11 May 2011

Hopefully not a final post

This may be the last post I do for a bit. But not for any bad reason.

We’re going to move from here sometime tonight and then head to a new safe haven. We’ll still be close by … but … enough details about that!

I’m hoping that the next place will have secure internet access so I can go on posting. Maybe even I will be able to use skype …. I dunno …

If not, I really hope it has some books! Just in case, I spent a lot of time today downloading a mountain of e-books – free ones mainly – so at least if that’s the case, I can read (serious books, silly books … I downloaded all the available Edgar Rice Burroughs and H P Lovecraft as well as all of Gibbon (Bury edition) and a lot of randomly interesting titles …
(by the way, a tip to readers – a series I’ve really enjoyed (and no, I can’t download it for free!) in recent years is a thing called “The Merchant Princes” by a guy named Charlie Stross …. It’s fascinating for a lot of reasons but one for me personally was that I could strongly relate to the main character, Miriam Beckstein; she’s an ordinary middle class American professional … who at the same time is embroiled from birth in inter-clan struggles in the Kingdom of Gruinmarkt and there are wheels within wheels within wheels …
anyway, I’m babbling …

being cooped up alone with your father for days, no telephone, can’t go out … my beloved unreachable except by internet (and yes, more than a little horny and can’t do anything about it) … argh …

and scared and worried
for me, for my dad, for my country …

serious repression in Homs … and more deaths. I read over a martyrs’ list; I saw people with our surname on it. I don’t know them, but my dad knew how they were our cousins and to what degree …

I want freedom for all Syria …
I want to be somewhere that mattters … though nowhere matters more than being here, now …

I have travel plans for later on in the year: in June, I plan to be in Italy, in August in the USA and Canada, in September in the UK … before all this started I got accepted into grad school in the UK …
But all those plans may be on hold; I won’t leave Syria until I know I can come back in … and who knows when that will be …

I want this to end; I’ve waited all my life for it to end. And now I discover that the worst thing about living in a revolution is that it is like the last day before vacation in elementary school … it never ends …

Anyway, I am babbling … I hope to be back blogging soon!

This is not 1982: a History Lesson




This is not 1982. This is not a repeat of Hama. The differences are huge, greater than any similarities.

There, I’ve said it and now I will spell out what that means.

Virtually every uninformed western pundit I’ve seen keeps referring in all the discussion of what’s happening now here, in Syria, especially in Dera’a and Banyas and Homs (while I’m writing this, areas of Homs are being shelled by tanks), to it being a replay of 1982 and what happened in Hama then. It isn’t. Every time someone does that, in my opinion, they just show that they really know nothing at all about Syria except what they’ve gleaned from other uninformed people.

If there’s anyone I do blame for this propagation of nonsense, it would be Tom Friedman. He’s the New York Times columnist who writes about how he met a cabdriver who told him how clever he was, saw an iPhone in Mali (or whatever the gimmick of the day is), blah blah blah …. Anyway, he might know something about Israeli politics and he might know something about building shopping malls, but he definitely knows very little about Syria! So forget that whole ‘Hama rules’ bs … it’s crap …


What really happened then was grim but it isn’t the story propagated in most of the western media and, I suspect, actively encouraged by the regime. What really happened was we actually came close to full on civil war. Not peaceful protests, not even mostly peaceful protests, but full on war. And it had two clear sides.

On the one hand, there was the Muslim Brotherhood – or rather a portion of it. They’d actually had a split in their leadership in the 1970’s between one faction that was mostly based in Damascus (and hence called the Damascus Group) that saw a path to power as coming from peaceful means; elections, that sort of thing; and a second group from the north, mainly in Aleppo and Hama that believed the Brotherhood should follow a path of armed insurrection and revolution to seize power by force of arms. The two groups squabbled over which was the better course much as factions of any polical movement does.

