The sky is massive and dark vlue at its apex, the royal fades to a hazy pale blue on the horizon. which is cut harchly by thress jagges, the pyramids of Geysa.
A woman lifts her hand to her brow, a salute but not quite, it is shield her eyes from the glare, like a peek cap, and her eyes relax a little and stare out at the landscape, her that blue is the same colour as her eyes.
The dessert is hot and shimmers with heat. She stares for a moment longer then drops her hand, the squinting frown returns and she looks west. a sprawling suburb. it is ugly. Antenna and wires and flappng landry. it is young hasty architecture. with no soul, no anchiet lamwnt. the city is Giza, and this is the part that embarreses the mahoym this is the part on no pride, just filth. Independent of the squalor and poverty it shared the same sky, it faced the pyramids, and . the womans nostrils flared, and flared again.
she took a few steps foward in a clusmby effort, and stopped again. she looked back, behind her and then down to her right and then took another awkward step, and slipped, lost her balance and fell into ransic junk under her.
She sliced her palm on a razor sharp lid of a tuna tin. She looked at the tin for a moment and then at the crimson bead of blood swelling in her palm. She turned it over and studied the top side, it was soft and pale, ungly pale inciped white, her skin looked repulsive, and she gagged to vomit, but didn't.
She stared at her foreign hands for a while, flipping them over like a burger chef. Next she looked into the face of the sun, shielded her face with one arm and carefully stood up, and once erect she continued forward and one eye cried a single salty tear.
A black man saw her stand up from the rubbish, he was very black, bournville black, from Senegal and he was holding a hammer.
He had never seen a white woman naked before, well in real life he hadn't, and definitely not in the city dump, like this. He watched her amble along the top ridge of the mountain of waste, like a concussed pig.
She was patchy, pink and beige and tan. Mostly a pinkish tan, like a piglet. The sun had burnt a bikini shadow into her skin and it looked absurd. The light triangle patches on her breasts made her nudity all the more shameful. Black girls where lucky in this regard. Ink pots, that is what he called them. It was odd seeing the white woman equivalent, with the puffy peach areola, it was hardly distriguishable from the rest of the breast, such that there was no change in territory, between the skin tones, they all merged into a nipple.
He had seen white nudity before, but not like this, and not in a way that he could look at her paleness slowly and see her like she was.
In the way you might pick up a shell from the beach an appreciate the miricle of it.
The only references he had of a white womans nudity where sequences chopped up like an advert on the television, which made the womans sex look like a piece of raw chicken, plucked bare, covered with oil and then pulverised by a penis. A penis without a body, no head no face no eyes, just an errection, an aggravated chisel hammering the chickens hole.
Even though she was older than him and past her prime, despite being inimic white, and ignoring she was probaly not Muslim. Nevertheless she was sexually appealing. But it was the teeth marks all over her body that made him drop his hammer. The sound of it hitting the ground that made him look down, and realise that the hammer was not where it should be. Her repulsive trauma made him forget what he was doing.
The bites had that signature cresent moon acs pressed into her skin, the mirrored brackets of bitten skin were everywhere, and different sizes, and others appeared to be of a different species. He could tell by the incisors punctuated, or perhaps ripped the skin in tracks, so that you could feel how she pulled away and tore herself open, and other bites looked reptile. The black man became frightened as it slowly dawned on him, with the weight of evidence embossed on her skin, that she had been signed by the beasts of nature in the oldest most ancient stamp know to all living beasts, the seal of teeth, the mark of mortality, of hunger, of violence, and of course of communion.
The sun had burnt her, and her butt was unusually white, like milk, like sick grass that has been under a tarpaulin for months, it has no colour, just ugly white. Once, as a young boy he saw a man half white, half black, a curse, his mother told him, she also told him not to stare at the man, but he couldn't stop help it. The white skin made him so ugly, but still he couldn't stop staring. The woman passed by. She didn't greet him, she didn't notice and didn't get afraid of his black black face and white curious eyes. He was invisible, is what he wandered to himself, and lifted his hand, he shook his head at himself for such childish thoughts, and looked at the woman again, man thought she must be sleep walking, and again shook his head to himself. It was the middle of afternoon. Nobody sleeps in the middle of the afternoon there is too much work to do, and yet she really did look that way.
