Lizards and Loins

Sheba Karim

Sometime around his forty-fifth birthday, Tariq began to have difficulties in the bedroom. His penis would only rise halfway, if it rose at all. It was the first time he had experienced a problem involving his lower region. Once, years ago, his wife had made a remark about his endurance, but he had always given a satisfactory performance with lift-off."Is it me?" Shaila asked him. She did not learn of Tariq's dysfunction until several weeks later, as their sex life, though never prolific, had now dwindled to once every other month, and responded to this discovery by spending the next three nights trying to entice her husband to an erection.

The first night Shaila made Tariq's favorite dessert, ras malai. She brought it to him in bed, stirring her finger in the thick milk and sugar based sauce and sticking it in her mouth. "Mmmm, sooo tasty," she said. Then she fed him two bowls, half by spoon, half by finger.

"How do you feel?" she asked him after the last bite.

"Sleepy," Tariq answered.

The second night Shaila put on a famous song from a 1970s Hindi movie, and Tariq found himself nodding his head to the beat. Wearing only a red silk sari blouse and petticoat, Shaila began her dance of seduction, swaying her hips and arms in a style bearing more resemblance to the hula than Bollywood dancing. After bumping into the dresser for the second time, she collapsed on the floor and placed her head in her hands.

"Don't worry so much, Shaila," Tariq said. "While it is true that what goes up must come down, unfortunately what comes down does not necessarily go up again. It is simply the laws of physics." But his attempt to bring humor to the situation failed. His wife began to weep.

"It is me," she sobbed.

"No, no," he said. "It's not you." He said this with the utmost sincerity. Though Shaila often complained of the wrinkles that had appeared like unwanted guests on her face, all of the elements that had made her an attractive young bride remained, light brown eyes with a tinge of honey, a perfectly oval face, soft, symmetrical breasts. "You are beautiful."

Always comforted by a compliment, Shaila smiled through her tears.

The third night, as he read a physics paper, she sat on the edge of the bed and asked him what he was reading.

"I'm reviewing some research done by Murat, one of my former students. He'll be presenting it right before me at the conference next week."

"Tell me." Shaila leaned towards him.

She was sitting in an odd way, her arms extended out behind her and her head tilted back so that her hair reached her shoulder blades and her chest stuck out, and wore a short black nightgown edged with lace that clung to the rolls of her stomach and revealed her large breasts. "Is that a new nightgown?" he asked.

Shaila pursed her lips. Tariq put the physics paper on the nightstand, making sure to keep it open to the same page. He kissed her, and Shaila's hand began to travel down his back. When it reached his buttocks, Tariq shook his head. "It's no use," he said.

She turned and left the room, returning ten minutes later in her usual nighttime attire, an ankle length floral cotton gown that always floated up to her hips when she slept.

"There is medicine you can take, you know. I think you should make an appointment with Dr. Sundaram," she said.

What Tariq could not bring himself to tell his wife was that the appearance of his erectile dysfunction was something of a blessing in disguise. The truth was, he had never been that interested in sex. As a young boy he much preferred to look though the worn copies of National Geographic his father collected than the dirty magazines his friends traded amongst themselves. While he was able to feel sexual pleasure, he never longed for it the way he knew some men did, and when he did have intercourse, it was fast and to the point. He had never felt the same passion for sex as he did for physics, his oldest and truest love. In fact, sometimes, while he was performing the act of sex, physics equations and formulas ran through his mind, and the intimacy of them helped him climax. Now he wondered if this was his body's response to the stress he had been feeling over the paper on CP symmetry violation he was to present at the conference. Very likely the problem would soon correct itself.

"Why don't we just wait a while and see?" Tariq told Shaila, and turned off the light.

For the next few days, after Tariq left for work, Shaila could hardly bring herself to get out of bed. She did not understand why she was so upset. The truth was, she had never enjoyed sex with her husband that much. She sensed Tariq felt the same way, though he always pretended it was just what he needed. Afterwards he would lie back and say, "That is just what I needed." He said this in English, with a hint of swagger in his voice, leading Shaila to believe that he had first heard the line in an old Western film and was trying to mimic its original delivery.

