How neatly she had been sundered from her world! Fear was now rampant. “The other girls?” she asked. “Why them?”
“Your own word, dear child. Pure melodrama! They too are a currency rare and costly in the desert. I will admit to opportunism. It seemed a pity to waste them.”
“But it’s cruel . . . both them and their families . . . !”
“They have but joined the ranks of women through the ages.”
“Have I . . . ?”
“No.”
The single negative was fearful. Its implications vivid.
“You are going to kill me?”
Yasin seemed genuinely affronted. “My dear child! Give me credit for more finesse and for some appreciation of what you are. You are an unusually beautiful young woman. Your death would desolate me.”
“But you used a word . . . !”
“Torture!” He laughed at her loathing of the word.
“Torture does not mean death. You could be tortured daily and live to be old. There are degrees . . . ”
“This, this ugly word . . . is it physical?”
“Indubitably. You will scream. The mental is concomitant.”
Reason rejected. Stacie tried to visualise. It was not possible! “But my father . . .. ”
She groped her way toward a strange conclusion. “He will believe me dead. You will have hurt him there, but without this . . . this personal thing . . . he won’t know!”
She gazed across the table in desperation. “You are going to hurt me to punish him, but he’ll never know. That means you are going to be cruel only to punish me for something of which I’m innocent.”
“Photos of you will be taken regularly. They will be mailed to him anonymously from around the world. He will share your pain.” Yasin chuckled. “If political circumstances were favourable I might send you back to him after a few years. The marks on your skin would convey an eloquent testimony. So, my dear, you are but an instrument. I suspect I will like you and enjoy you as a person. I may have you taken to my bed. But nonetheless all those connotations of your ugly word will be made very real for you.”
So neat, so logical! By Jedrahn standards so obvious! Here, women were not people. They were bodies to be used. If the body failed to please, the hands could be employed. Sometimes they might be allowed the exercise of their minds. But they had no will. Yasin had called her an instrument. Stacie began to feel like one. She understood why he kept her bound, the painful joining of her wrists engendered a state of mind which would eventually possess her entirely. Her voice was now an entreaty.
“I suppose I could grovel. I expect I will. Do you want me to grovel?”
“Hmmmmm . . . !” He took her question seriously. “I have to admit it would give me pleasure as a female act,” he admitted slowly. “But if, at this juncture you actually did it I would find my judgment of you at fault. I do not wish it as a specific end. When you do it, it will be coincidental to the rest of your condition.”
Stacie stirred restlessly. “I suppose you can understand how nearly impossible it is for me to assimilate this . . . this horror. I’m trying. I want to be rational with you. But you’re so . . . so civilized. I can’t equate you with torture.” She shook her head as though to rid it of illusion. “I can’t equate myself. I just can’t believe it! These cords round my wrists tell me something is terribly wrong. But that’s all.”
The voice of Mohammad Yasin was warm with sympathy.
“My dear, I am honoured that you wish our communication to be realistic. Do not concern yourself with this point. Reality will come. Face it then.”
“When am I to be tortured? I mean, when does it start?” He shrugged.
“It does not matter. It is not today.” Stacie frowned in concentration. “I’m sitting here in this pleasant place, my hands are tied behind my back so they hurt, and there you are, normal and polite. I’m half expecting this to be all a joke and that you’ll burst out laughing and the other girls come bouncing in and you’ll untie me.”
Again she twisted in frustration. “It makes it hard for me to ask what I want to, it sounds so silly and impossible and out of context. But this torture . . . ! What exactly will be done to me?”
“You will be completely naked.”
He watched her flinch. But she did not move or speak. “You will be whipped often. If it serves a purpose you will be ceremonially flogged.”
Yasin saw now that her features were drawn, but she was still concentrating, seeking to visualise, striving to comprehend.
“You will be suspended by your thumbs.” Her eyes were still lost in disbelief.
“Needles will be thrust under your nails.” A brief pause.
“You will be branded. You will straddle The Horse.” The quiet words without emphasis or anger ware like small blows at her inmost being. By their very simplicity they became believable. She raised her eyes to him, inviting the worst.
“Fiction and history have told you of many things. In the course of time they will happen to you. Those that end in maiming or death will be modified. I tell you, not as a gesture of mercy but of common sense, you will know pain but not injury, To me you are a jewel of great price, save for your torture you will be treated as such. You will be neither crippled nor invalid.”
“You said naked . . . ! In front of men?”
“That bothers you! You wear a bikini yet you ask that question?”
To be flogged, yet first query nudity! Stacie wryly recognized disproportion. “Yes, it bothers me.”
“Yousef is a man. He will sometimes deal with you. You will not be displayed naked for male eyes other than within the boundaries of your life here.”
“Am I to be . . . violated?”
Her choice of the word amused. “Just by me.” He said drily. “Only by some unusual circumstance would I grant you to Yousef.”
To discuss her ravishment! Or was the word rape applicable where she was to be penetrated again and again! Stacie shrugged it off as academic. She tried again.
“Is there more?”
“Quite soon your flesh will be pierced for the introduction of rings in the customary places.” A flicker of humour crossed Yasin’s features. “And also one place usually left chaste.”
Stacie tensed, uncertain. “As part of the torture?”
“Secondarily. There will be no anaesthetic. But primarily for my pleasure. As I said, you are very beautiful.”
“Rings in my flesh! But where?”
“Come, dear child, you are not naive. I want you yourself to name the places on your person where you might logically be so adorned . . . Now!”
The captive stifled revolt, it was unlikely she could give this man ideas he did not already have. “My ears,” she offered tentatively.
It was not enough. She knew it was not enough. But to voice such things as though in invitation! “I have heard of a girl’s nipples being pierced,” she admitted.
His gaze was relentless. Stacie twisted against the compelling cords. “Surely not my nose?”
“Most certainly your nose. The effect is charming.”
No mercy! She was not done. “I read a book: the lips of a girl’s sex were ringed . . .”
She looked at him bleakly. “It seems to me impractical,” she flushed. “I still think it is.”
“You’re quite delightful,” Yasin approved. “Yes, your enumeration correct,” he mused quietly for a moment. “Your rings will be as lovely as yourself. You may come to treasure them.”
“Through my nose!”
“There especially. You will see . . .”
She squirmed beneath his regard. She felt certain he was visualising her naked and ringed like a Pasha’s slave girl. It was an indicative admission that such a girl’s life was to be envied compared to her own. She sat awaiting his pleasure, he had left her nothing to say. Mohammad Yasin clapped his hands in summons.
Vivid impressions, one atop the other. Forever off balance, alternating between hope and starkest fear. Against the captive Stacie there marched a small army of successive shocks.