I emailed Aaron: email me some porn. I emailed Caleb: email me some porn. I emailed Finnity: email me some porn. I emailed them all again, not cc: but bcc:, my preferences. Tried some social profiles, the Tetsets: Lana’s square, which featured just professional headshot pics and shaky footage of her lecturing, was socialized with the square of a Patagonian preservationist at the Met, who though she was too old to get me up was coupled virtually with the square of her darkfeatured daughter, who though she was too young to keep me up was coupled virtually with the squares of maybe cousins or friends of intermediate ages whose unprotected images extended from last springbreak to last weekend’s MDMA excursion culminating in a mass makeout in the middle of the Pulaski Bridge.

I tugged my wire, charged myself.

But then another window opened, to shut my own—the prayer of Fajr. There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His slayer of boners.

I clicked away, to Rach’s blog.

What was new wasn’t the vid of a client picnic—Governors Island, all leis and tikis, account execs wattlenecked sweating the BBQ, multistrawed canisters of daiquiri and piña colada sweating pixels—I sat through all of it but Rach never made an appearance. Neither was it the pic of the rental condo we’d had in the Hamptons, “Steatite counters!” “Miele appliances!” shelves of salty cookbook, the landlord’s romance and detective novels, the only thing human a suede docksider shoe disembodied on the maple—Adam’s, it had to be.

Rather what was new was a comment. If I can call a thing a comment that has nothing to do with an original. Rach’s blog is offered for free, which must be taken to mean: only at the price of reaction. But I wouldn’t react—not yet.

I scrolled down below the dross:

uy387456: “perfect post!! 2 increase yr traffic click here.”

therightfootfwd: “i subscribed to this feed and will check new posts. for bargain footwear and related content click here.”

StrongL80s: “happiness happens. be yourself today tenaciously.”

I’d always presumed StrongL80s—and Nokiddushing, and Challahatyourgirl, and others—were all just Rach, cheerleading herself tenaciously.

The next and last was it: the only comment I hadn’t already read, the only comment I hadn’t already reread, was another from “KORDIE”:

“wtf? taking my plane leaving me behind in ras alkhaimah ummmm alquwain wtf? im just concerned 4 the both of u. the truth must not be evaded. trust me yre in waaaay over yr head. download this 2 contact me now.”

\

I got up out of the chair, tried to find the remote—where was it? if I were a remote where would I be? Wriggling myself across pins and needles to the entertainment system, to switch it on manually, then reembedding myself, constantly switching my alignment to face the east that was west, the west that was—comfort.

Insomniac, I defaced every direction—every qibla, or mihrab. All prayers point to the Saudis.

Each time the muezzin came through the curtains—sounding throughout the city, resounding and vibrating—each time he pronounced, I heard Rach. Her old ringtone.

That voice. It wasn’t recorded, but live. Both bodiless and hoarse. Arabesque. The voice that turns lattices to speakers. That speaks the very fretwork. While rising and falling like an arch. The sound of calligraphy, of cacography.

I listened, I lay and listened while watching the default channel, as the face of the sheikh wiped onscreen—a screensaver, a sheikhsaver.

Then a dissolve, to a stock image of Medina. Minarets around a vert dome. The sheikh returned, superimposed. A dissolve again, to a stock image of Mecca: caravanserai encircling the Kaaba, that brute granite tabernacle that holds paradise inside it and grants wisdom to all—in its big black squareness it even looked like a datacenter.

Again with “the sheikh”—or “king”—the lexicon kept changing, or else the man himself refused to be defined. Ruler of the petrols we’re passing for flight. Ruler of the electrified high celestials. Guardian of freon, and of the urinals that flush in the sky.

I wondered how he’d receive Principal: desert hospitality mandates feetwashing, the watering of camels, a meal (the guests served first and best), the best bed and first choice of concubine (supplies limited). A prudent host would also provide the translation.

The sheikh would speak, would describe an immense palace of utterance, and only when finished, only when utterly finished, would he let the interpreter render. A dictatorial practice, Koranic in a sense. Unless the totality has been communicated, nothing has been communicated. A single misunderstanding flaws it all.

Or else maybe the sheikh would break his speech into units, bits and bytes and girih tiles, pausing between each to demonstrate his authority, in the guise of generosity—pausing between each to allow his interpreter, scrounging on hands and knees, tongue thrust in concentration, to clean it up. To lick the words up from the limen, and spit out again a perfect reproduction mosaic.

But then perhaps the sheikh would say nothing at all, and just sit enthroned, while his interpreter stood and spoke for him: either words the sheikh supplied the interpreter with prior to this audience, or words the sheikh never supplied—the interpreter recast as a prophet and the sheikh becoming an oracle or dream.

Then again, the ultimate would be if there were no sheikh whatsoever: the sheikh could pose as his own interpreter, or the interpreter could pose as the sheikh, who was absent from this audience because too important, or too senile, or even deceased, and so the interpreter who claimed to represent him was just representing himself.

I wrapped my hand in a washcloth, prepped for my next sessh with Principal. Stretched for the ascent.

There were a lot of steps ahead of me. And each vital to mastering the next.

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9/10

To fall for this Arabess is forbidden, but nowadays to fall for any woman you can’t search up online is forbidden. How else to snoop her? how else to send her around?

Her life had been set to Private.

Her mouth, a pool of jewel set in bodied blackness. The modesty mullahs sure know what they’re doing, insisting that the less I know of a woman, the more I want to know, I need to know.

She’d reserved a full floor in my memory, without giving a number, without giving a name. I had no wasta, and only this chance. Though even if I’d manage to baksheesh the compjockeys at resort IT, it’d be too suspicious to ask after her, I’d have to ask after him, the rolypoly ayatollah, the offensive effendi. Claim him a prospective investment partner. Invest him in my claim. Either that or I’d appeal to Principal to hack the Khaleej dbase and ransack the records. No other sources to cultivate. Just desert.

Instead of excavating around the site, exposing its ramparts, I decided to go down, foundationally. I dug myself into the lobby, and sifted through the drifters, the dunes motioned around me—humpy dumps in full hijab.

The women who passed compelled attention by tighter fits, which were pregnancies, and heelless shoes, so as not to slight their escorts. Kitchen slippers, or wrung through the laundry slippers and then, open toes.