The receptionist smiles as she shows Ummi and me into the waiting room where I see that I match the walls in my abaya of pale cerulean. What the girl knows, I’m not sure but her eyes scan me over slowly and I feel her taking the sum of me, tallying up my bits and pieces; my lank hair, my slouching body thin to the bone like a street dog, bloodshot eyes, pale lips chapped and flaky and nails bitten raw. I was a vision of beauty once, called gorgeous and houri, told that I had a face that could get away with murder but not anymore. These days I am a haunting not a girl. Ummi sits on an arm chair even though there is plenty of space on the sofa next to me, picks up a magazine and begins to fan herself though the room is cool. There is a tinkle of jazz coming from a concealed speaker and I notice that the tall droop of moth orchids in the corner is real and I stare into it and find little faces in the flowers that seem to beckon me, to dare me to play with them, toy with their soft pliable shapes. I rub one smooth vanilla white petal between my thumb and forefinger and Ummi shifts uncomfortably in her seat. Don’t touch anything, she hisses at me and I see her right knee shake under her black silk cloak like it always does when she’s nervous. I want to bend the edge of one of the orchid’s rubbery leaves till it breaks, squeeze the sap onto my fingers and see the sticky strings stretch like thin shiny webs all over my hand. I want to pluck the petals one by one, place them on my tongue, snap the stem, shove my hand into the small glass pot of earth and bring the whole mess to my face. I want to chew the roots, grind them to a paste between the teeth that sit pretty and perfect in my mouth because I never stopped wearing the retainer at night. You don’t want to wake up with Bugs Bunny teeth Baba used to say tucking me in after reading me a story from the Book of Prophets. Baba, who isn’t here today sitting with me as I wait to see the court assigned psychiatrist, who hasn’t looked me in the eyes since it all happened three weeks ago, who even said in between gasps and shrieks of Rabbī, Rabbī, that he couldn’t believe he’d raised an animal.
But perhaps I should go back a little so maybe, just maybe, you’ll see I’m no monster.
Khaleeji Swag began filming three months ago with an original cast of twelve girls. Each with at least a million followers. In each episode we put up a post inspired by a loose theme thought up by the producers and open to our interpretation like Sci-fi Bedouin, Baqala Grunge or Desert Drift and the girl with the least number of likes got kicked off at the end. Netflix was going to be a distributing partner and there was an oil and gas sponsor too but they paid good money to expunge any connection with the show after all the brouhaha broke out and in any case I’ve been made to sign an NDA to make sure I never say their name. We only made it to episode six before the little accident—as I call it in my head—what Ummi and Baba call my possession by the devil.
I know I should have turned down the show when they told me Manal was going to be on it too but for some reason I couldn’t say no. As a child I used to tie a piece of string around my finger till the tip went blue, removing it only when I couldn’t bear the pain of numbness and Manal was like that string to me, she cut off the blood supply to certain parts and in doing that she made me feel alive. If I speak of her in the past tense it’s not because she’s dead—she isn’t—it’s simply because of the rupture brought about by what happened between us. I no longer see her as an autonomous living whole person but as a collection of parts: hands, knees, feet, separate but together like articles in a closet. Or maybe she was always an assemblage to me and it is only in my imagination today that I see her past self as a person and not an assortment of flesh-based delights. During my so-called possession I took in some parts of her, acquired what I fancied, sipped from Manal, very nearly wore her skin. She is no longer at the hospital but I don’t think she will be posting much for a little while at least not her face, hands or feet till she heals and maybe not even then. Actually I am pretty sure she will never post again. Let’s just say that the whole event has left her in a deficit.
