They Came From the Brothel

I am She whom one honours and disdains.
I am the Saint and the prostitute.
I am the virgin and the wife.
I am knowledge and I am ignorance.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am Godless and I am the Greatness of God

- A fifth century AD Gnostic hymn

from Nag-Hammadi in Middle Egypt


There wasn’t a statue of Venus standing at the entrance to adorn the abode that we entered, carrying in our heads the myths and the parables fed to us through various provocative tales of seduction and lewdness. We entered simply through a wooden door and made ourselves comfortable in our own little spaces. There was music, alcohol, hash and the prevailing dampness of our saturated lusts. Since Biblical times, lust had always been intimately associated with the idolatrous worship of Ishtar: the Babylonian goddess of fertility.

We waited impatiently for D’s cellular phone to ring.

“What time did you fix with him?” O turned the pages of Time magazine, not actually paying attention to its contents.

“I said we’d pick them up by ten.” D pushed some buttons on his mobile.

“It’s ten twenty D, where is your phone call?” S lay on the bed with the TV remote in his right hand.

“Guys, he’ll call; plus we’ve also paid him the security deposit.” D smiled his half smile; a smile that had seen only a little part of true childhood.

“And what makes you think he’s not buying two bottles of Regal as we worry about the damn phone call?” I shifted in my chair, a little uncomfortable.

D looked at me, “They don’t do that, it’s bad for business.”

The Socialist/Marxist say that prostitution is an inevitable result of Capitalism. Certain modern theorist and traditional anthropologists state that prostitution is inevitable because nature determines certain roles for men and women, and one of women’s roles is to serve the sexual needs of men. Others maintain that prostitution is a holdover from early matriarchal societies where it was practised without the negative social stigma that is attached to it today. Still some assert that prostitution is a function of a patriarchal and male-dominated society; this one’s the modern feminists’ favourite. (Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2050 B.C.). Bullough; Lars Ericsson as discussed in Schwarzenbach, Contractarians and Feminists Debate Prostitution; Tong, Women, Sex and the Law)

A didn’t talk much, he had a Kafka in his hands and he simply sat on one of the bean bags and turned the pages of the book looking at each page with an intent that is discernible in only the most detectable fans of surrealist paradox.

O was getting increasingly impatient, “D, I think you should call him.”

“Yes I’m doing just that.” D dialled the pimp’s number.

“I am definitely not going back to my Penthouse tapes man, I’ve watched them so many times now that I think I know the ladies personally.” F looked uneasy as he smiled at his own bad humour.

I lit up a cigarette and heard D give an agitated hello. He spoke on the phone for less than a minute and everyone looked at him, even A raised his eyes off the book and listened to the conversation.

“Guy’s waiting for us two lanes from here, we have to pick them.” D said getting up from the bed. “F, come with me.”

F started getting up. “Sure man.”

“Why didn’t he call?” O asked while pouring some Scotch into his glass.

“If you want we can sit here and debate or we can go pick them.” D gave O a look of disdain and O went about his business.

All our hearts raced with anticipation and mine took the lead, as this was unexplored territory. D and F left.

A stood up, stretched and head towards the music system. “St Augustine had warned: ‘Banish prostitutes and you reduce society to chaos through unsatisfied lust’, and he went on to say that ’unnatural sex is atrocious if committed with a prostitute, even more atrocious if committed with a wife.’ Therefore because of false logic and sexual repression established by the Church Fathers in ancient Byzantine, men had sex with their wives for the mere purpose of procreation and the element of pleasure was left for the prostitutes to take care of.”

We looked at him as he changed CDs and nonchalantly came back to his book.

“What?” O took a sip from his glass and frowned at A, who simply smiled and pushed the glasses up his nose.

A continued: “A woman is made for the soul to discover her beyond what is gifted to her by God. But in this world of ludicrous consumerism and the idolatry of flesh you cannot possibly look beyond the temptation that a woman offers, also. It is enticement that men – acquiring a state of pristine discipline – can refuse to indulge.”

“And threaten survival in the process?” I asked.

“You are threatening survival by humouring the synthetic needs; not by self-control.”

I lifted my glass and downed the liquid in one big gulp, “Then here’s to saving the Harlot from damnation... and us.”

Suddenly we heard footsteps. The women were here.

***

For you, a courtesan is not only a courtesan; you also make her into a murderess. Can you not see the link: after drunkenness, fornication; after fornication, adultery; after adultery, murder?

- St John Chrysostom in Homily on the Epistle to the Romans

“Let us drink to our betrayals.”

- Samuel Le Bihan to Monica Belucci in Les Pact Des Loupes

There were two of them; Kiran and Khushbu. They weren’t what we had expected them to be and this was being reflected off everyone’s faces. They both wore jeans and T-shirts and smelled of aloe. Kiran had her wavy hair streaked brown, it cascaded down her waist. When she smiled her small narrow mouth parted to bare a chipped tooth. Khushbu had acne and thin cruel lips that were hungry for hash, as she later revealed. Both had thin and shapely bodies with heavy padding to accentuate the curves. Kiran was clearly the better one, dispensing profanity that was engineered to lower our guards against the women and to embrace them with lust that had a price attached to it.

The ladies were asked to change into something more ‘Eastern’ (a request that was put forth by our friends who lived outside the country and were only visiting). Once the clothes were changed the women were seated and the ministrations began: the glasses were filled and consumed, the joints were rolled and burned and then the questions began.

