Lhola Amira: The Harlot's Feet

Lhola Amira is one of the most in demand high end call girls in the country. She has a uniquely intimate perspective on the state of the nation given her select client base (including a host of government officials, a Provincial MEC, business leaders, and one or two key players in the tri-partite alliance). She writes exclusively for Mahala. These are her thoughts.

The jury's still out on whether Lhola's real or not, but Mahala swear she is. This is her second piece and I like this better than her first, so I jacked it without permission, coz Mahala's cool like that. 

FotoCred: Lhola Amira/Mahala  

Jesus is my first encounter with a socialist revolutionaire, but his bible troubles me – it rejects me completely. As a woman, a black person. At least he washed the harlot’s feet. He washed her feet. Which kills me. Naturally I inspect history.

The condition of blackness is serious. Post-1994 has changed nothing for most of us.
This is where I am at: lynched. I’m in a dire space, the illusion of the Rainbow Nation has dissolved. The truth is painful. Out of black suffering I’m at black depression.

The burden of womanhood. The intensity of being black. The mirror lies to me and says, “you’re fine, Lhola, everything is fine.” I walk streets and hear them echo, “no need for your volatile blackness here!” My anger mutates. I seek solace in books at home alone about ‘revolutionary men’. Can they free me from the echoes?

I write my own way out. On hotel stationary. When he’s washing up. When he’s done. These after moments in hotel rooms. These songs of myself. His money in my hands.

My body is written by unknown authors
My limbs are parted by faceless men.
My thighs are gutted ghetto streets.
What more can you take from me?
You pollute my insides. Yet you scramble for me still,
Drawing lines like veins.

Can the revolution still-to-come save me? When my own black skin yearns for whiteness. How weird is that? How sad. Would that ease the pain? Was Fanon right? Was Biko? Is our contemporary Black Wash working? Illusions of whiteness. So many traps. But I’ll write my way out. On hotel stationary. When he’s washing up. When he’s done. These songs of myself. His money in my hands.

I’m the dark cannibalistic sister
Of your fever dreams, your Tarzan dreams.
I am the slave, cotton weaving the modern age.
Made from the core of a universe. I’m black.
Even my words are not my own. In your tongue.
I am a coconut. I’m waiting to evolve. Waiting to take on my white self.
But my black body denies me.
Lynched, my feet dangle, swaying, after this beautiful violence.
My womb sings its painful symphony
My womb’s a commodity
And my eyes look upon your whiteness John, trick, stud
And I smile with dry lips dry, cracked lips that say
Am I white yet? Have I suffered enough?

This is it. Tomorrow I stop. No more. I’ll awaken and wash my own feet. But right now I’m in-between spaces where nothing exists. Until he comes back for more.