Love Is a Ind of Madness

This is my first entry in the Romance category, and is influenced by some of my favorite novels that deal with similar settings and themes. Please note that there are some elements of nudity and sex, however they are plot-serving, explored sensually, and are less-explicit. I hope you enjoy it!

***

I arrived at the port of Abou El-Said on the coast of Egypt shortly after the end of World War II. The city had come through it largely unscathed and was an already bustling enclave for artists who either could not make it in Alexandria, or had no intention of trying. Flooded with a fresh batch of refugees nearly every day, it was a complex society; hypnotic and intricately woven with the disparate elements of numerous cultures, each determined to settle into a functional coexistence with the others.

I accepted a new job offer there at the music conservatory, on the one hand for the excitement of a new city and its multifaceted culture, but also for another, more indulgent reason. Surrounded by a wider culture of conservative religious values, the departure from which typically brought great shame, or even violence, Abou El-Said had a reputation for its carefree attitude toward the enjoyment of earthly pleasures. This was no doubt the result of numerous influences- Jews, Arabs, Europeans, Africans, even small enclaves of Indians and Chinese that had arrived for the business of trade, who were all squeezed together in a city rife with artists, musicians, and a literary crowd, all eager to explore themselves and each other.

And yet- there was no prostitution, at least not openly, for the government crackdowns were swift and fierce. Rather, there was a distinct tradition of open sexuality, as an unspoken understanding had developed that everyone should make themselves privately available, subject to their own discretion, of course, to whomever desired them. Naturally, I longed for this mythical Bohemian atmosphere that seemed like certain paradise.

I found such a paradise, in some ways, but was unprepared to have to search for it beneath layers of poverty and broken people. The clash of old and new, poor and rich, pedestrian and glamorous was evident every day, in the parks, on the quays, in the streets, as scrappy kids wandered the lanes picking through trash, dodging honking black cars with tinted windows that rolled past them, containing the rich wives of oil sheiks on their way to or from a rendezvous with their secret lovers.

I found myself wandering through the dizzying maze of streets, all looking the same, choked with the same heavy air, stained with the same yellow clay dust that began to coat my skin, such that I melted out of view, becoming the same race as everyone else. I was officially part of the downtrodden, the curious, the quirky denizens of Abou El-Said.

It wasn't long before I found myself on the prowl, young and desirous as I was. In my defense, I was still inexperienced and undisciplined. I had not yet learned about the higher planes of emotion that I later came to associate with a meaningful relationship. As such, I penetrated the social gatherings with ease, meeting countless flighty artists and iconoclasts, and one rather spirited contortionist, some of which led to the briefest of overnight encounters. Still, it wasn't long before I found these encounters woefully trivial and horribly meaningless, as much as they addressed a basic human need. I inevitably wanted more and I hunted for it everywhere, until I soon imagined a whole future built around it- prompted by a single glance.

***

It happened in Café Al-Majid, by a little square I often frequented to visit an old woman who sold the best Basbousa, a small semolina cake soaked in tangerine syrup. I had just finished my coffee and was about to relax with the morning paper when a woman strolled in with an air about her that expressed a certain defiance against the world. She was tall, with long black hair that traveled behind her like a sheet of silk, and piercing green eyes accented with a thin layer of eyeliner in the typical style amongst Egyptian women. Her dress, however, was distinctly European, French perhaps, boldly sensuous and impeccable in taste.

I felt a certain instant recognition, a flash you might say, of everything that was possible between us. Long strolls through the public squares. Elegant dinners that ended with hot-blooded and impassioned encounters in my tiny flat. An endlessly robust and torrid romance. I dwelled inwardly on this so long that I almost missed the look she gave me. It shot straight across the room, dismissive of the countless others who at that very moment had no less claim upon this imaginary future than I, until it fixated on me, the sole recipient of her fastidious attention.

