Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2013 00:54:16 +0100
From: Ben Hur <ben-hur-of-judah@outlook.com>
Subject: The Unique Experience Part III

   Of what happened to me in the next minutes I still after three years
remember every second. Those were the most horrible minutes of my life, as
they saw my irreversible physical transformation from a free man into a
chained slave. All my present-day fellow-sufferers at the oars must have
gone through those terrifying minutes just before or just after me, and I
am totally sure they will remember them in detail as the most horrible of
their lives too.

   For all those who are still free men in Europe or America, living their
luxurious lives in great wealth and indolence, without permanent fear for
the lash or any corporal punishment whatsoever, it will nearly be
impossible to imagine what that means, to become transformed from a free
man into a chained slave. I am rather sure about that, as the same was the
case for me up to three years ago, being used to live the same luxurious
life untill the gates of hell suddenly opened for me on this fateful day in
June I already talked about: I had'nt the slightest idea. I was as
unprepared to become a slave as you still will be unprepared to become one
and thus to read about what it REALLY means to become one. I didn't even
know this kind of cruel slavery still existed, that such a thing was
possible, without the Human Rights Commission of the U.N. intervening
immediately: to operate a galley propelled by chained slaves.

   Of course, I had seen the famous film Ben Hur in the cinema, with those
crude scenes on board a galley; but that what one sees there about the
Roman world of the first century on the screen might happen in reality at
the start of the twentyfirst century, surpassed my imagination. And now I
indeed seemed to play a role in such kind of scenery: that film suddenly in
a way became unmitigated reality - MY reality. You will perhaps remember
the scenes of Ben Hur with his fellows toiling on the oars inside the
galley, the chaining of the slaves to their seats when the sea battle
started, the merciless handling of the whip by the overseers to force them
to row much harder than they ever thought they could. All made a lasting
impression on me when I saw the film some years ago, and those scenes will
perhaps reappear in your mind's eye when reading this. They at least came
back to me in those unhappy minutes when I passed the corridor from the
first room (where I was registered and then confronted totally unexpectedly
with my new fetters) to the next room that for you as a reader is still
ahead.

   But believe me: in no way such short film scenes can even give a minimum
of an idea of what it really means to become a galleyslave. You may SEE the
whip handled in the film, hitting the back of some well-paid and well-fed
actor, but you don't really feel it on your own back. You may SEE a slave
being chained, but you don't feel the weight of the heavy shackles
yourself, a permanent weight, being there all the time without any chance
of escaping it, day and night. You may SEE the slaves straining at the oars
for some minutes - not for more than some minutes, because otherwise the
cinema-goers might start to get bored - but you cannot have any idea about
straining at the oars for hours and hours, doing such a boring job
yourself. In the cinema you would have fallen asleep by watching it already
after only one percent of the rowing time per day of a slave is finished,
but I guarantee you: as a slave you haven't the possibility to fell asleep
after that one percent is over.

   What you miss as an outsider is the real experience - the unique
experience my abductors would entitle it sarcastically - of having to do
that. What you miss in the film is the torturing pain, the exhaustion, the
sweat, the heat - do not forget the sweat and the heat! - and the smell of
all those tormented slaving male bodies packed together on a narrow
ship. No film can bring you even close to the complete experience of the
life of a galleyslave.

   It is much more horrible than you ever can imagine - as it became much
more horrible than I imagined at that moment, and there is no reason to
suppose that your imagination, reading this in your spare time - a slave
hasn't any spare time - at the beach or in your armchair, is bigger than
mine was, when I read such stories in my spare time once. So I have to warn
you, before reading further: I don't promise you a rose garden and will
utterly do my best to describe in the most intense and explicit way, to
help you to understand and imagine slightly what it is, to become a
slave. So if you are not prepared mentally for getting an at least in some
degree realistic - but still insufficient - look on the horror of real
slavery, you had better stop reading now.

   The pain I had to endure after entering the second room, the physical
and the psychological pain, far surpassed what I had endured in the
reception room. There I had been slapped in the past few minutes several
times in the face - that was a heavenly soft stroking of the senses
compared with what was to happen to me in the forthcoming hour. There I was
threatened with all kind of horrible treatment that indeed made me anxious,
although I at the same time somewhere still didn't really believe that
those threatenings could become real: that was beyond my imagination,
beyond that of a western guy like me living in the beginning of the
twenty-first century. But now that threatening future for me became the
actual present - from which there was no escape.

