Secret Skin Page 10

  I decided to start where it all began, the streets of old Dubai on the Deira side of the creek, close to the border of Sharjah the neighboring emirate to the north. I planned to work my way down to the more marketable and modern end of town.

  Broad strokes.

  For some that meant: loosely based on things you could quickly find online and disguise as your own. For me it meant research and the bigger picture.

  I expected it to be easy. The last time I had written anything on prostitution was at home, where it rained a lot. Which meant most of the research was done inside over a pint or a mug of hot coffee.

  It rarely rained on the Arabian Peninsula and the thermometer in my car measured an outside temperature of 490 centigrade.

  I parked in the free spot outside the British embassy on the creek’s left bank. A convenient place to avoid the fines and bumper kissing congestion of Deira that began when day turned to night.

  To compensate for the heat I wore pale colors tailored from lightweight breathable fabrics and shoes comfortable enough to walk in but conservative enough to get me past bouncers or security guards.

  In my shoulder bag I carried hack essentials: notepad, pens, phone, a pocket street map – for when I inevitably got lost – a compact digital camera for unmissable photo opportunities and a pencil thin mp3 voice recorder. A back up to my written notes and those times when sources changed their stories after publication, threatened lawsuits and claimed they had never said what they actually said.

  A five minute walk around the grand mosque to the abra station and my shirt already clung to my chest as if I’d been running in the rain. Despite sun block my skin prickled with the first signs of burning.

  The short abra ride across the creek created a false sense of comfort with its motorized breeze. My fellow passengers, all men, came from everywhere but there. I recognized the national dress styles and genetic features of some, Somalians, Sudanese, Indians, and many that I didn’t. There were no white, salmon or bronzed faces, a marked contrast to my usual working environment of western suits and corporate lifestylers. It actually felt like a different country.

  The rubber soles of my shoes began to bond with the tarmac as soon as I hit the street. I drained one bottle of water and instantly needed another. The prospect of a walk across Deira to the police station and the whore filled lanes behind it seemed like a pilgrimage to a distant land. I understood for the first time why you could always get free parking between one and four in the afternoon – sensible people stayed inside.

  I tried to flag a taxi, but even thirty seconds spent baking on the kerb drained the will to live. I turned and headed for the narrow shaded lanes and covered walkways of the spice and gold souks. I had no idea how construction workers survived 12 hour days in that heat. If the stories were true many of them didn’t.

  I knew roughly which direction I needed to go. Like most westerners I had wandered the main drag of the gold souk looking for a deal. I avoided the central route where the touts hung out and lumbered through the backstreets and ad-hoc mini malls piled high with multi-colored, multi-purpose produce.

  Along alleyways filled with hole in the wall shops, gangs of men embroidered luxurious fabrics and shaped ornate jewellery for high-priced women. They worked hunched over in spaces not big enough for a man to stand in. Two floors of men crammed into one.

  On every corner idling workmen packed small cafés, drank sweet tea from plastic cups and joked loudly with their friends. The hostile glares of some of the men unsettled me but I was too dehydrated to care.

  The heat increased with each step into unfamiliar territory. I came to a main street expecting to know my way, but the broken pavements swarmed with sinister smiles, curious frowns, and chatter in unknown tongues.

  I ditched my growing paranoia on the main street and headed back to the small gaps between buildings, learning to relax with the meandering kinks and curves in my path.

  In one alleyway the walls on either side bulged so far outwards they leaned across the narrow space to support one another. Butcher’s shops lined the walls beneath, men hard at work in each one, hacking, chopping and cleaning the gaping carcasses of beefy flesh that hung in every window.

  I gave in to the heat and dove into an alley built more like a cave than a small street. I took a seat at a table of unsmiling men and ordered a tea and a bottle of water from the Indian man at the kitchen door. He wore a pink short sleeved shirt and grey trousers and welcomed me with a broad smile.

  Across the alley a window opened onto the back room of a butcher’s shop. On the other side of the glass a smart middle aged man stood in a badly lit room wearing a white pinny. His bare arms gleamed with sweat and a cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. His hand moved quickly across the neck of a goat hanging upside down. Blood spurted from the vicious tear his knife left behind. I couldn’t stop ogling the wretched creature as its life emptied onto the tiled floor.

  The waiter placed a bottle of water on the table. He saw what caught my eye. No big deal his shrug said.

  The men lounging around me hadn’t noticed the goat’s sharp exit. They sat entranced by WWE wrestling on a small TV over the door. Hulk Hogan was making yet another come back in the public theatre of our day. The men winced and then laughed with surprise when Hogan smashed a folding chair around the head of his opponent. I wondered what narrative Shakespeare would have found to make a cage fight plausible. Love, betrayal, conflict: it was all there in the Lycra clad bear pit.

  My tea arrived, intensely sweet. I sipped and watched the men transfixed by the bogus violence and pale men in leotards. Those crazy foreigners.

  The pile of cleaned carcasses on the butcher’s floor grew higher and although I didn’t attempt conversation with anyone it felt comfortable there. The stares I’d thought of as unfriendly earlier were of interest rather than animosity.

