Chapter Three: Have and Hold
Sitting on her bed, tears running down here cheeks, Aeriel reflected on all of the terrible things that had happened since her father had moved their family to Cairo. She'd had to adjust to a new school, a new country, a new fucking language, but none of it compared to the news she had received today. Her eyes flitted to the calendar on the wall reflexively for the third time. This date would be burned into her memory forever: February 12th, 1983.
Her mother came into the room again. She had been crying all morning as well. She had in fact been crying for about five weeks, always when she thought that Aeriel wasn't around to see it, but she had seen it, and now she understood the reason for the tears.
There was an uneasy stare between the two. They both shared in the misery of the situation, but independently, unable to cling to one another for support. The sun brightly filtered through the thin drapery, landing cheerily on the off-white carpet, pale lavender wallpaper and pink sheets with ivory lace trim.
I hate pink
, thought Aeriel irrationally as she looked down seeking any excuse to break off her mother's gaze.
A harsh knocking came at their front door, and her mother gasped, fresh tears welling up in her eyes. There was silence, and then they heard footsteps as Aeriel's father moved to the door, and pulled it open. Angry voices spoke in a language Aeriel didn't understand, and then shifted to Arabic. She could only pick out every few words; they were speaking quickly and quietly, and her comprehension was still growing. They were speaking about a payment of some kind, and a promise.
A gruff voice that Aeriel didn't know told her father that he had been given enough time to make his arrangements. He began to say something back, and a smack echoed down the hall, followed by a thud of something falling to the floor. Footfalls quickly transcended the hall, and two men in uniforms that looked vaguely military arrived at the entrance to Aeriel's bedroom.
Her mother swung a directionless fist at one of the apparent soldiers, and the other seized her and threw her to the floor. Now unimpeded, the two men approached Aeriel and lifted her from the bed, one on each arm. Her muscles weak from the stress of the day's revelation, she simply walked along with them, glancing down at her mother, crumpled on the floor and weeping.
She passed by her father in the hall, slumped against a doorway and rubbing his quickly swelling eye where he had been struck. He gazed up at her with sorrowful brown-green eyes, and she swung her head away, fighting off more tears.
The men dragged her from the home that she had just begun to accept, and roughly pushed her into the back seat of an old limousine. She looked out of the tinted windows, seeing the landscape of Egypt for what she was certain would be the last time.
*****
Lying on her lush canopy bed, face slick with a layer of sweat, tears, saliva and semen, Aeriel struggled to take in breath after labored breath. It was the 22nd of May, and her arms and legs were bound to the tall posts at the corners of the mattress, hot red veins of wax still cooling on her stomach and leg. Her husband stood alongside her perspiring form, a candle in his hand.
Gazing up at him with bloodshot eyes she gasped for breath. She didn't even know why she was being punished this time. Their relationship had always been a farce for his sexual amusement, but in the past he had based his twisted fantasies on actual events. This time she had done everything he demanded, but still she lay there on her back, at his wicked mercy.
Walking slowly around the bed he leered at her like a predator stalking prey. The broad tip of the candle began to pool with liquid wax, threatening to cascade downward onto his fingers, but he contained it, held it perfectly level somehow. Aeriel waited with baited breath as she wondered where he would send his next assault.
Coming to rest at the head of the mattress, he turned, and encroached upon her a little. His presence burned in her mind like the candle in the cool air. She saw him coming nearer, heard his feet scuffing along the floor, but more than that just felt him there, like some strange, naked harbinger of pain.
He pressed his knees into the soft bedding, coming nearer still in much the same posture as he had to so recently pleasure himself with her mouth. His weight tilted forward more and more. Aeriel knew better than to expect him to desire oral gratification again; she had come to know him as nothing if not inventive. Fearing the consequences of further angering him however, she played along. Her mouth fell open, allowing him anything he chose.