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Ana opened the door to the
foyer and looked around her. Amongst the usual selection of middle-aged men
hovering around was a single young lady, dressed in leather jacket and
trousers, with short blue hair and hoop-like earrings dangling down each side
of her round-cheeked face. It could only be Azhnia, but Ana needed to go
through the motions. She approached the prostitute at the reception desk,
thanked her for her call and waved to Azhnia who raised her eyebrow with some
surprise, but nonetheless waved back with an expression of recognition that was
totally feigned. Ana reflected with regret that to Azhnia, she must have looked
just the same as all the other prostitutes in her tight revealing clothes and
thick pasting of makeup.
Ana
strolled up to Azhnia, and greeted her with a theatrical show of familiar
amiability. She could see Azhnia’s eyes examine her from eyeliner to high
heels: clearly disturbed by the blatancy of her appearance. Ana had never seen
a woman dressed like Azhnia before: the nearest to her in appearance was Zabba
when not at work, but Zabba’s appearance was still within the parameters of
dress acceptable in the City of
Ana sat next to Azhnia, who stared at her. When she spoke, her voice was somehow more languid and relaxed than
normal for Alif; and the vowels appeared contorted and tortured to her ears.
Nobody could ever mistake Azhnia as a native to Alif however fluently she spoke
the same language. “Well, Ana, isn’t it? How’re you hanging? ‘Sreal neat to see ya. ‘N’
this’s where you work? ‘Sreal
weird! Quite freaky, in fact. You guys’re in
the weirdest setup I could ever imagine!”
“Don’t you
have brothels in Gharab?”
“Yeh! Sure we do. Not like this
though. Not that I’ve ever been inside one, y’know. Our brothels are all
private. The state’s got nothing to do with them. But in Alif near everything’s
nationalised, so I s’pose there’s nothing so weird about brothels being
nationalised ‘n’all! I just never thought it’d be like this somehow. It’s sort
of almost like a hotel foyer here, isn’t it? You kind of expect bellboys and
bureaux de changes, don’t you?”
Ana wasn’t
sure she really understood everything Azhnia was saying, but she nodded her
head in assent. “Are you living in Blad?”
“Yeh. Sure I do. I got a job
working in a café. Not a waitress, though. They said it wouldn’t be right for
the customers to see me. They’d be put off their coffees! Behind
the counter. It doesn’t pay very well, but it means I don’t have to
spend all my savings in one go. And they give me a room above the café. It’s
real tiny, but it’s better than nothing I s’pose! You live here do you?”
“In the brothel?”
“Yeh. Like Binta and Ferhana. You
live here?”
Ana raised
her eyebrows. “No, thank goodness. I live in Jadid.”
“Jadid? That’s a real nice quarter,
that is. But Ferhana said you, like, had your own room in the Brothel where
we’d be going and meet Binta.”
“Yes,
that’s so. But it’s not my home. It’s just where I work. Shall we go there?”
“Oh yeh. Sure! Yeh.
Let’s go then.”
Ana
escorted Azhnia past the reception desk to the door she’d come through,
tottering on her heels while Azhnia followed behind in considerably more
comfort in her rubber-soled boots. She led the way along corridors and up
staircases to her room which was in one of the smarter wings of the Brothel
reserved for Alphas and prostitutes like her who were accorded higher status
for their other services to the Brothel. Azhnia looked around her with
wonderment at the rows of doors and the lights above each one of them. A
prostitute passed by, escorting a small balding man in an ill-fitting suit, and
Azhnia’s eyes followed them. She was clearly fascinated by all that she saw,
but made no comment. They soon reached Ana’s room, the sight of whose door sent
a shiver of anxiety down Ana’s spine. She hated it, however well-decorated it
might be and however comfortable the bed. It was a room she only ever normally
visited when she was about to see a client, and the association with all those
hateful, loathsome encounters always left a very uncomfortable feeling in the
back of her throat.
“This is
it!” announced Ana, pushing open the door and revealing the bed, armchair and
washbasin. “This is where I work.”