But when Tariq suddenly became unable to perform, a feeling of discontent, mingled with desire, emerged from deep inside of her. In trying to stimulate her husband, she had stimulated herself. For the past several days everything she saw she related to sex, the shape of the cloves in her spice drawer, the sight of white, creamy milk pouring into the deep brown depths of her tea. When, in the checkout line of the grocery store she read on the cover of a magazine "Ten Surefire Ways to Achieve Orgasm—With or Without Your Man!" she had to fight the urge to tear it open. Strange, perverted ideas now came to her unexpectedly. One morning, standing at the kitchen sink, she observed Bert, the postman, bending over to pick up a piece of mail he had dropped in front of their mailbox and felt a sudden desire to run out and spank the blue polyester that stretched across his flat bottom. Another morning, as her son Kamran reached past her to grab a banana on his way to school, she noted the thick black hair that covered his forearms and the hot, angry smell coming from his armpit, a mixture of sweat, cheap anti-perspirant and rebellion, and felt a tingle below. After he left she slapped her cheek. Her own son! Her own flesh and blood! Recalling this, Shaila trembled with shame. Perhaps, she thought, she was beginning to go through menopause, and her hormones were just confused. Whatever the reason, surely it was only a phase.

But a week later, her hormones continued to rage. Her private area, largely ignored for most of her life, now made demands of her. At night she heard it calling. Pay attention, it said. Shaila did not dare tell Tariq. In his condition he could be of no help to her, and her new longings would only make him feel more inadequate. Years ago she had bought a romance novel which she had never read, and now she spent an entire afternoon looking for it, finding it at last underneath a stack of physics journals in a closet. The cover depicted a cowboy on a horse with a woman slung across his lap, her eyes closed as though she had fainted. Shaila returned to bed, reading and re-reading the passages where the cowboy took a break from working on his Montana ranch to engage in far more interesting activities such as throbbing and thrusting. On page 138 she read, "Caroline felt a surging fire in her loins," and finally she was able to put a name to her condition. That's what I have, Shaila thought, a fire in my loins, as if her loins had swallowed too many green chilies. One day she tried to masturbate, but her bumbling fingers proved ineffective at quenching the fire. She kept the book in her nightstand drawer and returned to it several times a day, reviewing her favorite passages until she knew half of them by heart. On Saturday Tariq walked into the bedroom just as the cowboy was about to rip open Caroline's blouse. Shaila slammed the book shut and hid it under her pillow.

"Have you seen the remote?" she asked, patting the blanket.

"Shouldn't you be getting ready?" he asked.

"Ready for what?" Shaila said.

"Fariha and Firoze's party," Tariq said. "Did you forget? You know, you've been looking pale lately. Maybe you should eat more saag like Popeye the sailor man."

If only it were as simple as eating more spinach, Shaila thought, and got out of bed.

When they reached the party, Shaila wandered through the house, nodding to the other guests but not stopping to speak, worried that the fact that she had a fire in her loins was somehow visible on her face. But she was being paranoid; the women were all floating around the family room as usual, admiring one another's clothes and inquiring about the academic progress of each other's children. No one seemed to be paying any attention to her.

As she observed the others it occurred to Shaila that she might be wrong in her assumption that her friends' sex lives were as humdrum as hers. Wasn't it possible that many of the women in the room engaged in fulfilling and exciting sexual acts and assumed she did as well? Did Neema Choudhury, with her American flag on her mailbox and Quranic inscriptions dotting the walls of her house, have titillating sex with her husband Ijazz, with his immense stomach and tufts of hair at the tops of his ears? Did Lara Jilani, with her slim body and black kajol always in a perfect line underneath her eyes, engage in the gravity defying positions of the Kama Sutra with her silent husband Akram? The notion that she might be the only woman in the room never to have had an orgasm filled Shaila with a fierce determination. She would have passionate, wild sex, just once. Just once, and never again. That would be enough to put out the fire in her loins. She was sure of it.

