Throwing Sparks (16 page)

He told me to step into the bathroom and, when I remained rooted to the spot, he substituted miming gestures for his pidgin Arabic, indicating I should undress fully this time. Seeing me hesitate, he came up to me and took the matter into his own hands, stripping me of one item of clothing after another, smiling all the while. I grabbed his hand forcefully, but he treated me like a poorly disciplined child making a fuss over bath time. His features clouded over as the hint of a threat hung in the air.

I submitted to a thorough scrubbing. Every dead and dry cell on my body was exfoliated, my skin was conditioned with almond, walnut and pomegranate oils, lotions and ointments were rubbed on and, finally, a dusting of warm-scented powder was applied to attenuate the shine. I glowed.

I put on a cotton robe and the Filipino servant left me to lie down, my head swirling with unanswered questions. Issa had communicated no details about my prospective work beyond urging me to demonstrate total compliance with any command I was given. The image of Tahani’s tear-stained face overshadowed any other thought and her pleading cries crowded out every concern I had. I could not imagine what was about to happen nor anticipate that what I had just been subjected to was a harbinger of things to come.

The sound of approaching voices put an end to my reverie and the Master burst into the suite accompanied by four men who laughed and jostled raucously as a fifth man was dragged in wailing and flanked by two black manservants. The man was imploring the Master, swearing on his life that he would never again be guilty of insubordination.

His pleas for mercy mingled with Tahani’s and their two voices reverberated through my mind.

Working quickly together, the servants stripped the man naked and threw him on to the bed where I lay. The Master
seated himself across from the bed, flanked by a stony-faced acolyte on either side, while the other two busied themselves setting up a video camera and the African servants stood at attention by the door.

‘I want to hear him screaming at the top of his lungs,’ the Master said.

Only then, seeing the naked man on the bed, begging for mercy, did I finally realise with rising dread what was expected of me – the nature of the work I was to do at the Palace. I could not conceive carrying out the task expected of me, especially with all those eyes following my every move and being recorded on camera to boot.

‘I can’t do anything under these conditions,’ I said, the vex­ation I felt showing in the words that tumbled from my lips.

The Master looked pointedly towards the figures of the two black manservants looming at the door and winked at me. ‘Those two will take good care of you then … and you’ll end up being known as a whore.’

At that moment, the door opened and a smartly dressed waiter stepped in with a trolley filled with an array of alcoholic beverages. I had never seen anything like it. He busied himself mixing drinks for the Master and his acolytes, and complied with an order to pour one more drink, which he thrust towards me.

‘This should help you take care of business,’ the Master said. ‘But don’t make it a habit.’

The victim’s skin was as soft and clear as that of a woman stepping out of a scented bath; despite that, I imagined that he would not be easy to handle. I was not used to docile prey. He had not stopped pleading for mercy, his face streaming with tears, swearing he would be as a ring to the Master’s finger. His entreaties fell on deaf ears, however. I too felt like crying out to be spared the task that awaited me. Notwithstanding the general mirth the pleading seemed to induce, the Master’s sharp glances clearly indicated that his patience was exhausted.

I needed a few moments to recover myself, but with the threat of being administered my own medicine by the two Africans, I quickly complied, following the directions of the cameraman who seemed experienced at filming such scenes. He asked me to repeat several moves as if he were producing a film to be entered into some competition.

That night I was overcome with disgust at what I had been doing all these years in the dark alleyways of the neighbourhood. I had abused many young boys, completely indifferent to their suffering, and here I was about to get a taste of my own medicine. Even though I had engaged in countless acts of sodomy, I felt as if it were I who was being raped – that I was the one vainly begging for mercy.

*  *  *

I learned that my position at the Palace was an important one and that I was replacing someone whose ‘flame’ had gone out and who had served the first Master –
Sayyid al-kabeer –
in the same capacity. All indications were that the old-timer, Uncle Muhammad, was the retired punisher. I yearned to verify this but it was many years before the opportunity presented itself – or, to be honest, before I summoned up the courage to ask Uncle Muhammad directly.

Life inside the high Palace walls was something else entirely. Principles and values had no place there; we espoused whatever values the moment dictated, whichever ones best suited the Master’s mood.

Whether it was an inability to say ‘no’ or inherent depravity, it took me many years to understand fully the extent of my debauchery. Worldly pleasures are worthless when we do not choose them ourselves. In my view, that is the reason for boredom. The Palace devotees thought otherwise, however. Their hedonism knew no limits and they were forever searching for some new form of gratification – turning to perversion if all else failed. Perverts and deviants are basically motivated by boredom: tired of what is socially acceptable, they seek whatever is novel or uncommon to break the monotony of routine pleasures.

The Master was so jaded that he had a special reward for anyone who could entice him with a new distraction. He had grown disconsolate about most worldly pleasures and felt there were no carnal delights left for him to experience. He enjoyed mutilating servants as much as he delighted in trading jokes with his brother or bringing in dancing-girls and singers from far-flung places. He also indulged in several marriages to celebrities, pretty news anchorwomen and the like, and frequented the world’s biggest casinos. Watching his rivals being sodomised was his latest thrill.

On my very first night at the Palace, before I had even met the Master, Uncle Muhammad had taken me aside and said, ‘Mark my words – don’t hang around here too long.’

I was sitting, waiting to be shown in, when he offered me a cup of coffee in the traditional manner: bowing, as he had done faithfully for the first Master of the Palace. He poured the coffee ceremoniously into my cup and accompanied his cascading gesture with a small torrent of words that I did not fully grasp at the time.

