Ch. 1
I was on tour in Egypt, or more honestly on assignment in Egypt. I am a photojournalist for a small women's magazine in New York. They send me off at times to take pictures around the world, of women, culture, whatever would seem interesting to the readers back home. This trip was actually an addition to a vacation that I was taking to the Nile so I had this time more time to sit back and enjoy instead of worrying about glare, angles, and shading.
And leaning back was what I was doing. I had just arrived and settled into my not-technically-a-motel room and was now enjoying a quiet relaxing drink at a nearby restaurant. They didn't have any alcohol, but in truth the jet lag alone kept that desire from being pursued and instead I was sipping a delightful lemonade-like drink called Asiir something.
The coolness of the drink helped allay the heat that had covered the land. The nearby Nile cooled things a little, but ever-present was the sweltering desert heat that told you that you had come to Africa. For a New York Jew with a little too much Irish blood on my father's side, I was having a difficult time compensating.
My usual jeans and t-shirts were imprisoned in their bags and instead I was wearing a thin cotton sundress and a large hat to shield my face. I felt my inner feminist rebel against the clothes, but common sense soundly trumped principle. Besides, my hair was still in its original short condition and I thanked God for that. A cool breeze on the back of the neck is invaluable in the desert.
I glanced around the room passively like a lioness scanning the veldt after a good meal. There were a couple of families, eating together, dressed in mostly Western fashion speaking a beautiful Arabic. The odd disconnect between their mannerisms and dress brightened my spirits as well as the infrequent English words that leaked out of the conversation. A few old men playing backgammon in the corner looked up at her, but the tone of their faces showed that they considered me nothing more than another American tourist, someone to be ignored in the daily ritual of life.
I sighed and looked around some more and then I saw her. She was dressed in a black flowered top and tight faded jeans, the type that became faded with good honest hard work in the dirt. I knew that much of the country, especially in the tourist cities did not place much weight on the burqa, and here I was thankful for that. She was stunning and moved lithe as a cat to a table at the far end of the restaurant.
Cats...I thought briefly back to my college days and especially to a mythology class I had taken my sophomore year. I remembered the tales of Bast, the cat goddess. How she was a beautiful goddess with the head and mannerisms of a cat. Sandpaper rough tongue, mmm...Anyway, in that moment when I saw her, that was what I thought of. That was how Bast would have moved.
She had a skin of an exquisite shade of brown, halfway between the golden light of the sands and the intriguing dark of the Nile mud. It was a bewitching brown that slid race across it like a knife, looking both ethnic and non-ethnic at the same time. It was an exquisite exotic flavor that bewitched my quasi-Jewish mind.
But most of all, it was the eyes that captured me. They were an emerald green that seemed to gleam from across the room and were set in such a secretly smiling manner that I wanted to desperately unlock their secrets. They pulled you in from across the room, holding you entranced and spellbound and weak as a preadolescent.
I watched entranced, but unable to do the slightest thing about it. I was locked into the view unable to move, breathe, think, or even signal my sudden attraction. Below I felt the heat rise in my panties and I wondered how long it had been. The last was Sarah, some 2-3 years ago. She had betrayed me with a male friend I had previously thought to be gay and overnight had gone from my love to a straight chick who mildly disapproved of me. I had foresworn anybody for at least a year after that heartbreak and time and work had kept me from changing that.
In short, I was sublimating hard and the mystery women was unlocking all the hormones I had repressed through the betrayal and fights and slamming doors. I felt like I was back in high school again, lusting after the cheerleaders in their short skirts as they blew kisses to their men on the team. I was in rut and I was helpless to do anything about it.
After an hour of internalized debate over whether to walk over or not, the decision was made for me as my mystery women left the restaurant jovially exiting and talking blasely on a small Nokia cell phone.
Once she was gone, the spell broke and I felt like a moron. I had sat there and let her slip from my hands. She may have been a heterosexual or in a relationship or one of a thousand things, but I had never got up to even inquire. Dejected and self-blasted I finished my drink, it was now watery and warm from the time spent in my hand and a waiter slowly came over and gave me my bill for the drink and the small plate of what I learned later to be pigeon that I had ordered to prolong my visual worship of the mystery woman.
I walked out into the dwindling day to return to my hotel and get a good rest before the next day's tour to the Giza pyramids. My steps were forlorn and melancholy and every thought turned into a dream about the mystery lady and her emerald eyes.
