Of what happened to me in the next minutes I still after three years remember every second. Those were the most horrible minutes of my life, as they saw my irreversible physical transformation from a free man into a chained slave. All my present-day fellow-sufferers at the oars must have gone through those terrifying minutes just before or just after me, and I am totally sure they will remember them in detail as the most horrible of their lives too.
For all those who are still free men in Europe or America, living their luxurious lives in great wealth and indolence, without permanent fear for the lash or any corporal punishment whatsoever, it will nearly be impossible to imagine what that means, to become transformed from a free man into a chained slave. I am rather sure about that, as the same was the case for me up to three years ago, being used to live the same luxurious life untill the gates of hell suddenly opened for me on this fateful day in June I already talked about: I had'nt the slightest idea. I was as unprepared to become a slave as you still will be unprepared to become one and thus to read about what it REALLY means to become one. I didn't even know this kind of cruel slavery still existed, that such a thing was possible, without the Human Rights Commission of the U.N. intervening immediately: to operate a galley propelled by chained slaves.
Of course, I had seen the famous film Ben Hur in the cinema, with those crude scenes on board a galley; but that what one sees there about the Roman world of the first century on the screen might happen in reality at the start of the twentyfirst century, surpassed my imagination. And now I indeed seemed to play a role in such kind of scenery: that film suddenly in a way became unmitigated reality - MY reality. You will perhaps remember the scenes of Ben Hur with his fellows toiling on the oars inside the galley, the chaining of the slaves to their seats when the sea battle started, the merciless handling of the whip by the overseers to force them to row much harder than they ever thought they could. All made a lasting impression on me when I saw the film some years ago, and those scenes will perhaps reappear in your mind's eye when reading this. They at least came back to me in those unhappy minutes when I passed the corridor from the first room (where I was registered and then confronted totally unexpectedly with my new fetters) to the next room that for you as a reader is still ahead.
But believe me: in no way such short film scenes can even give a minimum of an idea of what it really means to become a galleyslave. You may SEE the whip handled in the film, hitting the back of some well-paid and well-fed actor, but you don't really feel it on your own back. You may SEE a slave being chained, but you don't feel the weight of the heavy shackles yourself, a permanent weight, being there all the time without any chance of escaping it, day and night. You may SEE the slaves straining at the oars for some minutes - not for more than some minutes, because otherwise the cinema-goers might start to get bored - but you cannot have any idea about straining at the oars for hours and hours, doing such a boring job yourself. In the cinema you would have fallen asleep by watching it already after only one percent of the rowing time per day of a slave is finished, but I guarantee you: as a slave you haven't the possibility to fell asleep after that one percent is over.
What you miss as an outsider is the real experience - the unique experience my abductors would entitle it sarcastically - of having to do that. What you miss in the film is the torturing pain, the exhaustion, the sweat, the heat - do not forget the sweat and the heat! - and the smell of all those tormented slaving male bodies packed together on a narrow ship. No film can bring you even close to the complete experience of the life of a galleyslave.
It is much more horrible than you ever can imagine - as it became much more horrible than I imagined at that moment, and there is no reason to suppose that your imagination, reading this in your spare time - a slave hasn't any spare time - at the beach or in your armchair, is bigger than mine was, when I read such stories in my spare time once. So I have to warn you, before reading further: I don't promise you a rose garden and will utterly do my best to describe in the most intense and explicit way, to help you to understand and imagine slightly what it is, to become a slave. So if you are not prepared mentally for getting an at least in some degree realistic - but still insufficient - look on the horror of real slavery, you had better stop reading now.
The pain I had to endure after entering the second room, the physical and the psychological pain, far surpassed what I had endured in the reception room. There I had been slapped in the past few minutes several times in the face - that was a heavenly soft stroking of the senses compared with what was to happen to me in the forthcoming hour. There I was threatened with all kind of horrible treatment that indeed made me anxious, although I at the same time somewhere still didn't really believe that those threatenings could become real: that was beyond my imagination, beyond that of a western guy like me living in the beginning of the twenty-first century. But now that threatening future for me became the actual present - from which there was no escape.
