Secret Skin (32 page)

I banged the door and rang the bell an impolite number of times. There was a spy hole set two thirds of the way up the door. To avoid being seen I stood flush against the anonymous hallway’s wall.

On the other side of the door a woman’s voice cursed with quiet venom. The door opened a crack. I rushed forward and fell on it with all my weight. My fall pushed the covered woman back. She fell to the floor and yelped with surprise. Close to exhaustion and barely able to focus my eyes I pulled the black cloth away from her face.

‘Yasmin,’ I said collapsing on the floor next to her, smiling with an uncertain sense of relief. ‘You are alive.’

She didn’t say a word. We sat silently next to each other. I felt the shape of her leg beneath the abaya’s flimsy veneer. Our breathing quickened. As usual we couldn’t tear our eyes away from each other. I also saw something else there….

‘Money,’ I said. ‘Money for the taxi.’ I explained pointing in the direction of the street. Her eyes flicked behind me. She opened her mouth to speak but before she could say anything I picked myself up from the floor and snatched the purse she had been looking at.

‘Stay here,’ I said. I took the set of keys that lay next to it and dead-locked the door from the outside.

I returned a few minutes later. I’d thrown money at the flailing cabby and then walked into one of Al Diyafah Street’s clothing shops that seemed to have a permanent sale. I asked them to measure me and bought a cheap off the peg suit and shirt with some of the money left in Yasmin’s wallet.

In the apartment the sound of a running shower came from the bathroom. I followed the noise and felt the clamor of steam against my skin as I opened the bathroom door. Yasmin took the bags from my hands, ‘Get in,’ she said.

I flinched and smiled weakly, a shower sounded painful. I would have to face my wounds and what had happened to me. An embarrassed tear sprang into my eye when I realized how tightly I was holding on, just about keeping it together. I recoiled when Yasmin touched me.

‘David….’ she started to say. What happened? She wanted to ask. She reached out to me again. I let her touch me. She delicately undid the buttons of my shirt and fingered the sore bruises and welts that covered my face and torso.

She loosened my belt, I kicked off my shoes and she helped me out of my trousers. The blood and sweat on the back of my legs had welded the material to my skin. I felt something open up inside me when she pulled them off. I whimpered pitifully.

‘What happened?’ she asked finally.

I shook my head and held back the tears. I’d lost every ounce of dignity already but I wouldn’t cry for them. ‘Faisal,’ I said.

‘What did he do to you David?’

I shook my head again. I couldn’t look at her. I felt my bottom lip begin to quiver.

‘Oh, David,’ she said, not sure what to do, or what to say. She touched the side of my face and made me look at her. A thin trickle of blood ran from my nose and reached my top lip, a sweet taste on my sour sun blistered skin.

‘It’s okay David,’ she said wiping the tear of blood away. She tried to hold me close but I put my hands on her shoulders and pushed her away. ‘It’s okay David,’ she said again, opening the shower door and letting a cloud of steam billow out.

I stepped in and held onto the wall for support. Through the steam I saw Yasmin undress. She unwound the abaya from around her body and deftly removed the skimpy clothing she wore beneath. She stepped through the steam and into the shower, unashamedly naked. The beautiful Yasmin, as I’d wanted her for such a long time.

She touched me again and moved closer, I felt her breasts brush against my chest, her hand ran though my matted hair. She placed her other hand tenderly on my hip, too fucking close.

‘I can’t,’ I said, recoiling.

‘I know,’ she said pulling me back toward her, a sad but compassionate face above the clouds of steam. I fell reluctantly into her embrace and unraveled. I cried myself inside out in her arms. The hot water rained on us from above and washed the shameful tears away.

***

I waddled into her bedroom-cum-living room feeling like a cowboy who had spent an eternity in the saddle.

The shower had helped to make me feel a little more human. My brain began to function again as I dried myself off. I dressed slowly and painfully from the clothes in the bags. There was a silence that had to be broken.

‘What happened to you?’ I said.

Yasmin wrapped a towel around her hair in an upside down cone, the way women do. She walked naked across the room, casually, as if we really were long term lovers who had grown comfortable and blasé about our bodies. The robe hanging on the back of the door quickly changed that.

Was she stalling?