“How old are you.” F probed looking over the glass that he had brought to his mouth in order to sheath the question metaphorically.

The answer was nineteen, and then the ladies were made to answer a large repertoire of questions. They lived with other women in an area that was a little far away from the main city. They were managed by a husband and wife duo that took great care of them. The company consisted of women from various parts of the country: the runaways, the genuinely needy, the orphans and the dreamers. Our escorts wanted to be actresses for the stage and film and this was a compulsory transit that had to be made, so they said. Their otherwise forlorn eyes sparkled for only a moment when they mentioned show business and the starry-eyed fantasies it fulfilled and the glamour it offered genially.

Everyday they woke up around noon and would proceed to the dining room where a table would be set for fifteen or twenty people. They were being fed graciously; as business flourished the table became filled with more delicacies with it. Around six or seven the cell phones would start to ring and appointments and venues would be set. Sometimes the customers would ask for a woman or two by name otherwise the driver (also living at the same establishment) would take any two or three women to the mutually agreed site where the selection would be made. The streetlights and the bulbs inside the cars would aid judgement then. The latter had taken place in our case and nobody dared complain.

“I want Kiran to dance.” O voiced his request and at once she was on her feet, tying the dupatta to her waist.

D went to the stereo and raised the volume a bit. As the speakers blared out the Punjabi number, Kiran gyrated her pelvis in a manner so provocative that it would put Lara Ditta to shame.

The Bishop of Serûgh, Jacob in Mesopotamia had warned in his Third Homily on the Spectacles of the Theatre against dancing, ’mother of all lasciviousness’, which ’incites by licentious gestures to commit odious acts’.

For only an instant, Kiran clearly resembled a sixth-century mosaic in Madaba in Transjordan that depicts a castanet snapping dancer dressed in transparent muslin next to a satyr who is clearly sexually roused.

Khushbu on the other hand sat peacefully besides me sipping her Scotch.

I looked at her intently. She was like any other girl except something in her morose yet smiling countenance distinguished her profession. It could have been my biases or the fact that their calling was not hidden from us. The palpably distant eyes seemed detached from the rest of her body; it was as if she wanted to devoid herself of soul and to let us men touch only that was flesh and bone. What would it mean to let total strangers penetrate you every day, and then what would be left for you to withdraw into? The flagrant regular invasions would either result in shedding the outer shell or transporting the inner being to someplace where absolutely no one was permitted. And this is where Khushbu presumably rested as the men became ready with gusto.

For a moment I wanted to become them and as a result feel enough woe to be able to precisely dissect my soul from my body and absolutely prevent even a drop of my blood to stain the pure essence of my soul. I’m sure the high would have an addictive quality to it.

“Can I put my arm around you Khushbu?” I asked gently, trying very hard not to sound timid.

She looked at me with the saddest eyes in the world and said, “You can do whatever you want with this body but please don’t ask me any more questions.”

There were instances where the clients had made her act out their most asinine and absurd fantasies (of which I shall not go into details). The women had been sometimes beaten and on occasions forced to have sex with men who were old enough to be their grandfathers.

The music ended, the bottle of Scotch was more than half-empty and it was now time for the main act.

O and A took turns with both the ladies within an hour in an adjacent room. A came out a little out of breath, he wiped his glasses with the tail of his shirt and sat down in the beanbag. He said that it had been alright and that he’d had better outside the country and then he resorted to reading Kafka. O was sumptuously graphic when asked to give details. The women bathed and sat with us. Some time passed and as lust kicked in again, the men proceeded for the second session. F came out a little perturbed.

“What’s with you?” Someone asked.

“I think the condom tore.” F said looking at me.

I just stood there trying to make sense of the entire evening. D requested Khushbu for a massage and nothing more, she complied and the couple disappeared for some time. By this time (it was around four in the morning) S was fast asleep on the floor near the bathroom and I was trying to come to terms with an internal battle that was waging inside me since the evening had commenced. S and myself had not seen what the neighbouring room looked like from inside.

It was time for the ladies to go and with S asleep I was the only one left who still had a chance to accompany one of the ladies to ‘the room’. I lit a cigarette and decided against it (but seriously) and as a result earned a fistful of respect from four people and a few weeks of wondering what it would have been had that cigarette not been lit and also a few lonely nights of fantasising about Kiran’s titillating performance.

D called the ladies’ driver on his cell and after trying for half an hour he got through. The driver would pick them from the same place he had made the delivery. We bade farewell and kisses were exchanged and D and F drove the women to their ride.

Tradition has it that Empress Theodora - in the Byzantine Empire - was once a prostitute, a common courtesan who frequented banquets assiduously, offering herself to all and sundry. She rose through the ranks and eventually seduced the Emperor Justinian of Constantinople into marriage. The emperor later associated his wife to the throne. Her career proves that Byzantine courtesans like the Ancient Greek hetairai could aspire to influential roles in high political spheres. (The Bishop John of Ephesus in his book ‘fifth-century Lives of the Eastern Saints’)

Unlike Theodora, the women who enthralled, fascinated and enticed us that night went on to offer themselves to other men who hungered for their touch for time immortal, seeing hope in the glossy magazines and the posters that may have hung on their walls and living for the day when somebody would have enough courage to ask their hand in marriage and to take them away from the poignant world of prostitution.

But lamentably, the women are as far removed from the sugary vistas of the Bollywood myth as an eight thousand rupees prostitute can possibly be.