Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2014 10:48:41 +0100
From: Ben Hur <ben-hur-of-judah@outlook.com>
Subject: The Unique Experience Part X

THE UNIQUE EXPERIENCE: PART X

   Being locked up in a small cell, your mental world becomes small
too. The view to the outside being limited, you automatically concentrate
on yourself. And I had a lot to concentrate on for the moment, as my own
situation claimed all my attention. For the time being not to know how to
cope with the heavy burden I literally had to wear forever from now on, my
interest in what was happening on the other side of the bars that hold me
confined, gradually diminished - also because was happening there anyway.

   I must have laid down there, trying to lessen the discomfort that my
irons caused in vain, for nearly an hour or so - it is a guess, as I had
lost all sense of time, and as the corridor was only lit artificially, with
no daylight entering, there was no sun to tell me how late it was - when I
heard some rumbling in the corridor, coming from the right and still far
away, but coming nearer. Footsteps, accompanied by the clanking of chains -
apparently some (?) new slaves in the end had arrived.

   Immediately my interest in what was happening outside returned. I
hurried to the grated door of my dungeon, as far as my heavy chains allowed
me to hurry of course, to catch a glimpse of what was happening outside -
as I said, boredom at this moment was the worst to fear, so every
distraction was more than welcome - but for the present I could see
nothing. They were still too far away yet. I tried to figure out how many
guys there were, but that was not as easy as you may think, as the
footsteps overlapped, and the human ear for a conclusion to be beyond any
doubt needs the confirmation of the human eye; but judging from the
clanking there were at least two slaves drawing near. Or perhaps even
three, just as I had been brought to my own cell as part of a trio. It was
very difficult to make that out from the noise.

   Then apparently they halted, as the sound of footsteps coming nearer
stopped and only the clanking of chains continued for a while. So at least
one of the slaves had a high number, and now was thrown into his hole. It
only took a few seconds, I heard the grated door banged shut, and then the
column clearly moved on.

   Meanwhile I saw that my only visible neighbor across the road, slave 47,
also apparently startled by the noise, had risen from the straw and
positioned himself in the same way as I did, standing behind the bars of
his cell. But he would not have seen much more from there than I did from
my place, and that meant in the end: nothing. Because the column of guards
and slave - yes, it was only one now, judging from the singular noise his
chains made - didn't move as far along the corridor so as to pass by our
cells. Also for this second slave they halted earlier, still a lot of
dungeons before ours. I heard the opening of the grated door, the
commanding voice of one of the guards (but couldn't decipher his separate
words), some clanking as the slave moved in, again the door being shut, and
then the footsteps of the guards fading away as they returned to the stairs
at the beginning of the corridor. That it was - silence again.

   I now gazed at my fellow slave across the corridor, and he gazed
back. Being slave G 47, he presumably was to become a direct neighbor at
the oars somewhere, but as I didn't know the distribution of seats on board
yet, I wasn't sure where his place would be exactly - just as I didn't know
exactly where mine was either. Would he sit next to me, on my immediate
left or right, or across the gangway, or perhaps somewhere on a row before
or behind me? It would depend on the way the seats were arranged on the
galley, how many there would be on one row on each side of the central
gangway (two, three, four?), and where I would be placed exactly.

   However, as the chance was rather good that we would have to live very
near to each other on the galley in the future, I was of course interested
in this fellow and what he looked like. Slave G 47 was a few inches shorter
than me - well, that was in fact nearly the only special thing to tell
about him, the only thing left that distinguished him from me now.

   Apart from just one other important thing: his skin color. He
definitively was black, and I was not. Judging from his physical appearance
he seemed to me to be a black American living in the States, not in
Africa. Would he have been an amateur athlete there like me? Apparently our
slavers didn't care about race: black or white was immaterial to them, as
long as their captives could be turned into useful muscled galley
slaves. But would they because of his racial background perhaps treat him
more crudely than me? Arabs still weren't free from disdain for Africans
traditionally; they in fact had begun to enslave them already centuries
before the Europeans turned up on the Atlantic Coast the first time, and
until the Twenty-First Century this had a lasting effect on the way Arabs
regarded the inhabitants of the Black Continent. As they had been slaves in
the Muslim world since the Middle Ages in big quantities, as the Arabs
hadn't known any important abolition movement and as no Arabian official
had ever apologized for the slavery-filled past, Blacks over there still
were the victims of racial prejudice.

