We were late getting up the next morning. Lisa met Helen in her dressing gown and showed her to the lounge whilst I speed-dressed, no need for shaving any more. I slowed down to make a dignified entry into the lounge, Helen was sitting on her usual armchair and rose to greet me.

“Sorry I’m late, slept in…”

“Looks like you both did… all OK?”

“Yes, great… definitely, great…”

“I’ve something for you, things are a little more relaxed here than in the UK.”

“Ireland actually, but no problem, just because we speak English we’re often mistaken for Brits.”

“Sorry, Ireland. One a day; how many were you on?

She handed me a small flat box. Inside was the disk with the daily little blue pill. They looked just like the hormone pills that I had been given in captivity.

“Four a day at first, then two after I was beginning to show their impact”.

“If they’re the same strength, that was a massive overdose! And an excessive dose doesn’t speed anything up. I’ve promised the Doctor that you’ll call when you pass through Athens for a full physical. Here’s the address.”

She passed me an A5 sheet of paper with the name, address and telephone number neatly typed. Athens seemed like a thousand miles away, but I would have to go through it in any event when leaving Greece.

“How’d you get these? The doctor is in Athens?”

“We spoke on the telephone and he faxed the prescription.”

“Thanks, I feel that it’s important not to break the continuity.”

“Do these still fit in with your current situation?” She meant the pills…

“Huh?”

“You and Lisa; it seems like you’re getting back to where you were at!”

“Yes, but we’ve a lot to learn again. We can never really get back to where we were at. And I need to get a job and get some money together for surgery.”

“Don’t rush anything; this is a bad time to make decisions….Come in…”

Lisa had knocked on the door and came in with a tray; coffee, breakfast rolls of cured meat and soft cheese. This was our missed breakfast. She had brought a roll for Helen as well. Lisa joined us and chatted a bit; it was clear that she knew more about the search for me than Helen. She was being briefed as it progressed, as, to a more censored extent, were my family. They were not aware of my dalliance with femininity and Aristotle, having discussed this with Lisa, directed that they be led to believe that my kidnapping had been an error and I had been mistaken for a relative of his, to be ransomed in due course.

“You know the first clue to your whereabouts was the electrolysis.”

“How’s that?”,

Helen asked before I had time to process Lisa’s statement. Lisa and I had not gotten around to the details of my rescue yet.

“The Local Agent was expecting that an electrolysis machine might be needed and kept an eye on sales, basically paying staff in the sales outlets for information. There’s a limited number of distributors and any sale outside the normal beauty business, or very rich community was suspect. One machine was bought by a youngish woman within days of your disappearance. She didn’t appear to be very well off and didn’t specify a business on the receipt, which she would have done if she was buying for a legitimate business. The salesman, our informant, offered to carry the equipment to the car, and noted the number. It took a bit of digging apparently but eventually he traced the purchase as most likely being for the place you were held.”

Lisa found it hard to say in front of Helen and I that I was actually being held in a brothel. She continued,

“That wasn’t conclusive, there was a chance that the girls were using it themselves, but unlikely as it’s an expensive piece of kit.”

“So the thousands of pinpricks I got from that machine were worth it”,

I joked, remembering many days of work by a series of amateur depiliators. We had finished our impromptu breakfast, and Lisa took the tray and excused herself.

“Who operated the machine?”

Helen was leading me gently into the story again…

“I reckon all the girls working there had a go, some were better than others and a lot of the less skilled ones dropped out. The skill might be eyesight and a steady hand.

