Chapter 20: Fahsai Salem Bakal - a fairy tale from 1001 Nights

For breakfast the next morning, Fahsai appeared in a dark green cloak embroidered with Inca patterns. In her hair she wore a golden barrette, around her neck a necklace of flowers attached to laurel branches. Zarina waved to Priya, Arabic music played, and Fahsai first danced solo on the dance floor, and then approached our table with her graceful, dreamlike movements. Zarina held the microphone. “My dear Mr Berthier, dear Michael. Is there a more beautiful creature in our valley than the one and the only Fahsaiii Saleeeem Bakaaaal? She would like to become a woman through you, to bear a child like me. Please, grant her the honour. She will be a wonderful mother.”

“Zarina, Fahsai, please not now. We need to talk about this calmly. I think we’ll discuss it after Christmas. This week and next week are the final exams and the other announced performance reviews. Please, concentrate on that. School holidays start at Christmas in Peru. We still have a lot of catching up to do, but you will only have a few hours of lessons a week in January and February.”

As I had intended, there was some cheering at first at the announcement of the school holidays, but the mood quickly shifted to unrest. Some at the table grumbled. The majority supported the two friends’ motion, but it was all moving too fast for me now.

Across the table, I smiled at Fahsai. “Nice robe, Fahsai. Where do you find something like that in our valley?”

“That’s secret, Michael. Wait for the solstice festival. You’ll be able to see more then.”

All the girls in the valley had grown great physically and in personality, but Fahsai surpassed them all. Her beauty was unsurpassed, a masterpiece of nature. Above all, she had a charisma, an aura, with which she could win everyone over.

Last year, at the beginning of our living together, she was the smallest girl in the valley, an underdeveloped lightweight for a long time. She was also very suspicious of Ramona and me from the beginning. It was initially extremely difficult to communicate with her and her Chinese friend Zarina. Their languages were the least known; no one could read their characters. In addition, she read and wrote from right to left. That’s why she also found learning English the hardest. But now, after more than a year, she was one of the best students. In mathematics, she increasingly competed with her teacher in terms of logic and speed in grasping and solving problems.

In chess, as far as I knew, she was still without defeat, although Esther could also play very well. She was the only one who had first wrested a draw and later even a victory playing against our computer programme in the second highest level. Fahsai’s grandpa had taught the tender girl to play chess long before she started first grade. The grandfather was severely disabled; he had lost a leg in a war. The poor family could not afford prosthesis. So, contrary to Yemeni custom, Yusuf Achmed, as her grandpa was called, took care of the family’s young children as a man. Fahsai told me she could already do arithmetic at the age of four, played chess and cards with her siblings and her grandpa. She was his sunshine.

While the boys were learning in a Koran school, grandpa also taught Fahsai to read and write. It annoyed many a boy in the small village that she was best at reading aloud. Many older villagers asked her to read to them almost every evening, because most of them were illiterate.

One day, Fahsai performed with some boys at the harbour. A large group of tourists marvelled at the riding and martial arts skills of the village boys. Fahsai was about nine years old and performed traditional dances with two older girls. After a while, the strangers wanted to see belly dancing. A rather fat woman performed a dance and Fahsai danced behind the rows of guests to imitate the dancing of the lady. Fahsai enjoyed it and combined the belly dance moves with her practised dance steps. Suddenly, a strange man approached her, lifted the lightweight into the middle of the small arena and gestured for her to dance. She was embarrassed at first but received thunderous applause after her first steps. More and more confidently she danced. In addition to frenetic applause, she was given many foreign banknotes, without knowing what they were worth, but her mother was very happy.

In the evening, a man and a woman were looking for the wonderful dancer of the morning. After a short negotiation by her father, the stranger drove Fahsai to a hotel with, accompanied by her mother and two brothers. Fires and torches were burning in the garden. A very kind woman tried on two particularly exquisite dance dresses Fahsai, groomed her hair, and adorned her with beaded headdress and arm jewellery. With matching shoes on her small feet, Fahsai stood before the few guests who eyed her in amazement. Unfortunately, when the music started, Fahsai danced her dance of destiny, which was to change her life dramatically. All the spectators were thrilled, video recordings and photos non-stop. After a break, she changed to the blue dress and the dances started all over again.

