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This story is set in Kushtia, a
narrow strip of a country that runs along the northern edge of the
Once part of the Russian empire, Kushtia is now, after a series of coups and counter coups, a (sort of) democratic republic. The Kalinin, the hereditary ruler, presides over a ruling council of elected representatives in the capital Kolin. The deep respect for tradition within the country means that almost all those elected to council are from the families that furnished the tribal leaders that had dominated Kushtia before the Russian era. Kushtia is a secular state with a slowly growing economy but still follows many of the traditional ways of its pre-Russian past. Women are largely disenfranchised and subject to men in most matters. Men may have several wives and often have concubines as well although in reality only the wealthy or tribal leaders can afford to. Kushtian society is organised around the household, a grouping of family and servants presided over by the man of the household.
Last year Dr Karen Armstrong, an American anthropologist, wrote an article on the way of life in some of the Kushtian hill tribes. It was published in National Geographic Magazine to much popular interest. Armstrong had smuggled herself into Kushtia, disguised as a boy. Travelling across the border from the north with a trading caravan, she had taken some extraordinary photographs of the life of the women of the northern tribesmen. The article described the life of the tribesmen; a very similar society to that in Kolin but without the sophistication of city life. Armstrong speculated that the growth of urban culture in Kolin would eventually dilute the primitive, traditional ways of the tribes and the change from the soviet command economy to a western market economy together with the growth of democracy would also lead to emancipation for the hill tribeswomen.
Armstrong’s article gave rise to a great deal of interest in the west for women seeking a different lifestyle and looking to discover whether the Kushtian way had value for them. One result of this was that the Kushtian Government approached UNESCO with the idea of establishing a “world heritage culture” within Kusthia. (A guide for participants in the programme is exclusively available in my Yahoo Group)
In the mean time, Dr Armstrong has been back into the Kushtian wilderness to pursue her studies further…..
Dr Karen Armstrong dropped down from the battered,
lurching, bus as it slowed passing the small temple at the end of the road
where she was staying. She just missed a deep pothole in the road and swerved
between two bicycles following the bus to make the relative safety of the
roadside. She hefted her bag onto her back and edged her way through the group
that were making their way down to the temple for
evening prayers. They seemed to take no
notice of her, ignoring what looked to them like a travel stained young man,
clad in the turban, felt coat, waistcoat and breeches of the local peasants.
The village here had proved ideal for her purpose. It was less than ten miles
from the border but that was far enough to mean that she could come and go here
as she pleased.
She walked between the small, mud brick, houses. The
leather roof coverings on their wooden frames creaked as the stiff wind swept
across the village. Her path took her towards a hut that stood a little
separate from the others. She pushed back the flap of leather that served as a
door and went inside.
“Home,” she thought as she sat down gratefully on the
straw packed mattress that was her bed. Home it was, or at least as near to
home as she could be; 8,000 miles from the
She pulled off the heavy, grey, woollen turban and
shook loose her long blonde hair. She took off the heavy grey coat and the
pouch that she wore diagonally across her chest shrugged off her waistcoat,
unfastened the toggles of the coarse undershirt and pulled it off too. She was
tired. It had been an exhausting five days. Now all she wanted to do was sleep.
She looked down at herself. Her chest was bound with strips of cloth wound
around her body in an attempt to conceal her breasts. It had allowed her to
pass as a young lad of the hill farming people for five days but for those five
days she had been in permanent fear of discovery. Five days continuously having
to watch her every move, her every word. Five days of trying to maintain the
coarse accents and grunts of the local dialect. Five nights terrified in case
she talked in her sleep or woke up suddenly to cry out in English.
She unwound the cloth strips, freeing her breasts. The
relief was extraordinary but suddenly there were these things on her chest. It
was as if they had just grown there in the instant. It was a peculiar sensation
that took her back to puberty and the time when she had first realised that her
body was changing from that of a girl to that of a woman. It called back all
the uncertainty, all the confusion of that time. She shook her head as if to
dislodge the memories. She pushed off her breeches and lay back on the
mattress. There was a large embroidered woollen rug beside the bed. She pulled
it over herself. It was time to sleep.
It was still dark when she woke. She suddenly realised
that she had no idea if she had slept for two hours or ten, she hadn’t taken a
watch with her and she couldn’t remember where it was now. She fumbled around
at the head of the bed, finding the small stub of candle that she kept there.