Things actually started to look up after the first day when I had the “surgery”. I was pretty much left alone for a day, apart from being given food, water, painkillers, and two blue pills with both my two daily meals. The following day, after I had breakfast, I was conscious that I hadn’t shaved and pantomimed shaving to ask for a razor. I didn’t get one but later, two girls came into the cell and beckoned me to go with them. The outer room was locked, so I couldn’t escape in any event. What I thought was a big radio was on the table and they indicated that I was to lie with my head close to it. There was some discussion between them while I was trying to figure out what was going on, then one started to rub my face, or so I thought. The first pinprick was a bit of a shock, then it kept happening. Actually this was their second time using the machine; they had practiced on me when I was sedated. After a while, two more girls came in and took over. I caught a glimpse of “Goon” when the door opened so a run for it was out of the question. Apart from the annoying pinpricks, the experience wasn’t too unpleasant. The girls were chatting away as they worked, occasionally addressing incomprehensible words to me to which I tried to respond, but there’s a limit to the ability to use sign language when lying on your back on a table! Still, human interaction is preferable to virtually solitary confinement, and the company of pretty women is always welcome, even if we can’t talk to each other.

Eventually the girls stopped working on my face and I was given a tube of cream to rub into it. Some hand signals indicated that they would be back tomorrow. I wasn’t locked into my cell so, apart from using the toilet, I stayed on the outer room, pacing about. I tried to avoid seeing the big A frame that I had been tied to, and of course it popped into view every time I turned.

After a short interval, a woman came into the room, burdened with a big “gettoblaster”, and an armful of clothes. She was in a belly dancing kit, but surely it was far too early for her to be going to work. I took the big gettoblaster from her and she indicated with her head that I should put it on the table. Its amazing how well humans can communicate without speaking. She shook out the clothes and held a belly dancer’s skirt, or whatever it’s called, up against me. The first one was too small, she tried another. It would have to do. She gestured that I should put it on. I retreated into my cell to change in some privacy. I took a minute to figure out how the skirt fastened before taking off my sarong and putting it on. Like the other outfits I’d seen the girls wearing, this had two large gaps exposing my legs right up to the low waistbelt. I felt very naked and vulnerable and very self-conscious as I emerged from the cell. I kept expecting the skirt to fall off, I didn’t have the hips to hold it up. I pantomimed this to the dancer who fiddled about with waistband for a bit, then seemed to indicate that she was happy with the outcome. Wish I was! She held up some tops before deciding that my own crop top was ok. She pointed at my chest, lifted her own boobs and shook her head. The meaning was abundantly clear.

She plugged in the gettoblaster, put a cassette tape into it and pressed play. As the music played, she started to dance. She made it look so easy, sensual, hypnotic, a combination of arm and hip movements which blended together perfectly. She stopped the tape; I smiled and nodded to indicate appreciation. I was afraid to clap; I’m not sure why now as my clapping would not have been any louder than the music. The dancer then, without the music, started to do a circular motion with her hips. She indicated that I was to do the same. It looked easy; it wasn’t. I tried a few times, then she stopped me and repeated the exercise, this time holding her palm flat against her stomach. I copied; it gave me a reference point for holding my midriff still, while moving my hips. I was getting it. She had me practice that for quite a while, reversing the motion every so often. Then she demonstrated a figure of 8 movement, doing it first one way, then in the opposite direction. I managed to follow and she kept me doing this for quite a while. She seemed pleased with her success to date. Then she demonstrated how to drop one hip, keeping the other at the same height, more practice, both hips, I was flagging. This was an intense workout. Next, lift one hip, then the other. More practice, I was jaded, time to stop.

She lifted the gettoblaster, carried it into my cell and plugged it in. She pressed play, then did all the actions again, in time with the music, scrolled the tape back to the start, pointed to the tape deck, rotated her hips and pointed to me. I was to practice! I pantomimed writing, so I could make a note of each movement. She nodded, indicated tomorrow, and left, locking the cell door behind her. Interesting how a hand moved forward in an upwards then downwards curve is so easily understood as “tomorrow” or “next time”.