  High on sugar and caffeine I wandered over to the still and empty lanes behind the police station. Everyone sensible hid in air conditioned rooms or the shade of cars and cafes, moving as little as possible.

  I took out Yasmin’s list and looked for one of the cheap hotels she had marked on my map. I headed for The Bola Bola which stood one street back from Al Nasr Square, a wannabe times square.

  A slender blonde smoked a cigarette with her arms folded outside an open red doorway just yards from the hotel, ready to pick up any passing trade. From a distance she looked beautiful, long legs, pert breasts, scarlet lips and big eyes, the all-American schoolgirl fantasy.

  Close up, she was worn out. Yellow skin, bloodshot eyes. The edges of her lips jagged with the sticky, clumped red of lip stick applied using tired, careless hands. Her legs were skinny rather than slender and her breasts less than pert, the excessive padding in her bra made her imaginary bust stand separate from her small chest. A service industry uniform worn without enthusiasm, a caricature of a real woman, a pantomime outfit.

  Her shoulders tensed at my approach.

  ‘Fuck?’ she said simply.

  ‘How much?’ I said.

  ‘Fifty dirhams, straight.’

  ‘How much?’ I couldn’t believe she sold herself so cheaply. Less than a tenner.

  ‘Thirty?’ she said with hopeful eyes. Less than a fiver.

  ‘Where you from?’ I said.

  ‘Moscow.’

  ‘Where you really from?’ I knew that girls from certain regions commanded a higher price, the myth being that Russian girls were best and girls from Moscow even better. She didn’t answer, so I said, ‘Best price?’ The same phrase I used to negotiate a stuffed camel in a tourist shop where the mark-up could be as much as 80%.

  ‘Thirty dirham. You fuck me now,’ she ordered. If you negotiated a good price you were expected to accept it.

  ‘I will pay you, but I just want to talk,’ I said.

  She looked at me in disgust, showed me the palm of her hand and refused to look me in the eye. Surely talking was preferable to fucking.

  ‘You don
’t want to talk?’

  She turned her back to me and looked to the other end of the alley as if spotting a new customer.

  ***

  The heat was more than enough reason to move on. I opened the faded blue hotel door beneath a grizzled and garish sign: The Bola Bola. Cool air welcomed me along with an even cooler reception from the scruffy man at the front desk.

  ‘The women?’ I said.

  He gestured for money. I slapped a twenty on the counter.

  His bony finger pointed up some steps to another door.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  In stark contrast to the abra and the café, the room was devoid of men. Around two dozen women lounged in a variety of flimsy outfits on long sofas that stretched the length of the room.

  I became aware that I had interrupted a conversation I could never be a part of. All eyes turned to face the intruder. Then the looks softened, glares became flirtatious calculating stares and the cats called: ‘Hello mister’, ‘Hello handsome’, ‘I show you a good time’, ‘You want me’, ‘You fuck me now mister’.

  I let the voices wash over me and tried to focus on the individual women. But the sight of so many cleavages, exposed rumps, fingered lips and petulant pouts distracted me. It was unpleasantly arousing.

  A plump black teen grabbed my hand and pulled me toward a door at the back of the room, ‘You come with me now,’ she said in an accent that could only come from Africa. ‘I will make you a man.’ The other women shrieked.

  Probing hands groped my arse; another hand grabbed my crotch and tugged uncomfortably hard.

  I wanted to run from this sensory overload and resisted the young woman’s insistent grip. ‘C’mon mister,’ she said more calmly, but still pulling. The other women all played their roles perfectly, making me feel irresistible, alluring, their every dream come true. I didn’t believe the act of course, but I imagined it would be easy for even the most pious man to be tempted.

  I looked at the young woman tugging my hand, ‘Come mister,’ she said, clumsy pun intended.

  ‘Okay.’

  She led me into a dank hallway lined with anonymous brown doors. Behind me the voices returned to less commercial banter.

  The hallway had an air of desperation about it, laced with the lingering miasma of soggy genitals, cheap whisky, cigarettes and disinfectant. Where the previous room aroused this corridor killed any ardor I might have felt.

  The rooms were silent. I could easily imagine the kinds of sounds you would hear on a busy night. The young woman guided me along a well travelled path to the last room on the right.

  We entered her small cell, a queen size bed and a closet inside. A few girlish pink decorations took the edge off the functional squalor. Unframed pictures of friends and family took pride of place on the walls. A hopeful suitcase stood next to the door.

  A teenager’s room, one that she lived in out of hours.

  Was Yasmin’s apartment the same?

  The girl let go of my hand and closed the door. She began to undress. ‘You pay Salem on the way out,’ she said, ‘20 for the room, 80 for a fuck, 50 for suck, 120 for sucking and fucking, extras we negotiate.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘How about talking?’

  Her hand paused on a bra strap. ‘Fucking?’

  ‘No, talking. I just want to talk. I will pay you for sucking and fucking but we just talk. Is that okay?’ I said looking into eyes that never looked directly at mine.