“Where’s
Binta?”
“She’ll be
along soon,” Ana said. She indicated the bed. “Sit there. I’ll sit on the
chair, if you don’t mind.” She hated the memories connected with the bed. It
was with some reluctance that she’d agreed to return to the room after her
working day. It was normally somewhere she was happy to leave and the bed for
all its apparent luxury was more like a soft-matressed
torture rack than somewhere to sleep.
“This is a
real neat room!” said Azhnia approvingly. “It’s real big. Bigger than my
bedsit, I can tell you! Can’t say much for the choice of
décor: these reds and pinks. It’s like a real boudoir. It’s not your
taste, is it?”
“All the
rooms are decorated much like this. We don’t have much say in how it’s done.
It’s what the clients want and expect.”
“Is this
where you, like, have sex with them, is it?”
Ana ignored
the question. She had no wish to discuss that aspect of her working life with
anyone. Azhnia was more persistent.
“Ferhana
says it’s, like, real awful what she has to do. She really hates it. It’s
something you don’t like, neither, isn’t it?”
Ana nodded. She tried to change the
subject. “Mostly, I work as a secretary...”
“Yeh,
Ferhana said in her letters. She said it was real weird, y’know, you working in
this kind of joint. I thought it was real weird that anyone like works in a
Brothel at other things than being a like prostitute. You sort of think that
that’s all that ever happens here, but I reckon there’s gotta be some admin and
all, hasn’t there? And you got to know Ferhana and Binta as a secretary, didn’t you?”
“That’s
right,” sniffed Ana.
She studied
Azhnia. She was clearly nervous, despite her show of self-assurance. Was it
because she was anticipating meeting Binta or was it because she was in a place
like the Brothel? She glanced at the mirror. She hoped that nothing would be
recorded of their conversation, but she reflected that with the enormous volume
of recorded material being collected that as long as what was seen was of no
visual significance then everything said would probably never be scrutinised.
She looked back at Azhnia.
“Do you
like living in Alif?”
“What a
question! Yeh, it’s all right. I’ve made some real good friends here. It’s got
some real neat countryside. I s’pose I must like it. I’ve been to plenty of
other countries too, and a lot of them are pretty neat too. But I keep coming
back here. I don’t really know why, but I s’pose the friends I’ve made here
must be one good reason. Friends like Binta and Ferhana. And friends are real
important, y’know. Don’t you think?”
“Yes, very
important,” agreed Ana.
There was a
knock at the door. Ana jumped back with alarm, her face whitening as she
contemplated the fact that it must mean that Binta had arrived. She had
rehearsed and re-rehearsed this moment for so long: what she would say, the
bitterness that she felt, the betrayal of her love that Binta had been party
to, the worries and anxieties that had haunted her in the last few months. As
the door opened and Binta entered, seeming so much smaller and more humble than
she’d remembered, all the rehearsed lines were discarded. She broke into a sad
but broad grin. She hadn’t realised how much she had been longing to see Binta
again.
“Hiya,
sweetie!” greeted Azhnia. “How’re you hanging? The bastards not getting you
down, are they?”
Binta
hovered by the door and nodded in reply. Like Ana she seemed to have lost her
voice. She leaned an arm against the door, gripping its edge with her fingers,
and stared straight into Ana’s eyes. Then she returned the grin and ran
straight to Ana, leaning down on the floor by her stockinged feet, grasping her
arms in her hands and staring up at Ana with a look of pleading and shame.
“Oh! Ana!
I’ve missed you! I’ve missed you so much!
I’ve been so worried that you wouldn’t talk to me ever again. So worried now
that you ... that you ... I thought I’d lost you forever! I haven’t, have I?
Tell me that I haven’t! Tell me that all will be the same again!”
Ana looked down at her lover, smiling broadly and crying at the same
time. “I still love you, Binta! I will
always love you! All I want is for us to be together again. Please believe me!”