   However, that in fact was the most important characteristic that
distinguished slave G 46 from slave G 47: our skin color indeed. Otherwise,
we looked completely identical, as we had in a way become identical with
the same future awaiting us, that of a galley slave. For the rest, he had
in the way of personal characteristics just a nose, two eyes, two ears -
and nothing special about that, presumably no floppy ears or hare-lips or
any other very special individual mark which in these circumstances you
might hope for to distinguish you from other slaves - and he had in the
field of impersonal new characteristics the same Mohawk haircut, the same
sallow loin-cloth, the same huge collar and the same heavy shackles and
chains as me.

   The exact color of what was left of his hair, the crew-cut ugly strip
stretching across his skull from front to back, I couldn't discover. It was
too gloomy there for that (well, it clearly wasn't blond), as it was too
gloomy to distinguish floppy ears if he might have had them (later I would
discover that he hadn't). And the ciphers on his slave-tag - they would
have said 'Slave G-47' - were not legible from this distance, as weren't
those of the blackened brand on his left chest (which, because of his dark
skin, I could only perceive vaguely through the bars). His eternal slave
number for that reason didn't stick out as much as mine, since the contrast
between the black brand and my white skin was much sharper.

   We both stood there for at least ten minutes gazing at each other, but
not daring to say anything, when again there was noise coming from the
right. It again was the sound of footsteps but this time accompanied, not
by those of clanking chains, but of creaking wheels. Clearly the guards
were drawing forward some kind of small vehicle. It sometimes stopped and
then, after a few seconds, it moved on again. Apparently it halted at the
door of every occupied cell.

   It took a little bit more than a dozen of those small stops to be
covered before it came into view. Well, there was at least nothing wrong
with my hearing, as indeed the two guards coming along had a kind of food
cart between them. On its several shelves stood rows of big round iron
bowls of the kind in which I had been offered my drinking water.

   The food cart halted in front of cell 47. One of the guards took a bowl
of the upper board and gave it silently to slave G-47; the other guard -
the one who had brought me my drink - picked up a bowl too and brought it
to me. Inside was a huge amount of some indefinable shapeless grey-brown
puree that didn't look or smell very tasteful, to put it mildly.

   The guard, a little more communicative than his colleague, said to me,
while reaching the big bowl plus a simple wooden spoon through the bars:

   "Here is your special slave chow for this evening, G-47."

   I looked with some disgust at the simmering, evil-smelling mess that was
offered to me and that I apparently was to appreciate as my refined dinner.

   The guard recognized my aversion - which didn't take much perceptivity,
to be honest - and added:

   "And you better eat it all, slave, and get used to eating it, as you
will get no other kind of warm evening meal in the near future. And you
will need it to stay strong to row forcefully and thus to avoid the
lash. This is the standard slave feed all galley slaves receive
everywhere. It is very healthy and has all the proteins and vitamins that
are essential to making a muscled rowing machine out of your body, and to
keep it in that useful state. It's in you own interest to become such a
rowing machine, as there will be no pity for those who fail to do so, as
the bullwhip will tell you in that case. So eat it."

   I wondered if he addressed all new slaves receiving their maiden slave
meal like this the first time. Perhaps yes, as it seemed that he took some
pleasure from talking this way to his feeding victims. However, realizing
that I was hungry and wouldn't have much occasion to complain about the
preparation of my dinner to the cook, I took in the offered big bowl and
sat down with it on the floor. Well, the irons riveted to my limbs were
gifts from hell, but at least the whole network of chains was thus designed
that they didn't hinder eating very much, as both chains connected my
manacles to my sole anklet, and thus sloping down immediately from my
wrists: they weren't in the way.

   While I was sitting down to eat, both guards dragged their food cart
along to stop at the next occupied cell, that of my neighbor slave 44. I
could vaguely hear his chains moving in the direction of the bars of his
dungeon to receive his food. There the same procedure was repeated by 'my'
waiter, this time without saying any word - had slave 44 already stayed
here overnight and knew what was expected from him? Or did the guard for
some unknown reason specially dislike me, so that he had spoken those
hateful - but at the same time, I must confess, useful - warning words?

