CONSCIOUS

‘It is said that drumming is the key to your tribal self. The beat travels through the earth of our African ancestors… How does that sound, authentic enough?’ says the white, privileged guru. Although he is not so privileged; he is trapped in a conditional Lake Como relationship with an obscenely rich narcissist. I pity this young man, with his car salesman smile and bloodshot eyes. 

Is that mascara on his lashes?

‘Just until we can get them tinted, Tesoro,’ the obscenely rich narcissist says to her ‘treasure’, her pet, who she found washed up at a lakeside bar clutching a bill he couldn’t pay.

Most of the time I pretend not to listen to their Instagram Live rehearsal, as I dust this vast marble sarcophagus, built on money stolen from a land far away enough to be an afterthought. A dogeared postcard, hidden in the family heritage drawer, sent from where temples have crumbled at their forefathers’ hands.

‘Corinne, come.’ Tesoro claps like I am a street dog, as he attempts to take the leash from his own neck to put around mine. He must create order in his pickled mind, but no sir, I am not as domesticated as I Iook. I pretend not to hear him, as I concentrate hard on polishing a bronze of two fawns shamelessly fornicating in the Garden of Eden.

‘Corinne, come!’ He barks – poor, chained animal. 

What am I? A life-raft? If I don’t get there quickly enough, what will happen? Will he drown in the tide of wealth that he has traded for his dignity? 

‘Honestly Darling-One,’ he drawls in an accent that is neither English nor American. A man of the world, a man of nowhere. ‘I feel so bad for her. Still so traumatised, six months after I rescued her. Doesn’t even recognise who she is.’

Corrine is not my name; that is the name you gave me because you can’t remember Kareema. See, even now, you furrow your brow, trying to recall what I said the last time you asked me, which was yesterday.

His barks become yaps. Soon I will have to bring him whatever toy it is that he wants to gnaw on. As long as it isn’t me, we will be fine. He is pointing at the object on the silver sofa. For him the phone is within reach; for me, it is a walk across a football field of rugs and imprisoned plants. Darling-One gestures to incapable Tesoro that he must be quick because this is their big moment. Now there is much bustling about, moving vases, licking teeth, shoving enormous breasts up to chins, fixing smiles.

‘Corinne!’

‘Oui, Monsieur?’ French isn’t even my first language, but it suits you better that I don’t speak Egyptian Arabic. Wouldn’t want you panicking that there’s an explosive vest underneath this ridiculous maid’s costume you have put me in. I press down the frills and enthusiastically trot to his side. All is forgiven. Balance of power is restored.

‘Ah good,’ he sighs, as if I have travelled from a distant land, not twelve metres. ‘So, we need you to film us. We will be talking to our followers.’

Please do not let me be sneering openly at this souk salesman with his shaking hands – hands that do not belong on a young man. Where is his mother? Who prays for him?

‘You look confused? Tu Comprenday?’ 

“Oui, oui.” His ignorance hurts my heart. He has asked me to do this every week for many moons, but he forgets so much by midnight.

As soon as she sees I am clipping his phone onto the tripod, Darling-One comes to life. I am her Ra, or at least I am raising her sun, ‘To just the right angle so it gives me a bella jawline. Higher, higher!’ The studio lighting, switched on for that ‘halo’ effect, shines down upon her oiled satellites and bounces into her eyes, momentarily blinding her. The man-child travels some distance along the sofa to where she awaits him. He is wearing an open-to-the-waist, white linen shirt. Darling-One spruces up his chest hair like a cat kneading a cushion. It looks as though it may be hurting him, but he bites his cheek, and no sound leaves his lips.

Who is this woman? I have been here half a year and still I do not know. She sashays in and out of the maze of rooms I clean, and she does not even notice me. I am something that moves in her property but I’m of no more significance than the robot hoover that occasionally trips me up. Perhaps she is Iblïs, or at least one of his minions? Her overfed fingers have not done a day’s work in their indolent life. Her calling has been to show the rest of the world how freeing money can be. Some people get lucky, others get sequins. 

