Jasmine
Entry for brigits_flame, week two! The topic is 'navel', and I actually quite like this one..... Here it is!
XX
She told me once that she wanted the world to know her. I assumed she wanted them to taste her on their tongues, know her with her soft-spoken words, and see her by her brilliant smile. She was beautiful, and it was hard for people not to notice her. But she wanted them to know her for more than that. She wanted the world to know when she walked into a room, have them sense her with everything they knew.
And when she danced. She would wait for them to stop staring and finally watch.
If there was such a thing as a ‘distinguishable,’ person, she was one. People ingested her with their meals, as her presence was known even if she did not utter a word. On a quiet day, she would be still and silent and completely unremarkable in the still of the moment, but she exuded life from her pores. She would smile in the silence, and the sun would become dull in comparison. Her words would be simple and sweet and soft, but you could taste them on your tongue like they were your very own. Her eyes spoke happiness and bubbling curiosity even when her words failed her. When the fire danced between her soft skin and shimmering eyes, she would dance with it.
Just an iridescent flame.
Her skin was flawless and dark. She was so beautiful; I sometimes found I lost myself in her velvet skin for hours. I imagined it as the finest European chocolate. Her hair was like a black waterfall, falling down to her waist perfectly straight and then curling around her hip bones. The curls turned to quotations when she danced; her hips began to sing with the rhythm and incessant movement of the music. Her eyes contrasted. While everything about her was dark as night, her eyes were the purest golden color, with dark brown flecks spattered in them like molten lava. She was so glorious, so perfect, so amazing. I will search for words to describe her until the day I die.
While everyone often knew her because she was perhaps the most beautiful girl in existence, I associated a smell with her. It was the one thing that I could describe. It seeped from her russet-colored body like chocolate sweat, ran its way down her spine and was lifted into the air by way of her curling tendrils. She smelled of clean air and sweet sugar. She smelled of fragrance and flowers and everything in her mysterious world. She smelled of jasmine.
She mentioned to me once, after years of watching her and more years of talking to her, that she was named after her mother’s favorite flower. Jasmine told me that her mother would cover the garden in her flower, plant all of the house plants in her flower, buy incense, soaps, shampoos, lotions, and even foods with her flower. It was one of the few things she ever managed to say to me. She kissed me (the first and last) when I told her that I knew not her gracious beauty, but her empowering smell. Her kiss, too, tasted like jasmine.
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When I first met Jasmine, I was traveling to Egypt on a business trip. My boss was boasting about the wonderful food he could fill his large belly with. My brother was begging me to visit the pyramids. Mother was telling me not to catch the West Nile Virus, but she was drunk and I suspected she didn’t much care if I didn’t even come back. Father, of course, told me to bring back a woman. He said, to be more specific, bring back an Egyptian belly dancer.
I took no heed of anything anyone said. This would either be a life-changing experience, a lovely look around, or a boring business trip. I was willing to bet a few pounds on the latter. But I wouldn’t pretend that the pretense of seeing Egypt didn’t appeal to me; all my childhood images of this place filled my mind. All I could think of was pyramids of sand, suntanned skin, and golden jewelry.
The place disappointed. I was hoping that there was a feeble chance that modernization hadn’t hit every corner of the world, but I was wrong. Egypt was just another concrete jungle, and I was ready to give up my hope altogether. On my fifth night, the night before my departure, my hope was kindled in the core of Egypt.
We left the urban forest to find a more exotic place. The company traveled to a restaurant far outside of town, where the company had reserved the entire place just for six men to feast. I was interested to try food from a presumably high-end place. Most of the men, however, were interested in the prospect of meeting the Egyptian belly dancers.
When I walked in the door, food was wiped from my mind altogether.
“Welcome,” said a voice. Three of us turned, and three made their way to the generous buffet laid out along the wall. To this day, I wish I had gone for the food.
Before us was the most beautiful woman any of us had seen. It was Jasmine, and she smiled slightly at us. Our stares did not bother her. She returned to tapping her foot to the live music playing. Her eyes swept across the room, reflecting the golden lighting, and then she walked away.