But I only slowly adapted mentally to the fact that there was no escape indeed, because between being turned into a slave factually and regarding yourself as a slave there elapses some time. All new slaves in the beginning, after their enslavement, of course struggle vehemently - mentally and a lot also physically - against their fate, against the fact that they have become slaves and will stay slaves for the rest of their life. All new slaves have to be broken, to become convinced with force that they better give up their own will - ALL their own will - and have no other choice than to obey. All new slaves need time before they have adapted to and accepted internally their new way of 'life' - if you indeed can call this 'life'.
Of course I myself also needed some time to learn to behave and to think as a real slave. Because that means you never doubt any longer about what you yourself would want, but you always doubt about what your overseer soon might want - and you try to anticipate that to avoid a stroke with the bullwhip. Because that's the real horror of slavery, I would get acquainted with soon: the need, just for your own bodily self-preservation, to give up your own will and your own personality totally, and to treat your body henceforth as just the tool of the will of somebody else, the person who owns you and has total power over you.
Of course, in the minutes I passed this corridor to hell I didn't realize all this, and of course I was even less prepared for that mentally. Although I in fact had lost my freedom, for just that reason I hadn't stopped thinking of myself as a free man! And the last kind of person I would have thought of myself as being at that unfortunate moment was as a slave. You might understand that just being completely nude - apart from wearing a loin cloth - is not enough for that, not sufficient to realize such a gigantic mindshift. I - as most others in my place would - needed more than just that. And before you may worry: there indeed was more to come.
The real horror started already in the next room, so before I had to go downstairs to join my new oarmates - a horror of a kind unimagined and in fact unimaginable for everybody who hasn't endured it, or at least witnessed it in reality. For that reason, hoping you might at least catch a glimpse of it, I will describe in as much detail as possible what happened to me in those terrible next minutes in which I became a slave, to make my atrocious fate clearer. So I suppose that you will forgive me that I now move on with my story.
That means: I entered the door at the end of the dark corridor I already talked about - and backed out in a reflex after entering, overwhelmed and frightened by what I saw. The door opened into the corner of a big room which was not as dark as the corridor, but still much more dusky than the well-illuminated reception chamber. Imagine a square hall, at least a hundred feet wide and deep, with a floor of dark-gray stone tiles and a flat concrete ceiling no less dark. Gloomy walls of bare brick without any apertures encircled this space on three sides; only the fourth wall, the wall directly to the left after entering, had a few small windows, which allowed some dimmed daylight to enter; it seemed as if there existed some inner court on that side.
Rather near to the entrance I perceived a kind of wooden bench, in a square position to the route we had to follow to reach it. Next to it stood a big iron structure with the contours of an X topped with a flat plate that of course, as I realized within a few seconds, was an anvil: the anvil they, as I presumed rightly, would use to rivet the shackles and chains to my limbs I was carrying now in my hands. I shivered, not for the first time this day.
Behind the anvil waited - yes, clearly waited, waited for me - a big muscular guy, wearing a big leather apron, the upper part of his sweating body completely naked. It was rather warm inside - especially compared to the cold corridor - and as he had to do (as I would find out very quickly) a rather strenuous job, it was logical that he wasn't dressed in more than the most necessary garments. Just next to him, behind the anvil, I saw a small table and a kind of brazier. There was a small coal fire in it, with a lot of red-hot coals, and their blaze of contributed to the high temperature in the room.
Of course the bench, the brazier, the anvil and the man didn't fill out the whole room. Behind them and to the right of them stretched some other, but much bigger wooden benches, placed against those three walls which were without windows. They did take up nearly the whole length of each of them. As distinct from the bench in front of the big man none of them was empty, on the contrary. Near to the bench at the far end of the room, turning his back to us, stood another big guy, dressed the same way as the man waiting for me at the anvil.
One of those benches, that one immediately next to the door through which we entered, was totally occupied by rows after rows of thick oval shackles, of the same kind as I was carrying with me. I couldn't count them so quickly, but there at least must have been a few hundred on display. Clearly they were of different sizes, from rather small to sizable, of course to be able to find the right narrow fit for all new slaves - now it suddenly became clear to me why Ahmed had measured my ankles and wrists a number of minutes ago. The quantity of those shackles was impressing and alarming. I then realized that my seat and slave number was 46, so I could imagine how many rowers there would be at a minimum on the galley - and perhaps many more. Supposing that they would be all chained and shackled the same way, you can calculate how many shackles at least were needed for all slaves together.
