1001 Nights Revisited in Recession - The First Tale

By José Lourenço

Bostiao Santamaria Braganza was quaking in his pants. He had been

summoned from his work site and now stood in front of the desk of Sheikh Mustafa
Bin Rashid.

“Ahlan wa sahlan, Bostiao,” the fat bearded man hailed him.

“Ahlan, respected Mustafa, kayf al hal, how are you and your wives and
children,” inquired Bostiao with a show of joviality.

“We have to let you go, habibi,” said Mustafa coming straight to the point.
“Our construction bill payments not coming in, so many of our employees like you
are going out.”

Bostiao personally believed that he was the best of the best. But he thought
to himself, Bloody hell! What to do ya, if this fellow fires me what I will do back in
Goa, I don't have money to put a xerox and cold storage also. Josefin will leave me
and marry that bastard Johncy who is Churchill's chamcha. Too much ya. This
Mustafa bastard is pulling out a cheque book to write my last pay, what to do ya.
Bloody fucker man!

“Boss, did you hear the story of the One Dirham Screw?”

Mustafa paused his podgy hand over the pink slip and looked bemusedly at
Bostiao. “No, tell me, how you can get a screw for one dirham, not possible, friend.
You tell me, but if you bullshitting me, I kill you.”

The pen-wielding hand paused in mid air. Mustafa pushed his cheque book
aside and pulled out his shisha pipe, inhaled a long drag of its herbal fumes and
waited curiously.

“Three friends went to Fujeirah for a fuck,” began Bostiao rather

nonchalantly. Mustafa grimaced slightly at his supervisor's bawdy words, but
listened quietly...

“It will be piptee dirhams por a phuck” warned the wizened old madam as
she led the three young men past dirty curtains and the simmering smell of sushi.

“But I have only ten dirhams,” proclaimed Balbir Singh. “What I can get
for ten dirhams, tell to me?”

“You can only squeeze titties of girlie for ten dirhams” conceded the old
hag, leading him to a room. “Nothing more, you want more - you pay piptee dirhams
por phuck”. These were times of shortage and every coin had to be squeezed from
her ‘girlie’ resources.
 Whereupon the rustic lad from Punjab applied himself unto the twin
breasts of the First Whore, gently first, kneading over the cheap fabric of her abaya.
He worked upon them diligently, caressing the udders between which had lain many
an exhausted head, coaxing them to rise and fall within his hands. It was not long
before memories of home fell upon him, of golden fields and golden grain. Of flour
and plate, and pattering rain. He thought of the times when he would close his eyes
at home and imagine that the firm lumps of dough he moulded with his palms were a
young bosom.

And at that lost moment, in that cold dismal corner of Fujeirah, Balbir
closed his eyes and wished that the warm mounds in his hands were the parotas of
Punjab.

His needy kneading rapidly rose to a frenzy, but his time had run out and
the flour of his devotion wilted in agony and fell away, leaving the young man
bewildered and empty handed. He left the room and went away greatly aroused and
greatly saddened.

“I don’t have even ten dirhams,” pleaded the second young man. “All I am
having is five dirhams only. Whatever possible in five dirhams I am happy for.”

The haggard matron of vice shook her head in disbelief and turned toward
her lair. Young Chachappan followed her to the room of the Second Whore, where
the old hag warned him that all he was entitled to was half of what was available for
ten dirhams.

Whereupon the ebony lad from Kerala sat by the side of the Second Whore
and took the only fruit bestowed upon him in his right hand. He weighed it and
fondled it and turned it and tweaked it. And as he happily twirled her nipple between
his fingers, his mind drifted off to the marketplace of Tiruchirapalli where he had
spent many a blessed hour sitting with lungi tucked, lost in the radio stuck to the side
of his face. He listened to the silent music of her breast, turning the knob of his
childhood gently round and round.

But knobs and nipples have their limit and Chachappan soon ran out of
bandwidth. He too left the building with only an antenna at hand and with the firm
resolution of procuring a transistor with his next five dirhams.

And now we come to the last lad standing. Stanislaus Pinto stood forlornly
at the door of the damned damsels and waited. When the hag came to him with a
dripping candle, for it was late by then, he whispered to her in hushed tones.

“I have only one dirham in the world,” said the boy. “But I wish to only
speak for a while with a girl”.

The hag’s eyelids drooped until they nearly hit the floor, but night had
almost fallen and sighing deeply she led him on to the third room, admonishing him
that he was not to touch even an inch of the girl. The last dirham of the day would
pay for the wench’s wage. And the hag went to bed.
 Stanislaus entered the room of the Third Whore. She was but a girl of
sixteen and Stanislaus was but a lad of eighteen. He sat on her bed which was clean
and scented and he told her he wished to only speak for a while with a girl.

They sat across each other without touching. He spoke of his yearning for
his land where green hills made love to sandy beaches. He sang to her songs of
moonlit nights in the shade of coconut trees, lilting to the rhythm of the sea. He told
her of his house in the fields, with a cock named Komblya and a cat named Buklya.

As he sang, her slanted eyes melted and she wept, thinking of her thatched
hut and her sisters in Pampanga province and of her dog named Kako. She fell into
his arms and begged of him to love her. She washed his face with her tears as she
kissed him over and over again.

And so it was sixty years later, respected Mustafa, said Bostiao, that on a
rainy evening in Betalbatim, a small crowd gathered at the graveyard. An old
woman with finely chiseled wrinkles on what was once a beautiful face of alabaster
stood supported by her children, two handsome men and a lovely high cheeked
woman, their faces glowing in sorrow. She stumbled forward to the side of the coffin
for one last glimpse of the old man lying in peace and slowly removed from around
her neck a chain with a single coin hanging from it.

“Take this, loved one, and speak with me just for a little more time…” she
sobbed. She placed it in the dead hands that clasped a rosary now getting slowly wet,
and kissed him gently.

She followed him in death six months later and they now lie together
beneath the soil of the land where green hills make love to sandy beaches lilting to
the rhythm of the sea.

“And that, O great and respected Mustafa, was the story of the One Dirham
Fuck,” sighed Bostiao.

Mustafa looked like a wet and woebegone walrus, with his hairy face
soaked to the beard in tears. But he shook his head clear and looked at the clock.

“It is namaaz time now. I cannot sign your termination cheque in the
namaaz time.”

“Come tomorrow, sala, and we will finish off this business,” he said
gruffly, wiping his eyes.