Congratulations !
You have been awarded points.
Thank you for !
- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Culture / Heritage / Lifestyles
- Published: 12/08/2023
![Yummy Mummy](/storage/story/C0E7E367-5D79-CE94-E743-10446EEE381B_1702093545-image(310x285-crop).jpeg)
There’s a scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Denholm Elliott’s run ragged through a market in Iskenderun. This was me to a tee as I searched for Martin in the maze of lanes and courtyards that made up Khan el-Khalili. A labyrinth of spices, jewelry, Mamluk architecture, and souvenirs. It had been a hive of commerciality since 641 AD. I wondered through the original Khan area between Al-Luizz Din Allah and Midan Hussein. Then to the narrower congested streets.
Our agreed rendezvous was an ahwa frequented by the Nobel Prize winning author Naguib Mahfouz. Finding it proved harder than anticipated. The sound of a woman banging a tin to entice customers in fused with the whirr of motorbikes which whizzed past. Her banging had the opposite of the desired effect. She looked so grumpy that nobody dared tell her.
Sheep, cows, and camels hung from hooks in the open air and the smell of rotting prawns nulled my nostrils. Slivers of silvery fish blinded me momentarily. Shelves of bread and pyramids of potatoes, carrots, radishes, onions, dried chilies, and cauliflowers were weighed on scales. A man walked by with a lettuce on his head for shade. Sacks of spices, nuts and leaves were sold by track-suited traders. Big brown bags bulged and overflowed with raw, unprocessed cotton. Claws of bananas threatened to grab us like hungry zombies. Tomatoes and oranges saddled neighbouring tables. Where they overlapped, they resembled the MasterCard logo. They were in front of a shop with plastic-bag thin signage which sagged heavily in the middle. To a backdrop of exposed brickwork and mortar an old mustachioed man swerved his knees out of the way of a tricycle. He didn’t acknowledge it. My mind was overloaded.
‘Halas.’
Enough.
I walked South of Sharia al-Azhar where I saw things that locals might actually need. A crossroads where tourism bull shit met real world requirements. I spotted a toy store which sold vacuum packed rocket launchers. The packaging featured an Israeli flag overlaid with black crosshairs. I picked it up to examine it whilst the storekeeper snacked away on pumpkin seeds. I wondered if Israeli stores had similar toys with red, white, and black tribands.
East of the Al-Ghouri complex came the carpet bazaar. This was where I eventually found Martin. Above him was a sign for an Al-Sisi mix sandwich. It featured a foot-long torpedo roll with chicken breast and hot dog chunks covered in sauce. It looked like it was dripping on to his bald pate. Guitars and fanous swung on S-hooks.
‘Egyptian weaving had its heyday under the Mamluks,’ an astute vendor told me as he raised a hand head high and beckoned me in with his middle finger. ‘Come in and look, my friend. Wall-to-wall coarse wool rugs. Camel-hair rugs. Hard-wearing. Full of beauty and charm.’
There were stacks as well, often striped in various shades of beige or adorned with stylised images of camels and birds. I stopped a while and looked for wabi sabi. Frustrated, I couldn’t spot anything. He didn’t make the sale.
Martin looked at a rug which featured pyramids and a camel. He was being harangued and needed rescuing.
‘Hello, I am Mohammed. Please come. Please come.’
‘Mohammed? The last guy trying to sell me a rug was called Mohammed too.’
‘Ah, yes. He is Mohammed, but I am Mohammed Ali. The real Mohammed.’
Wrapped in the beauty and intensity of old Cairo I dragged him from the spiel arm-in-arm in the manner of Egyptian men.
‘Good to see you, friend. You know Stanley, these rugs remind me of a news story I read recently. About Al-Sisi. He was being carpeted by the media.’
‘Pun intended?’
‘Pun intended.’
‘They laid out a two-and-a-half-mile red carpet for him when he visited a social housing project. Despite all his austerity preaching.’
‘I’m guessing he got in a pile of trouble.’
‘Let’s move.’
A boy passed by in a red spotty jumper adorned with the words Gucki Jeans – To See A World in A Grain of Sand Fashion Wear.
‘Cotton’s a major crop. Hence there are lots of good quality fabrics on offer, even if they’re knock offs,’ he said.
I spent too much time reading the jumper and not enough on my surroundings. Martin grabbed my shirt and pulled me towards the raised curb as a truck sped by. It brushed the fabric of my trouser leg. Outside the Mosque of Al Azhar a group of women balanced heavy and well-stocked baskets on their heads. They walked at a steady pace and chatted away, with their hands rested at their sides.