  ‘Talking? You want to fuck me, c’mon. Fuck me now. I want you to fuck me, c’mon mister,’ she pleaded.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Tabitha,’ she lied.

  ‘Tabitha?’

  ‘Yes, what’s your name mister?’

  ‘John,’ I said and cringed. ‘Don’t worry I am going to pay you. Sit down, relax. Please, let’s talk.’ She sat next to me on the bed. ‘I’ll ask questions, you answer, a conversation. Okay?’

  ‘You want to fuck?’ she said again. I ignored the question.

  ‘Is this your room?

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘And you work here as well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long have you lived here?’

  ‘Ten months,’ she said.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Uganda’

  ‘Do you miss home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who do you miss most?’ I said trying to break her out of one word answers.

  ‘My son.’

  ‘You have a son?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘Olu. He is three years old’

  ‘Yes?’ I said.

  ‘He lives with my aunt. She looks after him. When I have money I send it home. She will send him to school next year.’ She walked over to the wall and pointed at a picture. ‘This is him.’

  ‘He’s a very good looking boy,’ I said. ‘Like his mother.’

  ‘Like his father,’ she said.

  ‘Where is he?’

  She shrugged and broke eye contact. That line of questioning was clearly over.

  ‘When will you go home?’

  She shrugged again, looking at me for the first time and moved back over to the bed. I sat down next to her.

  ‘I will go when I can’t work anymore.’

  It was a stupid question but I asked it anyway. ‘Do you like your work?’

  She laughed and stared at me for a long time. Seeing what was inside.

  ‘I have had men like you before,’ she said.

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Men who ask questions. They always want me to be their dirty little girl.’

  ‘I don’t want….’ I began.

  ‘Of course you don’t, John,’ she smiled bitterly, and moved towards me, licking her lips. ‘I know what you want to hear,’ she whispered. ‘How I love to fuck men, to suck their dicks, to swallow their cum.’

  ‘No, please don’t…’

  ‘I eat them up. I love it Mister John. I love it when they use me. My arse, my mouth, my cunt, my dirty little cunt…’

  ‘Please, stop,’ I said.

  ‘You want to take pictures? Ask me about my family again? Show me you care John?’ she demanded angrily, half part of the act, half genuine hurt. ‘Go on; ask about my little boy again. Maybe you want to hear about my father? What he did to me when I was bad? Just fuck me now.’ She grabbed my crotch, ‘You’re big and hard John, stick it in me, fuck me, I just want you to fuck me.’

  ‘No,’ I said pushing her away. ‘No I really don’t want to.’

  ‘Okay John, whatever you say.’ Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, she mouthed slowly writhing on the bed, moaning, fingering her puckered mouth. It was like a Pavlovian compulsion, an animal trained to do one thing and one thing only. ‘Stick it in here,’ she said, thrusting her pelvis toward me.

  I was horrified.

  I was turned on.

  I was horrified that I was turned on.

  I grabbed my bag and all but ran out of the room. With my head down I slunk quickly through the feline taunts of the women towards the masculine safety of Salem.

  ‘Who and what did you have?’

  ‘Young black girl….’

  ‘Tabitha?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said out of breath, shameful heat burning through my schoolboy cheeks.

  ‘You very quick. She fucks good hey?’ he grinned.

  ‘Oh. Yes. Wonderful.’ I tried to smile with brotherly camaraderie and threw some more money on his desk. I didn’t count it. ‘Excuse me,’ I said and hurried back to the sweltering concrete outside.

  Thankfully my pantomime lover had disappeared from her doorway at the other end of the alley.

  I couldn’t control this situation at all, these people.

  ‘These fucking people,’ I shouted.

  I’d been stuck in my ivory arsehole hammering out soft copy for far too long. For t
he first time in a long time I wondered if I could go through with the job.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Martin stared at me over his whisky. ‘That better not be it Bryson,’ he said.

  ‘Of course it’s not, I just got a fright. She could have been my daughter for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Bollocks, you haven’t even got a daughter.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘Yes it bloody well is you were just freaked out that you weren’t the first person to pay her to talk to you…’

  ‘Not quite’

  ‘…to talk dirty to you!’

  ‘Exactly, not that I wanted her to talk dirty to me.’

  ‘Bryson, you’re a bloody coward. We’re journalists. Getting people to talk dirty to us is what we do. Anything else is just listening to people jerk off.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said and meant it.

  ‘My boy,’ he leaned close, ‘are you sure you didn’t stick it in her? You can tell your Uncle Martin, c’mon.’

  ‘Fuck off, Uncle Martin,’

  ‘Pussy.’

  ‘Wanker.’

  ‘Oh David,’ he said attempting a falsetto voice and failing, ‘why must we always fight when we’re drunk.’

  ‘Who’s drunk?’ I said. ‘You’ve had half that bottle to yourself already.’

  ‘Oops, well let me refill your glass old man, while you carry on with your story.’

  ***

  Martin was right of course, that is what journalists at least tried to do, to get people to talk in truthful honest words rather than phrases manufactured for the press.