And I did practice; it gave me something to focus on, and expend energy in some way other than fretting. I was working away with the music playing when Mayda came with my food. She was wearing her own dancing set, going to work again. She put the tray on the table and indicated to me to continue, joined me for a few movements, smiled and left. I ate, slowly as usual, then noticed something about the gettoblaster. It had a multiband radio, including Long Wave. I extended the aerial, moved the band selector to the LW position, made sure the volume was down and started to search by rotating the selection knob. I eventually found the BBC World Service; I was back in the World again, even if only in a small, surreptitious way. I listened for a while, then carefully folded down the aerial, moved the selection knob back to roughly where it had been, changed the band selector back to MW, where it had been, and drifted off to sleep.

The days continued roughly on this pattern. A selection of girls attacked my face each morning, giving me a break when it became obvious that my skin needed to recover. Then, to my initial considerable embarrassment, they started to work on my groin area. I got a fright when one of the girls casually opened my sarong skirt one day and just started to work down there. I had to remind myself that they weren’t exactly unfamiliar with the male, or in my case ex-male, anatomy. My dance instructress was called Mariyam, who seemed to be late 20’s, maybe 30, older than the other girls. She seemed reasonable pleased with my progress. Working with her, I was picking up the names of body parts such as hip, foot, leg, etc. as well as the names of the dance movements. I was working hard at the dance and was getting quite good at it. It was keeping me fit, filling in time, and giving me something to focus on.

Mayda normally brought me my meals and we mostly got a few minutes when she taught me some Arabic, or danced with me before going to work. I’m not sure how this arrangement came to be, maybe she asked to keep this role, maybe she was just appointed by whoever ran the place on a day-to-day basis. One thing I noticed, she never left before watching me take my two blue pills with my morning and evening meals. For a long time, I didn’t know what these pills were, I thought maybe tranquilizers. Then after about 4 weeks, I began to notice that my nipples had become much more sensitive and there was what I can only describe as hard areas, almost lumps, under them. These continued to develop very slowly until, by the time of my rescue, I had two distinct, though very small, mounds on my chest. This doesn’t particularly trouble me; I was slowly deciding that when, and never “if”, I rejoined the world, I don’t want to continue to live as a male. I tried to envisage how I could live as a female; staying in Ireland is out of the question as society is fairly intolerant of “deviance”.”

I was drifting between my tenses, trying to describe feelings which I had when captive, many of which were still unresolved. Yes, I was free now, I had made up my mind what I was going to do, but I still had no idea how to do it.

“Do you see yourself as deviant?”

As I had paused to consider the mountain facing me and still to be climbed, Helen had picked up on my last word.

“No, I’m not a deviant, but everyone at home will think that I am. They’ll try to say that I was obviously traumatized by what has happened to me and have become a bit unhinged, or something like that. It would give them a way to rationalize something that would be a disgrace on the family if there weren’t an external driver. They’ll probably even believe that themselves.”

“You’ve been thinking this through.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think!”

“How did you keep track of time?

“The days had a routine like I was saying, there was no difference apparent to me for weekends – do they even have weekends in Egypt? I kept track of the weeks through the radio, I listened in late at night, and very carefully returned the knobs to their original place, or something near it. Did you ever listen to the BBC World Service?”

Helen shook her head.

“They have a signature tune called “Lillibulero”. They probably don’t know that it’s an anti-Irish rant from the late 1600’s. Rant or not, I listened to that tune very low, every night. It was my connection to the world. Maybe Mastar didn’t care that I could listen to radio but, in his place, I wouldn’t have let me. Maybe they didn’t know about the World Service? I suppose I’ll never know the answer.”

“And they never caught you?”

“Never.

After a few weeks, I was beginning to feel the stress of never seeing daylight. I got my meaning across to both Mayda and Mariyam one day. It obviously worked as the following morning one of the “Goons” came into my cell and indicated for me to follow him. We climbed up a good few flights of narrow stairs, and came, through a heavy door, out onto the roof. There were some metal chairs and tables with a few of the girls lazing around. The roof was screened from view by a sort of sackcloth screening. I was brought over to a chair and table. There was a chain padlocked to the table and the other end was padlocked to the ring on my collar. The Goon put his finger to his lips to indicate silence and left. I put my face up to the sun and closed my eyes to luxuriate in it. After a few minutes, I heard a scraping of chairs as the four or five girls already on the roof got up and carried their chairs over to where I was. Again, indicating for silence, they started to introduce themselves. I reciprocated and the low murmur of whispered conversation resumed, with occasional attempts to include me through a combination of sign language and my pigeon Arabic. I was very grateful for the gesture, very happy with their company, and more than a little fascinated as two of the girls had their tops off and were completely unselfconscious about it. I tried not to stare! After about an hour or so they started to drift off and the Goon collected and returned me to the outer locked room. Soon the “electrolysis team” arrived and back to normal service.

