

he wants me to strike him. His face remained a resolute blank.

 198

To hit him she needed to be angry; she cast about quickly

for a cause. “What have you done with my fur coat?!” He hadn’t

brought it back-—he’d stolen it and it cost two thousand dol-

lars. She came closer, drawing back her arm. He flinched, low-

ering his feathery lashes almost ecstatically.

She stopped a foot away from him. She was so happy to see

him, to be standing close, so astonished by his beauty all

over again, her heart released all memory of hurt. Her hand

kept traveling, heedless; Selim’s knees bent slightly. To

kneel? Or to crouch for a spring? She hesitated, suddenly

frightened at the thought of his strength, of how he might re-

taliate. Against all reason, she couldn’t stop thinking of him

as a man and not a slave: a man for whom she would crawl

across deserts, swim oceans, and lacerate herself with her

chains. She dropped her hand, impotent. She would not beat

him. In that instant, she lost her empire.

Selim’s eyes snapped up to her face. Grabbing her waver-

ing wrist, he whirled her to face the wall, his weight pushing

her head sideways and mashing her cheek into the barred weave

of the wallpaper. Her concussion thundered as something nut-

hard pressed into the base of her skull-—a round silver ball

of protective herbs on a chain around his neck. His hands

wrestled the indigo silk of her gown, slipped underneath,

moved inexorably up her thighs. She slackened, as if she was

 199

ebbing into the soft chasms between the pads of a lion’s paw,

waiting serenely for the fang-rimmed hood to descend over her

head.

His hands broke apart her buttocks; she felt a horrendous

blaze of pain between them, and her pubic bone crunched

against the wall from the force of his penetration. The

searching, gouging strokes seemed to incinerate her inside.

“You bastard, I’ll get you!” she hissed through jostled

teeth, and then fainted.

When she came to, she was lying on her back, on the bed.

Selim, down on his knees, was cupping her foot, imploring

words tumbling from his mouth.

“I forgive you,” Connor murmured, not understanding that

he was begging her in Arabic to free him.

They had done this before, she realized, in her half-

conscious state. The image in her memory bloomed like a fatal

stain, horrifying her. They were in some temple. She was the

one who knelt. She was a young male initiate and Selim, re-

clining on a divan, was the priestess offering a foot for mas-

sage. Then the priestess began removing her robes and seducing

her disciple, although they both knew if the boy broke his vow

of chastity he would be destroyed by the god they both wor-

shipped. They shivered with fascination and dread.

 200

They had been bound together in many lives, Connor saw,

and always given the chance to let each other go. And now they

were beginning again.

The memory faded and she began to weep. She grasped his

head in her hands, pulling him to her. “Oh, Selim, if only

you’d let yourself go,” she cried, “if only you loved me, if

only you’d come.”

Though he didn’t understand her words, his face went rig-

idly impassive. Dutifully he slid her gown above her hips and

climbed on top of her, to begin his work again.

Crown Prince Rassan had never seen a murdered man. Before

him was the severed head of his enemy Babas Umaloo, twice the

size of an ordinary man’s head. The bald dome gleamed, and the

coarse peasant face had set in an utterly impassive expres-

sion. The old slave Suleiman delicately held it in a blanket

as if it were a newborn infant, then turned toward King Musa.

Propped up in bed, the monarch masticated violently to show

his pleasure and approval.

Suleiman looked back at the Crown Prince and caught Ras-

san’s look of horror. The old slave regarded him curiously, as

if to say, “Isn’t it what you wanted? One of you had to fall.

God wrote it was his time.”

 201

Chapter Sixteen

SON ET LUMIÈRE

The Port-Au-Wazz airport was packed with men when Miss

Albright Blakey-Vandermuffing (“Muffie”), arrived the next

morning. It was an elegantly groomed crowd, blatantly hetero-

sexual, with not a woman among them. Muffie could see Mas-

moudia was going to captivate the singles market.

In fact, one day had passed since the collapse of the

Masmoudian stock market, and the men were stockbrokers, wait-

ing to take the plane back to Cairo, then to their loved ones

in Geneva, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Tokyo, New York, Jo-

hannesburg, and Paris.

Their Middle Eastern adventure had enriched them all;

they had pushed the price index up as far as it would go, en-

couraged one last surge of demand by withholding all shares

from trade, then dumped everything when the price hit the

ceiling, and pocketed fabulous profits, closing their local

offices as the price crashed through the floor. It was only a

matter of time before all the businesses, utilities and banks

owned by the royal family would be bankrupt.

“Now those are what I call real men!” Muffie sucked in

her abdomen for the brokers. Even after three weeks on a liq-
 202

uid protein diet she still felt her vanished fat, the way an

amputee senses his lost limb.

Today the April sun shone superbly on the minarets and

derricks of the capital city. His Royal Highness Crown Prince

Rassan had sent a personal chauffeur. Muffie settled back and

let Masmoudia’s spell wash over her as the limousine drove her

to the Grande Wazz Hotel.

Thanks to a recent mid-like crisis, Muffie was now a

champagne blonde. Her makeup gave her a festive pink complex-

ion, roasted cheeks and frosted lips. Despite her bright hope-

ful hues, Muffie had an abandoned aspect, like a vivid canapé

no one wants to try. She blamed her weight problem for the

fact that she hadn’t been given a prime management position in

Blakey Industrials, where all the action was. But the Blakey

command had chosen her for the small public-relations subsidi-

ary because of her vast optimism. “Mysterious Masmoudia,” she

said into her micro-cassette pocket secretary, “its colorful

bustling docks piled high with spices and silks from the four

corners of the world. The city’s backdrop of something desert,

uh, serene desert, um, the flyovers will be the eighth wonder

of the eighties. Ancient meets modern. At night Masmoudia

shows its fun-loving side when the amusement park bursts into

action." As they passed the clock, whose mechanism had finally

been paralyzed by sand and cement dust, she noted the King,
 203

camel, and falcon that had tipped off their trolley and fallen

on their side. “The Unknown Soldier? The Unknown Nomad? Note:

check on war memorial, also history, any colorful battles, et-

cetera.”

At the hotel, the concièrge informed her that her suite

was taken; Miss Blakey had already checked in.

“It’s a mistake,” Muffie said pleasantly.

The man hunted for the occupant’s registration form, as

she continued muttering into her recorder, “Choice of exotic

local delicacies in the bustling market or a Juicy Jack at the

drive-in. Port-Au-Wazz, a favorite of artists and tourists

alike, a city in transition to the twentieth century, where

anything goes —- oh my God, no!”

The concièrge showed her Connor’s signature on the form.

Muffie’s optimism blew out.

Angrily she handed him her letter from the Crown Prince’s

office. “I am so devastatingly sorry, Miss Blakey-

Vandermuffing,” the concièrge stuttered, “I thought the woman

was you!”

As music blasted away inside, Muffie hammered on the door

of the Sinbad Suite. At last a tall, stunning barechested

young man smelling of wine opened the door, his blue-jeaned

hips swaying as he sang along with Frank Sinatra: “Oh no not

 204

me, I did it my way. . .” He fell against the wall as she

pushed past.

Connor was not in the bedroom. Snow rasped on the TV

screen; sheets and cushions were strewn about the room. “For

what is man, what has he got,” the tall man continued his duet

with the tape as Muffie strode out onto the terrace.

Her niece was huddled in a bedspread on a deck chair, un-

der a sun umbrella, a large purple bruise on her forehead,

glistening cerise scrapes dotting her pale arms. She looked up

dully at her visitor, like a dazed chastened little girl who

had fallen off her bike. “Aunt Muffie?”

“. . .if not himself, then he has not. . . .”

“Connor Blakey! I sent you a letter telling you to get

out of this country and now I find not only are you still here

but you’re in my room!”

“. . .to say the things he surely feels. . . .”

“What letter?”

“And drunk at eleven in the morning!”

“—-and not the words-—“

“I haven’t had a drop of anything.”

“—-of one who kneels-—“

“No diet soda,” Connor continued disjointedly, “no aphro-

disiacs-—“

“-—the record shows—-“

 205

“-—never had a drink in his life, he’s a Moslem-—I

thought it’d loosen him up—-“

“—-hours and hours-—no sleep—-and he still won’t-—“

“—-and did it MY WAY!”

“-—worse than before.”

“Connor, tell your joyboy to go down to the coffee shop

and sober up. I want to have a private talk with you.”

Her niece laughed. “I just flogged my slave and can’t do

a thing with him.”

“Young man!” Muffie called, without much force. Inside

the suite, Selim stood with his back to her, his arms weaving

with the next song’s lush string introduction. “What’s his

name?”

“He doesn’t speak English. He speaks Sinatra, though.”

Connor said bitterly, “He knows all the words to Tell Her You

Love Her Each Day but hasn’t got the least idea what they

mean.”

“You see in me a man alone. . .”

“I’m sure he has other talents.” Muffie closed the patio

doors against the din, returning to Connor. “Now, listen.”

“What are you doing here, Aunt Muff? Sit down and tell

me.”

“I love it, she offers me a seat on my terrace.”

“You’re looking well.”

 206

“Well, you’re looking dreadful.”

“I know. The water’s pretty clean here, but don’t eat the

men, whatever you do.”

“I hope your sense of humor is lost on your friends in

the royal family. Connor, I’m far from thrilled to see you.”

Something always happened when her niece was around. “The

Crown Prince himself hired me to come over for the King’s

birthday expo, and I’ve got a group of the top travel agents

from all over the U.S. arriving tomorrow. I am completely re-

sponsible for the success or failure of the entire campaign to

bring tourists to Masmoudia, so—-“

“Who’d want to come here?”

Hopeless. It was just the sort of thing Connor was bound

to say in front of the tour group, the Crown Prince, the King-

--everybody—-at the royal banquet. Clearly it was time to

place a long-distance call to New York; Connor constituted a

Blakey Industrial crisis.

Going back inside, Muffie headed for the room phone. Con-

nor’s gigolo leaned against the doorway to the bedroom, watch-

ing her with such a look of careless seduction she felt giddy.

Out of nowhere she pictured Connor on a plane back home, the

young man left behind. . . .The telephone rang before she

could lift it: Her Royal Highness the Princess Awisha had ar-

rived and was on her way up to see Miss Blakey.

 207

“Ack!” Connor leapt from her deckchair and tore into the

suite, pushing her lover into the bedroom and locking the

door. Quickly she straightened the room, clawing her ratty

hair over her forehead. Noticing that her straps had broken

and her nightgown had fallen to her waist, she threw on a long

white cotton shift that had been kicked under the settee.

The first thing Awisha did on entering was throw herself

into Connor’s arms. “Darling, forgive me all the things I have

said to you yesterday!” The Princess had been beside herself

on finding Connor’s bed empty that morning; she would’ve had

to take a “bad-news” pill if Masmoudian Intelligence hadn’t

quickly located her missing friend at the hotel. “Please come

back to the palace now, and don’t be mad with your poor stupid

pal.”

Muffie looked on, aghast at the apparent bond between her

catastrophic niece and her client’s sister.

“Wishy, I want you to meet my Aunt Muff.” If possible,

Connor seemed more nervous than her aunt. “Your brother hired

her to promote tourism.” Loud music suddenly blared from the

bedroom. Connor blurted, “Let’s put on some music. We’ll all

relax and have a drink. Wishy, take off your gook and get

cozy.”

“Oh, you have Pouilly Fuissé.” Awisha’s face lit up mis-

chievously. “If your aunt will tell no one, I will have just a
 208

little even though it is morning.” She removed her cloak and

veil to reveal her jogging suit. “Why is your aunt looking at

me so?”

“Culture shock,” Connor explained. “Muff thinks you’re

dressed funny for a princess.”

“What about you, darling?” Awisha tugged Connor’s white

shift, the traditional male slave’s attire.

“Cute, isn’t it? I picked it up in the souk. For a song.”

“I can’t wait to see your souks!” Muffie said. “You know

how tourists love a bargain—-things like that long shirt are

going to be such a hit, Princess. There’s so much to be done

here. I can’t wait to dig in—-it’s a new frontier!” She

started in on her presentation, but the Princess was nudging

Connor’s thigh with her wine glass.

“So you will come back to the palace?”

“I’ve had enough of the House of Corrections. God, locked

up with women day and night, can’t step out unless accompanied

by a sla—-“ Awisha’s look of warning stopped her.

“What you wish,” the Princess said, pouting. “You know

best. At least I am happy the hotel gives you the best room

for my best friend.”

“Actually,” Muffie interjected, “Connor is going home. A

family emergency.”
 209

“But you can’t! Connor, you can’t go before my father’s

birthday, I will believe you must be very angry at me! We have

a big celebration, with a new ‘son et lumière’ spectacle in

the old fort, and music and dancers and a big feast. Only un-

til Friday you must stay.” Awisha frowned quizzically as an

off-key voice started to shout along with the singer’s in the

bedroom.

“That’s called overdubbing,” said Connor. “Frank Sinatra

plays the tape back in his studio and sings along with him-

self, and they record it.”

“Do you know Mister Sinatra? You must tell him not to do

this, it’s not good. But you must stay, my pal, a little more

days for the festival.”

“Can I bring a date?” Awisha had never seen Selim, Connor

realized; if she dressed him up in a suit and shoes, he could

pass for an international playboy. “I met someone in the ho-

tel, a gorgeous man. Cuban.”

