6

Ana was gradually becoming accustomed to her new life in the big city. It no longer seemed the overpoweringly threatening place as it did on her first arrival. The city of Blad was still a great mystery on the whole but she felt fairly confident of the geography of the Jadid Quarter where she had been provided with a flat, and she knew all she needed to get to work in the city centre. The bus stop was only yards from the main entrance to the block of flats and benefited from a shelter which, at this time of the year, served mostly to keep the sun off Ana and other commuters as they waited for the bus. Unfortunately, she didn’t live near enough to the bus depot to avoid having to stand all the way on most of her journeys to work, but a little bit of discomfort like that was nothing compared to the gain of having a job.

Around her block of flats were many others almost identical, all the statutory maximum height of six storeys allowed before an escalator needed to be installed, and through the windows of which were flats of much the same design as Ana’s own. She was in awe of the magnificent amount of space she had: more than the two floors of her parents’ home. Her bedroom had an enormous double bed she could sleep in without hunching up her body. Her kitchen was ready supplied with a cooker, a microwave and a fridge-freezer. She even had a front-loading washing machine with which she had a disastrous time trying to get working properly. The most luxurious aspect was the fully-furnished living room in which there was a table, some chairs and even a television. And so much space! So much unoccupied air. Ana felt incredibly privileged. And all provided free as part of her contract of work with the Blad State Brothel! She’d never have been able to afford a flat nearly as well-appointed otherwise.

She stood by the living room window over a small balcony just large enough for her to peg her clothes to dry after she’d mastered the washing-machine. Down below was a network of clean well-paved roads and a shop opposite which sold almost everything from light-bulbs and lentils to radios and radishes. A huddle of older women stood at the bus stop just by a policeman in a dark green uniform, smoking a cigarette. Radiating out for a few hundred yards were similar streets, the occasional small church and a small patch of grass where children could play. It seemed so comfortable and ordinary to Ana that she sometimes forgot she’d not always lived in a place like this.

One prominent feature of the living room was a long full-length mirror in which she could examine her reflection. At first she worried that the mirror might be connected to a network of cameras and viewing screens, like the one in Binta’s room at the Brothel, but she soon satisfied herself, after poking around its perimeter with a knife, that there was no real likelihood that it could be anything other than a normal mirror. Ana stood in front of it, wearing only a towel round her body which she had used to dry herself after a long relaxing rest in the bath. She smiled sadly at herself, relishing her reflection’s corresponding smile.

She peered around through the window to confirm no one could see her and let her towel slip to her knees. She had never seen her naked body in its entirety before. Having seen so many naked or near naked bodies recently she was curious to see how she compared. She concluded that she had a nice face: not startlingly pretty, but still nice. A little thin perhaps, like the rest of her, but her eyes were large even if her lips weren’t at all prominent. Her lank fair hair fell onto her shoulders, even more lank than usual, as it was still damp from her bath. She was slim. Her breasts and hips had never really blossomed with adulthood quite as much as some girls at the Brothel: certainly not as much as Binta’s.

How would she compare with a Beta Plus like Binta? She was sure she could never be considered more attractive, although much of Binta’s physical beauty (she blushed to find herself using such terms) came less from her body than how she carried it. She radiated greater self-confidence and bearing without clothes than Ana could fully dressed. She imagined Binta walking along the corridors of the Brothel with a confident unselfconscious stride; Binta swimming breast-stroke in the swimming pool, her buttocks clearly visible through the water; and Binta sitting opposite her at the canteen table, her breasts just inches away from her fingers. Fingers which could easily stretch over and stroke her elegantly shaped nipples and feel the curve of her bosom. And, Ana couldn’t help wondering, would Binta actually enjoy that?

Although Binta came from the countryside much as Ana did, Jebel sounded very different from her descriptions of its hills and mountains (and rather more exciting) than the broad agricultural plains of Rif, bounded by distant hills and mountains. Her village of Biyat was such an ordinary place, - serviced by a small shop, a few irregular buses and a church, - that could claim several uneventful centuries of history. Like all the others in the village, her parents’ cottage had more space in the garden than inside, where most of the vegetables they ate were grown. Her father worked at a factory several miles away and left for work very early in the morning in a beaten-up van he jointly owned with several of his colleagues. He rarely got home much before seven in the evening. Her mother supplemented their living by forever knitting and stitching clothes. Ana was considered very much the bright star of the family for having attained a college qualification, and there was little shame attached to her inability to find work other than in the city of Blad. Most young people in Biyat were either unemployed or like Ana had little choice but to find work elsewhere.