‘It’s a custom which has been around since ancient times. Miniature figurines in the Egyptian museum testify to it. Don’t stare too much, Stanley.’
‘You never see people doing this in Asda,’ I said. ‘It’d be worthy of a talent show back home.’
‘That’s nothing,’ he said as he pointed to a woman carrying a toddler on her shoulder, hands-free.
We passed the citadel built by Salah-ad-Din.
‘It isn’t uncommon to see recycled buildings. After earthquake damage or regime change people got into the habit of just picking up stone and reusing it. You can find stones from Memphis with hieroglyphs on Islamic buildings in this part of the city. Woven in.’
‘Rather like the threads of the old rugs …’
A sudden blast from ahead. Carpets rolled off a collapsed table in different directions as two legs caved in. The owner desperately picked them up from the dusty cobbles. I jumped back and banged into my friend. A drop of water landed on his nose from the tower of apartments above. He looked up. Hundreds of mostly black garments hung from the windows. Laundry day. They looked like rows of aliens in the game space invaders.
‘There aren’t any knickers on show. People must dry them inside for purposes of modesty. No-one wants strangers looking at their undies.’
He looked down at the triangular street tiles. Where the heads of four met they made crosses. Martin’s hand pointed and my eyes followed. Belly Dancing this way. The sign was written in Arabic and good English.
‘Rumour has it that one of the reasons Napoleon failed to conquer Egypt was that his soldiers were so enamoured by the belly dancers of Mansoura. They slept with them. Once they were off guard, the women murdered their invaders.’
A gust of garbage blew across our feet and over the little triangles.
‘The 13th to 16th centuries were the high point of Islamic art in Cairo. Wealthy Sultans were splashing the cash on the best stonemasons from Armenia, stuccos from North Africa, Byzantine mosaics of gold, and polychrome marble inlays from Syria,’ he said.
We ordered ahwa, a mezze, and strawberry shisha, and sat down to enjoy the show. Chatter swept through the room. The lights faded. Our white faces stood out like Mercury in space.
‘We’re the only foreigners in this courtyard, except for the dancers themselves,’ he said.
‘Today wealthy Arabs are spending their cash on a … different type of beauty. Isn’t belly dancing a bit seedy? Should we be here? It’s a bit raunchy.’
‘No way. What you’re about to see is art. Nothing less. Have you ever heard of La Belle Ferroniere?’
‘A French actress?’
‘She’s a Da Vinci painting, you Philistine. She’s every bit as beautiful as the Mona Lisa. I would say more so. I like redheads. She’s painted on wood from the very same tree as La Jaconde.’
‘A bit too much information. What’s your point?’
‘My point is you’ve never heard of her. Few people have. She’s a beautiful obscurity. We all know the Mona Lisa though. Why?’
‘Because it’s hard to read the expressions on her face? That’s what I’ve heard. The more you look at her you see different things. Anger, confusion, contempt, disappointment, elation, sadness, surp …’
He interrupted me, crinkling his eyes and exhaling loudly.
‘Yes, but also because she was stolen multiple times, and because there were so many books written and movies made. Because she’s on postcards and screensavers and TV shows. Your Lenin badge-wearing friend probably has a t-shirt or pencil case with her on.’
‘Not a fr ...’
‘What I’m getting at is that our knowledge is a narrative constructed by others. It’s as true for belly dancing as it is for the Mona Lisa. Or for Lenin. Egypt has its own Mona Lisa, by the way.’
‘It does?’
‘Well, they call it the Egyptian Mona Lisa. It’s a 4,600-year-old painting. Of extinct geese. If we were judging art by longevity it’d be hard to beat it. Again, no one really knows of it. Why? Who, or what, pieces together our knowledge?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Stanley, there is nothing untoward or disreputable about belly dancing. You should feel fine to tell your wife you stopped by here, without feeling any shame. It has historic roots. Muslim women traditionally gathered to perform a fertility dance called raks-sharki. It helped them develop the muscles needed for childbirth.’
‘You know what Martin? You’re making a lot of sense.’
