Chapter 3
They found the body of Marjorie S. hanging from an electrical fixture in the small white cottage where she and her husband lived. The suicide of that lovely woman, not yet forty, profoundly disturbed all segments of the large Air Force base situated in a barren part of the Arabian desert. At the official inquiry, her husband said that he knew of no reason why his wife should have taken her life. Months passed and soon the incident was almost forgotten, only remembered as another example of how difficult life was for the wives of the men stationed there.
But the incident was not to remain buried. I received in the mail a letter from another officer's wife at the base. In it she told me that she had discovered the body first and there had been a suicide note. Because the content of the note was so alarming and filled with such intimate details, she had put it in her purse and quickly left the scene without reporting the tragedy at that time. Her conscience had begun to bother her and she enclosed Marjorie's note for me to look at and evaluate.
The note was indeed revealing. It outlined in detail the poor woman's descent into an uncontrollable passion, brought about by the horrible loneliness and deprivation of the Arabian sands. Because this note is far more important than all the judgements of professors and committees, I am reproducing the note in full, with nothing left out. Only the names have been changed to protect the survivors. The initial "L" in the note represents her husband.
"My darling L. Please do not mourn me. I can no longer survive here. My life has turned into a nightmare of such proportion that each step I take and each thought that flashes through my mind is excrutiatingly painful.
"You have been a good husband. You have a difficult and dangerous job to do and you have acted properly. It is not your fault that I am here. You go where they send you. It is not your fault that the fierce desert winds seem to bore through my brain, sucking every last ounce of strength from me.
"Nor was it your fault that I entered into a strange and perverted relationship with a young Arab boy. I beg you to understand. I beg you to take no punitive action against the boy, Gamal. It was my fault not his. It was I who seduced him and led him into swamp of erotic actions.
"This note will tell everything. I do not wish to hide even the slightest detail from you. At least, there will be no secrets between us when I am gone. I know you will carry on and do your duty for your country as you always have; with courage and dedication. Please do not hate me for this deed. Please understand and try to explain to my family.
"It began during your last mission when you had been gone for a week. Gamal was then recently employed by us but I never paid him the slightest attention. He was just another Arab boy to be used to do the washing and the various other chores. His secretive face told nothing and hid everything. Like all the other Arab boys, he was an enigma. During your absence that time, I had reached the breaking point. I wanted to throw myself on the floor and scream my hatred at that horrible country with its horrendous heat and its incessant boredom. I wanted to kill myself then. But I did not. For I saw Gamal. What I am trying to say is that for the first time since I arrived at that base I looked upon an Arab boy as human. Yes, as a delicate creature of God who had all the longings and fears of an American.
"You know how I liked to take a bath every morning. Well, one morning I called Gamal in as I was taking my bath. I just wanted to talk to him. He sat on the floor as Arab boys do and in halting English answered my questions about his family and his plans for the future.
"As he was sitting there, I suddenly became possessed with the feeling that I would like him to pour water on me. I pointed to a cup and asked him if he would let the sink faucet run, fill a cup and pour it over my body. He looked at me strangely because I was already immersed in water. But he complied.
"I closed my eyes and reveled in the feelings of the cascading waves as Gamal poured the water over my flesh. Then, without thinking, I raised my body a few inches off the bottom of the tub so that my nipples and part of my breasts were exposed.
"He began to pour water over my nipples. Shiver after shiver raced down my body as the hot water bit into them.
"I begged Gamal to continue and to make the water hotter and hotter. Finally, my nipples screamed with pain and lust as the burning liquid made them flex and retract. I had been transformed into a sort of receptacle. The tension of all those months had sent me into a frenzy that I could not control. Reaching over the tub I knocked the cup out of Gamal's hand and I pointed to my nipples. Af first he did not know what I meant but he finally understood. I must have looked insane for his face was drawn in a frightened mask.
"The child bent over the tub. As his face moved closer to my nipples, I beat the water with my thighs, like some great fish that had lapsed into a feeding frenzy.
"His tiny lips parted and they slid over one of my nipples. I began to weep as his hot Arab flesh made my nipple into the most profound vehicle to record the slightest nuance of passion. My nipples could almost speak the history of my disillusionment with the Air Force Base. In his own way, the Arab boy knew I was a woman who was on the edge of sanity, a woman who needed him more than she needed water or bread or fruit.
"His tiny hands then grasped my white breasts. It was a startling contrast to see the brown fingers sink deeply into the white flesh and burn that flesh with his innocent lust.
"My hands went inside his shirt and searched for his breast. But my hand was pulled downward by the lure of his maleness, hidden somewhere between his legs. Just as I grasped it, just as I felt its cylindrical shape, waiting for my fingers to mold it into a weapon, there was a sound outside. Gamal froze. I could see the fear in his eyes. Quickly, he left the bathroom.
