Cinnamon (2 page)

It was the streak of light!

It was the light which would drown Aliyah's nights in darkness when she forgot to lock her mistress's door, before stealing down from the top floor to the master's bedroom.

As Hanan al-Hashimi descended the stairs, Aliyah was trembling with fear. She imagined that her mistress had followed her and caught her, discovering the truth at last. Aliyah froze, expecting the door to open and allow her a glimpse of the shadow which stirred on the other side. Her hand turned dry and rigid and she lowered her weight off her master's body. Collapsing beside him, she was still unable to prise her stiff fingers from his member. She thought about jumping from the window, or hiding under the bed, but found herself paralysed, as if in a dream. The streak of light was the truth which prompted her to scurry like a lizard from under Hanan al-Hashimi's feet.

Aliyah was startled by her own movements: how had she soared like that from the master's bed to her room? The moment her head hit the floor she thought herself in a nightmare, dropping into a bottomless chasm. Yet the sound of approaching footsteps convinced her that this was the waking world, and as the mistress began pounding against the carefully locked door, she stirred completely. Aliyah knew that the time for games was over, that her mistress wanted to rip her to shreds between her jaws. She could hear the sound of her teeth grinding, like the grating of a rusty lock. Hanan sobbed like a child, her words to Aliyah coming out in a scream: ‘You dirty pimple-faced beggar!'

Before she had put on her night gown and had moved from her mistress's room to her own, as Hanan al-Hashimi had ordered, Aliyah remembered how Hanan's eyes had brimmed with love and contentment, how a secret delight had taken hold of her body and transformed it into a mass of delicious shudders.

But now, she was a foul scrounger. How had it come to this? How had those beautiful eyes turned to flame? Aliyah's lips quivered as she gathered her clothes, whilst the scent of a strange chill wafted from her limbs. It was a peculiar coldness in the midst of a blazing summer, when salty droplets of sweat trickle over the skin. Her body shivered at an icy sensation, provoked by the images in her delirious mind – pictures culled from tales of death, of dying from the cold, in the middle of an empty street, on a grimy pavement.

And so, Aliyah would spend her days dreaming of the night-time which would make her queen. She contemplated the night's special qualities, the things about it which she loved, for which she waited. Night was when her mistress would call for her, after she had returned from one of her soirées. Night was her ally, able to touch the passions of her heart.

As the first half of the night began, Aliyah would take hold of her sceptre, touching the invisible crown of her power before briefly falling asleep. When she awoke she would doze in her bed once more, ready for the mistress's summons.

In the second half of the night, she would slip down to the master's bedroom and lie naked beside him, sleepily toying with his soft flesh, before abandoning him for her own room. He wouldn't grumble when her games failed to return his manhood, and Aliyah was never concerned by her failure; she preferred to lie in his arms and listen to his hot breath... Each time, a little before the break of dawn, she would return to her room, wash, then sleep like the dead, knowing that the daytime was approaching, that her magic cloak would soon be stripped from her and she would be obliged to take orders once more.

Aliyah had not realised that the streak of light, which she had neglected out of carelessness, would reduce her queendom to ruins. She hadn't needed much cunning to keep her place on the throne, having picked up a few life skills and learnt how to dominate in the bedroom. It had never occurred to her that in the dead of night, her mistress might wander down to the room on the ground floor, when she had left her deep in sleep.

The moment Aliyah caught sight of the sparks in her mistress's eyes, her mind leapt upon memories of a certain fear and the feeling came back to her in its entirety. It was a fear of something unknown, something she was completely unable to identify, even though a taste of anxiety had for a long time nestled inside her. There had always been a veil separating her from it – a fine, fragile membrane which would not grow more robust with the trials of the years ahead. It was buried at the deepest point of her heart and, although the passing of time drew her further away from the world of her childhood, time could not erase her anxious shivers, or her violent facial spasms, which Hanan al-Hashimi considered amongst Aliyah's attractive qualities. They were the same spasms which, in a matter of moments, could become tremors of fear, making her face muscles twitch cruelly. Her right cheek would rise and the left would fall, her parted lips revealing small teeth. Then, she would bite down on her lips, her eyes quivering as she tried to stop the streaming tears, feeling as if she were suffocating.

In that fleeting stretch of time as she scarpered to her room – a few moments, which felt like a hundred years – Aliyah thought back to how the light had vanished from her eyes, how, naked, she had bolted from the old man's bedroom and felt herself falling into an abyss. She locked the door, dropped to the floor and broke into tears, which were halted only by the sound of Hanan al-Hashimi's voice ordering her to leave.

Aliyah imagined that, were she to leave her room and throw herself into her mistress's arms, she could turn the magic on the magician and appease Hanan. It was still night and morning was not about to break just yet; she was still the only queen. Yet, when day did come and she became a servant once more it would be another matter. Her faith in the magical powers of night gave her confidence that she could do it, but the malice she had recognised in her mistress's eyes held her back. Quietly, she picked up her bag and left the villa without looking back. As she left the house, Aliyah was unaware that Hanan al-Hashimi had not moved from behind the window.

The streak of light: it fashioned signposts that sent Hanan into the void, compelling her to bid farewell to Aliyah's silhouette as she stood behind the curtain, her eyes wide open like dark cave entrances. Hanan pressed her hand hard into her shoulders until she heard her bones crack, wanting to be sure that she wasn't dreaming. Then she slipped into bed, certain that she would wake up in a better frame of mind.

Yet the streak of light appeared in her nightmares too, as a whip of flames which flogged her body until her flesh was in tatters and her bones jutted outward. The streak was a fiery snake, crawling out from the gap in the open door and finishing up at Aliyah's head. The girl was holding a limp piece of meat between the husband's thighs, which grew until it became a viper that she rode upon as it sprouted wings and began to fly in circles, flapping in Hanan's face.