‘My point is this place isn’t a Spearmint Rhino. You won’t find Peter Stringfellow in here. Here’s the thing. Somebody or something is telling you it is. Somebody or something is telling you it’s sordid and grotty and seedy. Amira’s the biggest star in the belly dancing world, I follow her on social media. But it goes way back. In the Bible Salome famously offered Herod a dance in return for the head of King John. This was spun into fiction. Stop buying into the eroticised narrative fostered by repressed Europeans, Stanley. Enjoy it for the art form it is.’
He wafted his hand out to the empty stage ahead of us.
‘There is nothing sexual about it whatsoever. Just like there’s nothing sexy about table legs that the Victorians insisted were covered up. Do people get turned on today by Titian paintings? Oriental dance, let’s give it it’s real name, is art.’
‘Isn’t Oriental a racist word these days?’
‘I don’t think so.’
He looked unsure.
‘It’s definitely got connotations of colonialism. Exoticism, Martin.’
‘Maybe it is a bit … dated, I’ll grant you that. But I don’t think it’s racist because it’s used in a positive way. But yeah, definitely dated. Nevertheless, today you’ll find women performing Oriental dancing at weddings. The couple will have their picture taken holding the dancer’s belly. A throwback to its origins as a fertility dance. You’re not objectifying anyone.’
Sure, Katie won’t mind at all if I tell her we dropped by to take in some art. In fact, she’ll be impressed. She is a bit of a culture vulture. Besides, I’m still on the look out for more treasure …
‘Westernised fantasies of balmy Arabian nights are why most belly dancers are foreigners these days. Egyptian women choose to avoid participating … due to the unfair stigma associated with it. Nevertheless, there are heaps of belly dancing outfits sold by market traders outside, so there must be demand amongst local women.’
I threw a kofta ball into my mouth. Silence on the stage, followed by the slowly rising instrumental music of Jennifer Lopez played on a kamancheh.
‘I know this. Its a J-Lo track. Katie’s a huge fan. She often has it on at home. However, following her tour of Israel and a comment on social media in which she referred to Israel as the motherland there was a loud clamour for her to be boycotted here. With her millions of social media followers her concert had the effect of normalising the occupation. In a way no politician could have achieved. Rather like showing a Gal Gadot movie, playing Jennifer Lopez is contraband. That’s why the song’s being played instrumentally.’
Maybe that’s why they’re all so big on Shakira.
She lay on her back with her hips arched up, arms crossed over her bosom. The room was dark but for purple light which poured down on the stage and splashed off shimmering sequins. Her head tilted back towards us. Her breasts rocked just a little, like crown green bowl jacks coming to a halt on a green. She saw us behind her thinly gauzed battoulah.
‘Hey, that’s a battoulah,’ I said. ‘Katie explained it to m …’
‘Shhhh,’ came a request from behind.
A rising silver mist enveloped her for a few moments. Her legs snaked and her arms moved up and down like seaweed on the ocean bed as the music intensified. She wore a tiger print skirt which had a beaded golden diamond over the groin, and an inbuilt belt. A heavily beaded golden bra with overlapping red triangles dripped with noisy 4-inch tassels completed the two-piece ensemble. I could make out a hint of a moue beneath the battoulah.
Nadine? Transfixed. Our heads remained completely still.
‘Erm. Martin.’
‘Yes, Stanley.’
‘It’s all just an eroticised narrative by repressed Europeans, you say. Right?’
He gulped his coffee.
‘Yes, that’s right, Stanley. Nothing. Sexy. About. It. Whatsoever.’
‘Yes, yes. It’s the same as looking at a work of art in the Louvre, like you say.’
Nadine twirled and twisted on stage. My eyes zeroed in on her torso and the miniscule rolls of fat on her solid tummy. Every shimmy of every sinew told a sensuous story. Martin spilled his coffee over the table as I puffed away on the shisha with all the purpose of a military bagpiper.
‘Definitely NOT seductive, then?’
‘No, no, no, no, no.’
‘This is how Caesar must have felt when Cleopatra unfurled herself to him in a rug.’
‘I’d be less blown away if J-Lo herself had appeared.’
‘I wonder what her kids make of it all?’
‘Fancy coming back next week?’
She shook her booty in time with the beat.
The music came to an abrupt end. She stood statuesque in a central position on the stage. A second song kicked in. Tom Jones’ Sex bomb. Again, without lyrics. This time the kamancheh was joined by an oud and a rabab. Sounds of the orient. Nadine bent down 90 degrees and placed her hands on her hips. She thrust her arms out into an explosion. This bomb’s made for loving.
As she walked away Nadine gave a wink. My very own yummy mummy.
