A man with lips like a fish comes into my room and says, “You're lucky to be with Habib.” He is squeezing my breast with his hand, like someone shopping for a melon. I try to push him away, but my arm, stone-heavy from the drugged la**i, doesn't move.
“You're lucky,” he says, “that Habib is your first one.”
I close my eyes. The room pitches this way and that.
“You can tell the others that it was Habib,” he says.
I open my eyes, watch him squeeze my other breast, and wonder: Who is this Habib he keeps talking about?
“If this is really your first time,” he says. “Old Mumtaz is a tricky one.”
He unbuckles his belt. “Once before, she sold Habib used goods.
The fish-lips man removes my dress.
I wait for myself to protest. But nothing happens.
“Habib,” he says. “Habib is good with the ladies.”
The he is on top of me, and something hot and insistent is between my legs.
He grunts and struggles, trying to fit himself inside me.
With a sudden thrust I am torn in two.
“Oh, yes,” he says, panting. “Habib is good in bed.”
I hear, coming from a distance, a steady thud
thud,
thud,
and register that this is the sound of a headboard hitting a wall.
After a while,
I don't know how long,
another sound interrupts the rhythmic thud of the headboard.
I know this noise from somewhere.
I work very hard to make it out.
Finally, I identify it.
It is the muffled sound of sobbing.
Habib rolls off me.
Then I understand: I was the person crying.