Upon completing her simple transaction with the café owner, the woman made her way back toward the door, but not without making it known that I had captured her curiosity, allowing her quiet glances to linger all the way to the exit until they were abruptly severed by the frame of the door. I felt suddenly lost, like I had been spinning aimlessly through a kaleidoscopic wonderland only to find something to which I might remain rooted, and then, just like that, to see it waltz back out into a sea of humanity. I became grief-stricken at the fact that I might never see this woman again. Regretful that I did not immediately rise to follow her, to find out where she lived, what she did, and above all- what her name was.

The man next to me had been smoking a hookah for some time, catching my attention now and then only because of his heavy sighs that seemed to now finally come into alignment with my darkened mood.

"Excuse me," I said, interrupting his long inhale. "Did you see that woman who just exited the café?"

He rolled his eyes lazily toward mine, stared at me for a moment, then nodded.

"I don't suppose you know who she is?" I asked.

He nodded again.

"Ah!" I exclaimed, suddenly elated. "Who is she? What is her name?"

He removed the pipe from his mouth and let out a long sigh, exhaling a plume of smoke that stretched outward across the table as if eager to reach some destination, before suddenly losing its volition, sinking downward, and dissipating into thin air. He tapped his finger curiously on his nose, then began to shake his head back and forth.

"I'm sorry. You know who she is, but not her name?" I asked, desperately needing clarity.

"I know her name," he mumbled.

"But you won't tell me?" I continued, confused.

The man looked at me, his sunken, sallow eyes expressing some kind of odd compassion, then said: "Friend, it is better that way."

He placed the pipe back into his mouth, closed his eyes, and relaxed once again into his private cone of silence.

***

Days later, I suddenly found myself ensnared in the sweetly woven threads of the Fates, believing that all would soon be resolved.

By means of mere synchronicity, I had entered the very same square that morning, invigorated by fresh mint tea and a generous piece of baklava. There I spotted the same woman from the café, navigating the odoriferous corridors of hoi polloi that only the stray cats seemed equipped to safely traverse. I immediately quickened my step and pursued her, undetected, anxious to determine her location so as to return at a more convenient time and offer the proper salutations.

I followed for some time until we entered a small passage that I knew quite well to be a shortcut into the old quarter. There I saw her duck into a storefront in the broad shadow of a local bazaar. It was a simple watch repair shop which I felt I must have unwittingly passed a thousand times to date. I stood behind a small column across the street, studying the indistinct movements of her body through the clouded windows until it finally vanished. After some time, I chanced to look up and spotted her again by a small window of an apartment above the store and realized this must be where she lived.

I spent the entire day working up the nerve to approach her the following morning, planning to retrace my exact steps to that location in order to greet her at her home and, possibly, place of business, for a formal greeting. What would I say? How would I win her affections? A myriad of thoughts turned over and over in my mind until I discovered that the entire day had passed me by and I sat at the edge of my bed just as unprepared for the encounter as I had been hours earlier.

The next morning I was up early, nervous as could be, yet still naively inspired by the endless possibilities of romance that lay before us. I passed smoothly through the busy streets, suddenly finding great beauty in things that I had previously overlooked, all on account of the idea I had in my head about how my encounter would go, and what wonderful things might come of it.

My heart started beating as I approached the small shop, hoping that I had not missed an opportunity to catch her there. I stepped inside, finding the air within distinctly cool and fragrant with myrrh. An old man sat crouched over a watch, peering through a glass and tinkering away.

"Excuse me," I said, with a polite interruption. "I have a watch to repair." I removed the watch from my wrist which, in a moment of sudden obviousness, I set about gently sabotaging just that morning in order to present myself with the necessary excuse for entry.

The man did not budge from his craft; he continued to employ his dramatic focus on the task at hand without so much as raising his eyes to me. After a few moments he said, "Set it on the counter."

I did so.

"The woman who lives upstairs, is she here?" I continued.

The man let out a soft sigh. "Aïssata!" he barked. Suddenly I knew her name. "Aïssa!" he shouted, finally sitting up and turning toward a dark stairwell behind the counter. I wondered who she was to him that she alone had the power to move him to such frustration. Was he her father? Her employer? He seemed too disinterested to be her lover...

