12

It had been a riotous night at the Palace and the Master and his companions were wasted.

The ashen threads of dawn seeped into the large hall strewn with bodies. Revellers were sprawled out everywhere, bloated with intoxication and slurring their words.

The evening had begun in a large circle that gradually disintegrated and scattered to the loud music of the band. The guests had shed their stiffness as a Khaliji ensemble, brought in especially for the occasion, belted out rhythmic dance tunes and the lead singer whipped the crowd into a wild frenzy. The girls shimmied and shook their bottoms skilfully while the men, their joints loosened, leapt around them gracelessly. By the closing number everyone had shed the last of their inhibitions and sprung to their feet. The excitement abated when the performance was over and the musicians packed up their instruments and left quietly with the singer.

The languid and dewy breeze had not yet dispelled the last of the night, and the Palace lights shimmered against the glassy surface of the sea, tinged with the first light of dawn. The glow cast by the lanterns suspended from the Palace balconies turned the waters into a vast turquoise canvas streaked with gold.

Fighting his hangover, a guest called Jalal Ma’eeni struggled to a half-standing position from his stupor. He turned his feet in the direction he thought was due east and his musical voice lifted in the morning call to prayer. By the time he was done, he had called the prayer in all four cardinal directions and was now facing north.

Still pitched on their stomachs, the other guests responded with almost involuntary motions. They could hardly move in their drunken daze. Joseph Essam, claiming he wanted to break down the barriers of religion, asked someone to demonstrate what he needed to do to join in the prayer. He lined up next to everyone else and began reciting from the Holy Bible until someone silenced him and suggested he should stand away from them if he wanted to pray.

Everyone lined up in two crooked rows behind Ma’eeni, who looked right and left and invited the women to form their own separate row next to Joseph Essam. Before he had completed the very first words of the prayer cycle – the takbeer – the Master struggled to his feet.

‘The only one who leads prayers around here is me, you ass,’ he exclaimed, grabbing Ma’eeni by the shirt-collar.

Ma’eeni sank to the ground and did not try to pick himself up. Sprawled on his back, he reached out for the closest liquor bottle and slugged whatever was left in it.

The Master stumbled through the Qur’anic recitation: he wrestled with his memory to dredge up the verses of a particu­lar sura and came up with those from another sura instead. He faltered through the opening words, ‘Have We not soothed your heart, and relieved you of the burden—’ He stopped abruptly, unable to remember the rest.

The Master roared, ‘Help me out, sons of bitches!’

Since none of the congregation could complete the Qur’anic sura, he bowed and sank to his knees, not in reverential prostration but simply keeling over drunk. He fell asleep on the spot and began to snore; he was soon joined by several guests, with their mouths hung wide open.

Servants picked their way carefully around the sprawling bodies to collect bottles and glasses. The few remaining guests who had not dozed off fought their torpor and staggered off to their bedrooms to see if they could rekindle their pent-up lust.

*  *  *

In addition to my original crime, there was now another – one that could see me hang if it were ever discovered. But what bothered me more and plagued me with doubt was the video tape the Master had handed me. I remained baffled by it and assumed that, somehow, a spy with a camera had been hiding inside the villa and following my every move.

One day, out of the blue, the police raided the villa. Thankfully I was there when it happened.

It was during the summer holiday when the Master and his family were away on a tour of Europe. Before me lay the prospect of three months of freedom in which to do anything I wanted. I considered a trip to Casablanca, where a group of Palace employees had arranged to spend their holidays, but felt hesitant about leaving my aunt alone at the villa.

I toyed with the idea of taking her back to her house in the Firepit. It offered the prospect of getting rid of her once and for all since she would never be able to tell anyone what had happened to her and it would be practically impossible to convey the story in sign language. But I thought better of the idea when I recalled that the two women I had hired were able to communicate with her perfectly well. They understood all her hand gestures even when she was so angry she was fit to be tied.

It was one of those women who came to tell me the police were at the door.

I took my time going downstairs, trying to think of a reason for their visit. I momentarily panicked at the thought that the Master might have gone ahead and handed a copy of the video tape to the authorities in order to get rid of me. I thought of a whole host of possibilities but decided that delaying would just further complicate matters.

