Secret Skin Read online

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh stop saying sorry David. It is not your fault.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You look lovely today by the way. I can see your face. Without the abaya you seem to have more clothes on.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, pleased by the compliment, ‘I normally work hotels, not streets. I was only doing that because it was a quiet day and I was bored.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well David, many men have fantasies. In my abaya on a hot day, I can be a wicked wife for a bored husband, a seductive mother to a troubled son, or if I am out of luck a naughty daughter to an angry father.’

  ‘Ah, I didn’t realize.’

  ‘But surely you must David? If I need to, I can even be the innocent Arab girl who needs to be rescued from oppression by the heroic white man.’

  She explored my awkward reaction, waiting for me to see her point, to acknowledge my own predatory role during our previous meeting. A small smile touched her lips when I finally worked it out.

  ‘Don’t worry, we all react to other peoples bodies in different ways. It is natural. We are only animals after all. This is why they cover their women here. To hide them from the other animals.’

  ‘Like blinkers for horses?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So do you have local customers?’

  ‘Yes. If I am stupid or unlucky. Many times if you get into a car with them, they take you to a cheap penthouse somewhere in Sharjah or Khalidiya where there will be maybe nine or ten men waiting. If you survive the night you are lucky. But what can you do? Faisal can only make a noise if they are smaller men than him, you understand?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Faisal will only be interested in getting paid by every single man for the days or weeks that I cannot work. They will be punished, but only for not paying.’

  ‘Will you show me some of the places where the women work?’

  She shook her head. ‘I can show you the places where I work. You can pay and meet me. I can tell you about the rest.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said inhaling sharply, just another man paying to use her.

  I told myself not to be so self indulgent.

  ‘I’ve never been here before,’ she said, ‘six years and I didn’t even know this existed. It is lovely.’

  We sat for a moment taking in our surroundings. She let out a nervous sigh. ‘David, you have paid me for the whole day, yes? Will you take me to more places like this? Good places?’

  I hesitated. I was supposed to be a professional pinning down a story, but then I had the luxury of choice.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, offering her my hand, ‘let’s go.’

  Chapter Six

  Our first stop was the Icy Palm Café, a health conscious hideaway on Beach Road for Anglo-Saxon expat wives. Yasmin chain smoked heavily in between sips of her muesli smoothie, uncertain what to make of the chattering blonde hordes that surrounded us, their well fed boho babies and nannies chasing after them, living the good life.

  ‘This is what schoolgirls want to be when they grow up,’ she told me.

  ***

  I contemplated taking her to the Ladies Club but knew neither of us would be welcome. As the sun was melting tires outside we decided to go skiing instead. Cold snow in a hot desert sounded ideal.

  Inside the cavernous Mall of the Emirates the slopes were full of local teens showing off. Middle Eastern chavs wore pristine white dishdashes beneath puffy skiing jackets, their headdresses and baseball caps perched primly at rakish hip hop angles.

  Too cool to ski, their eyes darted unconsciously towards the visible curves of western teens, while the local girls looked on with envy and disdain.

  Never straying too far from family or friends they suckled the digital teats of their mobile phones and grunted ugly answers to indifferent questions.

  Yasmin explained that away from the inquisitive eyes of their families, teenagers would cruise the malls and use the Bluetooth messaging on their phones to flirt and make illicit rendezvous.

  Their bored fathers used the same technique to pick up cruising prostitutes while the kids occupied themselves on the slopes.

  We skied as badly as each other to begin with. Thrashing around on the baby slopes until we made sense of where our legs and arms needed to be. Once we had the feel of it we hit the red and blue runs until our thighs burned. I wondered if I could use the experience in some way. Prostitutes who skied. I’d never read that before.

  After two hours, we staggered back into the busy mall, exhausted, thirsty and hungry.

  ‘Do you fancy Madinat?’ I said. Enjoying myself too much to worry about the research I ought to have been doing.