“Cuban! Darling, I hope it’s not true, you know we break

relations with Cuba right now. We believe they are helping the

Berber reb—-“ Now Awisha stopped, eyeing Muffie.

“I’m glad to hear you’re not going to associate with that

scruffy country,” Muffie said brightly. “You know, Your High-

ness, the whole world is on tenterhooks to know which way Mas-

moudia will go. The U.S. is the top of the list, right? I
 210

mean, you and the Crown Prince are both American college

graduates—-“

“Did I say Cuba?” Connor interrupted. This dude’s from

Peru. I always get the two mixed up. He’s a knockout.”

“Bring him, darling, I am happy you meet someone you

like. Connor must get married, don’t you think this, Aunt

Muff?”

Hopeless, Muffie was thinking, the girl will not leave.

Now what will happen? What disaster is Connor going to bring

down on all our heads this time? “Yes, by all means. To a nice

psychopath.”

“Yes!” agreed Awisha. “To a nice doctor.”

By the day of the King’s birthday, Selim was fairly pre-

sentable; Connor had taught him to eat with a knife and fork,

work the television, and his new vocabulary included “hello,”

“no,” “dat’s life,” and “room service.” The latter he used

with glee: that others should wait on him!

Unable to read the menu, Selim told the chef to send up

meals fit for a sultan. The little Sudanese waiters wheeled in

the tables covered with food, glancing at Selim scornfully as

they uncorked the wine. It wasn’t until he slapped one of them

that they treated him with any respect.

 211

He also appeared to love his new suit: cream linen, with

a turquoise shirt to match his eyes, all made by the tailor

Habib had sent to Connor from the souk. By material things she

hoped to bind Selim to her, and indeed he stroked his suit so

much that Connor thought jealously of the way he used to

stroke her, their first night together.

Now he hated her; he did all he could to drive her to

throw him out: getting drunk, once even throwing food at her,

until she struck out at him wildly. He’d trapped her wrists,

but when she bit his shoulder, he hurled her across the room.

Raising herself, she saw him pitch the half-empty wine bottle

out on the terrace where it smashed. Then he lurched against

the wall and stared at her, muttering strings of words to him-

self like chants. After that, she steered clear of him.

At night she locked her bedroom door; she hid the forks

and knives and ordered no more wine.

He was presentable now, but he hated her. If only he

could have one decent, normal sexual experience with her, al-

low himself to climax, she knew he would love her -— but she

was too worn out to keep battling against his iron will.

When the news reached her that Simone Weill had disap-

peared from the women’s palace the night she’d had left, Con-

nor realized that the time had come for a decision. If she

stayed a minute longer, she’d vanish like her cat. Had she
 212

come halfway around the world just to be swallowed up by this

merciless culture? She’d had enough; after the King’s birth-

day, she would go home with or without her unruly slave.

How did you free a slave? How did you free yourself from

a slave?

Two storks coasted on the rusty lateral rays of the sun-

set. The torches had already been lit along the robust old

battlements of the fort above the bay. Inside its immense open

court, the audience for the “Son et lumière” waited for twi-

light and the pageant to begin.

Against the far wall, opposite the great gates sat the

two thousand males of the royal family and their affiliated

Bedouin sheikhs. The seventy-eight natural sons of Musa Beni

Wazz spread across the center row of cushions in a stain pa-

vilion decorated with portraits of the King. Against the adja-

cent wall, another pavilion held the women of their various

hareems: a blotch of black veils and abayas speckled white at

the edges by the shifts of the slave-attendants.

Opposite the women, bleachers for the people of Port-Au-

Wazz and a cordoned section for foreign guests were nearly

vacant. Over the past two weeks, the exodus of envoys, busi-

nessmen, and consuls from foreign lands created an ominous

quality like the ebbing of the sea before a tidal wave. Now
 213

only the old guard remained, clustered together in the pavil-

ion with wives and children, trading stories about the old

King, Commander of the Faithful, whom they remembered astride

his enormous ivory stallion, leading the devout each Friday to

the mosque. The monarch was promised to make a brief appear-

ance at his own birthday feast after the “Son et lumière.” Re-

membering him chewing on whole flaming logs, or the time he

served a stunned cobra to a Soviet agent and pretended it was

the national dish, they wondered what kind of man had been

left by the strokes which had incarcerated his powers more

than two years ago.

The sky glowed purple; Venus glinted over a ribbon of

cloud. Aunt Muffie and eleven American travel agents arrived,

giving their invitations to the guards. In the spirit of tour-

ism, a few peddlers were selling live chickens and food cou-

pons at the gate. “. . .And the Portuguese built this fort in

the fifteenth century,” Muffie’s voice circled her group as

they trudged through the dust to the guest section, “so you

can guess what a lot of history these old walls have witnessed

since then.”

They were proving a difficult bunch to excite. Ten of

their number had been assailed intestinally by “Masmoudian Re-

venge,” and the American doctor had administered shots guaran-

teeing them unconsciousness and phantasmagoric dreams for the

 214

next few days. They would miss tonight’s festivities plus Days

Three and Four of Muffie’s printed itinerary: the Girl Scouts’

Gymnastic Exhibition (“special appearance by Her Royal High-

ness Princess Awisha Beni Wazz “), then off to the splendifer-

ous Najiz desert on camelback for a catered picnic, then an

evening fancy-dress party in the King Musa Amusement Park

(“Fez optional!”). . . .

As the dark fell, the soldiers rounded up townspeople to

fill the barren bleachers; there was another delay as the gen-

erator for the stage lights resisted attempts to start it. The

only illumination came from the roving sun-gun of the second-

unit film crew of Italians shooting crowd scenes for Rendez-

vous In Masmoudia. The violet-white spot scanned the bleach-

ers, revealing morose moneychangers and grocers yanked from

their shops and now cleaning their teeth with sticks, their

black-shrouded wives cowering from the cameras.

The generator throbbed to life, steadily maintaining its

racketing din through the proceedings. Abruptly tiers of

mounted stage lights came ablaze as soldiers in magenta uni-

forms trimmed with gold braid, ornamented cutlasses in their

sashes, rode in on horseback to present arms before the

princes’ pavilion. One united burst of rifle fire filled the

air before the procession retired to either side of the gates.

 215

Here comes trouble, Muffie sighed, spotting her niece

climbing the aisle clad in a Nile-green panne-velvet conspir-

acy of tatters and slits, and copper lamé boots, her handsome

Peruvian boyfriend following behind her. In his cream linen

suit, he walked awkwardly in new loafers, his eyes on his

feet. The couple sat a few rows behind Muffie; the young man

slid his tape recorder under the seat, pressing his hands be-

tween his knees and staring warily at the white-shifted atten-

dants spreading carpets over the center of the court for the

performers.

After a sharp lance of feedback from the sound system,

the lights dimmed to a demonic red. The voice of a hired Brit-

ish actor began a crooning narration of Masmoudia’s history

over a tape called “Drums of Kenya”: “Who can know the heart

of this strange land, this unattainable pearl, its shores ca-

ressed by a sapphire sea, its deserts traversed by the eternal

caravans of the Bedouins, the ‘sons of the wind’? Six hundred

years ago, these proud sheikhs and warriors bowed to a man

named Mabruk Beni Wazz, the Father of Masmoudia.”

The narrator paused, waiting for a spotlight to pick up

the actor playing Mabruk in desert robes on a turret. The

light raked over the battlement in vain. Misunderstanding

their cue, scores of Berber dancers erupted onto the carpeted

court, cheerfully launching into a wedding dance. Musicians

 216

pounded curved sticks on their pottery drums, their oboes

squealing exuberantly. Youths with shaved heads and long back-

locks snapping like horsetails leapt and spun as a line of un-

veiled women, beaming, faces elaborately tattooed, arms inter-

laced, and silver jewelry clanking to the jog of their henna’d

feet, advanced on the drummers.

“The kettle’s overturned,” the men sang in their Berber

tongue.

“And my foot kicked it over!” answered the women, bobbing

merrily away again.

“The kettle’s overturned.”

“The old man’s got a new wife!”

Although the dancers had not been scheduled until the

second half of the program, the historical portion had begun

so badly that Crown Prince Rassan was relieved to see his for-

eign guests smiling delightedly. It was ironic to think that

these simple, rustic, vivacious performers were from the same

Dar Loosh tribes that had caused him so much embarrassment in

the past. All that fine rebelliousness had waned quickly after

the death of their leader Babas Umaloo, and now the Berbers

were entirely docile. Their presence on the program was fur-

ther proof for the consuls: The era of hostility in the moun-

tains was over. The mines could open and the nuclear age be-

gin.
 217

“This is the real stuff!” Muffie shouted over the drums’

tumult.

“The first wife was sweeter!” The men and women came to-

gether, stamped teasingly, and bounced apart again, out of

reach.

Those must be Selim’s people, Connor thought, watching

the men’s blue legs kick out from under their striped dish-

dashas. She turned.

There were tears in her slave’s eyes.

Her own eyes filled with tears. She should really let him

go back to his mountains, but she couldn’t give him up, any

more than she could control him.

Looking back at the dancers, she realized how little she

knew of his world. There was something in the ritual, some

step in the dance of mistress and slave, that she was leaving

out, probably such a minor thing, if only she could get at it.

Oh God, she prayed, please help me fix it with Selim, and

please get us to America safely, and -—

“Whoopie!” cried Muffie. The sound of the drums gave way

to that of pounding hooves: A phalanx of Radif horsemen ex-

ploded through the gates. The dancers had rolled up the car-

pets, scurrying off to the side to watch the glorious Dar

Loosh tribe. The riders’ faces were completely swathed in blue

cloth, except for their eyes; their bare blue heels flailed at
 218

their horses’ ribs as they galloped headlong to the royal pa-

vilion.

Just when it seemed the horses would leap into the grand-

stand, they wheeled sharply, parting into two groups, steep

banks of dust unfurling in their wake. Antique rifles fired

into the air, and pale drifts of smoke floated over the spec-

tators’ heads.

The travel agents grinned. Savage Masmoudia made heaps

more sense than civilized Masmoudia.

“God the Protector!” the horsemen shouted, and the two

groups raced at each other, careening into cryptic patterns so

swiftly, the dust rising in slithering arabesques made them

invisible, save for the darting spikes of their raised rifles.

Outside the gates, their women ululated, singing a high shrill

note while fluttering their tongues. The dust lifted to reveal

riders halted in a single line again. Their horses stamped in

place and nodded and the audience burst into applause.

“God is great!” the horsemen shouted. Again they galloped

up to the royal pavilion, raising their antique guns, which

disguised high-speed rifles. A resounding crack: Then the

horsemen parted, wheeled, and thundered out the gates.

As the dust sifted away, the spotlight from the Italian

film crew raked over the middle row of pavilion, shining on

the slain princes, their royal robes spattered with blood.

 219

Several riders had leapt off their horses and were hack-

ing at the remaining male line of the Beni Wazz family with

khanjars. Crown Prince Rassan appeared depressed in death.

Uncertain whether the pageant had ended or was actually

just getting under way, the foreign guests noted the bullets

ricocheting off the bleachers; this seemed a clear lack of

diplomatic tact, if not a disdain for tourism. Placing their

metal chairs on their heads, the travel agents curled up in

fetal positions on the platform.

Before ducking down among them, Muffie turned and sent

her niece a look of furious blame.

Transfixed by the pandemonium in the court, Connor

couldn’t move. Watching the mercenary soldiers struggling with

the assassins in the pavilion, the guards evacuating the wail-

ing hareem, the townspeople in panicked flight, she had no

fear for her own safety, because her palm had a long and un-

broken life-line. Suddenly she remembered Selim. She turned:

He was gone from her side.

Before she could cry out, a tall figure jumped to her

side, his shaved head bobbing. A long lock of hair swung be-

hind like a pull on a windowshade.

“Blek!”

He flashed his four gold teeth in a ramshackle grin. “Eat

money,” he said. As his goat’s-hair cloak flapped like a spa-

 220

cious wing over her, darkness billowed. A brisk blow on the

back of her neck toppled her.

 221

Chapter Seventeen

CAPTIVITY IN DUGAGAH

Connor rose to consciousness and opened her throbbing

eyes, gazing into darkness. A black canopy stretched overhead;

the air was smoke-filled and torrid; she lay on something

lumpy and hard.

She raised herself on one green velvet elbow, feeling the

tickle of sand in her boots. She was lying on some sacks of

rice, inside a black goat’s-hair tent. Near the entrance, a

triangle of daylight shone on an old Bedouin woman prodding

coals in a shallow pit dug in the sand.

Beyond her, on some sheepskins piled in a dark corner,

someone stirred. Connor made out a limp outflung arm, a head

of champagne-blonde snarls: Two makeup-charred eyes opened,

focusing dimly on Connor.

“Oh my God,” Aunt Muffie moaned faintly.

The old woman came over to Muffie, wordlessly offering

her a bowl of camel’s milk, still warm and frothy from the ud-

der. While the woman’s back was turned, Connor stood unstead-

ily and crept over to the tent’s opening, peering out.

The sun blinded her momentarily. Her ears filled with the

chatter of women churning butter, the chanting of men at morn-

 222

ing prayer, the grumbling of camels, and the gurgle of

streams. Her eyes adjusted to see towering date-palms and,

just outside the tent flap, a blue-legged Berber bowing to

Mecca, a rifle slung over his back.

“Excuse me,” said Connor.

The Berber hastily stopped his prayer to motion her back

inside the tent with his rifle. He then took his position in

front of the flap.