I came down the stairs pretending to have a stomach ache and apologising for keeping them waiting. I was at the door, talking to three policemen and I could see two cars in the driveway. As soon as I appeared, a higher-ranking officer hopped out of one of the cars. I introduced myself and told him where I worked. For the first time ever, I used my work address and the power of the Palace for a private purpose.

‘How can I help you?’ I asked politely.

‘Maybe you can tell us why we keep getting emergency 999 calls from here,’ the officer said. ‘But there’s never anyone on the other end of the line saying anything intelligible. We just hear stammering and shrieking.’

‘My sincere apologies, sir,’ I answered quickly. ‘I stored the number on my phone in case of an emergency. Looks like some of the kids figured out which button to press and have misused the phone.’ I apologised again and began shouting out random names that came to mind. ‘Hattan! Ghassan! Ma’een! Get over here!’

We waited in silence.

A few moments later, I tried again. ‘Hey kids, come here!’

I worried that I would have to keep on calling fictitious children till I turned blue in the face. I apologised again and praised the police for their vigilance. Then I realised it was a grave mistake to suggest that children were the culprits. The police had probably investigated beforehand and would know that a bachelor lived in the villa. Now, I thought, their suspicions would be aroused and I would be found out.

So I stopped calling out any more names and decided I would tell the officer it was my nephews or the neighbours’ pesky children or maybe a friend’s brats. But I did not know anyone who had relatives with those names. I was getting more and more worked up, and decided the best thing would be to say nothing.

Luckily the officer took his leave and left it to me to warn whoever was dialling the police station to stop. He concluded by reminding me that it was unnecessary to store the emergency contact in my phone since it was such an easy number to remember.

I took a long and deep breath as I watched the two police cars disappear into the distance.

Cutting off her tongue had not been punishment enough.

While I was talking to the police officer, I could see her watching us from the window. As soon as the officer climbed back into his vehicle and shut the door, she began pounding on the shutters. She was crying and whimpering, but the sound was fortunately very faint. After I had made sure the police were on their way, the first thing I did was to call the phone company and request a temporary suspension of ser­vice. The customer service representative told me apologetically that he could not process my request and that I would have to go and fill in a form at the main office in person before service could be suspended.

I ended the conversation hurriedly, fetched a pair of pliers, and disconnected the phone line on the outside of the villa. I called in the two women who helped with my aunt, paid them a full month’s wages and then dismissed them.

They were taken aback and asked nervously if they had neglected any of their duties with my aunt, but I reassured them that all was well on that score and that my concern was for them. The police had been checking on domestic workers who had overstayed their visas, I said, and they were returning momentarily with a female officer who was going to search the house. The two women thanked me profusely for my consideration, gathered their abayas about them, and left the house hurriedly. I instructed the driver to drop them off wherever they wished.

After locking the door, I went up to my aunt’s room and found her crouching in a corner, under a big pile of clothes. I pulled off the top layer that covered her head, grabbed her white hair and pulled hard. She gasped, her eyes widening like saucers. As I had done the previous time, I tied her hands behind her back with telephone wire, stuffed a wad of tissues in her mouth, and sat on her, bearing down with all my weight. Her bones practically snapped under me and she groaned and growled as her eyes fixed on the pliers in my hands.

‘Which of these fingers dialled the phone, eh?’ I demanded as I held her fingers and examined them. ‘It seems to me that you’re looking for more punishment.’

Her muffled scream was barely audible.

I placed her right index finger between the pliers and squeezed hard, but not so hard as to sever it. Then I moved on to the other fingers: her pinkie, her middle finger and her ring finger. I squeezed each one until I heard the snap of a bone breaking, before proceeding to the next one.

She had stopped screaming and lost consciousness. I untied her and left her lying where she was.

*  *  *

How I wished she would die. If she did not, I would have to kill her. In the meantime, I was well and truly her prisoner.

Life at the villa had become intolerable: I was stuck with this aunt who, though she was a near-corpse, refused obstin­ately to take herself off to the next life. I was restless and consumed by the idea of getting rid of her before she could do any further damage and have me hang for it. I brought in a succession of women to attend to her, rotating them before they could bond with her or develop any empathy for her.

Aunt Khayriyyah had grown used to dressing her own wounds and was so exhausted she no longer did anything besides moan, grind her teeth and chew on her palms. Her eyes had lost all their ferocity and she kept them mostly closed. It was as if the years of her life were gathering themselves for the final journey.

