Cleopatra's Perfume. Jina Bacarr

rotund woman in a black abaya and nose veil nudged Lady Palmer with her basket to better view the coffees, setting the Englishwoman’s feathered hat askew on her head. Lady Palmer was too shocked to react, but Flavia took the offense and pushed the woman, who turned and hissed at her like a cat. Laughing, the girl ignored her along with several dirty children gathering around her and holding out their hands for baksheesh, tips.

      “What filthy, rude people,” she commented, lighting up a cigarette. “I’ll be glad to get out of here.” She blew smoke in my direction, her eyes challenging me when she said, “I only wish I’d had as good a time here as Lady Marlowe.”

      Before I could give her a piece of my mind, Lady Palmer pulled the cigarette out of her daughter’s mouth and tossed it into the dirt. Half a dozen children leaped on it, including a bare-legged boy jumping off his donkey. “No smoking, Flavia. What will your father say?”

      She shrugged. “What he always says. Nothing.”

      Straightening her hat, the Englishwoman turned to me, her eyes sad. “I was hoping this trip would restore some civility to my daughter.”

      “Too bad she didn’t get the spanking she deserves,” I retorted, smiling, knowing Flavia would scratch my eyes out if she could. Fortunately, my double entendre was lost on Lady Palmer, who was more interested in checking out the wares of a small shop selling scarabs reputed to be from King Tutankhamen’s tomb, strings of mummy beads and little bronze gods. All made in Paris.

      Dallying at the shop proved to be my undoing. I picked up a stone statuette of a bare-breasted goddess, its smooth white chalky surface dirtying my navy gloves, my irritation at Flavia’s rudeness escalating when I called upon the shopkeeper to dust them. Bowing, apologizing, the poor man wiped my soiled gloves, but not to my satisfaction.

      I stormed out of the shop, fuming. What was happening to me, acting like that? I began to question why I decided to travel with the girl and her mother to Bombay. Loneliness, I presume, but that was no excuse for putting up with that girl’s insolence. No, I could no longer exist in a world whose rhythms didn’t match my own. Whatever the outcome, I made my decision. Lady Palmer could travel to Bombay without me. I had other plans. I wasn’t leaving Port Said until I tracked down Ramzi, if only to give him a piece of my mind.

      And to see his magnificent body again? Was my desire for adventure, sexual fever, wild fantasy that strong? Are you that much of a fool to expose your interest in him for everyone to criticize? I asked myself. Yes, and hell be damned what anyone thought.

      Fueled with a new energy, I paid little attention to the young boy wiping the dirt off my shoes with a grimy rag or the little girl pestering me with a frayed pink rose. I reached into my purse and gave him one piastre. Her, two piastres. Then I hurried down the street past butcher shops, cobbler stalls, vendors selling squabs and onions, splitting a goat flock in two, and dragging Lady Palmer with me. It was almost teatime, though I needed something stronger to calm my nerves, especially with Flavia lamenting how bored she was, then tossing more barbs my way about how she couldn’t understand how a handsome man like Ramzi could be interested in an older woman.

      “No wonder he left Port Said alone,” she said, tossing her long hair over her shoulder, “after he got what he wanted.”

      “I’d watch what you say, Flavia, if you don’t want to spend the next six months touring the Orient with your mother.” I turned around to make certain Lady Palmer didn’t hear my remark, when a camel blocked her way, his handler nowhere to be seen. Before I could react, the animal grabbed Lady Palmer’s feathered hat between his teeth, pulling it off her head.

      “My hat!” she yelled, her voice panicked.

      I wanted to laugh, but didn’t. She was lucky the camel didn’t bite her ear.

      “Lady Marlowe,” she begged, “you must retrieve my hat from that dirty creature! It’s a Bond Street original.”

      Shaking my head, I said, “By all means, Lady Palmer.”

      Racing down the narrow street after the camel, Lady Palmer’s hat between his teeth, the tassels on his saddle waving in the wind, I chased him down one winding lane then another, until I found myself in a seedier section of the city.

      An area I knew all too well.

      Across the street I saw the Bar Supplice, boarded up and deserted. My heart pounding, my lips moved without speaking in a silent prayer, recounting the mysterious awakening I discovered within those cavelike walls. The beauty, the sensual illumination, all still lived within me. Within seconds, that feeling dissipated. I sensed a tragic quality about it now, a world created for stimulation that continued to haunt me though its magic ceased when Ramzi left.

      I barely noticed the camel had dropped the feathered hat until a young woman picked it up and handed it to me. Without glancing at her, I said, “Thank you. Lady Palmer will be most pleased.”

      I opened my purse to give her two piastres, when she blurted out, “You’re British!”

      Turning to look at her, I said, “Yes, I’m Lady Marlowe.”

      “You must help me get to England,” she said, her accent foreign, “before it’s too late.” She rushed her words, as if every moment was precious.

      I stood back, not wanting to get involved. “Too late for what? Who are you?”

      She said her name quickly, but my ears picked up a German name, Jewish, if I wasn’t mistaken. That disturbed me for reasons I shall not explain. She grabbed my arm and begged me for help. I pulled away from her. She was a young girl, no more than eighteen, her slender form appealing but her body fragrant with the smell of fear. She was dressed in a shapeless brown-checked suit cut with a sophistication that didn’t fit her.

      Eyes brimming with tears, she went on to explain how Germany’s new racial laws threatened Jews and how things had only gotten worse since Kristallnacht, when gangs of Nazis and their supporters roamed through Jewish neighborhoods breaking windows, burning synagogues and looting. Since then, no one would take in the Jews fleeing the Nazi state. No one. Both England and America had refused her entry, so she boarded the Italian ship Conte Rosso to escape persecution from Hitler’s Reich. Without a visa only one place would take her.

      “Where?” I asked, more out of politeness than curiosity.

      “Shanghai,” she said.

      “Lovely city. Do be sure to make the rounds at the Cathay during the cocktail hour,” I said, mentioning the Chinese outpost famed for its watering hole for wealthy visitors. I rambled on about the interesting members of the literati I often found lingering at the bar. I paid no attention to the blank look on her face. I merely wanted to get rid of her. A stronger urge pulled at me as I continued to stare at the Bar Supplice and I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. I still ached for Ramzi’s arms around me, his sensuous voice spinning tales. Lies, but I didn’t care.

      Meanwhile, the Jewish girl rambled on, begging me to help her. I tried to ignore her. What did her problems matter to me? Surely it couldn’t be as bad as all that in Germany. Not too long ago I’d traveled to Berlin with Lord Marlowe to attend a photography show at a gallery for my friend Maxi von Brandt. We knew each other from the old days when we both worked the cabarets, me as a dancer, her as a photographer, chatting up strangers on the telephones at each table and drinking in the pleasure palaces of Berlin. Haus Vaterland and the Resi. Fun days, filled with all the wildness and proclivity and sexual abandon of the Weimar Republic.

      “Lady Marlowe, please, listen to me. You don’t understand what’s happening to Jews in Germany. The nightly arrests, the forcedlabor camps—”

      “Rumors, all rumors.” I avoided her eyes, not believing her theatrics. Didn’t all young girls go through a stage of dramatics? I couldn’t help her, I insisted, walking away, my eyes going again and again to the boarded-up building I’d known as Bar Supplice. I haunted the street with a vacant stare in my eyes. Hoping, dreaming it was all a mistake and Ramzi would return. I couldn’t