The morning prayer ended. All along the edges of the

Dugagah oasis, rebels with rifles got up from their knees and

resumed sentry duty, tightening their eyes against the glare

of the surrounding Najiz desert. Reprisals for the King’s

birthday massacre would not come soon, they knew, since they

had eliminated every adult male heir to the throne.

In the heart of the oasis, Berber and Bedouin warriors

went back to work rigging bombs to pipelines. Tomorrow they

would blow up Port-Au-Wazz’s water supply, which came from

this oasis. Afterwards they would mount a full-scale attack on

the capital.

The Bedouins had always held themselves apart from the

mountain tribes, but now they had joined the insurgent Ber-

bers, deserting the monarchy and bringing the rebellion to a

major turning point. The two groups had a common enemy in

 223

Crown Prince Rassan. His father, King Musa, had made the Bed-

ouins gifts they could carry with them: falcons, carpets,

horses, and women, things they understood. His son gave them

schools, hospitals, and rent-free apartments, gifts the

fiercely proud desert nomads had no use for. Not only that,

he’d spoiled their one pleasure in life. Having survived for

hundreds of years on almost nothing -- drinking their own

urine if water was scarce -- they’d returned to Port-Au-Wazz

to purchase the few basic supplies they needed and discovered

to their outrage that coffee and sugar prices had gone up a

full 50 percent since they’d last come to the souk. Coffee

with sugar was the one thing they passionately required in

their abstemious lives; and now they couldn’t afford it. It

had been inflation that had doomed the Crown Prince.

As the two American captives being led to the chief’s

tent, the tribesmen looked up from their work, enjoying in

particular the sight of the short, plump blonde in her orange

pantsuit. Like most warriors, the Bedouins liked to get some-

thing in the way of spoils whenever they staged a raid. The

night of the expo, one of the sheikhs had caught sight of Muf-

fie in the grandstand and taken a fancy to her. The other

woman perplexed them, however: skinny, slouching, immodestly

flashing her raw-boned legs. Who could possibly want her?

 224

“Thank God they didn’t take anyone from my tour group,”

Aunt Muffie told Connor, glancing warily at the guard as they

followed behind him, to make sure he didn’t understand Eng-

lish.

“So much for the ‘See Masmoudia’ campaign,” said Connor.

“Don’t you dare wisecrack, young lady. In fact, I want

you to let me do all the talking. This requires tact and di-

plomacy, and you haven’t a shred of either. You may not want

to stay alive, but I do.”

The guard pushed them into a huge black tent. Inside it

was so dark that the Bedouin sheikhs and Berber chiefs, seated

on layered carpets around their coffee service, recalled a

moonlit cemetery, white and blue headcloths glowing like phan-

tom tombstones, the men’s eyes flickering like votive candles

in cupped hands. Muffie felt a little dazed in the presence of

so much raw testosterone.

“Good morning, Miss Blakey.” A high-pitched voice came

from the center of the group. “And you also, Madame. Please be

welcome to this tent. You are the mistresses of everything,

while we are only the guests.”

The voice seemed somehow familiar to Connor.

“Let me do the talking,” whispered Muffie.

But Connor had already stepped forward. “Habib?” She

hadn’t recognized him at first because he looked so different

 225

-– so formal. His tawny face was impassive, his eyes narrow

and unblinking; beneath the folds of his striped dishdasha,

his slight body was as coiled as a cobra’s. The hole in his

cheek seemed to tunnel endlessly inward.

“It is very good to see you again,” he said without

warmth.

“What is this shit?” She wondered fleetingly when his

English had become so good. “What the hell are we doing here –

hey!“

She stared at his hand resting on a familiar ginger-

furred head. Simone’s tail arched as Habib caressed her.

“Typical,” Muffie hissed to Connor. “The only friends you

managed to make in this whole country would be gigolos and

terrorists.”

“You’ve got my cat!” Connor moved forward to retrieve her

pet.

Muffie grabbed her arm. “Sir,” boldly she summoned all

her powers of finesse, “I’m sure this whole unfortunate busi-

ness can be resolved quickly and to all our satisfactions.”

She paused, uncertain where she was heading as the men

eyed the orange crêpe-de-chine fabric clinging to patches of

her sweaty flesh. Beaming, a sheikh with a thick beard said

something in Arabic to Habib.

 226

Muffie noted the eager look on the man’s face with some

discomfort, forging onward: “Sir, there’s really much more to

be lost than gained by holding us hostage. My family is highly

connected in politics, and I have a wide influence with the

press. I’m sure you want a good image for whatever it is

you’re fighting for. If you give us safe conduct home, I will

throw my full support behind your cause. Release us immedi-

ately, and my government never needs to know we were held hos-

tage.”

Habib’s features softened. “But Madame, who tells you you

are a hostage? Your safety is our most serious worry. Should

you return to Port-Au-Wazz now, you would surely be harmed;

the city is full of savages and there is now civil war. This

gentleman,” he indicated his thick-bearded neighbor, “is

Sheikh Juma of the great Beni Hensh tribe, and he wishes you

to be the guest of his family as he travels by caravan through

the Najiz desert, across the Bay of Two Dogs to Muscat in

Oman. There if God wills it you will find an American embassy.

No need to be involved in our tiresome politics. You are

clearly a lively and interesting woman. I think you will enjoy

the experience of a real desert caravan. Not many tourists

have this opportunity. You can tell the press about it when

you get home.”

Muffie asked about Connor’s travel arrangements.

 227

“My feelings would be deeply wounded if my old friend

Miss Blakey did not stay this night for the big party, to

celebrate our victory over the Beni Wazz. Regrettably, Sheikh

Juma’s caravan is leaving at once, so I cannot invite you too,

though a well-traveled woman such as yourself would no doubt

find our little magic show a bore.”

“I’d rather go to Oman,” Connor said. A stern look from

Habib silenced her. Before she knew it, Sheikh Juma and his

guards were escorting Aunt Muffie out of the tent. Connor

turned back to Habib. “Will she really be safe with him?”

“Even if he grows tired of her and divorces her, he will

always defend her with his life.”

Connor took a combative stance, hands on her hips. “This

is unbelievable! You’re letting that guy take my aunt, you

stole my cat –- after I let you sleep in the hareem and hide

your guns there! After I gave you money!”

He considered her with hooded eyes. “So. Here is Miss

Blakey. The woman who wanders far from her own country looking

for a slave. Many other countries have the same idea.”

“While we’re on the subject, I don’t suppose you know

where Selim is?”

He ignored her. “We cannot be enslaved – we are already

slaves to God. How could you hope to be our masters? Could we

love you? Men can only love and serve what is unknown. What is
 228

too familiar, they abuse. When we love God, we submit com-

pletely to what we don’t know in the most beautiful surrender.

When a perfect slave has such a perfect master, they become

one. One is the sun and the other the rays.”

Connor sighed in exasperation. “Are you asking me to con-

vert? Fine. Honestly, Habib, I don’t even know you any more.”

He smiled. “I am not Habib. I am Babas Umaloo.”

Fear prickled her flesh. What was it about that name?

Connor struggled with a sudden sense of altered reality

as he talked on: Was it the concussion to her neck that made

his head appear to grow larger, the features fading into a

blank mass which swayed on the end of his neck? His voice

seemed to be coming from outside of him, turning eerily femi-

nine. “Perhaps now you understand. We will not serve two mas-

ters. We wish our freedom from men to serve God. I want you to

be a heroine for us. You will announce that you have joined

our struggle for independence. Your nation has no agreement

with the Beni Wazz. America will be wanting not so much to de-

fend them if we have you.” He smiled; the transcendental mask

vanished.

“Why me?” she protested. “My aunt is actually worth some-

thing back home, but my family couldn’t care less if I was

kidnapped permanently.” At Babas Umaloo’s signal, A copper-

 229

haired boy in a white shift advanced, handing Connor a sheaf

of papers. She glanced down at the handwritten text. “Greet-

ings and love to my family and to my homeland,” Connor read.

“I am not being held prisoner here. I am speaking of my own

free will, no harm has been done to me, and my life has not

been threatened. I remain here because I have been profoundly

moved by the cause of the Masmoudian Berbers from the Dar

Loosh mountains who seek to preserve their free identity

against –- ” She looked up. “What’d I supposed to do with

this?”

“Mister Pugh wrote this for us. He will tape-record you

saying these words this morning, to send to your country.”

“Listen, I appreciate what you’re fighting for, but

you’ve got the wrong girl for the job. I’m apolitical, amoral,

immaterial, and irrelevant.”

“But you are so pretty, and you have so much money you

can send for.” He showed his teeth. “And I can twist the head

off your cat. You not believing your self, you wait you see!”

he said in Habib’s old chirping voice, his hand closing over

Simone’s head.

“Okay, I’ll do it!”

Babas Umaloo released the cat, who padded over and rubbed

against Connor’s trembling boot. “Eat money,” said a voice

 230

overhead. Glancing up, she saw Blek suspended in mid-air near

the top of the canopy, his gold teeth twinkling at her.

Malcolm Pugh made his way toward Connor’s tent unes-

corted, hoping she was over the worst of the shock. Since he’d

been captured, he had managed to win the rebels’ trust by do-

ing them various favors such as repairing radios, teaching

English, making crude field telephones and inventing ciphers.

He understood that they’d had to capture him, believing he

knew too much after months of working in the mountains among

them. Still, it had given him quite a start himself when his

faithful guide Habib had turned out to be the ringleader. He

could still remember the moment the little man had pointed a

rifle up his nose and said, ”I am Babas Umaloo.”

“What a crashing disappointment. I was told Babas Umaloo

was as big as a mountain and you’re rather short and squatty.”

Habib had grinned at that, but his rifle didn’t budge.

“Either you will join our revolution or your body will be a

palace for worms.”

“Don’t mind if I do join, then.” Malcolm Pugh wasn’t a

coward; he just had never particularly liked the Crown Prince,

and the British government had only the thinnest of alliances

with Masmoudia. Besides, he’d become fascinated with the phe-

nomenon of Babas Umaloo.

 231

Like everyone else, the scientist had been fooled into

thinking that the legendary saint of the Berbers was a seven-

foot giant. Soon after Pugh had been taken prisoner, he’d dis-

covered that Babas Umaloo, a.k.a. Habib, had a slave who stood

in for him most of the time: a eunuch, about seven feet and

twenty stone, who like most good slaves was ready to die for

his master. One of Mal’s first assignments had been to write a

good rousing revolutionary speech in English to be delivered

in majlis to the Crown Prince, who had no idea what Babas

Umaloo really looked like. Pugh had had quite a job teaching

the speech to the great hulking slave, who was frightfully

stupid. Fortunately, the brute performed it well enough in ma-

jlis, so that the international press played up the story, and

the Crown Prince had his soldiers ambush the rebels’ hideout

in Tittawen. They had chopped off the poor bloke’s head while

the real Babas Umaloo was off playing Habib somewhere.

It alarmed Pugh that Babas Umaloo assumed that he and

his people were certain to die, because they wanted to leave

the uranium where it was. They couldn’t make necklaces out of

it; it didn’t traditionally placate any of the jinns. Even if

the rest of the world clamored for it, the tribes didn’t want

their lives changed. While they didn’t mind such modern things

as tellies and tape players, it was quite another matter when

the Crown Prince started diverting the wadis with his hydro-
 232

electric projects, sending in construction crews of Taiwanese

and Pakistanis —- Christians and Hindus -- blasting huge holes

and causing the local cows to bear three-legged calves, and

then bragging about building a reducing spa for French film

stars.

According to the Koran, one of the signs foretelling the

Hour of Judgment would be when “barefoot herdsmen compete in

the construction of lofty buildings.” Thus when the royal fam-

ily, formerly a gang of barefoot nomads, had begun building a

forty-two story Trade Center in Port-Au-Wazz, the Berber

faithful couldn’t fail to notice. The hour of total holocaust

was ticking near, with God consenting.

Babas Umaloo’s great concern was that all the Berbers die

honorably in defense of their liberty and thus reach Paradise,

since death was inevitable. He was fighting more than the Beni

Wazz, and he knew it. The world would not allow a tiny popula-

tion of farmers and herdsman to sit on such a valuable re-

source as uranium; the other nations wouldn’t rest until they

got it, even if they had to destroy Masmoudia and pick the

uranium out of the rubble.

Mal Pugh had found working for the resistance rather a

lot of fun, but soon things would become too dangerous even

for his tastes. He didn’t share the Moslems’ views on dying.

They were eager to reach eternal Paradise, since, unlike the

 233

easy, comfortable lives of Americans and Western Europeans,

their lives on earth were damned difficult. Pugh would have to

find some way to get out before the whole procession of lem-

mings went off the cliff.

Connor looked down at the tray the old woman had set be-

fore her. Shuddering at the blob of dates, bitter coffee and

camel’s milk, she yearned for a can of TRIM; it might cause

cancer, but it was at least attractively packaged. How could

her supplier have gone political, of all things? She’d proba-

bly been financing the revolution for months with her diet

cola habit, she realized. And now she was to be the poster-

girl for these tent-heads! Unless Malcolm Pugh could think of

a plan. . .

He was setting up a tape recorder in the sand beside her.

His white hair had grown long, the ends escaping from under

his turquoise turban; the beard growing thickly around his

bronzed bony face added to his air of mischievous masquerade.

