Ana opened the door to the foyer and looked around her. Amongst the usual selection of middle-aged men hovering around was a single young lady, dressed in leather jacket and trousers, with short blue hair and hoop-like earrings dangling down each side of her round-cheeked face. It could only be Azhnia, but Ana needed to go through the motions. She approached the prostitute at the reception desk, thanked her for her call and waved to Azhnia who raised her eyebrow with some surprise, but nonetheless waved back with an expression of recognition that was totally feigned. Ana reflected with regret that to Azhnia, she must have looked just the same as all the other prostitutes in her tight revealing clothes and thick pasting of makeup.

Ana strolled up to Azhnia, and greeted her with a theatrical show of familiar amiability. She could see Azhnia’s eyes examine her from eyeliner to high heels: clearly disturbed by the blatancy of her appearance. Ana had never seen a woman dressed like Azhnia before: the nearest to her in appearance was Zabba when not at work, but Zabba’s appearance was still within the parameters of dress acceptable in the City of Blad . Azhnia’s appearance was no more confrontational than Zabba’s but it suggested a self-confidence rare in Alif women.

Ana sat next to Azhnia, who stared at her. When she spoke, her voice was somehow more languid and relaxed than normal for Alif; and the vowels appeared contorted and tortured to her ears. Nobody could ever mistake Azhnia as a native to Alif however fluently she spoke the same language. “Well, Ana, isn’t it? How’re you hanging? ‘Sreal neat to see ya. ‘N’ this’s where you work? ‘Sreal weird! Quite freaky, in fact. You guys’re in the weirdest setup I could ever imagine!”

“Don’t you have brothels in Gharab?”

“Yeh! Sure we do. Not like this though. Not that I’ve ever been inside one, y’know. Our brothels are all private. The state’s got nothing to do with them. But in Alif near everything’s nationalised, so I s’pose there’s nothing so weird about brothels being nationalised ‘n’all! I just never thought it’d be like this somehow. It’s sort of almost like a hotel foyer here, isn’t it? You kind of expect bellboys and bureaux de changes, don’t you?”

Ana wasn’t sure she really understood everything Azhnia was saying, but she nodded her head in assent. “Are you living in Blad?”

“Yeh. Sure I do. I got a job working in a café. Not a waitress, though. They said it wouldn’t be right for the customers to see me. They’d be put off their coffees! Behind the counter. It doesn’t pay very well, but it means I don’t have to spend all my savings in one go. And they give me a room above the café. It’s real tiny, but it’s better than nothing I s’pose! You live here do you?”

“In the brothel?”

“Yeh. Like Binta and Ferhana. You live here?”

Ana raised her eyebrows. “No, thank goodness. I live in Jadid.”

“Jadid? That’s a real nice quarter, that is. But Ferhana said you, like, had your own room in the Brothel where we’d be going and meet Binta.”

“Yes, that’s so. But it’s not my home. It’s just where I work. Shall we go there?”

“Oh yeh. Sure! Yeh. Let’s go then.”

Ana escorted Azhnia past the reception desk to the door she’d come through, tottering on her heels while Azhnia followed behind in considerably more comfort in her rubber-soled boots. She led the way along corridors and up staircases to her room which was in one of the smarter wings of the Brothel reserved for Alphas and prostitutes like her who were accorded higher status for their other services to the Brothel. Azhnia looked around her with wonderment at the rows of doors and the lights above each one of them. A prostitute passed by, escorting a small balding man in an ill-fitting suit, and Azhnia’s eyes followed them. She was clearly fascinated by all that she saw, but made no comment. They soon reached Ana’s room, the sight of whose door sent a shiver of anxiety down Ana’s spine. She hated it, however well-decorated it might be and however comfortable the bed. It was a room she only ever normally visited when she was about to see a client, and the association with all those hateful, loathsome encounters always left a very uncomfortable feeling in the back of her throat.

“This is it!” announced Ana, pushing open the door and revealing the bed, armchair and washbasin. “This is where I work.”

“Where’s Binta?”

“She’ll be along soon,” Ana said. She indicated the bed. “Sit there. I’ll sit on the chair, if you don’t mind.” She hated the memories connected with the bed. It was with some reluctance that she’d agreed to return to the room after her working day. It was normally somewhere she was happy to leave and the bed for all its apparent luxury was more like a soft-matressed torture rack than somewhere to sleep.

“This is a real neat room!” said Azhnia approvingly. “It’s real big. Bigger than my bedsit, I can tell you! Can’t say much for the choice of décor: these reds and pinks. It’s like a real boudoir. It’s not your taste, is it?”

“All the rooms are decorated much like this. We don’t have much say in how it’s done. It’s what the clients want and expect.”

“Is this where you, like, have sex with them, is it?”

Ana ignored the question. She had no wish to discuss that aspect of her working life with anyone. Azhnia was more persistent.

