The buyers were wandering past the platform to inspect the goods. They, too, came from everywhere, all shades and races, Tauregs, Berbers, Turks, tribesmen from the nearby Dogon villages. I saw Arabs from the Persian Gulf with distinctive beards and chequered headdresses. There was a woman in a blue burkha, her face hidden by a mask. I saw two black men in white suits, men with scarred cheeks, monarchs in animals skins, and I saw a white man in a linen suit, polished brogues and a pale blue tie speaking French with a man who could have been an Aztec in a cloak woven from feathers. They came closer.
The white man was English. I knew by the way he spoke French, good but imperfect, like Daddy. He could have been a member of the same club. He stopped to look up at me, the blonde floss between my legs, the cobalt stripe dividing my breasts, my green eyes. He turned to the man with him.
‘C’est une sauvage!’ he said and looked back at me.
‘I’m English,’ I said. ‘Help me? Please can you help me?’
He stood back, surprised, offended, as are some people when they come across a beggar asking for change in the street. His jaw locked, but his eyes remained mobile, icy. They were leopard’s eyes, and I looked away, across the crowd. I was a slave in a market that was coldly secular in that tropical waste. There was no escape. For thousands of years girls have been stripped, strapped, enslaved and sacrificed. Man can’t stop poisoning the air, cutting down the rain forests, killing the last rare species of animals and plants. Was there any reason to believe slavery and the sex trade would ever end?
Tears touched the corners of my eyes. The sky was pink, the sun laying out a matador’s cape over the Sahara. Night would soon be falling. You go through darkness one step at a time. I looked out at the multitude, searching every face. I wanted to believe Samir was out there, that he had come to find me, but the dream was hopeless.
The old man in the white djellaba climbed up with his ledger behind a lectern, hammered his gavel on the wooden top and the auction began. He announced what I assumed was Lot One in a voice raked by tobacco smoke and the men in the clearing responded with bids in a polyglot of languages. I understood the numbers, one, ten, twenty, but had no notion of the currency they traded in, dollars, franc Africaines, Krugerrands.
The lots went quickly. A Chinese man in a red suit with shimmering silver threads bought the twins and his rivals clapped, the crowd parting to allow him to claim his goods. The woman in the mask, the wife of one of the Gulf sheikhs, acquired a small submissive girl with timid eyes and I imagined she would spend the rest of her life in Saudi or Dubai cleaning, mending, making do, sewing at once in double thread a shroud as well as a shirt.
There are more sophisticated ways of trafficking people, but this nameless clearing where the trade routes crossed was a bridge to the past, a reminder of the myth of Timbuktu. While we are busy making wars to bring democracy and western customs to Africa and the Middle East, in the third world, the old world, the people continue their ancient traditions. This wasn’t merely a slave market, it was a demonstration of defiance.
An aloof girl from India, an arrangement of jewels on fine chains running from her nose to her top lip and down to her belly button, was caught in a bidding war between the king in animal skins and a man whose coiled whip completed the ornate costume of a Maharajah. When he outbid his rival, the Maharaja snapped the whip in the warm air to celebrate. The girl shuddered, her features revealing pangs of agony and ecstasy that I recognised, and I desired only that she learned to appreciate the ambiguous joys of discipline.
There was a roar and a fresh round of applause when the Massai strutted up and down the platform. I had seen anorexic mannequins on the catwalk with the same loping gait, the same vague expression, and it is strange but true that even the highest paid model is no more than a slave to commerce. The Massai was purchased by a swarthy, barrel-chested man with a knife scar across his eye and down his cheek. He immediately fastened a leather collar around the girl’s neck and marched expressionless across the clearing like a circus performer leading a wild cat.
The girls had all gone. I was alone, centre stage, the last rays of the sun like a spotlight. The musicians played, the bids came from every direction, the sum and the excitement mounting. Among those exotic girls I was a rarity, a milky-skinned blonde with emerald eyes and a tattoo. I tried to see myself as they saw me and, with hazy vanity, I thought I was worth my weight in gold.