She pulled the Zippo lighter from the pocket of her breeches and lit the
candle. The Zippo had been the one piece of western technology that she had
permitted herself. It was possible that a young hill farmer might have such a
thing she’d argued to herself. It hadn’t attracted any attention from anyone
except from Ternet, the young man that had acted as
her guide. She could tell by the way that he looked at it every time she took
it out. She’d decided to leave it with him when she left.
The light of the candle guttered for a moment in the
draft from the door. She hunched her shoulders and then stretched her arms. Her
chest still felt as though the binding cloths were wound about it. The roof the
hut was creaking in the wind, the leather roof covering stretching and rubbing
across the timbers, the stone weights that held it down, clacking against the
walls as they swung with the motion of the roof. Apart from that it was quiet.
Quieter here in the village, she thought, than on the hill side. There, at
night, she had always had the bleating of sheep or goats, even in the dark of
the night.
She found her watch. Two in the
morning. She needed to be on her way by ten. There’d be a bus about
then. Back into town. Then she’d find a taxi. Out to the airport; well, airstrip. She wondered what they
would be using this time. A Dakota if she was lucky. There were a few of those
around. An An-2 if she wasn’t. They were the worst.
She fumbled in her pouch and pulled out the camera.
These digital cameras had made things so much easier, she thought. This tiny
box with maybe 1500 pictures in it and a lens every bit as good as the Leica she used to use. Tiny, silent, easy
to conceal, simple to use and such great pictures. The editors had been
so pleased with her last trip. “Veiled
and In Chains” the article had been titled. Sensationalised, of course, Dr
Armstrong thought. But if it got people’s interest, helped them realise there were
still people out there that didn’t live life in quite the same way as they did
in Champagne Urbana, then it was all to the good. And the paper she had
delivered had been well received in the faculty. Plus she’d had her chance to
tell her story all over the place – even
There would have been no problem getting the funding
from the university for this trip but she’d wanted to
do it herself. That way she’d have the freedom to negotiate on the best price
for the pictures. And beside it was her vacation, why shouldn’t she take it
where she wanted?
She flipped on the camera’s power switch. It gave a
quiet ping and pushed its lens forward. The glow from its tiny screen was
brighter than from Karen’s candle. There was hardly any power left in the
battery but that didn’t matter now. She thumbed the buttons that allowed her to
scroll through the pictures stored in the camera’s memory.
It was hard to tell on the screen, it was so small,
but Karen thought she’d done a good job. They looked every bit as good as the
last ones but this time the subject was more powerful yet. The pictures showed
a traditional Kushtian wedding with the gift of the
wife to the husband. There were shots of the wife before the ceremony and
after; shots that showed that Kushtian wives were
viewed as little better than slaves and shots that showed unmarried women were
treated worse. What was more puzzling though, she thought as she zoomed in on
one of the frames, behind the veil she was sure that the bride had quite
western looking eyes and, come to that, so did her maid servant. It would be
easier to tell on a bigger screen, she thought. It was funny she hadn’t noticed
it while she was there. She guessed
she’d been concentrating so much on taking the pictures that she hadn’t been
looking at the wedding ceremony in the dispassionate, focused way that she
encouraged her students to adopt.
She flicked off the switch. The glow of the camera’s
screen faded, leaving the light of the candle as the only illumination in the
room. She blew out the candle and turned over to sleep again.
She was woken again soon after by a voice outside
calling her name. “Dr Armstrong, I must talk to you.”
She recognised the voice. It was Ternet,
the guide that had travelled alongside her over the border into Kushtia. They’d shared working with the goats and sheep
that were her camouflage and his livelihood. And he’d shared her secret. She
pulled her undershirt on and went to the door of the hut. She pushed her head
around the edge of the leather flap. It was still pitch dark outside. She
looked up at a sky pierced with stars made all the brighter by the dark of the
surroundings. “Ternet?” she called.
Something heavy hit her on the back of her head. She
slumped to the ground, half out of the door of her hut, unconscious.
