I would learn that Um Buraq always asked to see photos when the men were drunk enough, not because she wanted to see their kids, but so she could collect the four-digit codes for their bank cards. “Men like this have several accounts. They’re too stupid to remember the codes, so they keep little pieces of paper in their wallets with the numbers,” she explained. She taught me how to steal the bank cards that went with those codes. We’d withdraw as much as possible, without raising suspicion. For men with that kind of money, a thousand dinars was like pocket change. They wouldn’t miss it at all, she taught me.

Um Buraq had an apartment in Hawalli for her girls. We went there when she told us to. We kept it clean, stocked with food and lingerie. We also went there sometimes to be alone. Fifi was a student, and I often found her there with her books spread on the table. She’d hurry to gather her things and leave. It’s strange, but I never got to know much about her or Susu, not even their real names. I kept my clerk job and went to the apartment only a few hours a week. It was easy to hide it from my family, because I had many legitimate reasons to be out—eyebrow-threading clients, going to the mall, seeing friends, running errands.

Susu gave me a pill to relax the first time in the apartment. She also advised me to lie about my age. “Tell him you’re sixteen years old. It’ll make him finish faster. The younger they think you are, the faster they get off,” she said. I did as she suggested. He lasted 173 seconds (I counted), paid four hundred dinars (I counted twice), and left. A few weeks later, he returned with an expensive gold necklace and paid the same amount for less than half an hour. There were others. Each bought a little piece of me and took it away forever. I remember them all.

Abu Nasser was the most pathetic. Married with five kids. From a wealthy family. Generally thought pious, a pillar of his community and an upstanding public figure. He spoke on platforms about virtue, caliphates, and better times when morality was woven through social and legal fabrics that wrapped tightly around women. He repulsed me initially, but in time I came to pity him. Now, in the Cube, I am grateful for him. Abu Nasser showed me what lived beneath public piety. From him I learned who those legislating morality and pretending to be more virtuous than the rest of us really were.

I was one of the few, if not the only one, privy to the stagnant cesspool behind Abu Nasser’s eyes. He believed the devil was weakening his resolve. He always rationalized violating the rules of God by using technicalities. He said it wasn’t technically a sin if he didn’t touch me. He always came to me when he knew I had my period. All I had to do was hand him my filthy panties, lined with a bloody menstrual pad, and leave him be. He’d pay more if I had worn the same pad all day without changing. Even more for two days’ worth of my body’s sludge. The nastier the better. He’d hold it like a precious gift and slowly bring it to his face, inhaling while he jerked off. I had to sit in the same room but could not look at him (another absolving technicality for the Day of Reckoning). But he made sure I heard him. Little-man noises, like a whimpering dog, that made me hate myself. As soon as he finished, he’d start crying, his face smeared with my blood. Then he’d curse me. “Temptress! May God punish you for luring me here.” He’d be-seech God, “O Lord, I call upon your mercy to keep the devil and the devil’s temptress away.” Then he would throw money on the floor and run out, surely to the mosque to purge his soul. But on schedule, he came back in twenty-eight days, at the peak of my heaviest menstrual flow.