‘The Interpreter’ is the English version of Arabic novel ‘Al Tarjuman’, authored by Ashraf Aboul Yazid, an eminent writer and poet of Egypt

“In our profession, there is no love, there is enough skill to warm the joints during the long winter of exile.”

The Lebanese is elegant, drenched in perfume. He shaves his chest hair, armpits, and pubes like a woman, and moves lightly like a dancer. His ritual begins with breastfeeding, as if his mother hasn’t weaned him yet, and he wants me to dance for him, to the tune of Lebanese dabke music, which he plays on his mobile, as if he enjoys exhausting me before he exhausts me in bed. When he’s done, he sleeps like a small puppy, often naked, without caring to check where his clothes are so I don’t steal them.

As for the Syrian, he’s the greatest flirt, loud, with sharp and cunning glances, studying the chest before rubbing it between his hands, holding the entire breast in his mouth. He plays with the other nipple with one hand, while the other hand wanders aimlessly. He never stops at just once, and almost never finishes without being overwhelmed by panic. He can’t sleep, smokes a little, or takes out a bottle of locally made wine, as if putting out a hidden fire.

The Egyptian is the contradictory one, stripping off his clothes, and before lying next to me, he has already secured his wallet, perhaps even before I return from the bathroom! The majority of them use protection, so it’s safer with them. There are few Egyptians whose virility has passed between my thighs, because my colleague warned me about them—after two or three nights, they turn it into a love story, to get sex for free later. They didn’t succeed with me, in our profession, there is no love, there is enough skill to warm the joints during the long winter of exile, or to revive the scorching summer nights.

One night, I passed by “Abu Mina’s” room. It was a cold night, and I couldn’t bring anyone. He looked at me for a long time, his doubts lingering. He asked if I had someone with me, and I said no. He whispered to me that he didn’t want to mix work with play, and he couldn’t betray his wife and then go to church with his sin.

I asked him if we could have tea together. He said, as if afraid I would rape him:

“And would Naji drink tea with us?”

As for the Kuwaiti, he is frightening, not because he is physically stronger—on the contrary, he uses pills and sexual enhancers to enjoy himself, not realizing that after consuming them, he becomes like an old machine that is moved by new oil, and its gears squeak, like a 1960s Mustang with a new Porsche engine installed. His many questions make sex with him feel like an interrogation and torture session for a rebellious Filipino woman in a Spanish prison. I hear questions but see nothing but the penis moved by the drugs, and then he collapses like a drunkard beaten by the bar’s guards.

Each one comes with his medicine, especially the little blue pill that has proven effective. And what a miser! I pay thirty dinars in “Abu Mina’s” room and take thirty dinars for myself. One day, one of them had no bills except for fifty dinars, and he refused to give me the hundred dinars, asking for the change.

He said:

“Take the fifty, and next time I’ll give you ten more.”

Of course, there was no “next time.”

They resort to renting apartments because the Kuwaiti can’t rent a hotel in Kuwait. That’s what they told me when they were negotiating to lower my fee. And for those who don’t rent an apartment, they come to one of our houses, or one of us arranges a safe room for them.

Indians rarely approach us—the Filipinas. They have a strong belief that we eat dogs, and they are vegetarians. Our paths can’t cross. The matter of fifty or sixty dinars in a night is exaggerated, and it leads them to choose Indian women who accept five or even ten dinars for one night. I heard that in Khaitan, maids charge two dinars for one time, and this “time” might not even last a quarter of an hour from start to finish, arranged anywhere, on the building roof, in the elevator room, or with the guard who prepares the room for it.

Men almost differ in their habits, whether in selecting the comfortable positions for themselves, even if it burdens and exhausts me, and they might want to continue, even if they are exhausted, knowing that their weakness here is hidden, unlike the weakness they see in their wives’ eyes the next morning after intercourse.

They differ, yes, even the same man can be different from one day to the next, for work here doesn’t grant the necessary happiness to enjoy. Most of them come to escape from some pain, they come sad, and they want me to turn them into joyful beings when they put their penis inside me.

They differ, greatly, but there is a magical agreement regarding their relationship with my small breasts, especially the nipple that changes color between pink, brown, and dark red, and in the heat of sucking and biting, it exudes sticky drops, and sometimes one of them hurts me, and I scream as blood flows from it. Everyone wants that small circle, which is no longer reserved for children but has become pleasurable for grown-up children, and they want me, in return, to suck their lower udder.

I learned that nipple stimulation is an essential part of sexual arousal because it stimulates areas shared by vaginal and clitoral stimulation. It is the phase when a woman responds with interest and feels attracted to the man, in a way that almost resembles her feelings toward her child and his attraction. Where are you now, “Rizal”?