   But I only slowly adapted mentally to the fact that there was no escape
indeed, because between being turned into a slave factually and regarding
yourself as a slave there elapses some time. All new slaves in the
beginning, after their enslavement, of course struggle vehemently -
mentally and a lot also physically - against their fate, against the fact
that they have become slaves and will stay slaves for the rest of their
life. All new slaves have to be broken, to become convinced with force that
they better give up their own will - ALL their own will - and have no other
choice than to obey. All new slaves need time before they have adapted to
and accepted internally their new way of 'life' - if you indeed can call
this 'life'.

   Of course I myself also needed some time to learn to behave and to think
as a real slave. Because that means you never doubt any longer about what
you yourself would want, but you always doubt about what your overseer soon
might want - and you try to anticipate that to avoid a stroke with the
bullwhip. Because that's the real horror of slavery, I would get acquainted
with soon: the need, just for your own bodily self-preservation, to give up
your own will and your own personality totally, and to treat your body
henceforth as just the tool of the will of somebody else, the person who
owns you and has total power over you.

   Of course, in the minutes I passed this corridor to hell I didn't
realize all this, and of course I was even less prepared for that
mentally. Although I in fact had lost my freedom, for just that reason I
hadn't stopped thinking of myself as a free man! And the last kind of
person I would have thought of myself as being at that unfortunate moment
was as a slave. You might understand that just being completely nude -
apart from wearing a loin cloth - is not enough for that, not sufficient to
realize such a gigantic mindshift. I - as most others in my place would -
needed more than just that. And before you may worry: there indeed was more
to come.

   The real horror started already in the next room, so before I had to go
downstairs to join my new oarmates - a horror of a kind unimagined and in
fact unimaginable for everybody who hasn't endured it, or at least
witnessed it in reality. For that reason, hoping you might at least catch a
glimpse of it, I will describe in as much detail as possible what happened
to me in those terrible next minutes in which I became a slave, to make my
atrocious fate clearer. So I suppose that you will forgive me that I now
move on with my story.

   That means: I entered the door at the end of the dark corridor I already
talked about - and backed out in a reflex after entering, overwhelmed and
frightened by what I saw. The door opened into the corner of a big room
which was not as dark as the corridor, but still much more dusky than the
well-illuminated reception chamber. Imagine a square hall, at least a
hundred feet wide and deep, with a floor of dark-gray stone tiles and a
flat concrete ceiling no less dark. Gloomy walls of bare brick without any
apertures encircled this space on three sides; only the fourth wall, the
wall directly to the left after entering, had a few small windows, which
allowed some dimmed daylight to enter; it seemed as if there existed some
inner court on that side.

   Rather near to the entrance I perceived a kind of wooden bench, in a
square position to the route we had to follow to reach it. Next to it stood
a big iron structure with the contours of an X topped with a flat plate
that of course, as I realized within a few seconds, was an anvil: the anvil
they, as I presumed rightly, would use to rivet the shackles and chains to
my limbs I was carrying now in my hands. I shivered, not for the first time
this day.

   Behind the anvil waited - yes, clearly waited, waited for me - a big
muscular guy, wearing a big leather apron, the upper part of his sweating
body completely naked. It was rather warm inside - especially compared to
the cold corridor - and as he had to do (as I would find out very quickly)
a rather strenuous job, it was logical that he wasn't dressed in more than
the most necessary garments. Just next to him, behind the anvil, I saw a
small table and a kind of brazier. There was a small coal fire in it, with
a lot of red-hot coals, and their blaze of contributed to the high
temperature in the room.

   Of course the bench, the brazier, the anvil and the man didn't fill out
the whole room. Behind them and to the right of them stretched some other,
but much bigger wooden benches, placed against those three walls which were
without windows. They did take up nearly the whole length of each of
them. As distinct from the bench in front of the big man none of them was
empty, on the contrary. Near to the bench at the far end of the room,
turning his back to us, stood another big guy, dressed the same way as the
man waiting for me at the anvil.

   One of those benches, that one immediately next to the door through
which we entered, was totally occupied by rows after rows of thick oval
shackles, of the same kind as I was carrying with me. I couldn't count them
so quickly, but there at least must have been a few hundred on
display. Clearly they were of different sizes, from rather small to
sizable, of course to be able to find the right narrow fit for all new
slaves - now it suddenly became clear to me why Ahmed had measured my
ankles and wrists a number of minutes ago. The quantity of those shackles
was impressing and alarming. I then realized that my seat and slave number
was 46, so I could imagine how many rowers there would be at a minimum on
the galley - and perhaps many more. Supposing that they would be all
chained and shackled the same way, you can calculate how many shackles at
least were needed for all slaves together.

