"More Harem Captives" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

Then, gripping them by the arm, the young pygmy led them up out of the dungeon. Peering through the small grilles of their Burkhas they saw that they were being taken down a long corridor.
Moments later, they came to a large door strengthened with iron bars. In front of it were two large armed black guards wearing smart looking red uniforms with crossed green scimitars embroidered over the left hand of the chest. They smiled at the sight of Gorka leading two tall female figures and waved him on.
The door had a modern electronic lock as well as a normal lock. Without letting the two women see what he was doing, Gorka first pressed as succession of buttons and then opened the door with a key. What, Amanda wondered, could be kept so securely locked up?
Gorka beckoned them through and then slammed the door and locked it. He looked at the two women: 'You now in harem. You slaves of Master. You no escape!'
Oh my God, thought Amanda, so they really were in a harem! And the awful thing is that no one, absolutely no one, even knew that they we were in North Africa, never mind locked up in a harem. Was this what Pierre had planned all along? Was his story of the rich investor just a cock and bull story to get us out here without any one knowing?
'Take off Burkhas!' ordered the boy, raising his dogwhip warningly. 'No men see you in harem.'
Nervously they did as ordered.
There was a murmur of female voices as Gorka beckoned them into a large room in the form of a beautiful covered courtyard. The floor was marble and the walls were bright tiles covered with gold Arabic script. The pair were so embarrassed at being half naked with their pubic hair totally removed, leaving their mounds and beauty lips on display.
They gasped as they saw some thirty or forty young women of different races, skimpily dressed like themselves, sitting on their heels in four well separated groups of large leather cushions of different colours: blue, green, red and yellow. They were laughing and whispering to each other. All of them seemed to have a shiny metal collar, made of flexible links, locked round their slim necks. A chain fastened to their collars linked some of the women and a short length of chain similarly linked the wrists of the European-looking women. On the side of each collar was plate on which something was engraved. Were these the women of the harem - their future companions?
Walking up and down between the groups of women was a large black man who was also carrying a dogwhip, like that of Gorka. He seemed to be supervising them, his eyes constantly darting from side to side. Later they would learn that this was Patak, a retired Chief Black Eunuch who was mainly used to patrol the team dormitories at night whilst the team overseers slept or to stand in for them when as now, they were all busy elsewhere.
The quick-eyed Diana noticed that two little cameras, like security cameras, were slowly training left and right across the groups of women. It was something that they were to see later repeated in every room in the harem.
Gorka led them over to a group of half a dozen young women dressed, like them, in green transparent pantaloons and green embroidered open boleros. One or two seemed European and the others more Arab or Indian looking. On their heads were little green embroidered caps and on their feet pretty little matching Turkish slippers with the points turned up. They were sitting in on green cushions. It was Diana realised the same colour as the ribbon in the turban of the pygmy overseer. She saw that their eyelids had been painted the same shiny green and that their lips glistened again with a matching green lipstick - both fetchingly outlined in black.
Hastily the women in this group all stood up respectfully at the approach of their overseer. As they did so, Diana and her mother were appalled to see that branded on their bellies was a green crest of two crossed scimitars within a black ring and below that that another branded black ring surrounding what seemed to be a green Arabic numeral. They, too, had all been depilated and their totally hairless beauty lips painted green and again outlined in black.
Astonished they saw that above the transparent pantaloons of one white woman was a well-curved belly. Clearly she was pregnant.
The women then all raised their hands and clasped their hands behind their necks. As they did so, their green embroidered open boleros slipped back, displaying their green painted and black outlined nipples. There was a distinctive tinkling noise from the belled bracelets locked round their wrists.
It was a noise that made Patak turn and look immediately towards the Green Team and then relax when he saw that Gorka was taking charge of them. Clearly, Amanda and her daughter realised, the slightest movement of their wrists would result in this tinkling noise.
'This Green Team,' said the pygmy boy proudly in a high falsetto voice, as he pointed to the women with his dogwhip. 'Me Gorka. Me black eunuch in charge of Green Team for Master, under Malaka He chief black eunuch. You already see him. All women in harem, especially white Christian, women fear us black eunuchs. You soon learn too.'