I take out my phone, scroll through Manal’s pictures and they grow in front of my eyes and crash over me in waves. These are posts from just a few months ago and I know them off by heart now: the Versace chains of her tights climbing up her ankle behind the golden strap of that Jimmy Choo, the small Art Deco Egyptian sun tattooed between her breasts, the ghostly fog of shisha smoke seeping out from her pink cherubian lips glossed to perfection. Her mother is French, was a model in her youth as was her grandmother who was the face of Biba—imagine!—and Manal got from the two of them these charcoal gray eyes and a body to die for. The grid is endless and there are so many gems: Manal reclining in blood red Valentino at the Noguchi Garden, poolside in the ’96 vintage white Gucci keyhole dress that she managed to find from God knows where with her black-as-kohl Saluki Cyra at her feet, in Paris at a dinner for Rei Kawakubo, at Adrien Brody’s art show with his arm around her shoulder, dancing on a table with FKA Twigs at a Highsnobiety party in New York for Fashion Week. There’s also her last post for Khaleeji Swag, the theme was “Stallions” and she got Azra to put matching henna stars on her and her white steed Jamil and it got three million likes, the most for any picture posted on the show. We’ve always been neck to neck in numbers though she hit five million followers before I did. I think of the dinner party she threw at the Bulgari to celebrate last winter where she wore a sparkly Rodarte piece and a diamond tiara and the twinkling lights bounced off her and came straight at me like darts, what they call in Feng Shui “poison arrows”. I should have known then that nothing good would come of this, that the arrows would only grow in numbers and strength, that over time they would diminish me, weaken me, make me ripe for a total occupation by the Iblīs Ummi and Baba speak of so often nowadays. I carry on my scrolling and Ummi grabs the phone from my hand, takes one look at Manal’s birthday post from Ibiza last year and begins to sob. When will it end, she says, not to me but to the ceiling, to Allah presumably who I feel is just as responsible for all this as anyone else. The only difference between us is that I do not act with impunity. I have been stilled, cuffed, straitjacketed, injected, made dull and puny, a wet towel thrown on my passions, my phone checked for the search history, my blood tested for drug abuse, my eyes peered into for signs of insanity. They even did an MRI scan of my brain to make sure the assault wasn’t part of some kind of seizure or fit and the lab technician had asked me if I wanted to listen to music or the Quran during the forty five minutes that I would have to lie still and without words I asked for the music, imagining they’d play some kind of instrumental Celine Dion cover and they played—would you believe it of all things—Beethoven’s Ninth into my ears as the sounds of the machine began to pound all around me. A cackling laugh escaped me then as I thought of A Clockwork Orange and the technician cautioned me to keep still otherwise we’d have to start all over again. It’s only Baba’s status and his majlis connections that have kept me out of prison or the lunatic ward as Ummi reminds me three times a day.
Dr. Elissar is Lebanese American, a little younger than I anticipated and the first thing she does is show me a picture of myself standing next to Ummi and Baba on the day I graduated from Columbia. Baba was upset that I’d swapped History for Art but he smiled and clapped just like everyone else when I stepped up on stage. Manal had gotten into the RCA the year before and was constantly posting these bizarre shots of herself like painting with her hair or making a cast of her bust in chocolate and I couldn’t help it, I had to make the switch. I think the graduation picture is meant to provoke me into talking, something I haven’t done since the attack and though it’s a smart ploy it has no effect. The doctor has a whole deck of photographs and she holds them fanned in her hands like we’re playing poker which in a way I guess we are—a game in which she keeps all the cards and gets to decide where I go on the crazy scale. She places another one in front of me, Manal and me in a pool when we were six. This time I feel my lips twitch and I think Dr. Elissar notices this because she makes a note on her pad. I want to tell her “bullseye” but I won’t, I look at the picture and let my eyes glide over Manal’s slippery body. I remember the day, Lara’s birthday. The cake was a My Little Pony cake with a prancing Celestia and we wore mermaid tails and splashed till our arms went sore. Manal could hold her breath the longest and swim from end to end underwater with the tiniest kick of her legs, just like a real mermaid. For the purposes of what Dr. Elissar is after, it would be accurate to say that it was around then when it started, the fever with no end. Even in my memory where so much is blurry, the pictures of our time in the pool stand pristine and clear like high definition TV. I ducked my head in the water and watched Manal for hours, till my eyes stung from the chlorine, her pale blue arms with a dozen glitter tattoos, her cloud of black hair, how smoothly her body sliced through the water, effortless, free. It was the same in our skating lessons, she jumped, twirled, arms raised high and landed with the lightest touch and I watched her over the expanse of white ice, my lips turning blue, my heart beating in what felt like cool iron chains. In school we were part of the same gang but she dominated the scene, always being the first to discover the latest trend—the first to get the violet streak in her hair, the glitter jelly shoes, the peacock feather earrings, the hair clip that switched from white to minty seafoam under the beast of Dubai’s relentless sun. They say that envy is the one sin that gives no pleasure but look at me, look at how it filled me, bathed me in its flames, flipped a switch behind my eyes so that they always look alive, ravenous, an essential quality for a girl intending on feeding the millions with her face. It’s what the superfans always wrote in the comments for me. Babe you have fire in your eyes. Little did they know for what it hungered.