Mere moments after Shaila made the decision to have wild, passionate sex, one of the most attractive men she had ever seen walked into the room, a man not unlike the cowboy on the cover of the romance novel; the same wavy black hair, the same muscular build and broad shoulders, the same dark, sun-blessed skin. Only the lack of a horse and the presence of a neat goatee distinguished the two.

"As-salam alaikum Shaila!" It was Neema Choudhury, a wonderful cook but an unfortunate dresser. Tonight she wore a yellow kameez that reached well past her knees, a length that had been out of fashion for years.

"Who is that? I've never seen him before." Shaila asked, nodding in the direction of the handsome cowboy.

"That's Naveed Qureshi," Neema answered without turning to look. "I think he lives in your neighborhood. Graduate of Harvard Business School. Handsome, no?"

"I see," Shaila said, feigning disinterest. "I just need to ask Tariq something," she said, and went into the living room, where she had just seen Naveed go. She stood in the corner, half-hidden behind a large fern, gripping its green plastic leaves with her fingers, and watched Naveed socialize, occasionally pausing in his conversations to take a sip of punch, or tuck his hair behind his ear.

"Shaila! Don't do that with any real plants, eh!" Tariq appeared in front of her, holding two cups of sherbet punch.

Shaila looked down at her hands, which now clutched several fern leaves, ripped from their stem. She took one of the cups from Tariq. "Weren't you telling me the other day that a Pakistani had bought a house in our street?"

"Yes, the gray house with the stone siding." Tariq gestured towards the buffet of appetizers in the adjoining dining room. "Did you try the samosas? Are they alu or keema?"

"Gray house," Shaila repeated. The gray house sat on the same side of the street as theirs. Naveed lived one, two, three, four—only five houses down from them. "We should invite him for dinner," she said.

"I suppose," Tariq said, still looking at the buffet.

For the rest of the party Shaila participated in conversations with only half of her face. Her mouth spoke to Neema and Nighat and Fariha about halva recipes and the difficulties of finding a reliable contractor to renovate one's basement while her eyes constantly searched for Naveed, looking for an opportunity to speak to him unnoticed.

This opportunity arrived just after dinner. As she left the downstairs bathroom, she spotted him across the hall, in the laundry room, talking on a cellular phone. She hovered in the hallway, and as soon as he left the laundry room she called after him, "Naveed!"

He turned, eyes squinting in a failed attempt at recognition. "Yes?" he said.

"I am Shaila, Tariq Haider's wife. We are neighbors. We live in the red brick house at the end of the street."

"Yes, your husband is the MIT professor," Naveed said in Urdu. He nodded, holding his goatee with his thumb and forefinger and stroking it with slow, vertical movements. Shaila imagined him stroking her nipple in such a manner, and squeezed her legs together to keep in the heat.

"I'd like to invite you to our house for dinner," she said.

"That's very kind of you," Naveed replied.

"Are you free any time next weekend? Just for an hour or so?"

Naveed paused. She watched him as he considered the invitation, first fingering the gray silk of his tie, then slowly running his fingers down the length of it. "I'm busy on Saturday. I have a prior engagement on Friday night, so earlier Friday evening would work."

She felt like running down the hallway hooting, swinging her dupatta around her head like a lasso. "Let's make it Friday at seven p.m." she said. "See you then!"

On the drive home, Shaila began to wonder how Naveed coming over for dinner would accomplish her goal. She could not flirt with him in the presence of her husband, much less seduce him. Although her conscience had been mercifully quiet thus far, she knew it would not remain so subdued if she served her husband and soon-to-be lover dinner side by side.

"I invited Naveed over for dinner next Friday," she said.

"Naveed? He seems a bit pompous to me. I think all of his success has gone to his head." Tariq drove like an old lady, hunched forward with both hands clutching the top of the wheel, refusing to make eye contact lest he break his concentration. At the sight of a red traffic light ahead on the next block he began to tap the break pedal. "Anyway, I won't be here next Friday. Don't you remember? I have a physics conference in San Francisco."