“Even if we got past the guards,” he was saying, “there’s the

Najiz desert to cross. We wouldn’t last long without guides.

Sending this tape might give us some hope of armed rescue.”

“No one will come for me (heep).” The strain of her meet-

ing with the rebel saint had given Connor severe hiccups. “I’m

a pariah, that’s always been my job. What happened to Habib?

 234

All of a sudden he speaks English like a champ and all he

talks about is God. God, God, God. (Heep.) Is that all they

ever think about in this part of the world? He’s going to

brainwash me, I just know it.”

“I miss Habib, too,” Pugh said ruefully. “Awfully clever

chap. Sold anything from tinned pudding to slaves, told for-

tunes, knew every particle of the mountain terrain, and played

the fool just well enough to gain access to everyone from the

old Queen on down, without anyone being the wiser. He even

managed to be away when he got assassinated.”

“He spent the night in the safest place in Masmoudia,”

Connor said. “The hareem, in the women’s palace. In my bed!”

“So that’s where he was.” Mal was taken aback.

“Not with me, he was with some Cuban dude. They were both

in drag and dripping guns all over the place.”

He seemed relieved. “Yes, all along he’s been accepting

arms, military advisors, and money from anyone who wants to

donate them, including the Cubans.” He finished plugging in

the microphone. “I always thought it rather strange, how Habib

could turn up anywhere, know everything. Evidently Habib was

only a diversionary creature, like a sprite, sort of darting

back and forth to steal your attention away from the larger

thing, which is Babas Umaloo.”

 235

“Sounds like a disk jockey,” she snorted. “Who is Babas

(heep) Umaloo, anyway?”

“He’s a visionary, a magician, a holy man.” Mal handed

her his water flask and watched as she drank. “One of the

great fakirs, I’d say. As a scientist, I know his magical pow-

ers, his baraka, can’t be real; the teleportation, miracles

and so on, must be hypnosis or illusion. But real or not,

they’re awesome, and he gives his people hope, when hope under

the circumstances is insane.”

Connor looked at Simone lapping a bowl of camel’s milk by

the fire. “He made my cat disappear, and then poof, he brought

her back. I don’t call that awesome. He’s just a thief.”

“I saw him thrust a red-hot skewer through that hole in

his cheek, one night around the bonfire, during one of those

ecstatic dances they do. He was in a trance, so he wasn’t

burned. I’ve seen that sort of thing before in India. But the

amazing bit was, the damned skewer was three feet long, and it

didn’t come out the other side!”

Connor was thinking: He brought me back Selim. And then

poof, he was gone again. How could she get Babas Boogaloo to

reverse the trick? She moaned, pressing her knuckles into her

temples. How could she be thinking of sex at a time like this?

Mal glanced up. “Headache?”

 236

She nodded. “That son of a bitch, Blek, hit me on the

back of the neck.”

“Who?” He came forward on his knees, taking her head in

his hands and feeling under her hair for bruises.

“Blek, the guy who’s always with Habib, or Babas whatever

-- ow.” Mal looked puzzled. “The tall skinny boy with the gold

teeth who says ‘eat money.’”

“They say Babas Umaloo gets his powers from his jinn, a

spirit who walks by his side, in the form of a tall Berber

boy, with the shaved head and ponytail so many of them have.”

Pugh studied her with renewed appreciation. “You know, I quite

believe you’ve seen his jinn!”

Connor’s mouth fell open. “I saw a ghost?”

“Well, a group hallucination -- except you’re an out-

sider. It’s quite extraordinary.” He brushed the clipped

stands of hair off her brow, finding the brown imprint of her

old bruise. “What’s this?” He tipped her chin up to see it

better. “You’ve been coshed quite a bit, haven’t you?”

“That’s old. It’s my life, always banging into things.”

He was so close, his breath on her face, his eyes so full of

concern that Connor couldn’t help resting her head on his

shoulder. It felt wonderful to let go, put the full weight of

her troubled life into someone’s arms, even if only for a mo-

ment.
 237

Mal held her patiently. “I’ve got some lovely opium pow-

der in the medical kit I brought. But first we’d better make

this tape. Hiccups gone?” She lifted her head and nodded; he

stared into her eyes as if trying to read them. “You’re enor-

mously brave, you know.” Before she knew it, he was softly

kissing her mouth.

At the moment, the old woman entered the tent, carrying a

goat-skin of water. Mal and Connor broke apart abruptly,

averting their eyes from each other. Mal handed her the micro-

phone.

She waited until he had started the tape. “Greetings and

love to my family and to my homeland (heep). . . .”

Malcolm walked back through the oasis, following the wa-

ter downstream, passing the women washing their men’s blue

trousers. Why on earth had he kissed her? Tourists weren’t his

style; coal-black tarts from the bush were what he fancied in

the past, but after one too many cases of venereal disease,

nothing became his style. He considered himself saved, like a

bloody born-again. So why had he kissed her?

He thought of her back in the dark tent, in her bedrag-

gled rock-star outfit, begrimed and battered, her luster some-

how undimmed. She had a certain heedlessness which he couldn’t

help but admire; even her ignorance held a sort of allure. But
 238

he took her claim seriously that she attracted trouble. Just

being in her vicinity was dangerous enough; better to quash

his libido and concentrate on their escape. Besides, he

thought as he scratched the hives on his neck, he was allergic

to her cat.

Reaching the shade of some date-palms, he dismissed the

boy he’d paid to guard his short-wave radio and set about

searching for some voice out in the desolation out there to

help rescue them. His first attempts met with no luck.

Sighing in frustration, he looked up to see a tall young

man in a white shift standing over him, his handsome face hum-

bly beseeching. His fair legs were painfully burned by the

sun, his eyes metallic blue beneath soft black lashes. The

blue cloth protecting his head from the brutal desert sun

identified him as a Berber, though his legs were not tinted

turquoise. He must be some recently freed domestic slave who

had come to join his people’s uprising.

Crouching next to Mal, he began to speak in a Dar Loosh

dialect. A silver charm on a chain glinted on his neck.

 239

Chapter Eighteen

SANDS OF THE NAJIZ

Connor blamed herself. She had broken her long-time rule

of staying away from men old enough to be her father, and now

she’d let Malcolm Pugh kiss her. If Selim were only here, she

wouldn’t have been so tempted.

Curling up on the pile of sheepskins as opium crept

through her blood, she remembered why she’d had to make the

rule so many years ago.

She could almost see her thirteen-year-old self, standing

before the mirror in her dorm room, wearing her boarding

school uniform, a blue polished-cotton shirtdress with a Peter

Pan collar. Since it was a weekend, she wore black pumps in-

stead of saddle shoes, because someone’s father was sure to be

coming to visit.

Connor never liked to go away on weekends. Staying at the

half-empty school was far preferable to being enlisted into

some boring family enterprise at some Blakey compound and es-

tate. Connor was happier commanding her own corps of enlisted

girls here at Laurel Academy, the fragile ones who’d been un-

able to get weekend passes or who’d had no place to go, spend-

ing their off-hours pining for boys, studying too hard, weep-
 240

ing and gazing romantically at the severable blood-vessels in

their wrists.

Connor always made certain to be hanging around the Com-

mon Room when the girls’ fathers arrived. She would stand ad-

miring their beautiful gray wool or gabardine suits, slender

silk ties, luminous lawn shirts, chatting with them as they

waited for their daughters to come downstairs. The fathers who

came to visit Connor’s girls were usually divorced or sepa-

rated, which left them in a state of shock, helplessness and

guilt: They looked like dogs who’d spent their whole loves co-

zily sleeping in the parlor, only to be abruptly pulled awake

and asked to rescue a drowning child.

“You’d look fabulous with a mustache,” Connor would start

casually, turning her head away shyly while continuing to

stare at him in profile. The father wouldn’t quite know what

was happening to him; suddenly he felt like the statue of a

god, adored and incapable of movement.

Too wrapped up in her own neuroses to notice what Connor

was doing, his daughter would inevitably invite her to join

them for luncheon in town, since all the girls knew of poor

Connor’s fatherlessness.

Connor liked to count how many times a father would touch

her in the restaurant, and the various ways he tried to dis-

guise the contact as fatherly. She’d make sure to sit between

 241

father and daughter on the ride back home to school, letting

her head idly come to rest against the fathers’ shoulders. The

moment when he looked down at the crooked part in her hair,

she could practically hear his heart give way, behind layers

of wool and sinew.

Back at the Common Room, as the father awkwardly kissed

his daughter goodbye, Connor stood back timidly; then, as if

she couldn’t help herself, she’d walk up and put her arms

around his waist (as his daughter was too inhibited to do) and

sigh, “Oh, Louise, I just love your father. Can I borrow him?”

She’d feel each father quivering under her hands.

This made for a quite satisfying, harmless little game

until after a time she realized that she wanted more than sim-

ply making the fathers quiver. She wanted them to detonate.

Over the summer she stole a copy of Sexus (banned in the

U.S.A.)from a bookstore in Paris and brought it with her to

school, burying it inside a metal Band-aid box in the orchard

behind the amphitheater. Every weekend she dug up the book and

re-read it. By the time winter came and the ground was too

frozen to yield her prize, Connor had achieved an astonishing

fluency in her subject.

March of her fourteenth year, Connor knelt on the moist

matted yellow grass behind the amphitheater, the ground over

Sexus muddy from spring’s thaw, the jacket of the latest fa-
 242

ther above her was elegant gray wool, his matching vest unrum-

pled. His skin had gone transparent as a lampshade, the blue

and crimson veins underneath surprised in the act of violent

skirmish. He stared down at the crooked part in Connor’s hair

and at his open fly as if it were a mortar wound from which

some vital entrail was escaping. When he came, the sound was

exactly the same one Connor’s father had made when he was dy-

ing of pneumonia.

She had been eight. Insisting on being allowed into his

hospital room to say goodbye, she’d come as close to her fa-

ther’s bed as she dared. Sticking her head through the metal

bars, she watched him arch his pelvis and twist his head, let-

ting out long disbelieving groans as his body evacuated all

his fluids. His eyes opened, staring into Connor’s.

It was their first and only intimate moment together.

“Oh. . .” he let out a last, moaning breath before his

body went slack with relief, yielding up to her his soul, it

seemed. She stared back until his eyes, fixed on her, lost

their sheen.

She would hear that same “Oh” of amazement from other fa-

thers, but the one who’d been with her behind the amphitheater

in March never came to visit his daughter again. At first the

poor girl stopped eating, immersing herself in studies until

her emaciated flesh was covered with ink and ballpoint gouges.
 243

After she gave herself a concussion by bashing her head re-

peatedly against a pew while praying alone in the chapel, Con-

nor knew that she had gone too far.

She would never go near older men again.

As time wore on, she waited for them to lose their at-

traction, but they never did; besdie them, men her own age

seemed perpetually foolish. Still, she was determined to stay

true to her vow. Turning her face away from older men who

might have made her happy, she remained single and hungry.

But she had never loved anybody until Selim.

At dusk the guard woke her, waited while she stumbled

groggily to her feet, and led her out of the tent. Outside,

they joined a tide of Bedouins and Berbers heading toward the

center of the oasis.

“Where are we going?” she asked Malcolm Pugh, when he

fell into step beside her.

“The victory feast. Then no doubt Babas Umaloo will put

on a show, to pump up the troops.”

“Do we get presents and party hats?” She was careful not

to look at him or encourage him in any way.

“No, and the men will sit apart from the women, so this

is my last chance to speak with you.” He moved in closer to

her, his shoulders touching hers.

 244

“About what happened earlier -- ”

He broke in: “I’ve just had the most agreeable chat with

your slave.”

“Selim?”

“Clever girl, you did get a slave after all. He’s quite

the Adonis, I must say.”

“He’s here?” Her heart leapt; she scanned the crowds of

tribespeople frantically.

“The dear boy sold his suit, his watch and his shoes to

buy a camel and follow you all the way here across the Najiz.

I had to put some salve on his legs, they were so frightfully

sunburned.”

“Selim did that?” Every ache and pain in Connor’s body

went away. “The sweetheart! He does care about me!”

“Actually, he promised his mother he’d never leave your

side unless you freed him.”

She sighed. “Well, whatever it takes.”

Mal put his arm around Connor’s shoulder, bringing his

face closer to her to speak more discreetly. “They let him

into the camp this morning with no questions because he’s one

of Babas Umaloo’s boys –- Habib’s, that is. It turns out he

was raised in Habib’s house in Tittawen -- slavery being one

of Habib’s many sidelines -- and Habib sold him to your

prince. They don’t suspect he’s still bound to you.” Connor

 245

walked faster, stepping away from Mal’s encircling arm.

“There’s a good chance he can get us out of here. He’s come up

with a fairly good plan, and he doesn’t mind dying if he gets

caught: one of the dividends of having a slave.”

“I want to see him.” He was right here, in camp, because

he couldn’t live without her -– or because he belonged to her,

which was the same thing! She wanted him now, in the sand, un-

der a date-palm, at gunpoint, anywhere.

“You’ll see him later. If we’re going to make a break for

it, it’ll have to be tonight, during the feast.”

As they came to a vast clearing, Connor saw carpets

spread for the feast as veiled Bedouin women, alongside bare-

faced tattooed Berber women, placed domed clay dishes of food

them. Before she could ask Mal anything else, the guard in-

serted himself between him and Connor, motioning her off to

the women’s side.

“What do we do? What’s the plan?” she asked Mal hur-

riedly.