   The shackles displayed were all still separate, lacking any connecting
chains. But being short of chains both guys in this room surely were
not. The bench to the wall on the right was full of them - just
chains. Dozens and dozens of them laid there stretched properly next to
each other. Although I had no measuring tape handy, I could figure out that
they must have circled the length of the chains in my hands, and were meant
to connect the separate shackles on the first bench. For that task there
apparently stood a burning furnace in the corner between both benches. That
was the reason why I had had to wait for a while in the reception room
after they had measured me: Ahmed had to give my measurements to the third
guy of our company, who then in this room had ordered the welding together
of the right shackles and chains to the set of heavy slave irons I was
carrying in my hands now.

   Then there was a third bench at the far end of the room, where the
second guy wearing a leather apron stayed. Between it and the second bench
there was a burning furnace too. But it was too dusky in that corner for me
to tell from that distance what exactly was resting on the bench, but this
surely was a heap of other iron items. I at least saw curved pieces of
metal shining in the few lights hanging from the ceiling. I could only
figure out that there again was quite a lot of it in stock, and I didn't
doubt already that it would in some way find its way to adorn new slaves
too.

   I shivered again. It was such a mass, all those shackles and chains seen
lying together, that I became intimidated by it still more than I already
was. This whole thing, this whole procedure I apparently had to go through
before entering the galley, was looking in every respect very well
contrived. They certainly weren't doing it for the first time now, it must
all have become mere routine for them. Also in that respect I was just a
number for them - many having processed before, many processes still to be
done after me.

   There therefore must be a big, professional organization behind all
this, otherwise this wouldn't be possible. I was overpowered by a feeling
of loneliness, by the starting sense that I by myself didn't have a chance
against the mighty powers in whose hands I had fallen. This was real
traditional slavery on an unimaginable huge scale, with no way for the
individual slaves to escape their fate. How many unhappy captured guys by
means of whatever tricks, I wondered in bewilderment, had already gone down
this frightening path before me?

  Of course I saw and felt this all only in a quick flash - it takes me
much more time to write it down now than it did to recognize it at that
very moment then. I in fact hadn't much time to look around in detail at
all, as I, after having backed away shortly after entering, was pushed
forward by Ahmed.

   "Move your despicable body to that wooden bench, slave".

   And to the guy waiting behind: "Omar, here is G-46. We leave him to
you".

   Trembling through fear I covered the few paces that separated me from
the wooden bench. When I reached it, Omar took the chains out of my hands
while saying:

   "Lie yourself down on the bench, slave. Your head at the far end, your
feet at mine".

   I positioned myself in the ordered way on the bench. The wood felt raw
and hard under my naked skin. It was very uncomfortable to lie there in
this position, without any support for my head, although the bench was
sloping up in that direction, so that I would have a good view of what
would happen at the lower end.

   If this was intended, for psychological reasons, to make a new slave
more aware of the fact that he has become a slave by seeing himself getting
his chains riveted on, I would never know. But as the organisation behind
this galley fleet already had shown me that it knew what it was doing and
seemed to have thought the whole arrangement all over into every detail
before, this seemed rather plausible to me. As indeed it is a very acute
experience to watch yourself being chained with the help of heavy slave
irons for ever.

   While I was getting into position, Omar disentangled the chains with a
lot of clanking - what until now had been a disorderly heap of irons in my
hands - by spreading them carefully on the floor, straightening out all
twisted links and opening the cuffs, to have them already in perfect order
when the moment had come there to rivet them on.

   I now, from my uneasy position on the hard bench, could distinguish
better, how the whole set was arranged: one shackle was clearly bigger than
two others - so one would be destined for an ankle, both others for my
wrists, I supposed. The fetter for my feet was in the middle of the set,
connected with separate chains of the same length with each of both the
apparent manacles. Both those connecting chains were linked to the same big
ring that itself at its turn was driven horizontally through a hole at the
flat extension of the fetter, that had its opening on that and its hinge on
the other side.

   On that other side, next to the hinge, with the help of a small
welded-on clip, a second and even bigger ring was attached, its diameter
being nearly as much as that of the whole cuff itself. In contrast to the
other ring, after the fetter would have been riveted to my foot, it would
stand up in a vertical position. It led to nowhere, so I wondered what its
function might be. Within twenty-four hours I was to learn.

   The manacles were completely identical (well, being symmetrically and
well-grown my wrists have the same size), and in their case the chains,
built up from thick links, were also connected to the cuffs with the help
of a ring that was driven through their flat ends at the side where the
manacles opened.