The light turned to green. "Conference!" Shaila exclaimed. "When will you be back?"

"I'll be back next Sunday. What has happened to your memory? Every day you become more and more forgetful. On Thursday I reminded you twice to pick up my dry cleaning and you still forgot. This isn't like you. Maybe you should go in for some tests." Tariq pulled into their driveway and turned towards her, his hands still on the wheel. Shaila saw the concern on his face and felt a small eruption of guilt in the pit of her stomach, but it was quickly engulfed by the fire in her loins.

"Don't be silly," she said. "I am fine."

With Tariq gone for the weekend, the only remaining obstacle was her son. He was in his room, as usual, and she hesitated for a good minute before knocking on his door.

"What?" Kamran yelled.

Shaila opened the door but did not enter. Kamran was sprawled on the bed, reading a textbook, his legs dangling off the edge, one foot bare, the other covered by a green sock. "Why are you wearing one sock?" she asked.

"What difference does it make?" he said.

Lately, everything her son said to her felt like some kind of challenge, and each reply she gave somehow failed. She thought their conversations were unfair. If she did not know what the challenge was, how could she be expected to meet it?

"Rani Chachi called. She invited you to visit them next weekend."

Kamran pulled on his ear. He had gotten his right ear pierced last month, and had formed a habit of playing with it. "I'm going whitewater rafting with my friends next weekend so I won't be here. I'm leaving straight from school on Friday." He sat up and folded his arms as he said this.

"This Friday?" Shaila put her hand over her heart to mask its rapid beating. "That is great. You need some fresh air, you're too pale," she said, and shut his door, leaning against it. For a moment she considered whether it was all too easy. Her father used to say that anything that came too easy was the work of the devil. She did not believe most of his sayings, and there was no reason to believe this one. No reason at all.

All that remained was to plan the actual seduction. Not wanting to gamble away what would be her only opportunity for wild and passionate sex, she did an internet search for tips on seduction. Almost every website she looked at was directed at men. She was about to give up when she found one, Practical Tips on Seducing a Man. Section one was Make Eye Contact. Section two was Dress the Part. And Section three was Plan a Romantic Dinner.

"After plying him with succulent food (think oysters and caviar) and wine (but remember what Shakespeare said!), end with a luscious dessert, something light." Shaila frowned. She did not eat oysters or caviar, and she did not know what Shakespeare said.

"After dessert, make yourselves comfortable on the couch. Play soft, romantic music. Light a few candles. Things should progress naturally from there. However, if it becomes clear that you will have to make the first move, be bold and fearless. One idea is simply to reach over and place your hand on his crotch. Then begin to knead and massage his testicles (gently, of course!), arousing him to the point of erection. After that he will be all yours!"

Shaila could not imagine herself massaging a strange man's testicles, even if the man was a gentle cowboy. But this was because she had never before been bold and fearless. Now things would be different.

First, though, she needed to practice. She took some atta from a tin storage container in the kitchen and added enough water to make a firm dough. After forming two balls of dough two inches wide, she pushed them together and practiced kneading them, picking them up and squeezing them in her palms, pressing around them with the tips of her fingers. When she was satisfied with her level of skill, she flattened the dough out with a rolling pin and cooked them on the tawa.

"Chapatis."

Shaila jumped and turned to find her son staring at her. "Beta! You scared me!"

"Sorry," Kamran shrugged. "Why are you making chapatis? Dad's not here."

"I'm making them for you," Shaila said.

"But I've never liked them," he said. "How could you forget that?"

Shaila was tired of people questioning the health of her memory. "For me, then," she said, tearing off a piece of one and putting in it her mouth.

She spent the entire day Friday cooking, goat korma, nargisi kofta stuffed with eggs, a simple pullau, moong dal cooked with spinach, then took a long, hot shower, scrubbing her body twice with soap to remove the scent of onion and garlic from her skin. She decided to wear western clothes, a long, floral printed skirt and white blouse, with the top two buttons undone. Underneath the blouse she wore a padded push-up bra that she had sprayed with the expensive perfume that Tariq had bought her for her birthday last year. The doorbell rang at exactly ten minutes after seven. Adjusting her cleavage one last time, she hurried downstairs.