Meanwhile, the government of the country had steadily moved from, at independence, essentially a coalition of wealthy, urban Sunni civilian grandees to army officers involved in Pan-Arabist political parties. Those officers were heavily recruited from rural, nin Sunni populations – Alawi, Druze and Ismaili mainly – and those groups were also heavily overrepresented in the Baath Party. The Baath – or rather its military members – had finally seized power in 1963 and then, in 1966, had an internal coup. The new leadership were hard-line socialists, admirers of the Soviet Union and overwhelmingly from the Alawi minority. They attempted to socialize the economy, taking over factories and estates largely owned by the old Sunni notables, and tied the country closer to the Soviet Union in politics. Under Salah Jadid’s leadership, the less radical (and less Alawi) Baathis were purged and he and his defense minister, one Hafidh al Assad, deliberately set out to provoke a war with Israel … and when it started, the defense minister had the military radio broadcast – before any Israeli attack on the Jaulan – that the Jaulan had fallen. Many soldiers heard this and, thinking they were the last survivors, fled from the front. (Incidentally, my father’s older brother was a Sunni army officer then. We’ll never know whether he and his soldiers heard those broadcasts as they all died at their posts. My grandfather blamed Assad and my dad left for the USA after that)

You would think that after that, a first order of business would be to sack the Defense Minister responsible for the fiasco that had led to humiliating defeat and to tens of thousnads of Syrians made refugees, right? Well, not with that government. Assad and Jadid grew stronger but eventually fell out when, again, a crisis came; Black September. Jadid wanted to support the Palestinian uprising against the Jordanian monarchy, Assad did not. Syrian tanks entered Jordan under Jadid’s direction but Assad refused to allow the air force to support them; another military fiasco and the defense minister becomes President while waving the little red book …

The Sunni majority, of course, chafed under these governments but did little more than grumble until 1976. Then, civil war had broken out in Lebanon; on one side, Christian militias fought to defend a political system where a minority were guaranteed a permanent control over the state and, on the other, nationalists, leftists, and Muslim and Druze groups joined together in a ‘National Movement’ to create a non-sectarian Lebanon. They started winning and controlled 80% of the country …. When Assad sent the Syrian military in to restore the Christian monopoly on power (Syrian troops stayed on for almost thirty years and eventually fought against and alongside every faction in the country at some point or other).

So …. This didn’t play well with the majority of people in Syria itself, especially the Sunni population. As a general thing, we think of ourselves and the Lebanese people as a single population, divided by a colonial border. Seeing a popular and democratic uprising put down by Syrian troops imposing a minority’s rule was something many Syrian Sunnis saw as deeply wrong and as the final insult.

Not least among these were some in the Muslim Brotherhood, especially in Aleppo. They decided to take up arms against the government with the goal of sparking a revolution and seizing power as a vanguard movement. Bombs began going off at places like the military academy in Aleppo (at the time, almost entirely Alawi and Baathi) ; assasinations were carried out against prominent Baathis and Alawis in the cities of the north … and counter-attacks happened as a ‘dirty war’ began; the regime arrested and tortured anyone suspected of being in the Brotherhood, killed most of those that they knew were …
Violence against civilians happened on both sides in those years. Alawis were shot dead by Muslim Brothers while Baathis murdered random Sunnis. At one point, in Damascus, Baathi irregulars went out and stopped all cars, looking for any women who were wearing hijab, a mark that they were Sunnis, and stripped them and beat them in the streets.

It was a slow moving war. In Aleppo, by 1979, the Brotherhood had the support of much of the Sunni population and controlled the old city; the regime sent soldiers in and killed thousands as they battled house to house. Huge parts of the city were destroyed.

And it finally came to an end in February 1982; the militant wing of the Brotherhood decided to make a stand in Hama, a last hope to make a final bid to seize power … militants slipped into the city and arms caches were built up (incidentally, largely supplied by the Jordanian government, then, as now, a close ally of the USA (just as the Assad regime was probably the closest non-Communist regime to Brezhnev’s USSR)). The regime noticed and accepted the challenge.

What followed was not a massacre; it was a battle, a desparate battle, and the Brothers hoped to make it their Stalingrad … they lost and Hama lost. Huge portions of the old city were levelled … thousands were killed. Estimates run from 5,000 to 38,000 dependig on who you ask and what axes they have to grind. My own guess is that realistically, about 10,000 people died; among them were several thousand government troops. Hardly a massacre of civilians! There are mass graves there; the Sham Palace Hotel by the banks of the Orontes is supposed to have been built on top of the largest of them.