He looked at her breasts with there pink nipples and her pubic region and the scruffy wire of public hair. He took a long time to look at her, it was not going to happen again is his life, he was pretty sure of that, and then he immediately bend down to collect his tools.
This woman was the beginning of bad news.
In a strange way bad circumstance was a rare opportunity to. But he was not in Senegal where honour and kindness was simple and well rewarded.
He did not want to be near her when the police arrived, because it would be his fault that she was naked, and they would blame him for raping her, and for the hundreds of bite marks all over her body, the tears in the skin, they would want to know who helped him do these atrocities. The man immediately looked around the heap of stinking waste, suddenly paranoid that someone else might be watching.
There was no one, so he picked up the aluminium case of the stripped microwave, and a huge canvas bag of tools and wires and other scrap metal which had been ripped from expensive kitchen appliances. He head down the steep hill taking long careful strides, the rubbish was untrustworthy, sometimes it would hold, other times it give after it held.
He worked his way down. A black bag burst under his weight and a hernia of maggots peeled open infested with flies. He relteched at the sight, but did not vomit. At the base of the heap sat a grocery store trolley, it was neatly packed and stacked with loot from the junk. Piles and chunks, and sheets of all kind of metal. Great balls of copper wire, all sort of magnet, some arbitrary jewelry which had been lost or swallowed by the drain or hurled into a trash can out of emotional rage. There was not much of that, and it was a pretty treasure of no value. Copper, now that had a price, clean aluminium, iron a good day who fetch him a hot bath and soft bed. Across town there was a scrap yard that paid per kilo. Today was a good day. He placed the microwave case on the floor a stepped into the right angle corner, his weight gently pressing down and unfolding the crease, he did that twice such that the jacket was flat. He collected it and filed neatly with the other flattened metal sheets. He regarded the new piece for a moment and frowned at it, and clicked his teeth and turned around and looked up the hill he had just descended from.
The crazy naked woman was a stumbling shillotte against the top ridge. He checked his strapless Casio digital watch face, hanging on a cord tied to the cart and clicked his teeth again and shook his head. He turned again and head up into the rotten landscape, toward the naked white woman.
She had moved on from where he first saw her, byt he cought up with her, and called to her in French when he was near, announcing himself, making sure shoe was not startled by his blackness, mitigating the sudden scream hiss presence seemed to have on white woman in places that they should not be. She didn't give any apparent signal that she had heard him, or his announcement. He shouted out to her, again. This time she stopped, and stood for a second and turned around to face him. She faced him. He raised the bottle of water, and reached it forward, with a strech, he wanted it to be clear to her that he was not approaching her, he was offering her something. She did nothing. With his other hand he made the gesture drinking by tipping his toward his mouth as if it was holding an invisible cup. She took two paces toward him. He withdrew the bottom quickly removed the lid and extended his arm again. The woman watched his motion, then looked at the bottle for a moment, then her eyes followed along his arm down to his shoulder and up to his eyes. Her eyes where open, but he was not sure if they saw anuthing at all. He waved, and she took three more steps toward him, with her arms forward and passed the bottle and tucked herself around him, she wrapped her arms around his back, and tucked her head into his chest, like a little girl would do.
He felt awkward standing with this arm out stretched, a bottle in one hand and a plastic lid in the other, he closed his arms around her. She was so tiny relative to him. He didn't know what to do, but he did know how to hold her until she was ready to tell him what to do.