"Hello!" she said, opening the door. The sight of his black chest hair, visible at the top of his navy polo shirt, made her tailbone tingle.

"Hello," Naveed said. In his hands was a bouquet of yellow tulips, which he now held out to her.

Shaila took it and inhaled deeply. The flowers had an antiseptic smell, as though they had been sitting in a hospital room. "Mmmmm, so fragrant," she said. "Thank you! Come, follow me."

She led him into the living room and gestured towards the sofa. He looked around the room before having a seat. "Where is Tariq?" he asked.

"He had to go to a conference in San Francisco. It was very last minute."

She could tell he was uncomfortable by the way he was sitting, knees pressed together, hands tucked between his thighs. "So, how are you liking the neighborhood?" she asked.

"It's nice. Everyone seems very friendly."

"Is that your son?" Naveed asked, pointing to a portrait hanging on the wall. It was of her and Tariq and Kamran, taken at Sears when Kamran was twelve, the three of them smiling in front of a bright blue back drop. Kamran's smile was big and wide, fully revealing his silver braces, top and bottom.

"Yes, that's Kamran. He is sixteen now, and all he does is frown," Shaila said, and instantly regretted her words. Tonight I am a seductress, not a mother, she told herself.

"Will he be joining us for dinner?"

"No, he's also away for the weekend," she said. Realizing she was holding a plate of pakoras in her hands, she bent down to set it on the low glass table in front of the sofa. As she did this her shirt fell forward and she saw Naveed glance at her cleavage.

"Would you like a glass of wine?" she asked, straightening up slowly.

Naveed looked at the portrait, then at her, then away. "Just a half-glass, I think."

She stood up, telling him she would be right back and went to the kitchen. Once there she pressed her hands against the counter and caught her breath. It was actually happening, just as she had imagined. She felt the heat spread throughout her body, making even the dead ends of her hair feel electric. Too soon! she thought, taking the wine bottle from the fridge and pressing its cool glass to her forehead.

"Do you mind opening it?" she said, holding up the bottle and a corkscrew. Naveed was standing in front of their bookcase, peering through the glass at Tariq's assorted physics books.

"Maybe it's too much trouble," he said.

"No, please, you must," she told him. Her hand lingered on the bottle as she passed it to him, and their fingers touched. He was attracted to her, she could sense it.

He placed the bottle between his thighs, inserting the corkscrew and gently easing it out. Shaila imagined what his legs must look like underneath the pants, taut and muscular against the curves of the bottle. "Here," he said.

As she poured him a full glass of wine he began to fidget, his knees meeting and parting several times, and when she handed him his glass he took a long sip. "Unfortunately I can't stay. I have to be in Boston by nine," he said.

Shaila glanced at the black onyx clock that hung above the bookshelf. It was seven forty. "But you must eat," Shaila said.

Naveed shook his head. "I really should go."

Shaila decided to conduct a test and bent over to pick up his glass. Once again, Naveed's eyes lingered on her breasts, and she saw not one, not two, but three beads of sweat on his forehead. "Please," she said. "Have something to eat."

"I'm sorry, Auntie, I have a prior commitment." He said this in Urdu, the first time either of them had spoken Urdu all night, and stood up.

"Call me Shaila," she said. She recalled the advice on the website; if it becomes clear that you will have to make the first move, be bold and fearless. Bismillah, she whispered, and plunged ahead.

She put the glass back on the table and, taking one step towards him, placed her hand on his crotch. Naveed's eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to say something but no words came out. Shaila began to massage and knead as she had practiced. She felt a full, hard erection beneath his pants, and he let out a strange, short moan from the back of his throat. She leaned forward to kiss him. He squeezed his eyes shut and jumped back in a violent motion, knocking over his wine glass.

"What is it?" Shaila asked.

"Lizards," Naveed said.

"Lizards?" Shaila said.

"I used to be terrified of lizards," Naveed said, and shivered.