   Well, sitting down I started to eat - trifling with the food, to be
honest. I don't know if you've ever had your dinner while the weight of
heavy chains is pulling on your shackled hands downwards? Well, as the
chains as such weren't in the way, it was possible to do so, but it was not
quite a big pleasure. I had to do it slowly and carefully - apart from the
fact that, although I had become rather hungry meanwhile, the offered food
was not that inviting that you want to hurry to enjoy your meal.

   To say it frankly: it tasted boring and disgusting. The slave chow
turned out to be a kind of mix of flour, cornmeal, some unidentifiable
vegetables and savorless pieces of meat. And indeed a mix: it couldn't have
been more a mix than it was, as all was completely mixed up by grinding and
compressing all ingredients to an unappetizing looking porridge in a
totally indifferent way. The meat - I would learn later from some fellow
slave who, as having been a professional food expert in his former free
life, knew more and even was able to distinguish the previously
unrecognizable mistreated parts of the slave chow - was cheap dog's meat,
nutritious but without any flavor. And the cornmeal was of third-rate
quality, rejected for human consumption, taken out of the pig
trough. Eating dog's meat and pig's cornmeal - to that humiliating level we
as slaves had been lowered.

   With disgust I succeeded in maneuvering all of it away behind my
grinders down into my stomach with the wooden spoon, slowly, bite after
bite. But as the menu in this inhospitable inn apparently didn't offer
alternatives, I had no choice, if I didn't want to starve from hunger - and
later to become punished for being too weak when my time had come to serve
at the oars. And for the time being, I didn't want that. Perhaps had I
known then what it really meant to be turned into a galley slave for life,
I would have preferred that. But the human will to survive and the human
hope for rescue are too strong for wanting to starve to death as an
alternative, and apart from that, the slavers would not have accepted that
their prey would escape his fate this 'easy' way by just saying 'no' to
their slave chow, and would have known means to force their victims to eat.

   So I did eat 'voluntarily', and eat it all.

   After having finished my first meal as a slave, I put the empty bowl
with the spoon aside and drank some water out of the other bowl to get rid
of the horrible taste. My stomach was full, as the compressed food had been
rather heavy. Then I put both bowls in the left corner of my cell and
searched for the best position to lie down for the second time, which took
some minutes again, although I already had some experience with searching
for that.

   While I had been eating the guards had continued to distribute the slave
feed, till they had reached the end of the corridor. There they apparently
waited, as for a number of minutes I heard no noise of footsteps or wheels
anymore. I myself, after having finished dinner, meanwhile lying down in
the back of my cell, didn't pay any attention to them anymore. Introverted
now, my mental horizon was limited again to my own shackled body.

   But after some time the guards must have started to go their way back. I
suddenly heard their footsteps and the wheels of the food cart coming
nearer. Judging by the short interruptions, they halted at all occupied
cells. Why that, I asked myself, but had no time to find an answer, as they
had reached mine.

   "Your food trough, slave", 'my' guard shouted angry, "And quick!"

   I needed some seconds to rise from the straw, just to see the guy
getting even angrier. I was rather embarrassed by that, as until yet he
hadn't treated me very harshly. I would soon learn that a slave never
should allow himself to be lulled by some apparent kindness on the part of
his overseers, as the next time the same overseer might suddenly be very
unkind and demanding. This unpredictability on the part of the overseers of
course is intentional: a slave should at every moment be full of fear for
his Owner and thus very keen on what He as a Master this time might command
him as a slave to do.

   "Quicker, you fucking slave, you will have to learn to be quicker!"

   I had reached the grated door now and searched for the bowl I had put in
the corner.

   "Remember, slave! When you finish your slave meal next time, wait here
with your food trough sitting behind the bars, and as soon as we arrive the
second time, you immediately hand it over to us without us having to ask
that, as you're not allowed to waste our time! Understood, slave?!"

   "But...", I started, trying to explain that I didn't know that, and thus
not deserved his anger, because as a slave I intended to behave well and
had been negligent not because of recalcitrance but because of ignorance.

   "No 'buts'! A slave doesn't know any 'buts'! A slave just has to obey!"