She curled her arms into her chest and he could feel her her inflate and deflate against his chest She felt hot ,like a sunburnt, an aggitatned hot. She sucked in and blew out with a second pause between each repitition. He could not remember when last he held another human for this lenghth of time. His sister came to mind. He missed her terribly. She was the only other human being that he had ever hugged where the duration did not get more increasingly uncomfortable, most times a hug is awkward from the very moment it begins. things like are you too hot, you think of when last you took a barh, and if your oder was too pungent, of your embrase was insinuating a secual intention, all these kinds of stypidiyies, that distract you from the fundamental simple gesture of being enbrased. he could smell the woman now. her could identify her flavour distinct from the test of the woeld. she had a scent as opposed to a perfume, her scent was a micture of floral and animal, floral in the sense that a flower attracts an insect, it is primarily a secual signal, and trap ro ensure fornication, and animal by the flavour of meat and saly, and delicate secrete oils in the depth of the skin, and hair folicals, the snimal scent was warm and alive where the perfume was a gigh pirched treble note designed to carch you attention, and in conjunction he suffenly noticd that he was getting aroused by her smell. His arousal had only just begun so he had a few moments to conclude the embrase before the woman noticed what was happening and perhaps jump to a wrong consluction. He was not a rapist, he was just a man, who had not eaten for a while, and was unflortunately hungry in a carnal sense. He felt her take two short deep brethes agaist his chest, and then a moment later she shuffled against him rearrangeing her limbs, and then her one armreached up to hold his neck while the other reached down to rub his groin, her head looked up and her lips parted expectantly and she stood on her toes to lift her mouth to his. His nostrils flared, and sucked in her smell, and his penis was becoming a cock, and it was happening way to quickly to be natural. She was accelerating everything, her flat palm was rubbing him erect. It felt so good, he felt helpless under the spell of her desire. Her lips where soft pink, they parted and a wet tongue stabbed out and in between his lips, softly prying them open, with flaccid stabbing motion. She was tongue fucking his lips, and occasionally driving the tip of her tongue deep into his mouth past his teeth and under this tongue, the underside was smooth like a fresh oyster. She mumbled something each time she kissed him. He did not understand what they meant. She spoke into his mouth, she kissed her words into his mouth, almost as if she was spoke to the soul and he was getting harder and harder then she gripped his shaft through the fabric of his pants and wanked him with his foreskin, her grip was strong and confident. He was so stiff that it was uncomfortable, perhaps even slightly painful from sensitivity and then by chance he opened his eyes and did not expect to see her eyes wide open and staring black orbed into his. The air felt cool against the heat of his erection.
She had changed, her soul had altered it's perspective. Or perhaps this was who she was all along, and the helplessness was the liar. Her eyes where still staring at him, frantically, with the madness of an animal. As a boy he once helped his father clear the roof, where a street at had settled to give birth. It was a litter of four, and they squeaked and squealed blindly. They know my father was there to remove them while the mother was out hunting and eating so that she could feed them later. The mother appeared suddenly at the beginning of her kittens, and with such fury that they backed away. The woman demonstrated this feral rage in her eyes, it was resident to be unleashed, but currently subdued. Her eyes constantly staring and probing his eyes, and she would look into his mouth, tease it open and the stare into his throat, and then she would say a phrase into his monuth, and if this hroat was ear passage of some sort. The black man was comprimesed, He felt as if he had come to a junture in his like a moment which he would be defined by.
Without warning threw the woman off him, he hit her in then chest with both arms pushed her as hard as he could away from him, the force was sudden and she had no control over the centre of gravity and crashed into the garbage floor rudely. The shift of weight upset his balance too and he staggered off balance but didn't fall.
The moment she was detached from him he felt religiously ashamed, he folded his erection into his trousers zipped him self asked for Allah's forgiveness, and was overwhelmed with a profound emotion a deep sadness that threatened to make him cry. He bit his jaw tightly, and sucked air through his node like a horse in gallop. The wicked woman was writhing in the trash, rubbing herself manically, her head jutted up and poked forward and still the words kept poured out of her. They where not from any language that he spoke, or recognised. He had no idea what they meant. But he did recognise the song beneath the words. All songs have an underlying intention, the unconscious expression of the author, perhaps the origin is inspired further back than his generation, these are melodies that sing the shape of a village, folk songs that have no single writer. And then there are songs of union, marriage hymns, songs of victory and of course songs of courage and songs of war and songs of abundance and gratitude. These are the songs that bind us, that unite us, that make us, that excite us and give meaning to dark nights full of silence or woe. The woman's songs was none of these, hers was a song of infinite wrong. A song of undoing a song of where absolute freedom was unleashed, where all things did as they please the raw unbridled chaos of creation.