"It had been the cat. What a humorous ending to the beginning of my death throes. For the next few days all I could think of was Gamal. I knew that there had been a radical change in my life. Something had snapped. It was not my love for you, it was my desire for you sexually that had broken off. It was not my hatred for my situation which had been modified, it was my sudden realization that only a change in my actions could save me. As you see now, they did not save me, they destroyed me.
"Do you find that I am writing very calmly for a woman facing death. It is true. I am somewhat calm but that is because I have gone far beyond the whining of most wives who live on this base. I am, perhaps, in another time zone, a zone where the ticking of seconds is measured in desperate erotic acts.
"A week after the incident in the bath, I was lying in bed reading a magazine from the States. I heard Gamal working downstairs. At first I was afraid to call him, worried that I had insulted him by my strange actions. But the patter of his almost silent feet excited me. Getting off the bed, I walked to the door and called to him. At first there was no answer. But then he said he would come up.
"He stood in front of the door, his robe wrapped loosely about him. I wondered how old he was. Probably not more than fifteen. He was smiling. I called him to the bed and asked him to take off his robe. He obeyed. There was nothing beneath the robe. His body was dark and firm. Not an ounce of fat marred the twisting relationship of muscles and sinew.
"I told him to come closer and soon he was holding my hand. I began to talk to him, telling how difficult my life was at the base. I asked him the secret for being able to withstand the decay of the desert and I praised you to him.
Yes, I told my child lover that my husband was a wonderful and brave man and that I loved him very much. Do you believe me? Please do. You are the only man I have ever truly loved.
"He lay down beside me. His body was fire and ice, the heat of the desert had infected his bones but his race had the coolness of ice.
"He stood up on the bed and moved his thighs ever so slightly so that I could watch the pulsing maleness which was beginning to stiffen. My eyes fastened on the tip and the small brown globes beneath it. I spread my legs, almost unconsciously, and the boy began to rub my opening with his foot. The touch of his flesh to my flesh made me gasp.
"I felt something cold and hard. The boy had placed his toe at my opening. Slowly, he let it penetrate my vagina. It inched in. The nail made my whole body move. He began to turn his toe and the sides of my flower quivered as the toe drew out its most treasured responses. His organ was still before me but I could not reach it. I was hungry for it but I was also hungry for the twisting turning toe which was within me. My thighs closed about his foot, almost unconsciously.
"Then I could wait no more. I broke away and grabbed his flesh in my mouth, tasting him. Oh, my dear husband. I do not know how to apologize to you for these words, I do not know what to say. But his organ in my mouth, the maleness of a child Arab was the sweetest and the most beautiful experience of my life. I wanted to die there. I wanted to end my life sucking on that blossoming piece of flesh as it turned and sang in my mouth. My tongue made him moan and speak to me softly in Arabic.
"There was a plant by the window, one of those gentle desert plants. Gamal reached over and pulled the plant from its resting place. Turning me over on my stomach, he reached in front of me and shoved the plant into my opening. I gasped with surprise. But the child was only beginning. Perhaps he had heard the stories his people tell around the fire. For he spread my buttocks and sent his now erect organ into the space between my buttocks. I was impaled in front and in rear by that Arab boy. I could not move. I could not think. Explosions formed before my eyes only to go away when I felt his iron organ splitting me apart and his hands working that desert weapon into my opening.
"You will never be able to understand my feelings at that time. I had entered a world of which I had never been aware. My vagina and buttocks were the receivers of the most delicate and powerful forces, forces which sent me into another dimension.
"Though he was an illiterate child and I was a sophisticated woman, the Arab boy handled me like a kitten. My body was at his disposal. Each time he thrust his organ into my buttocks or twisted the desert plant in my womanhood, I felt like he was my father who was teaching me the most hidden knowledge of the body.
"But I will not torment you anymore with these descriptions. For weeks Gamal and I continued our games, in every part of the house, seeing more in those few weeks than couples could see in their lifetimes. We drained the cup of lust.
"When it was over, when all the stars were gone, the facts of what I had done came home to me. Also the prospect of another two years at this base was made concrete and brought into focus by your promotion.
"Guilt and hate and lust. That is my life. Perhaps I was right or perhaps I was wrong. It does not matter. All that I know is that I can no longer live. You must have faith. You must forgive me. You must have mercy upon me.
The signature at the end of this pathetic note was Marjorie S. I realized that her husband and the base officials had never seen this letter. But rather than stir up old hates and feuds, I burned the letter after making a copy for my use in this book.
Few women have ever written so frank a note. That the note was a suicide note only gives lustre to her honesty and the tremendous desire she had to explain the tragedy which was about to take place. Furthermore, nothing ever written gives more credence to the many stories of incredible hardship which the wives of career soldiers are called upon to endure. Perhaps some day, Marjorie's suicide will bring about needed reforms in the administration of those godforsaken bases on the outposts of the world.