Sinister Grains

His hand slid across my stomach, sliding across the sweat on my skin, the light of the candles caught the wetness on the surface of my elongated stomach. Lying across the bed sheets, the satin felt like a blanket of cold softness. I lay breathing hard after coming down off the high of drinking too much wine. I could feel a pulsing of heat crawling up my body, a primal feeling slowing making its way to my brain, taking over any sense I had left.
I was excited by the movements of my own body, memories of this night, returned to me as I danced and I was once again, in the middle of a desert, under a tent, surrounded by Arabian luxuries, and a barbarian beat, tearing away the ties that I had to the present time, and I could feel a power, a heat, a pulsating heart speeding its way to a forbidden feeling. The feeling of sexual freedom. A freedom to lose your mind, a freedom to touch what you want and breathe faster than the wind blows. It is a dance of pleasure and passion. A dance only seen by those who can lose themselves in the moment, who can make that journey as well, who are willing to lose their minds, and let their bodies connect to the sights, and feel, and want and need, the body dancing before them. A dance only known to those who dream of lands roamed by sexual animals, who dream of places where time is measured by the sands of the desert. Time is no relevance, and relevance doesn’t exist. People become vulnerable, and nostalgic about their world, and nothing matters except utter rapture.

I have lived this land. The foreign people lose their minds here, lose their sanity in the blistering sun, and become slaves to their desires at night. I couldn’t explain the feeling I felt when I saw him but you have to understand, that I hadn’t felt this ever before. He didn’t know my passions, the wilderness I came from, and the fever I embodied, the fire I held within me.
He was not of this land. This man, tall and dark, and covered in ink paintings on his chest and back, had dark eyes; eyes that played with yellows and browns. Yellows and browns belonging to the sun, distorting your vision in the vast heat. He said to me many times, he was an astronaut. He had been to the red planet.
For the planet, which might be as hot as mine, and as cold as our desert nights, he had helped create what had allowed people to explore the red planet; machine and rockets, and equipment, and housing, and plans to launch the already organized civilization, which would inhabit the red planet, Mars. He lay on the giant pillows, hand crafted in Morocco, under this tent, surrounded by luxurious foods and music, told me of the hardships and adventures which had taken place on the red planet.

I was only a dancer and knew nothing of the stars above, only that they were a glorious sight from the sinister grains of the earth.
He continued to tell me the plans for the Space organization of the United States, and what would be in store for people; a chance to live on another planet.
I offered him a plate of Dolmas and more wine. He denied the plate of Dolmas, but signaled with his hand to pour him more wine, and then touched my hand, and thanked me. It was his kindness and gentle ways, which attracted me, yet still an aura around him, telling me he was a strong man, a man who would protect the woman he loved, even with fiery violence.
He talked about his childhood, telling me how he mis-behaved, and somehow this was sexy, knowing he was very intelligent, and was very powerful. But did he have a fire that would connect with my own? What was I thinking, being just a dancer, just a woman of little means, and many thoughts, how could I be worth this man’s devotion? I began to think what it would be like to be in a room alone with him, as he spoke. He took another sip of wine, I watched the shapes flex and move in his forearm and shoulder, as he raised the golden glass to his lips. I snapped out of it, and but then watched him drink the wine, watched his lips cover with red wetness.

I wanted to be the wine glass, and gather his wet lips on my rims. I put the plate of Dolmas down, which was beginning to tip over, due to my lack of attention.
I had been called to the other side of the tent, to Mensa Al Salaam. He was one of the most influential people in the oil industry, who had invited the employers of Derek Hermann, who was one of Mensa’s clients. Derek had begun a relationship with Mensa since the United States’s Oil reserve had been sucked dry, of course he needed oil supplies for the company’s projects in space, and so in return, Mensa was receiving a portion of the future profits, which would be made from the project on Mars. Mensa rose to retire with his mistress for the night, ending with a speech, “thank you friends and fellow engineers”, and commencing the last dance of the evening.

I assumed my position with the other women, and when I heard the music again, I remembered why I was alive. This is what I lived for. My hands began to weave in and out of the air, following my breast and my stomach, down to my hips and legs. I eyed the engineer I had been serving wine to. He was watching me. Watching me intensely. Watching me with those eyes, and I knew he wasn’t thinking about anything but what was moving in the shadows of the lanterns. My body up and down, and feeling every nerve in my figure come to the surface. Blood stirring and mad minds on fast-forward and pause at the same time, how could I keep myself from completely going up in flames?
The engineer pulled out a small book from his pocket and a pen. And he wrote.

I became distracted and wanted to know what he was writing. In between being drawn by my curiosity of what he could be writing during the most seductive dances known in this country, and the fact that I was dancing this passionate sexual dance, I was angered that he wasn’t paying attention to that fact that my fire was heightened by his presence and his eyes on me, and yet he didn’t feel the fire. I was angered that at this moment when I was doing the only thing I could do, which was belly dance, what I did for a living, he was writing notes in his little book! I was enraged.