The bidders approached, predators stalking their prey, the Englishman, the man from China, the tallest of the sheikhs, a Taureg in blue with tattoos on his face, a nomad who had stopped wandering or was seeking someone to wander with. Would it be such a terrible life, I wondered? I had crossed the Sahara. I belonged to the desert. I caught his eye. I smiled. I willed him to win.
One hundred.
Two hundred.
This thousand, that thousand.
The numbers rose. The auctioneer pointed his mallet like a compass needle, his smoky voice rising to fever pitch.
At the back of the crowd were two black men in white suits, white shirts and white ties. I had seen them earlier. Now, they edged forward. At the same time, they were leaning into each other as if to whisper secrets. They seemed to have come to a decision.
The bidders were shouting, but now one of the two men in white raised his hand and called out a figure that drew a gasp from the crowd. The gasp was followed by silence. The highest bidder at an auction is like an Oscar winner, an Olympic champion. Other men get a tingle in their groins and look on in awe tinged with envy.
The auctioneer stroked his moustache. He closed his ledger with a boom that echoed through the silence. He glanced at the Englishman, the Chinese man, the sheikh with cunning eyes, the Taureg. He glanced over that sea of faces and pounded his gavel down on the lectern.
‘Sold.’
The men in the clearing in the last light of day cheered and they weren’t cheering for me. They were cheering for my owner.
Ali-Sayad approached the platform and gave the man who had bought me my clothes wrapped in the turban. The man tucked the bundle under his arm and the two men bowed in a way that would have been oddly moving had my situation been different.
I followed my new master, eyes glazed. I tried to keep my back straight, proud like the Massai, and I wondered how my life would have been had the Chinese man bought me and I’d left with the twins. I was relieved not to have been sold to the man with the leopard eyes. Whatever indignity awaited me, it would have been far worse had the tool of my torment reminded me of Daddy.
We were joined by the other man in the white suit as we moved through the circle of tents. I thought we were going back to the river, but they turned in the opposite direction. We crossed the dust to the airstrip where the pilot and co-pilot were starting the Cessna. We climbed aboard. I was told in perfect English to dress. I strapped myself into the safety harness and the plane took off into the dark sky.
We flew at low altitude due south over Burkina Faso and Benin towards Lagos on the coast of Nigeria. The pilot never spoke to air traffic control, but the two men talked, their language drifting in and out of English. I didn’t speak to them and they didn’t speak to me. It was as if we had made a pact and I thought the less said the easier it would be for me to keep my wits about me. I was going to be raped, tortured, they would break my will and I would comply to their every demand, to every man’s sadistic invention.
The terror gripping my mind was so exhausting I slept and the sun had already risen when I opened my eyes. The dry desert plains had turned into bush and jungle. As the plane banked, I could see out of the window the green landscape vanishing below a tide of cement and glass, the tall buildings owned by bank and oil companies surrounded by mile after mile of slums, the biggest city I had ever seen.
We landed, bouncing over the ribbed surface of the runway. A Mercedes was waiting. I sat in the back with one of the men, the other climbed in the front and the driver took off, the sun beating on the black metal outside, the
air conditioning whispering over my bare feet.
We crossed a bridge, it was miles long, endlessly long. I thought about leaping from the car, swimming back to Lagos, but we were going too fast and the automatic locks had been engaged.
Beside the highway the land was flat, the bush dotted with gnarled trees like bent spirits fleeing from the city. Time did its thing and passed.
‘What month is it?’ I asked.
The two men seemed surprised that I had a tongue.
‘October,’ one of them replied.
‘October?’
‘The twenty-fifth.’
Three months had passed since I left the beach. It was a time as short as it is long and, again, I got the feeling that measuring time by the movement of the clock and the motions of the universe was spurious. Twenty minutes waiting for the Tube and a night with Samir were both forms of eternity.