“Don’t eat the food,” was all he said.

She didn’t see Pugh watching her as she was led away,

taking great satisfaction in his self-control. Touching her

had been a test: His emotions had happily remained unmoved.

 246

The stars sank from their gaudy midheaven into dark

sheaves of gently clicking palm fronds. The drums rumbled

through the night like ancient wagons, while the shrill

strands of the oboes tangled above. Babas Umaloo had been

dancing for four hours, stamping and jerking from the waist,

breaking to drink boiling water or dismember a live sheep with

his bare hands, or revive a dying man from his supine position

to dance convulsively among the throng of stamping, jerking,

bobbing men all slathered by the tongues of firelight.

Connor sat in front of a tent at some distance from the

celebration, guarded by the old woman and a pair of Berber

soldiers, who clapped and swayed to the music. The flickering

fires made her drowsy, as did the opium’s lingering residue in

her blood. She clutched Simone tightly, trying to stay awake,

her eyes searching the crowd once more for Selim. The light

was too dim, the dancers too far away; languor stole over her.

She jolted awake to see Babas Umaloo sitting beside her.

He was bareheaded; his tawny face was solemn and faintly lam-

bent, as if lit from within. Her eyes moved to the dancers in

the distance: Babas Umaloo was there too, among them, spinning

in a frenzied whirl of tatters, having torn his dishdasha in

his trance. Connor stared at him sitting at her side, every

detail of his shape preternaturally clear. Was it the opium?

Was it magic?
 247

“I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I,” a deep

voice echoed in her head. “We are two spirits dwelling in one

body. If you see me, you see Him, and if you see Him you see

us both. God is great.”

The music stopped. The dancing Babas Umaloo rose, fling-

ing his arms up until his long sleeves became an upward surge

of fabric. Connor glanced back at her side and gasped: The

polished cabochon head of a snake was nudging out of the hole

in his cheek, the glossy black tube of its body growing stead-

ily larger as it streamed out of the hole. Soon his head was

wrapped in a caul of shimmering obsidian scales; his body

twisted into a column of coils, vanishing. . . .Above the

heads of the dancers in the distance, a white form hung and

tipped, half-man, half-bird. The stork flapped away; the Fa-

ther of Shadows was gone.

With dawn a few hours away, the women began to serve

food.

Connor was at a distinct disadvantage in this strange

place, she realized. She wanted very badly to go home.

Remembering Mal’s warning, she feigned loss of appetite

when the roast sheep was offered. Soon the old woman and the

two Berber guards were unconscious from the opium powder lac-

ing the food. Since in a rare display of hunger, Simone had

 248

eaten a piece of the liver, Connor was the only one awake in

the tent just before dawn, when a Bedouin appeared. He held

open an empty rice sack and gestured to Connor to climb in-

side. Slipping the sack with Connor and her cat in the sack

over his shoulder, he carried them through the labyrinthine

back paths of the oasis to the edge of the desert.

When Connor emerged from the sack, she saw Malcolm Pugh

and Selim waiting with a kneeling camel. Her slave’s face was

impassive and deferential as always, but his eyes were alive

with excitement, matching the blue hour of the dawn. She ran

to him; his strong hands lifted her into the saddle; Mal

climbed on behind her. The Bedouin accepted Selim’s beloved

tape recorder and several American tapes as payment for his

services.

They set out, Selim walking alongside the beast. They

could hear the Bedouin in the distance, slapping and pummeling

the tape recorder until at last Frank Sinatra’s voice wobbled

feebly up into the fading starlight: “You see in me a man

alone. . . .” Selim echoed the tune softly as they passed out

of sight over the blanched ribs of sand.

Later at midmorning, Selim’s feet grew too cracked and

scorched to walk in the sand, and he traded places with Mal,

embracing Connor from behind, singing Sinatra tunes into her

 249

ear. He asked the scientist about the meaning of the song lyr-

ics, nodding with dreamy satisfaction as Mal translated each

line of “My Way” and “That’s Life.” Soon they were gossiping

away in Berber.

In the magic encirclement of Selim’s arms, Connor was ut-

terly happy. Holding Simone’s drugged body, she didn’t even

complain about the camel’s bone-wrenching motion and slow pro-

gress, the slimy discomfort of her velvet gown under the in-

sensate white sun, her unbelievable thirst and throbbing

skull.

Two storks sailed over their heads. Alighting on a dis-

tant dune’s crest, they became two men, one short and the

other very tall with a long slithering lock of hair. Selim

touched the silver charm around his neck, whispering something

in a language that was neither Berber nor Arabic, and the mi-

rage disappeared.

At midday, they stopped at a small thicket of saltbushes

to let their camel graze, drinking cautiously from their one

goatskin of water, eating a packet of dates. During the torrid

afternoon hours, they napped, all three naked and huddled to-

gether a canopy of their clothes, Mal on one side of Connor,

Selim on the other, curled on his side away from her. Too bad

survival is the only item on the itinerary, she thought,

 250

stretching out a hand to trace his beautiful long spine. Con-

nor was on fire for him.

At her touch she felt his flesh contract, his body going

slightly rigid, as if in dread. A stab of doubt entered her

heart: Did he still hate her after all? Maybe he was embar-

rassed by Mal’s presence, she told herself. Would she ever un-

derstand this man?

Mal couldn’t sleep. He was angry at himself for wasting

this precious rest time gazing at the woman’s back, its plains

and ridges, the cloven swell of her buttocks. She’d shown no

modesty in stripping off her clothes, acting as if he wasn’t

there. Her focus was completely on her slave, her eyes never

leaving him, admiring, worrying, wondering. The more she clung

to the chap, the more she repulsed him. A bit of obvious psy-

chology; didn’t she see it? He almost felt sorry for her. She

was sure to get hurt in the end, he thought, willing himself

not to care.

When they resumed their journey, Mal steered them north,

hoping to skirt rebel camps and cross into the territory of

the Al Agrab, a Bedouin tribe still loyal to the Beni Wazz who

with any luck might escort them back to the capital.

 251

As they stopped in the evening to rest near another lone

copse in this sterile sand plain, Connor seemed strangely si-

lent, as if deep in thought. Selim chased and caught a hare,

which they cooked over kindling gathered in the copse. Mal sat

some distance away while Connor fed her revived cat; his face

a battleground of allergic blotches and sun blisters.

Afterwards, they resumed their tortuous march over the

bleak landscape, Mal walking beside the camel. By dawn he

faced a fate far worse than fatigue: boredom. “Talk to me,” he

implored Connor. “What are you thinking about?”

The whole story poured out of her, as if she’d been ready

to burst at that very moment. She told him every graphic de-

tail of her encounters with the young man, asking his advice.

“You were probably too permissive,” he said, only too

happy to give it. Talking kept insanity at bay. “Spare the

rod, you know. Imagine, he came to your room that first night

when you hadn’t called him. That’s practically daring you to

punish him. Once you failed the first test of wills, it was

all downhill.”

“I could still do it.” Unconsciously Connor tightened her

fists. “I’ll just make myself whip him or whatever.”

“It’s rather late in the game for that.”

“Sometimes he looks at me as if I’m fungus.”

 252

“It’s rather shaming for him to serve a Christian, don’t

you see? And you fell in love with him! That’s rich. Don’t

look daggers at me, dear girl, you asked my opinion. These

love slaves become rather haughty when they imagine they’ve

seduced you. Really, it’s best to buy two of them and have

them compete for your affections.”

“This is hardly helpful.” Selim rocked obliviously behind

Connor, his arms around her waist. The dunes took on a pale

orange as the sun rose higher in the sky. From time to time a

shoulder broke away from the mother dune and slid down, expos-

ing a gash of cream-colored sand.

“If you’d learned a bit of the language, it might’ve

helped you to communicate with him.”

“I didn’t buy a slave to talk to.”

“But that’s one of the ways you went astray. Take your

first night, when he sprinkled something on a rose and had you

eat it. Probably hashish –- it’s commonly used as an aphrodi-

siac –- “

“He did drug me, I knew it! Everything he fed me had that

stuff in it. I nearly died!”

“But he did it right in front of you, which means most

likely he was trying all his tricks to see if there was any-

thing you didn’t want. And since you never said “no” or “stop”

-- two very simple words you really should learn -- he kept

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right on, waiting for you to state your limits. Did you ever

see The Sorcerer’s Apprentice? Mickey Mouse doesn’t know the

magic word to stop all those brooms and pails of water?”

“All right, how do you say ‘no’?”

“Lla.”

“That’s it? Lla.” Selim instantly took his hands away

from her waist. “Now how do you say ‘yes’?” she asked, putting

them back on her.

“Naam.”

“Okay, what else should I have done?”

“Restrained your appetite a bit. You shouldn’t have let

him be in your room all the time. Despite the fact that they

tend to force food and other hospitalities on one here, they

do expect one to graciously decline after a while. Each person

is supposed to understand his role. Though I suppose it’s awk-

ward for a foreigner.” He mused for a moment. “I know an Eng-

lish chap who had a sort of valet in Yemen, who got quite up-

set if his master handed him his clothes to wash. Felt he

should let them fall on the floor, step imperiously away, and

leave them to be picked up. The act of the master touching

dirty clothes and possibly even the boy’s hand in the transac-

tion was too shaming for words. They like a lord to be a lord

–- to be quite definite in his behavior about the balance of

the relationship. The entire culture is designed to preserve

 254

symmetry, you see. It’s all meant to be a bittersweet ballet,

before the release of death and the endless holiday in Para-

dise. How can he respect you when you neither follow the clas-

sical steps nor teach him the new moves to this modern dance?

All he asks is that the result be graceful, definite, and

suitably balanced.”

“He’s probably a Libra,” Connor said.

As they descended a slope into a flat, minutely rippled

expanse of gray sand, Selim tore off one sleeve from his shift

to wrap Connor’s head. The sun was sharpening. Mal continued

to press north through this dismal new zone, urging Connor to

keep him talking so that his mind would remain focused. Deli-

cately she brought up another difficulty she’d had with Selim,

before he ran away.

Throwing back his head, Pugh burst into laughter, crack-

ing his parched lips.

“What’s so funny?”

“You must have given him the shock of his young life.

Oral sex is not a practice here —- they think it’s haram --

bloody unclean!”

“I want him to come.”

“Surely the Princess explained how he was trained like

all love slaves to retain his seed. I suspect that particular

 255

tradition came from both and abstract reasoning: the unseemli-

ness of becoming pregnant by a slave, and the idea that a

slave shouldn’t enjoy possession of his mistress. The split-

ting of a hair makes all the difference in the phenomenon of

balance. To have him never taste triumph returns him to the

inferior role, the appropriate place for a slave. Otherwise he

would be assuming too many actions associated with the aggres-

sor, and much confusion about power would result. Anal sex is

ever so much more satisfactory. There the distinction between

master and slave is physically quite clear.”

He stopped, squinting. An image of red cliffs had been

hanging persistently on the horizon for the last hour. Confer-

ring with Selim in Berber, they decided the cliffs were real

and pointed the camel toward them. Soon, all three were walk-

ing with the camel, stepping carefully around the perimeter of

wide white patches of soft gypsum.

Under the sun’s revolving blades, Mal began to babble.

“Tempting him with wine didn’t work, you say? Dear me, he is a

good boy. Being a Moslem, he must be quite ashamed of that

episode. I really can’t understand why you should bother your-

self whether or not he climaxes.”

“Because it sort of. . .seals the deal, you know. It

means he’s mine, he cares about me.”

 256

“Why should that matter? Aren’t you basically getting

everything you want already?”

Connor stared at her boots, mechanically planting one in

front of the other as they trudged across the flat plain. She

couldn’t bring herself to utter the words, I want love. “It’s

just not romantic,” she said at last. “I could have bought a

vibrator if all I wanted was a cheap orgasm. Why won’t he just

let go?”

“I suppose it has to do with his honor,” Mal said. “Eve-

rything comes down to honor or shame with these people. This

young man here is decidedly the type to want to do things cor-

rectly, or he wouldn’t take his oath to his mother so seri-

ously. So what you want him to do is just not right, not fit-

ting for a slave, not honorable. So long as they can keep

their honor shame-free, slave or not, they can consider them-

selves free men.”

Selim started to sing.

“Teach me how to say it like a command, then, so he has

to obey,” said Connor.

“You’d have to deprive him of his will. I believe the

trouble with your boy is, he’s afraid of you. Probably why he

ran away. Afraid that if he stays with you, you’ll eventually

win the contest of wills.” He noticed Connor’s frown had deep-

ened. “Sooner or later you’ll dishonor him.”

 257

Selim broke into yet another refrain of “I did it my

way.”

“Stop singing that stupid song,” Connor snarled.

Misinterpreting her request, the slave switched songs:

“And then I go and spoil it all by saying’ something’ stupid

like ‘I love you’. . . .”

“I’m going to kill him,” said Connor.

“You might try drugs,” said Mal.

Connor stared. “I wasn’t serious.”

“Of course you weren’t. I was merely thinking of a voodoo

cult in Haiti, which puts a sort of vegetable-based drug in

food which renders their victims obedient and essentially

without will. They call it concombre zombie. Apparently this

particular vegetable only grows on some of the Caribbean is-

lands, which accounts for why the zombie legend only exists

there. I can’t tell you much more, because I left; Haiti was

getting too bloody touristy for me. Nowadays I hear almost

anyone can get into a voodoo ceremony -– they’re practically

running courtesy buses from the hotels.” Mal hardly knew what

he was saying any more, dazed by the sun; in another minute he

would be proposing mad, passionate sex on a dune. He blinked,

shook his head brusquely, trying to dispel demons.

