Ana and Binta stood by the bars enclosing the Brothel garden and watched the city streets below in the long evening shadows. Even now, long after the working day was over for most people, life was busy in Blad. Ana sometimes found it quite reassuring: but now she was somehow finding it irritating. Couldn’t Blad ever sleep or rest like a normal place? Why did it have to be so permanently lively? She expressed her thoughts to Binta, whose arm was surreptitiously around Ana’s waist, confident that the corner of the garden they were standing in was safe from prying eyes.

“After all these months, you’re still very much the country girl!” laughed Binta. “You’d rather have the quiet of a rural evening. Crickets and cicadas in the evening sun. A perfectly black sky and none of the ceaseless roar of traffic. Perhaps that’s why I love you! You’re just like me!”

Ana sighed. “You’re right! It still doesn’t seem right to me. I’d love to live in the country again. Rif. Jebel. Khlib. It doesn’t matter where. That’s all I really want.”

“And yet you want us both to settle in Blad!” objected Binta.

“It’s not what I really want. It’s just what we have to do. What is important is that we stay together! Everything else is irrelevant.”

“And so it is!” agreed Binta with a smile, kissing Ana on the ear, snuggling her face into Ana’s hair. “Just you and I! Nobody else. Just us!”

“It would be perfect. Away from the Brothel. Our own flat. We could cook dinner together. We could watch television together, stretched out on the sofa. We could share the evenings together in the parks and cafés...”

“And best of all we could make love all night together! With no fear of other people knowing what we do. And with no obligations to anyone else at all!” exclaimed Binta, taking Ana’s ear in her mouth and running her tongue around its crevices. “Wouldn’t that be perfect!”

Ana blushed. Binta was so right. That was very much what Ana looked forward to more than anything else with a yearning that ached in her bosom more than she dared admit to herself. However much she rationalised her love in terms of the more domestic and mundane, what really drove Ana’s love was much more carnal and she was still not sure whether she should be so unashamed about it. Not only was she in love in a more physical way than she’d ever believed was truly right, it was for a woman. With a sudden spasm of guilt, she disengaged herself from Binta and walked towards a corner of the garden bars where she knew that they would be within sight of the young Delta who was bent over her flowers with a trowel and a small plastic bucket. She glanced at the girl who was looking up and, despite her PAR, seemed quite attractive in the late evening light. It was so unfair, Ana mused, that appearances which couldn’t be helped had become such a currency in the Brothel. But, at the same time, she thought, as the girl lowered her head and the bright sparkling eyes and full cheeks were hidden and her clumsy awkward body became more the object of her attention, there must be a reward for those like Binta blessed with more than their fair share of beauty.

She turned to regard Binta, who was clearly rather put out by Ana’s sudden dismissal of her. She was so beautiful! The eyes. The hair. That body. Every inch of her was beyond comparison. Ana must be the most fortunate girl in the world to be privileged with a lover as beautiful as Binta. She smiled broadly, and glanced again at the Delta. Binta’s breasts, her hair, even such details as the slenderness of her ankles and the sinuousness of her legs made her so much the better in comparison. It may be unfair on the Delta to think such unflattering things, but beauty is so much better appreciated when contrasted with those that fall short of its high standards.

“What are you thinking about, Ana darling?” Binta asked in genuine concern.

Ana bowed her head, and in the process took in the sight of the whole of Binta’s naked body. A pang of emotion and love stabbed her breast and very nearly caused her to burst into tears. “I was thinking about you,” she admitted.

“Nothing bad, I hope?” joked Binta.

Ana looked up with a sad smile. “I love you so much. And I love you more and more. How can there be so much love in me? Nothing I do. Nothing I ever say. Nothing. Is enough to express my feeling for you!” She approached Binta, who withdrew discreetly behind a small palm tree and out of sight from the Delta who was gazing rather vaguely in their direction. “I never knew love could be so strong!”

“Oh Ana! Oh Ana!” exclaimed Binta, pulling Ana towards her and kissing her long and forcefully on the lips and inside her mouth. Ana felt her entire body tremble in the closeness to Binta’s naked body, ignoring the possibility of being seen, surrendered totally to the vagaries of her passion.