“Ferhana says it’s, like, real awful what she has to do. She really hates it. It’s something you don’t like, neither, isn’t it?”

Ana nodded. She tried to change the subject. “Mostly, I work as a secretary...”

“Yeh, Ferhana said in her letters. She said it was real weird, y’know, you working in this kind of joint. I thought it was real weird that anyone like works in a Brothel at other things than being a like prostitute. You sort of think that that’s all that ever happens here, but I reckon there’s gotta be some admin and all, hasn’t there? And you got to know Ferhana and Binta as a secretary, didn’t you?”

“That’s right,” sniffed Ana.

She studied Azhnia. She was clearly nervous, despite her show of self-assurance. Was it because she was anticipating meeting Binta or was it because she was in a place like the Brothel? She glanced at the mirror. She hoped that nothing would be recorded of their conversation, but she reflected that with the enormous volume of recorded material being collected that as long as what was seen was of no visual significance then everything said would probably never be scrutinised. She looked back at Azhnia.

“Do you like living in Alif?”

“What a question! Yeh, it’s all right. I’ve made some real good friends here. It’s got some real neat countryside. I s’pose I must like it. I’ve been to plenty of other countries too, and a lot of them are pretty neat too. But I keep coming back here. I don’t really know why, but I s’pose the friends I’ve made here must be one good reason. Friends like Binta and Ferhana. And friends are real important, y’know. Don’t you think?”

“Yes, very important,” agreed Ana.

There was a knock at the door. Ana jumped back with alarm, her face whitening as she contemplated the fact that it must mean that Binta had arrived. She had rehearsed and re-rehearsed this moment for so long: what she would say, the bitterness that she felt, the betrayal of her love that Binta had been party to, the worries and anxieties that had haunted her in the last few months. As the door opened and Binta entered, seeming so much smaller and more humble than she’d remembered, all the rehearsed lines were discarded. She broke into a sad but broad grin. She hadn’t realised how much she had been longing to see Binta again.

“Hiya, sweetie!” greeted Azhnia. “How’re you hanging? The bastards not getting you down, are they?”

Binta hovered by the door and nodded in reply. Like Ana she seemed to have lost her voice. She leaned an arm against the door, gripping its edge with her fingers, and stared straight into Ana’s eyes. Then she returned the grin and ran straight to Ana, leaning down on the floor by her stockinged feet, grasping her arms in her hands and staring up at Ana with a look of pleading and shame.

“Oh! Ana! I’ve missed you! I’ve missed you so much! I’ve been so worried that you wouldn’t talk to me ever again. So worried now that you ... that you ... I thought I’d lost you forever! I haven’t, have I? Tell me that I haven’t! Tell me that all will be the same again!”

Ana looked down at her lover, smiling broadly and crying at the same time. “I still love you, Binta! I will always love you! All I want is for us to be together again. Please believe me!”

“Ferhana told me about the videos. How you found out about me and her. How can you ever forgive me? What can I do to convince you that it is you? Only you that I love! Please please forgive me! And how you must have suffered these last months! Those horrid clothes you wear. The suffering you must have been through!”

In Ana’s rehearsed script this was to be the occasion in which she would now spell out exactly the full gruesome and unpalatable details of her life as a prostitute - part-time, maybe, but a prostitute all the same. She was to tell Binta about the recurrent humiliations met upon her by the Director and his never-ceasing reminders of the illegal activity with Binta which had entrapped her in this way. In her mind’s eye, this script was now crumpled up and thrown away into the waste bin at the corner generally intended to receive paper tissues.

“Oh, Binta!” she said with a deep sigh. “None of that matters. Nothing matters! All that is at all important is that we be together again!”

Binta smiled sadly, and buried her head on the thin strip of black skirt that intervened between the nylon of her stockings and the bare flesh of her midriff. Her arms wrapped themselves around Ana’s waist and her breasts nuzzled against her knees and thighs.

“Oh, Ana! I love you. I love you. I haven’t been able to eat. I haven’t been able to sleep. My life is a misery, punctuated by the nightmare of the clients and the few pleasures that my garden affords me. Oh please, Ana! You do forgive me, don’t you? It will be like it was before again, won’t it!”

Ana stroked Binta’s long hair as it spread out over her shoulders and onto Ana’s thighs and outward over the pile of the carpet. She let a finger roam around her ear and onto Binta’s cheek. If only it could be like it was before, she thought, but now that she was under the almost constant supervision of Khedra and the Director it could never again be as free or natural. She would always fear reprisals which could affect both herself and Binta.

“We-ell!” exclaimed Azhnia, in a long drawn-out whine. “I didn’t expect this, Binta sweetie. I really thought it was me who’d come to see you. I didn’t know that it was gonna be like some lovers’ reunion!”

