Imagine a man of Islam, with a true desire to Submit in more than his religion. A man who would be devoted to his owner, loyal and faithful. A Muslim man, born to service, wanting to serve honorably would probably make a good... she bolted upright in bed, wide awake suddenly. He could make a good husband. A perfect husband. Her hand reached for the bell, and she rang it furiously. “Fatma!” she shouted. “Fatma, come here! Dilwahti! Dilwahti!”
* * * *
The next day, Khadija sent an e-mail message to a private address her father had given her when she was first assigned to the Zürich office, requesting an appointment as soon as possible. A reply came within 24 hours: she would receive a visit from within the next 10 days.
Khadija was cutting flowers in the private garden when Fatma notified her of the expected visitor. She told Fatma bring the guest out to the garden, and to prepare refreshments. As she lay her shears aside, her guest appeared in the doorway. “Salaam, salaam,” greeted the Asian man, who then lightly touched his heart, mouth and forehead in the proper ritual. No, not a man, Khadija realized as she returned the salaam, a woman dressed as a man. A woman wearing a beautifully tailored suit, designed to flatter her figure. Jet black hair that was cut long in the back.
“Ken!” she exclaimed. “Can it be Ken?”
The woman ducked under a set of hanging baskets, to step closer. Her almond-shaped eyes narrowing, then widening in surprise. “Khadija, is that you? Good heavens, ma cherie, I barely recognized you in that costume,” she laughed. “Weren’t you in jeans and a midriff the last time I saw you—graduate student at Columbia, wasn’t it?”
“University of Pennsylvania,” Khadija corrected, then continued in French, remembering Ken’s fondness for the language. “Papa asked that I entertain his dear friend and business associate’s daughter when she came to New York for the Marketplace’s winter auction. I fear I was going through my American phase then, bare stomach and all. Not that you were much better, as I recall!”
Ken laughed again, explosively. “You know, I think I still own those elevator shoes. Remember pretending we did not know English, how those college boys struggled with seducing us with their Berlitz phrases. ‘I have need to polish your cup with my tongue.’ Atrocious accents, and so hard keeping a straight face!” Khadija laughed at the memory.
“Remember how they were talking about us in English? ‘I’ll take the Asian girl, they’re always so submissive.’ What a surprise you must have given him that evening!”
“I tell no tales,” Ken answered virtuously. “Certainly not mine, nor would I even mention the rather rhythmic thumping and moaning from the room into which you led your young conquest. But I see you’ve gone native,” Ken observed. “No doubt you’re a virgin again, too?” she asked wickedly.
Khadija looked down at herself. After just a few weeks home, the dark, shapeless caftan and headscarf were already feeling natural. “My father has recently passed away after a long illness,” Khadija explained, and Ken’s eyes darkened in sympathy. “I wear the djellaba in his memory. What is the phrase? When in Rome?”
“Wear a toga,” Ken chortled, and Khadija laughed at her friend’s irrepressible humor, as she led Ken to a set of garden chairs and a tea table carefully placed in an alcove sweetened by the fragrance of blooming jasmine. Fatma reappeared with a tray of tea and fresh fruit. “It was time for me to come home anyway,” Khadija continued as they settled into the comfortable chairs. “I missed Cairo. My soul is here, somewhere between the souk stalls and the Nile.” Her eyes turned toward the garden’s trellised fence, as if she could see through it to the streets of the Old Quarter, filled with people and carts and the noise of her home.
Ken opened a cigarette case, arching an eyebrow at Khadija, who nodded permission. The Eurasian lit an Egyptian cheroot and inhaled it with an evil grin. “I never smoke, except in Egypt and Cuba,” she explained. “There’s something about the tobacco here that makes me feel positively villainous. Ah, but we are not here to talk of my many vices. Let us get to the purpose of this visit, shall we? The message from the central office was vague. I was eager to see you though, and when your name came up, I grabbed at it! I said to them, this lady, I can help!”