That was essentially the end of the struggle. In that final battle, though, it wasn’t Alawi troops that did the slaughtering; most of the foot soldiers were from Kurdish and Bedouin backgrounds. They were Sunnis, not Alawis, contrary to myth; the Brotherhood had never really built much support for itself beyond the Sunni population of the cities and the larger towns and the faction that had made the stand was not even the more popular among those. The regime had realized that and had played off faction against faction, to isolate one group until they could be contained. They were but the regime didn’t want to put out how hard it had been for them to win so they encouraged the myth that the naive Friedmans propagated.

The mastermind of the slaughter was Hafidh’s righthand and brother, Rifaat … and Rifaat tried to seize power a year later … he was forced to flee and lives in exile. Spain and Britain among others have given him shelter while he and his son plot to return and seize power.

Afterwards, the broken Brotherhood split and rebuilt; the Damascus faction had been proven right. If change were to come, it would be by the ballot, not the bullet. In exile, they began to work towards that day.

Except not all the Brothers saw it that way. One faction made the point that the reason they had failed was because the so-called Islamic Republic in Iran had supported the ultra-secularist pro-Soviet Baath over an Islamic movement; that moment spelled the end of any real notion of Iran leading a pan-Islamic revolution or exporting anything beyond the scattered Imami Shia ….

Another faction, the smallest of all, split off and claimed the failure was due not to taking up arms against a better armed opponent but by not taking up enough arms. They left the Brotherhood in a huff, claiming that the Revolution was betrayed by the Hypocrites in the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership who didn’t want to fight to the death, who didn’t want to kill all Alawis. They made threats and carried out violence against the Brotherhood leadership. That faction, by the way, largely headed to Afghanistan and became one of the kernels of another group that’s been I the news lately; many of the ur-texts of that other group were written first as denunciations of the Brotherhood …

SOOOOOO ….

Having recounted that history, does anyone still think that what’s going on now is in any way parallel to what happened then? Does anyone think that Tom Friedman’s recent comment that "It's different from Hama. They're doing it now in slow motion, bit by bit,” shows him as anything but the Michael Bolton of Punditry? I mean, really?

What’s happening now isn’t one faction of one opposition group in one part of the country taking up arms, much as the regime might wish it were, but, instead, a real national uprising. It’s city and country, women in short sleeves and women in niqab, kurds and arabs, bedouin and medini and fellaheen, liberals and conservatives, Muslims and Christians and Druze … and we aren’t planting bombs and doing assassinations …

THE REGIME KNOWS THIS; they just don’t want you to know. You can tell by the way they send troops; they send over-armed crowd control in armored personnel carriers and the backs of trucks by the platoon; what I saw last night was not an assault force preparing for war but an over-reacting police force to an unarmed opposition. They want the world to think it’s crazy heavy bearded guys back from Afghanistan or up from Najd come to destabilize; it isn’t at all. And the people know they are lying.

That is why we will win.

The wheel will turn.

Irony

SURE!!!!!!!

Night, Dawn, Sleeping in

I went to bed exhausted last night. Sleep would come quickly I was sure.

Then, a sound like … well, at first I thought it was a garbage truck, you know, the kind that lifts up a dumpster … but that isn’t normal here. And it was getting closer.

I got up and peaked out a window.

Outside, there was a tank coming down the road. And then another.

Now, I’m not stupid. And I know a little bit about how to identify objects. So, what I saw was a slow moving column: a couple of tanks – Soviet built, I think T-72’s? – followed by armored personnel carriers, then more tanks. They were spaced out, which was weird – well, I guess in case they came under attack …

They didn’t stop here but kept going. And so loud as they went by …

I have no idea where they were bound for but they were moving north … the news today is that Homs is under massive attack ...

I didn’t get back to sleep for a long time after that. It isn’t exactly something that one relishes ….

I slept in … when I got up, my dad was already up.

“Sleep well?” he asked.
“No, did you?”
He shook his head.
We talked about what to do now. We’re probably going to relocate later today or tonight; we think we have a lead on a new shelter. I hope that it has as secure internet service as here has had! Maybe even somewhere I can use skype … I’d so much love to talk to my beloveds and, heck, do some radio interviews about what is happening here.
And if not, at least some books to read! Really – one of the annoying things here is no books. I’m a bibliophile; I have a vast library at home. And here? They don’t even have a Quran! The only book here is my dad’s very worn pocket Quran …

I made ablutions; my dad already had. We got ready to pray. And … well, this is immensely cool:
He is supposed to lead, right? Man, older, my father.
But this morning, he insisted I lead and be in the imam’s place!