   If I indeed had been dreaming a little away in the straw a few minutes
ago, I was totally awake now. I was upset and worried, as I hadn't expected
this kind of reactions. They were totally without reasonableness. How to
handle this? How to manage this totally unexpected and unpredictable
outburst by one of those guards? How would I know what to do to prevent
them, to have them treating me in a less aggressive way? I again became
aware of my powerlessness. Still apart from being chained and locked up, I
totally surrendered to the caprices of my captors.

   But exactly in the seeming unreasonableness of those outbursts, you will
have realized now, was hidden their satanic reasonableness - from the point
of view of the slavers. The first thing they have to imprint on new slaves
to get them also behave as slaves is fear of the unexpected and
unpredictable. And by each slaver behaving in another way and at another
point unexpectedly and unpredictably, slaves indeed become very keen what
each of them might perhaps want him to do, to prevent corporal
punishment. No, there is not much space in a slave's life to dream away as
long as he isn't ordered to do so, not even a little. And he rather seldom
is ordered to dream away, as it's not with that purpose that he has been
enslaved.

   But at that moment I knew nothing about such training tactics or the
mental methods behind them, and just trembled, rather out of balance.

   "Understood, G-46?!"

   The guard now shouted even louder.

   "Understood, how to behave the next time?!"

   "Y-yes", I stuttered.

   Bang! The guard hit one of the bars with his boot.

   "Yes?!? It's: yes, Sir, understood, Sir!" He paused, "Understood,
slave?"

   "Yes, Sir, understood, Sir", I trembled obediently, totally intimidated.

   "You apparently don't, slave!"

   ??? I must have looked quite astonished now.

   "If you did, slave, you would have handed me your bowl already some
seconds ago, slave! Do it NOW!!!"

   "Yes Sir, understood Sir!" - and I hurried as fast as possible to do so.

   The guard took the bowl and the spoon silently out of my hands and put
it on the food cart. As his colleague had already recovered that of slave
47, without the necessity - or the need - to shout, they could continue
their way, to disappear out of sight, leaving me bullied behind.

   For the next couple of minutes nothing happened, and also for the second
next to come. But suddenly there happened something: inside myself. My
bowels, not used to this heavy slave chow, after all the food had passed my
stomach, started to work. I was seized with tormenting cramps that I
couldn't stand and made me moan. I quickly shuffled to the corner and
squatted to shit. No, there was no kind guard arriving in a hurry to offer
me a toilet chair for my comfort, as a slave I had to balance above the
hole in the floor and to manage it all alone. I had to shit in a
humiliating and dehumanizing squatting position as the chained animal I had
become.

   With my shackled left hand I tried as well as might to lift the back of
my loincloth, to keep it as far away from my ass as possible, to prevent my
only clothing from getting filthy. It was really a balancing act that I
only thanks to my athletic body could succeed in doing, while the cramps
became heavier and heavier. Than suddenly all the slave chow came out, or
at least a big part of it, in the form of shit. Well, the brown substance
at first sight didn't look very different from the unappetizing porridge
that had entered me from the front before, it only was even more evil
smelling.

   But once all the diarrhea left my body in this rather inelegant way, I
was relieved: the terrible cramps were suddenly gone. Moreover: I hadn't
made a mess of my first crap as a slave and had not ruined my new daily
dress. But, oh my God: I would also have to cope with my food, to get used
to that. Well, I indeed within a few days would, and from then on eating
the heavy slave chow, apart from terrifying my taste, wasn't a physical
problem for me any longer.

   After being emptied underneath, I swept with some straw the shit that,
because of its fluid character, had spread around the hole in the
ground. Also with help of a bundle of straw I tried to clean my ass as good
as possible, the sharp ends of it pricking into my skin. I doubted if I
also would use some of my drinking water to clean my back up, but not
knowing when my bowl would be filled up, I decided better to leave it like
that. Well, it wasn't as hygienic as it would have been with toilet paper
and a daily shower afterwards at home, and I still had to learn that living
as a slave also means living filthy, and to adjust to that fact. Then I
rose again and, having forgotten the guards outside meanwhile, moved to my
already favorite place of retirement in the back part of my cell.

