As he shaved and showered he could hear the music. When he stepped out of the bathroom, his first impression was that she was still dancing. Which she was but the lights were turned down. This was a large room, not luxurious, but large enough to have a separate sitting and sleeping area. There was a couch underneath a large flat screen TV and two chairs opposite the TV. With a coffee table in between. Amina had pushed the coffee table completely out of the way and moved one of the chairs out of the way as well. She danced where the chair used to be. On closer inspection she was not dressed the way she was when they came in. She had kicked off her shoes. No big deal, right. But she also had covered herself in the scarves she had been buying throughout the trip.
Honestly, he was intrigued. He liked music in general. The station played a random set of old and new pop music from the US, UK, France, Germany and Spain. He sat down and watched the videos, many of which he recognized. Amina seem to pay no attention to him. Every so often she left her position and got some water.
The scarves added dimension to her undulations. When she spun they flowed outward like a three dimensional time lapsed video of flowers going from bud to full blossom. He focused on the video but some had good music but boring videos. During these he watched her. He assumed that she had tucked the scarves into her waistband and top. Nope. As she danced a scarf would fall from time to time. He started to see more and more of her bare legs. He could see some of back and belly. She had taken one scarf and tied it around her waist like a belt. then she tucked scarves into the make-shift belt. It was sort of like a hula skirt of scarves. He was having a harder and harder time paying attention to the videos. She knew exactly what was going on with him. She could see the affect she was having on him by his gaze, facial expressions and other features.
It so happened that several songs in a row were by a Spanish band, the Gypsy Kings. She sang along with each song and did a sort of bare footed Flamenco, hands over head, she always clapped at the right time. She kept checking on him, she was having the desired affect. At one point he pretended to lean on his arm to hide his eyes from her. She said, don’t bother, I’m not shy or afraid. Pretend we’re at the beach and I’m dancing in my bikini. Logical or not this gave him the excuse he needed to relax. He took her invitation seriously. Soon he was clapping along. By the third song she was completely naked except for two scarves. He was in the groove, relaxed and mesmerized by her graceful gyrations. With each turn he became aware of how much of her he could see. And began to anticipate what else he could see. She must have known the next song very well. It had a very dramatic and final ending. As the song ended she pulled the last 2 scarves from her body. Nothing was left but the make-shift belt.
She walked slowly over to him. He was trapped. He wanted to look. He hoped for what was going to come next. He squirmed visibly in the chair. Inwardly he was at war. Wanting to but fighting not to. She climbed into the chair, one leg on each side him, fully erect in that kneeling position, she took his head in her hands, looked into his eyes and kissed him. She slid her hands from his cheeks to his ears then ran her fingers through his hair to the back of his neck.
She was covered with a thin layer of perspiration that made touching her feel like he was touching a woman at the beach covered in sun screen. He could feel the heat of her breasts just below his neck. He reached for her back and pulled her just a tad closer. She leaned into him a little more. She turned her head and kissed his cheek and worked her way down the side of his face towards his neck. He could smell her. Not just the perspiration or the last whiffs of the cologne she bought earlier, but that unique smell that every woman has. He inhaled deeply. He kissed her again and stroked her back. She kissed his neck again.
In her ear, he whispered hoarsely, Amina, Amina.
Yes
Amina stop, please.
Why
My wife, my sweet wife. She died a year ago. I see her standing right behind you. He still had his hands on her back when he said that. He felt the goose bumps spread across her back.
She screamed, jumped up and turned around. As a child she always hated, beyond loathing ghost stories. They made her skin crawl and disturbed her sleep. She stepped from side to side as if she didn’t know whether to run left or run right. He took one of her hands and put one of his on her thigh and spoke softly.
I’m so sorry. I did not mean to frighten you. Let me explain. Her eyes were as big as saucers, all she could say was What!. She looked behind her again and again.
Amina, Amina, let’s sit on the couch. He gently spun her around and they sat on the couch. Her breathing slowed. She regained her composure. Then she got angry and tried to slap him.
How dare you! How dare you!
Like most men in his situation, he was completely confused by her sudden change in emotion. However, he had learned that it’s best to let a woman express herself without interference. Recently, he learned about Amina’s flare ups. He touched her gently. He looked into her eyes with attention. After a minute she took a deep breath and relaxed.
Ok. Go ahead tell me.
Do you want to put some clothes on?
No, I’m good. Tell me.
I spent 8 years in the U.S. Army as an MP, military police.
What? I thought you were from Quebec?
Not all why did you think that?
Your accent, it’s very strong.