The Master returned from his tour and was greeted by a line of servants and staff welcoming him back. I was among them and he asked me explicitly to stay behind.

I felt I could not stomach one more ignominious act of sodomy. I was so dispirited that I would have gone to my death willingly and was steeling myself to refuse his next request.

He busied himself with the well-wishers, discussing the various cities he had visited and other things he had enjoyed seeing.

I stood there for a long time, like a guard from the Abbasid era at the sultan’s disposal day and night, primed and ready to plunge his sword into whichever miscreant was at the execution block. I stood there, seething with resentment, certain that I was about to be tasked with another assignment.

The Master gave everyone a beautifully wrapped gift and then dismissed the other members of the staff. They began to disperse and the accompanying hubbub died down.

When we were alone, he handed me my gift and said cryptically, ‘You need to get rid of your aunt before she dies on you.’

I accepted his advice unquestioningly, relieved that this was his reason for asking me to stay behind; there was no other business, no punishments scheduled for that day.

Later, I unwrapped my present to find three things in the package: sexual enhancement pills, a bottle of cologne and a video tape. I hurried home and inserted the cassette into the video player to witness the entire sequence of my aunt’s fingers being crushed.

Aunt Khayriyyah had become frail and withdrawn, and spent the entire day moaning plaintively.

She paid no attention to me when I got home and I no longer provoked her terror. If I ventured near her, she just shut her eyes and wrapped her arms around her head, and her body tensed with apprehension.

I had given up hurting her.

I had also figured out the mystery of the two video tapes.

I was checking in on Uncle Muhammad, who was still holed up in his quarters. I broached the subject of the Master’s uncanny ability to be aware of everything that happened around him. Uncle Muhammad interrupted me and launched into a eulogy, praising the Master’s treatment of his staff, his pursuit of their well-being above all else and his vigilance in protecting them from mistreatment by others. Then he changed the subject completely.

‘They say that Sheikh Omar is in a really bad way,’ he said, ‘and that he’s dying. Is that true?’

I was not interested in talking about the former head fisherman. ‘But I’m asking you—’

‘I think I should visit him right now,’ Uncle Muhammad interrupted. ‘You can come with me if you like.’

For the first time since the night he was humiliated by the Master, Uncle Muhammad left his quarters, pulling me along as he negotiated the meandering hallways of the Palace.

He was clearly uneasy, but this discomfort was not linked to his advanced age. After a while, he leaned in towards me and hissed, ‘All this time and you haven’t learned a thing.’

‘Learned what?’

‘If you come to my room to talk about him, what do you expect me to say? Don’t you know that all of the staff quarters are bugged and that there are people whose job it is to film everything and pass it all on to him?’

I did not respond.

‘You’re never going to get it, are you?’ he exclaimed and was seized by a sudden coughing fit so acute he practically choked.

*  *  *

Around me, my aunt was completely silent. I felt nothing but revulsion when I saw her. It was as if her tongue had been the source of her vitality, and all that was left now was this decrepit, old and emaciated hag. Just as her screaming had been a form of torture, so now her silence was a torment. She avoided me and I avoided her.

The villa became a wasteland in which two housemaids and a Filipina nurse roamed with nothing to do but watch my aunt. They made sure she kept to her room and prepared food for her if she requested it.

I could no longer invite anyone over and the huge villa became a hotel where I spent part of the day sleeping and left at three o’clock in the afternoon without seeing anyone.

I needed to get away from the twenty-four-hour surveillance.

I had become cautious and was circumspect at all times. I moved like a rat trying to get across an open space full of hungry cats: security precautions preceded my every step. I became increasingly desperate to leave the villa.

The only obstacle was my aunt, a constant thorn in my side; I could not just pack up and leave.

Then I hit upon the idea of transforming her room into a prison cell – a jail without warders or guards who might inadvertently let their captive escape. Since I did not know where the hidden cameras had been planted, I decided to cover the walls and ceiling with wallpaper.

First I dismissed the guard who watched the villa, as well as the nurse and the two servants. After going about the rest of the day as usual, once night fell I switched off all the lights and applied layers of wallpaper. I brought in crates of water, milk, canned goods, biscuits, and dried fruit and vegetables and stashed them inside the room with her. I locked everything up, including the front door, and drove away.