   Meanwhile it must be already far in the evening, I wondered if it was
dark outside: inside I lost all sense of time. Would there arrive still
more new slaves today? Or had we to wait for them till the next morning?
Should I have stayed waiting at the grated door, in case the guards came
with new orders? But they didn't come back, feeding time was over, and
after they had taken back all the bowls they didn't show up again.

   Only much, much later did one of them return, walking slowly to and
through the corridor. And later followed the other, both their paths
crossing not far from me, i.e. halfway down the corridor, where the desk
with the third, sitting guard was positioned. Would he still be there? I
had not heard him leaving - but I hadn't paid attention all the time if he
might. As both walking guards didn't notice me, there was no reason for me
to notice them. Of course: in the total boredom of being locked up in a
small, dark dungeon, with nothing else than straw to play with and to
attract your attention, seeing your guards passing by through the corridor
on the freedom side of the solid bars that hold you captive, is the only
distraction available. But, to be honest, it's not a very big distraction
anymore, once you've seen them passing by for the nth time.

   As I was very, very tired now, I had, as said, like an animal crawled in
my chains back to the rear end of my cell to create a kind of resting place
for the night. Lying on my right side was the best, I had already
discovered, but I needed some support for my head and collared
throat. Sitting on my knees (as this was the only way to do it, as
otherwise my chains would be too short), with my shackled hands I tried to
heap up the straw against the back wall until I had created some kind of
mound to rest my head and collar on. It wasn't easy, because my chains were
constantly in the way while doing this. It therefore took a lot of time,
and some tryouts by lying down, till I reached my goal. While I was
working, my chains were clanking without interruption from the start till
the end, but at that end I was happy to have succeeded in creating a kind
of pillow of straw of sufficient height.

   So, finally I indeed was ready, and could stretch my limbs for the
night, as far as my chains allowed me to do. I moved into the desired
position, lying on my right side, with both my legs next to each other and
my hands to the right of my right leg. This in the end had turned out to be
the least uncomfortable position, when I had tried all before
feeding-time. But also lying down I was constantly aware of the heavy
shackles riveted to my wrists and right ankle, and of the connecting
chains. Above all I felt the ponderous weight of the narrow-fitting, huge
iron collar encircling my throat. I hoped, by making a pillow of straw as a
preparation for the night, all would be bearable. It was horrible.

    How the hell could I manage to sleep in those fucking heavy irons?

    I closed my eyes, but for the moment that didn't help, although it was
rather dark in my corner. After a couple of minutes I opened my eyes again
and - hey: it was dark everywhere, it was also dark outside, in the
corridor. They had switched off the lights. It was silent. Were all the
guards gone? The only thing to be heard was the very muted sound of some
rattling chains of other slaves nearby. Although I had hoped that I had
found the right position, I couldn't find enough comfort, so I again turned
and tossed, my chains following the turns of my body. I again tried lying
on my left side for a while - no, with my right anklet shackled that was
even more impractical. Lying on my back? No, that was impossible - within a
few seconds I felt strangled by the collar. So then try lying on my right
side again, without finding redemption. And so the whole search started
once more.

   Each time for several minutes I hoped that I could stand it, and that I
could forget about the tight irons riveted forever to my body. But I
couldn't. They were there all the time, and I was all the time aware of
them being there all the time. I couldn't forget that fact even for one
single moment. They were just to heavy for that. Apart from that, the
horror scenes I had gone through that day didn't go out of my mind. And
there was the soaring pain of my pierced penis and my new brand that
reminded me every moment what I had gotten into, that I had become a
slave. So I was lying there in the straw, exhausted and longing for sleep
but not being able to close my eyes.

   Panic struck me: how would this be in the future? Would I ever be able
to rest and to recover as a chained galley slave in a decent way? Would
each night to come be so hopeless? Would I have this same problem every
night? So I turned and tossed desperately in the straw of my dark dungeon,
not knowing what to do.

   And just when, finally, I was slipping away, there was suddenly some
heavy noise outside in the corridor. I opened my eyes and saw that the
lights in the corridors were on again. It wasn't completely dark in my
dungeon anymore. Outside were there now a lot of stumbling and shouting,
accompanied by the inevitable clanking of chains. A new slave?