‘You’ll get singed,’ he warned, ‘like a moth dancing too close to a flame. To the high and mighty of these halls, we’re just a temporary convenience. Just like a tissue for a snotty nose, you’ll be discarded soon after use.’ When I responded with silence, he reminded me that money was the root of all evil.

A life of destitution is holier than anything I encountered at the Palace, where nothing was sacred and everything permissible. Without limits to freedom and nothing to push against or to hold us back, freedom is meaningless. I learned late in life that without obstacles or barriers, freedom is a mirage.

*  *  *

On Friday evenings, Aunt Khayriyyah would sit behind her lattice-screen window hoping for a little breeze to dry off her weekly henna application. Whenever she caught sight of me hanging around aimlessly on the street, she would launch into her usual vituperation. ‘Mind you don’t scrape that rear-end of yours sitting in the dirt!’

We thought we would die, as we had lived, drowning in rubbish. The filthy neighbourhood was a Babel of residents who hailed from every corner of the earth and who trickled into the streets every Thursday night like cheap dye that stains everything.

Only one area of the neighbourhood had retained any social cohesion and was still inhabited by the original settlers. The other districts were populated by more recent arrivals, a motley collection of people from the southern part of the country – the Ghamad, the Zahharis, the Qahtanis, the Shahranis, the ’Asiris, the Yamis, the Jazzanis – and a hodge-podge of Bedu from outlying desert areas. There were also expatriate communities of Yemenis, Levantine Arabs, Egyptians, Sudanese, Somalis and Eritreans, as well as Indians, Afghans, Indonesians, Chadians, Chinese and Kurds, and Bokhari Uzbeks, Turkmen, and Kyrgyz who had fled the hell-hole of the Soviet Union.

Catapulted together, this multifarious assemblage of humanity spread deep into the neighbourhood, sharing the daily grind of life all the while dreaming of escape. Soon, it was no longer enough to say that you lived in the Firepit because dozens of smaller contiguous neighbourhoods had sprung up that were named after some event or community. The Firepit had its own elusive history, one that its inhabitants had colluded in writing. Every event in that history – good or bad – could be attributed to someone who lived there.

The Hadhramis from Yemen were the most numerous and were well-regarded by the wider community. The next lar­gest group were the Africans, mostly Somalis, Chadians and Nigerians who were known for their unflagging vigour and unrepentant licentiousness. No one, whether newcomers or long-established residents, was interested in further classifying the residents of the neighbourhood.

The award for manliness would go to whoever took on one of the Africans. If you backed down from the contest, your friends would consider you a coward and it was then best to make yourself scarce and not stray too far from home.

That was a life lesson that I learned early on. I had lain in wait for the least spirited among the African boys and assaulted him right in front of his peers. I laid into him and did not back off until I had secured my reputation as a tough guy.

We did such twisted things in the alleyways that we were often shunned and sometimes beaten by elders in the community who hoped to reform us. In their view, our actions were beyond the pale, and this only drove us to greater secretiveness.

Our depravity exposed us to imprisonment, banishment or a thrashing at the very least. It was like a red light. The opposite was true at the Palace, where no vile act committed within its towering walls would ever be exposed.

*  *  *

The Palace comprised two distinct wings: one for the Master’s family, including a retinue of nannies and concubines, and the other for guests. The two areas were not completely separate since various structures within the compound were common to both, notably the halls, foyers, lounges, gardens and recre­ational areas.

Only a handful of people ventured into the wing that housed members of the Master’s family, foremost among whom was Issa. He was responsible for seeing to the requirements and needs of the women. It was rare to have any news of that side of the Palace and no one knew exactly the connections between the Master and the various women who emerged from a door deep inside.

The women were assigned chauffeurs from a host of Islamic nations, each of them a paragon of honour, temperance and piety. The cars that conveyed the women used one of two roads: one that ran right through the middle of the compound, which was closed during celebrations and festivities, and a back road that followed the perimeter of the Palace along the seafront. This was the preferred route when there were too many visitors and during wild parties.

A luxury car glided to a stop near the family compound and a woman with bewitching eyes rolled down the window. Her
niqab
slipped momentarily off her face to reveal a lustrous complexion and to suggest many other charms besides those distracting eyes.

‘Isn’t Issa back from his trip yet?’ the beguiling young woman asked.

When Issa was away, everything was topsy-turvy – at least that was how it felt. I realised that the young woman was repeating the question and that I had been staring at her the whole time. I was flummoxed.

‘Is Issa back from his trip?’ she repeated.

She was annoyed by my staring into her eyes and urged me to respond as I searched for the ineffable charms that might lurk behind that veil.

‘Lower your gaze or say goodbye to your eyesight!’ she snapped.

Coming to my senses, I mumbled a halting apology which she ignored. She raised her hand against the tinted window and the car resumed its stately passage through the compound.

When I was younger, a sure path to stealing a woman’s heart – and body – was through her eyes. The secret was to gaze into a woman’s eyes longingly and then make all the other moves to reach what lay behind them. It was a lesson I had learned from Mona. ‘Women love being looked at,’ she had told me. ‘They love feeling that you are entranced by them. It gives them a heady sense of their femininity.’

The only woman I have ever known to dislike being looked at was Aunt Khayriyyah. Finding herself being stared at was likely to bring out her most warped traits and spark uncontrolled rage. The merest glance at her would ignite whatever fire lay smouldering inside her. If you wanted to see her enraged or find out first-hand what a mean and spiteful person she was, all you had to do was stare into her eyes.

The men in the neighbourhood knew that looking her in the eye was likely to set off a torrent of obscenities and went out of their way to avoid her, stepping briskly out of view if they happened to come across her in the street. No suitor ever darkened her doorway for fear of that inextinguishable wrath.