I masturbated furiously back in the hotel, desperately plunging my fingers in grim hope to allay my mad desire and infatuation that was awakened in me, but nothing seemed enough. I wished I had brought my 7-minute girlfriend along, but the security measures that have been in place since 9-11 have made me wary to bring any items on a plane that are "too personal."
Frustrated I fell asleep my fingers still buried in my naked cunt and dreamed softly of emerald eyes and earthen brown skin.
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Ch. 2
I awoke irate to my telephone wake-up call. My evening fantasies had caused me to toss most of my sheets and pillows off the bed and left my eyes puffy and red with lack of sleep.
I was thus, not in the best of moods when I arrived at the tour jeeps. I was awake, a cold shower, very cold (I'd complained quite angrily to the manager of the hotel about the odd lack of hot water in my room) had seen to that. I had a cigarette dangling out of my mouth. I'm not often a smoker, but when I'm angry or frustrated, I find myself lighting up. I had my shades on, black and tilted forward as if daring someone to comment on them. On top of this I had my large camera bag draped over my shoulder.
Overall I looked more butch than I had in awhile despite my continued wearing of my sundress. I briefly cursed my Irish blood for making me so averse to the dry heat of a desert and hoped the strength of my deodorant would last throughout the trip.
As I approached the group my mood darkened a little. The pervasiveness of cowboy hats from Americans who'd decided that they might as well check out the Pyramids before all the Muslims rebelled against them. They were talking loudly about how stupid A-rabs were and how they couldn't get a good Budweiser down here and why did McDonalds cost so much.
The young drivers loaded the bags up onto the jeeps and tried their best to smile away the insults against their religion and people and I empathized quietly behind my seething. If there was anyone who knew how bad an American tourist could be, it was me.
I might have remained in such a fearful mood all day, if it had not been for the arrival of the tour guide for the trip. The cigarette dropped into the desert sands of the edge of the city with a soundless plop. I recognized immediately the bewitching emerald eyes of my mystery woman from the restaurant. My jaw froze in shock as I watched her hold her clipboard in front of her and march confidently like a ring-mistress around the jeeps.
My heart skipped a bit as she turned towards me. I wondered if I was awake or dreaming as she stared into my eyes and approached. I felt drawn, excited, lost as she approached close enough to smell the heady scent of the Nile on her. Inches from me, she stared deep into my eyes and my brain was too flustered to do anything but soundlessly mumble syllables.
All of a sudden, the spell was broken as she bent down suddenly and picked up my carelessly dropped butt. She turned away carrying the cigarette and told everyone not to litter in the deserts and to dispose of all their refuse in a special trash-bag on the lead jeep. Her accent of English was slightly mid-eastern but carried much more of a British tone. I would learn later that this was because she had been educated in her youth at Oxford.
The voice also carried something behind the stilted London trill. There was an undertone of time and tradition and the shifting sands of the desert and most of all the promise of great things to come. I smiled through the flush of my embarrassment and in a trick of the heat I thought I saw her glance back over her shoulder at me and wink.
My spirits thus lifted and consequently my panties soaked, I fell in with the other tourists who had all ceased their cacophony of Americanisms. We listened all of us entranced as she told of the purpose of the trip, the nature of the pyramids, and the respect we must show when we view them. She then began to read off the jeep assignments.
Whether it was fate or providence or mere coincidence that I got placed in her jeep, I know not, but I was not going to question it. I sat in the seat behind hers while she spoke over the intercom to the other jeeps about the history of the Egyptian people, the complex rituals for the voyage of dead kings into the Afterlife, about the myth of Anubis and the weighing of one's heart against a single feather. The talk was fascinating but in many ways a rehash of the histories I learned in college and I found myself focusing on the beauty before me.
She called herself Angua and through the blowing scent of the desert wind, I smelled her. She carried the Nile with her and its scent of warm wet breezes, reeds, and mystery overwhelmed every sense. I felt myself completely owned by her and wanted nothing more than to taste her, drink in her scent, confirm my suspicions that her beauteous mound would taste similarly like mead. I wanted to get drunk off that taste.
She wrapped up a long talk and took a quick break to down some water in a plastic bottle that she had in her pack. The water running over her lips was agonizingly sweet torture to me and I bit my lip to try and suppress the rising emotions.
Looking back as she drank, she stared deep within me as if tasting my lust, letting it run over her. I felt the stare deep within me as if she could taste the heat of my loins with it and she smiled enigmatically at me.
"What's your name, luv?"
The question burned unexpectedly for a moment and I found myself stammering like a boy at his first strip club. My Irish blood reddened my face like a Christmas ornament as well, broadcasting my extreme embarrassment to the world.