The roof became a regular part of my routine and was very welcome for two reasons; I was getting sun, for sure and that lifted my spirits. Probably more important was the company. The girls always sat with me and tried to include me in their world. Now I didn’t feel so alone. I wasn’t sure how many, if any, of the girls were there entirely voluntarily but they seemed to be getting on with whatever life had thrown them. Maybe that’s how to survive? One day I noticed that one of the “roof regulars” had been missing for a few days and asked about her. Eventually I understood that she had been bought by a client. My initial reaction was something between confusion and shock, but the girls assured me that this was “jayid”, good. I surmise that one way out of this life for the girls was to develop a relationship of some sort with a client and for him to buy her from Mastar. I’m not sure it could be described as buying her freedom.”

“Probably no woman is entirely free in that society?”

I wasn’t quite sure where Helen was going with that half question, half statement. I let it rest.

“It might seem strange for me to be saying this, but after the first few days of terror, with a fair bit of pain thrown it, life was becoming tolerable. There was the worry of what was to come when my training, grooming, whatever, was finished but I tried to ignore that. By the end of the second month the hair on my face, and other places, was very much lighter. I was given a razor for my legs and underarms and warned not to use it on my face. The dancing was fairly intense, and my Arabic was starting to improve. I missed having a textbook, but I couldn’t read the script even if I had been given one.

Mastar rarely appeared for the first two months after the initial days. In the third month he started to take more of an interest in both my appearance and dancing. He came in towards the end of a dance class one day and watched me perform or train. When the class was over he dismissed Mariyam, then told me to take my top off. I was now getting a bit self-conscious about showing my chest; I didn’t have boobs in any meaningful sense, but it was obvious that something was developing. I was told to put my hands on my head; he came around behind me, reached his hands around my sides, and started to play with my nipples. I was afraid at first that he would pull the rings but he was reasonably gentle and the odd approving grunt seemed to indicate that he was pleased with my reaction. My nipples had become incredibly sensitive and, try as I might, I couldn’t contain the odd gasp as he continued to play with me. He was pressed up against me and I was afraid that he was about to push this a bit further: It certainly felt as if he wanted to and I was acutely conscious that all I was wearing was a belly dancing skirt, not much in the way of a barrier!

But he didn’t. He took his hands away from my nipples and sort of lifted my hands off my head to indicate that I could take them down. He caught my shoulders and turned me towards my cell door and gave me his usual slap on the ass, all of which I took as a command to go into the cell. My top was still on the table in the outer room, but I didn’t dare turn around to get it. I hoped it would still be there in the morning or that Mayda would bring it to me when she came with my evening meal. I took off my belly dancing skirt, hung it on a hanger on a peg on the wall and changed into my harem pants set. That, with my sarong and top, and the belly dancing skirt were all the clothes that I possessed.

My regime changed again that evening. Mayda came as usual but brought no food. I took the two tablets that she proffered. She handed me my top, which I hung up, then she told me to follow her. We hadn’t got to sentences, but we were able to converse in a limited way with individual and short combinations of words. We left the outer room and I glanced towards the door; it was closed, and I presume locked. I wasn’t sure if I was being tested and there was no point in making a break for it without being reasonably sure of success; that would put my ingratiation back by months, perhaps permanently. We headed up stairs to what was a room just under the roof, spanning at least half of the entire building. Inside was a riot of colour, individual carpets lay on the floor around the walls, tapestries and mirrors adorned the walls, a few stools and small cabinets were scattered among the carpets. There was a large low table in the center of the room with serving plates of food, some jugs, cups, napkins and no cutlery, around which about 15 girls were seated on the floor, picking things from the various plates and obviously having their evening meal. All the girls that I knew so far were there except Mariyam, along with a few that I hadn’t met yet.