*********************
Part of an extract from my novel, Adjo, which you can buy on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CN9P2STC/ref=ewc_pr_img_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
Yummy Mummy(Guy Knee)
There’s a scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Denholm Elliott’s run ragged through a market in Iskenderun. This was me to a tee as I searched for Martin in the maze of lanes and courtyards that made up Khan el-Khalili. A labyrinth of spices, jewelry, Mamluk architecture, and souvenirs. It had been a hive of commerciality since 641 AD. I wondered through the original Khan area between Al-Luizz Din Allah and Midan Hussein. Then to the narrower congested streets.
Our agreed rendezvous was an ahwa frequented by the Nobel Prize winning author Naguib Mahfouz. Finding it proved harder than anticipated. The sound of a woman banging a tin to entice customers in fused with the whirr of motorbikes which whizzed past. Her banging had the opposite of the desired effect. She looked so grumpy that nobody dared tell her.
Sheep, cows, and camels hung from hooks in the open air and the smell of rotting prawns nulled my nostrils. Slivers of silvery fish blinded me momentarily. Shelves of bread and pyramids of potatoes, carrots, radishes, onions, dried chilies, and cauliflowers were weighed on scales. A man walked by with a lettuce on his head for shade. Sacks of spices, nuts and leaves were sold by track-suited traders. Big brown bags bulged and overflowed with raw, unprocessed cotton. Claws of bananas threatened to grab us like hungry zombies. Tomatoes and oranges saddled neighbouring tables. Where they overlapped, they resembled the MasterCard logo. They were in front of a shop with plastic-bag thin signage which sagged heavily in the middle. To a backdrop of exposed brickwork and mortar an old mustachioed man swerved his knees out of the way of a tricycle. He didn’t acknowledge it. My mind was overloaded.
‘Halas.’
Enough.
I walked South of Sharia al-Azhar where I saw things that locals might actually need. A crossroads where tourism bull shit met real world requirements. I spotted a toy store which sold vacuum packed rocket launchers. The packaging featured an Israeli flag overlaid with black crosshairs. I picked it up to examine it whilst the storekeeper snacked away on pumpkin seeds. I wondered if Israeli stores had similar toys with red, white, and black tribands.
East of the Al-Ghouri complex came the carpet bazaar. This was where I eventually found Martin. Above him was a sign for an Al-Sisi mix sandwich. It featured a foot-long torpedo roll with chicken breast and hot dog chunks covered in sauce. It looked like it was dripping on to his bald pate. Guitars and fanous swung on S-hooks.
‘Egyptian weaving had its heyday under the Mamluks,’ an astute vendor told me as he raised a hand head high and beckoned me in with his middle finger. ‘Come in and look, my friend. Wall-to-wall coarse wool rugs. Camel-hair rugs. Hard-wearing. Full of beauty and charm.’
There were stacks as well, often striped in various shades of beige or adorned with stylised images of camels and birds. I stopped a while and looked for wabi sabi. Frustrated, I couldn’t spot anything. He didn’t make the sale.
Martin looked at a rug which featured pyramids and a camel. He was being harangued and needed rescuing.
‘Hello, I am Mohammed. Please come. Please come.’
‘Mohammed? The last guy trying to sell me a rug was called Mohammed too.’
‘Ah, yes. He is Mohammed, but I am Mohammed Ali. The real Mohammed.’
Wrapped in the beauty and intensity of old Cairo I dragged him from the spiel arm-in-arm in the manner of Egyptian men.
‘Good to see you, friend. You know Stanley, these rugs remind me of a news story I read recently. About Al-Sisi. He was being carpeted by the media.’
‘Pun intended?’
‘Pun intended.’
‘They laid out a two-and-a-half-mile red carpet for him when he visited a social housing project. Despite all his austerity preaching.’
‘I’m guessing he got in a pile of trouble.’
‘Let’s move.’
A boy passed by in a red spotty jumper adorned with the words Gucki Jeans – To See A World in A Grain of Sand Fashion Wear.
‘Cotton’s a major crop. Hence there are lots of good quality fabrics on offer, even if they’re knock offs,’ he said.
I spent too much time reading the jumper and not enough on my surroundings. Martin grabbed my shirt and pulled me towards the raised curb as a truck sped by. It brushed the fabric of my trouser leg. Outside the Mosque of Al Azhar a group of women balanced heavy and well-stocked baskets on their heads. They walked at a steady pace and chatted away, with their hands rested at their sides.