I heard the stairs creak as bare feet compressed against them. Soon Aïssa descended the narrow wooden stairwell and wafted into the room like a breath of fresh air. She seemed to be barely out of bed, thanks to my unusually early visit, wearing an old Chinese silk robe that looked like it had been passed through many owners and long since lost the luster of its former glory. I observed the soft movement of her breasts beneath, which sent shiny waves down the front of her dress as well as down the length of my own spine.

"Good morning," I said cheerfully, "I apologize if I have just woken you."

Aïssa did not seem the least bit surprised to see me. In fact, she gave me a funny look, as if she had been expecting me earlier and was indignant about my late arrival. She crossed her arms and faced me, as if expecting me to continue.

"Uh... I have brought this watch to repair. It happened to stop working at the café a few days ago. How fortuitous that its movement ceased the moment you entered the Café Al-Majid that morning! The man sitting beside me said that he believed you worked here at this shop where I might get it fixed."

I completed my explanation, proud to have devised it, and certain that it would be just the welcome means that I needed in order to build an amicable rapport with this mysterious woman.

Aïssa stared at me for a few moments with a look of incredulousness that confused me. Finally, she said, "And it took you three days to bring it to me?"

I blinked at her.

"I suppose you did not need to know the time of day, in all the hours that have passed in between this and our first encounter... In all this time, you were content to reflect on the passage of the sun, and distinguish between the time for lunch and the time for tea by carefully calculating its precise movements. Did you hear that, Sadiq? This man is a sundial!" she laughed. The old man did not move.

I was taken aback by the sudden outburst, unsure why or how the fit of irritation had even come about.

"I'm sorry... I do not understand..." I began to say.

"You do not understand, and yet you expect me to somehow believe that you did not loosen this screw and block the mainspring like so many before you have done in order to come to know me," she explained, gesturing to the apparently novice job I had performed on my sadly crippled watch.

I began to open my mouth but I could not think of a thing to say. I felt my face becoming hot with embarrassment.

Aïssa continued, "How I have observed you... in the café, in the square, following me here just yesterday like some silly schoolboy. All the while reflecting on the way you nonetheless intrigued me, on the fact that there was something different about your eyes, which many have said are the windows to the soul. And yet here you are, lacking even the courage to admit the simple affections that led you to this place. How foolish I was! How many times must I learn and relearn the same lesson of how simple-minded men are, and how imprudent I have been in my judgement of them!"

She began to laugh, not at me, but at herself. Before I could recover from the blows she had just delivered, I found myself yet again surprised by her unpredictable behavior.

Aïssa began to wave her hand in circles dismissively. "Yes, yes, I understand that you have come all this way. You've spent days watching me come and go, desirous of me, undressing me with your eyes, without having the decency to admit it. Shall I take pity on you, then? Shall I offer you some crumbs and send you on your way? Yes, I think I shall like that punishment..."

Without hesitation, she flung her robe open before me. There she stood, nude as the day she was born; her lithe, sensuous body leaning on one foot with her arms thrown apart, but with a certain self-absorbed grace that brought to my mind the image of Aphrodite Anadyomene, rising from the foam and spume of the sea, upon the pearlescent shell from which she was just birthed.

I gasped inwardly, succumbing to the shock of her perfect body and its rarefied beauty. Her breasts were full and mirthful, pointedly tipped with delighted brown nipples that seemed to defy her dour mood. Her soft stomach was graced with a dainty navel gently acquiescing into itself. The dark fur of her sex tucked neatly between her long legs seemed to me so full of secret charms and mystery. And yet, it was none of these things that truly held my attention.

There was a complete beauty that Aïssa possessed. Not an eyelid, nor an ear, nor the sweetness of her gently sloping nose seemed any more or less beatific than anything else. I was completely and utterly shattered by the revelation of her entire being, expressed here physically, and as such somehow limited to just the surface of what I imagined to be a deep and bottomless splendor.

After a few moments of my incredulous silence, she abruptly shut her robe and scoffed.