The good doctor reveals another photograph, this time a picture of Manal and me seventeen with skis on our feet at Zermatt. A school trip. I want to say “bullseye” again but no words leave my mouth. I stand up and pace the room, sweat on my lip though I move in the pathway of the AC’s blast. Manal was as smooth on the snow as she was with everything else and I spent a week watching her gain her speed during the day and the whiteness of her teeth when we sat by the fire at night. She called me to her room one evening and I found her both, drunk on schnapps, high on hash, the half-smoked joint still glowing in the ashtray. She sat me down, placed her hands on my shoulders and laughed a witchy laugh. I know your secret, she whispered in my ear. I started to leave but she pushed me back down and went through the list, ticking each thing off on her long slender fingers. Wafa’s bracelet, Fatima’s perfume, Alia’s hairbrush. I won’t tell, she said and sat in front of me looking like a beautiful demon, a kind of reckless malice glinting in her eyes where the white was pink from the cocktail of two vices.
I had been taking things for as long as I could remember. I never noticed that I took them, I just took them, something from here, something from there. In my room I had a whole drawer assigned to hold my collection—rings, tiny ceramic figurines, paperweights, lipsticks—things I never used or wore, just held between my fingers till they went warm and felt like a little living thing. Ummi even took me to a hypnotherapist but he couldn’t make me stop.
I’ll give them back, I told Manal, though the prospect of facing the girls utterly mortified me.
Manal smiled and flicked her long black hair. Let’s make a deal, she said, leaning back putting her feet up on the coffee table, her fingers knitted behind her head. You do what I say and I promise not to tell.
I nodded and felt my t-shirt under the fleece-lined jacket go cool with sweat.
Be a donkey, said Manal.
I looked into her eyes and they smiled back in encouragement. Do it, she said, softly, like a gentle preschool teacher or pediatric nurse.
I brayed like the animal and she shook her head. No, no, on all fours, she said. Haven’t you ever seen a donkey?
I got on my hands and knees and brayed again. Manal laughed and clapped then took a long pull on the joint. Why don’t you come have some hay? she said, parting her legs and sliding her hand inside her velvet joggers.
I went to my room twenty minutes later, the taste of salty girl on my lips, Manal’s sighs soft against my eardrums. She was good on her word and never told the others about the things I took. When I saw her at breakfast the next morning, she winked at me but we never spoke about what happened in that room.
Dr. Elissar takes my hand, brings me back to the armchair in the corner and places another photograph in my lap. Manal and myself in the green room, from episode six of Khaleeji Swag, the week I succumbed to the voices in my head. The theme for the episode was “Spectacular!” and the producers wanted us to go all out, encouraging us to fly in photographers and vintage pieces from Tokyo, LA, Paris, New York. Each girl got to design her own set but had to present her moodboard to the group before the shoot because the director wanted some behind the scenes clips. Manal had roped in Youssef to shoot her and was going for an Oriental pop vibe with her as Cleopatra in Zuhair Murad from his Spring/Summer 2020 collection holding a real albeit non-venomous snake clasped to her breast. Her board was a mashup of Beyoncé, Liz Taylor and Garbo from Mata Hari with sketches for a gold circular stage, her throne between two sphinxes. My shoot was going to be a sort of “death-by-fashion” motif and for inspo I had screenshots from The Neon Demon, some Duggie Fields paintings with headless women and photographs by Izima Kaoru and Guy Bourdin featuring spiritless sprawling bodies and many cut off disembodied hands and feet with fire engine nails. Some may choose to see my moodboard as a bright red caution signal for events that were to come, a kind of prophetic warning from my subconscious, a full scale crystalline revelation of my deepest desires and sinister fetishes. Did I know then that I was slipping into the dark? No, of course not. The picture selection on my part was largely psychic, I’m not sure why I picked the images that I did other than that they were glorious to look at and had to be held within oneself with extreme caution. I was going for a kind of slick gothic, something new that would thrill the superfans, make them fall in love with me all over again, bring gasps to their little mouths, color to their miserable days. If anyone turns my life into a film ever, this is the part critics will pause at. Art or life? they’ll say. Who knows where one begins and one ends. Later in court, Manal’s lawyers showed my moodboard to the judge and he shook his head and muttered under his breath about the coming of the end and the ubiquity of vulgar western culture. She’s clearly disturbed, he said out loud, his thick wrist flicking in my direction.