‘It’s a custom which has been around since ancient times. Miniature figurines in the Egyptian museum testify to it. Don’t stare too much, Stanley.’
‘You never see people doing this in Asda,’ I said. ‘It’d be worthy of a talent show back home.’
‘That’s nothing,’ he said as he pointed to a woman carrying a toddler on her shoulder, hands-free.
We passed the citadel built by Salah-ad-Din.
‘It isn’t uncommon to see recycled buildings. After earthquake damage or regime change people got into the habit of just picking up stone and reusing it. You can find stones from Memphis with hieroglyphs on Islamic buildings in this part of the city. Woven in.’
‘Rather like the threads of the old rugs …’
A sudden blast from ahead. Carpets rolled off a collapsed table in different directions as two legs caved in. The owner desperately picked them up from the dusty cobbles. I jumped back and banged into my friend. A drop of water landed on his nose from the tower of apartments above. He looked up. Hundreds of mostly black garments hung from the windows. Laundry day. They looked like rows of aliens in the game space invaders.
‘There aren’t any knickers on show. People must dry them inside for purposes of modesty. No-one wants strangers looking at their undies.’
He looked down at the triangular street tiles. Where the heads of four met they made crosses. Martin’s hand pointed and my eyes followed. Belly Dancing this way. The sign was written in Arabic and good English.
‘Rumour has it that one of the reasons Napoleon failed to conquer Egypt was that his soldiers were so enamoured by the belly dancers of Mansoura. They slept with them. Once they were off guard, the women murdered their invaders.’
A gust of garbage blew across our feet and over the little triangles.
‘The 13th to 16th centuries were the high point of Islamic art in Cairo. Wealthy Sultans were splashing the cash on the best stonemasons from Armenia, stuccos from North Africa, Byzantine mosaics of gold, and polychrome marble inlays from Syria,’ he said.
We ordered ahwa, a mezze, and strawberry shisha, and sat down to enjoy the show. Chatter swept through the room. The lights faded. Our white faces stood out like Mercury in space.
‘We’re the only foreigners in this courtyard, except for the dancers themselves,’ he said.
‘Today wealthy Arabs are spending their cash on a … different type of beauty. Isn’t belly dancing a bit seedy? Should we be here? It’s a bit raunchy.’
‘No way. What you’re about to see is art. Nothing less. Have you ever heard of La Belle Ferroniere?’
‘A French actress?’
‘She’s a Da Vinci painting, you Philistine. She’s every bit as beautiful as the Mona Lisa. I would say more so. I like redheads. She’s painted on wood from the very same tree as La Jaconde.’
‘A bit too much information. What’s your point?’
‘My point is you’ve never heard of her. Few people have. She’s a beautiful obscurity. We all know the Mona Lisa though. Why?’
‘Because it’s hard to read the expressions on her face? That’s what I’ve heard. The more you look at her you see different things. Anger, confusion, contempt, disappointment, elation, sadness, surp …’
He interrupted me, crinkling his eyes and exhaling loudly.
‘Yes, but also because she was stolen multiple times, and because there were so many books written and movies made. Because she’s on postcards and screensavers and TV shows. Your Lenin badge-wearing friend probably has a t-shirt or pencil case with her on.’
‘Not a fr ...’
‘What I’m getting at is that our knowledge is a narrative constructed by others. It’s as true for belly dancing as it is for the Mona Lisa. Or for Lenin. Egypt has its own Mona Lisa, by the way.’
‘It does?’
‘Well, they call it the Egyptian Mona Lisa. It’s a 4,600-year-old painting. Of extinct geese. If we were judging art by longevity it’d be hard to beat it. Again, no one really knows of it. Why? Who, or what, pieces together our knowledge?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Stanley, there is nothing untoward or disreputable about belly dancing. You should feel fine to tell your wife you stopped by here, without feeling any shame. It has historic roots. Muslim women traditionally gathered to perform a fertility dance called raks-sharki. It helped them develop the muscles needed for childbirth.’
‘You know what Martin? You’re making a lot of sense.’
‘My point is this place isn’t a Spearmint Rhino. You won’t find Peter Stringfellow in here. Here’s the thing. Somebody or something is telling you it is. Somebody or something is telling you it’s sordid and grotty and seedy. Amira’s the biggest star in the belly dancing world, I follow her on social media. But it goes way back. In the Bible Salome famously offered Herod a dance in return for the head of King John. This was spun into fiction. Stop buying into the eroticised narrative fostered by repressed Europeans, Stanley. Enjoy it for the art form it is.’