Binta turned around to face Azhnia, leaning an arm on Ana’s thigh with a trail of tears running down her cheek. “Oh, Azhnia! I’m so sorry! I wasn’t thinking. It was just that ...”

“You don’t have to spell things out to me, sweetie. Ferhana hinted there might be something between you two. I just didn’t think I’d be some kinda, like, frigging gooseberry, y’know. I’m real happy for you two. Really I am!”

“I know. I know,” blubbered Binta. She took one of Ana’s hands in her own and squeezed it tight. “How are you, Azhnia? How’s life treating you?”

“Fine! Fine. Same’s always! But it’s you I’m worried about. How’re you? How’re you coping with living and working here?”

“It’s horrible! Horrible! I hate every minute of it. It just gets more and more unbearable!”

“You’ve not, like, got used to it?”

Binta shook her head. “All I ever think of is: when is it going to end? When will I be free again?”

“And when will that be, sweetest?”

Binta sighed. “Another couple of months or so!”

“Well! That’s not so bad after all the time you’ve been here!”

“But I don’t know what to do next. I haven’t got anywhere to go to. I can’t go back to Jebel. I don’t know anyone in Blad. I don’t have any skills that’ll get me a job. And wherever I go people will find out that I’ve got a criminal record and that I’ve worked in the Brothel.”

“Can’t you just go and live in Jadid with Ana here?”

Binta looked up at Ana with longing. “I’d like that. I’d like that so much. But now they know about Ana and me, it won’t be safe. They might want to arrest us again. And then it’ll be worse.”

“Well! There’s only one thing you two can do, and that’s, like, bail out! Just leave Alif. Go someplace where girls like you won’t be hassled and you can, like, lead your own lives. Most countries don’t care a hoot about lesbians. They wouldn’t hold it against you!”

“But it’s not as easy as that!” Ana said sadly. “It’s very difficult getting passports in Alif. It’s very expensive and they probably wouldn’t give one to Binta because of her criminal record. And for me, they’d ask my boss for references and he would never give me one.”

“You sure about that?”

Ana reflected on the Director. It would be just the sort of humiliation he would dearly love to inflict on her: tearing up her passport application and throwing the shreds over her body. It would only be as bad as some of the other unspeakably disgusting humiliations that he’d contrived for her benefit. “I could never be more sure about it!”

Azhnia mused on this. “Well, say you could leave the country, where’d you both wanna go? Have you got any kinda idea, like?”

Ana gazed down at Binta who was nuzzling her cheek against the silky artificial fibre of her skirt. “Agdal. That’s where we’d like to go. Agdal.”

“Hey, that’s only, like, next door, isn’t it? Yeh, I been there. Real neat, it is. You’d love it there. They got nothing against lesbians there. And they like nudists and all. Ferhana told me you’d become a nudist, Binta. I really didn’t believe her: it seems such a real weird thing to do. Like getting into astrology, mysticism, incense and therapy. Not like you at all. But here you are: naked as the day you were born. So, Agdal is it? Well, I think you’ve chosen the right one there!”

“You think we’d be happy there, Azhnia?” asked Binta longingly.

“Well, yeh. I’m real sure you would. But when I say you’ve chosen the right one, I don’t just mean there. I’m sure you’d be real happy in Gharab as well if you’d wanted to go there. ’Fact you’d probably be happy in almost any frigging country ’slong as it wasn’t Alif. No! What I mean is that Agdal’s a much better bet than most because it’s got this Amnesty from Oppression policy. Haven’t you heard about it? It’s been going on for years. Ever since they became, like, the most liberal country in probably the whole frigging world.”

“‘Amnesty from Oppression’?” wondered Ana. “What’s that mean? And what’s it got to do with us?”

“You’re not kidding me? You’ve never heard of it! Well, that’s real weird. I thought everyone knew about that. I ’spect you guys never get told anything, do you? Your government’s real tight on information. But I thought here in Blad and in the Brothel and all, it’d be like common knowledge.”

“Tell us, Azhnia. What is this policy? What should we know that we don’t know about now?” asked Binta with a certain impatience in her voice.

“Well! All around the world there are countries like Alif which are like real intolerant and repressive. Countries where people who disagree with the government are locked up or shot. Countries like here where the only elections are like real shams, where you’ve only got the government’s appointees standing for positions in your parliament, congress or senate, or whatever they call it here. Countries where the president, like your own President Marmalade - sorry, Marmeluke - supposedly win 99.9% of the popular vote. Ever since Agdal went so liberal it’s had this Amnesty from Oppression policy. I s’pose it’s like a guilt trip the country’s got. It used to be real repressive itself. Worse than Alif! And not that long ago, really. It just got fed up with fighting all these stupid wars (though it’s not gone as far as give all its territories back!) and had some kinda revolution. And now it like gives asylum to political prisoners and people like that all over the world. That’s what their Amnesty from Oppression’s all about. It’s to sort of like make amends for all those people it shot, imprisoned and tortured when it wasn’t the liberal big shot it is now!”

