Bedouin and Male Rape
Chapter 13
The days were rolling by and I was bored to tears. I took to dashing up the seven flights of stairs each time I returned to my room. I tried to take a second off my time each day. It broke the monotony of the hotel and the waiters cheered me on as I passed by each landing.
I made friends with the managers of a nearby hotel that lodged Arabic students in jeans and t-shirts who claimed not to be rich. They clandestinely munched biscuits in their rooms during the day and flirted with Russian girls by internet at night. They took me out to a trade fair and introduced me to the phenomenon of papering. They wrote their phone number on a scrap of paper, rolled it into a ball and tried to throw it to the girls walking past with their chaperones. If they were lucky they might get a phone call the next day and they could romance over a Nokia for the next year or two.
I kept up the visits, liased with lawyer and waded through the phonebooks to rally support. After two weeks I was beginning to feel a bit useless and wondered for how long I should stick this out. I hadn’t been arrested but I wasn’t getting anyone free in a hurry. A discreet enquiry had assured me that there was no possibility of bribery here.
I needed to clear my head and think so I took a taxi out to the red mountains on the Eastern horizon. The Afghani driver looked nervous about letting me out in the middle of nowhere and warned me about an army encampment to the south. He drove away with a mystery on his mind and a story for his friends. Just why was this white guy going to climb a mountain – was he a spy?
I figured the military might take a similar view of things so I climbed up an embankment of rocks that kept me firmly out of sight. There were a couple of Bedouin huts nearby but there was no sign of life anywhere on this hot afternoon. I stretched out on a sun-baked rock and tried to play my thick, Indian bamboo flute. I’d bought in search of deep, longing tones but so far had only found auto-asphyxiation in the attempt to blow down it.
Below me the flat, arid land stretched away to the lights of the city and then to a beach without a single bikini. I dozed for a while until the sun began to set behind the town and it occurred to me that it would soon get dark and I had no idea where I was. It couldn’t be more than 5 miles into town and I decided that a walk would work up an appetite.
I walked along the road but noticed I was getting a lot of strange looks from the sporadic cars that passed. If there was one thing I wasn’t in the mood for right now it was to be harassed in Arabic. I scrambled down a bank to the side of the road and walked along in the shadow of some olive trees. I guessed that now no one would see me. I guessed wrong.
A Land Rover pulled up and out jumped two Bedouin guys with fierce, black beards and long white robes. One of them slid down the bank and marched up to me with a long stick in his hand. He started shouting in my face in Arabic but there was no anger in his eyes. I didn’t know what he was saying but I could read in his dilated pupils the spark of malice and plain old lust.
People who grow up without learning how to fight secretly pray that violence is something that just won’t happen to them in life. As though perhaps there was an opt-out clause in the birth contract. Consequently we’re utterly unprepared for thee kinds of situations and will do almost anything rather than deal the first blow.
I still held in my hands the heavy bamboo flute and I guessed it could have cracked this Arab’s head in two. But that just seemed like a losing strategy; if I killed him I’d be in serious shit, if I missed then I could expect to be beaten to shit myself before being raped and in any case his friend was waiting by the jeep – he probably had a cell phone to call in reinforcements. Maybe I could push him out of the way too but I didn’t know how to drive. My getaway would be an unimpressive series of bumps and jolts.
All of this ran through my brain in the second that the Bedouin leant forwards to grab my jacket. I glanced to either side and realized that there were no houses in sight where I could take refuge. Well, if you can’t hide you can always run.
I turned around and scrambled up the bank and made the first 100 metres in around 11 seconds. I heard a car engine start behind me and the screech of wheels as made a u-turn. I maintained my desperate pace and in between deeper and deeper gasps I could hear a Land Rover moving into second gear behind me. I tried to stop approaching cars with outspread arms and a look of pure terror. They swerved around me with the smell of burning rubber.
Finally a car pulled up to a halt and the electric window wound down. The Bedouin man inside looked me sternly in the eyes.
“What problem?” He asked.
“Please…”I gasped, “Please help – bad men!” I pointed as the Land Rover arrived beside us. But the man had already got out of his car to greet my pursuers. They kissed one another on the cheeks and I got the impression they had the same camel for a mother.
My assumption that they wanted to rape me may well have been erroneous but this was not the first time I’d faced this danger in Muslim countries. A famous sheikh was recorded to have been asked what his reaction would be to meet a young, shepherd boy in the shade of a palm tree alone one afternoon. ‘Allah forbid that I be faced with such temptation!’ was his answer. I was one such you, white boy in the middle of nowhere in a country where young men had a hard time finding an outlet for their hormones. The stats on male rape are higher in the Muslim world than anywhere else.
The last paragraph took about a tenth of a second to think through as the Bedouin embraced and accordingly, I turned to run again. I found the thinner of the original couple blocking my path. I swung back my flute and he moved out of the way. Again I sprinted faster than I had since school athletics day and again I heard a car engine start up behind me.
Desperation poured out along with the sweat. I reckoned I could run for a few more minutes before I would have to collapse by the side of the road and throw up blood. Then I ‘d be in no position to put up a fight. Maybe I should just stop now and make my last stand? Was this really happening? I thought of the European sailors who promised to convert to Islam if Allah would only deliver them from a particularly fierce tempest.
I kept running and around a corner I came across three shops in the middle of nowhere. I jumped up on the veranda and found to my relief that they were run by Pakistanis. “Please help me – bad men are coming-“ Hyper-ventilation stole away the rest of my words but my distress was evident.
“Calm down, sir. Don’t worry. You are safe here.” The shopkeeper laughed. I breathed a prayer of thanks as I knew he would see it as his duty to protect the guest even if he was uninvited. Also there was no love lost amongst the immigrant population here for the Arabs.
I hid behind shelves of rice and chick peas, wondering what the hell I should do next. Just then the call to prayer sounded and I was ushered outside.
“Where are you going?” I asked, appalled to see my protector walk away.
“It is time to pray!” He answered cheerfully. “Do not worry!”
I watched him fade away into the dusk and was tempted to join him but guessed they wouldn’t let me an infidel into the mosque at prayer-time. I found myself on the veranda with four Hindu boys from Goa who must have felt a little out of place here. Naturally, just then the Land Rover pulled up and wound the window down. The Bedouin with the look of a devil on his face yelled in English.
“Hallo! My friend! Where you go? Come with me – I take you your hotel! Come my house! Ha! Ha! Ha!” I ignored him and walked down to the opposite end of the veranda but he reversed to keep up with me, yelling all time. The Hindu boys urged me to go with him and I felt like the only sane person within a hundred miles. Finally, I guess his family was waiting for him to go and break the Ramadan fast and he had to leave me alone.
The Hindu lads took me around the back to their cabins where they prepared a milky chai. I remembered that I was carrying a mobile phone and began to call everyone I knew in the country. The lawyer and the missionaries were out but the hotel answered.
“Hello? Yes, it’s the Englishman. Yes, room 706. Please send me a car or a taxi at once, it’s an emergency. Well, send a Christian driver then. What? No, I don’t know where I am. Just send cars out onto every road to the mountains!”
The battery died and I cautiously walked around to the road. A taxi came on duty early and I jumped in before he could protest. I grabbed a bunch of banknotes out of my wallet and waved it in his face. He looked at me as though I were crazy. He shrugged, started up the engine and we drove away to safety.
I booked my flight out the very next morning.
