My collaring being neatly finished, I was ordered by Omar to raise myself from the anvil and the wooden bench to sit upright, and he was so kind to give me a few seconds to recover my senses. Well, those few seconds I needed indeed. After having sat up, I immediately felt the whole weight of my new slave-collar pressing on my collarbone. Again I was upset - lying down being collared was no great pleasure, the steel pressing continuously severely against my Adam's Apple, but sitting while collared wasn't that great either. And I knew that I would have to sit collared for many hours in the uncoming days, weeks, months and perhaps years, toiling at the oars.
To remind me that the collar wasn't the whole burden I would have to bear when rowing that damned galley, the moment that I raised myself up of course the chains going down from my hands to my right ankle started to rattle again. The total weight of all the irons riveted to my body literally made me grow dizzy. I needed a few seconds to overcome that and find my clear consciousness back. No, it certainly wasn't easy to become a slave!
After a few seconds Omar approached me and tugged at my collar, apparently again to test if the riveting was well done, as he had done before with my other fetters. Of course, the rivet proved itself to be totally unmovable - but even this superfluous controlling had an extra depressing effect on my already not so well-tempered mind.
Omar, on the contrary, seemed very well-tempered. Quite satisfied with his piece of work, he said to me: 'That rivet will not come off, slave'.
As though I still had some illusions about that.
But if I indeed had some other illusions, illusions that with this collaring the whole enslavement process was now over, Omar disabused me immediately.
'Stand up, G-46', he bayed, 'You have to get out of here before the next slave arrives'.
So I tried to stand up, and turned my body to the right, while lowering my feet. Again my chains rattled, when I put my fettered right ankle on the cold floor after I had done so with my left. Staggering through the weight of the collar and the chains I tried to stand erect. Now for the first time I had to bear the whole weight of those irons with my body only, without any support of the bench or the anvil. It was an immense weight indeed. No: trying to run quickly away had become even less an option than it already had before. Again: I had no chance against my captors and thus no choice than to prepare myself to set out for the direction they wanted me to move in. So, each step in the opposite direction, leading to freedom, at all essential moments seeming impossible, I inevitable moved further in the direction of slavery.
The direction I had to go was that of the door at the far end of the hall, on the opposite side of the door through which we had entered. I had to move to the next room. That was the direction from which that infernal cry (from what was presumably another slave) had come when Omar was busy fettering my hands. I remembered it with horror now, and worried again about what might have caused it, but I didn't get much time to think it over, as I had to concentrate on the moving itself. Omar showed me the way I had to go, Ali walking behind.
I assure you, it is not easy to walk when you have to bear the load of one collar, two chains and three fetters. Again I had to take care not to stumble, and also to take care that the thick anklet wasn't chafing my ankle too much. And then moreover there was that neverending accompanying noise, that continual rattling of my chains - yes, I started to regard the chains riveted to my limbs already as MY chains, although it would still take a lot of time until I regarded them as just another part of my body, just always being there, as 'normal' a part of my body as my fettered limbs themselves. To be honest: I never succeeded in doing that completely, you shouldn't be resentful about the fact that I failed in this ultimate respect. They always in some way remained a kind of unsolicited intruder into my privacy, however trusty their presence in the end became to me.
Above the rather clanking noise the chains produced, I heard off and on the creaking of the big circular slave-tag that showed my slave-number, dangling and swinging underneath my heavy collar, each time that its clip (thanks to my movements) struck against the iron ring that connected it to the thick steel band encircling my throat. There was nothing that I could do against this irritating extra noise, as I needed both my hands to keep my chains straight, apart from he fact that because of the shortness of my chains I had to lower my head quite a lot to enable my hands to reach my collar. With every now-inevitable new creak the swinging slave-tag reminded me of the fact that I was now just a number.
Perhaps you can imagine how it is on a galley, with dozens of straining slaves at the oars, and thus dozens of rattling slave-chains and creaking slave-tags at the same time! I at that very early moment still couldn't and didn't try to do so either. The same creaking of iron to iron, for the rest, was produced by the loose big ring attached to the fetter around my ankle, and to stop that while walking I of course was unable to do.
Whereas I thus hobbled to the exit, crossing the riveting room with the cold concrete floor feeling unpleasant under my bare feet, I rather quickly discovered that it might be less painful for my ankle if I didn't let the connecting chains just hang down in a curve from my manacles, to have them swinging with every step I made, but to take them firmly with both hands to straighten them.
When Omar, looking back over his shoulder after we had arrived at the door, saw this, he made a grimace.
'You're starting to learn, slave 46'.
'And you'd better do this also in all other cases beforehand, to avoid the whip', he added sneeringly.
In a way I was too tired to react to it with showing myself horrified. Nothing more than a short, not openly expressed, 'Go to Hell' came to mind. I was now more horrified by the unknown waiting behind the next door than by my still incomprehensible and distant future in the galley. And I was right in preparing for first things coming first. I mean: it is beyond the capacity of a human being to prepare himself for the full impact of all the sufferings a galleyslave has to endure at the same time. So he is better off dividing that into parts.
To my surprise, Omar didn't open the door, but pressed on a button. I heard a short ringgggg ... sounding on the other side of the door. After some seconds I recognized footsteps on the other side and than it opened inward.
'You're finished with the last candidate, Abdel?'
I couldn't understand the answer, but apparently it was yes, as Omar continued: 'Then here is the next one'.
Indeed: it was a slave production line here. For all the guys concerned with the whole enterprise it had all become merely routine, everybody just doing his job in the same familiar way as I would have done mine at home. It only was an unusual job, at least it was in my opinion. For what passes for normal in Saudi Arabia I can't say for sure, even less so today since I have seen in the interim a great deal of its society from a very special point of view, at least for westerners an unusual one.