“Are you saying we could get political asylum?” asked Ana incredulously. “But neither of us has done anything political. We’ve never done anything like that at all!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be sure about that. You’re both lesbians. Binta’s a naturist. You’ve both been pretty much punished for your views and practices, working as prostitutes in this place. I think they’d look on you pretty sympathetically. Naturism and homosexuality are pretty much commonplace in Agdal. They’re bigger deals there than they are in Gharab, which wouldn’t be nearly so happy to see people roaming around in the nude all day. Yeh! I reckon you’ve got a real big chance with Agdal. All ya gotta do is apply for asylum through this programme of theirs. I mean, you don’t know your chances until you try, y’know’t I mean!”

“I can’t believe it,” said Binta sceptically, but with a face which betrayed her eagerness to believe every word. “It sounds just a little too good to be true.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not true. You go have a stab at it. It could work out for you. Agdal’s got a real big embassy in the Honey district. Just ask a few questions. You don’t know how far you might get.”

Ana looked down at Binta with a smile. “Azhnia’s right! That might be exactly the right thing to do. We can but try.”

“I don’t see why any government would want to be that generous. What have we done to deserve such preferential treatment? But on the other hand, I’ve come to despair so much while I’ve been here, I’ve probably got too cynical for my own good. I just can’t believe there can be so much good in the world.”

“Oh, Binta, there’s always gotta be something to balance the bad. It’d be a real bad world if it were all as bad as Alif wouldn’t it?”

“But if you think Alif’s so bad why do you keep visiting here?” Binta wondered.

“I don’t come from here. I can leave whenever I like. A Gharab passport’s real good for getting anywhere. And as a foreigner I can probably get to see more of the good side of Alif than either of you. I can just travel around, look at all the different parts of your country, meet people like you and Ferhana, and then when I get fed up I can just head to the border and go somewhere like Agdal or whatever. So, Alif’s not as bad for me as it is for you. And you got real neat countryside here. Better, in fact, than Gharab which is a lot colder and a lot more industrial than Alif. If you had a better government, people’d probably flood into your country from everywhere. But it’s you we’re talking about. You’re the ones that want to get out.”

Binta nodded. “Yes. I do. Desperately! I’ve lost everything I ever had in Alif. My family have disowned me. Mezyana’s in a convent, and she’ll be there for much longer than I’ll have been in the Brothel. I know nobody at all outside the Brothel walls. And I’m going to be stigmatised for the rest of my life. But what about you, Ana?” She turned her head around to gaze into Ana’s face. “Do you want to leave Alif as much as I do? Won’t you miss your family?”

“I already do!” sighed Ana. “I haven’t seen them since I arrived here for the interview. But they would disown me too if they knew what I was doing now. I shall probably never be able to walk through Rif again if they knew what I did for a living. They would despise me for it. But more than that, I could never live my life without you, Binta. You’re all that really matters to me!”

Azhnia smiled indulgently. “How very touching! I’d never have guessed. You’ve done real well, Binta. Two good loves in your life. Y’know, I’ve had more than my fair share of lovers and boyfriends, but none of them seem to’ve been as good or passionate as yours have been.”

Ana knew that this was a reference to Mezyana, but she also knew about Azhnia’s own relationship with Binta. A flash of anger spread through her, as she reflected on how Binta had not only been unfaithful to her with Ferhana, but had earlier committed the same indiscretion with Azhnia. Could she really trust Binta that much? When would she do the same again? She glared at Binta, who flinched slightly.

“Oh, Ana. Don’t look at me like that! Trust me! It’s you I love. Only you. In the last few months, I’ve thought only of you. Yours is the only true love in my life!”

Azhnia scratched her nose, and smiled to herself. “You mustn’t let the past get in the way of your future together, y’know. Mezyana is in the past. By the look of it, you are her future.”

“Mezyana isn’t the only person in Binta’s past I am concerned about!”

Azhnia blushed. “Well ... er ... anyway ... It’s the future you’ve got to think about. It’s not that long till Binta’s sentence finishes, y’know! You’ve both gotta think what you’re gonna do next. And if Blad or Alif or Jebel or whatever’s not what you want then you’re gonna have to look elsewhere aren’t you. And if it’s Binta you love then you’re just gonna have to accept that she’s not perfect, y’know. There’s always gonna be a past behind her. And it’s not just gonna go away, y’know!” She looked around Ana’s room, at the red and pink wallpaper, the silk cream sheets and then finally at Ana herself, who was uncomfortably aware of the thick mask of makeup pasted on her face and the artificially enhanced cleavage below her chin. “And don’t forget, Ana. You’ve got some past of your own that’s not gonna go away that easy either!”