Oh, well I learned French from a buddy I met in Iraq. He insisted that I learn French. If I didn’t work at it he would do mean or humiliating things to me. On top of that the intense learning helped me deal with the stress. I didn’t know I had an accent.
You speak well but with a heavy Quebecois accent. Go on.
After the military, I went to school and got a degree in coaching and found a position in a town close to where I grew up. It was always my dream to become a coach and use sports to teach men how to be men.
Boys need more than sports to become true men.
Anyway, after a year there, I met a magical woman. Deborah, I called her Deb. Most people called her Debbie. She taught math and history at the same school.
Math and history, both of those are necessary to form boys into men. Go on.
I read for information. Deb read to get a bird’s eye view on life. Beyond that she relished the unique relationship that you can form with a book.
How do you mean. How do you have a relationship with a book. That sounds very odd.
On Saturdays, sometimes we would go to used bookstores in larger cities or go from garage sale to garage sale looking for books. She was on a quest to find a certain kind of book.
On math and history?
No, she was looking for a book that had been loved by another person?
What?! How do you do that?
You look for wear on the book. Dog eared pages, notes in the margins, yellow stickies with notes stuck as tabs on the pages.
That makes no sense. Why buy garbage? Was she poor? If the books are damaged and disfigured, even if their old, it does not make them valuable.
I felt the same way.
Then what?
One day, I heard her squeal from the back of a book store. I ran to see if she was Ok. She said, “I found one. I found one.”
What did you find.
I found a book that has been loved.
She raced past me to the cashier to pay for the book. We left the bookstore, went to a Subway to pickup lunch and then went to a park and read.
This book follows the life of a young man. Look!
The book was the collected works for Edgar Rice Burroughs. He wrote about Tarzan and Mars.
Look here. It looks like he received it on his 8th birthday. As he read the book, he wrote notes in the margin. Then he started to add drawings. He didn’t read it straight through or all the time. Look at these two pages. On one side was a penis on the other side a vagina. The graphics made Deb blush and giggle.
Why would she do that?
If you don’t know, I can’t explain it to you.
He continued to read through the book. Well drawn cars, trucks and guns started to show up towards the middle of the book. We’re guessing it was his middle teen years. Girls names and faces appeared and were crossed off. The book was underlined in some places. Sometimes quotes from the text were rewritten in fancy script in the margin. Or quotes from other books or people. “I am the greatest” Mohammed Ali. Or a line from a song. “We will, we will rock you.” from Queen. Girls names would appear then get crossed out. We’re pretty sure he went into the military.
Why is that?
We found the stripes and insignia of different ranks in the army. Tanks, bombers, fighter jets and hummers. We saw a list of men’s names, some were crossed off. Some had a small capital H in a circle next to them. We assumed the crossed off names were either personal enemies or friends who died. The circle-H meant, we assume, that the person went home.
What happened next?
The last 50 pages of the book were completely clean. No markings of any type. We think he died, maybe in battle. His belongings were sent to his wife, girlfriend or family. The book meant nothing to them or it served only to remind them of what they lost. Deb found the book in a stack of books that were going to be sent for out recycling. The book was about adventure and in the margins of the book you could see the adventures of a boy growing to become a man.
Then what?
I became hooked on the idea of finding books that had a similar past. But they’re hard to find. We have managed to find a few books and journals that have story next to a story. She found a journal from a woman growing up on a farm outside of Denver, Colorado. It detailed the thoughts she had and what her life was like at different points in time around the early 1800s. We planned trips based on how many used bookstores were in the target city.
At the mention of journals she perked up. She moved closer to him, still naked, and listened with heightened interest.
What happened next. Speed it up.
Hey! This is my life, not a movie you can fast forward through.
I’m sorry. Please continue.
We got married and spent our honey moon searching the books stores and rummage sales in the Chicago area.
She had come across a copy of the script for Casablanca. Also marked up with comments on food, music and drawings of buildings and the sea.
From that moment on we started planning and saving to come to Morocco.
That sounds so wonderful. You have been truly blessed. But she is not with you now, what happened?
She died suddenly last year. In fact, it was one year ago yesterday. Brian’s lips got tight and his eyes started to water.
How did she die?
He just looked at her. Eyes watering. As if to say, “Really! Really! Does it matter?”
She took his head in both hands again and brought her face right up to his.
I am very, very sorry for the sad ending to your journey with her. At the same time I am very grateful that you were granted those years full of love and adventure. You have opened your heart to me like only one other man I know. I am honored.