Wow …..
The world is turned upside down; the child leads the parent in prayer, the daughter before the father …

Anything is possible.

Coming Out: part one???

Anyone who’s ever struggled with their sexual orientation knows it takes a long, long time to acknowledge your own desires and, even then, it takes effort of will to get over the shame and fear. For me, I considered my own desires awful and wicked and shameful and refused to acknowledge them for a long time. Here’s a bit from my novel about how, age 25 in September 2001, I started the process. I admit, it’s graphic … but I just have my own story to tell.
It continues from where this earlier post leaves off:
http://damascusgaygirl.blogspot.com/2011/05/september.html
read that first if you haven’t already …

Evening


Katy came in through the door when I opened it; her face looked stressed, concerned. She was still dressed like she’s at work; long cotton skirt, loose blouse. In her arms were paper sacks; I take them from her and show her in. As soon as I put down the bags, she gives me a tight hug; I’ve needed that all day.
“Wow,” she says, “you’re stressed! I can feel knots all over your back!”
“Can’t imagine why,” I laugh, “and I’m sure I’m not the only one!”
She laughs.
Katy starts unpacking her bags; she went by a Thai place, one of the few still open today she says, and got takeout for both of us; green curry chicken for me, pad Thai for her.
We sit down to eat and I realize how famished I am. She laughs. Over food, we chit chat … mostly, unfortunately, trading speculations on the news of the day. I’ve been more glued to the screen than she but she’s heard more of the ‘word on the street’ – and, of course, most of those I’ve spoken to have the same parochial concerns I have.
There were rumors, she says, that something happened at the Sears Tower; she’d heard about evacuations at O’Hare and Midway. Lots of people in the air or away from home today have been checking in. We both can tick off several people who might be dead, but, for both of us, they are all at most second-degree friends.
“You know,” I say, “there’s going to be a war.”
“I don’t know,” she says, “isn’t this enough? And no one’s clearly to blame.”
“The government will want to blame someone,” I say, “even if they don’t have evidence; did you ever see that movie ‘In the Name of the Father’?”
“I remember the theme song,” she says, “Sinead, right? But I never saw it. Why?”
“There’s a bombing – it’s based on a true story – and the British grab the first Irish guys they find since they figure it’s the IRA. So that people will get calm. US government does it too; in Atlanta, they jailed a guy for the Olympic bombing ‘cause he’s the one who called the police.”
“So you think they’ll nab someone?”
“Yeah,” I sigh, “and it’ll probably someone who looks more like me than you.”
“I know,” Katy says, glumly. “It could get really bad …”
“That’s why I’m stressed!” I laugh nervously.
“Amina,” Katy says and pats my hand in a way that doesn’t seem patronizing, “if it comes to it, I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
“Thanks,” I laugh though I know she is being sincere; she’s here, isn’t she? “I think that, if something bad goes down here, I have it easier than most.”
“Why’s that?”
“If I go out, dressed like I am now, no scarf or anything, who knows I’m Arab or Muslim? I can pass …”
“Yeah,” Katy laughs, “I’ll call you ‘Amy’ …”
“Exactly!” I grin. “When I was younger, you know, I used to wish I was Amy not Amina … I used to wish I was Amy McClure and had blonde hair … so maybe, now, I’ll have to live that out!”
“Then you wouldn’t be you!” Katy protests. “And you’re a lot prettier with your hair color anyway.”
“Yup,” I laugh, “and everything in life could be different …”
For a moment, I’m lost in thought with visions of that counter life.
“Anyway,” I say, as I return to the present and start clearing the table, “we’re here and now … and here and now doesn’t look good. This is the beginning.”
“I don’t think so,” Katy says as she gets up and helps me. “I mean, I think people will be more sad and hurt and won’t want more killing. Nobody wants war.”
“I know,” I sigh, “and I wish you were right. But, I think, it’s not going to be a matter of what the people think. The government and the media are going to jump on a war wagon. And these idiots just gave them a blank check.”
“You really think so?”
“Yeah,” I nod. “Wow, I don’t want to think about this …”
“Me neither!” Katy says as she grabs the other bag she’d brought with her.
She hands me a pack of cigarettes, takes one for herself. She lights mine, then hers, we stand in silence, contemplating.
“Amina,” she says, giggles, “I mean, Amy! I know that you don’t drink but … well, I thought you might want a glass of wine …”
She pulls a bottle out of the bag. I chew my lip for half a second. Medicinal usage is OK, isn’t it? I ask myself.
“Sure,” I say and get glasses (juice glasses; I don’t even own the right type of stemware) as she uncorks the bottle.
It’s a white wine; I know so little about wine, I can’t identify more.