“First, I have a simple request,” Khadija began. “As I said, my father has recently died, and I am the current legal owner of slaves he had purchased through the Marketplace. I have need to sell one, and I need to purchase another.”
“And you need an agent,” Ken nodded. “I am happy to offer my services—for a fee of course,” she added, and Khadija smiled. Ken hadn’t changed a bit. “Tell me more.”
“The one I wish to sell is a pleasure slave, and should be easy to move in any manner you feel is best,” Khadija agreed, “but the other matter is more difficult.” Ken took another suck at the evil-smelling cigarette, and waited expectantly. Briefly, Khadija explained to Ken the pertinent contents of the will. The Eurasian woman listened carefully, and when Khadija finished there was a long silence between them.
“I think see the dilemma. A husband to meet the requirements of the will, but not necessarily the expectations of your family. It’s a brilliant plan, Khadija, brilliant.”
“I like to think that my abuyya, may his memory be a blessing, would have appreciated my creativity,” Khadija said, lowering her eyes.
“It is a challenge you place before me. My fee will be high for this service. I assume the man must be of appropriate age, and a Muslim?”
“Naturally. And for your fee, I shall give you thirty percent on the sale of the pleasure slave, and another fee as you wish should you be successful in the completion of this special search.”
“You are as generous as you are beautiful, Khadija. I shall begin immediately!” Ken crushed her cigarette out on her almost-empty teacup, creating a noxious odor that wafted over the table. “But first, let us go to Alexandria to see this pleasure slave of your late father’s, so I have a better idea of how much my efforts are worth.”
* * * *
Ken was as good as her word. Khadija received regular reports, beginning with the news that she had several prospective buyers for the pleasure slave. Within the month, Khadija was rid of the extra responsibility, and looking forward to reading about prospective slave-husbands. If only she weren’t so distracted!
For Ken was not the only one searching for her husband-to-be. Dear Uncle Ahmed had indeed decided it was his personal responsibility to see his niece wed. It was, after all, right and proper for him to do so, but it drove her to distraction.
Nearly every week, Ahmed would call her, or appear at her door, to present a new prospect. Most of them were business acquaintances of her uncle or her late father, and clearly interested in getting their hands on part of the family fortune. Many of them were old, ancient, with wrinkled skin and beady eyes and wet hands. Ahmed would introduce each of them, then whisper to Khadija, “I think this, this may be the one, insha’allah.”
Khadija found faults with each of them, which distressed her Uncle.
“But my dearest niece, what is wrong with Ali?” he would ask, and she would reply, “He is rude to me, Uncle, and is only interested in money, not in a marriage. Besides,” she added mischievously once, “this one smells of alcohol.” Her Uncle would moan and wring his hands, crying at her words, swearing by Allah that he would find her a true husband before the following year. And just a few days later, he would appear at her door again, to introduce yet another man, and whisper to her, “I think this may be the one, insha’allah.”
The constant interruptions of her uncle were doubly wearing as six weeks went by and Ken still had nothing valuable to report. Oh, she e-mailed Khadija regularly, sending summaries of several prospects. But none of Ken’s prospects were acceptable: too young, not Arab, not of the Faith. But she read the profiles anyway, finding that she enjoyed the descriptions of the men’s sexual capabilities, particularly when discussed in such objective ways. Sometimes Ken e-mailed pictures of the men, so explicit that
they would make Khadija blush. She wondered if she would treat her husband the way that some of those men had been treated; sending him to sleep at the foot of the bed, beating him if she was displeased with his behavior, forcing him to pleasure her without allowing him any release of his own. One week, Ken had sent a photograph of a man with rings piercing his nipples and his penis. Light chains joined the man’s nipple rings and a single chain ran from its center to the ring in the man’s cock, forming a “T” across the man’s body. In addition to the chain, metal balls were hanging from each of the rings. Khadija wanted to think it must be dreadfully painful, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that the man in the photograph had a full erection. She printed that photo out, and for many nights, she looked at it, then closed her eyes and imagined decorating her own slave that way. Would he, too, keep a full erection under such punishment? If not, she would beat him, yes, beat him as he knelt on his hands and knees on the wool Turkish carpet at the foot of her bed. And he would then sleep on that very rug, until she decided to allow him back into her bed. Her hand crept between her legs as she imagined how he would tremble at her touch, fearing punishment, yet eager to please her again.