Mayda pushed in amongst the girls, made a place for me and asked me to sit. I indicated that I would like to wash my hands so she brought me to a large washroom with an array of sinks and mirrors. Hands washed, we returned to the table and I squatted amongst the girls and started to eat, using only my right hand. To use a left hand is considered unclean as it was supposed to be used for personal hygiene. I ate slowly; I had developed this habit over the previous months and tried to keep up with the conversation going on around. Again, the girls were kind and considerate to me, although our ability to interact was necessarily limited by language. With the food mostly gone the girls started to drift away from the table, mostly starting to do their makeup and changing into their dancing costumes. Some cleared off the table and left everything on a table outside the door, to be collected by the male waiting staff. I learned later that generally only Mastar was allowed into this space, though sometimes the Goons could come in if there was trouble. I was no longer regarded as male, not even by myself.

As there were girls changing all around me, I indicated to Mayda that I should leave. She shook her head, and brought me with her when she was doing her own makeup. It dawned on me that this was a further stage of training. Unselfconsciously, she had me help her to get into her dancing set, ornate necklaces, bangles, and little cymbals attached to her fingers. I noticed that many of the girls were quite, how do I say, close, to each other during the dressing process but wasn’t sure if this meant a relationship or was just the way girls in this situation behaved. Like a lot of the girls, once finished, Mayda did a little dance routine to check that everything was ok, a sort of test run. Then she brought me back down the stairs and locked me into my cell.”

“That was quite an eventful day”,

Helen had let me talk on for quite a while uninterrupted.

“Obviously Mastar, or whoever, had decided that you were sufficiently compliant to be integrated with the rest of the girls?”

I noted that she was also including me as a girl.

“Yes, and I had worked hard at that. I think the timing also coincided with the electrolysis, my dancing progress and the hormones all coming to a certain point together. I think Mastar’s little mauling session was essentially to check my physical reactions and compliance. When I was first captured, I would have tried to fight if my hands weren’t always handcuffed; this time I didn’t, very deliberately.”

“Ok, that’ll do us for today. I’ve brought these for you, remember you asked for a copy of my notes.”

She handed me an A4 envelope.

“Can I show these to Lisa?”

“Yes, particularly as I’m around again tomorrow. Remember how hard it was for you to tell me some of these things? It’ll be even harder on her to read them, but better she finds out now so that you’re keeping nothing buried inside that you feel you can’t tell her.

I’m bringing Theodore, Aristotle’s Head of Security with me tomorrow. He can let you know how the rescue side was working. See you tomorrow.”

It was well before dinner time so I sat alone in the room reading through Helen’s notes. They were neatly typed out, using blue carbon paper as was usual at the time. Eventually Lisa came in and sat silently opposite me; she would do this when she wanted to talk, but didn’t want to interrupt my thoughts. Eventually I spoke,

“These are Helen’s notes, would you like to read them?”

“Should I? Aren’t they private?”

“Not private from you, but not easy reading”.

She knew that she should read the notes, otherwise I wouldn’t have offered them to her. She started to read; I watched her from the corner of my eye and saw her start to stiffen in her chair. She continued to read, I heard a sob, then she put down the paper and started to cry. I held her and whispered.

“Sorry, it’s just important that you know all this…”

I must have held her for 10 minutes before she slowly regained her composure.

“It’s me who should be sorry, you had to go through this, I’m only reading it!”

“It’s harder for you now. I know all what’s happened; I’ve had months to deal with it. You’re really just seeing it for the first time. You don’t have to finish this today.”

“No, I’ll read it.”

