“Twenty thousand!”

Broken Arabic was barked from a dark open doorway. Mr. N tried to see the woman who’d called, unsure of what he’d heard. She winked at him and smiled, revealing gleaming white teeth between narrow lips. She took a step forward and stood on the threshold, which raised her a few centimeters higher as she thrust her breasts nearly into Mr. N’s face and pushed out her butt. The scent of cheap perfume filled Mr. N’s nostrils, mixed with the smell of sweat and spices. He pulled his head back a little, taking the liberty of looking past her shoulder: a dark hallway rumbling with the motors from water tanks of various sizes, lined up haphazardly. At the end of the hall was a decrepit tile staircase missing some steps.

The young woman raised her arm and waved her hand as though to dispel any concerns. “Do you have a car?” she said. “We’ll do it in your car. Or, if you want, we’ll go to a hotel. Or to your place, okay? I’ll spend the entire day with you for one hundred thousand lira. Well? What do you say?”

She grabbed Mr. N, wanting him to check out her goods, trying to stick his hand between her legs, but the way he stepped back without the least word dashed her hopes. His subsequent retreat down the alley angered her, and suddenly she was raising her middle finger at him and uttering expressions in Ethiopian accompanied by curses in Arabic. Mr. N avoided her eye but then turned to look back from a distance. He saw her with two workmen who stood haggling over the price of a quick orgasm. She called a greeting to another woman who passed by at a run, her breasts bouncing in front of her and her slippers nearly falling off her feet.

———

For a long time, Thurayya refused to employ foreign housekeepers. But when the work became too much for Mary, and she decided to return to her village in order to grow old there and be buried close to her people, Thurayya was forced to accept a Sri Lankan woman—better her than a Filipina who wasn’t good with any language besides English. Thurayya preferred French, considering it an aristocratic language, while she saw English as the language of the rabble. And if someone ever tried to contradict her, saying that English after all was the language of Shakespeare and other great poets, Thurayya would have objected that anyone using that mongrel tongue today was only speaking the language of the riffraff, not the language of poets.

Suwarna put up with Thurayya for nine years. She was made to suffer every single day, but offered no complaint beyond a smile that only incensed Thurayya further. So she would send Suwarna away, only to change her mind and call her back a little later as though nothing had happened. Thurayya would rarely apologize for her harsh behavior with that angel of a servant, who loved her and showed her compassion through her advancing years. Thurayya did, however, insist on calling Suwarna’s successors by that sainted Sri Lankan’s name, even though she knew the new girls’ names perfectly well.