From that evening on, Fahsai completed this programme several times a month and earned good money for her family, even more than her father, who taught mathematics in two schools but was poorly paid. A few months later, photo shoots for a Chinese company were held in the hotel. Fahsai was the star with her expressive movements and poses.

Shortly afterwards, her grandpa Yusuf received a prosthetic leg that enabled him to walk well. Fahsai was happy for the dearest person she knew, and they enjoyed walking to the beach or the market together. Fahsai did not know then that she was the prize for the important aid. A little later, two women came to pick her up. Her grandfather said to his dearest granddaughter, “My little gazelle, take this chance. You will be the first from our village to see the big wide world. Don’t forget us and promise me to learn a lot.”

Probably none of her family had any idea how this education would end, but Fahsai firmly believed in the guilt of her father’s first wife, who had always bullied her mother and their children, and often tormented Fahsai emotionally as well. Our little Yemeni had also written in her report about the time before arriving in the valley that she never wanted to return to her family, which I did not really understand. But a return was not an issue at the moment either, so I had not discussed it with her for long.

After breakfast, Ramona asked me if I still planned to partner with Fahsai this year. “No, I don’t plan to. I want Fahsai and Daja to wait and think things over.”

“Fahsai came to see me yesterday. She really wants it and asked me again about the implications of her circumcision.”

“What circumcision?”

“So, you don’t know yet, no? In many Arab or Muslim countries, girls are circumcised so that they don’t get any feelings during sexual intercourse. They are intended to be purely birth machines.”

“Ramona, that was in the past, but this is the 21st century. Does that really still exist?”

“Unfortunately, probably millions of times. Even in Germany there are cases where little girls are mutilated, although it is forbidden by law.”

“What does that mean now? Why does she still want it?”

“Probably it’s some kind of peer pressure, plus curiosity and maybe really the longing for a dear person of her own, her child. There is nothing to consider. As far as I know, most Arab men married to circumcised girls or women don’t linger long on seduction or even foreplay. A man had to take his wife without any consideration; it is his possession. Since the first child is supposed to be a boy according to tradition, but girls are also given to their husbands as virgins, the first days are often a suffering, an ordeal for the woman. Despite being wounded inside, they have to be ready several times a day.”

“Ramona, this is scaring me. Does it look very bad?”

“Don’t worry. It may have been done to her by her grandmother more than ten years ago. You won’t cause her any pain either, especially since I have expertly prepared her. You can have normal intercourse with her, but don’t expect pleasure or even an orgasm of her. That is not possible under these circumstances.”

I looked uncertainly at our doctor. She showed no sympathy, while I was totally shaken. What a lot of things there were. Their own family did this barbaric abuse to their daughters without showing compassion or waiting until the children could decide for themselves.

Zarina and Fahsai came by our table again. I beat them to their questions.

“Fahsai, you please write down for me by tomorrow why you want a child so badly, you may want to deface your gorgeous body in the process or strain it to the limit. The more I think about it, I wonder if I have bewitched or manipulated you.”

Fahsai wanted to speak. “No, not now, tomorrow, my dear. You still have so much time in your live. We should wait a little longer, at least until the first birth by a young woman, that is, until Esther’s confinement. I am so afraid that something will happen to one of you in childbirth. Understand me, please.”

The next morning, I found a message from Fahsai on my tablet.

‘Dear Michael.

The answer to your question is simple and complicated at the same time. Yes, I would also like to have a child, to show everyone that I can do the same, although some know what was done to me when I was a baby. When I imagine how, from next year, each of my friends will no longer have time for me because their child will naturally take absolute priority and I will become an outsider, I could cry today. It is something extraordinary to give birth to a baby, to nurse it and look after it, to wait every day for the first smile and later for the first word. Just thinking about it makes me tremble with excitement. Dr Liebknecht confirmed to me once again how well I have developed and that I could carry a child sooner than some others.

Please, just let it happen. It’s not just for me; it’s for our community. For me, it would be terrible if my child had to be taught alone because he is too young to attend the same class with the other children. You are the boss, you decide, but please make me happy and not unhappy.

