Chapter One
The first time I saw her she strode assertively towards me, all but invisible behind the black folds of a traditional Muslim abaya. Then she purposefully flicked the flimsy fabric to one side to reveal the secret skin of a dark leg and the momentary sheen of a translucent hold-up stocking. Her movements disturbed the flat air of the afternoon and freed an intoxicating scent of hot flesh and heavy perfume hidden from the powerful Middle Eastern sun.
As she passed she angled her head to capture my fascinated gaze with the desirable but uncommon green of her own.
Emirati women rarely looked at a man so directly. And I almost never looked into the eyes behind a veil. I either ignored them or focused on the quality of their extremities and accessories instead. Designer handbags and jewellery, either real or fake, told you about their financial standing, or their aspirations. While heavy makeup, flashes of haute couture, or the impossibly perfect skin of surgery around the eyes confirmed that under the oh-so slimming black Emirati women cared about how they looked as much as any western woman with Voguish tastes.
At the very least these cultural idiosyncrasies lent a helpful hop and a skip in my eager jumps to conclusions.
She continued her teasing promenade along Al Diyafah Street, a working area of shops and offices by day, a family and couples area by night.
As afternoon turned to dusk the street filled with crowds of transient men, either happily finishing a work day based on the cold climate hours of the western world, or returning to a sultry evening’s toil after the more practical siesta of Arabian time.
The oversized pavement cafes bubbled over with flavored shisha water pipes and an everyday street theatre of well-heeled local young bloods entertained. They cruised by in showroom fresh cars and sped between columns of slow moving traffic on expensive Japanese motorbikes, scaring pedestrians with their front wheels in the air.
Every few months an impoverished laborer would throw himself in front of the traffic hoping to exchange his life for enough blood money to satisfy a demanding family back home.
For this woman to be so bold and for the men to let her get away with it she just had to be a prostitute. A stray from the back streets, out to exploit the ready market of overheated testosterone and clammy, repressed sexuality.
Despite claims to the contrary, a woman for hire was as easy to find in Dubai as a designer knock-off in the souks. Any hotel, shopping mall or downtown street in the city would provide. Normally I ignored this aspect of the bullish city state. She had forced me to pay attention.
Curiosity aroused, I turned to follow her.
Two rotund men with Levantine features seated at one of the outdoor cafés called her over. I took a nearby table and studied the routine conceit of their advances, imagining the tastes, smells and sights that she would endure pleasuring such damp little men.
‘What you like?’ someone said.
I looked up into the smirking face of a waiter. His expression told me he knew I wanted the woman more than anything he could provide. He was right of course. I did want her. Only not for the reasons he thought.
‘You have Turkish coffee?’ I said.
‘Arabic coffee,’ he corrected, ‘yes, how you like it?’
‘Medium sweet.’
‘Anything else?’ he said, leering at the woman with the immodest legs. We both watched as she leaned in over the two men and listened obediently. She flashed her eyes at them, long fluttering lashes visible even from where I sat.
‘Maybe, yes. Maybe I have her too,’ I said and leered back at him. I made a thrusting, rotating, gesture with my fist and tried to make him believe that I meant what I said.
When men shared desires to do painful things to others it disturbed me, awoke my past, and when that djinn escaped the bottle it was like the touch of a cold hand in an empty bed, nothing but trouble.
The playground body language appeared to work though. For a moment the nodding acceptance of the over familiar waiter almost made me feel like one of the guys. He stalked off to a neighboring table and called out my order in Arabic to the front desk.
I watched the woman and waited for my coffee, examining the way the abaya clung to her body to reveal the discreet curves hidden beneath the treacherously opaque fabric. If I was that type of man, I would definitely have been interested. But even without seeing her face I suspected that off duty she would probably have been out of my league.
Happily, I mused, she would also outclass the two men in front of her, who by their gesticulations appeared to be haggling for a service that would involve both of them at the same time. As they negotiated she continued to ooze a casual sexuality and confidence that would make most men nervous. A nervousness that usually vanished once you realized that no matter how beautiful the woman, if she was a prostitute, she could be controlled.
Although not always. Her patience with the men wavered. One hand moved to rest on a jutting hip. The haughty flick of her other hand signaled they had already bargained too hard.
