Free Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren Page B

in the trees I caught glimpses of a mishmash of modern office buildings, nondescript homes, and domed mosques.
    As we drove along the water, I recognized the Kampung marsh villages from my research at the library. The villages comprised tilting shacks perched on stilts above murky marsh water. The shacks looked like they could slide off their precarious foundations at any moment. The plank walkways between them seemed no more secure to stand on than the lily pads beneath them.
    “The Sultan offered the marsh people houses, but they chose to stay where they were,” said Serena, wrinkling her nose. “It’s filthy out there. They don’t even have plumbing.”
    This reminded me of a story I had heard once about the nomadic tribes in Persia. In the seventies, the Shah, obsessed with modernization and Western culture, forced the nomads to abandon their customary migrations and settle down in houses. The nomads put their goats and camels in the houses and slept in tents in their backyards. When the Shah was deposed during the revolution, the nomads picked up and resumed their former life; they were that sure of who they were. Their abandoned houses still stand on the Iranian hillsides.
    As we drove, I caught only little slices of the sights through the trees and I wanted to see more. I asked Ari when we’d have time to do some sightseeing.
    “You won’t.”
    “You can sometimes go to the Yaohan if you request it in advance,” said Serena. The Yaohan was the mall. “But you have to wear a baseball cap and long sleeves and people will still stare at you. I got flashed by a pervert once in the parking lot.”
    Serena was freer now that we were in Brunei. She had slid into a comfortable skin. She was the girl who knew more than we did, the tour guide. But I detected something else. She ran the nail of her middle finger back and forth on the pad of her thumb, a nervous tic. As she rattled off her knowledge about the country, I sensed it growing; Serena was definitely anxious about something.

    In about twenty minutes we reached a compound that appeared to be the size of a small city. High, off-white stucco walls surrounded the place, and above it we could see only treetops and a large blue dome in the distance. We pulled up next to a guardhouse, where a soldier stood wearing the kind of cap that an old-fashioned soda jerk would wear. I knew from a former Marine who liked to come into the Baby Doll and tell me his war stories that Marines call those caps piss-cutters. I had a mental file cabinet a mile deep where I kept those sorts of details.
    The soldier opened the gate and as it rolled back it revealed a compound that looked something like a resort in Fort Lauderdale as envisioned by Aladdin. Eight four-bedroom guesthouses were arranged in a semicircle facing a palace on a hill. A road wound around the property, and we followed it to one of the houses, where five smiling Thai housekeepers in pink uniforms waved at us from the porch and rushed to the cars when we stopped, pulling our bags from the trunk while chirping, “Hello. How are you. Hello. How are you.” They didn’t wait for our replies.
    Inside, the house itself was like a tacky mini-palace, decked with miles of Italian marble and plush carpets. The windows were smothered with yards of peach drapery and someone had stuffed huge silk flower arrangements into every possible niche. An odd detail caught my eye: There were at least three tissue boxes in every room, each with a decorative gold cover.
    I stood on the back porch and looked out on the property. Across acres and acres of lawn and partially obscured by a hill stood the palace. It was as big as a hotel. Up the road to the left I saw a glittering square of turquoise pool and beyond that some tennis courts. The light was beginning to wane and I realized I was starving. I took my shoes off before I walked across the freshly vacuumed tracks in the peach-colored carpeting and up the stairs to search out my