I stayed in hotels and beach bungalows, after having obtained the requisite family ID card as evidence I was not a bachelor. Normally, an unmarried man would not be able to check in to those establishments.

I had learned that the hard way. Whenever I had snagged one of the girls at the end of Palace parties, there was never anywhere to take her. I would do this typically by the end of the evening when the Master was so drunk he could not tell which way was up. I would pick up some woman who had not been selected by any of the guests and find myself circling every street in Jeddah looking for somewhere to take her. Every establishment required a family ID card before they could offer a room, even for an hour, and so I lost my catch every time.

I had never thought of obtaining a family ID until I realised that women could provide escape from my deep depression. It felt as if a weight were pressing down on my chest, and the feeling worsened whenever I thought of my aunt, of Tahani and of the punishing assignments the Master set up for me.

All of this was weighing on me so heavily that I began to have trouble breathing and found that, no matter how wide I opened my mouth, I could not inhale sufficiently deep breaths. I thought I had asthma or that my lungs were sick, but after several inconclusive tests, I was referred to a psychiatrist.

He wanted me to go over my entire life in detail. I would not agree to do that, but he did say something that resonated with me. Human beings need to nurture their souls with positive feelings and to rid themselves of negative emotions, he said. Just as you sit down to lunch every day and later discard the waste, so too you have to sit down and feed your soul and clear out toxic residues. Life, he said, was nothing but nourishment and excretion.

I agreed with this notion and so began searching for some positive nourishment for my dispirited soul.

Thinking of Maram made me feel good and all I wanted to do was to take refuge in that image which came to dominate my thoughts. Before becoming the Master’s favourite, her candour during our conversations had verged on salaciousness. She had rejected the possibility of love but offered sexual bliss if I wished. Just as I began exploring the most effective approach to pick her ripe fruit, the Master set his sights on her and she became inaccessible.

I turned to other Palace women for solace.

But in order to be alone with a woman, I needed an official permit that would allow me to move freely in her company. That is why I had to get married: I needed that family ID status.

I quietly approached a family from the countryside and negotiated a marriage contract where my name would not appear in full, on the off-chance that the Master had spies in the marriage courts. The clerk who drew up the contract was an easy-going fellow and, for an additional fee, was sympathetic to my predicament – my lie, that is, that I wished to protect my current wife and children from finding out about this additional marriage.

The marriage was a mere formality. Once I received the certificate, I could divorce my putative wife without ever having set eyes on her. In the meantime, I completed the paperwork for the family ID, which enabled me to cruise unhindered around the hotels and beach bungalows of Jeddah.

I settled into a bungalow in a hotel compound. One afternoon I felt the need to wash away any lingering thoughts of my aunt sealed in her cell, and had a few hours before I was expected at the Palace. I ran a bath and even though the water was only lukewarm, I submerged myself. Thoughts of Tahani began trickling into my head as I watched the drip-drip-drip of the water from the tap.

How close past events seemed even when they had taken place decades earlier. Tahani was the springboard from which I leapt into the inferno.

We had liked to quarrel because it stoked our passion. After we disagreed about something, we would have to make up; we would get close and, one thing leading to another, we would be ablaze with desire.

We bickered over trivial things: seeing her standing in the window and looking at the young men hanging around the neighbourhood, some scurrilous rumour she had heard about me which had made her angry, her refusal to come out in the evening to meet me in secret, her failure to respond to one of my letters, her anxieties about my past, my irritation whenever she told me of suitors knocking at her family’s door.

However, there was never a time we did not make up and forget our quarrel. The Egyptian diva, Najat al-Saghira, could always be counted on to break the logjam, particularly her soulful ‘A Night to End All Nights’, which seemed to have been written just for us.

I recalled the night of my senior school graduation, when Tahani appeared at her window and waved. Both Osama and I had noticed that wave. Later, she told me that her aunt, Osama’s mother, had approached the family to arrange for a betrothal. He had expressed an interest in her and had promised that, if Tahani agreed to marry him, he would work and study at the same time. I had said nothing that day and had slipped away, realising how much I hated Osama.

Where was she now, I wondered.

Even when I hit rock bottom, Tahani remained a ray of light.

When we fall, we are not conscious of our screaming and shouting, nor do we remember how we scrabbled desperately to grab on to something or someone to prevent our fall. We are not aware of our bleeding wounds; all that we can do is try to stop that fall. It is only once we hit the bottom that we can take stock of both our injuries and the pit we find ourselves in. I had sunk as low as possible and had nowhere left to go.

