Part Two — The Things of God
It was soon Ramadan, the first time I had experienced it in a Muslim country. I was a little in awe of how people rose before dawn to eat before spending the daylight hours without food or drink or sex. And even when Imtiaz had broken the fast she was too tired to make love. I joined her family for Iftar, the post fast meal, that began with a date. For Ramadan was a time for communal gatherings, a time to be with people, a time for me to learn to value and love the time I spent with her without exploring the delights of her body. She became more beautiful to me as the month passed and I loved her as much for her devotion to her faith as for her devotion to me. The first was something I knew would always take precedence over the second.
I also knew that this was something I had to support her in. It was on the seventh morning that I got up not long after daybreak, but still in the hours of fasting, made myself a cup of camomile day, prepared a fruit salad with a sprinkling of oat flakes as I usually did and began to eat. As I took my first mouthful it felt sour in my mouth as if I was betraying her by eating. I stopped, put the bowl in the fridge and poured away the tea. I resolved to fast., fast for her.
I texted her.
“I am fasting too. For you xx”
She sent back a heart emoji. I kissed the screen of my phone.
The fasting was hard. By lunchtime I could only cope by sitting on the floor and thinking of her. I shout my eyes, held her before me, Imtiaz in my bed, her lithe, slim body, her breasts, her cunt which I so wanted to kiss again. I put my hand inside my knickers, began to rub my clit and murmur words of adoration in time to the gentle, rhythmic motions of my finger.
“Oh my darling Imtiaz, my lovely, gorgeous Imtiaz.”
I repeated it like a mantra, over and over as I brought myself closer to orgasm. Then I stopped realising that even this was forbidden by the rules of the fast. I cried out in frustration but this too I knew I would offer as a gift to her. So for the remainder of Ramadan I took a break after lunch and edged myself, stopping short of climax, offering it as gift to her, a prayer.
By the time I joined in the celebrations of Eid-al-Fitr something had changed. I had been reading the Qu ’uran each evening, been practising prayers I had been learning. I wanted to share her faith. I wanted this badly, wanting to be close to her in everything.
She came to my flat the following Saturday and we spent the afternoon making love. For the first time we scissored, rubbing our cunts together as we kissed each other’s feet. Before I went down on her again. She painted a henna tattoo on my arm before we kissed again and I carried her over to the bed and we stated again. For the first time she pleasured me, starting with the feet she had washed in soap and spices before running her tongue over my inner thighs and burying her face in my bush and pushing her finger into my sopping wet cunt.
“Let me do it” I said as she placed a finger on my clit, now swollen and needy.
I put my thumb on my bud and frigged hard as I told her to finger fuck me hard.
“Quicker!” I shouted, and she moved her finger in and out faster, faster as I rubbed my clit fiercely until I came.
We lay together in each other’s arms.
“Tell me about your faith”
She sat up and rested on her elbow.
“Do you really want to know?”
“I do. I have hasted for Ramadan, I have read the Hl Book, I pray”
“You pray?”
“I do.”
I showed her the notebook in which I had written down the prayers as transliterations of the Arabic with an English translation alongside.
“Tell me.”
“It’s simple really. There is God who is compassionate and merciful, God who is quite unlike us, and there is Mohammed, peace be upon him, who ix his prophet. We live by the rules set out in the Holy Qu ‘uran and that is our guide to living a good, holy life.”
“As simple as that?”
“Yes. It is that simple. But that doesn’t make it easy?”
“How do I become a Muslim?”
“You declare that there is no God but God and that Mohammed is His messenger.”
I fell silent. I had a lot to think about. I kissed her again ad we made love again before drifting into a deep, wonderful sleep.
It was three days later that I said the words before Imtiaz. I showered straight away as required by Islamic law. I was a new woman, I was her woman, her woman. I loved God because Imtiaz had pointed the way. My love for Him was part of my love for Her.
As I showered, as the water ran in rivulets over my breasts, as it wetted and matted the pubic hair that was growing back strongly now that I no longer shaved the bathroom door opened. Imtiaz walked in, naked. She gently opened the cabin door, put her long black hair under the water and then with hair plastered to her face knelt down and licked greedily at my cunt. And I came, there, in the shower, my first orgasm as a Muslim. She held my legs in a tight embrace, kissed my thighs, looked up at me with need and longing. I began to cry.
“Be happy my darling. Our love is a gift from God too.”
It was so good. We made love in my flat every day after digging finished. I learnt her body as I had never learnt a body before. I learnt the beauty of the vulva as I had never known it before, as I went down on her, kissed her bud, sucked hungrily on her labia, tasted her juices, kissed and kissed, rubbed my face in the lush comfort of her hair. It was so good. It was too good.
She came to see me one Saturday afternoon as I worked at my laptop, writing up my findings from the dig. I only had two more weeks in Sialkot and I had been thinking about where my relationship would go, or could go. I dreaded the idea of it being over and pushed the thought away.
I stood up and ran over to hug her. She pushed me away, avoiding eye contact.
“I am to marry” she said simply. “I have to comply. It is a question of honour for my family. I can’t go against them. I can’t. I am so sorry Rachel.”
She began to cry.
“Come to England with me”, I said, feeling a tremor of desperation in my voice. “We can….”
“Do what? Do you think we could live together, have our little happy ever after fairy tale? Rachel, we would both be outcasts from our faith, excluded from what we hold dear, sacred.”
“But those things we talked about…”
“I know what we said. I know in my soul that our love is not condemned in Heaven, but who else really believes that, here? In Sialkot? Or anywhere in England?”
“There are those…”
“Rachel, we would be outcasts. Outcasts. Are you strong enough for that? I know I’m not”
We looked at each other.
“I would pledge myself to you for ever” she said, “but I can’t, not here, not in Pakistan. Go home. Keep the faith, read the Qu’uran daily, pray, and I will be with you. Our bodies can no more be together but our souls can. I will offer a prayer for you every day.”
She squeezed my hand, stood up and left the room without looking back. It was only then that I began to cry. I wanted to tear off my clothes, dance into the street in a mini dress, flaunting the legs now several months unseen. But I knew that I cold not. As I cried, I began to pray and knew that my adherence to her faith, her culture, were the way of never parting. Still I had to cry even as I felt the ache, the pain of longing. The following way I flew from Lahore back to London.
I have become ever more devout in my observance, in my devotion to Him who is compassionate and merciful. After my first Ramadan back in the UK I shaved my head and put two locks of hair into a jar. I stuck a label on “for Imtiaz” . I longed to send it to her but knew I never could.
I began to wear hijab. I pulled the cloth tight over the smooth stubble, I wore loose clothing, I dressed modestly. I cast my eyes down in the presence of men, wanting because that was the expectation of my religion, my new culture, yet not wanting. If I was His, I was even more hers. She had, after all, brought me to the faith. It was Imtiaz who had been the witness to my conversion. She could never be mine but I would always be hers. I dressed in the language of unavailability.
I rise before dawn every day and say Fajr. I sit on cushions on he floor and meditate, hold the world and its fathomless hurt before Him, praying for His mercy and healing. On the days when I am blessed, I pray to her too and the broken world resolves into a picture of her smooth brown thighs, the dark wiry curls of her pubic hair, before I sink my face into her beautiful, beautiful, cunt.