She
recovered stretched face down across the back of a horse. Her hands and feet
were tied. Something hard and rough was tied across her mouth preventing her
crying out. A tall man emerged from her hut clutching her saddle bag. He tossed
it across the back of a second horse. She saw Ternet
and tried to call out to him but whatever it was that gagged her
choked back her cry. The two men exchanged words. As he started to lead the two
horses away from the village she saw the tall man toss something to Ternet. The young man waved. She watched him fumble with it
and she saw the flicker of light. He’d given Ternet
her Zippo.
They got as
far as the last hut and the village well. The tall man stopped the two horses,
dropped two leather bottles down into the well and pulled them up again, filled
to overflowing. He slung them across the back of the second horse, much as
Karen herself was strung. He returned to the first horse, She
watched as he groped in her saddle bag. He pulled out her camera, snarled and
tossed it into the well. Seconds later she heard it fall into the water far
below. Her long, uncomfortable, ride into the dark of the night began.
The ride
seemed endless. They were following the track that she had used only days
before through the narrow pass that led to the Kushtian
border. Her head was aching from the blow, her mouth sore from the gag, her
wrists and ankles raw and bruised by the combination of the ropes and the
movement as the horse stepped its way uncertainly through the dark up the rocky
track. Slowly she felt she could see the approach of dawn. The darkness seemed
not quite so black. There were the anticipatory calls of the mountain vultures
in the hope that daylight would reveal some new pickings for them. The horse
stopped. The man led the two of them off of the track and began to pitch the
wooden hoop frames of a small dome shaped tent. Pulling the tent’s canopy over
the frame he weighed each corner down with rocks from the surroundings. Karen
watched as the man returned to her horse. Untying the rope that linked her
wrists and ankles under the belly of the horse, he pulled her from her mount
and carried her to the tent.
He picked
up a heavy rock, hefting it in his hands as he approached her. She looked up at
him, terrified, as he brought the rock down again and again, only inches from
her, using it to hammer a steel spike deep into the ground. He grinned at her
fear and pulled her across to the spike, chaining her wrists to it. He hammered
another spike into the floor near her feet. He stretched her out full length
and chained her ankles to that.
He left her
for a moment. She tried to pull at the chains and the pegs but with no effect.
He came back carrying one of the leather bottles. He bent down alongside her
and undid the rope that held her gag in place. As it fell from her mouth she
saw that she had been gagged with a thick stick, a gnarled joint between two
branches; a woody ball that had been pushed into her mouth and held there by a
leather thongs tied behind her head. She gasped her gratitude, trying to say
“thank you” in both the local dialect and the Kushtian
tongue. “Thanark, Thaknarish,” uncertain of the nationality of her abductor.
The man
ignored her but pressed the bottle against her lips. She took a deep drink, the
cold water stinging on the cuts and grazes in her mouth. He let her drink,
trying to avoid spilling too much of the water on the floor of the tent. He
took the bottle away, picked up the stick gag and wedged it back into her
mouth, tying it in place. Karen shook her head in desperation. The man pushed
her down to the floor and pulled a blanket over her. “Sleep,” he said, in a
deep growl. “Travel later.”
Outside the
tent the brightening sky was heralding yet another day of scorching
temperatures and skin drying winds. She tried to sleep, knowing that whatever
was to come she would need her strength, dreading the rape she felt certain
would come, fearing what else could be her fate.
The rape
never came. She slept fitfully, jerking awake from fear or her dreams or the
pain from the bruise on her head or the aching from her mouth.
She woke
again as it was getting dark, the glow of the setting sun visible through the
door of their tent. She felt a heavy weight across her belly. She looked down
to see her captor’s head resting on her, using her as a pillow. He rolled
towards her as he began to stir, grunting as he saw she was awake. He took off
her gag and gave her more water. It was warm now even though the tent had
protected them from the worst of the day’s heat. She drank what she could. He
put the gag back, tying the stick in place even more tightly. She cried out in
pain as the stick cut into the corners of her mouth again. He ignored it.
Night had
fallen. He took the tent down around her, loading the horses and leaving to the
last the release of his captive from the spikes that held her. He lifted her
up, seemingly without effort and put her across the back of the horse, tying
her in place as she had been before. She wriggled to try to turn her head to
see what she could of where they were. Featureless scrub and a few rocks gave
her no indication. There was no sign of their camp apart from the dieing embers
of the fire that her captor had lit. She realised he had used it to burn her
belongings. Nothing remained except a charred corner of the waistcoat she had
been wearing when she had returned. She was angry. He’d wanted her to see this.
