The morning is behaving itself.
She totters in her diaphanous robe next to Antonio toward the stone cavity on the seashore. The breeze irks the temper-prone lover with its saucy gaiety. Antonio is torn between blaming his bewilderment on either the treasures on display or the impudent jerk harassing his beloved. On the threshold of the eastern access to the royal bath he promises to wait for her as long as it takes and to refrain from ogling her, as he just did. He repeats this over and over again while his blatant lies set his cheeks on fire.
A smile of disbelief plays on her enticing lips, and by letting her eyelids fall over her sleepy and suggestive eyes, she shows how little she cares about whether his statements conflict with the truth. The hollow stone swallows her, and Antonio, “the sentinel,” tries in his petrified state to monitor the universe so that it not to outwit him, as it obviously likes to sin the same way he does—by sneaking covert peeks.
Antonio hasn’t noticed that the sun is lurking, awaiting her rendezvous with a morning bath. A heavy menacing cloud rises unexpectedly, clogging up the conduct of the voracious appetite sliding over the horizon. With her veiled wrath she buries the earth!
The beautiful and charming lady feels afraid of the gathering darkness as if it be a speckled snake that crawled inside the cavity of the rock. The darkness starts abusing itself. It desires the incandescent lady and thus bites with her terrifying eyes into the tender flesh she is exposing. Cleopatra pleads to return. This enrages the sea and infuriates the sun. It prompts both to entreat the wind, whose extremities meet after girding the universe, to curb its audacity. In response to their fervid invocation and in a desperate effort to acquit itself well, the wind peters out, but not without forbearing to administer a few last whips beforehand. Meanwhile, the sun sets the cloud’s loaded womb on fire with its infernal rays, forcing it to lose its rain, which it then dismembers and scatters about. Lastly, the wind gets rid of the cloud and the sea soaks up the debris spilled everywhere.
Through the clefts in the rock, the sun struggles to unravel his entire cylindrical anatomy and spin it into threads of ravenous hunger. And so, a wave of lust-clouded light storms inside the royal bath.
At the northern mouth of the cave, a monstrous snake surfaces from under the seawater at her feet! The wind refuses to leave; it enjoys staying by her side!
Gradually, the sea’s wounds close around her ivory legs, shackling beauty par excellence, who surrenders to her fate. It loves the way her silence permeates the Berber tunes and her pores open with excitement. The sea encroaches into the banned space, at some point banging the closed doors wide open, which ultimately do not fight back. She braves the bundle of light that arrives, allured by the paralysis gripping her limbs. Its raunchy kisses cake the dimples on her cheeks as they both start to unfold.
The light instills its warmth in the water, the wind dodges the hollow blaze, and Cleopatra splits open, freed from the clutch of her diaphanous robe—a completely mellow and juicy fruit. The sea traps her inside its fetching corridor like a young lecher! There is a tempting frailty and a brazen clamor embedded in their manifesto: Cleopatra, the sea, the sun, and the wind!
The waves conduct themselves according to their usual giddy demeanor, impervious to the whole carousel of endurance of the other nature on the one hand, and the indulgence of their own on the other. At the northern hole, they roar boisterously, passionately. They crash against the rocks, goring them again and again before breaking into droplets. Antonio suddenly realizes what a fool he is. He wields sword and spear, clasps her arm, and pulls her out with the torment only lovers can sustain, the exact same way he rescues her every morning; she is as naked as a newborn baby.
The author:
Khairy Abdelaziz Abdelbary Ahmad
– In 1999, he graduated from the Tanta University in Egypt with a degree in Computer Science.
– He is the author of a short-stories anthology called The Kingdom of Saffron, published and distributed in 2014 by the publishing houses Dar al-Quds and Dar Nahda.
– He is the author of a short-stories anthology called The Last Pirate, published and distributed in 2014 by the Egyptian publishing house Dar Ghorab.
– He has won 6 literary awards so far.