"And yet still you stand there and say nothing!" Aïssa exclaimed, as if insulted. The sudden awareness of mild pain led me to the distinct realization that my mouth had been opening and closing silently on its hinge, but emitting no sound.

Aïssa slammed my watch on the counter beside Sadiq, who had not moved one inch during the entire speech that had just ensued, nor the dramatic unveiling that followed. "He will fix it. Come back this afternoon!" she snapped. Then she casually waved me off before turning and vanishing up the dark stairwell into the apartment above.

I stepped out onto the street as fast as I could and crossed to the other side. The sun, which had been so gentle just minutes ago was suddenly harsh again. The dust swept down the street in waves, having previously left me spared. Everything that had been renewed with beauty had suddenly returned to its savage, unwelcoming state once again.

I spent the hours that followed wondering what on Earth had just happened, and fearing that all was now lost. I began to say goodbye to all the dreams I had for our future, as if I were about to bury a dear old friend. Next, I passed into a state of anger toward myself. Then, finally, depression.

Yet, Aïssa would not leave my thoughts. She remained there, haunting me, and I felt somehow my grief was not yet finished. I clung to the hope that it might still be transformed into something else...

***

How odd it is that man, in the midst of his absolute misery, will always find some way to make it worse. To twist the knife.

To console myself for the sadness that I had come to associate with unrequited passions, I made my way that afternoon to the public baths. This, ironically, fed exactly the same attitudes I had toward Aïssa and was chastised for. Namely, to engage a fostering of carnal desires without having the courage to own up to them. Still, I was wounded and retreated from my encounter with her like an injured animal licking its paws.

Due to the oppressive heat and dirtiness of the city, bathing was a constant ritual. It was done in the open, although confined to elaborate facilities designed for this purpose, with all genders and ethnicities mixed together in an orgy of scouring and sponging. Never before had I been privy to such a frank display of widespread nudity as I had been witness to in those places. There were wide bubbling azure basins filled with lumbering figures that seemed as if to be boiled alive. Dark, cavernous hammams choked with a cluster of sweaty, naked flesh. Avenues of washed and unwashed bodies streaming to and from the various pools, dry saunas, wet saunas, as well as open air lounges where young men and girls who'd just acquired the adulthood necessary for admission stood about cowering over the bare state of their bodies as they withstood the shock of this abrupt lesson in human anatomy.

Aside from the obvious means of enjoyment that one could secretly partake in at such a place, the thing that interested me most about them was the complex but subtle interactions that developed amongst the bathers. A language that permitted an expression of desires that, at times, seemed almost adulterous in nature. It was there that I began to understand the basis of the distinct experience of sexuality that existing in Abou El-Said:

It was systemic hypocrisy.

Just down the street it was not only forbidden to screen the latest Hollywood production on account of the scandal it would surely cause, but equally forbidden to request its very showing. And yet, in this place, it was sufficient enough to be present for the purposes of "becoming clean" that I was able to enjoy the experience of strutting about unclothed, imagining that the beautiful young women, equally unclothed as they'd be, were just as moved to emotion by the very sight of my frankly broadcasted manhood as I was upon observing the earthy riches of their voluptuous and exotic bodies.

I drowned my sorrows at the back of a large hammam, roused to life by the lascivious display of hot flesh, beaded with sweat and passing in and out of states of unmistakable arousal. Knowing nudity to be a great equalizer, I had expected to see an evenness to society not typically a feature of life in Abou El-Said. I saw instead the social orders of daily life illustrated with a crystal clear familiarity. There were those who one was permitted to approach with unchaste interest along side those who could never be touched, who stood like gods and goddesses amongst men, and who could only copulate with their own rare breed. And, of course, there were those I was warned stood below me, the untouchables, with their apparently lewd appetites and conspicuous undesirability.

I happened to sit beside a lovely Greek girl who showed subtle but keen interest toward the object I managed conspicuously between my legs. For a moment I felt unchained, freed from the torment of having to fight my own desires, finding my own appetite reflected not just in the slight smile of the girl's face, but in the sharp pointedness of her nipples, and the distinct discomfort down below that urged her through a series of slight corrections to her posture.