Throwing Sparks by Abdo Khal Page A

while I even entertained the thought that Madame might be none other than Tahani. I was haunted by Tahani’s words to me those years ago: ‘I’ll never leave you. Wherever you go, I’ll be there.’ I became obsessed with meeting Madame.
    In all, there were three women who were involved with procuring a steady supply of nubile young women to Palace parties; they also trained the young men in the best approaches to lure girls and ensnare the more difficult ones.
    Osama was trained by a woman who had worked Beirut’s nightclub scene until the Israeli siege of the city in 1982, when the Master extended her indefinite hospitality at the Palace. Cosseted in luxury and accolades, she groomed Osama in the arcane art of luring women. He became very successful and always came back from his forays with freshly caught game still rosy with life.
    Osama had reeled Maram, the dazzling beauty, into the Palace, like countless women before her and since. He had set his sights on her but had not imagined the Master would be so captivated by her good looks that he would be unable to let go. It was not the first time a woman had entranced the Master, and those who knew him well had believed Maram would go the way of all the others – seduced one day, discarded the next. They were totally confounded when Maram breathed new life into him.        
    From the minute I first laid eyes on her, I too was bewitched.

5
    Issa escaped from the Firepit and only returned to smuggle the rest of us into Paradise. I was among the first victims of this human trafficking.
    Bound together by a miserable childhood, Issa, Osama and I were foul-mouthed children. For those we regarded as opponents, no obscenity or profanity was too vile or hurtful, no sarcasm too biting. The neighbourhood folk avoided us and then shunned us altogether. Although we came from decent families, we were regarded as deviants who had strayed so far from the norms of decency that we had become unredeemable.
    Osama’s father, Muhammad al-Bushri, periodically left his family to pursue his livelihood as a pilgrimage guide – a mutawwaf – in Mecca. Whether for the Hajj or the lesser pilgrimage, the Umrah, he welcomed the pilgrims at Bab Ismail, accompanied them on their seven circumambulations of the Kaaba, and was grateful for whatever munificence they bestowed on him. In the evenings, he repaired to a café inside a small souk and quickly went to sleep so as to be up bright and early to welcome the pilgrims after dawn prayers and get a head start on earning his living.
    Muhammad had grown accustomed to being away from his family, disappearing for a week and sometimes two weeks at a time. When he came home, he would soak his swollen feet in warm saltwater and his wife would massage his feet and relieve him of the discomfort from the long hours he spent on them. He would fall asleep groaning with relief. In fact, when Osama’s father was home, he spent most of his time lying in bed to rest and recuperate.
    It was on one such trip to Mecca that Muhammad lost his life to a random bullet in the courtyard of the Kaaba. A self-proclaimed Mahdi and his band of heavily armed men chose the dawn of a new century in the Islamic calendar – 1 Muharram 1400 AH – to take control of the entire site, and Muhammad al-Bushri was one of the many victims to fall that day. His was killed trying to escape from the holy sanctuary after refusing to pledge allegiance to the Mahdi, who would meet his own death three days later.
    Muhammad’s family received no compensation or blood money for his death, so Osama’s only inheritance was the ihram clothing his father had worn to perform the circumambulations and a few religious books. Among these was a book of prayers that Muhammad had known by heart and that his son could not even begin to decipher.
    Osama’s mother had wanted her son to inherit the mantle of pilgrimage guide. But her wish was never realised because the senior mutawwafs ranged themselves