“Yes, from the very first,” she answered.
Rashid kissed her again. Both were aware that there was
something very different about them and the way they were relating to each other today here in Crete. Something had radically changed Rashid. Was it that for the first time sentimentality had entered their relationship? It made Humayun feel awkward, but she was helpless to pull herself from the past.
“It was such an odd day for me too, that day we met,” she said. “I had been your father’s concubine since I was thirteen, and he had been good to me, so good that all I wanted to do was please him. I spent all my days and nights learning the art of lovemaking, just to give him pleasure — only to be told I was being educated in the world of erotica solely to become your sexual slave. When we found you away from home, he left me there like any old parcel, and with barely a word of farewell, just a warning to please you or bear the consequences.
“That was the first time I realized I was no more than chattel. And so, while waiting for you, I made up my mind to be the most remarkable possession you would ever own. Hours went by, and I decided to go out for a walk, and to look for you and give myself to you.”
The surprise in Rashid’s face did not go unnoticed by her. Of course it had to be there. She had rarely spoken so directly to him in all their years together. Was it her affair with Moses that gave her the courage now? Or was it these few moments of loving and caring, the memories, and Crete that opened her to him now?
“I couldn’t find you,” she continued. “It was midday and, oh, so very hot. I headed back to your house. Somehow I became lost in the maze of winding back streets which flattened out at the back of the port. I was tired and hungry. I can remember that vividly. I passed several sailors in a doorway who were laughing and talking. One called out to me in Greek.
“I turned down another street and farther on I saw three Island men coming toward me. They were tall, big, handsome with their dark moustaches and broad smiles. They were shepherds down from the mountains in their village dress, with black scarves and little fringes tied around their heads. Their trousers were tucked into dusty
but shiny high black boots. They wore black shirts and black sashes around their waists, and one had a white wool cape thrown over his shoulders. The other two had sheepskin jackets, I think, over their shirts. I was amazed by the way the three of them were striding toward me in the tiny street with its white houses and small wooden doors.
“I thought, ‘Oh this is Crete, proud and strong, rugged and male.’ I half-hoped as they walked toward me that they would carry me off to some remote village in the mountains overlooking the sea. They were surely the kind of men women dream of being captured by. To me they looked more like Cretan mountain pirates than shepherds, and they made me think of the famous Cretan feuds that wiped out families, the murders of passion, the vendettas passed down from generation to generation that I had heard stories about. I had my little moment of fantasy that you would rescue me from them, fall in love with me, and I would be enslaved to a romantic hero.”
Rashid put his arm around Humayun as the car swerved off the gravel road and onto the tarmac of the main road to Xania. She turned in the seat, the better to face him, and his fingers grazed her cheek with such tenderness that she placed her hand over his, holding it there for a second, not wanting to lose the moment. She was suddenly embarrassed by the intimacy and removed Rashid’s hand from her cheek and held it in her lap as she continued.
“I had to pass by the men, but they blocked my way. The one in the center ate me up with what seemed to be liquid black eyes. He gabbled in Greek to me, but I said nothing, afraid to let them know I spoke only Turkish. I remember giving them my most charming smile and making gestures that told them I couldn’t understand. But it made no difference. He went on talking to me and the three of them kept laughing as I tried to get around them. The man in the center picked me up with two hands around my waist. He lifted me high off the ground, and before I could even protest or wave my arms around, pretending to be a lady in distress, he twirled me over his shoulder and put me down behind him. The three men
laughing heartily while they moved away, never looked back at me. I stood there alone in the dusty street watching them swagger away from me.
“Now that I am reminded of that little scene, I find it hard to remember whether I was more disappointed or amazed that they didn’t kidnap me. I remember the morning walk, and the men, and the incense that lingered with me after I looked into a small white church. Visions of Byzantium, virile, rugged men, violent passions, sex, the sea, and the landscape, whirled around in my head, and I fell under the spell of Crete, the first place I had ever really been outside on my own. There was no freedom from the bordello in Istanbul where your father kept me.”
“And that’s when I found you.”