He came into her view, grinning at her as he crouched down beside the fire,
poking the un-burnt corner of waistcoat back into the fire. It smouldered and
flared. He took something from his pocket, holding it towards the flames. She
realised it was her passport. He laughed as he let it fall into the fire.
He watched
it burn and then said nothing but began to lead the horses off again, trudging
slowly towards the mountains along the track that they had been following
before.
She tried
to keep track of time, jarred and bruised by every step of the horse she was
tied to. Her only view of the passing miles was the stones and dust of the
track a few feet below her face and the belly of the horse.
They
stopped. She tried to turn her head to see what was happening but could see
nothing except the flank of the animal that was carrying her. There was the
sound of voices, the guttural tones of the dialect of the town where she had
been staying. Two men talking; greeting one another. Her captor asking the other if he was ready. The other
saying yes, she can join the others.
Dawn was
breaking, the soft pink light that heralded another day of hear and dust. Her
captor came back to her horse and released her from it, sitting her down on the
ground. The other man came to join them. He crouched down beside her, taking
her by the hair and turning her face towards him. He nodded. Stood up again and
reached into his coat, pulling out a wad of the local currency. She watched as
her abductor stood waiting, licking his lips as the bills were counted. The two
men shook hands and her abductor reached down to pick her up once more. As he
carried her around the horse she saw the waiting truck.
It was an
old, weather beaten truck with a canvas cover over the rear. She was lifted up
and pushed into the back over the back board of the truck. Inside were three
other girls, each bound and gagged like herself, and a guard sat holding a
machine pistol. The guard leant across, pulled a length of chain from the floor
and looped it around Karen’s neck. A heavy padlock fastened the chain in place.
The truck moved off.
She groaned
as the truck bounced over the ruts and pits in the unmade road. “Signechi,” the guard barked, jabbing the barrel of his gun
into her ribs. He was speaking Kushtian, she thought,
signechi – silence. She tried to sit back against the
side of the truck but every lurching bound of the vehicle tossed her to one
side or another, bruising her. She tried to look around at the other bound and
chained women. Their gagged cries of discomfort had now subsided to a
disconsolate silence as they stared at the floor of the truck avoiding the eyes
of one another and their guard. Two of the other three were of Asiatic origin,
Japanese she thought. The other looked European or American. Probably
a back-packer that had found her way up here and then fallen in with the wrong
crowd. Just like she had, she thought. They all looked tired,
frightened, resigned. The two Japanese girls wore short, pale coloured dresses,
the European jeans and a t-shirt. They all looked bruised and beaten.
The truck
bounced on. Every so often there would be the piercing honk of the truck’s
horn, intended, she presumed, to clear livestock from its path. But then the
truck slowed and finally stopped.
There were
more voices. Official sounding. She assumed they were
at the border. That was good. They’d be bound to search the truck. They’d all
be rescued. She strained her ears to hear what was being said. “Warodny carbech?” asked an
unknown voice, “what are you carrying?” She heard the voice of the man that had
taken her from her abductors. “Tores carnachy,” he said. “Only meat.”
“Signechi,” the guard hissed again. She heard booted steps
outside the truck, walking towards the back. The flap in the trucks cover was
pulled back. A uniformed man put his head into the gap. “We’re saved,” thought
Karen.
“Ha!” he
said. “Tores carnachy!”
“Kurich carnachy,” the guard
replied, “fresh meat”. The two of them shook hands. Karen watched as the first
man appeared at the back of the truck. He reached into his shirt pocket and
pulled out a wad of notes. He peeled off a few and pressed them into the hands
of the uniformed man. The uniformed man laughed and waved the two of them good
bye.
The truck
started up again. Through the half open flap at the rear of the truck Karen
watched the border post slipping away behind them, the border patrol guard not
even bothering to watch the truck disappear. After a while the guard in the
truck got up, pulled the flap shut and then slapped her face for her
trouble.
They must
have driven for three hours or more, the roads becoming progressively worse,
the heat in the back of the truck rising as the night gave way to day. The
screech of gears and the straining noise of the engine told Karen they were
climbing. She tried to reconstruct the route in her head. They must have
crossed the border near the town of
The truck
bounced on without a stop. Without the opportunity to get down from the truck
to relieve themselves, the girls had been forced to
urinate where they lay. The stench in the truck was overwhelming. Flies were
starting to gather. Finally as night was falling the truck turned off the road.