Lisa read the notes, sometimes putting them down, then forcing herself to continue. When she was finished, I put the notes back into the envelope and we locked them in the villa safe. Dinner was brought from the hotel, but it was a very quiet affair. I held her in my arms all night hoping that I’d done the right thing showing her these notes. Was I being selfish, sharing a trauma that she needn’t know about? Logic said that it was the right thing to do, but logic doesn’t always feel right at the time.

I got up early the next morning and prepared breakfast. I was just getting a tray ready for Lisa when she appeared so we sat together at the breakfast bar.

“Sorry about last night, it was just such a shock to see the detail…”

“No need to feel sorry; I hope that I did the right thing showing it to you.

I want to get some time alone with Theodore this morning when they come. Can you keep Helen out of my hair?”

It was as transparent as a pane of glass but it gave me a chance to offer Lisa the morning counselling session; she accepted the offer,

“Yeah, sure!”.

When Helen and Theodore arrived we both met them at the door. Unlike Lisa, I hadn’t met Theodore before. Lisa brought Helen into the lounge and I steered Theodore to an outside patio. When we sat down, I noticed him looking at the tattoos on my legs, visible when my denim mini rode up.

“Apparently they spell a name given to me, Xania, although I don’t read Arabic”.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare”.

“That’s all right, I’ll put it down to professional curiosity”.

“I gather Lisa has brought you up to date to where we tracked the building after getting a car number?”

“Yes, sounds like a smart bit of work by the Local Agent. Am I going to meet him?”

“Sorry, No, I’m the only one who actually knows who he is. It’s for his safety, you understand?”

“I understand, just I’d like to thank him some day.”

“I’ll pass it on and maybe he will meet you some day.

The story is that, once we had identified the building and were about 55% sure that’s where you were being held, we needed to get someone in there, someone not known. We used a Lebanese freelancer, posing as a businessman looking for opportunities in Egypt, as the man to send in. It wasn’t hard to arrange as that type of establishment always has a passing trade. As a foreign businessman travelling alone, he also had a cover for frequent visits.”

“Nice work if you can get it; I met him of course in the rescue, but he had been well known to us all before. The girls noticed that he often came, generally alone, western light grey or light blue suits. Talkative and always tipped well.”

“Did they ever suspect anything?”

“No, they just thought of him as a good patron, a regular who treated them well. He made his way around the girls so some suspected that he might be looking for a woman to buy.”

“Good to know; he might be useful in a similar role again. Anyway, eventually he picked up, from little things the girls said, that there was a new entertainer to come on stream soon, but he probably wouldn’t be interested. That was a clue in itself; an entertainer that he would not be interested in. This surveillance lasted for a good few weeks, though we had to pull him out twice to pretend he had gone on business trips to make his cover more believable. Then one day, he saw you dancing”.

“Yes, after I was brought to the girls’ room to eat, do make up etc., things started to move along. I started to be trained in makeup and eventually Mariyam brought in two new dancing kits for me. These were probably adapted ‘specially for me. There was more “tail” to the skirts, probably to disguise my lack of hips. What appeared to be a decorative rope belt or cord around my waist was actually attached to the skirt belt at the front and back to stop the skirts slipping down on my hips. There were padded tops as well to improve the appearance of my shimmy. Then I was told that I would be joining the “floor show”, though now yet available for “private entertainment”. The metal collar was unlocked from my neck, leaving an obvious mark. This was to be covered by a decorative collar when I was dressed. I was decked out in an array of bracelets and ankle bracelets, bigger earrings and belly ring to replace the small holding rings there since I was pierced.

Mariyam and Mayda brought me to the floor during the day to show me the layout. There was a small dance floor, surrounded by curtained off semicircular benches with a small table in the center. Even though I would not be doing this at first, I was shown how to push the table into the center of the couch, or to the side depending on the number of men in the booth to make room for some private entertainment. All the booths were open to the front for a full view of the stage, but a curtain could be pulled across when required.