The shackles displayed were all still separate, lacking any connecting chains. But being short of chains both guys in this room surely were not. The bench to the wall on the right was full of them - just chains. Dozens and dozens of them laid there stretched properly next to each other. Although I had no measuring tape handy, I could figure out that they must have circled the length of the chains in my hands, and were meant to connect the separate shackles on the first bench. For that task there apparently stood a burning furnace in the corner between both benches. That was the reason why I had had to wait for a while in the reception room after they had measured me: Ahmed had to give my measurements to the third guy of our company, who then in this room had ordered the welding together of the right shackles and chains to the set of heavy slave irons I was carrying in my hands now.
Then there was a third bench at the far end of the room, where the second guy wearing a leather apron stayed. Between it and the second bench there was a burning furnace too. But it was too dusky in that corner for me to tell from that distance what exactly was resting on the bench, but this surely was a heap of other iron items. I at least saw curved pieces of metal shining in the few lights hanging from the ceiling. I could only figure out that there again was quite a lot of it in stock, and I didn't doubt already that it would in some way find its way to adorn new slaves too.
I shivered again. It was such a mass, all those shackles and chains seen lying together, that I became intimidated by it still more than I already was. This whole thing, this whole procedure I apparently had to go through before entering the galley, was looking in every respect very well contrived. They certainly weren't doing it for the first time now, it must all have become mere routine for them. Also in that respect I was just a number for them - many having processed before, many processes still to be done after me.
There therefore must be a big, professional organization behind all this, otherwise this wouldn't be possible. I was overpowered by a feeling of loneliness, by the starting sense that I by myself didn't have a chance against the mighty powers in whose hands I had fallen. This was real traditional slavery on an unimaginable huge scale, with no way for the individual slaves to escape their fate. How many unhappy captured guys by means of whatever tricks, I wondered in bewilderment, had already gone down this frightening path before me?
Of course I saw and felt this all only in a quick flash - it takes me much more time to write it down now than it did to recognize it at that very moment then. I in fact hadn't much time to look around in detail at all, as I, after having backed away shortly after entering, was pushed forward by Ahmed.
"Move your despicable body to that wooden bench, slave".
And to the guy waiting behind: "Omar, here is G-46. We leave him to you".
Trembling through fear I covered the few paces that separated me from the wooden bench. When I reached it, Omar took the chains out of my hands while saying:
"Lie yourself down on the bench, slave. Your head at the far end, your feet at mine".
I positioned myself in the ordered way on the bench. The wood felt raw and hard under my naked skin. It was very uncomfortable to lie there in this position, without any support for my head, although the bench was sloping up in that direction, so that I would have a good view of what would happen at the lower end.
If this was intended, for psychological reasons, to make a new slave more aware of the fact that he has become a slave by seeing himself getting his chains riveted on, I would never know. But as the organisation behind this galley fleet already had shown me that it knew what it was doing and seemed to have thought the whole arrangement all over into every detail before, this seemed rather plausible to me. As indeed it is a very acute experience to watch yourself being chained with the help of heavy slave irons for ever.
While I was getting into position, Omar disentangled the chains with a lot of clanking - what until now had been a disorderly heap of irons in my hands - by spreading them carefully on the floor, straightening out all twisted links and opening the cuffs, to have them already in perfect order when the moment had come there to rivet them on.
I now, from my uneasy position on the hard bench, could distinguish better, how the whole set was arranged: one shackle was clearly bigger than two others - so one would be destined for an ankle, both others for my wrists, I supposed. The fetter for my feet was in the middle of the set, connected with separate chains of the same length with each of both the apparent manacles. Both those connecting chains were linked to the same big ring that itself at its turn was driven horizontally through a hole at the flat extension of the fetter, that had its opening on that and its hinge on the other side.
On that other side, next to the hinge, with the help of a small welded-on clip, a second and even bigger ring was attached, its diameter being nearly as much as that of the whole cuff itself. In contrast to the other ring, after the fetter would have been riveted to my foot, it would stand up in a vertical position. It led to nowhere, so I wondered what its function might be. Within twenty-four hours I was to learn.
The manacles were completely identical (well, being symmetrically and well-grown my wrists have the same size), and in their case the chains, built up from thick links, were also connected to the cuffs with the help of a ring that was driven through their flat ends at the side where the manacles opened.