  ‘You’re buying?’

  ‘Sure, but if the tab is too high we do a runner okay? I’m only a lowly journalist after all.’

  ‘Okay then, maybe we go Dutch, you poor little journalist.’

  ***

  The Madinat Jumeirah complex was an effective recreation of the real world souks downtown. It even had a faux creek, with mock abras that transported tourists from private holiday villas on the beach to the rows of comfortable air-conditioned restaurants on the promenade.

  There were people we knew everywhere we went. Yasmin pointed out top tier working girls in the alleyways of the souk, while I avoided tables full of boisterous media darlings in the bars.

  ‘How about the beach for a change?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, but how do we get there David? We are not paying guests.’

  ‘Hold my hand and come with me,’ I said.

  I guided her through the five-star maze of restaurants and wine bars towards the abra station and the concierge waiting there with his clipboard.

  ‘Slow down and rest your head on my shoulder,’ I said, as we sauntered through tables of drunken tourists sweating at the creek side restaurants.

  She did as I asked, linking her arms through mine.

  ‘Wait,’ I said a short distance from the abra station. ‘Pretend we’re a couple,’ I whispered. ‘Look at me.’ She turned and our bodies met with a bump of hips. Our hands quickly found each other.

  Up close I saw that her eyes really were green. No contacts. I also noticed a small mole above her left eyelid. Instinctively I tried to rub it away. She giggled. I kissed it and held her face gently in my hands.

  ‘My beauty spot,’ she said, ‘my one imperfection.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said agreeing, a small reassurance in her world, so full of casual brutality.

  I stroked the back of her neck. Her hand touched my cheek. Then tenderly we savored the succulent tang of each other's kiss and lost ourselves between eager and impatient lips. Someone’s polite cough reminded us where we were.

  ‘Come on,’ I said.

  We walked nonchalantly towards the abra man, acknowledging him at the last moment.

  ‘Villa number nine,’ I said, smiling.

  He gestured towards a precarious little abra and we stepped aboard.

  A real abra on Dubai Creek is a smoke belching park bench that acts as a water taxi for 20 people at a time. The hotel’s polite electric powered, non-polluting version was a new experience for us both.

  Yasmin continued to hold my hand even though our little performance had finished. The closeness we shared thrilled me, but my motives were questionable.

  A generous tip, months before, had prompted a Madinat waiter to tell me how the unofficial villa nine routine worked for friends and guests of the hotel staff. The furthest stop from the hotel, you simply had to ask for it. No kissing or doe eyes required.

  What the hell was I thinking?

  I rarely let myself get close to anyone. But Yasmin was raw, sultry and very real, and a prostitute, enslaved to a local.

  It could never be anything more.

  The abra created a breeze that whipped her hair around her and a disarmingly cheerful and innocent expression spread over that normally troubled face. Like one drink too many Yasmin was hard to resist.

&
nbsp; Maybe this could be more?

  Yeah? You’ve only just met the girl and this, this is just work, for both of you. Not the eating, drinking and having fun bits of course but…but nothing, you’re smitten over a sob story, don’t get carried away.

  .‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, lying. ‘Absolutely fine. Just having a little argument with my internal monologue.’

  ‘Your what?’ she said.

  I opened my mouth to explain, to say something smart-arsed and cynical, but my jaw just flapped uselessly a couple of times and nothing came out.

  ‘Oh, you are silly David,’ she said.

  I smiled and squeezed her hand tighter. I felt about twelve.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘What wonderful food,’ she said, as a waiter stoked and prepared her shisha pipe. He dropped a hot coal into the bowl to keep the flavored tobacco alight but never aflame. Then he sucked on the pipe until the bowl glowed and sparked, the scents of apple and cinnamon wafted easily around us. He passed the pipe to Yasmin who lay stretched out on the cushions of the outdoor majlis.