They didn’t seem to notice.
The waiter moved in beside her and asked the two men if they wanted anything else. While they struggled to pull their thoughts out from between their legs he spoke briefly to the woman. Something along the lines of, ‘If these guys don’t bite there’s a westerner back there that will.’
Because when I looked up from my first sip of the potent murk that is Arabic coffee, she stood directly in front of me, the seam of her abaya parted at crotch height. Not enough to reveal anything to those on nearby tables, but just a few inches from my face the spanked red color of her exposed underwear triggered an anxious carnal yearning throughout my body.
‘You want to fuck.’ she said, a statement, definitely not a question.
***
‘Slut, whore, hooker, lady of the night, working girl, call girl, pro, streetwalker, courtesan, floozy, harlot?’ I said.
She sat on a king size bed in a mid-range but well used hotel apartment, head uncovered, legs crossed, and eyes so wide her pencil-thin eyebrows looked like they might fall off the back of her head.
I continued, ‘Lot lizard, tochka, hostess, pickup, midnight cowgirl, party girl, tart, trollop, commercial sex worker, loose woman, sex slave?’ She seemed amused. I sighed. ‘Scarlet woman perhaps?’
She was amused. ‘You can call me anything you like darling.’ She said in an accent that wouldn’t settle, French-Arabic one moment, American or English the next.
‘No, that’s not…I know I could, but….’ She laughed silently at my awkwardness. Her shoulders shook as she tried to suppress the giggles. I pressed on, ‘What I mean is, what do you call yourself? Do you use any of those terms to describe what you do?’
‘I am Yasmin. I work with men. What is this scarlet woman?’
They say English is the business language of choice but after the words Coke and OK understanding usually makes its excuses and leaves. I sighed again, wishing I was adept at any language other than my own. I checked my notes.
‘Well, scarlet is a color, a vivid red.’
‘I like that. Souri, my family name, it means red.’ she said.
‘Okay, here we are. A scarlet woman….’ my notes defined an immoral woman and prostitute, but I wanted to gain her confidence not lose it. I leapt impulsively on the next hopeful sentence, ‘Let’s see, a biblical expression from Revelations 17:5 where St John describes a vision of a woman in scarlet with an inscription on her forehead “Mystery, Babylon the Great,”’ I intoned. ‘‘‘The mother of harlots and abominations of the earth....’’’
I stopped speaking when she stopped smiling. ‘I’m sorry. I remembered it as being flattering. I really don’t think you are an abomination of the earth. I think they were referring to Rome.’
We sat in silence. She examined me calmly for the first time without the prostitute’s mask of flirtatious body language. No teasing eyes or hostile pouting lips, no fluttering eyelids, thrusting bosoms or parted legs.
She appeared to be a woman in her early twenties and like the city itself in between cultures. Occasional blonde streaks colored her dark hair, and she’d visibly lightened her soft brown skin. I couldn’t tell whether the green of her eyes was natural or colored contacts.
For once I shut up and let the silence build, ignoring the questions struggling to be asked. Show me an open mouth and I’ll usually put my foot right in it. Mercifully she spoke first.
‘You want to just talk?’ she said, crossing her hands in her lap.
I nodded.
‘Why?’
I could have told an easy lie, but chose not to. ‘I’m a journalist of sorts,’ I said instead. ‘Or I was. Back home. Now I regurgitate press releases about the wonders of Dubai for news or feature articles. I basically earn money re-selling the development dreams of sheikhs to gullible foreigners. And I’m sick of it. I want to write something different, something more worthwhile.
‘Take prostitution,’ I said, ‘it’s not even supposed to exist in this holier than thou Islamic state. So when bad things happen, nobody hears anything apart from denials. I’ve heard stories of women who are trafficked, enslaved, and forced to be here against their will. About women who are abused, raped, or killed. I want to find out first hand if these stories are true.’
She tilted her head to one side as if trying to figure me out.
‘I guess I just want to make a difference,’ I said, and shrugged. ‘A naïve ambition perhaps.’
‘Most people without money can’t ask questions and those with usually don’t,’ she said.
‘Except how can I make more, right?’
Her eyes sparkled agreement.
I took that as encouragement. ‘I don’t intend to take pictures where faces can be seen and I will never use the real names of the people I speak to.’ I said.
