Work is over and people by the thousand pour out onto the square; grains of sand flowing into the beating heart of Marrakech. They play mad music. A beat of drums, of wooden soles and friendly arguments. A chant of crooked bartering, of laughter and motorcycle exhausts.

A million stars burn into your eyes. Blinking neons held in absurd contraptions, candles suspended in red glass, tall men spitting fire and the minaret of the Koutoubia mosque, wandering the sky like a lost sun. The smell of luscious tajines dances with the stench of the tanneries.

This is the warmth of Jamaâ El Fna after a burning summer day, you'd know it from all others. Under your feet, the battered old stones whisper back the merciless vigor of the desert sun.

A stranger's wine and the copperish feel of blood linger together on your tongue. They taste like the cunt of your first whore. You were but a lost boy when you found her, in her tent guarded by an ageless snake charmer. He still plays they say, but the viper died. That woman taught you things, left you poorer but a man. So many years ago.

What was her name?

One more step on the kind, burning stones. And one more step and one more step and one more step, and one more...

The world stands still, held by a bright moon crescent. The smile of a massive Moor in the sky over you. The man is ancient, with skin of black, hard-boiled leather softened by an immaculate djellaba. He wears the face of an old titan, who has seen wars big and small, who has lost things and felt the times go by. Scarred, sculpted by nature and men.

How beautiful was he once, in the embrace of a princess entranced. When the sun would rise, she was to belong to another. But this one night was theirs. She gave him all: her love, her innocence, her cunt and hymen, her shameless devotion. Tears made an oued of the rifts under the titan's eyes, as in ecstasy the princess prayed for more. But the light grew behind the blinds and no man can stop politics.

Somewhere a good and kind king calls a blood stranger “son”. A story for another time, inch'Allah.

"Follow me, Sahib.”

The Moor says “master” like a wise man who bows, but knows better.

He doesn't wait for your answer, strides away. The crowd breaks on him like waves on an old rock. It's late, people seek the lights, the food and the fresh pots of mint tea. But the Moor goes against the flow, into the dark corner of the square, the one your eyes ignore and your heart aches for.

You follow him blind through the laces of the souk, into this ever-changing sea of streets, tents, and folds. Few know the one he seeks, but you've been here before. The snake charmer still plays in the dust, his back to the crumbling brick wall. A young and graceful cobra dances before him. The word was true, the viper died long ago.

“She waits for you, friend,” the Moor says. You bow to him. He turns back without word or care and vanishes into the souk. His smile fades last into the night.

*********************

She lies on her side, her back turned to you, her side to the rough woolen carpet. She looks not a day older than she did then. A beauty not of this world. For her, the perfection of youth is a jewel set in the metal of age. Her long hair brushes her pale skin. She has it the color of desert wood smoothed by the sandy wind. The shy light of a candle weaves a flickering dress out of shadows. It reminds you of Chinese ink spilled on a vellum page. A simple glass necklace set with a gray stone shimmers around her neck. In another life, men held her with cast iron or gold.

No more of it.

“You are back, boy,” the Whore says.

You slip out of your shoes and kneel, two steps away. Not until this moment did you know why you were here.

“You told me it would be so.”

“So I did.” Her voice slithers with honey.

Yet she does not turn. Your eyes are left to wander the curves of her hips, the maze of shadows her body casts, the long valley between her legs. It leads to a promise drawn from the sweetest memory...

“You gave me a gift, many years ago,” you whisper, and your throat feels tight. “I squandered it like a fool.”

She had told you then, that would happen too. You did not believe her. You were young. Inspired. Immortal. 

But as the words squirm past your lips, they become the reality of your curse, shaped like a curved dagger. It's lust and loss, striking together. Your body folds on itself. Your forehead hits the floor. In the pose of a praying man you wait, while your ungraceful cock pulses between your legs with every beat of your heart.

You are a fraud. You are nothing without her.

“The words,” you beg, in the face of her silence. “I need them back.”

You can feel her move, ever closer to you, in slithering grace. You dare not rise.

“Do you remember my price, boy?”

A strange question. Who could forget? You dare not rise.

“Do you agree to it?”

A strange question. Who could refuse? You dare not rise.

“Face me.”