Like much of the restaurant, Jasmine was draped in gold. Her dark skin was covered provocatively with gold jewels, gold tattoos, gold bangles, and only the bare essentials in golden clothes. While I never got to look at her closely until later, my mind remained enraptured with the image of her all through the night.
“…there’s no competition,” one man said. I had been zoning out.
“I give her a ten.”
“Dammit, Ben, she breaks the scale.”
“Wish we could’ve seen her…. The way you men are talking about her, you’d think she was a goddess.”
“She was!”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see her later.”
“Oh my God, what if she dances?”
“Jesus, be prepared to break your zipper.”
There were several choruses of laughter through the night, but I joined in none of them. Everyone got steadily more intoxicated by the rich food and bountiful wine; I remained sober. Several beautiful women came and danced for us, capturing the full attention of most of the men, but I looked away. None of them even begin to compare to the woman I saw.
Perhaps they knew that they weren’t getting my attention, because they became increasingly more seductive towards me as the night wore on. I smiled and played along, but I was growing weary. I would never sleep again until I saw her.
Finally, just as we were finishing dessert, a woman came out of the back door. Her plain features and formal attire gave me the impression that she owned the place, and I found myself feeling relieved. At least there isn’t some horrid man who ran this place like a prostitute’s house, I thought. At least no man touched the woman on my mind.
“Thank you so very much for your generosity,” the woman said. She had a thick Russian accent and a fairy-light voice.
“Anything to keep this lovely place running!” my boss boomed. His mustache quivered with drunkenness.
“Thank you, sir. We have a show to end the night. We do hope you return again sometime.”
“Oh, but of course!”
A few men laughed. Others were too drunk to speak. As I watched the Russian woman walk away, the click-click of her heels was quickly drowned out by the onslaught of music. It tinkered on edge for a moment. Just a moment.
Then it fell off the edge and into the purest music I have ever heard.
I closed my eyes and let it imprint on my brain. The music was so rich, so full of life, I had to wonder in silence for a moment. Was it playing like this before? Surely not, for I would have heard it.
When I opened my eyes again, she was there. The beautiful woman. My heart almost sang with joy at seeing her there.
She danced a never-ending dance. It carried on for what seemed like hours to me, yet, in the end, it was much too short. Her arms were held high above her head, moving fluently with every inch of her body. The golden accents gleamed along her bronze skin. Her eyes were dancing with color, like they too were joining in the music. Her hair fell down to her waist, yet it seemed to stretch for miles. It flew in the air and wrapped around her skin. I wanted more than anything to be wrapped in it, too.
I suppose they call them belly dancers for a reason. I wish they could be called navel dancers, or core dancers, or maybe simply just soul dancers. Because Jasmine brought alive in her what I never thought was meant to be opened up: a soul. Her core seemed to rage with a blistering passion in just a simple dance. If she could do this with a dance, what could she do with words? With kisses? With love?
I asked these very questions the night I watched her dance. I did not leave the next day, the next week, or even the next year. I stayed and returned every night in search of this girl. It was six months later that I learned of the 'large company donation' that had brought the beautiful girl. She was insanely high priced, so I saved my money and bought a night with her.
I did not kiss or love her that night, as her usually vibrant skin seemed much too breakable when she was still. I simply talked to her, laughed with her, watched her. Her eyes danced even when her body didn’t move. I found out in only a matter of minutes that she was not good with words. I did not relent. I let her mutter until the moon was high in the sky, just content to let her eyes speak what she could not.
I made her promise not to forget me, and she nodded and departed. That night was perhaps the happiest and saddest of my life. Then, a year later, I bought her presence for three days. On the first day I watched her. On the second day I talked with her. On the third day, I finally came to the conclusion that I was more than just fascinated by her.
She soon let me watch her even without money. I talked and talked, but she never uttered a word. She was never good with words.
Soon I came to find that she was not good with kisses, either. This did not bother me. And it did not bother me when there was no future of mutual love for us. Nothing bothered me, so long as she could still dance for me. She wanted to be remembered, after all, and dancing committed her to everyone’s memory when nothing else she did could hold her. Her core simply shook with love and words and kisses, and I was happy.
To make up for everything she can’t do, she says, she dances. And I’m fine with that until the end of time.