“Yes, I was still wandering through the streets trying to find my way back to the old port, and I bumped right into you. You appeared as if by magic. I knew at once it was you, and I was disarmed by your handsomeness, the sensuality on you like perfume. I was flushed and angry with myself for being lost and having to ask you to take me home.”
Rashid laughed and kissed her on the lips, not once but twice, and said, “By my life, I remember that. We stood there looking at each other. I thought to myself, she is mine. I tried to hold back my joy but remember feeling a little twisted smile break through. I knew at once who you were because there was not a single woman in Xania as startling beautiful as you. I wanted to chastise you for not remaining in the house, but the best I could do was ask you if you were lost.”
“Not quite, Rashid. Your first words to me were a declaration. You said, ‘You are lost.’ I answered, ‘Yes, I am, and hungry.’ And then you declared, ‘Never do this again. Never wander away from the house without asking me. You would not dare to do that to my father, and I will not have you do it to me.’ Then you took me firmly by the arm, and together we walked under that hot sun toward the old port. You told me that you were taking me to a restaurant where we were to meet your friends and, since there was a language barrier and no one there could speak
Turkish, I need not worry about being with strangers. You were charming, kind, and interested in me. You wanted to know all about me. For the first time in my life someone wanted to know me, Humayun. I was so happy; you won me to your heart before we ever joined the foreign colony in Xania. They were all at lunch at that restaurant with the awning. That was the first time I had ever dined in public.”
Humayun began to smile at Rashid as she added, “You said something to me before we joined the group seated at that long rectangular table. It was littered with plates of half-eaten food, I remember, and full bottles of wine and glasses. You said, ‘Remember, when in public like now, I will introduce you as a friend of the family. They would not understand your real role in my life. That’s a secret we must keep to ourselves.’ ”
There was a look of astonishment on Rashid’s face when he asked, “It was so long ago. A lot has happened since that day. But you still remember it all, don’t you?”
“You, and that first lunch with the foreigners of Xania, changed my life. Am I going to forget that? They fascinated and you charmed. I fell in love for the first time in my life. We spent those first three idyllic days alone together, except when we took a meal at midday with the group. None of it has dimmed for me. The evenings when you cooked for us in your house and talked endlessly about yourself and your ambitions, your dreams, your love for the erotic — how uninhibited you seemed about that — all of it you wanted to share with me. You showed me the most passionate sexual side of yourself. I thrilled to it, rose to it with my own. But, if we were wild in our sex, we were tender too. You taught me so much about the island, the people, the language, the customs. I was a most willing pupil. I sat at your feet in adoration. You taught me the basics of speaking well in Greek — so forcefully impressing on me how much you loved and respected the language and resented it being misused. You spoke about writers and painting. And I fell hopelessly in love with you. Any woman would have.”
Rashid squeezed her hand reassuringly rather than put love into words. Humayun had to turn away from him, so
moved was she by the memories. They had brought a tear to her eye, which she would rather not have Rashid see. It was evening now, and the car rattled through the darkness toward the very place where their lives together began.
“I was so much a part of the foreign colony living in Xania then,” Rashid mused. “I thought the expatriate poets, painters, writers, and escapists were fascinating. I spent most of my time with them and Christos. Your arrival never drew me away from my love for the West, for Westerners and their life-style, but it did draw me back into the Turkish, the Oriental side of my life. It reminded me that I was first of all an Ottoman, a Muslim. I think it revived my love for that life of power and passion my ancestors thrived on. Decadent. Intriguing.”