Perhaps owning a husband would have more than the obvious uses.
* * * *
It was near the end of the fasting month, Ramadan, when Khadija received a promising message from Ken. “Now I shall collect the rest of my fee,” the message read at the top, with a file attached to download.
Khadija looked over the file carefully. There was enormous potential here. Farouk al-Wadir was originally from Algiers, but his family was forced to leave during the dreadful revolutions of the 1950s. They settled in Great Britain, where his father and mother entered paid service with a retired British officer who had served in the Middle East. Farouk, as a young man, took a position as a personal servant to the officer’s younger son, and followed the young man to Cambridge to serve him there as well. It was through the son’s college friends and their servants that he learned of the Marketplace. Farouk was released from his employment when the son eventually married. He immediately sought out training, first appearing on the block in his mid-twenties as a common house slave, eventually working his way up the hierarchy to butler. His first Owner encouraged his potential for management, and sent him to finish his education at Cambridge. At the death of his Owner, he was sent to the block again, and was purchased by a British-based international corporation that often did business with her own family’s business. Farouk remained there as a valued administrator for the last twenty years. His latest five-year contract would be expiring within the year.
Ken also uploaded a series of graphic files. After waiting an interminable amount of time for them to free themselves from the e-mail, Khadija looked them over carefully. Farouk was in his mid-fifties, a short, dark-complexioned man with a tendency toward plumpness. In the first set of photos he was dressed in an expensively cut business suit, and looked all the world for what he was—an administrator of a multinational company. In the second set of photos, however, he was nude, and in the positions Khadija now knew to be standard Marketplace poses. Nude, his weight was more obvious, especially in his belly and buttocks, but he was able to hold even the more awkward positions with a sense of grace and dignity. She noted that his right nipple had been pierced, a small ring of gold drawing further attention to his skin color in a pleasing manner. Then she clicked to the next set of photos. And it took her breath away.
For there was Farouk dressed in the white galabiyya, the traditional dress for the hajj, surrounded by hundreds of other similarly dressed pilgrims on the steps leading into the Great Mosque in Mecca. He was staring slightly away from the camera, his dark eyes moist, and a look of intense joy radiating from his face. The photographer captured his desire, his love, his true link to Submission that Marketplace pictures could not, would not have been able to. She sighed in satisfaction, and printed out the entire document, but not before sending her message to Ken: “Please negotiate on my behalf, and contact me as soon as possible.”
* * * *
Ken burst past Fatma into the garden. “May I be the first to congratulate you on your upcoming marriage,” she crowed in delight. “What is it you say around here? Mabruk! Mabruk!” she added in Arabic, sounding like the souk peddler who had congratulated Khadija that morning on her clothing purchases, after they had enjoyed a fierce bargaining session. Khadija gave a cry of delight and embraced her friend. “Fatma, some refreshment, please!” she cried, and the ancient slave bustled away, a large smile on her face.
“I see you dressed so that I could pick you out from the crowd in the souk,” Ken commented, as she released herself from Khadija’s embrace. “Short sleeves? It must be the evil influence of the West, no?”
Khadija laughed, her hand reaching up to touch the bright scarf she had wrapped in her hair. “I purchased it this morning, in honor of your visit. Do you like it?” She stood, and swayed her hips so that the material swung from her hips, and the dress’s neckline promised the viewer a well-endowed bust.