Life in her village was very uneventful and was no less so at the small town where she had attended college. There was little for a young girl to do. There was the occasional village disco attended by too many adults and children for young people to be anything but careful in what they did or said. The affairs organised by the college were more exciting, but were compromised by her need to catch the last bus back home to Biyat. Ana would occasionally see a film in the tiny cinema with other students, but the selection of films was very uninspiring and was mostly mercilessly cut. However, Ana had never felt deprived, as she had nothing with which to compare her social life and hers was no different from that of other girls in her village.

Her family, Biyat and Rif were a long way from Blad and her new life. An immeasurable gulf separated her from her former life, and it was not just the physical distance between them. Ana sat on a chair with the towel on her lap, still facing the mirror, contemplating the upward tilt of her breasts in the slight chill of the evening. She’d never be able to tell her parents about the actual nature of the company employing her and the deceit made her feel uncomfortable. She’d never hidden the truth from them before. She’d never had the need. Now she was obliged to routinely mislead them whenever they asked questions about the big city employers who had provided her with such a grand flat. Would they guess that not many employers were prepared to pay a secretary so well, and to give her such a nice place to live in addition?

Her employer still disgusted her. It was after all a Brothel. One owned by the State (and ultimately by President Marmeluke himself) and therefore with at least some of its approval. Ultimately, it was a concern which sold the bodies of mostly women to mostly men for the purpose of their sexual gratification. The thought discomfited her considerably. It particularly perturbed her now she could visualise the actual girls employed in the business of providing their bodies to the rather unattractive men she saw going into the Brothel. She could imagine Bezaffa, Ferhana and Zabba underneath these foul hairy bodies with their dirty unscrubbed fingers crawling over their soft skin. She could most particularly and painfully imagine Binta in this position: her pretty face being kissed by stubble-chinned, pot-bellied men, their hands grasping at her firm breasts and, worse, the most intimate part of all being repeatedly violated for their vile pleasure.

However, as Ana reflected with some relief, it was not she who had to endure all this indignity and disgrace, but her new friends, not all of whom seeming nearly as distressed as Binta. Furthermore, life at the Brothel wouldn’t be any different whether or not she worked there. Perhaps she was privileged to get such a close view of the workings of a Brothel without having to actively participate. She was grateful to have met so many new friends in a city where people were generally far too intent on their own business to spare any time or friendliness for an innocent country-girl. She had met many new people and made new friends. She wasn’t too sure who were really her friends, though she was convinced that Binta fitted that description. Perhaps also Ferhana and Ketaba. These were girls so very different from the people in Rif, and this fact compensated for some of the loneliness she felt living so far from her family and friends.

She was also very grateful for her salary and her flat. She’d enjoyed selecting it with Khedra, the Personnel and Training Manager, who’d presented her with a list of available flats and told her of the relative merits of each. She hardly believed the options she had, and so soon after arriving in the city just for an interview! Her parents expressed their delight in the letters they sent her which included her younger sister’s drawings of the kittens and tales of all the things in the village that had so recently been of primary interest to her. They had been surprised that things had worked out so right so soon.

The work she was doing wasn’t too bad either, Ana considered. It was all well within her capabilities, and she’d already earned praise from Mr Madir for the accuracy of her typing and how she organised the manual files. She was apparently so much better at it than Inta, and so much more attractive.

The Director’s praise made Ana feel extremely uncomfortable, though. It wasn’t only because the office air was thick with smoke emerging from the cigarette smouldering in his holder or the sweet smell of it clinging to his clothes and hair. Although he treated the staff - prostitutes or not - in a flirting over-familiar manner, she couldn’t help suspecting his motives. She decided that she didn’t like him very much. Not only was he rather ugly and smelly, but for all his apparent kindness she couldn’t somehow forgive him his rather active rôle in the running of the Brothel and ultimately in the enslavement and foul abuse of girls like Ferhana and, of course, Binta. Although Ana couldn’t be said to be active in the more obviously sordid activities of the Brothel, wasn’t she just as complicit as the Director himself simply by helping to run the administrative side of the concern?