Ana’s hands wandered down Binta’s naked body and clutched her buttocks in her palms. As she did so she envisaged her body as she now knew it so well, spread out on the bed receiving her caresses with such gratitude and returned with so much passion. She felt her love swell as the image grew in her mind. She possessed Binta’s body. But, and the thought sent another much less pleasant spasm through her, it was also a body she shared with so many others. She tried to banish the image, but it stayed in her mind, even while Binta’s tongue explored inside her mouth. The hairy buttocks. The taut sinewy hands. The swelling gut. The harsh bristles on a man’s chin. The thoughts became too much. She pushed herself off Binta and with no warning burst into tears. She covered her face with her hands, but the tears still came. Her face felt ugly with unhappiness but she couldn’t stop.

“What’s wrong now, Ana? Why are you crying? Has Mr Madir been particularly bad today?”

“No. It’s not that!” Ana sobbed. “In fact, I’ve not seen him at all today. I wasn’t thinking about him at all!”

“So what’s troubling you, sweetest?”

Ana looked up. Could she voice her feelings? The very idea of what was troubling her sent a fresh spasm of emotion through her frame, and the tears resumed.

“Tell me! What’s wrong?” demanded Binta, resting a hand on Ana’s shoulder. “Why are you crying? What’s upset you?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing!”

“There must be something. You can tell me. You must tell me. If anyone should know it’s me.”

Ana looked steadily into Binta’s concerned wide eyes. “It’s you! It’s what you do. All those men. Those horrid men! Every day. Hour upon hour. How can you?”

Binta nodded with reluctant understanding. “It doesn’t mean anything, Ana. You must believe me. It’s not choice. It’s not what I want to do. It’s what I have to do. It doesn’t diminish my love for you. If anything, it makes my love for you that much the stronger. I don’t enjoy it. You know that. I hate every second of it. It’s horrid. It’s disgusting. It’s demeaning.”

“But you still do it...”

“I’m not here by choice. The clients mean nothing. They’re less than nothing. There’s only you. Believe me!”

“But they do it to you. They do it every day. While I sit in the office, typing letters and taking notes and addressing envelopes, there are men, every day, while I think how wonderful you are and how much I love you!”

“My thoughts are with you when the clients do what they do, Ana. It becomes more bearable to think of you and how much better it is with someone I love. Someone who loves me. When they come into my room, take off their trousers - their bellies swelling loose and the smell of sweat - and then come on top of me, snorting and grunting like pigs... it’s you my thoughts focus on.”

“Are you saying that you think of me when your clients are making love to you? Am I just there to make it more bearable for you?”

“No, not at all. Well, yes, I mean. I don’t know!” stuttered Binta. “Yes, I do think of you when I’m servicing my clients. But I don’t mean that I think of you and them in anything like the same way. It’s not the same at all. It might be in a sense. It’s sex I suppose. And sex is sex, whether you enjoy it or not. But love makes all the difference between it being hell and heaven. With you, it’s heavenly. I’m in paradise. That’s because I love and respect you and I can’t bear to be parted from you. But with them...”

Binta paused. She turned round and looked out through the bars of the garden at the rooftops opposite. The dusk was setting in. Street lamps were coming on, and light emanated from behind the curtains of the residential blocks opposite. A car drove by and cries from a crowd of young men echoed across the streets. Ana walked up to Binta, and put an arm around her bare waist. There was a tiny shudder from Binta’s buttocks as she did so. Binta wasn’t crying, but her eyes had a drained look about them.

“I hate them so much, Ana! You must believe me. I hate the Brothel. I hate everything to do with it. Each day I count off: thinking only of the end of my sentence. I look forward to our meetings together. And those days when we don’t meet... Those are the worst days! I feel lonely. Isolated. Surrounded by enemies. Okay, the other prostitutes - some of them - are all right. Zabba. Ketaba. Ferhana. They’re company. They’re people I can talk to, and who listen to my worries. But they’re just friends. And often not really that. And the clients. They don’t count. They just break up my days: and a good day is when I can forget them altogether. A good day is when we meet and spend the nights together. Please believe me. You are more important to me than you can imagine.”

“But so many men! And you can’t say that you don’t enjoy it! You enjoy it with me. How can you not enjoy it with them?”