Her words pull your eyes up despite a weight too great. But it is not yet that you deserve her. Your only reward is her legs spread wide and her bare slit, hairless and exposed. Her wet makes her cunt shine. She's a promise to your lips parched by a sudden, raging thirst for her whole. You crawl miserably, ripping your clothes off as you scale between her legs.

She tastes like nothing else. Something no memory could retain and no poet ever evoke. Like nectar and ambrosia. Like an oasis in the Sahara. Like a wish for a dead man. With a despair that has no time for playful licks, your tongue reaches for her deepest. Your teeth rip hard against her pulsing clit. She rewards you with a moan and her hand passes without kindness through your hair.

There is power in her pleasure. A warmth that radiates through your chest, awakes feelings long lost. You seek, you need more. Your lips ensnare the swollen button of her sex. It hardens and plays against your teeth. For seconds, or hours, your tongue swirls and dances, your lips catch and let her go. Time loses meaning when it's spent serving the pleasure of such a whore. She twitches once and twitches twice. Every time your tongue finds its way just a little deeper, prise apart the walls of her a little more. The third time she gushes a torrent in your avid mouth. You swallow it all and it's delicious.

There is something else in her moans you'd swear. Surprise maybe? But she stays wordless.

Her hand comes to your throat and pulls you up. Again you climb, anchoring your palms in the curves of her flesh. The climb is a delicious torture. Your cock rips hard against the raw wool of the carpet. Every inch of your skin burns from the lightest caress. There is no willing away such inhuman pleasure.

Sisyphus, you must ascend to an inevitable fall.

Your hands find her breasts, they fill your palms to perfection, her dark nipples slip between your fingers and you squeeze. They shine in the candlelight. Two pearls of ebony, lit by fire and your saliva.

Your true prize, though, lies between her legs. Her lips can't contain this overflowing well. The juices of her first orgasm dancing with renewed passion. Her clitoris shines too, impossibly, from under your shadow. Quite the dirty little thing this pussy, and pure beauty.

“Well, you wanted it,” she says with a smirk. “Take it now and do it quick.”

You would like so much to resist her. But your body is a puppet to the pleasure. You raise her to your hips and thrust yourself deep into her. Her pussy melts, juices gush like the snows in the mountains in spring. They run along your shaft and the valley of her thighs; drips drop by drop from your balls, lost forever as stains on the carpet. All of it but a little pool, an oasis held precariously in her bellybutton. Lucky is the one who would get to taste it when you're done.

It was, in truth, quite the brutish fuck. She did not care for technique. She knows that her sex is heaven itself. She lies, her back against the carpet and takes everything you have. Your hands raise her ass and knees to meet more of your hard cock. The corner of her mouth shivers in a smile at every clap your body makes against hers. Your knees are painful and red, from thrusting against raw wool. You wonder what her smooth skin must feel like, pressed against it with all of your might. But her eyes are lit up and you know that she would have nothing else.

The bitch can't even control this fucking little smile, the greatest expression of the pleasure she takes from the cock of any mortal man.

But the pleasure she gives back. Oh, the wonderful death!

It's a poison, infused in you from the depth of her body. It crawls along your every nerve like venom, burning through your nerves one and all, leaving nothing but bliss. Your spine is aflame and your mind is numb. Anything that isn't fucking her like the whore she is, is nothing. The creeping fire builds and builds in your body, caressing the impossible.

Nothing else but it can exist. It's a trance, a wall between you and the world, that not even spears, time or pride can pierce. You are blind to her body, vibrant in ecstasy. Deaf to her mad shouts. There is only the burning bliss and your silence. Your cock. Her cunt.

Such pleasure breaks the world apart. Your orgasms tear open the fabric of your mind. From this fracture in heaven, pours a fountain of words. You can't care that your body is inert, that she's led her lips and teeth to the tip of your sex to drink your cum. She gulps it like a vulgar, greedy viper. As she drains every last drop of seed your body can give, you bask in a wave of inspiration only she could unleash.

You never remembered the rest of your life. Nobody would. An usurper published some immortal poems he found by your desiccated carcass under his own name. The Moor would feel sorrow. The Muse would feel sated.

For your years, she had given you your words back. No better deal ever was found, in the souk of Jamâa El Fna.