“Ferhana
told me about the videos. How you found out about me and her. How can you ever forgive me? What can I do to
convince you that it is you? Only you that I love! Please please forgive me! And how
you must have suffered these last months! Those horrid clothes you wear. The
suffering you must have been through!”
In Ana’s
rehearsed script this was to be the occasion in which she would now spell out
exactly the full gruesome and unpalatable details of her life as a prostitute -
part-time, maybe, but a prostitute all the same. She was to tell Binta about
the recurrent humiliations met upon her by the Director and his never-ceasing
reminders of the illegal activity with Binta which had entrapped her in this
way. In her mind’s eye, this script was now crumpled up and thrown away into
the waste bin at the corner generally intended to receive paper tissues.
“Oh,
Binta!” she said with a deep sigh. “None of that matters. Nothing matters! All
that is at all important is that we be together again!”
Binta smiled
sadly, and buried her head on the thin strip of black skirt that intervened
between the nylon of her stockings and the bare flesh of her midriff. Her arms
wrapped themselves around Ana’s waist and her breasts nuzzled against her knees
and thighs.
“Oh, Ana! I love you. I love you. I
haven’t been able to eat. I haven’t been able to sleep. My life is a misery,
punctuated by the nightmare of the clients and the few pleasures that my garden
affords me. Oh please, Ana! You do
forgive me, don’t you? It will be
like it was before again, won’t it!”
Ana stroked
Binta’s long hair as it spread out over her shoulders and onto Ana’s thighs and
outward over the pile of the carpet. She let a finger roam around her ear and
onto Binta’s cheek. If only it could be like it was before, she thought, but
now that she was under the almost constant supervision of Khedra and the
Director it could never again be as free or natural. She would always fear
reprisals which could affect both herself and Binta.
“We-ell!” exclaimed
Azhnia, in a long drawn-out whine. “I didn’t expect this, Binta sweetie. I
really thought it was me who’d come to see you. I didn’t know that it was gonna
be like some lovers’ reunion!”
Binta
turned around to face Azhnia, leaning an arm on Ana’s thigh with a trail of
tears running down her cheek. “Oh, Azhnia! I’m so
sorry! I wasn’t thinking. It was just that ...”
“You don’t
have to spell things out to me, sweetie. Ferhana hinted there might be
something between you two. I just didn’t think I’d be some kinda, like,
frigging gooseberry, y’know. I’m real happy for you two. Really I am!”
“I know. I
know,” blubbered Binta. She took one of Ana’s hands in
her own and squeezed it tight. “How are you, Azhnia? How’s life treating you?”
“Fine! Fine.
Same’s always! But it’s you I’m worried about. How’re you? How’re you coping
with living and working here?”
“It’s
horrible! Horrible! I hate every minute of it. It just gets more and more
unbearable!”
“You’ve
not, like, got used to it?”
Binta shook
her head. “All I ever think of is: when is it going to end? When will I be free
again?”
“And when
will that be, sweetest?”
Binta
sighed. “Another couple of months or so!”
“Well!
That’s not so bad after all the time you’ve been here!”
“But I
don’t know what to do next. I haven’t got anywhere to go to. I can’t go back to
Jebel. I don’t know anyone in Blad. I don’t have any skills that’ll get me a
job. And wherever I go people will find out that I’ve got a criminal record and
that I’ve worked in the Brothel.”
“Can’t you
just go and live in Jadid with Ana here?”
Binta
looked up at Ana with longing. “I’d like that. I’d like that so much. But now they know about Ana and me, it won’t be
safe. They might want to arrest us again. And then it’ll be worse.”
“Well!
There’s only one thing you two can do, and that’s, like, bail out! Just leave
Alif. Go someplace where girls like you won’t be hassled and you can, like,
lead your own lives. Most countries don’t care a hoot about lesbians. They
wouldn’t hold it against you!”
“But it’s
not as easy as that!” Ana said sadly. “It’s very difficult getting passports in
Alif. It’s very expensive and they probably wouldn’t give one to Binta because
of her criminal record. And for me, they’d ask my boss for references and he
would never give me one.”