Yours,

Fahsai Salem Bakal’

It all sounded so logical and clear, well considered, and refined at the same time. Zarina had certainly helped her because the text was without any mistakes. The later Schooling of our kids was of course an important argument. Even now, if everything went normally, the birth would not be until the end of September next year, that is, at the time limit for forming a common class for the children of all my girls. But was it even necessary to plan so far ahead? What would be in store for the next months and years? No one could answer these questions for me.

So, I just wrote a short answer.

’Fahsai, thank you for your lovely message. We need to have an honest talk today. Michael.’

After some back and forth, after discussions with Ramona and Luisa, then also with my five young counsellors, they had softened me up once again that same evening. When I put the green ribbon of partnership on Fahsai, I had only supporters. The formerly oh-so-small and delicate Yemeni was such a recognised young woman in the team, 1.70 metres tall, weighing a good 50 kilograms, and gladly used by the girls, or rather young women, as help with homework or for chatting. Fahsai’s intelligence was not only evident in chess. She made suggestions for better organisation of our lives, such as how to use the emptied containers in the ore processing plant or how to permanently prevent new growth on exposed sections of road. She had taken the guinea pig breeding under her control, marking the males so that they would not mate with its own offspring. She clearly enjoys setting the males on females in a controlled manner, filming the short mating process and often fetching single girls to demonstrate the act to them. All I heard was that there were some pretty hefty remarks from the observers.

She had tried the same with the alpacas, but the stallion knew exactly which mare belonged to him and when. However, Fahsai had given a young mare from the village to the young stallion caught last year, so that she could experience, so to speak, how both of them had their ‘losing her virginity’. She enthusiastically showed other girls a video clip of the young animal’s initially helpless efforts to push the mare to the ground before the female alpaca surrendered to the courtship. The mating, which was also new to me, usually took place lying down and often lasted up to an hour.

‘Yes, with Fahsai it was to be expected even lying down, let’s see how long’, I smiled to myself. But I was downright afraid of reacting the wrong way to her body. I couldn’t imagine what a circumcised girl looked like and how it affected her. When Fahsai joined me in the bedroom, I asked her to perform a dance for me in her Yemeni dress or belly dance costume. The little belly dance dress she wore last year was far too small for her, but I helped my partner to half-cover herself with it.

By chance, her abdomen was exposed. Fahsai saw my quick glance and immediately helped herself, showing me her mutilated abdomen. She scolded her grandmother, but in the same breath said that the maternal grandmothers in her region traditionally did this circumcision.

I finally enjoyed the grace of her dance steps. It was not only a feast for the eyes; the dance has always served to stimulate the men. Unfortunately, here and there a fortification was lost, a seam tore, two bells fell to the ground. My partner had completely outgrown her dance dress.

Gratefully, I pulled Fahsai towards me, helped her out of her little dress and asked for a second dance as an unclothed Eve. Hesitantly at first, then more and more uninhibitedly, the young, budding woman danced her way into my heart. I clapped in time to the music and cheered at every successful step combination. Completely out of breath, Fahsai collected her reward, an ever-expanding kiss.

“Bathtub or bed?” I asked, also a little out of breath with excitement. Without a word, she pulled me to my huge bed. My partner knew no inhibition, pulled me on top of her, presented me with her receptive womb and awaited ‘the first time’, as she whispered to me. At first, I restrained myself a little, but knowing that Fahsai lacked feelings, I completed the act quite quickly. Her beautiful big eyes looked at me questioningly.

“This is how girls get their ‘fire of love’, I expected more.”

“Sorry, Fahsai, there is also more. Normally, I play a lot around, kissing all parts of the body of my partner. Specially, the clitoris is to stimulate and the love opening is worked on and widened a little, but the Muslim women can’t experience that. Too bad, isn’t it?”

“Well, it goes like this. In any case, I have received enough semen to have a child. Maybe it’s not good at all to feel too much here in the valley. How often have I heard my pregnant girlfriends say they could and would again, but one man is too few for all of them.”

“Fahsai, a thought just occurred to me. How do you feel about Ananda?”

“She is a very dear friend to me. Why?”

“Ananda didn’t want to be stimulated either. She had trained her body with yoga exercises since childhood and thus learnt to come to climax. Why don’t you ask her if she would do that for you? The exercises would be secret in her home village, but she should make an exception for you. Do you dare, or should I ask?”