The sharp jolts of the potholes gave way to a slow ballooning motion as the
truck made its way slowly across what Karen assumed was open land. They stopped and their guard leapt down.
There were more voices talking in Kushtian, some way
away so that Karen could not make out what was being said.
The guard
came back and dropped the tail gate of the truck. “Yavechi!”
he barked at the girls, “get out”. He unlocked the padlock that secured Karen’s
chain and jerked it, pulling her by her neck to the back of the truck. The
others staggered behind, linked as they were by the same heavy chain. From the
truck they were pushed into a large open sided shed. In the
middle of the shed stood a series of metal fenced pens. The four women
were driven into one, their neck chain padlocked to a large ring on the gate
they had been pushed through. The guard
took their gags from them but left their hands tied. There was a low trough in
one corner of the pen, they each drank as best they
could. The guard watched, amused, as they jostled one another, on their knees,
at the trough. They finished drinking. He changed the ropes around their wrists
for chains, added chains to their ankles, gagged them once more, this time with
leather straps and left them. They collapsed on the floor of the pen, resting
against one another, and fell into a fitful, disturbed sleep.
Karen was
woken by a combination of sounds, smells and the glow of dawn’s light streaming
through the gaps between the planks that made up the walls of the shed. They
were no longer the shed’s only occupants. The other pens were filled with
livestock of all kinds, sheep goats, yak, even, across from where they were
chained, a pair of oxen. Men were wandering up and down between the pens
peering in at each in turn, Prodding at the animals and arguing in the guttural
dialect of Kusthian that Karen recognised as belonging
to the northern hill tribes. None of the men seemed to be paying much attention
to the girls. The goats in the pen alongside were attracting more
attention.
A woman
approached the pen. Young and veiled in the traditional chanoosh. She was apparently a femnyette,
an unmarried girl of marriageable age. Traditionally girls were used to tend
livestock. She opened the gate and unlocked the padlock that fastened the
girls’ neck chain to it. “Yavechi,” she called,
tapping on Karen’s leg with the long cane that she would use to herd whatever
animals were her lot that day, “Yavechi.” She pulled
the chain taught from Karen’s neck. “Yavechi!”
Karen staggered to her feet. The others followed her example and the girl led
them from their pen down between the rows of animals towards the front of the
shed. The closer they got, the more Karen was aware of raised voices, calling
out numbers. The girl led them through a pressing throng of Kushtian
men, on into an open space beyond just as two heavily built oxen were being led
away. As Karen saw the man on the step across the sawdust filled space from her
she realised that they were in an auction ring. With the departure of the oxen,
the crowd began to thin. A small group of men stood near to the auctioneer but
there didn’t seem to be much interest. Karen could tell that the auctioneer was
trying to drum up enthusiasm but speaking so quickly that even she could not
follow what it was that he was saying.
The bidding
was perfunctory. The auctioneer called something to their herds-maiden. She
chivvied them across the ring towards where the men were standing and paraded
the girls back and forth, tapping them with her stick
to move them into the position she wanted. There still didn’t seem much
interest. Then Karen caught a few words. “Franksye”,
“Japonsye”, “Americansye”.
Interest appeared to pick up. There was a flurry of bids, quickly shouted
numbers, Karen couldn’t make out what. The auctioneer, tapped down a stone on
the post set into the ground alongside him. Karen took it as the sign that they
had been sold. He didn’t look happy at the amount of commission that he had
made on this particular lot. The girl herded them away to the other side of the
shed, still chained, still gagged.
There a
small collection of animals of various kinds stood waiting patiently. The chain
that held the four girls together by the neck was linked to the chain that
already ran from oxen to yak to mule, and on to goat. Two men appeared and
loaded saddle bags across the back of the mule. The younger of the two men
worked his way down the line of animals checking the tether of each in turn.
The first of the girls struggled as he went to check her chains. She earned a
back handed slap to the face. The other girls, Karen included, offered no resistance. He returned to the front of the small column
of animals and women and began leading the oxen away. The girls could only
follow, pulled along by the chain that linked them to the other animals,
starting on the next stage of their journey. The other man following behind,
tapping with his stick at any of the train, girl or beast,
that showed signs of slowing on the march.