‘No pictures.’ she said waving a finger at me. ‘No. Questions only. But what about censorship?’ she asked. ‘I will be happy if they deport me tomorrow. If you say a wrong thing, you will either leave or go to jail.’
‘I expect a certain amount of trouble.’ I said. ‘It means I’m asking the right kind of questions.’
Her lips pursed and she shifted uncomfortably. I didn’t want to scare her off.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I don’t have a big corporation or government behind me but I do have a magazine published in the west and Middle East that will print anything I can find out. I also syndicate my articles through some of the agencies and I have the ear of a couple of news editors in Europe.’
‘That is good,’ she said, encouraging me, expecting more.
‘To be honest, I’m winging it. If I find a good story, someone will break it. I hope.’
‘So you want me for what exactly? I hear so many stories from men,’ she said. ‘You really don’t want this?’ She opened her abaya to reveal the red underwear that clung to her hips and breasts like a second skin, covering but not concealing what lay beneath.
‘No!’ I said and focused my eyes intently on hers. ‘You are a beautiful woman Yasmin. But I just want you to talk to me. I want to learn about what you do. How it works here. I will even pay you for your time.’
She sat there for a frustrating age holding the robe open, testing me, willing me to look down and fall for her easy charms.
‘Why did you ask me all those names?’ she said. Wriggling her hips from side to side and twisting her body until it was at its most seductive angle. She clearly understood the power she wielded.
‘The men who pay me call me far worse things,’ she said, ‘vile things, but I am not any of them. Your names were like a little boy’s.’
I recoiled at the sting, embarrassed by the truth of it. ‘An editor asked me to do it,’ I said. ‘He thought it would be funny. I thought it was stupid. But, you know how it is…I have to keep my clients happy.’
‘Yes, I understand,’ she said and closed the abaya, finally letting me relax. I hoped believing in me.
‘So what do you call what you do?’ I said.
‘Work. What would you call it?’
‘Hard fucking work?’ She gave me a withering look. ‘Sorry. When I was younger I imagined that being a porn star or gigolo would be a great way to make money. Who wouldn’t? Sex on tap right? I was all hormones back then.’
‘You are not so old. What changed?’ she said.
‘A lot of drink, insecurity, too many one night stands. After a while it all becomes a little functional. Sex becomes just another physical act, like digesting food, nothing more. It becomes hard to connect with anyone. All those sensitive egos, especially your own. It’s tiring. Lots of conquests and the only person you really fuck is yourself.’
She was smiling again. Laughing quietly.
‘What?’ I asked, smiling back.
‘Many of my men do this, justify why they are here, with me. My wife doesn’t understand me they say. Always the sex is so bohh-ring!’ laughing again as she mimicked her clients.
‘Perhaps you just need to fuck someone else eh? Get yourself going. Are you sure that’s not why you’re here?’
I smiled my answer. She waved her hand. ‘No matter.’
‘So can I ask you some questions?’
‘Yes, okay.’
I had a list of prepared questions, but still slightly unsettled, I rattled them off as if it was my first day on the job. ‘What is your real name? How old are you? Where are you from? How did you get here? How much do you earn? Do you have a pimp? Where do you stay? Do you have a work visa?’
She grinned and shook her head. Then stood up and walked over to me. ‘Okay David,’ she said covering my notepad with her hands. ‘Enough. You have so many questions. Ask me next time.’ She pulled me up by my elbow, ‘Now you go. I have to show my face. People will be looking for me.’
‘Who?’
‘Next time, we already take longer talking than three men take fucking.’
‘How will I contact you?’
‘You won’t. Give me your card. I will call you when it is quiet.’
‘When?’ I asked rummaging for a business card.
‘We will see, morning is better. Oh David,’ she said, ‘don’t forget to kiss me on the way out.’
‘What? Why?’ I said, as she pulled open the door.
‘You never know who is watching,’ she whispered.
She held my face, pulled me close and our lips touched. A sharp tug of desire pulled me in. Lost for a moment, I closed my eyes and then heard her say, ‘You’re a regular client now David. You must act like one.’
When I opened my eyes I was looking at the closed door of the apartment and standing in an empty corridor, feeling alone but unexpectedly content.