“To better days,” she says, raising a glass and I clink mine with hers.
“Cheers!”
Katy’s also brought a movie for us to watch; a videotape of The Princess Bride. We settle in on the couch, sipping wine and watching it, giggling and talking through the movie. And it seems a little less tense for now, even if it is just the wine going straight to my head.
When the movie ends, I get up to turn off the VCR, only slightly light-headed from the wine. As I stand, I grunt; I feel like I’ve pulled a muscle in my shoulder. I rub it lightly as I sit back down. Katy looks at me concerned.
“Want some help with that?” she asks.
I nod and turn my back to her. She starts to rub my shoulders.
“You’re incredibly tight,” she says with concern.
“Stress, y’know?” I reply.
“Have you thought about getting a massage or seeing a chiro?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“If you want,” she says, “I could give you a massage … at least, I think, I could get some of these really huge knots out.”
“Is it really that bad?” I wonder.
“Amina,” she says, sternly, “I used to work as a licensed masseuse; I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone knottier than you …”
“OK,” I laugh, “I guess that’s a good idea.”
I turn back to face her. Katy’s looking around, in thought.
“I could go home,” she says, “and get my massage table … but that would be a waste of time. I think it makes more sense to use your mattress.”
“OK,” I nod. “Do you need anything else?”
“Got some lotion?”
“Of course,” I say as I stand up and head into the bathroom.
I return with some baby oil and give it to Katy. We both go into the bedroom. I pull the covers off the bed so it’s bare, with just the fitted sheet.
“Now what?” I ask.
“Well,” Katy says, slightly embarrassed, “usually the patient gets undressed and lays down.”
“OK,” I laugh, “I guess you can tell I haven’t had many massages, right?”
“Yeah,” Katy laughs. “I’ll try to be gentle when I take your virginity.”
Without further word, I start unbuttoning my blouse, hang it on a doorknob; I notice Katy is watching me in a sort of amused way. For some reason, I find, I like that. I unhook my bra and hang it up; again, I feel like Katy is trying not to look at me. Quickly, I unbutton my pants and pull them off, pulling underwear along with pants off ... and, as I stand up completely nude, I see that Katy is looking at me.
To save any awkwardness, I lay down on my stomach in the center of the bed.
“You know,” Katy says, “this might be a little weird, but since we’re close to the floor and all, so I can move around, I should take off my skirt …”
“I’m completely naked,” I say and laugh into the mattress, “it’s really not that weird!”
I look across the mattress and see her hanging up her long cotton skirt. She’s got great legs, I think and try to lose the thought while Katy squirts oil into her palms, starts rubbing her hands together before kneeling on the mattress beside me. Slowly, she begins to work my knotted flesh. It feels good. I slowly relax and enjoy the tension easing as sh works me over. Then, Katy straddles me; I can feel her thighs against my buttocks and the warmth and satiny feel of her underwear rubbing against me. I feel slightly embarrassed as I’m aware that it is definitely turning me on when I realize that. I concentrate on the relief I feel instead.
“Ahh,” I sigh as she releases a spot of intense pain.
“You like that?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I smile, “keep doing that and I’ll do anything you want in return!”
“Anything?” she repeats, amusement in her voice.
“Yup, anything,” I say, feeling really good just then. “Right now, you’ve practically got me melting! Seriously, you could totally have your way with me right now …”
“Ha,” she answers, sounding like she’s grinning. “You should be careful saying things like that!”
“Oh?” I wonder. “Why’s that?”
“Well,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone, “I think I’ve told that I’ve been known to date women and I just might want to take you up on that offer and have my wicked way with you.”
“That’s funny,” I smile, still relaxed and feeling good, wondering where this is going but not feeling frightened.
“That doesn’t bother you?” she asks earnestly, pausing her massage.
“What?” I ask as innocently as I can.
“That I’ve dated women?”
“No,” I reply honestly. “Do you think it should?”
“I don’t really know,” she answers, slowly. “I had just assumed it might; I thought you might have thought less of me since I told you.”
“No, not at all,” I shake my head as much as I can with it pressed against the mattress, “it doesn’t bother me in the slightest; you’re my best friend, y’know?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I mean that,” I say. “You really are. And not just because you’re here. But, seriously, you know, though. what does bother me more than a little?”
“Mmm-mm,” she says; I can’t see her face but I can almost hear her eyebrows wrinkling up the way that they do, “no, what’s that?”