The highway narrowed and we turned on to a track overhung with mature palms, thorn trees, trees laced with creepers and beards of twisted vine. We turned again and reached a clearing where a cement single-storey building stood surrounded by high walls and iron gates.
The driver parked. There were several luxury cars, a swimming pool with leaves floating on the surface. The building was like a fortress with grilles over the windows and double doors where a man sat nursing a rifle. Although unadorned outside, inside it was as lavish as any ambassador’s residence I had ever seen.
From the marble hallway I passed into a living-room with mahogany floors and leather sofas, wood sculptures, animal skin rugs, a huge chandelier below a ceiling with fleur-de-lis cornices. There were a dozen men, most in white. They were speaking English and stopped when I entered. They looked me up and down, not with lust, quite the opposite, more as the family Capulet may have viewed a Montague entering the fold.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘There has been some mistake.’
‘You do not speak,’ said a tall man with a neat beard.
‘I’m not a prostitute,’ I countered.
The man frowned. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘Now, please do as you are told.’
‘I will not,’ I returned.
He smiled, more bemused than angry.
‘She’s as stubborn as a goat,’ another man said.
The bearded man threw up his shoulders. ‘You know what happens to goats,’ he replied.
The others all roared with laughter and it was their laughter more than their condescension that made my eyes prickle with tears.
‘I’m English,’ I shouted. ‘My father’s a diplomat. There’s been a terrible mistake.’
The bearded man did not respond except in his expression I caught a hint of disdain.
I’m English. My father’s a diplomat. I’m important. I’m white.
Was this what he heard? Was that what I meant?
‘Please,’ I said again.
He ran the tip of his finger over the spot below my bottom lip and down the curve of my throat. He then took my arm and, with the two men who had brought me from Mali following, I was hurried along a corridor to another room where I was locked inside.
The room was spotless, white marble walls and a marble floor, a squat-style lavatory and a wide sink with a single brass tap. It was like a surgery, the feeling enhanced by what appeared to be a massage table with straps hanging from either end, the only item of furniture.
I patrolled the four walls. I watched the sky through the narrow window turn orange, green and purple. I tried to think about Samir but, as I lay on the table staring at the shadows on the ceiling, what came to mind was my school in Kent, hockey matches, the old-fashioned uniforms, the silvery glow of the light in the chapel, a time all the more pleasing when seen through the prism of a teary memory. I was aware how lucky I had been. While I lacked for nothing, most people struggled to have decent lives, in England, more so in Africa. Even my running off into the unknown was the escape of privilege.
At least in the desert I had learned to while away the hours. I slept. I woke. The sun rose and I waited. I know a whole day must have gone by because I was starving and felt an enormous sense of gratitude when one of the men brought me some bananas, nuts and a bottle of water. Shortly after I had eaten, the door unlocked once more and several men in white suits entered with a much older man who walked with a cane. He wore big sandals, a loin cloth and shawl like a mystic.
He spoke to the bearded man. He addressed him as Thomas, and he translated.
‘Take off your clothes,’ he said, and I did so because I had learned that it’s not worth making a fuss.
Leaning on his cane, the old man ran his free hand over my body like a blind person, feeling my breasts, my waist, my hipbones and thighs. He ran his finger from my chin down the tattoo and, when he looked up again into my eyes, he seemed puzzled and said something I didn’t understand. There was nothing lewd in his examination. The marble room with the table and straps made it seem more medical than sexual.
He spoke again and two of the men held my arms. The old man continued and Thomas translated.
‘Are you a virgin?’ he asked.
I didn’t know what to say. I shrugged. My cheeks reddened. ‘Not exactly,’ I answered.
The two men holding me tightened their grip and the old man plunged his hand between my legs and deep into my vagina. I gasped and I was just as shocked as the man when he removed his fingers coated in blood. He turned away, frustrated, irritated, I wasn’t sure, and the men all filed out of the room with bowed heads, one of them taking my clothes.
