The Last Living Slut Read Online Free PDF Page B

them. He was so unhygienic—didn’t he know that place was germy? His fingers were going to smell.
    I heard a zip . The cartoon was so colorful. So full of crazy characters. I wished it had a princess in it. Karimi’s breath was hot as he whispered things against my neck that I didn’t understand. There was something between my legs. It was what boys like my cousin had. I thought Karimi must love me. We were doing something bad. I would go to hell. I would definitely go to hell.
    Karimi finally stood up and unlocked the door. He went to the bathroom, washed his hands, came back, and put some socks on. The cartoon was over. I could go now. The room smelled like holy rose water.
    I don’t know which came first anymore, my childhood sense of sexuality or the lodger upstairs.
    Karimi had moved in because my mother wasn’t earning enough to take care of us. One day I heard her telling my grandmother that my father had taken the money she had hidden under the carpet to pay for his opium.
    Karimi had a black mustache just like my father. But he was tall and wore crisp white shirts. He smelled like sweat, but I liked him. He was kind to me. When I sat in the passenger seat of his car, I felt like a spoiled rich girl.
    Karimi did many things for me, and I started to spend a lot of time with him. When I went in search of his companionship every afternoon, I knew what was going to happen—and yet I did it, again and again: Facing Mecca, he taught me how to recite the Qur’an and say the afternoon prayer, kneeling on the mat, pressing our foreheads against the Mohr, and muttering it under our breaths. Afterward he’d take me to his bedroom. He’d always lock the door. The projector hummed warmly. I was scared. Frightened. Never had cartoons triggered such adrenaline in me. The bedroom of this man was where I belonged and it would be unnatural for me to leave it. No one was ever going to help me. When he put me on his lap, however, my place was confirmed in the flames of hell—and I knew that too. I was a bad girl. Tainted. I knew then that this was my destiny. I must love it. I must love this. This—it is who I am. He loves me; he takes care of me; he shows me cartoons and takes me places. My dad doesn’t do these things. His fingers would slip into my panties. I wanted to vomit from fear, but I gave him love instead.
    I sat still afterward until he washed his hands and told me to go downstairs. He didn’t even have the courtesy to show me girlie cartoons like Cinderella , only Pink Panther and Bugs Bunny—and I hated him for that.

Chapter 9
    T hough a sliver of me got off on the sexual contact with Mr. Karimi, I knew what he did was disgusting and unnatural. What made me happy was playing sexual games with the boys and girls my own age.
    During afternoon siestas, the nightly gunfire, and whenever panic erupted in the neighborhood, I got together with my cousins and neighbors, male and female, and played our games— mummy and daddy or doctor and nurse. Skirts would be lifted, tiny trousers would be unzipped, and we would show each other our down-there, each of us examining, touching.
    I began to feel more sexually aware of my body, and because of this, whenever my grandmother took me to the local public bathhouse, I became rigidly shy and self-conscious of my nakedness.Our shower was nice enough, but going to the public bathhouse was like being reborn in body and soul. It was a ritual event, where everyone went for hours to luxuriously scrub and steam themselves as they exchanged gossip, drank ice-cold Coca-Cola, and exfoliated until their skin sparkled.
    After collecting our fluffy white towels from the clothesline, my grandmother would fold the family’s freshly washed underwear into a cloth sack. I would take my baby doll, get her dressed, wrap her up, and then we’d walk through our alley and down the hill. When the wailing of azan (prayer) from the mosque opened up, my heart would burst quietly with peaceful