“That you say that you’re attracted to women,” I say somewhat nervously, trying to disguise my nerves with what I hope sounds like humor, “yet, as far as I can tell, you’ve never ever even tried making a pass at me!”
Katy laughs long and loud; I feel more than a little embarassed at having even brought it up.
“Amina, my dear,” she says at last when she regains her composure, “let’s look at a couple of things: first off, I’ve got you sprawled under me naked right now, so why would I need to hit on you?”
“Point,” I laugh with her.
“Hold on,” she continued seriously, sliding down and sprawling beside me on the mattress. “Second, as long as I’ve known you, you’ve claimed to be religious and modest and straight and so on and, until recently, as far as I knew, happily married. So, again, wouldn’t hitting on you be kind of rude?”
“Yeah,” I agreed as I raised myself on my elbows and turned towards her, “who knows? I might’ve blown up at you or freaked out or something, right?”
“Well, exactly,” she nodded and now looked straight at me as I faced her. “And, finally, that wouldn’t be any good at all ‘cause I’ve had this huge, enormous crush on you for the longest time …”
“Really?” I blinked, more than a little startled. “Are you pulling my leg?”
“No,” she shook her head and turned to avoid looking at me, “it’s not exactly something you want to admit, y’know? But I’ve always thought you were attractive, even before we started hanging out, like from the first time I saw you in the store and I’ve hoped you wouldn’t mind so I knew if I told you I might scare you and, then, I’d end up driving you off …”
“It’s OK,” I said, sitting up fully now and having turned over; now, Katy was more or less sitting opposite me. I placed a hand on her shoulder. “Really, Katy, it’s totally OK with me.”
“You sure?” she said and looks at me with, I think, tears on the verge of coming.
“Yes,” I say, not knowing quite what to do and I pull her towards me, hugging her.
“Besides,” I say softly, surprised in one part of my brain by what I’m doing, overjoyed in another, “you should know, you’re not the only one with a huge crush here …”
And next thing, I know, I kiss her on the mouth, and she kisses me back and we’re kissing, kissing like we’ve both been hungering for a long time. I feel her hands on my bare back squeezing me closer to her, and then I feel her touching my breasts; my nipples tingle …. and my own hands are exploring her like mad, as I have wanted to for so long and pretended I did not.
Then, I’m pulling her shirt off over her head when we stop kissing for a moment and we both are looking at each other with happiness and hunger on our faces … and we are kissing and I am unhooking her bra, looking at her beautiful breasts, bigger than mine, then kissing those magnificent rosy breasts, teasing her nipples as she gasps and rubbing her crotch through her sodden underwear and pulling them off as I kiss her again … and she’s all over me, kissing down my neck, my shoulders, teasing my breasts with her mouth … and I feel incredibly alive and turned on and hot and wet and excited and I want her and she wants me and I’m touching her and kissing her and she’s touching me and kissing me and we stay like this, exploring each other, like a dam has been burst and both of us have a flood of pent up sexual hunger for each other flooding down …
We are laying side by side on my bed, both of us nude, kissing and touching and I sit up and push her onto her back.
“I want you,” I say as I crouch between her legs and look over her, so beautiful before me.
“I want you too,” she says and I lean down so I can smell her sex and see the soft flame red hairs over what I think is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen … so I kiss her there on her pubic mound and touch her clitoris with my lips …
“You don’t have to,” she says.
“I want to,” I look up and then go down on her … and she’s squirming in delight and I am loving every moment of this intimacy, more than I have ever enjoyed anyone else before. She has her hands in my hair as she orgasms and gasps and I keep going and going until she has clearly ceased and then I kiss her long and hard and deep …
“I’ve wanted you for so long,” she says.
“I know,” I tell her, “and I’ve wanted you.”
And she goes down on me and I orgasm intensively, maybe harder than ever in my life until now … and its probably the best orgasm I’ve ever had because it’s not like when I’m touching myself and thinking about her or some other woman or when it was me and Hisham and I’d imagine he was Hind or Katy or … and hours, actual hours pass of us just kissing and touching each other and having the most intense orgasms and such; it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before, nothing that has ever gone on and on and on like this … and we fall asleep entangled in each other’s arms and I can’t quite tell where Katy ends and Amina begins and I like this more than anything I have ever known before …
And as I fall asleep, I realize that, for the first time in a long time, I’m not afraid.