  Part of an open-air restaurant on the Madinat’s beach, the traditional architecture of the three hotels stood behind us and we looked out to sea over the impressive sail like structure of the Burj Al Arab. Its mood lit profile colored the night sky with a hue that changed intensity every minute or so, fading from crimson to indigo, green to violet.

  ‘This is why tourists come to Dubai,’ she said, ‘it is beautiful here.’

  ‘It certainly is. Normally it’s like we’re in a five-star prison with a wall of hotels keeping the rest of the city out from the good bits.’

  ‘Sometimes I even forget we are a city on the sea.’

  ‘The Arabian Gulf?’ I teased her.

  ‘Shush David, of course not. I am Iranian you know. It is the Persian Gulf, always has been. It is only when America flirts with Saudi that it ever gets called Arabian.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you know David,’ she said pausing to exhale, ‘I believe that there is something going on with the architecture in Dubai.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Have you ever driven down Sheikh Zayed Road, where all the skyscrapers are, and felt like you are driving through a valley of enormous glittering penises?’

  I laughed loudly, I hadn’t expected that.

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, ‘that would explain why as soon as one goes up, another ten shoot up right beside it. Penis envy, it has to be. I will show that Sheikh Jeff,’ I said in a mock Arabic accent, ‘I will build the biggest, shiniest penis in Dubai, just you wait and see.’ Yasmin giggled smoke. ‘Money is no object. Taste is no object. Everything that can be gold will be gold.’ I continued warming to my theme.

  Luckily the staring tourists on the tables around us sat too far away to know why we were laughing ourselves silly, smoke billowing out from under the tented roof of the majlis.

  ‘You know I think you have something,’ I said. ‘You see the Burj over there? When you drive in from the front it doesn’t look like a sail anymore.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. it looks like a giant vulva.’

  ‘Ohh,’ she said. ‘What is ‘vulva’?’

  I tried to work out how to explain it, failing. ‘Women’s bits,’ I said pointing at her.

  ‘No!’ she said, eyes wide.

  ‘And you know what else?’

  ‘Oh David, what?’

  ‘From the sea, it is the biggest crucifix in the world. You will never see a publicity photo of that side because of this. Apparently the architect had a hell of a time after they found out.’

  ‘Really,’ she said. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘A guy in a bar told me, so it must be.’

  ‘Oh my god. There’s always something going on here that we don’t know about.’ She smoked some more, ‘This is fun,’ she smiled.

  ‘I love it. I’m so relaxed.’

  ‘I love this shisha,’ she said, ‘I could just lie here and smoke it all night.’

  We both sat back adding clouds to the sweet smelling haze around us, trying to find stars in the night sky against the reflected glow of the city, and listening to the sea as it lapped lazily against the shore.

  I felt Yasmin’s foot brush mine. We touched tentatively at first, feeling that uncertain but enticing spark of attraction pass between us. Not sure where this could ever go. Without speaking we settled on entwining our feet together, stroking each other's legs with our toes. A happy jumble of limbs. That was enough for now.

  As the desert cooled it pushed a refreshing breeze out over the sea. The air tickled our skin with the promise of respite from the unrelenting night time heat.

  ‘I needed this,’ she said. ‘David…’ she began, and then her phone vibrated.

  She checked to see who the caller was and answered immediately. No pleasantries passed between them. ‘Yes,’ she said flatly. ‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘No…on his own…I am not sure,’ she said, looking at me from under dark lashes and heavy lids. Then the caller hung up.

  ‘Faisal?’ I guessed.

  ‘He wanted to know whether you had paid already.’

  She pulled back into herself and inhaled furiously on the pipe, lost in her own thoughts.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘I had forgotten why I was here David. I had forgotten that you are a client. I felt normal for once.’ She looked at me. ‘Do you know David I have forgotten how many hundreds of men I have slept with. I am 22 and I have never had a lover of my own. I was a virgin when I came here. I have never slept with a man because I wanted to. Imagine that.