And free from the sexual trap he felt bilious, as if she had fed him sour rice and sick fish. He leand
The woman stopped masturbating herself and sat up, she was smiling at him, her eyes had dilated so wide that they looked black with a thread of blue, and she smiled at him and leapt
She landed on him squarely and the momenttum carried them to the floor wtha crash, he deflected her by wiping his arm and grabing her right am and this pushed her away and gabe him space to stand up.
Hey you" a mans voice shouted up from below.
The black mans nightmare had been realised in it's absolute entirety.
"Get away from her you nigger cunt" the voice spat.
He looked down in the direction of the voice, it was an over weight tourist, in beige cotton clothing, with a handkerchief on his head, under a floppy hat. He was also beige and pink, like the woman, less pink than her because he had not been burnt as much as her. His language was definitely English, and he jumped into the trash and started scrambling toward them, like a monkey, half running half crawling.
The tourist kept looking up at them, desperate not to loose eye contact, and screaming to the man to "fuck off", and behind the tourist two local policeman entered the trash behind him. The one closest behind the man took out his pistol and fired it in the sky, and shouted Egyptian profanities.
The black man got what he needed and vanished into the dump.
The woman was lying face down in the rubish when the overweight man arrive on the ridge, the man gasped in horror. Seeing that woman would make any man gasp, but this particular man was the womans husband, and he immediately burst into tears, and ripped his cotton coat off to cover her.
Call an ambulence he shouted down the hill, call a fucking paramedic of somehing, Jesus Christ!
Then he very carefully lifted the woman up, and bit his lip as he saw her mangled body, he gasped for breath again and composed himself and lifted toward his chest draping his coat over her red shoulders. She look bewildered again, and head seemed limp and lolled on her shoulders, until she noticed him, and she reached forward and embrased him. Oh god maggie!" he said, and pulled the coat over her. Oh Jesus! he said, don't worry know, okay, help is coming. And she rubbed her groin against his leg, grinding her pelvic floor on his knee and reached down to unbuckel his belt.
The man, the husband, jumped away from his wife. He held out a hand and she again approached him.
"Maggie! Maggie can you hear me, fucking hell Maggie what's wrong with you!" he shouted
She just laboured toward him, mumbling, the coat fell off her shoulders and she tried to dodge his arm but couldn't, at that point the first policeman arrived with his pistol un-holstered. Tony waved at him to conceal the weapon, which he did. She, Maggie that is, gave up on her husband and turned her insatiable lust to the policeman.
The officer didn't know where to put himself, and looked at the Tony, the husband for some kind of acknowledgement. Tony shook his head and jump forward and grabbed his wife from behind pulling both her arms backward, and tipping forward on to her knees like a criminal.
"Quickly" he shouted at the office, "handcuffs, gime your handcuffs"
Between the two of them they cuffed the woman called Maggie, and covered her in the man's coat, as a feeble attempt to restore her dignity, or rather their dignity, and they waited in a disturbed silence for the third man to arrive. Then they could cuffed her legs and the three men carried Maggie down he steep heap of junk, toward the south side gate, the main entrance facing the main road. A few minutes after they had gotten to the oil stained ground level an ambulance arrived. The back doors opened and gurney came out. Maggie was strapped in and the gurney was slid back in. Tony followed the medic into the back and a second paramedic closed the doors behind them. The flickering red and blue light came on with a sirens whoop, and wailed as the boxed wagon drove away.
and swallowed the tourists and rushed them out of the junk yard.