The day of the photoshoot, I woke up buoyant, jubilant even. My set was perfect, black marble floor with thin swirling veins of white surrounded by mirrors. Farah took the pictures and had me go with a silver Tom Ford knee-length dress, six-inch Louboutins on my feet, supine with my arms and legs at odd angles like I’d fallen from the sky, a steely blue light wrapping around my skin, different parts of me reflected in the mirrors.
After the shoot I sat on the steps outside for a cigarette and overheard two spots talking about Manal’s get up. Her studio was right next to mine. “Holy fire” they called her and I couldn’t help it, I slid into her studio and walked over to her make-up room where she sat in front of the mirror alone, still in her dress, like a goddess, her big eyes lined with thick liner, gold dust on her arms and a cloud of Amouage in the air. She took a line she’d cut on the table then turned and smiled at me. Nice dress, she said. Your legs look good. Barre?
I nodded. Manal was a master at paying compliments that made you feel pathetic and small and I was used to them. She passed the little bag of coke to me and I took the hit from my finger and looked into her eyes, which were limpid now, unfocused with a little wildness lurking in their dark pupils.
You know what I think? she said. I think we’re going to make it to the final episode.
I nodded again. Lana and Tara don’t really stand a chance, I said. They only have like a million followers.
Manal laughed. Maybe you’ll win.
Could be you.
I could slip up, she said.
Why would you do that?
So that you can win. I’m the only thing in your way. It’ll be like our little secret, she said and turned to the mirror and began to run her fingers through her hair. Remember, she said.
Remember what? I asked.
To this she laughed again and started to bray. Like a donkey. Eeh oh eeh oh! I’m not sure what possessed her to do it but she did it, I guess there was an animal in her too. And that was the moment it happened. My feet moved of their own accord and I jumped across the room, knocked Manal to the ground and she hit her head and passed out. I tore the golden dress, dug my nails into her breasts and pulled them along her skin and left on her these stripes of raw pink. My teeth found her cheek, which I only bit, but when I took her hands into my mouth I ripped out her fingers and began to chew. I sat there chewing for some time, three digits off her left hand, two off her right foot or so said the doctor in court a few days later. It was Manal’s stylist who found me, blood on my face and neck, a small collection of bones gripped tight in my fist.
I don’t speak but I begin to cry and Dr. Elissar leans back as if this is some kind of progress. She says a few things like we have some work to do and that this is a start and it won’t be easy but there is a ringing in my ears and I can’t quite catch the words. She rises from her chair and squeezes my hand and I feel a tingling on my wrist where her fingers press into my flesh. All the hands that have prodded me lately—flicked my veins for blood, held open my eyes—were gloved and I realize that this is the first time in weeks that the warmth of another person has left an imprint on my body and my skin responds, wakes up from its slumber and becomes thirsty for more of the touch. Dr. Elissar’s fingers are what a palmist would call “conic,” tapering at the end with almond-shaped nails buffed short and painted violet. I look at her properly now—something I haven’t done yet because I’ve spent the past hour looking right through her—the soft waves of her brown hair, the hazel irises, the freckles on her arms, the pale yellow silk shirt, the off-white skirt. Her lips are thin but time will be good to her—I can tell—she has the toned skin and bone structure for it and of skin and bones I am something of an expert now. My eyes move from the gold band on her wedding finger to the Raymond Weil on her wrist to the pearl drop earrings and I imagine slipping all three of these off her and putting them into my pocket. I imagine the sounds she makes with her husband who she has a picture of on her desk and whether she gets on all fours for him. Does she squeal, I wonder, or moan deep and husky. As she walks me to the door, I notice her tall frame, the stately posture and I picture the curve of her spine in some rare moment of ecstasy. She hands me a tissue to wipe the tears from my cheeks and I catch a faint whiff of her scent which I recognise immediately—Cuir de Russie—and I think of the courteousness of her choice, like she knew I was coming and put on—just for me—an invisible envelope of leather around her skin. She wears a small gold cross on her long neck and I wonder if she thinks this will protect her, keep her safe. I want to ask her but I don’t. I leave the room and Dr. Elissar calls Ummi inside to speak. I gaze out the window of the waiting room, the late afternoon light falling into my eyes and I feel on my tongue a kind of flavor of speculation. What is the taste of a psychiatrist on the panel of the Criminal Investigations Department, I wonder, and for the first time in my life I am hungry for someone new.
RAJA’A KHALID
The art that appears alongside this piece is “lo specchio lucido” by GRETA KOSHENINA.