My life in Syria was nearing the completion of its first year. Much I had learned during this time in terms of local customs, behaviour and cultural barriers. But one thing had certainly undergone a profound change: my personal perception of the Arab woman in her society and towards me in particular. Of course, encounters between men and women were not as easy and manifold as in the Western society. But when they happened, they climaxed in such an incredible amount of energy and unleashed a longing previously unknown for me. From the few sexual encounters that I had had with Syrian women I was able to gather that they were unparalleled in their amazing intensity.
So I did not regard women in this society as a strict taboo anymore but happily played their little games of flirtatious interchange, be it on the streets, in restaurants and cafés or in official meetings. Apart from opening some side doors when it came to gathering information or needing a special favour within the governmental sector, this behaviour rewarded me with some gorgeous smiles and little, unintentional touches of the hands. But of course this did not really satisfy my physical needs, but could only be seen as a nice interlude.
A major challenge and constant source of my special attention represented one of the secretaries of our office. Going by the beautiful name of Rabab, she was a grown woman of 34 years of age. However, her actual life style and behaviour would have been more that of a 22-year old. Unmarried for unknown reasons, she was very shy and hardly had any self-esteem. This stood in harsh contrast to my perception of her female attractiveness that she was obviously unaware of: petite but agile figure; rather slender body but with a nice, round ass; small but well-shaped breasts; short dark and full hair; big, round and trustful eyes; and perfect, shapely lips that originally must have been created exclusively for kissing.
However, she was obviously not aware of all those fine qualities that I gazed at every day in the office. I had tried various times to bring her out of her shell. While sometimes she seemed quite happy about my attention and my compliments and responded with flirtatious looks, sooner or later she would lose her confidence and simply let the advances from my side peter out. Although I seemed to detect more than once a deeply hidden spark of enthusiasm and passion in her, she seemed decided to fit into her self-prescribed role of the office's grey mouse.
When spring time came around, her usual outfit got a little bit more freshened up. One day she came to work with a new, tight t-shirt that revealed the beautiful marble skin colour of her arms as well as a little of her neckline. Surprisingly, she answered to my positive comments with big smile. We had a coffee together and she told me about the pending marriage of her youngest sister. This meant for her that she would stay at home for good and take care of her mother – and she would not have to answer any more gnawing questions about her status as an unmarried woman. Office talk had it that she was in love with a family father and could therefore not consider marriage an option. Seemingly at great ease with this new development in her family, she teased me flirtatiously during our little break.
My spirits were heightened by our encounter and I drew new hope towards getting closer to her. But during the following days I saw her fall back into her same old routine of almost non-existing self-confidence; it was then that a plan started to form in the back of my mind. It could simply not fit in my head that a woman with such beauty and attractiveness could waste away her gifts like this! More and more I was convinced that the reason for this was nobody had actually ever proved to her what she was capable of as a woman – nobody had really brought out the femininity in her.
So I made up my mind: I would try to seduce her in the most pleasing and fulfilling way possible and show her what was really lurking deep down under her surface. A chance presented itself just one week later when she was summoned to accompany my to a meeting in Aleppo as my interpreter – my Arabic was certainly not good enough for conversation at technical level. When she started questioning the sense of her going with me – her usual attempt to sneak out – I put my arm around her and pulled her close to me: "Rabab, you know I always value your services as my interpreter. Without you I would be lost in those meetings, you know that."
Still she tried to wiggle her way out: "But I am not really good at translating and I just don't see much sense in me being there!"
I turned her around a little and looked her straight in the eye: "Rabab, there is something else I wanted to tell you. I was really glad to see you so happy just some days ago. Now you appear to have fallen back into your usual routine. We will make this trip to Aleppo a special one, I think you deserve a special treatment..."
"No, I don't," she interrupted.
"Yes, you do! Now stop this putting yourself down all the time! You are attractive, you are beautiful and you have all it takes to be captivating woman – but you don't make anything of it. Please give me a chance, just this one evening, and I will spoil you like nobody has ever done before."
"But...," she tried stubbornly to protest, but I cut her off.
"Just this one time, please. Let me guide you through a wonderful night, and you won't regret anything, I promise." I paused for a little while and searched her eyes. "Do we have a deal?"
She finally surrendered and her answer came as little more than a whisper: "Ok, fine, and I will not complain." And with a smile half defeated and half proud she confirmed: "I promise."
Three days later, we were on our way to Aleppo. As usual, she had organized the logistics and reserved us two hotel rooms in one of those wonderfully restored old town houses. Accepting my request for a king-size bed in a half-embarrassed, half-smiling manner, she had dutifully complied. We both did not quite now what to expect from our deal, that was more than clear. During the 4-hour ride in the car, we tried to ease the tension between us by doing small talk, which actually was quite pleasant; never before, I had seen her so blithe, easily laughing away and enjoying the ride and the conversation. Ever so often, our looks met for short intervals: the anticipation of what possibly lay ahead of us was clearly mounting.
Although I did not really know what to make of her behaviour, whether she actually and fully realized the extent of my intentions or not, I knew there was still a considerable chance that she might try to sneak out of our deal. In any way, I would not give her many chances for that. If she really did not want this to go forward, of course she could always move out; but if it was just for her sense of false embarrassment, I would know how to overcome this. My plans to seduce her were unshakable and my preparations were perfect.