That same man came back with sanitary towels, hand towels and soap. For the next four or five days I remained alone in that room like a prisoner on death row. Food was brought to me without a word. I was cold at night and hot by day. I had not had a period for a long time. I’d even begun to wonder if I were pregnant and half hoped that I was.
I tried hammering on the door, but it was pointless. I cried. I grieved for a life that was gone. At first I did exercises, stretches, yoga, handstands, but weeping was a better way to pass my time. I knew, I sort of knew, what was going to happen but it was too bizarre to contemplate. I dwelled instead on happy times in the red fort with Samir and Maysoon. I nursed the St Christopher and tried without success to pray. I remembered my round belly. It had gone. I had grown as thin as a leaf.
Finally the old man returned. My period had passed. I was clean and the table in that room was put to the use for which it had been designed. I didn’t struggle when they laid me along its length and tightened the buckles on the four straps occupying the four corners, pinning down my arms and legs.
One of the men was carrying a white ceramic bowl which he placed on the counter beside the sink. The old man carried a woven bag and from it he unpacked some smaller bowls, a pair of scissors with big rounded handles and what turned out to be a cut-throat razor of the sort barbers use.
As the old man opened the blade, I shook so much the other men had to hold the table so that it didn’t topple over. He was going to cut my throat, bleed me like a goat before roasting me on the barbeque. I was going to be eaten. Tears flooded my cheeks. I closed my eyes and opened them again when the old man spoke.
‘Keep still,’ Thomas translated. ‘He’s not going to hurt you.’
The old man had put the razor down and picked up the scissors. He now cut off my sun-bleached locks, hacking at the curls and letting them fall to the floor. He worked quickly and soon I was shorn. The men removed the straps from my ankles. I drew my feet back and, as the old man trimmed my pubic hair, I remembered the women preparing me for the blue tattoo and it felt at that moment that everything is linked, that just as there was a thread running down my body, there was a thread running through my life, and that if we can just close our eyes and see that thread we will know who we are.
The old man made a lather with soap and warm water from the large bowl. He shaved my head. He ran the blade down my legs and shaved the stubble from my pubic mount. The spider emerged, hanging from the thread, and th
e men leaned closer, watching open-mouthed as the creature stretched its legs. In Mauritania, that spider may have been a warning, a reminder that I belonged to someone, but here in the backwoods of Nigeria it was merely a curiosity, the customs of one tribe meaningless to the next.
The patriarch used a sponge to wash my head and between my legs. He seemed pleased with his ministrations and looked at me as a wood carver may look at the trunk of a tree. They buckled my legs, left the room, and there I lay watching the light change. I was more naked than I had ever been before, as smooth as a baby, a born-again virgin.
They came back for me at twilight. The old man had abandoned his cane and was dressed in a long white gown embroidered with moons and stars. He seemed taller, his face hidden by an elongated mask carved in the form of a firebird with a pointed beak and bloody lips. Through the mask’s eye slits, fanned with flames of red and yellow, his eyes seemed misty and primitive.
All but one of the other men were masked, bare-chested and wore white loin cloths. The remaining man was naked and shaved of all body hair. He had slit eyes like a toad. He was tall, muscular, and his large cock bobbed between his legs like a nocturnal creature moving to the rhythm of the single drum one of the men played. The others carried twisted sticks decorated with feathers, bones and strings of glass beads they rattled as they moved like a wave towards me and back again in a rolling motion. They chanted and wailed. They drank from the earthenware jug they passed from hand to hand. Like the old man, they seemed stoned.
It was Thomas and the naked man who released the straps that held me. I swung my legs to the floor and, using the sticks to tap my shoulders and the backs of my legs, they danced around me as I was herded from the room, down the corridor and out of the building through a back entrance that led to a narrow gate.
Girl Trade - full length erotic adventure novel (Xcite Erotic Romance Novels) Page 21