* * * *
“Oh, yes,
ya madehm
, I was sold in the Marketplace oh, fifty or sixty years ago,” Fatma told Khadija.
“That long?” Khadija gasped. “But you have been working in our family all of my life.”
“And most of your father’s too, may his memory be a blessing,” Fatma agreed. “It should be no surprise to you that Muslim families prefer to buy Muslim slaves to care for the children. Your grandfather purchased me to assist your grandmother with her two sons, when your aunt was still to be born. I have remained with your family since.”
“But how did you find the Marketplace?” Khadija asked, fascinated with this new knowledge.
“How, how? I don’t know how to explain it,” Fatma sighed. “I had friends from different places, women friends, with desires similar to my own,” she began. “I fell in love,
ya madehm
. I devoted myself to a woman in a way that I cannot explain. She was a mistress to a diplomat who had a house in my town, and she lived there to serve him. No, she was not a woman who had been purchased merely for the purpose of sex, but to provide much more to this diplomat. In fact, she had received special training for her skills, not just in the sexual area, in language, arts, politics, oh, she was so smart!”
“A cultured whore, but still a whore,” Khadija sniffed, but Fatma determinedly shook her head.
“No,
ya madehm
, not a whore. The Marketplace is not a dealer of innocent flesh. They do not seek out the unknowing and force them into such lives. They do not even take those who simply exchange money for sexual intercourse. No, the Marketplace exists for people like me, who wish to serve honorably. I knew this when I first met this woman. She was not desperate or unhappy. She had a place inside her soul that needed to be useful to others. And she cultivated this place so that it brought her pride and grace in such a way that I knew that is what I wanted too.”
“What did you do?” Khadija asked, drawn into the story despite herself.
“Do? I asked to serve her in her house, to be closer to her. No,” Fatma laughed at the question forming on Khadija’s lips, “I was not used sexually. With this face? Even sixty years ago, I was no prize. It was not necessary, you see. There are women—and men,
ya madehm
—who are specially trained for such things. Why would their Owners waste their thrustings and groanings with a common house slave? No, but I learned much from my dear friend. I learned how to take such pride in the feelings I had for service, and to perfect the ability to anticipate the needs of my Owners. I discovered that my love for this woman was strong, but my need to serve was stronger. She was kind, bless her, and arranged for me to be taken into the Marketplace. I have remained ever since.”
“Have you ever wanted to leave?” Khadija asked curiously.
“Oh no,
ya madehm
, I am very happy in my place,” Fatma assured her. “Before the Marketplace, what did I have to look forward to? A life of drudgery, of poverty, of a husband who would make me carry his children! No, I have no use for men. I wanted more for my life. The Marketplace has given me everything I need.”
* * * *
Khadija went to bed that night, her head spinning at the thought of a woman choosing voluntary slavery.
What would those radical feminists I went to school with think about the Marketplace?
she wondered.
Would they believe that some women actually preferred to serve, or would they insist it was brainwashing by the patriarchy?
Khadija herself believed that some people, men and women, were naturally inclined toward such service. Even the Prophet Mohammed himself had written of the duties and responsibilities that were naturally masculine or naturally feminine. Lucky women, like Fatma, found a place where they would be permitted to serve honorably.
I wonder about the men with those tendencies
, Khadija thought as her mind drifted closer to sleep.
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.