Amina stood up before him, still naked and commanded, “Look at me! Look at me from head to toe.” It wasn’t what you would expect. He did so without leering, if one can imagine that is possible. She turned her back to him and said, “Again!”. His eyes followed the flow of her long black hair as it cascaded over her shoulders and on to her back, moved down the spine to the small of her back, her butt, her thighs. He observed the crinkles in her knees, her calves and finally her ankles. As if she could feel exactly where his eyes were she turned as soon as he reached ankles and knelt in front of him and put her hands on his knees.
I am your friend. I promise I will never betray you again.
Again! He looked left and right and moved to stand up.
No, not like that. Sit down please.
Alright.
I am naked here before you and completely at your mercy. You are stronger than I and could lift me and throw me out that window. I have a confession to make. Tonight, I planned to seduce you to get some information. By your story, I am convinced that you have it. I am equally convinced that you would have told me about it if I would have simply asked. I promise, if I ever kiss you again it will not be trickery.
Hasan and I met when we were in high school. At that time we were not really friends just acquaintances. I likee him and I thought he liked me. But we were both busy and had ambitions. He is 3 years older than I. We met again during his last year at university in Paris. We fell in love and married. He had a good job in finance at a local branch of an international company. I had a solid job at a bank. Our first house was a pile of mud I referred to as a hovel. We worked full time, came home and worked on the house. We lived like poor people, scraping and saving at every opportunity. We sold the remodeled house for a handsome profit. We invested again. Our friends were buying nice houses, Beemers, jewelry, and vacations. We prospered. Soon we were comfortable, not rich, but in a better position than most of our peers. We had several different streams of income some very mundane, some very odd, like our camel renting business.
Really, you rented camels. To zoos and fairs for kids to ride on?
Oh no! Nothing that mundane. Hasan, I don’t know how, had developed some relationships with some Berber sheikhs. Whenever a film director wanted camels in the dessert we would coordinate everything. Transportation, lodging, food, shade, handlers and extras if there were chase scenes.
Wow! That sounds really cool.
It was. But then Hasan changed. I don’t know why. I think it happened when some of the movies we worked on actually became a success. We were invited to fashionable events, mostly Europe but sometimes, Los Angeles or Hong Kong. If you’re walking down the street and you have a million in the bank, you’re doing fine. If you have 10 million in the bank you might even say that you are set for life. The people at those events had hundreds of millions in the bank. Money is a character multiplier. Some used their money to do more good. Some used their money to satisfy their lusts and had no shame trading money for services. I invited you to look at me, while I’m naked. I could see by your eyes and your expression that you saw me inside my body. At these events, I could feel men pinching my nipples and worse. After two or three of these events I refused to go scantily clad like many others do. What I failed to realize is that I created mystery with my new look.
And, what does that mean?
Tell me, were you more aroused examining me just now, completely naked. Or earlier, when the veils were coming off one by one?
I hate to admit it, but when you were dancing. I wanted to know what was going to happen next.
There you go. They could see my figure, but their imagination went into high gear wondering what I really looked like. And their lust drove them to action. At one point, Hasan suggested I sleep with a powerful businessman so we could get a big deal. We fought. I argued against the indecency of it. He out debated and out argued me and bribed me with all the good I could do for my family and community. I became a prostitute in my own house. But our fortune soared.
Brian looked sick. He jumped up and ran to the bathroom and vomited. She could hear him retching, then swearing vehemently in English. She had never heard him speak English before.
That is the most disgusting, dishonorable, inhuman thing I have ever heard. I hate slavery of every kind and it just infuriates me.
Amina had been pressured and forced to deal with the shame of her situation; alone and in silence. His reaction brought all the demons of shame into the room at one time. She began to shake and shudder and finally cry out in sobs interspersed with wails of shame. She had buried her shame. She painted over it with jewels and language classes and parkour and every other mental or physical diversion she could find.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I did not mean to make you cry.
He put a hand on her shoulder. For the first time since they had met, she slouched, loosing 3 inches in height. She continued to sob. He put his arm around her shoulder and patted the other shoulder every so often. He spoke not a word.
You did not make me cry.
She sobbed some more. She turned into his chest and sobbed like a child. Sometimes slowing to a whimper. Sometimes rising to a wail. He said nothing, just held her. Finally, after about 20 minutes, she stopped. Patted his chest a few times and stepped away.
You did not make me cry. You allowed me to open the lid I put on the shame and embarrassment I felt. I pretended no one knew. I feel cleansed. Pax?
Pax!
With that they shook hands and she smiled as she wiped away her tears.
He handed her one of his t-shirts. She put it on and sat down.
Frugal Pilgrim 