Ana was seeing a great deal of Binta these days. On those days when her friend was not working late, she rarely returned home directly after work. She would wander along to Binta’s room and the two girls would chat together or go swimming in the Brothel pool. On some evenings, they would meet in the roof garden: high above the city and the only part of the Brothel open to the sky. Like many others, Binta had a small plot in the garden she could tend when she could. It was a very small plot that grew only a few flowers and herbs, but Binta had taken the option of working there, precisely for the freedom of an empty sky above her head. Ana enjoyed these visits which, because of Binta’s chosen dress, were only possible on dry warm evenings. She enjoyed standing by as Binta knelt down on the ground: her trowel deep in the earth and mud on her knees.

Ana wasn’t at all sure why she felt the need to see Binta so often. The most obvious reason, and the one she preferred to believe, was that Ana had very few friends in Blad and Binta was the closest of them. She could speak freely about all she missed from Rif and her life there. She could ramble on about her flat in Jadid and her neighbours: the couple who argued quite loudly; the young man on the floor below who tried engaging her in conversation when they passed on the stairs; the old woman who would open her door slightly and watch her as she passed by. Binta often prompted her to continue if she lost the thread of her thoughts.

Ana felt empty on those evenings when Binta was working. Time seemed to drag and she was unable to concentrate. Weekends were even worse. She often had to think of excuses to come to the Brothel, as she had when she escorted Ferhana to the cathedral, for the occasion of spending time with Binta.

“I never enjoyed gardening in Jebel,” admitted Binta. “Indeed, I never did any at all. I couldn’t tell geraniums from hyacinths. I would have hated getting any of this muck on my fingers. Look at it all!” She splayed her fingers to display the earth that discoloured them. “But, now, I just couldn’t imagine a day not spent tending this little garden. I’ve read all the books in the Brothel library on gardening and I know far more than I used to do. Some girls here have much better plots than me. That Delta with the jacaranda over there: I don’t know how she does it! Her plot always looks immaculate. And she manages to make it look good all year round. Most of the time, there are either things waiting to sprout or flowers which have just died. There’s a real art to it!”

Ana smiled appreciatively. She thought Binta’s plot was quite delightful enough. She followed Binta’s gesture to all the other plots that lined the narrow paths around the roof garden. Other girls were working at their plots, but they were mostly Deltas and Epsilons who were also serving time, and wore nearly as little as Binta as they didn’t wish to dirty the satin, silk or leather of their working clothes. Prostitutes were not offered the sort of clothes that would normally be appropriate for working on a garden.

“What do you enjoy most about it?” Ana asked, standing against a small tree in the evening sun, her arms folded and a hand stroking her chin.

“The open air more than anything else. It’s so oppressive being indoors in the Brothel all day. A country girl like me just can’t take so much neon and claustrophobia. There mightn’t be a lot more space, but there’s a lot of air. You can’t see much more of the world up here. No more than I can see through the window in my room anyway. But it’s nice to know that there’s nothing but sky above my head. It’s a kind of freedom. But it’s more than that! I like getting my hands deep into the soft unresisting earth. I like to help things grow. I love watching the first leaves of a bulb sprout from the earth, and then bit by bit watch the flowers open. I like to take my secateurs to the roses and prune them. It’s so restful. You just don’t notice the hours go by. I can forget the misery of the Brothel and just concentrate my thoughts on what to do with this plant or that plant. Where to put what seed. What needs to be trimmed. I wouldn’t mind growing vegetables here. Carrots or cabbages. But there’s nowhere to cook them. And anyway the Brothel only supplies us with a limited variety of decorative garden plants. You can order other plants, but whatever you order just doesn’t seem to be available this month or any other month for that matter. What do you think, Ana?”

“I don’t know. I like looking at all these flowers and I love watching the way the garden changes, but I just don’t know whether I’d be so keen even if I were in your position.”

“But you seem to enjoy coming up here and watching me work.”

“That’s because you enjoy it,” Ana remarked. She instantly felt embarrassed. What was she trying to say?

“What do you mean, Ana?” asked Binta standing up and turning her naked body towards her friend. “You only come here because I come here?”

“Well, no. I mean, yes. I mean, it’s just because ... you know ... it’s nice to watch you at work and enjoying yourself at work that ...”

“You like watching me enjoy myself?”

“Not so much watching you...” rambled Ana, her ears burning with embarrassment, not at all sure what she was trying to say. “It’s just nice chatting to you while you’re happy and not ... when you’re sort of your own person and not being ... I just think it’s nice that ...”

Binta leaned over and tenderly kissed Ana on the cheek. “I enjoy your company. I don’t care why you want to spend time with me. It’s just nice to be together.”

“You think so?”

Ana felt the heat from her ears spread across her cheeks and forehead. What was causing her so much embarrassment?

Binta looked at the earth-pasted hands with an amused smile. “How did they get this muck onto the roof? Anyway, I must wash it off.” She picked up her trowel, fork and a small bucket. “Let’s go to the taps.”

These were lined against the wall by a series of shrub-like trees in wooden tubs and a small greenhouse where an indistinct figure was tending to some tomatoes. Binta carefully packed her tools in a small locker, its green metal rusted a red tinge, locked the door and hid the key in a small pot just above her locker. Ana stood back as she rubbed her hands under the sparkling water of the tap as it gushed out, splashed over her wrists and fingers, and then spiralled down the small grate at her feet which were also getting washed.

“It’s unbelievably cold!” she exclaimed, shaking the droplets off onto the wall’s peeling paint. “My fingers are so numb! Feel them!”

She proffered them to Ana, who had to admit that they were very cold. She dropped them promptly while Binta agitatedly shook her hands.

“So, what do you think about working here, Ana? Are you enjoying it any more?”