Morning


I lay in my bed feeling good for the first time in months as I stretched in the first bits of sunlight seeping through the windows. I felt happy, I felt good and I hadn’t felt so well in … as long as I can remember. For a moment, while my eyes were still shut, I imagined that it was six months ago; there were no terrorists, no divorce, no questions of identity to grapple with …
As I opened my eyes, I saw I was alone in the bed but could see that someone had just been there; I heard noises coming from elsewhere in the condo … coffeepot, television or radio … I see long red hairs on the pillow and I smile …
“Katy …” I thought lazily to myself, thinking how wonderful last night had been … and, then, a moment of dread seized me … I had just had sexual relations with a woman! And, this time, I couldn’t pretend to myself that it was just youthful experimentation or stupidity; I’d known full well what I was getting into and I had initiated it. And it hadn’t been for a moment or some fleeting embarrassed thing but was clearly the real deal …
Did this mean I was a lesbian? Maybe, I thought, or at least that I really was bisexual or something like that. I’d thought those questions had been settled a long time ago by me by sheer force of will; I had clamped down so very hard on those thoughts, fled from them as far as I could; I’d thought my will had triumphed over temptation … but now, here they were lying wide open again.
And the idea of being gay was no more appealing to me now than it ever had been in the past, even if I’d never actually been attracted to anyone who wasn’t female … but I really, really did like Katy, liked her a lot and had liked her a lot before last night … and I really, really liked having sex with her and I could admit that to myself … which meant that I really wasn’t the perfect heterosexual I’d been hoping for so many years that I could become.
And I didn’t quite know what to do with that.
Katy walked into the bedroom, wearing one of my bathrobes and holding a mug.
“You awake?” she asked and I nodded.
She sat down beside me on the bed, smiling at me in a way I can only describe as beatific.
“Don’t worry,” she said as she touched my shoulder, “there’s no need to rush anything; you’re amazing and you’re beautiful, Amina.”
I looked up at her and smiled back and everything felt all right.
“Thanks,” I said softly, “I think you’re pretty amazing, too!”
She smiled back at me and I sat up and kissed her.
“You’re not mad at me?” she asked.
“Why should I be?” I wondered.
“For,” she gestured with her hand sweeping in the bedroom, “all of this; seducing you, taking advantage of you when you were down …”
“Sweetheart,” I grinned, “let’s remember who kissed who! You didn’t take advantage of me at all!”
She laughed and we kissed again, for a longer time this time.
“I made some coffee,” she said, “and I got into your clothes …”
“It’s OK,” I smiled as I got up, put on another robe, and followed her into the kitchen.
We sat, quietly, drinking coffee and taking in the news; more of the same … but still …
“Do you wanna go get something to eat?” Katy asked.
“Want me to cook up something?” I asked.
“No,” she shook her head, “I was thinking more of going out somewhere … for brunch? Y’know?”
So we headed out, together, to one of those trendy brunching places that seem to litter gentrifying and upscale urban neighborhoods, where the food really isn’t all that remarkable but all the other yuppies claim it is … and the prices are anything but cheap.
The one we went to, that Wednesday, was almost deserted: the streets, too, seemed rather empty. But, above us, a bright blue sky shown down on a warm day. Most people, I suppose, who didn’t have to be somewhere in those days chose to stay at home …
We sat and ordered and made idle conversation over more coffee and pancakes and eggs and so on … and, it seemed, both of us had agreed not to talk about last night and what had happened … and, finally, Katy looked at me right in the eye and said:
“Amina, there’s something I think I need to say,”
And I swallowed hard, dreading what she was going to say (and trying to guess what that was going to be: was she going to tell me that she had had a boyfriend all along and he was coming back in town? Was this how someone got dumped?)
“I like you a lot,” she continued, “a whole lot and I really value our friendship and, so, I don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize that, so, well, what happened, well …”
“Yes?” I said, in dread; I knew I was about to be told-off, felt it and started bracing myself. “What about it?”
“Well,” she said, “I know we were both under a great deal of stress and things happened, and I feel like maybe we both might have said some things that we wish we hadn’t and maybe did some things that we regret … and, anyway, I just feel like I took advantage of you when you were in a bad place and made you do things you didn’t want to …”
Her voice trailed off and I found myself chewing my lower lip.
“Katy,” I said and made myself smile, “you didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do, that I hadn’t thought about doing with you …”
“Really? You sure?”