My son, “Rizal,” was on the verge of turning two when I stopped breastfeeding him. I was preparing to travel to Kuwait, and if I hadn’t weaned him gradually before my trip, he would have gone mad. I was his only world because his father had fled after his birth. Before disappearing, he said he didn’t want children and couldn’t live with their cries and their urination in the small room my mother had provided for me in our old house, after we failed to secure rent for our own apartment.

One day, someone came to me—one of those who look for the needy—carrying pictures of Kuwait. Beaches, towers, streets, and shopping malls. The last picture was of a large two-story house with an upper floor and a ground floor. He told me that I would work as a nurse there, and that this palace would be my home. I told him I knew nothing about nursing. I studied history and had worked as a teacher before I had “Rizal.”

He said:

“There’s no place for a teacher there. Only a nurse. The salary is generous, and I’ll only take three months’ pay from you. They will give you 300 dollars a month, along with housing and food.”

The beginning was going according to plan, but the elderly man I came to nurse passed away after four months. The lady of the house told me I had to find work, and I had two months to transfer my sponsorship to a new employer. I was left with only the thousand dollars I owed to the travel agent. I didn’t have enough for a ticket back to Manila. I decided to stay.

I went to search for a job I had read about in an ad seeking saleswomen for a clothing store in Salmiya. The girls there looked at me suspiciously, but their leader defended me. She took me by the hand and introduced me to the handsome man, as they called him, who was responsible for operations. He asked her, “Do you vouch for her?” She said yes, and she had only seen me about twenty minutes earlier. She finished her shift and took me during the break, which started at 2 p.m. and lasted three hours, to a nearby pizza restaurant. There, she devoured slices of pizza greedily, like a cannibal, while sipping cola surrounded by ice cubes.

Finally, I understood the secret behind her great confidence in me:

“I’ll take you to my room. You’ll share the room with me. I have an extra mattress, and a box that can serve as your makeshift wardrobe. The important thing is that we’ll work together, in the store and outside it. In the store, there’s slow death; outside, we take doses of life to help us stand for ten hours, talking to dozens of customers and enduring their dullness. These doses of life don’t just refresh our bodies but our pockets too. You seem like a young wife, but you won’t be able to bring your husband here. Marital life is available, and for a price.”

She laughed for a long time and added:

“And you won’t have to wash the dishes or your husband’s dirty clothes, because most of those we deal with have their wives who take care of that. They might even be single, and that’s better, because they pay generously.”

She introduced me to my first client. She called him, and they agreed to meet in the evening at the same pizza restaurant. After closing the clothing store at 9:30 p.m., I hurried to the restaurant’s bathroom, put on some makeup and perfume, and then went out to find my mentor “Rose” standing with a tall young man, with curly hair and large eyes. “Rose” left us, and I walked beside him, my head barely reaching his shoulder. He pointed to his car, an old black Jeep, and I got in with him. He drove toward the Arabian Gulf Street.

He asked me if I had a place, and I replied no. There wasn’t enough room due to the two roommates in the small apartment he lived in. He said:

“The car will be enough for the night.”

He knew where he was heading. After a while, he turned into a side entrance not far from the neighborhood, but it was completely dark, with no movement in an area where new buildings seemed to be rising.

He reclined the front seats, pulled a mattress from the back seat, apparently prepared for this purpose, and let me strip under it, piece by piece, while he unbuttoned his shirt, lying down. The car shook beneath us. I remembered “Kate Winslet” and “Leonardo DiCaprio” in Titanic. I smiled because I had survived in the movie. The young man—whose name I forgot—was in a hurry, as if he were used to this routine, while I was eager to have sex after a long drought. The first twenty dinars I earned were for spreading my legs for a quarter of an hour!

After several months of wandering in cars, restaurant bathrooms, and bachelors’ apartments, “Rose” came to me one evening, beaming, telling me she had found a solution for our place. This would increase the price, but it would offer great security. We would also convince the customer that we would be with him for the whole night.

“Rose” was looking for a studio apartment for us to move out of the girls’ apartment, where they had started to grow restless from my absence in the room. She wanted a small apartment that we could use alternately if we needed a private place. She met “Abu Mina,” who understood her need and offered to “inspect” the apartment for the entire night.

“The monthly rent here is expensive. Two hundred dinars, and you don’t need a large place. But if you need to check out the apartment for an hour, two, or more, I can arrange that.”

We were comfortable dealing with “Abu Mina.” After three years, I had managed to gather 1,720 dinars, which was all I had in my bank account now. I feared a shortage of clients, but demand had grown higher than the available nights. I couldn’t afford to take time off during the day because I needed my job at the store, which provided me with legal residency, but the money was still tight, especially after sending “Rizal’s” expenses, who lived with his grandmother, and buying health and beauty products, along with proper clothes.

