This is how I got to know Mr. Philip, or, rather, his body — only a massage allows you to know the body of a person before knowing their name. He had the traits of the foreigner the fortune-teller had prophesied. He was a Frenchman in his seventies who settled in Marrakech because of a dream he had shared with his deceased wife. They had both discovered the red radiating face of Marrakech: the hospitality of its people and their sense of humor, the delicious food, the magic sunsets over its palm-tree alleys, its markets alive with colors and smells, and the Jemaa el-Fnaa Square with its exoticism, its clowns, storytellers, dancers, snakes, apes, and clamor, bestowing a new life on its visitors. The Frenchman bought a house in Derb Dabachi in the Old Medina, a neighborhood that was a busy passageway to Jemaa el-Fnaa. Derb Dabachi was also famous for hosting in the famous Ghazalah Cinema, before they destroyed it, as well as the notorious gay shop called al-Gaman.
With renovations, the old house was transformed into a wonderful riad where Philip wanted to live the stories of The Thousand and One Nights for the rest of his life. He called it the Riad of Dreams. He forgot that dreams could turn into nightmares.
At the time, I was a young trainee at a massage center in a five-star hotel. I got that job thanks to Saeed — the drug dealer. In Marrakech, you can manage your life if you’re smart enough to adapt to all situations and take advantage of each one of them. But no one was smarter than Saeed when it came to taking advantage of people and things. He was the kind of person to whom the popular saying applies: He lays hands on whatever he sees, and has a share in whatever he hasn’t seen yet. He worked sometimes as a tour guide and sometimes as a driver. He traded in everything from clothes to illicit goods, and had numerous clients — the kind of clients attracted to Marrakech’s hashish rather than its palm trees. He would give me presents that seemed more expensive than what he could afford.
I don’t know what exactly attracted me to Saeed. He wasn’t handsome, but he had the charisma of someone who lived on the edge. Yet I felt safe with him, and this seemed another contradiction of mine. The cops could’ve arrested him any time they liked and thrown him in jail, even if he had friends among the police who benefitted from his deals in return for their silence.
Some policemen provided protection by ignoring your activities until someone stronger than you emerged on stage, and then you became a scapegoat. I had a passion for Saeed, but at the same time I didn’t want to spend my whole life with him. My ambitions were larger than him, and men like him only loved my body and its charms.
I had a strong feeling that I was a princess who was born in the wrong place and in love with the wrong man. I resembled none of my family. All of them were ugly, including my mom who was a housemaid of pure breeding, one of those who labored in homes for meager wages, or worked every day at olive and apricot factories in Douar el-Askar for their daily bread. My father spent his life working in a tannery far away from our neighborhood. He died of lung cancer caused by inhalation of dyeing chemicals when I was ten years old.
I have two sisters, dark-skinned like my mom, short with snub noses and curly hair. I alone was fair-skinned with hair like silk and a slender shape. I honestly doubted whether we all came from the same father. My mom said, justifying the differences, that during her pregnancy she used to work for a beautiful French lady. She said pregnancy cravings had their own secrets and mysteries. Who knows what happened? Perhaps I am the daughter of some foreigner for whom my mom worked. If that’s true, I can’t help but thank her. At least she saved me from the ugliness that would have disqualified me from the world of massage.
I also have an older brother who took refuge from the family’s poverty in faith. After he had failed his studies and given up all ambition, he grew a casual beard and spent most of his time in the mosque. As alcohol is forbidden in our religion, he replaced it with maajoon. In the beginning, he tried to exert his authority over me and my sisters as the man of the house, but the power of the pocket money I provided him with and the effect of maajoon made him docile, so he contented himself by asking God to lead us back to the righteous path.
If Mr. Philip were the foreign man destined to bring my happiness as Aunt Mannana had foretold, then the tree had to first be shaken for the fruit to fall.
“Do you prefer a regular massage or a special one?” I had asked him, feigning innocence.
“I want a relaxing massage,” he replied. “But if the special massage is better than the regular one, why not try it?”
He seemed like the kind of person not used to the intimate caresses often demanded by foreigners his age. I thought that sometimes one learned nothing from the passage of years. I filled my palms with the oils prepared according to Aunt Mannana’s recipes and passed my soft fingertips on his stiff skin after I galvanized them with smooth, sensual energy. I tried to make the exciting part of the massage inevitable. The soft music, the smell of Oriental incense, and the room’s coziness all together completed the play of my fingertips.
Clients who developed an erection went from bashfulness to confusion, and then to laughter. There was nothing like laughter to establish communication. Here, I would intervene gently to puff up their virile ego, showing admiration for their male organ no matter how tiny it was, explaining that it was just a natural reaction in real men. Of course, I didn’t give a damn about boosting their sexual prowess. I, as a matter of fact, cared only for the extra tip that I got from them. I developed the ability to manipulate any kind of human being, aside from Saeed, who kept manipulating me.
I don’t know why I became so weak in front of him. Was it my love for him or my fear of him? Moments of tenderness in his company were accompanied by his fits of violence. He would sometimes beat me and then perch at my feet, crying and pleading: Forgive me, my sweetie, I’m not cruel, but this hellish life is full of cruelty. We would then embrace, cry together, and make love passionately, dreaming of a better tomorrow.
He taught me exciting massage techniques, which I practiced on his body. He taught me the art of using my fingertips, how to tempt and then deny, how to make the client pass gradually and slowly from relaxation to sudden pleasure. In fact, I was very perplexed when he told me all this, and I didn’t understand how he could be so jealous yet at the same time tell me to indulge my clients. He said that it was not lovemaking and that my fingertips had nothing to do with my body. How could he say that when he knew that things sometimes did not stop at my fingertips? What if the client were to ask for oral sex?
Finally, I convinced myself that my body had nothing to do with my mouth either, and I immersed myself completely in massage. This was basically prostitution disguised as massage. However, after I started working at the Riad of Dreams, I discovered that prostitution was an essence with a variety of expressions. Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at me, as Christ said.
After the first massage session, Mr. Philip offered to employ me at the Riad of Dreams. I discovered later that our meeting was not a coincidence, and that Saeed had planned it all. Saeed told Mr. Philip that the Riad of Dreams lacked a beautiful lady with the skill of massage. Then Saeed sent him to me at the hotel for a trial session; afterward, he told him that I was his neighbor and close friend.
It saddened me that he did not present me to Mr. Philip as his girlfriend, but he justified his deed by saying that Marrakech had ears that were wide open and mouths that were gaping — everyone knew what was in everyone else’s bowels — and that Mr. Philip’s knowledge of our true relationship was none of his business. He added that he was to blame for considering my own good and my future. I thanked him with an embrace and closed the subject, as was the case after every quarrel. And so I began my adventure at the Riad of Dreams, and at first I was happy with my new job.