They are settling now: she holds the drum for which an animal gave its life and Tesoro takes his place behind her, arms draped over many dead silkworms. I am about to connect them to deluded fantasists – who think they can be touched by luck via Wi-Fi – when disaster strikes, Tesoro spills red wine on his perfectly pressed uniform of serenity. The tableau is sullied, real, not what people sign up for. The fat-fingered princess smiles meekly, although she looks like she wants to put her runt out of his misery in one of their many shallow inlaid baths.

‘It is no matter. Just take it off,’ she growls, and I am reminded of the voices of the patrons in that roadside club in Naples. The place the man-child found me washing dishes. ‘Sorry, I was looking for the bogs,’ he’d said. Ten minutes of unanswered questions later, he was bundling me into her Range Rover and telling me that, ‘Your destiny is not to be surrounded by unconscious pain. It was my destiny to find you.’ A saviour with a love of striptease, a blessing indeed. 

“Come on. Off!” Darling-One insists. 

‘You what?’ For a moment he loses composure, and I hear an Englishman, a football hooligan, a fry-up and beer man try to stand up for himself. He looks as though he might say, ‘I’m not your bitch.’ How wrong he is. Instead, he shakes out his mop of hair and reassembles the guru persona that got him off the barstool in the first place, the one that can’t believe his good fortune to no longer have to sell second-hand cars out of an industrial estate along one of England’s super-fast highways. I know this because he told me once after too much sunshine. I have seen pictures, shoved under my eyes with drunken force. I do understand his predicament; his first home was as grey as mine was oppressive. 

‘With pleasure Darling-One.’ And now he does battle with so much more than his shirt. 

Who am I to judge? I am wearing a maid’s outfit. His flesh, as sculpted as King Ramses II, is an asset; he must use what he has. My cast down eyes are an asset. We all use what we have. What does this woman have? Inheritance and a sugar addiction. I can forgive him his weakness, but her? She has no excuse. She should know better than to behave like a man.

‘Perfetto, perfetto!’ Claps fat-fingers. Her veneered mouth opens, and she roars, ‘Let’s begin.’

But perhaps this is where we should end, with me looking at two fools preaching integrity while they roll around in avarice. You want to know what happens next? You care about these empty vessels? Well, O.K. Here goes:

‘Ciao, Welcome, Dwellers of Higher Consciousness.’ They say as one – arms outstretched, jewellery sparkling from earlobes, shoulders rolled in the comfort of knowing they will never fear eviction, displacement, or hunger. 

‘And we’re live. Hello beautiful people. Hi Betty, Hi Maurice.’ They wave at their reflections with a religious euphoria. 

‘Today we are going to talk about how to manifest success in your life,’ says the man-child as he tries to hide his nakedness behind his owner.

‘Yes, that is right,’ says the princess. ‘If you have too many bills, that is because you are manifesting them. So let me teach you how to stop those bills from coming to your door.’

I cannot be here in this room, with the smell and nonsense spouting from perfumed donkeys, so I think of my daughters – their elegance and controlled tempers. My daughters, they are clever; they are modest and secretive and alive. I know they are alive in The Mother of The World; I can feel it. They are safe in the dust and traffic, the noise and spice of Cairo. They are protected by an army of progressive women there. No cutting for them – only safety, in numbers, in a crowd of millions. They are safe, in shaa Allah.

‘I didn’t do it.” Darling-One is suddenly screaming. ‘Tesoro! Puoi Aiutarmi, Corrine! Save him. He’s unconscious!’ 

It took a bloody wound for you to realise this?

Darling-One is holding Tesoro’s head upon her knees. Blood stains his perfect torso at an alarming rate. Well, not alarming to me, but it is quite obviously terrifying for Darling-One, who perhaps believed he was a sculpture made flesh. There is a shard of what looks like the wine glass sticking out of his ribs. Do I keep recording? Is this what her followers wish to see? Is this the point where I use my training and keep him alive, or do I let him bleed out, like the animal that died so she could beat her drum? 

‘And just why should I help you?’ 

‘What?’ She has never heard me speak English before, but it is the attitude and not the language that surprises her.  

“Give me one good reason?’