   Curiosity on the one hand tickled me to rise to see what was happening -
there was at least something happening, and every small distraction was
welcome to interrupt the total boredom of being imprisoned in this fucking
dark stuffy hole - but my exhaustion on the other hand prevented me from
doing that. And I knew that when I got up, it would even be more difficult
to reach even the slumber of the last hour again. Apart from that, for the
time being there was nothing to see - and if the whole theatre that was
going on outside would stay at the spot were it was now, far to the right,
I would see not more of it than I had seen of the incarceration of those
two slaves who arrived after us, which meant: nothing.

   Because a kind of theatre it was. Apparently they were bringing forward
an unwilling slave - well: very much willing slaves they will not have
locked up in the last few days, I presume. Very slowly the noise came
near. There were the gruff voices of the guards barking to there captive,
who apparently was a heavy burden. Was he really resisting, or what was the
matter?

   Than, after a while of moving forward, they came really very near, to
halt. Were they next door? Was this new slave to become my neighbor, in
cell 48? Or was it still one further away? It was difficult to decide, but
I now at least could distinguish the voice of the guy that made the most
noise, it was one of the guards who also had accompanied us to our dungeons
some hours (?) ago.

   "Stop this stupid behavior, you damned slave", he shouted, "Move on".

   Than I heard some rattling of chains, and indeed the sounds came still a
little bit nearer. Now they really were next door. And now I could hear
their victim weeping, although softly, after one of the guards had opened
the grilled door of the cell.

   "Please Sir, don't put me inside there, Sir. I'm claustrophobic. I can't
stand such a small dark cell, Sir, it makes me panic!"

   "Go inside, slave 48, immediately. Your claustro.... or whatever it is
doesn't interest us at all. Go inside your cell, slave. Or otherwise we
will lock you up in a much smaller and darker one! And then you will have
to stay in that tiny place for a long time to come!"

   The fucking bastards! The poor new slave was really scared, and they
didn't give a damn for it.

   I now again heard the unhappy slave sob: "Please Sir, please..."

   "Go into your cell, you fucking slave. NOW!"

   The guard apparently lost his patience now, as I perceived that slave 48
was just shoved (instead of thrown) - the clanking of his chains sounded
relatively civilized - with some force into his cell. I then heard him
still sobbing, but the sound was muffled as the partition wall between our
cells now was in between, and the grating closing of the grated door
moreover for a while deafened it. I heard a key turned in a lock, and just
a second later the guards already walking away, leaving G-48 in the
darkness of his dungeon behind. So I had become a neighbor also on the
other side.

   Silence returning and lights being switched off at the end, my own
martyrdom, my fight against my pains and chains started again. Damn, I had
been nearly fallen asleep, and then this whole clamor outside in the
corridor! Couldn't those idiots make at least a little allowance for the
exhausted slaves trying to rest here? It must have been far past bedtime
already; this new slave must have arrived at the airport very late in the
evening. Now I was awake again, and I had to cope once more with my
shackles when trying to sleep and the panic that I couldn't.

   That not only was because of the chains. Again and again flashes of the
most terrible experiences I had had to endure on this unholy day appeared
in my mental eye, as the results of them still were especially very
painfully perceptible on two spots of my body, in the first place on my
genitals, but above all on my chest above my left nipple. The branding
iron... the branding iron... the branding iron that I suddenly had
recognized in the hands of Mehmed... the branding iron that came nearer and
nearer to me... the branding iron that touched my tender skin... the
infernal pain it caused during those horrible seconds... I closed my eyes,
but I couldn't get all out of my mind now. Again and again, when lying
down, flashbacks of those gruesome minutes repeated and repeated
themselves, only to be alternated with the thought on the collaring and
chaining, and the memory of the repelling piercing of my (up until then)
virginal undamaged cock. The flashbacks just didn't want to leave my mind,
I wasn't able to concentrate on what my whole soul and body desired and
wished for the most: to sleep.

   And in vain I tried to think over, whether I had missed any opportunity
to escape. No, there in fact hadn't been any, since I had entered this
damned building this afternoon. Not even upstairs in the reception room,
there already it had been too late - three against one.