He wafted his hand out to the empty stage ahead of us.
‘There is nothing sexual about it whatsoever. Just like there’s nothing sexy about table legs that the Victorians insisted were covered up. Do people get turned on today by Titian paintings? Oriental dance, let’s give it it’s real name, is art.’
‘Isn’t Oriental a racist word these days?’
‘I don’t think so.’
He looked unsure.
‘It’s definitely got connotations of colonialism. Exoticism, Martin.’
‘Maybe it is a bit … dated, I’ll grant you that. But I don’t think it’s racist because it’s used in a positive way. But yeah, definitely dated. Nevertheless, today you’ll find women performing Oriental dancing at weddings. The couple will have their picture taken holding the dancer’s belly. A throwback to its origins as a fertility dance. You’re not objectifying anyone.’
Sure, Katie won’t mind at all if I tell her we dropped by to take in some art. In fact, she’ll be impressed. She is a bit of a culture vulture. Besides, I’m still on the look out for more treasure …
‘Westernised fantasies of balmy Arabian nights are why most belly dancers are foreigners these days. Egyptian women choose to avoid participating … due to the unfair stigma associated with it. Nevertheless, there are heaps of belly dancing outfits sold by market traders outside, so there must be demand amongst local women.’
I threw a kofta ball into my mouth. Silence on the stage, followed by the slowly rising instrumental music of Jennifer Lopez played on a kamancheh.
‘I know this. Its a J-Lo track. Katie’s a huge fan. She often has it on at home. However, following her tour of Israel and a comment on social media in which she referred to Israel as the motherland there was a loud clamour for her to be boycotted here. With her millions of social media followers her concert had the effect of normalising the occupation. In a way no politician could have achieved. Rather like showing a Gal Gadot movie, playing Jennifer Lopez is contraband. That’s why the song’s being played instrumentally.’
Maybe that’s why they’re all so big on Shakira.
She lay on her back with her hips arched up, arms crossed over her bosom. The room was dark but for purple light which poured down on the stage and splashed off shimmering sequins. Her head tilted back towards us. Her breasts rocked just a little, like crown green bowl jacks coming to a halt on a green. She saw us behind her thinly gauzed battoulah.
‘Hey, that’s a battoulah,’ I said. ‘Katie explained it to m …’
‘Shhhh,’ came a request from behind.
A rising silver mist enveloped her for a few moments. Her legs snaked and her arms moved up and down like seaweed on the ocean bed as the music intensified. She wore a tiger print skirt which had a beaded golden diamond over the groin, and an inbuilt belt. A heavily beaded golden bra with overlapping red triangles dripped with noisy 4-inch tassels completed the two-piece ensemble. I could make out a hint of a moue beneath the battoulah.
Nadine? Transfixed. Our heads remained completely still.
‘Erm. Martin.’
‘Yes, Stanley.’
‘It’s all just an eroticised narrative by repressed Europeans, you say. Right?’
He gulped his coffee.
‘Yes, that’s right, Stanley. Nothing. Sexy. About. It. Whatsoever.’
‘Yes, yes. It’s the same as looking at a work of art in the Louvre, like you say.’
Nadine twirled and twisted on stage. My eyes zeroed in on her torso and the miniscule rolls of fat on her solid tummy. Every shimmy of every sinew told a sensuous story. Martin spilled his coffee over the table as I puffed away on the shisha with all the purpose of a military bagpiper.
‘Definitely NOT seductive, then?’
‘No, no, no, no, no.’
‘This is how Caesar must have felt when Cleopatra unfurled herself to him in a rug.’
‘I’d be less blown away if J-Lo herself had appeared.’
‘I wonder what her kids make of it all?’
‘Fancy coming back next week?’
She shook her booty in time with the beat.
The music came to an abrupt end. She stood statuesque in a central position on the stage. A second song kicked in. Tom Jones’ Sex bomb. Again, without lyrics. This time the kamancheh was joined by an oud and a rabab. Sounds of the orient. Nadine bent down 90 degrees and placed her hands on her hips. She thrust her arms out into an explosion. This bomb’s made for loving.
As she walked away Nadine gave a wink. My very own yummy mummy.
*********************
Part of an extract from my novel, Adjo, which you can buy on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CN9P2STC/ref=ewc_pr_img_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
- Share this story on
- 5
COMMENTS (0)