He noticed that I wasn’t paying attention to him. Flirting with the other engineers, sitting around the tent, of course they didn’t have his softness, and different air around them like he did. They looked at me and wanted to take me to bed, and that was it, there was nothing else in their little eyes, some of them had wives and some had children, and still they looked at us like we were whores. All of us. All of these women, in fine fabrics and gold and jewels, hanging from our clothes and necks, ears, hands and feet, we were he queens of the desert, the Cleopatra’s of the land we knew well, but to them, to these American men, we would be just another great story, a sexual release, and an awesome romp.

We were not whores, we were dancers, but we were also the knowers of rapture, of fantasies and heightened feeling of the body and mind. We had certain customs, one of which is the burning of incense, but not just any incense: clove incense. Clove is an element of hallucination, which heightens all feeling in the body, along with the heavily fermented wine, drunk during the feast and pleasurable dances, allowing these natural combinations to add to the core of our primal instincts, to allow our passions and sensations to secrete shamelessly to create a world on fire.

I became bored of the other engineers and realized that the one I had been eyeing all night was lying back on the pillows and watching and smiling at me.

“Are you just going to smile all night, engineer?” I smirked, as I walked to him and leaned back on the pole holding up part of the giant vibrant colored tent.
“No I was waiting for you.” He said, completely confidant.
‘Waiting for me? Don’t you have things to write in your little book?” I asked, still very annoyed about earlier.
“No.” “I’m finished.” The engineer replied calmly.
“Well, so am I,” I replied, Sweet Ala, why was I being like this.
“I was writing down a poem. I was…describing the way you move. I didn’t want to forget.” He yelled after me, since I had turned and begun to walk away. He was watching me. He had been very closely. I spun around slowly and smiled, “So, what now engineer?”
He smiled a very sly smile, “Would you walk with me?”
“I don’t do those kind of favors.” I replied.
“Would you honor me then, with just a walk?” He asked sincerely, playing off my jest, he understood, that I wasn’t just going to get behind a water trough and get to it.

We walked for a while, the sand was cold under us, and we could feel it through our thin sandals. The sands and sky had a haze of blue, because of the moon, which was a drastic change from the orange yellowish wave from the day’s sun. Our surroundings were calming, yet my insides were burning, I was a human torch and I could have turned the sand beneath me to glass, if it weren’t for the fact that I was trying to keep my composure around this American man.
I told him about the mysteries and wonders of this place, and he told me about his heritage, to which I found out was Irish, a place somewhere in Europe, a great nation, many miles, north of here. A place I had always wanted to travel to. My mother was a traveler, and a legend here, a nomad, traveling the lengths of the deserts of North Africa to Europe, and the Middle East, to entertain and honor people with her enchantment. She disappeared one night, on a full moon, after having conceiving me alone, with only her emerald ring to bear witness, and left me to the traveling dancers, with only her emerald ring, and her legends and stories of her mysticism.

We stepped into the engineer’s tent, and he lead me to the mass of pillows and satin sheets, which made up his bed. He lit candles and incense as he had learned from my tellings of the way things were done here. And he asked me to dance for him. I had never done a private dance for anyone before, alone, an intimate dance.

The dance I performed for him was a dance only known as one of the oldest dances, performed by the Mahadeva. It was a dance for fertility, and a dance of purity. A dance of spiritual unity, and would provoke unbelievably powerful sexual desire. And she told him, a dancer is a cook, a chief of prowess and power, of sensuality, of desire, an extraction of the very core of a person, and emotion, deep and diverse emotional recipes, to evoke the very freedom to become sensitive to every nerve, taste, sound and sight, and to lose thought and stability, leaving the cook and the eater completely vulnerable for each other.

Afterwards, she lay on her back. As his hand slid across her elongated stomach, across the sweat on her skin, the light of the candles caught the wetness on the surface of her stomach. Lying across the bed, the satin felt like a blanket of cold softness. She lay breathing hard after coming down off the high of drinking too much wine. She could feel a pulsing of heat crawling up her body, a primal feeling slowing making its way to her brain, taking over any sense she had left.

The movements of her own body had excited her. The engineer was unsure about what she would allow him to do, but at the same time, he had watched her, and he was feeling the vulnerability of both of them, and the desire, the uncontrollable desire to ravish her. Lying on his bed, in a pulsing sweat, he wanted to, he wanted to feel what it would be like to be on the inside, to feel that fire, to feel the intensity, about to engulf her in flames. His hand slid from her rising and falling stomach, down her body, slowly and gently to between her legs.
Her eyes closed, the combination of her desire for him, the incense, the wine and dancing had subdued her will to do anything. She lay there, and did nothing to stop him. They craved each other.

He was inside her as he tore at her clothes. Until they were both twisted in sheets and each other, among clothing, pillows and burned incense. Not leaving each other’s sides until dawn, they stayed in there positions entwined together, until the desert changed from blue to orange yellow.