“You sure about that?”
Ana
reflected on the Director. It would be just the sort of humiliation he would
dearly love to inflict on her: tearing up her passport application and throwing
the shreds over her body. It would only be as bad as some of the other unspeakably
disgusting humiliations that he’d contrived for her benefit. “I could never be more sure about it!”
Azhnia
mused on this. “Well, say you could leave the country, where’d you both wanna
go? Have you got any kinda idea, like?”
Ana gazed
down at Binta who was nuzzling her cheek against the silky artificial fibre of
her skirt. “Agdal. That’s where we’d like to go. Agdal.”
“Hey,
that’s only, like, next door, isn’t it? Yeh, I been there. Real neat, it is.
You’d love it there. They got nothing against lesbians there. And they like
nudists and all. Ferhana told me you’d become a nudist, Binta. I really didn’t
believe her: it seems such a real weird thing to do. Like
getting into astrology, mysticism, incense and therapy. Not like you at
all. But here you are: naked as the day you were born. So, Agdal is it? Well, I
think you’ve chosen the right one there!”
“You think
we’d be happy there, Azhnia?” asked Binta longingly.
“Well, yeh.
I’m real sure you would. But when I say you’ve chosen the right one, I don’t
just mean there. I’m sure you’d be real happy in Gharab as well if you’d wanted
to go there. ’Fact you’d probably be happy in almost any frigging country ’slong
as it wasn’t Alif. No! What I mean is that Agdal’s a much better bet than most
because it’s got this Amnesty from
Oppression policy. Haven’t you heard about it? It’s been going on for
years. Ever since they became, like, the most liberal country in probably the
whole frigging world.”
“‘Amnesty from Oppression’?” wondered Ana.
“What’s that mean? And what’s it got to do with us?”
“You’re not
kidding me? You’ve never heard of it! Well, that’s real weird. I thought
everyone knew about that. I ’spect you guys never get told anything, do you?
Your government’s real tight on information. But I thought here in Blad and in
the Brothel and all, it’d be like common knowledge.”
“Tell us,
Azhnia. What is this policy? What should we know that we don’t know about now?”
asked Binta with a certain impatience in her voice.
“Well! All
around the world there are countries like Alif which are like real intolerant
and repressive. Countries where people who disagree with the
government are locked up or shot. Countries like here where the only
elections are like real shams, where you’ve only got the government’s
appointees standing for positions in your parliament, congress or senate, or
whatever they call it here. Countries where the president,
like your own President Marmalade - sorry, Marmeluke - supposedly win 99.9% of
the popular vote. Ever since Agdal went so liberal it’s had this Amnesty from Oppression policy. I s’pose
it’s like a guilt trip the country’s got. It used to be real repressive itself.
Worse than Alif! And not that long ago, really. It
just got fed up with fighting all these stupid wars (though it’s not gone as
far as give all its territories back!) and had some kinda revolution. And now
it like gives asylum to political prisoners and people like that all over the
world. That’s what their Amnesty from
Oppression’s all about. It’s to sort of like make amends for all those
people it shot, imprisoned and tortured when it wasn’t the liberal big shot it
is now!”
“Are you
saying we could get political asylum?” asked Ana incredulously. “But neither of
us has done anything political. We’ve never done anything like that at all!”
“Oh, I
wouldn’t be sure about that. You’re both lesbians. Binta’s a naturist. You’ve
both been pretty much punished for your views and practices, working as
prostitutes in this place. I think they’d look on you pretty sympathetically. Naturism
and homosexuality are pretty much commonplace in Agdal. They’re bigger deals
there than they are in Gharab, which wouldn’t be nearly so happy to see people
roaming around in the nude all day. Yeh! I reckon you’ve got a real big chance
with Agdal. All ya gotta do is apply for asylum
through this programme of theirs. I mean, you don’t know your chances until you
try, y’know’t I mean!”