They
trekked for ten miles or so. The countryside was hard. The rough stone walled
fields surrounding the village and the market soon gave way to low foot hills
strewn with rocks and scrubby, thorn covered plants that scratched at the girls
as they brushed past them. Beyond the hills they trudged into a sandy, desert
like stretch, cutting around the edge of dunes, sand bowing in their faces,
staggering as they missed their step in the loose sand beneath their feet.
The chains
were chafing at their ankles and their necks.
Karen found
it hard after her treatment over the past few days but she at least was fairly
fit, made hardy by her weeks with the Kushtians
before her capture. The others found it harder; their stumbles earned them
blows from the older man’s stick. Even Karen was handed her share of beatings.
Soon she was soaked in sweat from the heat of the sun, her body caked with
grains of sand stuck to the sweat, her buttocks and the backs of her thighs
striped with red wheals from the drover’s stick. The girl in front of her, the
European was faring no better. The two girls behind her, the Japanese, were
struggling. Every so often one of them
would stumble and as she fell the chain between them
and Karen would be jerked tight around Karen’s throat.
They
emerged from around the edge of a dune to another rocky stretch. A track took
them up over a low ridge and down again to a small stream bed. The stream
itself was dry but some pools of water remained. The two men bent to the pools
and each took a drink. They returned to the column and took each of the animals
in turn to drink, the ox first, then the yak and the mule. Finally the four
girls were herded down to the pool together. The men watched as they scrabbled
to scoop water from the dribbles remaining in the pools and then dragged them
back by their neck chains to take up their places again in the string of
animals.
The small caravan
started off again following the track, back up onto higher ground across a pass
between two scree covered slopes. Karen looked at the
others, their feet bleeding from the rough ground. All three of them looked
ready to drop. The beatings were becoming more frequent, the pace no slower.
The track they were following wound around the end of a narrow rocky gully.
Tucked against the wall of the gully was a group of low buildings, and a number
of loosely fenced animal pens. The buildings were made of roughly piled stone
walls with rusting corrugated iron sheeting roofs, the roofing held down
against the raw winds hat blew down from the mountains by a net of ropes
stretched taut by bags of rocks hanging down from the roof. The pens looked as
if they wouldn’t hold any animal determined to be elsewhere but, on the other
hand, there wasn’t anywhere for them to go. The men came and worked their way
along the chain, taking the women into one of the sheds, the animals into the
pens.
The younger
man came and took off their leather strap gags and gave them water. He unlocked
their wrist chains but fastened their ankle chains to rings in the wall of the
shed. The three women watched as the last of the daylight slipped away outside,
leaving them alone, and naked, sitting on the straw covered floor of the shed.
Karen tried to talk to the others. The Japanese girls spoke no English and she
no Japanese but she discovered that their names were Natsumi
and Miyako.
The French girl, Anouk, spoke good English,
Karen could manage some French. It was dark. They’d drunk all the water from
the small bowl and tried to bathe their cut feet, bruised arms and legs.
The younger
man came again to the shed, holding a guttering lamp that threw a shaky glimmer
on the rough stone walls of the shed. In
his other hand he held a small bucket and four tin cups. He left the bucket and
cups for the girls. They scooped greedily at the coarse pulse stew in the
bucket, gulping down mouthfuls of the gritty, stodgy mess, grateful for any
food at all.
Then the
older man came. Karen had been expecting it but still had prayed it wouldn’t
come. She knew the Kushtian man’s view of women,
their principle purpose and the man’s rights of use. She’d seen no other women
here; she knew why they’d been brought here.
He started
with Natsumi. She’d tried to cower away from him, as
if she could hide in the bare stone walled room. He ran his hands over her
body, she whimpered as he parted her thighs and pushed his fingers inside her.
He took her head turning it this way and that peering into her mouth, stroking
her hair. He seemed in intrigued by her small breasts. He gave a grunt and
turned to Miyako and then Anouk.
They faired no differently; his hands exploring every part of them, prodding,
stroking, squeezing, pinching. He gave a grunt,
seemingly satisfied, got up and came towards Karen.