Black eunuchs, Amanda was thinking, in this day and age! No wonder they had these strange falsetto voices. But how cruelly they treat us women. She had always imagined the eunuchs would be weak creatures, but there was nothing weak about this boy, nor about that black brute Malaka.
'I team overseer,' went on Gorka. 'Here women just indentured servants like slaves. You too. All under us black eunuchs. All women in my team, they obey me. You obey me, too, or you get my whip' He pointed with his dogwhip to a long knobbly rattan cane hanging prominently on the wall of the courtyard. 'Or maybe you get rattan cane. It hurt very much. All Master's concubines frightened of rattan cane.'
Looking at it, Amanda and Diana both could not help giving a little shiver of fear. Indeed she could see that several of the women were nervously glancing at the rattan cane. What a terrible place this was.
They were even more shocked to read the big notice in Arabic on side of the rattan cane and in English on the other:
.
"Women take heed!
This cane will be used to thrash any woman:-
1. Who fails to show proper subservience to the Master at any time, stands in his presence, looks directly at him or speaks to him, without permission.
2. Who, when selected by the Master for his pleasure, does not do her utmost to give him pleasure, without seeking any for herself.
3. Who tries secretly to climax without the express permission of the Master, when pleasuring him, or during training sessions, of a eunuch.
4. Who is caught masturbating, or is suspected of masturbating whether alone or with another woman.
5. Who is impertinent, answers back or shows dumb insolence to a black eunuch.
6. Tries to see another man.
7. Allows her face to be seen by another man.

'My God!' murmured Amanda
'How awful!' cried Diana.
Gorka turned back to the team of women. 'Fall in!' he ordered in Arabic and then in English. As Amanda and Diana would soon discover, these were the only languages allowed in the harem - for the eunuchs did not want any of the women hatching any little plots in a language that they did not understand.
Quickly the women lined up as if they were soldiers on parade. How humiliating, thought Amanda, to be ordered about by a little black boy of less than half own age.
'Right turn!'
Amanda and Diana watched in astonishment as the women obediently raised their right knees and turned with military precision to their right - and waited.
Gorka now tucked his dogwhip under his arm and pulled his short handled black whip out from where it was tucked into his cummerbund.
It gave a loud crack that made the women jump. 'Blue Team - march to dormitory!' he ordered.
But the women kept quite still until he cracked the whip again - then they all stepped off like automatons, all together leading with the right foot. The girl with the big belly led them, swinging their arms and looking straight ahead, marching across the courtyard towards an alcove.
My awful, thought Amanda, grown-up women being made to obey the crack of a whip - and by such a tiny boy.
'My Green Team, best drilled team in harem,' said the boy as if reading her thoughts. Then pointing to the leading girl, he said: 'That Number 12. She Austrian. She married.'
Then he laughed aloud and added: 'Husband, he not know wife now just Master's concubine Number 12.
He turned to Amanda: 'Master like locking up Christian women in Harem - especially if married like you. He like make them carry black progeny. Number 12, she not know what she carrying. I not tell her. Maybe several pygmies, maybe giant Dinkas. She never know, for she blindfolded when she deliver for Master. Maybe Master soon like see you and daughter with pretty curved bellies, too.'
The mother and daughter both gave little shivers of fear.
'Follow me,' the boy ordered.
Watched by all the women of the other teams and feeling so ashamed at being half naked, they meekly followed their overseer through a typical Eastern open curved doorway into a large alcove.
The floor was tiled and the white walls bare of ornament, except for a well lit up, huge, enlarged photograph of a fat, repulsive and bad tempered-looking, bearded, middle aged man, wearing Arab dress.
Oh my God, thought Amanda, is that the mysterious Master that Gorka had been talking about? Were she and her daughter destined to be the helpless concubines of this repellent-looking man? She had been hoping to find a new husband and her daughter lots of boyfriends - not to be locked up as the playthings of a debauched-looking Arab.