“Yup,” I nodded and placed my hand on hers, “when you told me you had a crush on me, I told you I had one too. And I wasn’t lying. I was thinking about you in, um That Way, for a long time. And wondering if anything could happen and hoping it would and worrying that it might never … and being scared of it not happening and scared of it happening….”
“Yes?” she looked at me expectantly.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t want you to think that there was anything wrong with what we did or that you forced me into anything; remember, I kissed you first. If anything, well, I feel more like I forced you into something …”
“No, don’t say that,” she now clasped my hand tightly.
“I won’t,” I said and looked down at my plate. “But what happens now?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean after last night, what happens?”
“Well,” she sighed, “we can, I suppose, go back to how things were and pretend that nothing happened if you ‘d like. We both go on like before and pretend we never shared that one night. Or …”
“Or what?” I asked after she was silent for a long time.
“We can see how we work as a couple, y’know? Start dating, maybe, instead of just being friends?”
I was quiet and thought for a long moment. Which did I want to do? I think I knew pretty clearly as soon as the choice was offered.
I stood up and stepped towards her, grabbed her face in my hands and turned it towards me. I kissed her long and hard and fiercely …
And when we parted we were both half-gasping for air.
“So which is it?” she asked.
“I think you know,” I grinned. “Wow, I feel so good …”
“Cause of this?”
“Yeh, cause of this,” I nodded, “like I’m finally doing what’s right, what I always knew I should. Cause, Katy, I’m pretty sure I’m a, uh, lesbian …”
“Sweetheart, one night doesn’t make you a lesbian!”
“No, it doesn’t,” I nodded. “I know that. But I’ve also been pretty sure I was gay for more than ten years …
And then it all came out in a rush and she just sat and listened and nodded and patted my hand and made nice sounds as started telling her about how I’d first realized I was gay when I was fifteen, told her about Lori and what she did and how I wanted to die and was going to kill myself and God saved me and about Hind and how I had been crazy about her and how I’d cried all night when I found out she was getting married and how I’d been too scared to go away to school because I knew I’d end up sleeping with a woman first chance I got … and I guess I wasn’t wrong was I?
And she laughs and I keep going and tell her about how I used to have crushes on my teachers and my friends and how I’d read books about lesbians late at night when everyone was asleep and how I was always terrified that I’d accidentally out myself one day and how I didn’t care anymore and how I had hoped marrying Hisham would be the cure for my sickness but it hadn’t worked, how I’d tried as hard as I could but it never seemed right and how I had thought she was gorgeous first time I saw her and had gone to her bookstore so often hoping sh was working. I mean really, didn’t it ever occur to you I could use amazon like everyone else?
And she says, yeah, I wondered about that a lot. I just thought maybe you were too rich to care.
And I told her how I’d dreamed about her for months and …and now here we were and I wanted to be her girlfriend more than anything …
And, so, September 11, 2001 had two significances for me …. the day the world crashed in for me as an Arab-American and the day I took a huge leap into the unknown …