When he next looked at Connor, she was brooding heavily

over something. Something he’d said? What was it he’d said? He

 258

couldn’t remember. Her silence slowed his steps; before Mal

knew it he was hallucinating.

They stopped to rest again, lying naked in the shade of

their clothes, and didn’t awake until twilight. Connor still

didn’t speak, when they rose to dress and resume their trek. A

pale green scorpion fell out of the folds of her dress, but

she did not even utter a cry.

“Don’t budge,” Mal said.

Connor only stared impassively at her astrological em-

blem, her shriveled double. The tiny pale creature with a sin-

gle treacherous twist where its tail crooked inward was both

deadly both to others and to itself.

Mal flicked it away with his boot.

As the morning dawned, they reached valley between brick-

red cliffs of sand. Suddenly Selim cried out, pointing. Mal

cupped his hands over his eyes, framing a distant figure of a

man on the cliffs above.

Connor broke from her reverie to see the point of a bayo-

net swinging out as the man shouldered his rifle, disappearing

down the far side of the cliff. “That was real, right?”

Mal brought his hands away from his face, looking encour-

aged. “Brown turban wrapped sideways. Think it’s an Al Agrab.

Good show if it is. We’ll have a guide, then.”

 259

The Al Agrab sentry led them into an encampment of women

and children. All the men and youths of the tribe had departed

for Port-Au-Wazz to rally around King Musa. It seemed the King

had recovered all his former powers and was now summoning all

loyal subjects for a violent reprisal against the rebels.

The Bedouin women offered the fugitives bread, milk, and

the merciful shade. The next day, a young boy lent them some

horses, agreeing to guide them back to Port-Au-Wazz, in ex-

change for Malcolm Pugh’s compass and Selim’s last cherished

possession, his mother’s protective silver charm.

 260

Chapter Nineteen

KING MUSA SPEAKS

As the dawn mist unrolled from the shore, Port-Au-

Wazz’s landmarks came into blurred view on the horizon: the

Ferris wheel and half-finished trade center, a minaret, a gi-

ant crane. Outside the city, in the dunes between the beach

and the gravel desert, thousands of Bedouins from the eastern

Samra desert to the western loess plains of Masmoudia finished

the morning prayer and settled back onto their rugs to hear

their monarch speak.

It had been two years since King Musa had last spoken,

and eight years since his people had been gathered in such

numbers. The last occasion had been one of vengeance, after a

young Beni Wazz prince and his hunting party had gotten lost

in the northern Najiz desert and were inadvertently slaugh-

tered by some Beni Fasidim scouts. The Crown’s loyal tribes

had joined forces to exterminate all the males of the Beni

Fasidim.

Now the King’s desert brethren gathered again, listening

rapturously to his voice, as he sat amid them on a camel lit-

ter of beaten gold, emeralds, and magenta tassels, his

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headrope gleaming like a gilded serpent on his brow. The an-

cestral Beni Wazz features shone nobly in the frame of his

gold-embroidered black headcloth, though age had lowered his

great cheeks to join among his chins, and his eyelids drooped

so low that it seemed unlikely he could see. His face had gone

waxen in the two years since his stroke, but now assumed the

orange glow of the campfire before him. With his right hand

still paralyzed, his left brandished a cattle prod as he ex-

horted revenge, glory, and genocide to the gathered tribes,

fueling them with his righteous fury.

Later, his followers hoped, he might even drink boiling

water and eat bottles the way he used to, thus inciting them

to mystical vigor in the battle to come.

Due to the feebleness of His Majesty’s voice, only those

seated immediately around the fire could hear his actual

words; yet all sat bathed in contentment that their King had

returned to command the faithful. They understood his rage

without needing to hear words: All his sons had been murdered

on his birthday, in plain view of his army, his women, foreign

guests, and a film crew. The royal hareem, along with his

grandsons, wasted no time evacuating to Dubai.

The rest of the capital’s inhabitants left as quickly as

they could; foreign residents, diplomats, town merchants, mon-

eychangers, porters, poets and acrobats, taxi drivers and

 262

fishermen, masons and peddlers all made a mass exodus across

the Bay of Two Dogs into Oman. Soon the cafés and souks of the

capital were deserted. The water supply had been destroyed by

terrorists, and the jets and tanks systematically stripped of

the engine components that made them battle-ready.

Only the mercenary soldiers remained. Those laborers un-

able to obtain passage across the bay had been seized and con-

scripted into the army, and now stood glumly behind the King,

beside their nervous horses and baffling modern jeeps.

It was an impressive gathering of troops, even if hastily

assembled: twenty thousand Bedouins, mercenaries, and foreign

workers, recruited by Sidi Messoud, the black slave who had

risen to become Minister of Defense. Messoud’s position in

life depended upon the survival of his King. Should the Berber

resistance be destroyed, Messoud would sit as Regent in majlis

until one of Musa’s grandsons was old enough to rule. Messoud

would marry several of the King’s daughters (including the re-

cently widowed Awisha) and the Beni Wazz clan would swell

again, its line nurtured by slaves’ blood, as were most Arab

monarchies.

If King Musa was the only man to match the charisma, cun-

ning, and baraka of Babas Umaloo, however, his escape from his

invalid’s existence was temporary. Those watching would have

been horrified to learn that he owed his rebirth to an ancient

 263

trick, used to great effect by his great-grandfather Jawel

Beni Wazz. With Musa’s crown imperiled, the old slave Suleiman

had told the story to Sidi Messoud:

In the previous century, when Jawel Beni Wazz was called

upon to display his baraka before the tribes to renew their

awe for another year, he’d dismembered bull camels with his

bare hands, eaten scorpions, and commanded the jinns under the

ground. For the latter performance, a slave had been secretly

buried three feet down in the sand, along with a hollow bamboo

pipe connecting him to the oxygen above ground. When Jawel had

stamped his foot on the ground and conjured some spirit of the

sands to make its presence known, the slave had shouted an an-

swer as loud as he could through the bamboo tube. Thus it had

seemed as if the sands themselves spoke: In a dim screeching

voice, the spirit would praise Jawel as master and magician,

feared by all the desert jinns.

Now, at the height of his great-grandson’s crisis, the

trick was revived. Though King Musa had never actually re-

gained his speech, he could chew; timing his words to match

the monarch’s moving jaws, old Suleiman was buried next to his

master’s camel litter and now shouted about revenge, glory,

and genocide through a concealed bamboo tube. Whenever the un-

derground Suleiman had to stop and gasp for oxygen, Sidi Mes-

soud leapt to fill the gap and further rouse the troops and
 264

allies, reliving the night the Berber terrorists had slain

Masmoudia’s princes and carried away their severed limbs to

eat, kidnapping two American women to be raped and roasted in

oil.

Suddenly, in the midst of this frenzied spectacle, came

an Al Agrab boy on horseback, galloping in with some rescued

hostages -– a British scientist, and one of the American

women! The crowd roared with enthusiasm. Connor Blakey and

Malcolm Pugh were lifted onto the shoulders of the exultant

soldiers, carried to the King. Through the din of cheering,

Sidi Messoud cried that the rebels’ fortunes had turned: “God

is great! Soon every murdered prince will receive a hundred

Berber corpses as a mantle on his grave, and honor and all

power will be restored to our beloved King Musa and his breth-

ren, the sons of the wind!”

As Malcolm Pugh was called to speak a few words to the

troops, Connor stood numbly to one side of the King’s litter,

clutching her cat to her breast. Recent events had rendered

her almost skeletal. Her skin had erupted in blisters, her

eyes were pink and swollen, and her hair, still wrapped in

Selim’s torn sleeve, was clotted with sweat and grime. The

multitude of men’s dun-colored faces before her were no realer

than a pack of film extras. She wanted to go home.

 265

If only she could float above the crowd as she did so

easily in her dreams, burst through the confining stratosphere

and fly over mountains and forests and oceans. She pictured

herself flying over the roof of her hotel in Manhattan, find-

ing her window with its lamp still lit. For a moment, she for-

got Masmoudia and Selim: She was back in her bed at the Pi-

erre, drinking chablis with her friends and complaining about

men who couldn’t get it up. Had all those palmists and psy-

chics who’d said she’d live to be eighty, with too much money

and too many bad romantic choices, lied to her? Had she been

actually destined to perish at the age of thirty-one on a dune

halfway around the world, surrounded by raving maniacs?

Gulping back tears, she stood bravely, her boot heel

planted flat upon a bit of bamboo pipe poking out of the

ground near the King’s litter. Three feet under, cut off from

oxygen, the old slave Suleiman breathed his last.

Her Aunt Muffie would not have been surprised at Connor’s

latest catastrophic blunderof course. At that moment, Muffie

Blakey-Vandermuffing was crossing into Oman with Sheikh Juma’s

caravan, having a marvelous time soaking up Arab customs.

These included having her hands and feet painted with henna, a

ritual she did not realize was part of a long beautification

ceremony to prepare her for her nuptials with Sheikh Juma.

 266

As Sidi Messoud shouted to the soldiers that the appear-

ance of the hostages was a sign from God, that Babas Umaloo

had lost his baraka and the rebels’ courage was failing, Mal-

colm Pugh returned to Connor’s side. A thunderous ovation bore

down upon them. Mal anxiously looked up at the sky. “I do wish

the sky wasn’t so damned empty,” he whispered to Connor.

“Where’s the United Nations, where are those lovely Marines of

yours? We must quit this place of doom, my dear, as soon as we

can manage.”

Selim, behind them, suddenly pointed toward the Port-Au-

Wazz skyline.

“What’s that?” gasped Connor.

Between the Ferris wheel and the fort there swelled a

fantastical pink sphere, like a jolly puff of bubble gum.

When the U.S. rescue plane came to evacuate all the

Americans in Port-Au-Wazz, Ralph Shunt had stayed behind, un-

able to bear abandoning his hot-air balloon. He would use to

escape, he decided, before realizing that inflating it would

require help. After he’d hired some Baluchis he’d found hiding

in a shipment of rusting transport vans along the quai, they

stole his water and ran off, leaving him to fend for himself

in a city that had been dry since the Berbers had blown up the
 267

falajes, the underground conduits that supplied Port-Au-Wazz

with water from the Dugagah oasis. (The few remaining Moslems

in the city, accustomed to the month-long Ramadan fast, had

handled the deprivation ably, but the Hindu staff at the

Grande Wazz Hotel were not so well-prepared. After they’d bro-

ken into the liquor closet, Ralph Shunt found their stuporous

bodies draped about the ballroom.)

Further search turned up another countryman, the American

doctor, who’d stayed behind when the rescue plane’s pilot re-

fused to take along his three slave-boys as refugees. Though

Ralph Shunt didn’t like the doctor, he recognized the value of

a man who possessed a case of Vichy water and three healthy

young boys capable of erecting a balloon. In return for their

help, Ralph agreed to transport the doctor and one of the boys

to his destination, across the Bay of Two Dogs and north to

Muscat in Oman, where there was an American embassy. (There

was certainly room enough for at least six more people in the

balloon’s gondola, but Ralph didn’t feel right about being

outnumbered by fruits.)

In no time Shunt put the boys to work, spreading the

ground cloth on the dock, pattering delicately around on soft

bare feet, while the American doctor sat in the shade of an

abandoned steam shovel nearby, blubbering incoherently and ad-

ministering shots of Demerol to himself. Then his slaves laid

 268

out the vast pink silk and held up the ring while Shunt’s

burner had blasted hot air through it, until the great mass of

silk filled. Bobbling dizzily in a stray wind off the bay, it

could be seen for miles.

As Sidi Messoud worked up the bloodlust in the crowd, no

one noticed that the rescued hostages had slipped away. Trad-

ing the last precious goat-skin of water for the use of a

draftee’s jeep, Mal took the wheel, Connor beside him. Selim

crouched in the rear as they headed full speed toward the pink

silk bosom on the horizon.

The jeep ran of water at the head of the Port-Au-Wazz

quai, breaking down near a small party of royal guardsmen

searching for a shipment of ammunition that had been lost un-

der the deliveries of food and merchandise piled up along the

docks. The king’s men glanced up curiously as the three

scorched-looking fugitives ran the length of the quai to the

balloon.

“We met on the plane coming in, didn’t we?” Ralph Shunt

said to Connor and Mal. He kept an eye on his balloon’s posi-

tion as two of the slave-boys held her steady, dragging on the

ropes. “You guys are in the nick of time. How’d you like a

one-way non-stop up-up-and-away to Oman?”

“Can you fit us all in?” Connor asked, panting.

 269

“No problem-o. I’ll give you a leg up, honey. Jeez, you

guys look like you’ve been scraped off a barbecue grill. Those

sand-niggers didn’t torture you, did they? Professor, your

face looks awful.”

“Damn bloody cat,” said Mal, climbing into the basket

alongside Connor.

“Well, y’all are in luck,” Shunt said. “There’s a doctor

on this flight. He’s over there with the stewardess.” He

winked and indicated the American doctor lurching toward them

on the arm a boy sporting a new “Voulez-Vous Couchez Avec Moi

Ce Soir” T-shirt for the journey.

As the doctor and his slave clamored into the gondola,

Connor waved Selim on. “Get in!”