Unlike his sharp uncle, “Naji” would wink and smile at me like a foolish boy whenever he saw me, whether alone or with someone else. I didn’t respond to him, following “Abu Mina’s” advice: don’t mix business with pleasure. I never thought “Naji” would offer me even a single dinar for a night.

Then, suddenly, he said to me:

“I need you for something important. But if you don’t like it, please don’t tell my uncle Abu Mina about our conversation.”

I was slightly scared. What did this young man want? I stepped closer, and he whispered to me that the matter didn’t concern him. “Naji” said:

“Listen, Miss Vicky, you and I are both wronged. You pay thirty dinars for the apartment for one night, and I know the hotel doesn’t charge more than twenty. And the money you pay my uncle Abu Mina, only five dinars actually make it to my pocket, even though I do all the work. I stay up all night guarding the building while you sleep upstairs, and I clean the apartment the morning after you leave. Isn’t this injustice…”

I replied, my fear increasing:

“But I can’t pay you an extra dinar.”

“Naji” smiled slyly and said:

“Does that satisfy me? I’ve found the perfect solution.”

“Naji” explained that there was an apartment that had become vacant, and its owner was in the hospital, and that “Abu Mina” didn’t want to list it among the available apartments. This meant he would never rent it out. The idea “Naji” presented was for him and “Vicky” to benefit from the apartment. She could use it for half the price, and the fifteen dinars would go straight into his pocket, untouched.

“And what if Abu Mina sees me coming in or out of the building?”

“This is my job. He loves sleep as much as he loves money. We’ll stay in touch. The important thing is that you make sure not to touch anything in the apartment. It seems the owner is dear to my uncle, and his belongings are expensive too. I know you’re careful, and I won’t need to advise you further. To ensure safety, I won’t take your ID card, and I’ll give you a copy of the apartment key. But you must tell me when you’re coming and going.”

It felt like a game of conspiracy, and I had to play by “Naji’s” rules. I felt there was something wrong, but I couldn’t quite place it. I knew the apartment had once been occupied by an Egyptian translator named “Mohsen Helmy,” who had suffered a stroke and was hospitalized. The likelihood of his quick return seemed uncertain.

When I started using the translator’s apartment, I set my own new rules. I would send my companion to the building, and he would go up alone, as if visiting a friend. I would describe the floor and remind him of the apartment number, then give him the key. When he arrived and entered, he would call me after a couple of minutes, and I would go up to him, where he would leave the door slightly ajar. I would enter, and the night would be ours.

Men don’t just agree on loving a woman’s body; they also agree on sleeping away from satisfying their desires, especially Lebanese and Kuwaitis. As for me, I would wake up for an hour or two, set my mobile alarm to wake up early, finish my routine in the bathroom, and wait for my bed companion to wake up. I wanted to go to the store in the morning looking my best. I’d walk into the store, and “Rose” would wink at me because she knew exactly where I had been and would take her share from the company and gifts. I never asked myself why she had chosen me. Perhaps she thought I was younger than her companions, less fierce, and more graceful.

In the translator’s apartment, sleep didn’t come easily to me. I found my own haven, a forest where I had always dreamed of being a tree. The piles of books became for me a paradise that complemented sex and perhaps equaled it in pleasure. Some bed companions last only two minutes before they ejaculate, relax, and stretch out like abandoned pillows, while others take their time with the help of blue pills. As for me, with the books, I wished I could leave the young man sleeping on the bed in exchange for that library. Previously, I had filled my free time, on empty days, with reading.

I discovered collections of books in English. Each book seemed to have its own space, as if the Egyptian translator had a specific way of handling each collection. In every book were clippings full of notes. I began tidying his desk and cleaning it. I regained my enthusiasm for reading, sitting at that luxurious desk as though preparing for my lessons in Manila. I started borrowing books, taking one or two, and returning them on my next visit.

The smell of books reminded me of my visits to the “Popular Bookstore” branch near my school in Manila, with its red sign and large white letters. I often read books there over two weeks. I would take a book from the shelf, as though I were just browsing, and continue reading from where I had left off during my previous visit.

I preferred “Popular” bookstores over the “National” chain. In the latter, they wouldn’t let me touch or read books with such freedom. At “Popular,” they turned a blind eye because I bought a magazine, a newspaper, or a book every week. I would return home, rush the hours until “Rizal” fell asleep, finish preparing lessons, clean the house, then make a cup of black coffee and sit to read until after midnight, with the library’s motto in front of me:

“The habit we all must cultivate is reading and digesting the lines.”

When I was preparing to travel, my mother said to me:

“Finally, we’ll buy formula milk instead of wasting money on paper.” (Continues)

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Published under International Cooperation with "Sindh Courier"