From behind my round dark glasses, I watched the gentlemen eyeing my pointy breasts and the ladies watching them. I shaded my eyes from their stares, but I had nothing to hide. White denoted purity of heart and I had every right to wear it. During my years of marriage to Lord Marlowe, I’d remained chaste, taking no other man to my bed; but now I was alone, and companionship was not something I merely desired. I needed a man and I needed him badly.
I disembarked the ship at Port Said to idle away time shopping for tropical skirts, pants, cameras, inexpensive jewels and French perfumes. Lucky for me, the shops remained open all night to cater to travelers until the ship departed in the early-morning hours. It wasn’t long before boredom, the heat and the flies, as well as the dirty looks from my fellow passengers, drove me to explore the port city on my own.
I doubted these ladies with their noses stuck up my business would dare follow me into a seedy-looking bar that reeked of male sweat and alcohol and with cigarette smoke so thick it drifted like a seventh veil over the crowd. I sat down at a small table and ordered Egyptian beer, what Lord Marlowe called onion beer because of its strong taste.
Raising my glass, I was congratulating myself on losing the gossipy women, when a slightly built Egyptian wearing a red fez with a long black tassel half covering his face shuffled over to me and bowed, then asked to tell my fortune. I shooed him away, knowing full well this wallah would gladly dish out what British locals called pukka gen— advice to the lovelorn—to any lone female willing to listen.
But he wouldn’t give up, insisting he had a special rate for a pretty lady with hair the color of the moon. I put down my beer and smiled at him. With a line like that, how could I refuse?
I invited him to sit down, and before the air could settle underneath his sagging body, he removed the lid of a biscuit tin from inside his shabby jacket and poured fine sand into it, then shook it until the surface was even. Then, taking my hand, he instructed me to trace lines in the sand with my fingers. I did as he asked, its soft touch making my fingertips tingle with what I knew was curiosity, not magic. When I finished raking my fingers through the white specks, he gazed at the squiggles I’d made, thinking. Then he began to speak. Slowly, as if he was reciting a well-rehearsed prayer.
“Your heart is lonely since the death of your husband.” He sighed, for effect, I’m sure. “And you crave a man’s touch to soothe your pain.”
How did he know I was a widow? Did he see the hunger in my eyes for a man’s sweat to mix with mine, his hard muscles pressing against my willing flesh as he rubbed his chest against my bare breasts?
He looked at me, but I cast my eyes downward. Not giving up, he continued, “I see you are as fragile as a flower in the desert, reaching up to the sun for nourishment, but dying without the sweetness of the rain to quench your thirst.”
No doubt this fortune would fit several lonely women travelers in this port city and I told him so. He shook his head, insisting there was more. He grabbed my hand again and raked my fingers through the sand. I saw him shaking, his lower lip twitching. My hand shook as well and I swear the sand sparked against my fingertips.
“You will meet a man within a fortnight,” he insisted, “and his fire will peel the skin from your bones, making you lose all control—”
I pulled my hand away. “Sounds unpleasant.” I tried to keep my voice steady, not let him see how his prediction affected me, nurtured the 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