I hadn't much time to study it more intensively - I would have plenty of that later - as the process already started. For in the meantime the other guy with the apron had neared our group, to accompany Omar. Apparently he was his assistant, at least in practice he soon turned out to be that. After he had joined in, Mohamed and Ahmed left - knowing that I hadn't any chance to escape with three men still in the room - through the door to the corridor, while the third guy stayed inside.
I had put myself down in such a way that my whole body from top to toe was on the bench, but that was not intended - my ankle had to reach the anvil. For that reason the assistant just pulled me rather coarsely by my legs in the right direction and I felt the bench's wood chafing my back. One of my legs, the left one, he then pushed aside, they needed only the other, my right. Omar at that moment already had picked up the fetter intended for my right ankle, leaving both manacles on the floor; the connecting chains were hanging downwards.
Then he placed the fetter in an open position on the anvil - the lower half oval with the opening left, the hinge in the middle, the upper half oval upside down to the right, seen from my perspective. I regarded it with abhorrence. The assistant lifted my ankle, and then lowered it into the lower half of the waiting opened cuff. The soft skin at the back of my ankle touched cold, hard, inflexible steel. I shivered.
Omar thereupon turned the other, upper half counter-clockwise around the hinge, till its flat end met the flat end of the lower half. Now the skin at the front of my ankle had the same experience as the back had had a few seconds before. I heard a short pang, when both ends of the cuff met. It in fact didn't make very much noise in reality, but to me it was so ominous that it sounded like a loud bang. The fetter was closed now and made a perfect oval - with my ankle caught in between.
How to describe my feelings at this moment! My right ankle was encircled totally by a band of thick, infrangible steel. It was a very narrow fit, I wouldn't be able to get even one finger between my skin and the shackle, I felt the heavy iron everywhere around. Oh, my God!
That it is better for a shackle around your ankle to have a narrow fit than a looser one - escaping it is anyhow impossible - I would learn to understand later: the narrow fit gives the shackle a more steady grip on your ankle and holds it more easily on the same place, reducing the risk of painful chafing your skin or bones through rubbing while you are moving or walking.
Whereas the third guy watched the whole from a small distance, strictly surveying that I wouldn't try to escape again - well, I wouldn't try that - the assistant kept the fetter around my ankle firmly locked with both his hands. Omar then took a rivet and a pair of tongs of the table next to him and put his instrument, holding the rivet firmly in the red-hot coals of the adjacent brazier.
With horror, the next few seconds I saw the rivet gradually change its color from dark black to fiery red.
It took perhaps half a minute, then Omar, taking fast hold of the rivet with the pair of tongs, turned to me and said: "Now lie totally still, slave, so nothing bad happens accidentally".
I trembled more than ever now, as Omar approached with his pair of tongs. My first impulse was to try to free myself again, to escape this horror, but the assistant's grip around my shackled feet was too strong, so I had no chance of succeeding. Apart from that, there was also the third man standing to my left, watching me carefully and of course prepared to intervene immediately in case I might resist. So I resigned myself.
When the assistant pushed the cuff encircling my ankle firmly downwards on the anvil, Omar inserted the hot glowing bolt into the small hole to rivet both flat ends of the fetter together. As it entered, I felt the heat spreading slowly through the steel, reaching my skin. But there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Keeping the rivet inside the hole with the pair of tongs in his left hand, Omar took a big hammer from the table and gave a first blow with it on the nose of the rivet. Wham! My whole body shook by the force he used.
Wham! A second hammer blow. My body shook again.
Wham! A third one. Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham!
With each blow on its nose the tapered rivet drove a little further into the hole. Seven blows in total apparently were necessary to drive it far enough, so far that it would never come out without the help of some strong instruments.
It was a horrible experience! Each blow echoed off the walls, and to me it was as if Omar had hammered on my head instead of on my fetter. I can assure you, this really makes you aware of the fact that you have become a slave.....
After seven blows Omar stopped. My ankle in the meanwhile had got rather warm by the heat spread by the inserted rivet. The thick, now inescapable steel of the shackle started to become painful, burning my skin.
Luckily, the third guy, who had withdrawn while Omar was hammering, now returned with a bucket of water that apparently had stood in the corner, but that I had not noticed until now. It was used to cool the rivet - and by doing that the rivet expanded thanks to the cooling, making it completely irremovable.
