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Melissa had spent the warm autumn afternoon on the white sands of the Alexandrian beach, her knees drawn up pensively to her chin, her dark skirt blowing in the wind. The powerful waves crashing against the shore had felt as if they were wearing her away, eroding the jagged edges of her predicament to a calm smoothness. Yet at the same time they made her so aware of her frailness, of the slender thread with which she clung to her existence. Poverty is the most basic challenge to the will to live, and Melissa, though capable of finer longings, wanted no more for herself at this moment than the assurance of a hot meal every day and a roof over her head. When her father had died he had left her a small income. But it was exhausted now. . . And she knew there was only one thing she could do.
She stood up and dusted the fine warm sand from her shabby skirt, and headed now, in the mauve-lemon light of the fading sun, towards the old city. She could feel the eyes on her as she walked through the teeming streets, the coal black eyes of the old Arabs, the covertly lusting eyes of the Greeks, the cold steely blue of the English, and the snobbish, fey eyes of the French. She would have to get used to it now, get used to the eyes crawling over her body, the eyes desiring her, desiring to consume her, to defile her, yes, to fuck her. For she knew the only way open to her now was to dance. . . to be a belly dancer in old Koan’s club. It was only a short step up from the streets, but there was a universe of self-respect in that short step.
Fictional reading for entertainment purposes only.