Though Selim understood the gesture, he did not move. His

tattered shift, one sleeve missing, flapped against his emaci-

ated body. His once unmarked birch-white skin had been dried

to brown wrinkles in the desert air; black hairs prickled his

once lathe-smooth face and body. His parched lips parted pain-

fully as he said something in Berber.

Connor turned to Mal. “What’s he saying?”

“He says he has delivered you to safety from Dugagah, and

he hopes that in your gratitude, in your generosity, you will

give him his heart’s wish.”

 270

“Anything! Tell him to come on!” The gondola rocked;

Ralph Shunt was cutting the last stays before climbing in.

“Free me,” said Selim.

“What?!” Connor reached out and grasped Selim’s collar.

“For Christ’s sake, get inside! Mal, he’s delirious, he’s run-

ning on with some Sinatra song. Make him understand.”

“Free. . .me.” His eyes entreated her.

Connor spun on Mal. “You taught him that!”

The scientist shrugged. “He wanted to ask you properly.”

“He only rescued me because – because – he wanted to make

a deal?” Stricken, incredulous, she released Selim’s collar.

The slave stood breathlessly watching her lips, waiting for a

word to release him.

She was hurt, just as Mal had feared she’d be. It never

paid to lose one’s heart: He would tell her that, when she had

calmed down, when they were off and away. He squeezed her

shoulder to comfort her, but she shook him off, her eyes fill-

ing with such fury that Mal stood back, alarmed.

“It was all a trick! And you knew!”

“Let him go,” Mal said gently. “They’re not worth much

when they want to be free.” She glared at him. “Come on, old

girl, it’s a fair trade. He saved your life, he gets his free-

dom. All you have to say is yes. Quick! Any language will do.

Yes, oui, da, si, naam--”

 271

“No!” She grabbed Selim’s collar again and pulled him to-

wards the rim of the basket.

Mal caught her arm, struggling to pry her away. Words

tore out of him before he could stop them: “Come with me in-

stead.”

She wouldn’t look at him. Her eyes were locked on Selim.

“There are plenty of other countries where you can get

slaves,” Mal found himself begging, “I’ll take you there!

Leave him here, he doesn’t want to go with you. Whatever went

wrong between you, it’s past fixing.”

“No!” Connor howled. “No!” She turned to Selim and

screamed in his face, “Lla! Lla! Lla! Lla! Lla! Lla!”

Each of her cries struck Selim like a blow, his head

twisting away to ward off the words, but Connor held fast to

the flimsy white shift until the fabric began to shred in her

hands.

Ralph Shunt walked over, frowning. “What’s going on?”

“It’s my boyfriend -– he’s in shock.”

“Only one thing for that.” Making a fist, he delivered a

swift punch to Selim’s jaw, then flipped the slave’s uncon-

scious body into the craft beside Connor, jumping in after

him. “Okay, boys, cut those mothers!” he called, making a

slitting gesture at his throat. The two jubilant slave-boys

hacked at the restraining ropes and, with a magnificent surge,

 272

the balloon lifted free. Catching the dancing ends of the sev-

ered ropes, the two boys shinnied up to topple, giggling, into

the gondola as it ascended.

The American doctor grinned at Ralph Shunt’s indignation.

“You didn’t really think I’d leave without them?”

Suddenly a huge explosion at the opposite end of the dock

brought a powerful gust of air to buffet the balloon. The

royal guardsmen had at last located a decayed shipment of dy-

namite and plastique ordered back in the days when the Crown

Prince was alive and yearning to blast the enchanted uranium

from the mountains of Masmoudia.

Outside the city, the war party in the dunes heard the

deep thump of the blast and saw the muddy plumes of smoke rise

from the port. An eerie pink bubble soared up, lilting away on

the wind like a giant messianic embryo born from the explo-

sion. Confusion reigned.

Some terrible magic was at work. First the rescued Ameri-

can girl and the British adventurer had run off. Then, after

Sidi Messoud delivered a lengthy tirade and the cheering died

down, the sentries had announced that the Berber armies were

approaching from the south. Seeing the long curl of dust

across the horizon like a serpent rolling sideways, the troops

 273

had waited for King Musa to utter the final valedictory before

they set off for battle.

Yet though the old monarch’s jaw kept working, no voice

came forth. Some sorcery had reduced their King, Commander of

the Faithful, Protector of the Poor, Lord of the True Believ-

ers, Exalted of God, the warriors’ last hope, to a drooling

marionette! No sooner did they realize the disaster that had

befallen them than the explosion came, and then the vision of

a pink airship in the sky.

The Bedouin tribes stayed to confront the enemy. Merce-

naries and foreign laborers scattered in panic: A stampede of

Yemenis, Iranians, Baluchis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Suda-

nese, Pakistanis, Ethiopians, and Indians raced back to the

city to loot the villas and shops and palaces before making

their escape across the Bay of Two Dogs. They entered the city

by the road along the docks, where fire from the explosion

lashed away at the towering heaps of cargo. Crates filled with

washing machines and stereos, motor oil and milk formula, air-

conditioners and x-ray equipment, sacks of wheat, flour, and

rice, lumber, and new automobiles. . . .The harbor, the fort,

and the funhouse all burned as the silk balloon skimmed safely

away, northeast to Muscat.

 274

The American hot-air balloon salesman Ralph Shunt beat

his chest boisterously. “Whee-ha! Man oh man, Oman, here we

come!

“My sweet refugees.” The American doctor hugged his male

hareem. “After I sponsor your visas to America, we will all

live happily ever after in a place called Little Rock, which

is my home.”

Connor crouched beside Selim’s sprawled form, staring

down at his insensible face. Loose strands of hair seethed

over her famished face.

“Why the devil didn’t you free him?” Mal asked her

numbly.

“And leave him to get killed in that ridiculous revolu-

tion?”

The anthropologist wasn’t fooled. “It’s his revolution.

His choice to be killed.”

“Not his choice. Mine.” Connor turned wild eyes to his.

“He’s mine.”

She turned her face to the wind, as it bore her over an

ocean in flames, her slave beside her.

 275

Chapter Twenty

MASMOUDIAN FAREWELL

After the mutiny of the King’s guard, those Bedouins

still loyal to King Musa fought over his body in the sands

outside Port-Au-Wazz. Yet despite a ferocious battle, the Ber-

bers defeated them, moving into the capital to skirmish with

the mercenaries and looters in the narrow streets. Then Babas

Umaloo was killed.

It was said he hid in a dead camel’s stomach for three

days in the souk, shooting three hundred men before anyone

figured out where the automatic rifle fire was coming from. It

was also believed that he resurrected in the form of a great

stork with a snake in its beak.

One day in the Bay of Two Dogs, a pilotless dhow ap-

peared, its motor still running and sails erect. Colliding

with the artificial island in the Port-Au-Wazz harbor, it

overturned: A party of hungry rats scurried ashore and entered

the amusement park funhouse, promptly attacking the food pro-

visions Sidi Messoud had been hoarding. The Defense Minister

had been hiding in the funhouse with his servants until the
 276

foreign powers intervened to end the civil war raging outside,

but the Great Powers had been silent.

Messoud was grateful for the boat; after having his ser-

vants right it and start its motor, he chose three of them to

accompany him to South Yemen, where he would appeal to the

Communists for help. But halfway across the Bay of Two Dogs,

he and his companions experienced violent headaches, and sud-

denly went blind. Flailing and shouting feebly for help, they

soon collapsed, too weak to move. By sunset, as the boat

drifted into the Indian Ocean, all aboard were dead from some

mysterious affliction.

Back on land, the two servants left behind surrendered to

the Berbers, who decided to take them back to the Dar Loosh as

slaves. The rebels were withdrawing from Port-Au-Wazz; they

had never wanted to rule Masmoudia but simply to protect their

mountains and their honor. Demoralized by Babas Umaloo’s

death, the warriors were homesick.

They were halfway across the gravel plains, with the Dar

Loosh looming before them, when the entire party was struck

with sudden migraines. Their sight then fled, with paralysis

following soon after. Man after man lay down in his tracks,

entering a state of catatonia until by sundown their corpses

littered the plain. Not one was left alive at the foot of the

mountains. A peculiar calm covered their features, their eyes

 277

open and clear, as if they had expired from nothing more seri-

ous than apathy.

Just as a snake, dealt a mortal blow, often kept writhing

reflexively until sundown, “sundown sickness” victims appeared

to die quickly, entering a vegetative state, but did not stop

living altogether until their metabolism slowed gradually to a

halt, many hours later, usually after the sun went down.

Transmitted by animals, insects, people, water, and air, the

virus ran through entire populations before natural barriers

like mountain ranges or jungles finally prevented its further

spread.

The rare disease had never been reported anywhere except

in central Africa, but the strain that wiped out Masmoudia was

a synthetic version, reproduced in the laboratories of a tech-

nologically advanced nation. The infected rats were deliber-

ately placed in the dhow, with the knowledge that the depend-

able currents in the Bay of Two Dogs would carry the boat to

Masmoudian shores. Within three months, “sundown sickness”

would infiltrate even the outermost Bedouin caravansaries and

Berber kasbahs, and Masmoudia would be stripped of most of its

humanity. By the end of the year, the virus itself would die

out, for lack of a host.

By happy acident, or by God’s design, the cavedwellers

would be spared the disease: the five hundred old men, women,
 278

and children who guarded the granaries and herds of the upper

slopes. Living above a perilous stone ledge that could only be

reached by a single narrow path, buffeted by winds which op-

posed the currents of the lower slopes, the cavedweller commu-

nity was naturally fortified against the disease. Blue-eyed,

milk-skinned, straight-haired, some even blond, they were a

hardy people. Just as their ancestors had endured abduction

from the Atlas mountains of North Africa, escaping their Arab

captors to be shipwrecked on Masmoudia and resume their cul-

ture here in the Dar Loosh, they were bred to endure.

Since their visionary saint Babas Umaloo had sworn them

to allow no human being up the path until a Mohammedan year

had passed, they’d stored their last reserves of grain and

produce, drinking clean water from the wadis’ source, and

avoided the disease completely. Babas Umaloo had also told

them to welcome the first men to ascend the path after the

year was up. These would be the new lords of the Dar Loosh.

One year later, when the promised rulers did indeed ap-

pear, they were not Bedouins or Berbers, neither the caved-

wellers’ own people nor the royal family’s breed. The new

lords would be foreigners from other nations, seeking what lay

in the exquisite heart of the mountains: enough uranium to

detonate the entire solar system.

 279

At the same time, Sheikh Juma’s caravan would end its

wanderings in the deserts of Oman and Saudi Arabia, preparing

a return to Masmoudia. The morning of the journey home, the

hundred people in his following would wake at five o’clock to

pray outside their tents. In the women’s tent, the Sheikh’s

American wife would sleep through the chanting as usual; all

she did was sleep, except when it was time to eat, or the

times when her husband came to her. Every night the Sheikh’s

other wives burned something in a brazier at the entrance to

her tent which made her drowsy; and the food, which she con-

sumed avidly, contained something else which made her feel

pleasantly stupid.

She had long since stopped thinking of escape. She remem-

bered her life in Manhattan, yet it was as if she had always

lived as she did now, her needs taken care of, her life devoid

of work or obligations. It was a kind of bliss, to surrender

to her fate.

Her life would not be without purpose. During her remain-

ing childbearing years, Aunt Muffie would play her part in

God’s design to repopulate Masmoudia.

 280

Chapter Twenty-one

THE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SIXTH NIGHT

Ming-Li Wu winced as the banquet hall speakers blasted

out the song:

Ming-Li, Ming-Li, general’s daughter,

Where have four years of art history got her?
In lizard boots, she makes the rounds
Of faithless cowboys and rodeo clowns

People started looking at her lizard boots. “Why did we come

to this party? Are we crazy?” she wailed, hiding behind her

friend Wren Ellis.

“No true Sarah Lawrence girl can pass up the chance to be

notorious,” said her former classmate.

Crimson lights and rotating mirror balls sprayed red

polka-dots on the people crowding the sushi restaurant.

Ronda’s record company was throwing her a gold record party;

thanks in part to the rumors about Ronda and the bachelor

Senator, both the title single and the album of “It’s Always

Some Dude” had sold a million units in one month.

“I can’t listen to the radio any more,” said Ming-Li.

“They’re even playing that song on the country stations!” She

particularly resented having it known that she was addicted to

country-western singers.
 281

Though Ronda’s hit single dissected every one of her

friends from college, she had invited the same friends to her

party to hear the song playing repeatedly in the background.

The press was clamoring to meet the real-life women of the

lyrics.

Lavender-white fluorescence bathed the immaculately pale

Japanese chefs standing vigil, like nurses in a maternity

ward, over rows of gleaming raw-fish fillets asleep on pillows

of white rice. Ming-Li’s current shitkicker boyfriend had

opted to leave the party rather than “hang around watchin’

folks eat bait.”

It’s always some dude

For that we had to be smart?
What good is our head
If some dude’s gonna get hold of our heart?

“I think we should stay just long enough to get even,”

Wren said balefully, abandoning her friend to get a drink. As

Ming-Li shrank into a corner behind the buffet, hoping she

passed for one of the help, she was joined by Fiona Feldman,

another college friend.

“Ronda must be gloating,” she said. “Look at this crowd.”