As the tap dripped, I took stock of my wounds and how much they hurt.

I had not been aware of the depth of my love for Tahani. Did I love her because I had ruined her, and were my feelings in fact closer to pity or self-reproach? When we slaughter an animal and make a mess of it, the creature, foaming at the mouth in agony, ends up haunting us. Tahani was my botched sacrifice.

Thinking about Tahani invariably led me to thoughts of Maram. Maram dominated my mind; her spirit was so radiant that she could brighten the darkest gloom. And I needed someone to help me out of my gloom.

*  *  *

In our neighbourhood the practice of sodomy was not considered inherently perverse. It was a way to acquire a reputation for virility and was looked upon as an expression of one’s sex drive rather than one’s sexual preferences. It helped to classify one as either predator or prey.

Sodomy became my bread and butter at the Palace, and with the greater availability of women, less perverted sex also became commonplace and banal.

‘Maybe I need to open an academy for budding queers,’ the Master had said one day, laughing, after it was brought to his attention that his victims hankered for more of our punishment. The Master did not disband the Punisher Squad because the group had been unruly or unwilling to accept the strict regimen he enforced, but because many of the victims had started to crave more punishment.

Foremost among those was the businessman Mamdouh Suleiman, who bid on a large project when he knew only too well that the Master was also in the running. Despite several warnings, he persisted and made sure that he undercut all other bids.

The Master arranged to have him brought in and punished, and specifically instructed that he be broken. However, after being thoroughly chastised, instead of behaving as the Master had expected, Suleiman just persisted in bidding on projects to compete with him.

The Master switched to punishing his rivals by stripping them clean of their wealth. He did this by luring them into various scams, including money-losing deals, shady real estate schemes and fictitious joint ventures. Eventually he struck where it hurt them and their shareholders the most and he celebrated their declines in the stock market. He played his hand masterfully thanks to the advice and acumen of an army of economic and media advisers, planners and policymakers, bankers, brokers, middlemen and fund managers.

Once the Punisher Squad was disbanded, I was freed of the vile responsibility of recruiting for it. Instead, I was charged with distributing gratuities to the girls who provided the entertainment at the Palace gatherings.

Maram was the choicest among them.

She knew how seductive she was and thrived on the attention of the men who lusted after her, albeit discreetly. They had to be careful that the Master did not notice their eagerness when their gaze lingered on her cleavage, her majestic ivory neck rising out of the vale between the rounded hillocks of her breasts. His drinking companions stole only surreptitious glances at her whenever she swept into the room to take up her place beside him.

I had become adept at the furtive contemplation of women during my adolescence. They hurried through the alleyways and little markets of the neighbourhood and I filled my imagin­ation with whatever I could steal without them noticing my marauding eyes.

There was nothing furtive or oblique about the way I looked at Maram. Women are very responsive to a man’s lustful stare, which generates an almost electrical charge inside them. When a man looks at a woman with desire, she responds with every pore and cell of her body and wants more of it.

Maram often caught me with my eyes latched on to her breasts, and she tripped me up time and again.

On dancing nights, Maram would remain seated until she was specifically requested to dance, and then she would get up and do so only if she had the entire dance floor to herself. The other girls knew this and as soon as Maram stood up they all made way for her.

The men, for their part, launched into conversations with their neighbours and averted their gaze. They knew it would mean the end for them if the Master caught them ogling her. They would be summarily expelled from the Palace and would be lucky to escape with their eyes intact.

Maram was gifted in both the Khaliji style of dancing as well as in the more boisterous Egyptian rhythms. She would begin by kicking off her shoes and stepping coyly to the centre of the dance floor. Then, wiggling her bottom provocatively, the rippling movements progressed to her waist and from there her whole body shook and undulated. All of her seductiveness was concentrated between her torso and her buttocks and she swung her cascading hair enticingly from side to side. She moved ever so lightly on her feet, painting sways and bends with her body in waves that revealed her breathtaking femininity. Like a priestess in a sacred dance, every limb and joint shimmied and trembled. Finally, with tiny intertwined steps and snaking legs, she would sidle up to the Master and let her hair cascade over his face.