‘What happened Yasmin? You do realize you don’t exist anymore? You are now officially dead.’

She removed the towel from her head and aggressively dried her hair.

‘Yasmin!’

I grabbed the towel out of her hands.

‘What? What do you want from me?’ she said.

‘You are supposed to be dead Yasmin. A woman who looks like you was cut to pieces and found in the river. I’ve nearly been killed, twice. My friend may already be dead. So I want to know….’

‘What? What do you want to know?’

‘I want to know what’s going on Yasmin,’ I said desperately. ‘Talk to me.’

‘Just go David. It is not safe for you here. I will be fine.’

‘I need more than that Yasmin.’

‘Oh David, just go. You have your story, what more do you want from me?’ She walked over to the purse and grabbed the rest of the money inside. ‘Take this and GO!’

‘Not until you tell me what’s going on.’

‘Unnnh!’ she grunted, ‘Don’t you ever stop asking questions?’

I didn’t answer, just grabbed an arm and glared in her eyes. She grunted again and pulled away from me.

‘Please Yasmin,’ I said.

‘I made a deal with Faisal.’

‘What sort of deal?’

‘For my freedom.’

‘Your freedom? You don’t exist anymore, you’re dead remember?’

Her wet hair hung limply. She thrust her chin at me and fumed.

‘Who was the dead woman Yasmin?’

‘One of the Lebanese girls, Ditta…with Faisal’s friends…they went too far.’ She looked away. ‘It could have been me.’

‘What the hell have you done?’

‘He is bringing in more girls, younger girls.’

‘Like the blonde girl…Tish?’

‘Yes, she is my first one.’

‘Your first one what?’

Silence, then, ‘I know what he does to them when they arrive David.’ She glanced up at me. ‘So do you now. I have made a deal with Faisal that I will stop working with men and work with the girls he brings in.’

‘What do you mean work with them?’

‘I will train them when they arrive.’

‘You mean you will teach them how to be prostitutes?’

‘Yes, we will have a bigger apartment, a villa maybe, and I will look after the girls, teach them what they need to know.’

‘You’ll take over Faisal’s role is that what you mean?’

‘My lessons will be much less painful than Faisal’s, I will look after them.’

‘Like Faisal looks after you? Yasmin, you’re going to be a pimp, a madam, a fucking slave trainer. Do you think you’re doing them a favor? You’re just making it easier for Faisal.’

‘Yes. But that will make it easier for the girls David.’

‘Easier would be taking everything you have on Faisal and running so that he never does this shit again, spill the fucking beans.’ She bit her lip and stared, nervous and angry at the same time. ‘Easier on the girls would be killing him while he sleeps.’

She exploded, ‘And you would do all this would you David? Tell me how. Who would listen in this country to a woman without a passport, without money and without a man? You tell me who? Your charities? Your governments? Your politicians? They all ignore what’s going on here, even when they see it with their own eyes, you know this.’

Her fists clenched and her arms trembled.

‘You,’ she began barely able to get the words out. ‘You come here with your tears from one night of pain. You have no idea what it is like. Night after night after night, especially for the young ones, and you want me to walk out on them?’

‘I….’

‘This is not a nine to five David. There was no one there to help me, I have been alone all these years and I know what Faisal will do to those girls if I am not here, the same as he did to me, to you, the same as he did to Ditta.’

‘But it won’t get any better Yasmin, they may get gentler treatment from you, but they will still be used by Faisal and every John, Dick and fucking Harry who wants to poke fresh blood out of a baby.’

‘That is exactly why I have to stay.’

‘That is why you have to go; you’re just delaying the inevitable.’

We were both out of breath from shouting at each other. Tears were streaming down Yasmin’s cheeks. My ribs ached and the bones in my face felt crushed, broken, like us.

‘He’s never going to let you go,’ I said, reaching for her arm. She shook her head and shrugged me off. ‘Yasmin, just come with me, we’ll find a way out together.’

‘I can’t David…I just…I can’t….’ she said and ran out of the room, slamming the door hard.

I finished dressing. The mirror showed the face of man I barely recognized anymore.

Yasmin was in the bathroom with the door locked. I knocked.

‘You must go David.’

‘Not without you Yasmin.’