Ronda’s song hadn’t made Fiona very happy either: The lyrics

implied that her marriage had broken up because her husband

was gay. Her ex had called her up, ranting that he was going
 282

to sue. (Fortunately, his boyfriend talked him out of a libel

action.)

Fiona and Ming-Li eyed the throng: permanently-frizzed

columnists mingling with blow-dried executives, managers and

agents with ethyl-soaked handkerchiefs and poppers in their

dittybags, groupies and butchettes -– and the political con-

tingent, drawn by the Senator’s presence. This party was a new

pinnacle in Ronda’s steady rise to rock-and-roll fame: She’d

landed both a Senator and a recently exiled Princess.

“Poor Connor.” Wren floated up to the two women with a

plate of sushi and a thimble-cup of warm saki. “She must have

felt so upstaged. I mean, five months away on a desert island

without a word, escaping a revolution and everything, she fi-

nally waltzes in like Phileas Fogg or Professor Higgins, with

a marvelous tan and a slave, and no one pays any attention.”

“She left so early,” Fiona said. “What was it, jet lag?”

“I noticed she got uptight when she saw the Princess was

here.”

Ming-Li disagreed; Connor hadn’t seemed that upset. “All

she said was, ‘Uh-oh, there’s butt-face.’”

They could see the Princess dancing with the Senator as

flashbulbs popped. After a bit he excused himself and Awisha,

spotting her college friends, rushed over.

“Hi, Wishy. Having a good time?”

 283

“Yes!” Awisha beamed through a black veil stamped with

glittering gold studs that was the envy of all the models in

the room. She was in mourning for her family and country; with

the hareem forever disbanded, she took solace in the company

of her old classmates. “Yes, the Senator is a very nice dude!

He says to me if he is elected President he will send me back

to my country.”

“I wouldn’t bet on his getting the nomination,” said

Wren.

“Can you see Ronda in the White House? She’d be ordering

drummers up to her room every night,” Ming-Li said, after Her

Highness went off to get another beer.

A reporter approached, drawn to Wren’s ethereal looks.

“You’re a friend of Ronda’s, aren’t you? Do you think she and

the Senator will get married before the primaries?”

Wren leaned close. He was slightly wall-eyed; his pupils

drifted haphazardly as he inhaled the fragrance of her hair.

“We’re all in stitches about it,” she murmured. “Of course he

wants her around to give himself a masculine image and con-

vince people he has an emotional and sexual side to his per-

sonality even though all you have to do is take one look at

him to know he doesn’t.”

Fiona and Ming-Li tensed. Ever since Wren had moved in

with a doctor who’d diagnosed her as having a multiple-

 284

personality disorder, her behavior had become impossible to

predict.

“. . .Nobody who really knows Ronda believes she and the

Senator are actually doing it! As far as I’m concerned, I

won’t be convinced until I see a photo of her holding his -- ”

“Wrennie!”

“ –- in her hand.”

“Wren.”

“And it has to be hard.”

Ming-Li covered her moon-shaped face with her hands. “Oh

God, Wren, not to the press.”

“Your name’s Wren?” The reporter lit up. “Are you the

girl in Ronda’s song: ‘Wren, Wren, who tried to be weirder/

Majored in mushrooms and children’s theater’? Did you really

take a lot of drugs in college?”

Wren stroked his lapel. “Darling, I never heard of anyone

named Wren. I have twenty separate identities. Right at this

moment I’m Trixie.” Her hand headed south toward his pants. “I

come out at bad parties and do wild, disgusting things to any-

one stupid enough to stand close.” She hooked her finger in

his belt, then dumped her plate of sushi down his pants before

he could pull away. He fled.

“My saki’s cold,” Wren said, leaving to get another thim-

bleful.
 285

“Hey, Ming-A-Ling. Hey, Fifi.” Ronda strode up. “How come

Connor left in such a hurry? She didn’t even say goodbye.”

“I think she was insulted you didn’t put her into your

hit song.”

“I couldn’t come up with a verse for her.” Ronda looked

guilty. “How do you describe Connor and keep it clean enough

for the Top 40?”

“Mingie’s just teasing you. I think Connor and Spike left

because they were tired, that’s all.”

“Did you see her watching him like a vulture? Did she

think we were going to steal him?”

“Really, though, buying a slave?!” Ronda shook her head

in disapproval. “I think Connor has reached a new extreme in

tackiness.”

“He was cute. I never thought a person could look so good

in an ‘I Love New York’ T-shirt.”

“I can’t believe she gave him that name.”

“He never said a word, did he?”

“I heard him say something. It must have been Arabic.”

“He didn’t seem very bright. That face –- no expression

whatsoever! I had the feeling that if I shot a gun off in his

face he wouldn’t blink.”

“Fantastic dark eyelashes, though.”

“And built. And hung. Did you check?”

 286

“His posture was weird. He was leaning over Connor like a

hired goon.”

“And he kind of shuffled.”

“That beautiful white skin, though, like marble. How can

you be in Haiti for a month and look like you’ve never been

near the sun? Connor was absolutely negroid.”

“She must have kept him chained to the bed in the hotel

room while she went down to the pool.”

“Who?” Wren returned with hot saki.

“Spike, Connor’s slave.”

“He was gorgeous. Like a god,” Ronda declared.

“But that’s so easy these days.” Wren yawned. “Everyone’s

forgotten what the gods look like.”

“Hey, Wish!” Ronda greeted Awisha’s return. “We’re talk-

ing about Connor’s slave. You must have all the dope on him.”

“Slave?” Awisha frowned. “This man with her tonight? You

talk about Connor’s boyfriend? He is from Peru. She met him in

a hotel in my country.”

The women stared.

The Princess insisted, “He is not a slave. Connor came to

Masmoudia for a slave but she did not find a good one, and

then she met this other knockout man in the hotel. I heard him

speak a little tonight, and it was not my language. I don’t

know what he is saying, it must be the Peru tongue. And why

 287

does Connor leave so soon? I’m so happy to see her I wet my

pants, and now I’m hurting my feelings.”

“Well! I don’t know which is tackier,” Ronda said, “Con-

nor buying a slave, or Connor making up a whole story about

buying a slave.”

Before she could get worked up on the subject, her man-

ager caught her eye and beckoned Ronda to the end of the buf-

fet, where he was standing with a disgruntled wall-eyed jour-

nalist.

Shortly after, Ronda ordered Wren to leave the party.

Wren promptly switched identities and created a scene that

would make the next day’s papers.

The fractiousness of the world saddened Awisha. Her old

hareem had been disbanded forever; if her new hareem was al-

ready breaking up, what would become of her? The answer would

arrive in the next minute, when the Princess would meet the

love of her life, an eighteen-year-old six-foot thrills-

starved impoverished minxed-eyed double-Libra junkie named

Carole.

The new moon shed no light in Connor’s bedroom.

Connor sat riding Selim, her hair brushing his bare

chest, her fingers interlaced with his. His back arched and

his hips rocked, gathering rhythm, as his mistress shuddered

 288

with pleasure. She pumped harder, their flesh slapping, and

his hardness seemed like the only upright thing in the world

when her body and all else were melting, melting all around

it. She reached back to squeeze his balls, whispering, “Now.”

He bucked, thrusting into her with a final, searching

force as the spasm overtook him. The simmering fluid rushed up

his column and he surrendered, groaning. Connor felt herself

burst open, the flash spreading to her extremities, leaving

her shocked and trembling. As the charge ebbed away, she sank

down onto his breast, laughing breathlessly. “That was per-

fect.”

She rolled off to lie at his side. He was perfect, his

slim body glowing in the faint light shed by the streetlamps

lining Central Park outside. His eyes stared up at the ceil-

ing; she touched his lids gently, closing them. His breathing

slowed, his abdomen barely stirring as she caressed it, feel-

ing his sweet pulse through the smooth skin. In a surge of

tenderness she hugged him to her fiercely, and spoke his name.

The swarm of dark lashes lifted from his turquoise eyes.

Their sheen had dulled, like stones brought up from the sea to

dry in the sun.

“Selim,” she said again. “Should we do it again?”

His penis stirred, awaiting her command.

 289

“Never mind,” she said after a moment. “We’re both too

tired. It was really a strain, getting through that party.”

He had been absolutely the most beautiful thing in the

room; Connor had reveled in the waves of envy she’d felt com-

ing her way. Of course, this was New York. It wasn’t enough

to be gorgeous; everyone expected him to have a personality,

too.

They all missed the point, she thought defensively. He

was perfect the way he was.

Sadly, she could not say the same for herself. For the

first time, whenever she looked in a mirror, she saw a woman

in her thirties. She cursed the desiccating desert air of Mas-

moudia for the wrinkles sketched under her eyes. Haiti had re-

paired the worst of the damages after her escape from the oa-

sis; the American consul in Muscat had arranged for everything

she asked, and the Sultan’s son let her have one of his jets

for the flight straight through to the Caribbean. Now her skin

was tanned the same rosy-gold-brown shade as her hair, and her

concussions and contusions had disappeared. Even the faint

dimples of cellulite inside her thighs were gone, thanks to

the salt-free diet she and Selim were on.

But those tiny white clouds rising slowly from her cuti-

cles to the rims of her nails told the story of her trauma.

That’s what the palmist at the Grande Hotel Oloffson pool had
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said, the month she’d spent in Haiti, while Selim was up in

the hills under the care of a bocor, a voodoo doctor to whom

one of the native taxi-drivers had driven her on the second

day.

The bocor’s whole cure had been flagrantly expensive.

Connor wired her New York bank for the money, but her mother

intervened, refusing to authorize any funds until her daughter

explained the meaning of that embarrassing tape which she (and

all the papers) had received from that Masmoudian man Mister

Umaloo. Annette Blakey had had to spend a considerable sum of

money to suppress the tape, as well as hours in deep confer-

ence with the State Department, only to discover that Connor

was not kidnapped at all, but lying around the pool in Port-

Au-Prince, wiring her bank for thousands of dollars!

After Connor had calmed her mother down, giving the usual

explanation (none of it was Connor’s fault; these things just

happened to her), the funds arrived in Haiti. She delivered

the money and Selim to the bocor in his compound, high up in

the mountains.

The operation was dangerous, the bocor explained. He kept

Selim sequestered for three weeks before Connor was allowed to

see him. She entered the little hut made of coconut matting

and bamboo, and saw him lying on a straw mat. The bocor had
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healed all Selim’s burns and gashes and blisters, as well as

depilating all his body hair, at Connor’s request. He looked

just as she had first seen him in the pearly Zhubba dawn:

beautiful and pale, luminous like a peeled tree, though his

skin now had a slight grayish tinge.

“He died,” the bocor said proudly. “He was like a dead

man for one night and then I slowly bring back his life and

now he is awake. He can even talk a little now. Anything you

tell him to do he will obey.”

She felt nervous. “Sit up, Selim.”

Selim stared fixedly at the thatched ceiling.

“Oh, I forgot,” she stammered. “He doesn’t understand

English.”

“You can teach him anything now!” the bocor laughed. “He

will do anything you say.”

“He has no will?”

“No will. But everything else is the same man.” He gave

her a supply of the dried concombre zombie plant to make tea,

should Selim need his docility renewed; the tea and a salt-

free diet would keep his metabolism depressed. “That is most

important. Give him no salt. Zombie gouter sel, li pas mander

rayti,” the witch doctor said in Creole. “If a zombie tastes

salt he don’t want to stay. He runs away.”

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Outside the Pierre Hotel, down on Fifth Avenue, a wino

was howling. Connor closed the window, shutting out the sound,

and returned to bed.

“Tomorrow let’s go to André Oliver and buy you some new

shirts,” she said. “Maybe we’ll go dancing at 54, let every-

body slurp you up with their eyes.”

She didn’t wait for a response; the rare times Selim

spoke, it sounded like gibberish. Something in his head must

have gotten scrambled from the bocor’s procedure.

She missed him saying things while they made love, the

strange liquid consonants and swallowed vowels of his lan-

guage, all the more beguiling because she didn’t understand

them.

I have the things that count, she told herself. You

couldn’t have everything. It would be greedy to want more.

Of course, she had to tell him to do everything these

days; he no longer showed any initiative in their lovemaking.

She missed the way he’d always come up with strange, surpris-

ing tricks to bring her new sensations, to disarm and entice

her. But initiative was part of independence, of will, wasn’t

it? And she’d made her choice to deprive him of that.

It got to be a bit much sometimes, though, having to tell

him where to go and what to do. “Sit,” “lie down,” “brush your

teeth, remember how I showed you?” “get in the taxi.” Some-

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times when he didn’t understand her English, she had to resort

to elaborate mime. Still, he was getting a little more pre-

sentable every day. She’d never have risked dragging him to

Ronda’s awful party otherwise.

“You go to sleep now,” she said, kissing his temple. “I

love you.”

“Myway myway,” he said. “Didit myway.”

She closed his eyelids again. He would lie there for

days, never moving, unless she told him otherwise. Locating

the remote in the tangled bedclothes, she turned on the TV in

time for the “Late Show” monologue. Laughing at the first

joke, she settled back beside Selim’s inert form.

One day, though she could scarcely imagine it, she might

not love Selim any more. One day she might want someone she

could talk with, someone who would get her jokes, forgive her

faults, even give her shit when she deserved it. A rogue pang

of loneliness entered her heart; she quickly banished it. If

that day ever came when Selim no longer satisfied her, then

Connor would start putting salt in his food.

Copyright © Sarah Kernochan

http://www.sarahkernochan.com/
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