She sat
quietly, staring straight at him, meeting his own appraising gaze. Her knees
were drawn up in front of her, her arms wrapped around her legs. He stood
beside her, looking down at her as she looked up at him. He shook his head. She
shrugged her shoulders, uncurled her arms, stretched out her legs. Now he
nodded, crouching down beside her. She felt his hands on her thighs on her
belly, on her breasts. They were the hands of a farmer, hard, callused. A
broken finger nail caught against her, nicking her flesh as the claw of a cat
might. He took her hair in his hands, cut short for
her disguise it was barely as long as the width of his fingers. He grunted with
disapproval and got to his feet, leaving her and the others.
Anouk
rolled over towards Karen. “Has he gone? Est-il parti?” she asked hopefully.
“For now,
but not for long I think,” Karen answered, unable to give the girl the
reassurance she begged for. She was right. They heard him returning across the
yard. As he came in they saw he was leading the younger one by the hand. He
half pushed him across the room towards Natsumi.
“Darnichi,” he said in Kushtian. “Darnichi. Fristok.”
“Take her,”
thought Karen, “take her, your first one. He’s giving him his first woman.” The
younger man smiled at the older. Karen looked to see if there was some family
resemblance. Perhaps the older was the younger’s father. The age difference was
too great for them to be brothers. Perhaps the younger worked here and the
older was seeing his young employee introduced to the ways of men. She couldn’t
tell from what was said but the younger one needed no second urging. Natsumi tried to push him away but he would have none of
it. She was young and with the strength of years of hard farm labour. She could
do little to restrain him. He coupled with her eagerly, pulling her close to
him as he entered her, ignoring her struggles and cries. They weren’t together
long. He twitched and bucked as he came, his body throwing her back beneath
him. The older man had stood by all this time watching. Satisfied that his work
was done and that the younger man was sated, he grunted and left them, the
young man laying across Natsumi
as she sobbed beneath him under his weight.
In time he
rolled off her, picked himself up and followed the older man from the
shed.
Karen’s and
Anouk’s ankle chains were just long enough to allow
them to reach Natsumi. The three girls huddled
together to gain what warmth and comfort they could from one another.
They were
not left for long. Perhaps two hours passed, maybe a little more. The four
women were curled up close to one another, sleeping. Karen stirred as she heard
noises outside, the rowdy sound of Kushtian drinking
songs. Four men appeared in the room, the older man from before and three
others all of about the same age. The older man gestured to the women. “Kurich karnachy,” he laughed
drunkenly. “Fresh meat,” as the guard in the truck had said. Two of the men
came towards Karen, grabbing her by the arms and forcing her back against one
of the four pillars that were set in a square in the centre of the room to hold
up the roof. They pushed her to her knees, dragged her arms back around the
pillar behind her, took some rope and tied it between her elbows. Her fore arms
flailed futilely. Two others did likewise with Anouk.
Miyako and Natsumi were
dragged to a similar position against two other pillars. More rope followed
fixing Karen’s ankles to the post, making sure she could not get to her feet.
The men
gathered in the centre of the four pillars, prodding and touching at the girls.
Cheering drunkenly when Anouk spat defiantly at one
of them, one of them produced a bottle and they all took a drink in turn. The
last up-ended the bottle, letting a few drips of liquor fall on the floor of
the hut. “Sparatichi,” one of them called. “Spin it?”
thought Karen. “Sparatichi! Sparatichi! Sparatichi!” the
others joined in. The man with the bottle crouched down,
placed it on the ground between the four pillars and span it. It came to
rest with the neck pointing at Karen. “Americansye! Americansye!
Americansye!” they chanted. He got to his feet
stepping unsteadily towards Karen. He pulled up his robe with one hand and
grasped the back of her neck with the other. As he twisted her hair with one
hand he pulled his cock from the breeches that he wore beneath his tunic.
Already stiff, he pushed it towards her face. Another twist to her hair brought
a yelp of pain and her mouth was filled with the stiff, salty, throbbing cock,
pressing against her throat. He pushed against her, forcing her head back
against the hard wooden pillar, threatening to knock her unconscious with every
thrust. She looked upwards at the man’s drunken grin. “Suchicki,
suchicki,” he encouraged. “Suchicki,
suchicki,” the others called out too and she knew to
suck until finally he came, his cock spurting jism
into her mouth, dribbling down on to her naked body and sticking in her
throat. The man stepped back to a cheer
from his compatriots.