Tschhhhh......
Cold water was thrown over my fettered ankle, and with a noisy hissing the burning steel gradually took on a normal temperature again, that of my body. I breathed again - but not wholeheartedly, as I knew something irreversible had happened: my first shackle now was securely riveted on.
It soon was time for the next. The assistant ordered me to sit upright, while moving myself further in the direction of the anvil. When I tried to do so, he lifted my shackled foot from the anvil to lower it on the floor. Rattling chains - this time connected to my body! - again accompanied this move. Now, with both my feet again touching the floor, for the first time I suddenly felt the immense weight of my new fetter pushing painfully on my ankle bones. This stuff surely wasn't designed for running away fast!
After I moved into the right position, sitting on the end of the bench with my face to the anvil, the assistant picked up one of the manacles still resting on the floor, and, accompanied again by a lot of rattling of the chain that connected it to my riveted fetter, heaved it on the anvil, again in an open position, with the chain and the opening to the left and the hinge to the right. Thereupon I was ordered to put my right wrist in it, after which the assistant closed this second cuff. Meanwhile Omar ...
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!"
Suddenly there was an infernal screaming that came somewhere from beyond the wall at the far end of the hall. It was muffled by the stone wall in between, but nevertheless it pierced my very marrow. It clearly was the shriek of a man, the shriek of somebody who was being tortured in a terrible way. I stiffened.
Totally upset, I gazed in the direction whence it came. What were they doing there to who presumably would be another slave, the last unhappy creature caught before me? What more had I to endure in the coming minutes than I already had? The horrible sound must have lasted for at ten, fifteen seconds - not more, but to me they seemed hours - and then gradually faded out.
What did happen over there, behind that closed door at the far end of the hall, next to the bench where the assistant had stood as I was shoved by Ahmed into this room? Bewildered I looked at Omar, at his assistant, at the third guy, looking for an answer to this question. What the hell was going on here?
Neither Omar nor both of the others even raised an eyebrow when that ghastly cry pierced the space we were in. Nor did they do so when I looked to them for an answer. They continued their work without any interruption, as if this were totally normal for them at this place, such a kind of infernal screaming - and perhaps it was.
So, while I was panic-stricken again, Omar started to rivet my first manacle. I was really in a shock now, so I in a way only through a blurred window noticed what was happening to me. I only came to myself a little when Omar, having heated the bolt and having put the burning piece with that pair of tongs inside the hole of the cuff while I was mentally absent, started to use his hammer again. Again seven blows, and the seven blows made me return to reality.
Then there was the splashing of cold water again, on my hand this time, and when I, now totally awakened, looked to my right wrist after that, it was shackled too, connected by a heavy chain to the fetter around my right ankle, of which ponderous weight I became aware immediately in the moment the assistant removed my wrist from the anvil: it took some force not to have my right arm pulled down along my leg by the heavy chain. O my God: and this I would have to wear forever, while rowing on the galley?
The same procedure then was repeated for the last shackle, the manacle for my left wrist. Everything was now attached in reverse, left becoming right and right becoming left, the hinge being on the outer side, now on the left, the rivet on the inner side, where the chain to the fetter round my ankle was attached, thus on the right.
Now that all was done and my irons were riveted on, I was ordered to stand up. A new rattling of chains made me immediately aware of my new state as a slave. I felt the heavy weight of what at least should be twenty pounds pulling on my limbs; on each of my manacles jerked a heavy chain, connected to the thick fetter around my ankle. Standing upright, the chains were just long enough to raise my hands to halfway up my chest; but it was much more comfortable - if this is the right word - not to try to lift them, but to let my arms hang alongside my torso and thighs. Then at least a part of the weight of my whole set of irons was resting on the floor.
I tried to make a step: it was extremely heavy to do so, and it needed a lot of energy. No: escaping wasn't possible anymore, those damned slavers could be sure about that.
Omar looked satisfied, having for the nth time chained a new slave, and the third man, being superfluous for watching over me from now on as I was securely chained, left the room in the direction of the corridor I had passed some minutes ago - the last unfettered minutes of my life. Two men would be sufficient for guarding me - in fact, one could do the job. There was no risk that I would run away - indeed I would never be able to run in the future anyway.
But the worst was still to come.