Entertainment in the booths was limited to some topless dancing and general foreplay, culminating in oral sex. Should a client want more from his chosen girl, there were rooms on a type of balcony over the booths. These were dominated by a large four-poster bed and there was a small toilet and washbasin en-suite. These rooms probably had been bigger once, but were modified to accommodate the ensuite, thus losing about a quarter of their size. The client did not engage the girls directly but through a functionary who ascertained the clients wishes and chosen girl, called the girl from the dance floor and instructed her accordingly.

I was mildly surprised to be told that there was no alcohol. Refreshments consisted of Turkish coffee, water, sharbat, local sweets and hubbly bubbly pipes, or hookahs. Service was by exclusively young men in white Egyptian robes, a red sash and a fez. No women were involved in the service. The Goons were dressed in a kind of sleeveless tunic top and baggy trousers. They were the bouncers, and were, by and large, a fairly intimidating crew.

I was to be started on a slow night, Monday. Things generally heated up quite a bit on Thursday, and Friday nights, tapering off on Saturday, going quite again by Sunday. The basic idea was to generate interest during the week and get word out to the weekend clients that there was a new “mukhannathun” available and effectively run an auction on Thursday night and the same, but with an expected lower return, on Friday as I would no longer be fully “new”.

I ate with the girls as usual on Monday but had butterflies, stage-fright, so took little actual food. I got a bit of good-natured ribbing from the girls then Mayda and I helped each other dress. This was the first time that I had changed in this room and was very self-conscious. Once dressed, we did a little routine to check out our gear and warm up a little. Because of the size of the floor, only half the dancers went out first; the rest waiting in a small area hidden from the stage by hanging tapestries. After a time, the dancers on the floor would either be engaged by a client and replaced, or, if not engaged, rested and replaced. I was out with the first batch.

I wished that I could close my eyes but I would have bumped into the other dancers and spoiled the show. I tried to concentrate only on the dancers, the stage and the music and block out the booths and their occupants. Eventually I started to relax into the dance, my stress dropped and my dance became more fluid and, hopefully, graceful. After about 15 minutes I was taken off, rested and did four more stints before being packed off to my cell by a Goon. I was tired out by the experience and a bit emotionally drawn, and having undressed and taken off my makeup, I slept without listening to the World Service for the first time.”

“You started Monday? We had you picked up by Tuesday.”

Theodore seemed pleased at the success of this aspect of the surveillance.

“Monday, yes, but what if I had been started when your Lebanese agent was pulled out? I would have been “used goods” by the time you had found me. Sorry, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, I’m just thinking how close this ran”.

“We had to take the chance. If our agent’s story was not believed, both of you could have lost out. We even had him visit various Ministries to enquire about import permits and suchlike in case his background was checked. We don’t think that Mastar, as you call him, was able to operate at that level. It was more in his line to keep the local police on the payroll and arrange freebies for them from time to time. That’s why we couldn’t go to the police once we had found you; you might have simply disappeared.

We knew that we couldn’t use the Lebanese agent to extract you but once the positive ID was made, we had a second stage ready. Our man this time was a former Omani security agent who was to claim to be a purchasing agent for an unnamed Gulf state person of importance and some wealth. We had to be a bit careful here as we were using Aristotle’s money. The story was that he was a sometime business contact of the Lebanese agent. He had been contacted as soon as the Lebanese agent had seen you and realized his possible interest. He had flown in immediately as his client was most interested in “fresh” company. Actually, some of this is true as he waited in Oman until called and then did fly in, all part of the cover story. He was able to be at the auction by Thursday. He arrived, was introduced by the Lebanese agent, and was fully accepted as genuine, having been introduced by a well-known regular client!”

I picked up the story from my perspective for a bit.

“That was a pressure day for me; I was almost sick with worry, fear, whatever. The girls had tried to get me to smoke a little weed in the runup, to try to get me to relax. Actually it wasn’t much used in the girls’ room, more as a medicine than to get high. I did the dances on the floor each night as practice and the girls showed me how to slip condoms out of little hidden pockets in the waistband of their skirts. We each had four hidden away that way.