  ‘If this life was my choice it would be different. It would be my money, my mistakes. But it is not. I am his. They are his clients. It is his apartment. It is his money. I can leave him one day when I pay my debt. Set up on my own, make some good money maybe, but by then my life will be half over and this, this place, this work will be all I have ever known.’

  I left my shisha and moved next to her. I put my arm around her shoulders and she clung to me the way an exhausted child clings to a parent.

  ‘Take me home,’ she said.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Your home.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Chapter Eight

  Nothing happened that night. Nothing sexual. Emotions were rampant but very little else. We kissed, of course. We talked some more, but mainly we held each other, still and tender.

  As the night grew old our boyfriend and girlfriend act seemed less and less like role play. In a city obsessed with status we didn’t pretend to be anything other than ourselves.

  I resolved that nothing could ever happen while her time came at a price. Until she could get away from Faisal neither of us could be sure of our feelings.

  The feelings didn’t stop though.

  We fell asleep holding onto each other, still wearing our underwear, a nod to modesty and the boundaries of our relationship.

  The dawn light seeped through the heavy white curtains and forced its way between my eyelids. The loud squawks of exotic migratory birds in conversation disguised the white noise of construction traffic rumbling along Sheikh Zayed Road. Like the rest of us Dubai was just somewhere for the birds to stop on their way to somewhere else.

  Yasmin had already moved on. Her scent, like the first time I saw her, lingered on the white sheet she had cast off from her sleeping body.

  The money I’d left her on the night stand had gone. Part of me hoped it would still be there.

  Alone, I watched the early morning shadows of palm trees move against the curtains, nature’s puppet show. Wondering if I should indulge myself and sleep late.

  I knew where that would lead though. I could make my own hours, but why waste the good ones feeling blue.

  ***

  Martin responded to my text around six thirty, an hour after I sent it.

  ‘Why so early Bryson? Never made it to
bed or couldn’t sleep?’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ I said.

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘You got anything for me this morning? I’m all dressed up with nowhere to go.’

  ‘Hang on,’ he said groggily, I heard papers rustle. ‘Right, I need a monthly news roundup from Dubai. I want all the vice, murder and corruption you can give me. 1500 words all in. A dirham a word.’

  ‘C’mon Mart, that’s a scandalous rate. The free papers back home pay more than that.’

  ‘Take it or leave it. It’s the price you pay for the privilege of writing for Arabian Outlook.’

  ‘Oh is that what it is?’

  ‘A tough negotiator, hey? Go on, do it. You can have the syndication rights. You never know what these stories can lead to.’

  ‘You tired old hack. The syndication rights are mine anyway. Just give me the goddamn brief before I hang up on you.’

  ***

  If they don’t fall into place quickly news briefs need plenty of unprofitable leg work to bash them into any kind of coherent shape. With six times 250 words on money laundering, child slavery, gold smuggling, ghost ships, piracy and human trafficking I would have to seriously manhandle my subjects.

  Each story deserved far more than a just short news item.

  In Dubai you also had to be careful of what you said. As a supposedly benign dictatorship you couldn’t openly criticize the government, or to be precise, the ruling family.

  You could get away with asking the wrong questions, you just wouldn’t get any answers. Print the wrong thing and you could suddenly find it hard to pick up any new contracts, sidelined from even the most brainless jobs and eventually on a plane home because nobody would deal with you. If you were an employee you could be transferred, if you were a larger organization such as CNN or BBC then you might have to pay a few visits to the palace and more than a little penance.

  Most media organizations heavily self censored, but direct censorship ensured nothing else slipped through. The government spliced films so frequently that even the latest Hollywood teen fluff became an experimental series of jump cut montages that Godard would have been proud of. Scenes of extreme violence, mashed eyeballs, torture and mutilation were of course left in and shown casually to young children. While sex scenes, unclothed torsos, breasts, buttocks, and entire films with powerful women or gay men tended to vanish without trace in case they warped the minds of impressionable Muslim youth.