   I hadn't much time to study it more intensively - I would have plenty of
that later - as the process already started. For in the meantime the other
guy with the apron had neared our group, to accompany Omar. Apparently he
was his assistant, at least in practice he soon turned out to be
that. After he had joined in, Mohamed and Ahmed left - knowing that I
hadn't any chance to escape with three men still in the room - through the
door to the corridor, while the third guy stayed inside.

   I had put myself down in such a way that my whole body from top to toe
was on the bench, but that was not intended - my ankle had to reach the
anvil. For that reason the assistant just pulled me rather coarsely by my
legs in the right direction and I felt the bench's wood chafing my
back. One of my legs, the left one, he then pushed aside, they needed only
the other, my right. Omar at that moment already had picked up the fetter
intended for my right ankle, leaving both manacles on the floor; the
connecting chains were hanging downwards.

   Then he placed the fetter in an open position on the anvil - the lower
half oval with the opening left, the hinge in the middle, the upper half
oval upside down to the right, seen from my perspective. I regarded it with
abhorrence. The assistant lifted my ankle, and then lowered it into the
lower half of the waiting opened cuff. The soft skin at the back of my
ankle touched cold, hard, inflexible steel. I shivered.

   Omar thereupon turned the other, upper half counter-clockwise around the
hinge, till its flat end met the flat end of the lower half. Now the skin
at the front of my ankle had the same experience as the back had had a few
seconds before. I heard a short pang, when both ends of the cuff met. It in
fact didn't make very much noise in reality, but to me it was so ominous
that it sounded like a loud bang. The fetter was closed now and made a
perfect oval - with my ankle caught in between.

   How to describe my feelings at this moment! My right ankle was encircled
totally by a band of thick, infrangible steel. It was a very narrow fit, I
wouldn't be able to get even one finger between my skin and the shackle, I
felt the heavy iron everywhere around. Oh, my God!

   That it is better for a shackle around your ankle to have a narrow fit
than a looser one - escaping it is anyhow impossible - I would learn to
understand later: the narrow fit gives the shackle a more steady grip on
your ankle and holds it more easily on the same place, reducing the risk of
painful chafing your skin or bones through rubbing while you are moving or
walking.

   Whereas the third guy watched the whole from a small distance, strictly
surveying that I wouldn't try to escape again - well, I wouldn't try that -
the assistant kept the fetter around my ankle firmly locked with both his
hands. Omar then took a rivet and a pair of tongs of the table next to him
and put his instrument, holding the rivet firmly in the red-hot coals of
the adjacent brazier.

   With horror, the next few seconds I saw the rivet gradually change its
color from dark black to fiery red.

   It took perhaps half a minute, then Omar, taking fast hold of the rivet
with the pair of tongs, turned to me and said: "Now lie totally still,
slave, so nothing bad happens accidentally".

   I trembled more than ever now, as Omar approached with his pair of
tongs. My first impulse was to try to free myself again, to escape this
horror, but the assistant's grip around my shackled feet was too strong, so
I had no chance of succeeding. Apart from that, there was also the third
man standing to my left, watching me carefully and of course prepared to
intervene immediately in case I might resist. So I resigned myself.

   When the assistant pushed the cuff encircling my ankle firmly downwards
on the anvil, Omar inserted the hot glowing bolt into the small hole to
rivet both flat ends of the fetter together. As it entered, I felt the heat
spreading slowly through the steel, reaching my skin. But there was nothing
I could do to stop it.

   Keeping the rivet inside the hole with the pair of tongs in his left
hand, Omar took a big hammer from the table and gave a first blow with it
on the nose of the rivet. Wham! My whole body shook by the force he used.

   Wham! A second hammer blow. My body shook again.

   Wham! A third one. Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham!

   With each blow on its nose the tapered rivet drove a little further into
the hole. Seven blows in total apparently were necessary to drive it far
enough, so far that it would never come out without the help of some strong
instruments.

   It was a horrible experience! Each blow echoed off the walls, and to me
it was as if Omar had hammered on my head instead of on my fetter. I can
assure you, this really makes you aware of the fact that you have become a
slave.....

   After seven blows Omar stopped. My ankle in the meanwhile had got rather
warm by the heat spread by the inserted rivet. The thick, now inescapable
steel of the shackle started to become painful, burning my skin.

   Luckily, the third guy, who had withdrawn while Omar was hammering, now
returned with a bucket of water that apparently had stood in the corner,
but that I had not noticed until now. It was used to cool the rivet - and
by doing that the rivet expanded thanks to the cooling, making it
completely irremovable.

