Henri Bragger looked around the seminar room at the World Bank symposium in Washington, D.C., giving a nod here and a little smile there. He was among old friends—or at least long-time colleagues. His own Swiss bank, the Banca Privata Reichstein, was one of the most reputable—and safest—banking institutions throughout the world. And he had been with the bank over thirty years now. He was at the top of his world, with a secure position in playing traffic control for all international transactions coming into and going out of the BPR; a beautiful and rich second wife, Karyn; and two university-student children, who were beautiful in their own right and who worshipped him and didn't blame him for his first divorce. His ex-wife had been decent that way; she had said nothing to the children about the incidents that had led up to the divorce and, anyway, that whole period of his life was more than a decade behind him.
And here he was, in Washington, on a panel of world banking leaders, advising the industrialized nations on how to get out of their shared economic crises. His panel had been very successful, and he had come into this one on secured international bank transfers to rub shoulders with his peers and to rest his brain before he was to appear on his next panel. This seminar wouldn't be taxing; there was absolutely nothing anyone had to teach him about secured international bank transfers.
After glancing around the room, Henri's brain signaled that he had passed on something interesting and a bit disquieting, and he scanned the room again. He almost didn't pick up on it, but his eyes finally focused on a younger man sitting several rows back and to his right. Henri might have let his gaze travel over him again, because in identifying his peers, his brain was gauged to men and women in their fifties, as he was, not men as young as the one who now was giving him a smile.
That smile. Yes, he was a younger version, probably not connected at all, but reminiscent of Sa'eed. Henri hadn't thought about Sa'eed for years—or at least intentionally or very long at one time—or at least that's what he pretended to himself. Sa'eed was part of his closed life. And the Germanic in Henri worked hard at keeping closed internal doors closed—and locked.
Henri looked at the young man again. Dark-complexioned and handsome, a son of the Levant, with a sultry look, velvet brown eyes and black curly hair. The bitter sweet memories crowded into Henri's brain, and perhaps he should have gone to a seminar with a less-familiar topic, because his brain disconnected entirely from the droning of the German banker at the front of the room and roamed back twenty-five years, back to Beirut.
* * * *
It was the silky voice he had and his sultry good looks, even in maturity—especially in maturity—and what he read to me, yes, certainly that too.
Sa'eed Maalouf was a writer and scholar of Arabic literature, destined to be a major writer and, even then, a professor at the American University of Beirut. And I was a young banker, in my late twenties, on an internship in our Beirut branch, and with a pregnant young wife at home in Geneva. I was studying at the American University in the evenings, intent on learning Arabic and the culture of the region, already having decided that specialization in the oil-rich regions of the world was ideal for a banker. I also was lonely, and full of myself, impressionable, and in a place exotic in ways that were way beyond my world in Switzerland.
At my beckon, Ibrahim crossed the stifling hot room, an old ceiling fan ticking overhead, and sat down on the edge of the divan where I was reclining, ready for the night and reading from one of my forbidden books.
Ibrahim looked at the cover of the book and gave a low laugh, "And is this the cause of those sounds I hear in the night, Mahmud? You have no need of such books as these."
He laid his palm on my belly and leaned down and looked intently in my face as his hand descended lower, watching the changes in my expression, listening for the soft moaning from my lips, his face like a mirror, reflecting his own rising passion in response to mine.
Please turn down the lamp, Ibrahim, I murmured.
We were in Sa'eed's study at the university, a large room, opulently furnished with Oriental carpeting, massive overloaded bookcases, a large mahogany desk, and in the far corner, wedged behind bookcases, a low divan, spread with tapestry pillows and one overstuffed club chair. The ceiling was high, and an old fan ticked away overhead. It was late in the evening, with little light filtering through a tall, dusty, uncurtained window behind the desk.
Sa'eed, in his customary white dishdasha tunic, was reclining on the divan, reading to me in Arabic from
The Red Velvet Jacket
, slowly, in silken tones, endeavoring to help me pick up the richness of the language. The text was almost poetry as written in Arabic—and even more so as Sa'eed spoke it—and I was concentrating hard to understand all the nuances of a language that was so much more expressive and visual than mine.
This reading was all too visual, and even though I was blushing and Sa'eed was murmuring that I need not dwell on the deeper meaning of it as much as how the language was being woven on the surface, I found myself responding in ways that embarrassed me.
I was not a novice to homoerotic texts or even to youthful experimentation in the all-boys prep school I had attended in Zurich. But I was a husband now and soon to be a father. I'm sure I could have resisted if I hadn't been alone in an exotic atmosphere, with a handsome, honey-voiced poet exhibiting a special attraction to me.
"Come, come over here, Henri, and sit on the divan beside me and take up the book and read to me. Here, I will find another passage. Ah, yes, this will do. The verbs are not too difficult."
I sat beside Sa'eed's hip, and he brushed his fingers along the hairs on my forearm as I concentrated hard on speaking the words properly.
The night is so quiet out on the sands of the desert, a day's journey between the oases. The warm leather of the camel saddle slides gently across my belly, as I dig my fists and toes into the sand and stare up at the stars, searching for the largest, panting, his hot breath on my neck, his teeth nibbling at my ear, his chest rising and falling on my back and his strong hands holding my wrists. Never before feeling so filled, so deeply pene—
"No, Sa'eed," I said, my voice breaking, my trembling hands lowering the book. "I don't think I can—"
He had drawn his dishdasha off and was nude underneath. He was sitting behind me on the edge of the bed now, his thighs enclosing mine. One hand on my belly under my shirt and the other hand unbuttoning my shirt and fly. He was breathing heavily on my neck and raised his lips to my ear and took my lobe in his teeth for a moment before I heard that soft, arousing voice of his.
"I think you can. I think you must." He had encased my now-freed hard cock in his fist. "I will be gentle."
"Please, can we turn out the light?" I murmured in a shaky voice.
In darkness, I felt my body being lifted up on the divan, and my thighs spread and Sa'eed kneeling between them. He was reciting verse to me in a singsong voice.
The velvet sheath whispers its sadness at the wandering sword
The sword hears the song; its blade shimmers and sings in return
Searching for its velvet sheath, singing to it to open to the sword . . .
My legs were raised slowly onto Sa'eed shoulders, and I felt the cool, oiled fingers at my entrance, and I moaned and felt my hips begin to roll as my prostate felt the touch. I closed my eyes and went with the passion of the moment. He was still speaking of the sword and velvet sheath as he entered me, and I cried out and he thrust deeper each time the word sword was spoken.
