elusive dream I craved, but even as I said the words, my lower belly ached and my clit throbbed from want of a man I didn’t know.
The fortune-teller continued, “With him you will find immortality.”
I pondered this, though not for long. Immortality? What nonsense. What Near Eastern alchemy he was peddling I could only guess. I doubted I could find a man to fulfill the incompleteness haunting me since my husband’s death and assuage my hunger for the pleasures long denied to me. Still—
“Where will I meet this man?” I had to ask, wanting to believe I could escape my loneliness through this predestined encounter. I held my hands together in my lap to stop them from shaking. If I found such a man in Port Said and found sexual pleasure with him, that would mean I’d crossed the line into another world. I couldn’t go back. I sensed I was at a dangerous impasse by snubbing the staid world of British royals, forcing me to face what I thought I’d left behind: my taste for the sweetest of tortures. I’ll not regale you, dear reader, with details. They will come later.
“You will take him from the arms of another woman,” the man said.
I threw my hands up into the air. “I don’t believe your silly fortune-telling.”
“Believe. It will happen.” He jumped up and put out his hand. “Five piastres.” One shilling.
I paid him, though my face dripped sweat and my lips trembled as the smoky air seemed to close in around me and hold me in its grip. I couldn’t deny the physical reaction I had to his words. Whatever excuse I wanted to use, lonely, frustrated for lack of a sexual partner, I was ready to embrace whatever erotic impulses I discovered in this city of sin, ready to surrender to emotional chaos to feed my hunger without guilt.
I turned around to order another beer and when I turned back, the man was gone.
My hand was still shaking.
The fortune-teller’s words freed my spirit. I was like a bird released from its cage, not knowing I was the bait for bigger prey. I rebelled, ravaged my past and let go of my fears. Looking. Searching. Imagining. My need for sensuality clashed with my need to be rational, and won the fight.
I elected to remain in Port Said.
I returned to the ship and made arrangements for my luggage to be transferred to a hotel. Then I sent a cable to my secretary and oft-traveling companion, Mrs. Wills, in London, telling her I was staying in Port Said. A woman whose starched back never bends, her prompt response was one of concern as well as curiosity as to why the change in my plans. Bookish with gray strands weaving through her dark hair like a melody of lost notes, she cuts a slender figure in her proper dark suits and blucher-style brown oxfords. She’s an asexual creature who neither understands nor approves of my erotic adventures, but I value her friendship and advice. She rarely if ever ventures forth with a personal opinion, believing it isn’t her place to do so, but I would have never found my way in British society as Lady Marlowe without her.
I refused to admit I was profusely affected by what the fortune-teller had told me, his prediction disturbing me in an obscure, mysterious way. Over the next two days, I went out of my way to avoid men, peering over my sunglasses in a dismissive manner whenever a gentleman spoke to me, as if I was testing the fates and their uncanny way of making things happen when we fight against it. But my resistance was as fragile as a dream and just as fleeting when I saw the man I came to know as Ramzi.
It wouldn’t have happened, I’ve since convinced myself, if I hadn’t encountered Lady Palmer fretting about the hotel lobby, looking for her daughter. The young woman had disappeared after leaving an afternoon thé dansant, a tiresome trend consisting of dancing and sipping warm weak tea that has spread around the world from Bombay to Manila to Hong Kong by way of the contingent of the smart set. Lady Palmer was a longtime family friend of Lord Marlowe’s and fancied herself his social chaperone after his first wife died. She befriended me, I believe, more out of duty than true friendship. I found her pleasant and unassuming, though her daughter, Flavia, possessed the frivolous manners of her society stepsisters hungry for wicked games, but only if played according to their rules. No wonder Lady Palmer came to my husband numerous times to ask for his assistance in getting her daughter out of trouble without creating a scandal. He always obliged her with the understated elegance I loved about him. I felt that same obligation to help her when she sought me out in Port Said and told me her daughter was missing.
Earlier she had made plans to take the girl on a picturesque tour of the city, she told me, extolling the values of “going native” in a cart drawn by two mules, riding up and down the tree-lined streets past the lighthouse, then the Victorian buildings with purple-red bougainvillea overflowing on the terraces. Flavia refused to go. She assured her mother she’d have a better time at the afternoon tea dance, insisting she’d befriended some British girls she met on the beach visiting from St. Claire’s English School. That was the last time she saw her daughter. When Lady Palmer returned from her city excursion, Flavia’s new friends informed her the girl had left the hotel.
With a man. A tall Egyptian with a charming French accent, they said. Sweeping her away into his arms as if his galabiya, indigo blue robe, was a magic carpet flying around him, the orange-hued imma on his head contrasting with his black hair, the tightly wrapped turban giving him a courtly demeanor. Bidding the British schoolgirls adieu with a grandiose gesture of his bare brown muscular arm, his large ruby ring set in pearls dazzling them, the girls sighed, speculating he must be very rich and very important.
They said his name was Ramzi.
When I asked my British circle of friends about this Ramzi, no one knew much about him, though I watched more than one spectator-pumped miss sigh with a near-rapturous want, as if she’d gladly drop her knickers for a quick poke. I knew I must find him. Was he the souteneur the fortune-teller warned me about, the man who held the key to unlocking the great waves of pleasure I so desperately sought? I shuddered, though in a pleasant manner. I intended to see for myself.
Wrapped in a black curve-smothering tunic with clasps of bright copper and gold placed between my eyes to hold my nose veil in place, I hired a local guide to take me around the port city to places where men wearing dark-colored gandourah sat under the blue-and-white striped awnings of restaurants, playing games and smoking from nargilehs, water pipes. I kept my distance, my heavy cloak trailing over dirty floors rife with crawling creatures, until—
“Asim knows of this man you seek,” my guide said.
“Which man is Asim?” I asked behind my veil, trying to read their faces.
“The man with the dagger fastened with a leather band to his left forearm. He says Ramzi took the girl to his nightclub.”
“Is he sure?”
He nodded. “Yes. The Bar Supplice.”
“Why did he take her there?” I knew the answer before I asked. The French word supplice meant torment.
His mouth twisted in a dirty grin. “In Port Said, one does not ask why. One knows.”
“Take me there. I will pay you well.” I made him an offer, knowing I straddled two worlds here in a culture that judged me as a lesser being than men, but hadn’t I overcome similar prejudice when I, a commoner, married Lord Marlowe? I couldn’t stop now.
“I get into much trouble if Mahmoud sees me bring you there—”
“Mahmoud?”
“Ramzi’s