“Cherie, you look like a luscious mouthful. I could, how you say, polish your cup with my tongue. Hah!” With a leer, Ken flung herself onto the garden’s bench and lit a cigarette. Fatma returned with a tray of fresh fruit and tea, and automatically the women switched to French so as to keep the details of the purchase private.
“Ah, cherie, I cannot help but provide solutions to all concerned, particularly where my cooperation will only increase my own family’s business,” Ken chuckled. “I told his owners that your new position for him might not keep him from seeking employment outside the home. They are prepared to sell him to you on the condition that they have the option to hire him back into his current position for six months to a year to train his replacement. They would also be willing to consider transferring him to their Cairo office!” Ken clapped her hands in glee, and Khadija laughed with her. “Naturally, these matters must be left in your hands, but I assured them that you would be most amenable to such a plan. After all, his paycheck would belong to you.”
“And then I could put him in charge of my father’s business—oh, Ken, it’s a wonderful offer. I must meet him at once!”
Ken squeezed her hand. “I knew you would. So I brought the papers with me, and the slave. He is waiting in the library for final approval.”
“He’s here? Now?” Khadija could hardly contain her eagerness to meet the slave, but forced herself to pay attention to the papers before her. They said exactly what Ken had outlined, and she noted his signature already affixed, as Ken had told her it would be. He was ready to be transferred to her, to become her property. “Do you wish to buy him first, or meet him and then purchase? You can still back out, if he is not suitable.”
Khadija looked down at her clothing. Years of cultural and religious training made her hesitate at meeting another Muslim with so much of her skin showing. But then, this man would belong to her. If she purchased him—just by signing these papers and making a transfer of money through her Swiss accounts—then he would see her in a variety of outfits, and even in nothing at all. She took a deep breath. “I shall inspect this man before I sign,” she said imperiously, a smile on her face.
Ken rose and elegantly gestured toward the door. “Then let’s go.”
* * * *
Farouk was kneeling on the dark, Persian carpet in the center of the room, naked except for a collar and the nipple ring. “Better than the pictures, don’t you think?” Ken asked Khadija, as they entered the room. “Present, slave, for this fine lady.” The slave moved in a smooth motion until he was standing, his fingers locked behind his neck. At Ken’s command, he executed a turn, then bent over, resting his hands slightly above his knees. “Quite a tasty bit of meat, my friend,” Ken said wickedly, her hand cupping the slave’s ass. “Shall I leave you to inspect him more privately? Take your time. Feel free to... be thorough.” Without waiting for an answer, she sauntered out of the room. “I’ll be in your gar
den, enjoying my last cigarettes,” she called over her shoulder.
In the light filtered through the latticework of the library windows, Khadija circled the slave, stretching out a hand to caress the slave’s back, and saw a shiver run across his shoulder blades. Her touch had done that? How exciting. She trailed her fingers across his back again, then to his chest. She found his pierced nipple, and pulled lightly on the ring. He sighed, and she felt a warmth between her legs. She pulled on it harder, then twisted it. He gasped, but remained in position. She felt the warmth rise through her body, filling her with wetness. This man would belong to her, Khadija thought. Soon he would be compelled to do anything she desired.
The rush of power was as strong as the sexual rush she had felt moments earlier. She stepped forward abruptly, grabbed the slave’s greying, short hair and pushed him back into a kneeling position. With her other hand, she pulled her skirt up, and thrust her hips forward toward his face.
The slave needed no further encouragement. He pressed his mouth against her moist undergarment, and exhaled softly. She could feel the warmth of his breath heating the cotton, and her nether regions as well. He pushed his face nearer, and Khadija moaned as she felt his tongue probing her, through the barrier her panties created. She thought briefly of ripping the garment off, but found she took a deep pleasure in keeping herself hidden from her husband-to-be in this manner. Instead, she tightened her grip in his hair, and pushed his face deeper between her thighs, rubbing herself against his nose.
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