   Tschhhhh......

   Cold water was thrown over my fettered ankle, and with a noisy hissing
the burning steel gradually took on a normal temperature again, that of my
body. I breathed again - but not wholeheartedly, as I knew something
irreversible had happened: my first shackle now was securely riveted on.

   It soon was time for the next. The assistant ordered me to sit upright,
while moving myself further in the direction of the anvil. When I tried to
do so, he lifted my shackled foot from the anvil to lower it on the
floor. Rattling chains - this time connected to my body! - again
accompanied this move. Now, with both my feet again touching the floor, for
the first time I suddenly felt the immense weight of my new fetter pushing
painfully on my ankle bones. This stuff surely wasn't designed for running
away fast!

   After I moved into the right position, sitting on the end of the bench
with my face to the anvil, the assistant picked up one of the manacles
still resting on the floor, and, accompanied again by a lot of rattling of
the chain that connected it to my riveted fetter, heaved it on the anvil,
again in an open position, with the chain and the opening to the left and
the hinge to the right. Thereupon I was ordered to put my right wrist in
it, after which the assistant closed this second cuff. Meanwhile Omar ...

   "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!"

   Suddenly there was an infernal screaming that came somewhere from beyond
the wall at the far end of the hall. It was muffled by the stone wall in
between, but nevertheless it pierced my very marrow. It clearly was the
shriek of a man, the shriek of somebody who was being tortured in a
terrible way. I stiffened.

   Totally upset, I gazed in the direction whence it came. What were they
doing there to who presumably would be another slave, the last unhappy
creature caught before me? What more had I to endure in the coming minutes
than I already had? The horrible sound must have lasted for at ten, fifteen
seconds - not more, but to me they seemed hours - and then gradually faded
out.

   What did happen over there, behind that closed door at the far end of
the hall, next to the bench where the assistant had stood as I was shoved
by Ahmed into this room? Bewildered I looked at Omar, at his assistant, at
the third guy, looking for an answer to this question. What the hell was
going on here?

   Neither Omar nor both of the others even raised an eyebrow when that
ghastly cry pierced the space we were in. Nor did they do so when I looked
to them for an answer. They continued their work without any interruption,
as if this were totally normal for them at this place, such a kind of
infernal screaming - and perhaps it was.

   So, while I was panic-stricken again, Omar started to rivet my first
manacle. I was really in a shock now, so I in a way only through a blurred
window noticed what was happening to me. I only came to myself a little
when Omar, having heated the bolt and having put the burning piece with
that pair of tongs inside the hole of the cuff while I was mentally absent,
started to use his hammer again. Again seven blows, and the seven blows
made me return to reality.

   Then there was the splashing of cold water again, on my hand this time,
and when I, now totally awakened, looked to my right wrist after that, it
was shackled too, connected by a heavy chain to the fetter around my right
ankle, of which ponderous weight I became aware immediately in the moment
the assistant removed my wrist from the anvil: it took some force not to
have my right arm pulled down along my leg by the heavy chain. O my God:
and this I would have to wear forever, while rowing on the galley?

   The same procedure then was repeated for the last shackle, the manacle
for my left wrist. Everything was now attached in reverse, left becoming
right and right becoming left, the hinge being on the outer side, now on
the left, the rivet on the inner side, where the chain to the fetter round
my ankle was attached, thus on the right.

   Now that all was done and my irons were riveted on, I was ordered to
stand up. A new rattling of chains made me immediately aware of my new
state as a slave. I felt the heavy weight of what at least should be twenty
pounds pulling on my limbs; on each of my manacles jerked a heavy chain,
connected to the thick fetter around my ankle. Standing upright, the chains
were just long enough to raise my hands to halfway up my chest; but it was
much more comfortable - if this is the right word - not to try to lift
them, but to let my arms hang alongside my torso and thighs. Then at least
a part of the weight of my whole set of irons was resting on the floor.

   I tried to make a step: it was extremely heavy to do so, and it needed a
lot of energy. No: escaping wasn't possible anymore, those damned slavers
could be sure about that.

   Omar looked satisfied, having for the nth time chained a new slave, and
the third man, being superfluous for watching over me from now on as I was
securely chained, left the room in the direction of the corridor I had
passed some minutes ago - the last unfettered minutes of my life. Two men
would be sufficient for guarding me - in fact, one could do the job. There
was no risk that I would run away - indeed I would never be able to run in
the future anyway.

   But the worst was still to come.