Unable to contain himself after such a bewitching performance, the Master would envelop her in his arms, kissing whatever part of her his lips could reach. Then he would lead her off to one of the Palace bedrooms.

More often than not Maram would later return to the hall without him, smiling radiantly, to look for her purse or phone or shoes and to bask in the pleasure of the guests’ lechery. She was careful to avoid looking directly into any of their covetous eyes after they had ravished her body.

Before the videos of my crimes came to light, I had thought of luring Maram to the villa. The Master beat everyone to the draw and snatched her up. She sowed the seed of a passionate love in his heart. However, it became apparent that she was not as enthralled as he was. She would invariably leave whenever he was at the peak of his pleasure, claiming she had to return home.

It became so intolerable that he told her she had to make a choice. Maram chose him, and he took care of all the impediments that had kept her from being with him night and day. She later told me that the Master enlisted the help of people in high places to get rid of her husband, who ended up institutionalised in a psychiatric facility after a judge obligingly issued a court order.

Ever since her first night at the Palace, when she had complained about making less money than the other girls, I had been baiting her with flirtatious remarks. She responded to my overtures with a broad grin but continued on her way, sweeping through the Palace majestically, like a ship cutting through the waves on the high sea.

One day, before she had become the Master’s exclusive preserve, I took my courage in both hands and confided that I was in love with her.

‘And what exactly are you after?’ she replied, laughing.

‘I just want you to know that I love you.’

‘Do you not think that’s what I’ve heard from every man I’ve ever known? Love is just a word and I’m not looking for words.’

‘I can give you whatever you want,’ I tried again.

‘You think love can be bought, just like a body? Look around you,’ she went on. ‘There is not a loving man or woman in this place. There is only lust, extinguished as quickly as it’s ignited.’

I remained silent.

‘But if you’re looking for something else,’ she said, ‘a little bit of bliss, maybe, I would consider it. Just don’t ask for more.’

Whenever I saw her after that, she held my gaze and it was clear in the way she moved that it was a promise deferred but not forgotten – even though she had become the Master’s chattel.

*  *  *

Where was Tahani now? What abyss had she fallen into?

I erased every act of wrongdoing with a more egregious one, and had no qualms whatsoever about it. For good measure, I was careful never to look my victim in the face. Such abdication of responsibility came at a price – as I found out for myself.

Tahani lurked on the periphery of my mind, but I managed to keep thoughts of her at bay until Osama joined us in Paradise. With him around, I could not help being reminded of her and of our rivalry.

The wild nights at the Palace were of no interest to Osama. Once his job setting the parties up was done, he would disappear and return only at the end of the evening. He would slip off to his room and keep his cell phone close by in case he was needed.

One evening we began reminiscing about events both recent and long-gone.

‘Would you feel sorry if I told you that you ruined my life?’ he asked with a deep sigh, as if some heavy burden was being lifted off his chest.

‘We all ruin each other’s lives without meaning to,’ I answered, patting him on the shoulder. ‘Should I blame Issa for ruining my life? If I hadn’t gone along with him, I wouldn’t be stuck here now. Nor would you, had you not chosen to follow suit.’

‘I wasn’t talking about being here,’ he said.

‘I know we made a dirty choice, but it’s too late to clean up our act now,’ I cut him off.

‘I’m not talking about the Palace, Tariq,’ he said, adding with resentment, ‘I’m talking about Tahani. Tell me what’s become of her.’

I said nothing. Her face loomed before me, tender and sad as if from behind a veil of dust. I had covered her tear-streaked face with layers of dust in the years I had spent putting her out of my mind.

Osama stood up and faced me. ‘I came to the Palace to kill you,’ he confessed. He buried his face in his hands as he added, ‘And to kill Issa – and to kill myself.’

There was a long, strained silence.

Eventually, Osama asked me bluntly, ‘What did you do to Tahani?’

Just then, a servant approached to let us know that the Master was asking for us. We were both worked up, but we set aside our animosity, jumped to our feet and hastened to the Master’s side.

‘Get ready,’ the Master said, addressing us both. ‘There’s an arse that needs whipping into shape.’ He rose and headed to the private quarters where his family resided, adding gleefully as he reached the door, ‘I’ll be watching you. Don’t let me down.’

We took care of business, the Master watching us closely, and when we were done we went back to our seats as if nothing had happened.

Tahani was right there where we had left her, waiting to torment us both.