By Thursday it was too late to smoke some weed as it might make me sick, and I was sorry that I hadn’t taken their earlier advice. I didn’t eat anything, got dressed with Mayda and down to the waiting room. This time I wasn’t on the floor initially, the old show trick of building up anticipation. Eventually I was sent out and tried hard to concentrate on the dance, trying to forget that I was actually being sold, or at least rented out, as I rather mechanically went through the routine. I noticed Mastar going to booths, then moving along to others. I tried to blank it out… impossible…

It was almost a relief to be called off the dancefloor and led to a booth by Mastar. One man, whom I hadn’t seen before, was getting up from his seat and picking up an old, slightly worn leather bag, a bit like what doctors use. I recognized the Lebanese business man and we exchanged smiles before Mastar and the new man led me up the stairs and into one of the bedrooms. I tried to smile and act as if this was normal; inside I was frankly terrified. I was surprised to be directed to sit on the bed and the two men continued talking. I was called up by Mastar after some time and got what I can only describe as a thorough physical by the new man. I’m going to call him the Omani, OK?

After a bit more haggling they appeared to have made a deal. My Arabic could only pick up snatches but apparently the Omani wanted to take me away now and pay later; Mastar wanted his money before I left; the Omani didn’t want to leave me alone now in case I was “used” while he was away. After a bit of haggling, it was agreed that the Lebanese agent would remain with me in my cell while the Omani got the money.”

“That was actually a bit of theatre”, Theodore butted in. “We thought that the Omani could not go in with the money as no one in his apparent situation would do that. They would simply be robbed and disappeared.”

“I was brought back to my cell and Mastar and the Omani waited with me until the Lebanese agent arrived, escorted by one of the Goons. There was a slight delay as he was being entertained by one of the girls while the haggling went on over me! Master and the Omani left; I virtually collapsed into the chair as the enormity of what had happened sunk in. Instead of staying here, with a group of girls that I had grown to be part of, I was to be brought off somewhere where I would probably disappear. It was a good job that I hadn’t eaten or I would have been sick. I rested my head on the table and started to sob; I wouldn’t even get to say goodbye to my friends. Seeing my distress the Lebanese man came over from the corner where he was standing and said softly,

“Good man, won’t beat, good life”.

“He shouldn’t have done that”, Theodore said. “It was foolish to divulge anything to you, even that, until you were safely away.”

“I suppose he felt sorry for me. Anyway, after a while, Mastar came back with his bag of tricks, handcuffs, gag and big Afghan dress. He handcuffed my hands behind me with normal handcuffs, not the rigid ones he used before, gagged me and dropped the big Afghan dress over my head, no shackles, collar or blindfold this time. Mastar and the Lebanese man brought me to a car, a big old Mercedes, and I was put in the back with the Lebanese man. A Goon came out pulling a robe over his normal attire and sat in the front, Mastar drove.

We stopped in front of a mosque in a quiet area and waited. A white Toyota Land Cruiser pulled up and the Omani got out. He appeared unhappy about the presence of the Goon and ostentatiously took a pistol from the pocket of his robe and replaced it again. I recognized it as a Browning Automatic from my time in the Reserves. Point made, he put a cheap briefcase on the ground in front of Mastar who picked it up, put it on the bonnet of the Mercedes and checked it. He seemed satisfied and nodded to the Lebanese man who walked me to the back door of the Toyota. There was another bit of farce as the Omani put a second set of handcuffs on me, got the key of the original set from Mastar, took them off me and handed them to the Goon.

The Lebanese man helped me gently into the rear seat of the Land Cruiser and climbed in beside me. The car moved off slowly, finding its way out of the built-up area, and onto a highway. No one spoke, then as we gathered speed on the highway, the Omani spoke, in flawless English,

“Jasmine, Jim, you’re safe now. We’re taking you home.”