I allowed one little warm patch of nobility to soak into the fabric tapestry of my story. This way, no one would really be clear how or why I’d died. A mysteriously dead former aid worker was less likely to screw up the prospects of a peaceful settlement than a public execution. That was a prospect that comforted me. Death is always better as a mystery.
And so it started. I cleared my head. And I found a song there.
I met my boyfriend at the sweetie shop . . .
I left the bed only to put the Arabic day clothes in the corner of the room. When I heard Hamal’s key in the door, I glided to the facing wall and leaned against it, breathing hard to keep still.
The light was off. Hamal needed to know from the top that tonight was different. The door opened a little and stopped. For an instant, I thought the dark might act as a block, startle him away. That might offer me a way out, this cup would pass from me, I’d be left there in the dark wondering if my dream was just the first manifestation of a madness born of incarceration.
“Hamal?”
The door opened. I had called him by name. I’d started it and there was no way back.
“Where are you?” he said.
“Here.”
He reached for the light switch and turned it on. He was carrying the Thermos of coffee and two cups, his fingers wrapped into their handles.
But no gun, I noticed. Did he always leave it outside? I suddenly couldn’t remember. Like a dizzy girlfriend afraid of alerting her father, I waved an arm forward at him mockingly.
“Turn it off!”
He obeyed, rather touchingly.
“Come here.”
I was growing accustomed to the dark. The room was flooded with a blue glow from a light night sky, and I moved towards him to put my arm around his neck, the Thermos and cups clattering awkwardly at his side.
“Listen, Hamal, we have tonight. Go get the checkerboard and tell him you’ll be a while. Lock the door when you come back.” And I bit his ear lightly. Silly, but I realised then I’d never known the Troll’s name.
Hamal grinned and set down the Thermos. I’d wanted to tell him to bring his gun, but could think of nothing to make that sound plausibly like foreplay. I’d thought about how to get him on the bed and slipped my trousers off and slid under the single coarse cover.
I heard the lav flush, some words outside and the volume of the television rise slightly. Then he was in the door.
He paused again and I said, “Over here.”
He turned into the room, locking the door and palming the key, and a hunched shoulder revealed that he was carrying the weapon. There is a God.
“Come here,” I repeated.
He bought me ice cream, he bought me cake . . .
He stood by the bed, looking down at me, and I imagined his lip was high. I whispered further encouragement, swinging open the bedcover in invitation, but he didn’t move, just stood there. It occurred to me that I didn’t know Arabic form, what his father might have taught him to expect.
I swung out of bed and stood against him, ran my hand up his cheek and kissed him urgently. That lip, I noticed, was lowered, resting on his upper teeth, and I thought he wasn’t responding. But he dropped the gun against the wall and clutched my bare back with both hands, and we stood there for a moment, turning our heads like dancing birds to get fresh purchases on each other’s mouths.
“I want you now,” he murmured.
Perhaps he’d watched some Western porn. It was the last thing I heard him say.
I let out a short little breath of emulated hyperventilation, rested my forehead on his chest and started to rub his groin. Its hardening cargo took shape and I sat on the edge of the bed, unzipped him and he flopped out forward, like a salami from a carrier bag. He moaned and I left off for a mischievous “ssh”, my index finger across my lips. Perhaps that’s why he said no more. I resumed the salty work of preparation, but he pulled away and pushed me back on the bed, gripping my right leg behind the knee and pushing it aside.
“No, Hamal,” I hissed, “no, no, no,” but that only fired him up and he pushed into me and I gasped. This wasn’t going to last long and I had to move quickly. My head was pushed against the wall and I feigned an uncomfortable crick, crying out softly and arching my back, pushing my hips down and him out. Close to his head now, I nuzzled his ear and caught it roughly with my hand, making out that the throes of passion had made me lose all decorum. He moved to the side ever so slightly to extricate his ear, and I used the movement to swing his shoulders bedwards, down the wall, and laid his head on the pillow.
He brought me home with a bellyache . . .
Deargoddeargoddeargod . . .
I swung a hand in indication and he shifted his legs on to the bed and I straddled him. With one hand by his head on the pillow, I used the other to help him and he did the rest with a short upward thrust. I rocked my hips on him and guessed that he wanted the dignity of being serviced.
I needed him at his most vulnerable if I was to succeed and the moment I had only vaguely anticipated had arrived. He was offering himself up. The sacrificial lamb.
Mama Mama, I feel sick, call the doctor quick, quick, quick . . .
I delivered the usual verbal encouragements over his face and I felt an aggression well up in me.
“Show me, Hamal.” And he started to pump rapidly, as I pushed my fingers over his chest, running across the stubby pencil shapes in his