   The last chance - had the last chance perhaps been outside in the
parking lot in front of this building? Well, apart from the fact that at
that moment I hadn't had the slightest reason to mistrust (if you do not
count the thereupon in a reasonable way explained fact that 'my' Mohamed
had not turned up at the airport, but this Mustafa), I wonder if they had
let me go at that late moment and not would have tried force, as I, by
knowing at which remote place the slavery organization had their
headquarters, could tell this to the police - if, indeed, at that moment I
had any reason for mistrust and knew that this was a slavery organization
of course!

   I suppose, in case of a hand-to-hand fight, I would have turned out to
be stronger in the end - being athletic and trained as a rower, I have a
lot of strength in my arms - than Mustafa, supposed I had to fight him
alone, he not having the opportunity to call for assistance. Also in this
respect those heavy chains had an important function to control a slave:
thanks to them even a much weaker overseer in a struggle was able to
vanquish a thanks to years of rowing very muscled slave.

   But if I had overpowered him in the parking lot indeed, and taken his
keys of the car: would I have been able to find my way back to the airport
soon enough, before HE would call the police, telling them that his car was
stolen? And whom would those local cops more likely believe: a guy, versed
in the culture and the language of his own nation, with a lot of
connections perhaps to corrupt state officials, or a foreigner, not versed
in either: I knew not very much about the Saudis, their country and their
culture - I was in the next few months to learn much more, I said grimly to
myself - and my knowledge of the Arabian language was compared to Mustafa's
small too. To be clear: it was non-existent. And I doubted if the local
police spoke Oxford English.

   So in fact, retrospectively, the moment I stepped into Mustafa's car at
the airport I was lost. Only at the airport itself had there still been a
way back - but at that time there existed no reason for retracing my steps
yet, at least not more than there had been before coming to Saudi Arabia at
all. I tried to remember if I had had any hesitation or mistrust at that
very early moment at the terminal. I had had indeed a very little, but as
it was only based on my surprise not to see Mohamed - with whom I had had
contact before - but somebody else waiting for me, there had been no real
arguments, not to follow him.

   Yes, now, looking back, perhaps there were, but what would you have done
in my place then? I could not blame myself very much for joining him in the
trip to the harbor, or afterwards for failing to escape once inside - I
only could blame myself, and indeed did blame myself very much for my
naivete, to respond to that treacherous advertisement and to take a flight
to a completely unknown country for such a special trip, without knowing
really something about the organizers. My big fault had been at the start,
and once it was made, as a consequence of that I had inevitably ended up
where I was now.

   'Looking for a unique experience?' Yes, the whole thing already now,
even before having seen one single oar, after only one single day, indeed
had turned out to be a unique experience. A damned unique experience!
Looking backward therefore, regretting my mistake, was depressing - but
looking forward was even more terrifying.

   What would it be like, to be a galley slave? To be forced to toil in
heavy chains, in the heavy chains that were already forever bolted to my
limbs for that purpose, under the hot sun and the threat of the lash, for
hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month -
perhaps year after year??? Oh, my God.... Yes, I had read in my youth
something about that, yes, I had seen that famous film Ben Hur, that
showpiece with lots of blood and whips and chains about Roman times, at the
movies years ago, yes, I did. But reading a book or seeing a film about
barbaric slavery in some distant past from a comfortable armchair isn't the
same as to experience it sitting on the hard wooden benches of a galley in
reality yourself.

   I brooded about my future, and all this worrying kept me awake. I just
failed to get all out of my mind for the necessary good rest. I because of
that must have struggled for hours, despairing that I was still awake. And
the heavy chains and collar, the physical uneasiness of having to wear and
feel them all the time, the pain of the brands and the piercing didn't help
to change that. Concentrating on trying to forget all and just on trying to
sleep didn't help, trying to think about something completely else didn't
help either.

   So I opened my eyes and stared at the dark vault of my dungeon, and then
closed them again, whereas the muted clanking of chains in some cells
elsewhere along the corridor told me that I wasn't the only one fighting
for sleep. I turned and tossed with my naked shackled body in the fuzzy
straw - well, at last, I didn't smell it so much as in the beginning, it
seemed as if I was already getting used to it - to find rest, without
finding it. But at last I dropped off to sleep. It was to be my first night
as a slave.