“I can’t
believe it,” said Binta sceptically, but with a face which betrayed her
eagerness to believe every word. “It sounds just a little too good to be true.”
“That
doesn’t mean it’s not true. You go have a stab at it. It could work out for
you. Agdal’s got a real big embassy in the Honey district. Just ask a few
questions. You don’t know how far you might get.”
Ana looked down at Binta with a smile. “Azhnia’s right! That might be exactly the right thing to do. We can
but try.”
“I don’t
see why any government would want to
be that generous. What have we done to deserve such preferential treatment? But
on the other hand, I’ve come to despair so much while I’ve been here, I’ve
probably got too cynical for my own good. I just can’t believe there can be so
much good in the world.”
“Oh, Binta,
there’s always gotta be something to balance the bad. It’d be a real bad world
if it were all as bad as Alif wouldn’t it?”
“But if you
think Alif’s so bad why do you keep visiting here?” Binta wondered.
“I don’t
come from here. I can leave whenever I like. A Gharab passport’s real good for
getting anywhere. And as a foreigner I can probably get to see more of the good
side of Alif than either of you. I can just travel around, look at all the
different parts of your country, meet people like you and Ferhana, and then
when I get fed up I can just head to the border and go somewhere like Agdal or
whatever. So, Alif’s not as bad for me as it is for you. And you got real neat
countryside here. Better, in fact, than Gharab which is a lot colder and a lot
more industrial than Alif. If you had a better government, people’d probably
flood into your country from everywhere. But it’s you we’re talking about. You’re the ones that want to get out.”
Binta
nodded. “Yes. I do. Desperately! I’ve lost everything I ever had in Alif. My
family have disowned me. Mezyana’s in a convent, and she’ll be there for much
longer than I’ll have been in the Brothel. I know nobody at all outside the
Brothel walls. And I’m going to be stigmatised for the rest of my life. But what about you, Ana?” She turned her head around to gaze
into Ana’s face. “Do you want to
leave Alif as much as I do? Won’t you miss your family?”
“I already
do!” sighed Ana. “I haven’t seen them since I arrived here for the interview.
But they would disown me too if they knew what I was doing now. I shall
probably never be able to walk through
Azhnia
smiled indulgently. “How very
touching! I’d never have guessed. You’ve done real well, Binta. Two good
loves in your life. Y’know, I’ve had more than my fair share of lovers and
boyfriends, but none of them seem to’ve been as good or passionate as yours
have been.”
Ana knew
that this was a reference to Mezyana, but she also knew about Azhnia’s own
relationship with Binta. A flash of anger spread through her, as she reflected
on how Binta had not only been unfaithful to her with Ferhana, but had earlier
committed the same indiscretion with Azhnia. Could she really trust Binta that
much? When would she do the same again? She glared at Binta, who flinched
slightly.
“Oh, Ana. Don’t look at me like that!
Trust me! It’s you I love. Only you. In the last few
months, I’ve thought only of you. Yours is the only true love in my life!”
Azhnia
scratched her nose, and smiled to herself. “You mustn’t let the past get in the
way of your future together, y’know. Mezyana is in the past. By the look of it,
you are her future.”
“Mezyana
isn’t the only person in Binta’s past I am concerned about!”
Azhnia
blushed. “Well ... er ... anyway ... It’s the future you’ve got to think about.
It’s not that long till Binta’s sentence finishes, y’know! You’ve both gotta
think what you’re gonna do next. And if Blad or Alif or Jebel or whatever’s not
what you want then you’re gonna have to look elsewhere aren’t you. And if it’s
Binta you love then you’re just gonna have to accept that she’s not perfect,
y’know. There’s always gonna be a past behind her. And it’s not just gonna go
away, y’know!” She looked around Ana’s room, at the red and pink wallpaper, the
silk cream sheets and then finally at Ana herself, who was uncomfortably aware
of the thick mask of makeup pasted on her face and the artificially enhanced
cleavage below her chin. “And don’t forget, Ana. You’ve got some past of your
own that’s not gonna go away that easy either!”
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