"But there are no—" Shaila began, but Naveed had already left. She searched the room but could see nothing that resembled a lizard. The wine had seeped into the carpet. She poured an entire bottle of lemon lime soda on it and watched it fizz, then got her knees and began to scrub.

Shaila went to bed without eating and lay awake imagining what would have happened if Naveed had not been so nervous. Perhaps she had made a mistake in going the bold and fearless route. That might work with American men, but Pakistani men, even less traditional ones like Naveed, liked to be in control. He needed to be seduced in a much gentler manner, a seduction more like simmering than the quick stir-fry method she had just employed.

The idea came to her the next day when she opened the fridge and saw the food from last night, still in its serving dishes. She would take some of the food to Naveed, reheat it in his kitchen, and they would relax and eat and talk like friends, and things would naturally progress from there. She spent half an hour putting on make-up, smoothing on a layer of foundation to cover the cracks around her eyes, and decided on a simple, unassuming outfit of jeans and a black cashmere twin set. After packing the leftovers into small containers and stacking them in a grocery bag, she walked to his house and rang his doorbell, balancing the bag on one hip. There was no answer. She waited a minute and rang twice more. Still no answer.

She began to walk away, then on an impulse turned back to the house. Naveed was standing at the window on the second floor, the fingers of one hand and the middle third of his face visible through the blinds. And in that moment Shaila caught sight of herself, an older woman with a husband and teenage son, clutching a grocery bag full of Tupperware, chasing a delusional fantasy. She set the bag on his lawn and started to run, praying that none of the neighbors were home to see the spectacle.

Back in the safety of her bedroom she doused a cotton ball with cleanser and, crying, began to remove her face. On her lips she tasted a mixture of salt and alcohol, and felt like beating her chest like the Shias did on Muharram, mourning the loss of their prophets. She was not a seductress. She was a wife and a mother, a terrible wife and a terrible mother. And, just like that, the fire in her loins went out, filling her with cold gray ash.

Although it was an interesting conference and his paper had been well received, Tariq felt distracted during many of the presentations. His wife's forgetfulness had been worrying him. The idea of his wife's memories disappearing frightened him and on Thursday night, he had begun to catalogue his memories of her and the two of them together, making notes in his leather bound journal. By the end of the weekend the journal was two-thirds full and Kamran had not even been born yet. At first Tariq was surprised by this, but was later surprised at his initial reaction. Of course the journal was so easily filled. They had spent twenty years of their lives sleeping and waking side by side.

He knew something was off the minute he got home and saw glasses in the kitchen sink and crumbs on the granite counter. His wife was a meticulous cleaner. Even when she was ill with fever she cleaned. "Shaila?" he called.

She was sitting on the edge of the couch in the living room. As soon as he approached she began to cry; he took her in his arms and patted her back over and over. When it seemed like she had calmed down enough to talk, he asked her, "Why all of this crying, jaan?"

"I am the lizard," she sobbed into his shoulder.

"What are you talking about? In no way do you resemble a reptile," he said. Or were lizards amphibians? He could not recall.

Shaila cried in his arms until she fell asleep. The skin around her eyes was swollen and red, but she looked peaceful, the way Kamran used to look after he finished his bottle and passed out against Shaila's chest. Could this all be because she was bored, tired of staying at home? He had never felt boredom; he had physics and all of it mysteries to enchant him, to keep him occupied. But as he watched his wife sleep, her lower lip pushed out slightly further than the upper, her nostrils flaring slightly as she snored, he realized that his own life was a precarious equation, of which his wife's happiness was a necessary variable. He must do whatever he could to help her.

When Tariq woke up the next morning Shaila was already downstairs, and the smell of coffee, fried eggs, and alu fried with cumin floated in the air outside the bedroom. He picked up the phone and called Dr. Sundaram. He can see you Wednesday, the receptionist said. Any particular reason for the appointment?

"Oh no," he told her. "Just a routine check up."

Then, with the eagerness of a young physicist embarking on a new experiment, he rushed downstairs to tell his wife what he had done.