A second
stepped up and span the bottle again. This time Anouk
was chosen. She sobbed, “No! No!” as the bottle stopped spinning. The slap she
earned left blood trickling from the corner of her mouth and almost knocked her
senseless as her head slammed back against the pillar. Her plea didn’t stop the
Kushtian raping her mouth.
Miyako
and Natsumi were treated the same way. All four men
sated themselves. They sat in the centre of the square of pillars surrounded by
the four sobbing, cum choked, women, drinking from another bottle. Laughing and
chatting, their tunics pulled up around their waists, comparing the lengths of
their cocks until the bottle was empty and they went their separate ways. Still
bound, each to their own pillar, the girls were left in excruciating
discomfort, groaning in pain and shame as the night wore on, unable to free themselves.
It was the
young man that came to release them. Annouk and Natsumi fainted as their arms were freed from the pillar,
falling limply to the floor of the shed. He made sure their ankles were still
chained but left them to recover.
Karen was
dragged to one corner of the shed. A heavy stone quern, sat beside a sack of
grain. The young man fixed her ankle chain to a ring in the side of the quern
and picked up a small tin cup, scooping grain from the sack into the quern. He
pointed to the peg in the quern’s upper stone and made a rotating motion with
his hands. Karen knew what he wanted. She set to grinding the grains, realising
that if there was no flour there was little chance of food.
She watched
as he went back for Anouk. Gripping her neck chain he
pulled her to the far side of the shed. A large copper pot stood on a low
burner. An old, wizened woman appeared, carrying a large basket, a heavy pair
of wooden sticks, a wooden board and a stone. She tipped the contents of the
basket onto the floor beside Anouk. Bundles of cloths
fell at her feet. The old woman picked up a heavy woollen shirt. She waved it
at Anouk, then at the copper, then at the wooden
block. She made a pounding motion with the stone on the wooden block to drive
home her point. She spat on the floor and left. Anouk
had her instructions, she was left to get on with
washing the clothes.
Miyako and
Natsumi had suffered most on the trek the day before
and could barely get to their feet when the young man came to set them to their
task. He dragged them outside. At first Karen couldn’t see what had happened to
them. She heard the sound of Kushtian curses, the
crack of a stick and the cries of the girls. This was followed by a creaking,
groaning sound of wood working against wood.
She caught
a glimpse of the two girls through the crack between the shed’s door and the
wall. Miyako and Natsumi
had been harnessed to a wooden yoke, the yoke in turn
was fixed to a heavy beam, pivoted at its middle. At the other end of the beam
two donkeys were harnessed to a similar yoke. All four trudged in a circular
path, pushing the beam before them.
Karen heard
another sound as the two girls and the two mules trudged on; splashing water.
She realised what it was that Miyako and Natsumi were doing. They and the mules were driving a pump.
The beam would be driving a chain of buckets, lifting water from a deep well.
They walked on throughout the morning, the sounds of the water punctuated by
the moans of the girls, the bray of the donkeys and the crack of a cane.
It became
the pattern for their days. Permanently naked, permanently shackled, two of
them would be yoked to the pump for the morning, the
other two would work at the quern, the washing or the baking. They would have a
short break in the middle of the day. All four would work on household tasks
for the afternoon. They would be fed in the evening, barely enough to keep them
working, a cold porridge of grains mixed with a little watered down goats milk.
Then the men would take one or other of the women into the back of the shed to
help them pass their evenings.
They had
little chance to talk, a few words exchanged as the collapsed onto their pile
of straw to sleep at night, if neither of the men were around. They could do
little more than try to comfort whichever of them had been used most badly in
the day, whichever had been most blistered by being harnessed to the pump,
whoever had been most abused by one of the men. Between them they tried to hold
on to each other, helping each to survive. Anouk even
managed a joke, “It’s not so bad,” she said, “not so different from what my old
man used to expect, apart from the pump. He just wanted fucking, food and
washing.”
© 2007 Freddie Clegg
All characters fictitious.
Dr Armstrong also features briefly in Freddie’s story “Market Forces” available here.
Download PDF copies of other Freddie Clegg stories at :
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/
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