Hanan woke up from the nightmare. She sprang from the bed again as though stung and peered at the curtains. Perhaps it was all a nightmare – the whole thing simply conjured up in her troubled dreams! Hanan murmured to herself, waving her hands in the air to ward off any spirits. She felt as though she had slept for a thousand years, although she knew it couldn't have been more than an hour. She rushed to her mirror.

‘I won't let this petrify me. These horrible limbs will soon disappear; they'll stop growing any moment. All I have to do is get a hold of myself... Right, you stupid bitch?' She struck out at the wide mirror on the wall.

‘Where have you been all this time?' said a voice.

‘I am the Mirror, and which one of us knows the other better than the other knows herself? Quick, we've only a few moments to talk.'

‘I know I'm imagining things. It's all a dream. No, not a dream; it's just my subconscious showing itself to me for a while.' Hanan told herself, preening before the mirror. She perched on the edge of the bed, gazing into the mirror's smooth surface as though searching in some far-off place for someone unfamiliar.

‘I didn't throw her out! I couldn't possibly have thrown her out! She's still asleep in her room. She's waiting for daylight, to start work.'

Hanan whacked the mirror. She stared into the two piercing eyes which glared back at her.

‘I haven't even left my room! They're just images! Images rotating in my exhausted brain,' she said, shaking her head violently.

Hanan slapped her chest and pursed her lips. She groped at her arms and breasts, then grabbed the mirror on both sides, clasped it in her arms and shouted, ‘He's still snoring, the old crocodile. There's no way she'd even go near him, never mind wrap herself around him like that. She couldn't have made herself get anywhere near his cold body, could she?'

She moved away from the mirror, lit a cigarette and drew back the curtain, watching the birds as their shapes changed and they became tiny, multi-coloured specks. A few white clouds made various shapes in the sky. For a moment she imagined there was someone watching her, sitting atop the clouds. Hanan closed the curtain and jumped onto the bed. After steadying her feet, she stared recklessly into the mirror, where another woman appeared, her appearance much like Hanan's. The woman whispered to her, hissing almost:

‘You're lying to yourself though, aren't you? You're jealous of her – a lowly servant, a nobody. She's got you talking to yourself. Who gets jealous of a skinny, low-life servant who fucks an old man, who devours his dick like a... like a whore? She's eating away at your insides. She's eating away at you like a maggot, sucking dry the sweetness inside of you.'

Hanan sobbed. ‘I just want to hold her close to me!' she cried out, her voice hoarse. Her skin itched. She groped at her thighs and tugged hard at her hair, yelping in pain. Imagining a voice calling her, Hanan bounded towards the window. She drew back the curtains and opened the window. Eyes loomed amongst the clouds, peering down at her. She shut the curtain again and inhaled the scent of her bed sheets.

‘Are you mad? You saw her with your own eyes. She was in his bed. It's just your subconscious, you stupid bitch. You know what the subconscious can do to a woman disturbed by the unsightly things she's witnessed.'

‘But I didn't see anything unsightly. Aliyah is so slight, so soft and she's got no one to turn to now. She'll have to live on the streets.'

‘She's just a pair of hands. Replace her!' screamed the other woman from inside the mirror.

Hanan stopped on the tips of her toes, pulling at her hair and shuddering. She tried to close her mouth so that she could no longer hear the words coming from her own voice. She clung to the mirror, concealing the ghostly figure with her palms.

Hanan retreated from the mirror and hid in her bed, curling her body up into a ball and pulling the covers over her head. Her eyes remained open, staring back from the mirror. Closing them, she began sobbing, her body shaking. She stopped up her ears with the sheets but the voice grew louder.

‘It wasn't a dream. Run downstairs – his flesh is covered with the traces of her saliva; the imprint of her lips is all over his skin. Look at yourself, you miserable wretch! Cry all you want, your days have turned to nightmares!'

Hanan threw the covers onto the floor and jumped up on the bed. She stood upright on the mattress, fell and attempted to get up again. In an instant, the bed seemed to become a pool of moving sand and she could barely get her footing before it quaked under her feet and she was on her knees again.

‘Don't say a word,' the mirror threatened. ‘Don't talk to me about torment; I know it far better than you. I keep it stored away here in its velvet boxes. Look at me. Press on my heart, then you'll know. Do it, before I break you; before I reduce you to splinters. Do you really think you are a living, breathing being? You're nothing but emptiness and thin air. You never even existed. But if you just do the right thing, you can be free of your agonies. All you have to do is stick the blade into your heart. Isn't it enticing? Go on, do it.'

Hanan struck out at her heart in the mirror and gave a loud laugh, delight sketching its way across her face. Suddenly she frowned and pressed her lips together.

‘I won't do it. I'm not sure of anything.'

‘Liar! You're lying. Ever since you were a little girl, you've lied and faked those pallid smiles, so that everyone would gather round you and applaud. And now where's it got you? Prisoner to a dirty little maid.'

‘I'm begging you, get away from me! Why are your eyes so yellow? And why is your hair a mass of monstrous snakes?'

Hanan finally stood up from the pool of shifting sand and took a few heavy steps. She felt like a tiny ant. Everything around her grew longer and wider: the bed was the size of a train, the mirror as big as the sky and the ground below was a pit which she fell deeper into with every step, unable to keep upright. She began to tremble hard, shaking uncontrollably.

Hanan collapsed onto the mattress.

‘I can't do it. I miss her! Why did I throw her out like that? Had I lost my mind? Maybe she'll come back. She'll knock on the door in a few minutes, for sure. She's got nowhere to go, nowhere very far from me.'