I leaned my head against the door and felt the pressure of her body on the other side. ‘Go without me. Nothing you can say will make me leave,’ she said.

‘What about us?’

‘There is no us.’

‘Yasmin….’

‘David,’ she moaned, ‘Why are you such a fool? It was just an act, do you not understand? Are you completely stupid?’

‘Bullshit…you’re lying.’

‘I took your money didn’t I?’

‘Yes, but….’

‘It was just a game, since the first day we met. I wanted nothing to do with you. Faisal was the one who made me call you back.’

‘Yasmin….’

‘David, understand! I don’t need you to rescue me, this is what I do. You are just a customer. I was just playing a role. Fulfilling your fantasies of being the big hero, nothing more.’

The surface of the door splintered when I punched it, leaving a fist shaped hole in the hollow interior of the imitation wood. She slammed it back from the other side and shouted angrily in a mixture of Arabic and Farsi.

‘Do you think you are the first man to fall for me?’

I had no answer for that.

‘People will be coming soon,’ she said more softly. ‘I will not leave here with you. Not tonight. Not ever.’

Despite her words every fiber in my body was still screaming kick the door down, drag her away from there, rescue her, but even if I did all of that she wouldn’t thank me, and we had nowhere to go. I felt her breath rattle against the door.

‘Go now David, before it is too late.’

She had made her decision. I had to make mine.

I took enough money for another cab and left her behind.

I made the driver wait outside the post office on Al Wasl Road. I wasn’t going back to the apartment but I needed cash and a way out. The private mail boxes conveniently acted as both a mail drop for the citizens of Dubai as well as a cheap no questions asked safety deposit box for people like me. With no keys I gave the attendant my password and he opened the box for me. I ignored the junk mail and retrieved my passport and the thick manila envelope from the bottom of the box. I slammed it shut, the last time I would ever use it.

The envelope contained a combination of leftover holiday dollars, euros, dirhams and sterling, enough to get me out of town and on a no frills flight out of the Middle East.

I had one last stop to make before I left town. After he protested that he didn’t have any credit a $20 bill persuaded the cab driver to let me use his mobile phone. Martin could only be in one of three places if he was alive, the office, his villa or the hospital – I couldn’t remember his mobile number but the operator put me through to the Arabian Outlook switchboard. His secretary was working late as usual; and he was in his office.

He had made it. I had no idea how but he was still alive.

***

I told his anorexic secretary to tell him I was on my way. Thirty minutes of rush hour traffic later she informed me coldly that he didn’t want to be disturbed. I burst into his office anyway just happy that my friend was still alive. He nearly jumped out of the window when he saw me. He smiled, and then so did Khadim.

‘Ah fuck, sorry old son,’ Martin said, nodding in Khadim’s direction.

Hindsight told me that I hadn’t thought this through. If he was in his office the day after he’d electrocuted a tent full of gangsters it was because someone wanted him there rather than under a dune.

‘I told her not to let anyone in,’ he said.

‘Well you know how I am at taking advice.’

‘Yeah, you look great by the way…Mr. Potato Head.’

We both laughed. I couldn’t stop smiling, happy to see my friend alive.

‘You on the other hand look surprisingly good. No bruising, no swelling, whose cock did you have to suck to….’ He flashed me a look, ‘Oh.’

‘Don’t even go there Bryson. The only reason I’m still walking is because Arabian Outlook is now the mouthpiece for screw-the-world-enterprises over here.’

I’d already forgotten about Khadim. Martin’s personality always acted like a magnifying glass that made him stand out above anyone else in the room.

‘I’ll be tearing you a new arsehole in the pages of our mag by the way.’

‘That’s alright, I can’t use the old one,’ I said. Martin winced.

‘Yeah. Sorry about that. It’s damage limitation on the Sunset Heights project and anything else they can think of. You, my friend, are the sacrificial goat.’

Khadim was obviously amused by our banter.

‘Hello Khadim,’ I said. ‘Thanks very much for not shooting me.’

‘My pleasure,’ he said. ‘However I really wasn’t expecting to see you again.’

‘Don’t worry I won’t be bothering you anymore,’ I held up my passport. ‘I just wanted to make sure my friend was alright.’