Gently, with fingers on her cheek, he turned her face back toward his and continued, “I too have memories. Maybe not as acute as yours, but they are there. Will you play the flute and sing for me tonight the way you did then? I was delighted and charmed. Yes, and I suppose even seduced by your company. And that has never changed. I remember how, when you had too much wine, affection poured out from you to me. It just added to the excitement of my sexual excesses with you. Your obedience and loyalty, your courageous will to please me were always what made me want to be more gentle and more generous to you. It gave me so much pleasure to spend days on end teaching you languages, to swim in the sea, to appreciate everything beautiful and people and what makes them create those things. And the joy behind every sexual door we nudged open. You were perfect material to mold into the extraordinary woman that you are now.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her with great passion. Even as she slipped into the kiss with her body and her soul, her own inner promptings were telling her, ‘Be cautious, Humayun. Once before you thought you and Rashid were growing together, were as one, building up a full relationship to be shared only by the two of you. For all the attention that he paid you then it was just a seduction. The same as for any newcomer in his life. You may not have known that then, because you were under
his spell, enchanted with a prince who took you, body and mind. But you must know it now.’
But imaginary voices of caution go unheard in moments of lust and love, even if they speak for a real love that is pure and honest, such as she was experiencing for the first time in her life with Moses. Moses. He simply vanished from her mind. She eased her arms around Rashid’s neck and returned his kiss, and together they slipped back in time.
When the car had left them, hand in hand they walked around the crescent-shaped port of Xania. A few foreigners they had once known there and remained still welcomed them warmly.
“They were wonderful times, those old days, when we were young and innocent,” Rashid said to Liz Cordell, a big-shouldered giant of a woman they had known well when she was in her late thirties. A quiet, sensible, hardworking illustrator of children’s books, she was part of the incestuous group of expatriates who lived in and around the old port. They clung together, dined, and gossiped madly together. They both dished and defended one another according to how they felt on a given day. Critical and protective of one another was their way of survival in the small egocentric, creative circle. She had been kind to everyone and very much liked by the people of Crete. In her little car she used to bump across country roads, over the mountains to every village where she made friends and sketches.
“Yes, wonderful. One moment you and Humayun were part of our lives, and then you were gone. We all wondered what happened to you. But the press filled us in with the adventures of one jet-setting Turkish playboy. We thought you might return one day.”
Rashid insisted that she stop and share a bottle of wine in one of the cafés. She stopped but chose beer, and so the three of them drank beer. It was such a throwback, that courtesy of drinking only what one of the group could afford, a habit they all had cultivated in the old days, with money in inconstant supply among them. But, if one of
them had sold a book or a painting, then there was wine — whiskey even, for a long book, a large canvas.
It was true he had abandoned them and, worse, forgotten them, never given them a thought. Suddenly they were all there in his mind, and he was curious as to what had happened to them.
“I was thrilled in those days to be part of the group. I liked so much the way you all lived. No one was ever offended if some of us preferred our own company and wanted to dine alone. That when invitations were issued to dine in one of our houses, no one was ever vexed if he was excluded. Personal privacy was all-important to each of us and we all respected that, and yet remained solidly a clan of friends.
“There was just one exception, that English playwright and his French wife with the two children, who very rarely joined the long table at the Kavouria.
“Odd man he was, Rich and successful, he didn’t like to see the poverty and struggles, the joys and disappointments, of the other foreigners in Xania. I remember he particularly did not like Martin Bolder, the fact that he wrote a brilliant literary first novel and little else. He saw him as a silver-tongued fascist who tried to seduce every man, woman, and child to his way of thinking. They were always seen whisking important people from the airport to their house, and they always dined at another restaurant in the port away from us other foreigners.”
“And he was always trying to cultivate a friendship with your cousin Christos, because he knew how wealthy and influential he was,” Liz added. “You won’t find him here, Rashid; he is long gone.”
“The one I liked was that grand old English aristocrat with the double-barreled surname,” Rashid said. “He sat in the shade by himself. Never joined the table. He was always cordial to the group. They’d stop one by one and talk to him for a few minutes. Drunk from morning until night, and drunk again the same way the next day and every day. But always somehow to control. He carried his shabby clothes and intellectual sloppiness with a panache that made one think he was much more profound and
sensitive than the travel books he wrote for a living indicated. Just competent they were. Charming, likable, intelligent. An old-time homosexual of the Maugham-Coward-Auden ilk. He stayed tucked up in one of the rooms in the same hotel six months of the year, year after year. His liver must have given out long ago, no?”