“It’s a job. It has its good days and its bad days,” Ana answered. She never really thought that much about it. She didn’t enjoy the director’s company, but fortunately he was more often than not busy elsewhere and she didn’t have to suffer his facetious comments too often. “It’s not as bad as your job. I’d hate to do what you have to do.”

The thought always filled Ana with disgust. It perturbed her more than she thought possible. The image of Binta being subjected to the physical attentions of her clients was one she preferred to blank out of her mind.

“Some of the clients today were particularly nasty,” Binta mused. “One man wouldn’t stop squeezing my wrist. I told him to stop and he just wouldn’t. I think he liked causing me pain. Another one just wouldn’t accept my refusal (which I’m wholly entitled to insist on) when I said I didn’t want to do what he wanted me to do. I told him it was painful and, in any case, illegal. But that didn’t stop him going on and on. And offering me quite a lot of money for it. Money I can’t even spend at the Brothel anyway. I hate my job. And the worst of it is how it changes the way you regard lovemaking...”

“What do you mean?” wondered Ana, leaning against a table loaded with potted plants. “How has it done that?”

“It just doesn’t seem to have anything to do with love any more. The other words you use for it - the old Anglo-Saxon ones - they seem much more appropriate than words like ‘making love’. It’s got nothing about it that I would call ‘love’. Not the love I enjoyed with Mezyana. Not the passion and satisfaction I used to get. Now, it’s just on your back, legs up in the air, a disgusting smell of body odour and a kind of distant far away sensation from where you’re supposed to feel sensation the most acutely. It’s just perverse and horrible!” Binta leaned against the table next to Ana, and absent-mindedly took Ana’s hand in one of her own and looked down at it. “It’s dehumanising! I’m nothing more than a sex toy. I have a vacant hole to be filled and the clients just want to fill it. That’s all it is! That’s all they do! I prefer it when I can satisfy their lust without them putting their repulsive thing inside me...”

Ana gazed into Binta’s eyes. “How do you do that?” she asked with a slight choke.

“With my hands. With my mouth. With my breasts. With anything I can. And then they release their smelly viscous muck and I know I’m safe. The trick is to do it quickly, but not so quickly that they feel that they want to have a second go. And I look at them. Those bristly greasy faces. Those pale hairy chests. The flabby mass of stomach in folds at the front. The skinny legs with the angular knees and so much hair. Those piggy little eyes. And that loathsome look of lust that they all have when they come in my room and look at me. And the things they say. ‘Just like my daughter, you are!’ One said. ‘And she’s a slut too!’ That was so horrid and unnecessary. So dreadful...” Binta sighed, and her eyes moistened with tears Ana had never seen before. She put an arm round her shoulders to comfort her friend, and Binta squeezed up towards her, face against her cheek and an arm trailing over Ana’s knee.

“And some of the others! The violent way they force their fingers in places where I don’t want them to touch me. The way they slobber and trails of saliva drip out of their mouths and leave damp patches on the sheets. The ugliest, unhealthiest, most diseased looking bodies you can imagine. It’s not just the ignominy of being a sex machine: it’s what you have to endure. It’s repulsive! Obnoxious! Nothing I ever did with Mezyana resembles what I have to suffer from these men. God! I hate them! I hate them!”

Ana squeezed Binta’s shoulder comfortingly. “They’re not here now! We’re in the garden. Your clients are far away.”

Binta turned round and with a sudden impulse wrapped her naked shoulders around Ana’s.

“You don’t understand. While I’m in the Brothel, I can’t escape them at all. The clients are here all the time. All the time I’m surrounded by prostitutes and the Brothel, I can’t forget them. They’re in the shadows of the corridors, behind the doors with red lights, in the creases of all the satin, silk and leather that’s worn here. I hate it! I hate it so much!”

Her chin rested on Ana’s shoulder and her body pressed against her breast. Ana patted Binta’s back with one arm while supporting her with the other. The note of Binta’s breathing became a distinct sob.

“There there!” Ana said periodically and soothingly, but nonetheless feeling unsettled by the sensation of a naked woman pressed so close to her. She and Binta had never been so physically intimate before. She gazed into Binta’s tear-soaked eyes. A sudden rush of emotion and pity overwhelmed her, and without any thought she leaned over and kissed Binta tenderly on the lips. It was meant to be a brief and comradely kiss, but she was taken totally unawares by the intensity of Binta’s response.

In a sudden wild rush of sensation, she was aware that Binta had manoeuvred her kiss to a longer and more passionate one in which there was the unfamiliar (and yet not unwelcome) sensation of another tongue in her mouth. Ana felt obliged to follow suit. Binta’s mouth was a very liquid and very warm place which tasted of so many different things: sweet, salt and even bitter. She felt the hardness of Binta’s teeth: the uneven row of incisors and the crowns of the molars where, yes! she identified the metallic taste of a filling. Her tongue ached as it revolved around Binta’s own tongue, slid along the gums above and below the teeth, and deep breaths through her nostrils picked up the slight soapiness of Binta’s well-scrubbed flesh.

All of a sudden, Binta eased off and steadily gazed at her, with a toothy bright smile. There was something very strange about her expression. The eyes sparkled in a way Ana had never seen in anyone before and her mouth expressed an unutterably beautiful foolishness. Ana just wanted her lips to return to Binta’s and feel more closely her smooth warm flesh. Binta understood Ana’s thoughts, despite reservations that had vanished in the heady mist of passion.

“I think we should go to my bedroom,” Binta said breathlessly, raising her eyebrows with a reluctant frown. “We can be sure of our privacy there.”

Ana panicked slightly. She glanced around her. Thankfully there was no one who could have seen her with Binta. She looked back at her good friend. She smiled in a sad but determined way.

“Yes, let’s go! But hurry!”