“It’s different. It’s not the same thing at all. I hate men. I despise and loathe them. I didn’t before I worked here. I just didn’t think about them very often. They were just there. I was, I suppose, just indifferent. So I had no strong feelings about them. In fact, I sometimes thought there was something wrong with me: not liking them in the way a woman is supposed to. I thought maybe that I would get to like them more if I got to know them better. But it’s not been like that. At all! The more I’ve seen of them, the more clients I have, the more contempt, disgust and revulsion I feel towards them. I know that Ketaba and Zabba say I should make more allowances for them. Even Ferhana says that men are more to be pitied than despised: but if you knew men like I know them, then you would hate them too. If it weren’t for men, this world would be a so much better and healthier place. And Alif is a true man’s society where women can only be either whores or mothers, and never anything that they might otherwise choose to be.”

Ana nodded. She so much wanted to believe Binta.

Her lover frowned: “I’ve been thinking about what we were discussing the other day in the canteen about Agdal. Do you remember? I’ve been thinking that perhaps I should be more positive about emigrating there. I don’t know how. And I don’t know at what cost. But it must be possible! People do emigrate. They do somehow manage to do it. There must be a way. And it must be a prize worth having. Living there would be such a neat, such a perfect, solution to our dilemma.”

“Our dilemma?” echoed Ana, staring deeply into Binta’s wide green eyes.

“Yes. That we want to live together. That we both want to live in the country together. In Alif, we can do one or the other, but not both. And we may not even be able to find jobs outside Blad even if we did live in the country. And what sort of life would it be for us in this big city? In Agdal, all that would be past. We could live like ordinary lovers. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

Ana smiled broadly. “Yes, it would! It would be paradise. Oh, I do hope it’s possible! But what can we do to get there?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Binta. “I really have no idea. Agdal’s only over the border, but it might as well be another planet. But I can ask. The other girls here might know. Ketaba might. She’s been there enough times. She knows what’s involved in going there as a tourist. Perhaps we could go as tourists ourselves and just not come back. We’d be illegal immigrants, and we’d have to get terrible jobs where nobody was bothered about our papers: but it’d be better than staying here. Maybe Ferhana might know. After all, she’s an immigrant herself. She might know what’s involved. Even if I find nothing at all, it’s worth asking, isn’t it?”

Ana felt hope rising inside her. This must be the solution, she thought. There would be no problem about language in Agdal, and it was known to be a wealthier country than Alif. All that tourist money and all those industries Agdal was famous for. With so much wealth, maybe there’d be some spare for Binta and her.

“Do you think I could get a job as a secretary there?” she wondered. “I’ve gained a lot of experience here. And I’m sure there’d be more jobs for secretaries in Agdal than Alif. They’ve got many more offices and businesses.”

“Perhaps,” nodded Binta. “Perhaps. If we got work permits, we could do anything. I don’t know what I could do. Perhaps I could study at college - maybe part time - and get a qualification I can use. I might become a secretary too. Or perhaps something better paid than that: I wasn’t at all bad at school, and if I worked hard I’m sure I’d get something.” She smiled broadly, and hugged Ana tightly to her chest. “That must be the answer. I can barely wait. The idea is giving me hope. I’ll finish my sentence here, and when I’m free we’ll do whatever we have to do to get to Agdal. I don’t care what it is, I’ll do it. I’ll even sell my body if necessary!”

Ana flushed with alarm: “You wouldn’t do that, would you?”

“It’s what I do now, and I get nothing for it!” Binta gazed into Ana’s sad round eyes. “Don’t take me seriously. I’m only joking! I’m just saying that I’ll do anything - well, nearly anything for us to live happily together! Wouldn’t that be simply wonderful?”

“Yes! It would be!” exclaimed Ana, feeling a wave of joy tingle through her body. “Agdal is where we’ll go. You’re right. It must be so. A country where we can live a normal life. Oh! I so hate Alif. It’s such a cruel unforgiving country. But in Agdal we can be happy. Won’t we, Binta?”

Her lover nodded and pulled Ana so close to her that her head rested on her shoulder. Ana looked over it, through the bars of the garden, over the tall buildings of the city in the early evening dark towards the red aura of the last rays of sunset, where she fancied were the tall snow-capped mountains, the golden beaches and the friendly faces of Agdal. They’d be there soon, she reflected. Hand in hand along the beach, listening to the sea lapping against the shore, not a care in the world. It just had to be!