‘Because I am your boss. When I say jump, you say, “How high?”’ 

I stand behind the tripod and watch her panic. The man on the floor will be fine, it is a minor flesh wound, anyone can see that. His breathing is steady, and he looks serene. Let us give the man some rest for a moment; after all, that was what he was seeking. The bleeding has almost stopped, he had fainted only, look, see him stir, like one of those Hollywood actors. I will let the blood stain the rug for a while and see what this woman is made of.

‘What is it you want?’ she looks at me as if I am a thief. I don’t want her money, her outfits for every day of the week, her chess board carved from majestic elephant tusks. 

‘What can you offer?’

‘Anything. What do you want? I could teach you how to manifest your desires, if you’d like. You want money? I can help you create money, from nothing!’

It is curious what people value. For starters she could pay me properly, but that’s neither here nor there…

‘Do you have a clitoris I could manifest?’

‘A what?’

‘A clitoris. Part of the female anatomy. I would like one of those back. Oh, and my womb.’

This woman stares at me like I have asked for the moon because I have. I have asked to go back to the age of thirteen, to have my flesh returned to me. My womb, that, after I gave birth to my girls, had to be removed – with my husband’s approval of course. This woman looks pained; she does not know pain. I am too angry to look at her.

‘You said you were a nurse!’

‘Oui.’

‘Then do something.’

As a Muslim, it’s my duty to help. 

‘Do not remove the glass, that is the first step.’

Her hand hovers, fighting the instinct to pull the weapon out. 

‘Is he breathing?’

‘Sì.’

‘Then he will live. Apply pressure.’

I stay back however and continue to film. I don’t know why, ask me later, when the fog of fury has dissipated. Perhaps, I have finally lost my mind, standing here in this palace, while my teenage daughters hide in backrooms like goats. So much for the law. So much for protection.

‘Tell me something Darling-One, have you ever struggled? Ever, in your whole life?’

Still holding her charge, her ridiculous tribal gown soaked in blood, she looks up, incredulous.

“I am a woman.’

Ha! As if that is enough. There is being a woman raised in a true patriarchy and then there are yachts, decanters, soprano laughter and rose oil. We do not share the same experience of what being a woman is. We are from different worlds. 

‘Look around you,’ Darling-One says. All semblance of serenity replaced by something harder. ‘What is missing from this picture?’

Nothing is missing. It is perfect. There is not a thing out of place, even the glass shard in the man-child’s ribs sparkles from the polish I gave it last night, when it was a full bowl awaiting his insatiable lips. 

Outside, cicadas start up their orchestra in the trees, and a breeze picks up the silk curtains. 

Nothing is missing.

‘You have everything.’

She half-laughs as she buries her face in the young man’s tousled hair. She strokes errant curls down and moans like a mother for her injured child. A child. Indeed, a monkey in their mother’s eyes…is a gazelle. 

‘I see.’ I stop recording.

‘No, you do not see. But that is ok. You do not see the man who owned this property, who left me when he discovered I could not have children. He gave me this house without a second thought, because he has so many. He left me here with my sorrow. He has children now and I… have this.’ She picks up the half-broken wine glass and hurls it at the wall. ‘I am fifty-six years old, and I pick up drifters and sycophants for company. I have no-one. Do you understand. No-one. What do you think all this is?’ She indicates the drum, the incense, the ludicrous ‘ethnic’ music that goes with this week’s theme.

‘Alexa, shut up!’ She yells in the most un-enlightened voice, but even Alexa ignores her. ‘I am trying to believe that there is something I can do to be a victor. Tell me, what can I do?’

I do not know why, but I sit beside her and place my palm where her womb is, and I place hers where mine is not. We sit like this for some time, saying nothing. Soon I will tell her how I cope, maybe she will listen, maybe she will not.

The man-child comes round and pulls the glass shard from his ribs. Blood spurts anew but it is hardly what you would call haemorrhaging. To cry over such a wound would be an embarrassment. 

‘Oh shit,’ he slurs, forgetting that ten minutes ago he did not value his life enough to keep it.

‘You’ll live,’ I say, applying pressure with his linen shirt. ‘We all will.’