So, to what extent the galley I had to slave in was standard or exceptional, I can't say, but after some years spent at the oars it appeared to me more the rule than the exception, whereas at the start of my service it seemed the reverse. It wouldn't have been otherwise for you, I suppose. I mean: if you had been in my place, the existence of such a galley would have been as big a surprise for you as it was for me. But all those Arabs guys that handed me over the next guy one after the other during my 'visit' at this unholy building near the harbor seemed to consider it nothing special what they were doing, as if they had done this already for years and years. And perhaps they had. They just did the whole process of enslaving their western victims by each performing his appropriate task: picking up newcomers from the airport like Mustafa, receiving them at the entrance of that gloomy building like Ahmed, writing down all their physical dates like Mohamed, forging together chains and cuffs for them like Ali, et cetera. To Omar it was just as normal to rivet an iron collar around a slave's throat (as if we were still living in some distant past)as, me being a student of economic history at Amsterdam University, writing a paper about the iron industry in some distant past would have been to me.
But let me not hold you up any longer with my troubled musings of that pitiful moment when I stood there heavily chained waiting for what was to come next. As Abdel had opened the door to the adjoining room after Omar had rung, I of course had to move inside. So I did.
I don't remember what I had expected to see at that moment - being prepared for everything, at least for everything I could be prepared for on the basis of my experience up until that moment - but the first view didn't seem especially alarming to me.
The room was perhaps only a little bit smaller than the one I had left. There were the same three bare brick walls behind me, to my right and at the far end, with another door over there. Again the light was coming from the fourth wall, the one to my left. Not very much light again, as little as there had been in the riveting room, but the courtyard behind the small windows apparently continued past this new room. There were two furniture groupings, one rather close to me and the other at the far end.
Near me stood a very simple wooden chair, with a table next to it having a lot of smaller stuff on display that I couldn't identify immediately. A broom was leaning against a second table on my right. Behind the chair waited the next employee of this professional company, like Abdel dressed in the (by now) familiar aproned way. What did this mean? Were there more shackles to come? I looked automatically to my last free limb, my left foot, as I couldn't imagine any other part of my body needing another fetter. But nowhere in this room did I see cuffs or chains - there weren't any long benches against the three brick walls this time at all - and there was no anvil visible either. And apart from that, why would they in that case not do all the chaining in one room, instead of spreading it over two?
In the far, again more gloomy, half of the room I saw another coal fire burning, and ... I hadn't time to identify more now, as my guide during this stage of my enslavement ended my thoughts by addressing himself to me directly.
'Sit down on that chair, slave', ordered Omar.
And to the guy with the apron waiting behind: 'Mehmed, I leave him to you. He's now all yours'.
And, more sarcastically joking to me: 'Enjoy your short stay here, slave'.
The hateful undertone was not without meaning. This short stay here indeed became the worst intermediate station in my passage to hell.
But it started not as bad as it could have been. At least: it was not worse than what I already had gone through.
Careful not to hurt myself by my heavy irons that swung with every uncontrolled movement of my body, I sat at the wooden chair, letting my chains partially rest on the floor. After some final clanking they were silent for awhile. Wile I was doing this, Omar turned his back to me and left the room with Ali through the door through which we had entered just half a minute ago.
Then I saw Mehmed take some machine from the table, which I immediately recognized to be a kind of razor, although a rather rough and big one - more intended for shaving sheep than shaving men, it seemed at first sight. Well, in fact I had become cattle now, indeed slave cattle, only useful for them because of my muscular strength and what they would be able to press out of those muscles at the oars. And apparently this piece of slave cattle, I now said grimly to myself, was to receive a special haircut. Fearing something much more horrible, at the moment my hairstyle didn't worry me too much. In the first place, there was no one in my future slave neighborhood who might comment on it anyway.
Be that as it may, what Mehmed held was the only modern electric machine I would see them using during the whole process - it was an unforeseen break of style in the whole pseudohistorical re-creation. But apparently they deemed efficiency important too, more important in this instance than historical accuracy and authenticity. And efficient it was. At least much more efficient, in the sense that it did its duty much quicker, than if they had tried it manually, say in the traditional way with razorblades, water and shaving soap (or without the last, to be more crude).
Again be that as it may: the decision about what was to be used to shave me was not up to me. There wasn't any decision about what was happening to me that up to me any longer anyhow. If they decided to do it that way, I had to accept. In the same way, I had to accept the kind of haircut they would deem appropriate for a galleyslave. It turned out to be a rather simple haircut, not a very sophisticated or fashionable one.
But after I sat down, something totally unexpected happened, at least totally unexpected by me. It would not have been unexpected to them. After Mehmed started the electric razor, which made a lot of noise and was shaking awfully, without warning he with one coarse pull shoved the front flap of my loincloth (that covered my crotch) aside like a curtain, and after a quick look at my rather hairy genitals placed this damned bulky razor against my left ball!
I jumped up, perhaps more because of fright than because of the pain, although it was indeed a horrible painful feeling. I mean: I had shaved my genitals several times in the past, but that was always done very carefully with a fine-tuned razor intended for human beings, and by a friend who knew about my tender spots in this very intimate zone of my body. Mehmed hadn't the slightest idea about my most tender spots, and if he had it presumably wouldn't have bothered him at all. For him I was just the nth cattleslave to be shaven quickly before the next one would come in. No room for personal treatment or mental care left!
The fact that I suddenly jumped up, and by that interrupted his work, apparently irritated him greatly, as he barked to me: 'Don't move, you damned slave, otherwise I might cut your eggs off totally'.
I sat back down and this time stayed in my chair, although it was difficult to stand it when he was going through my crotch with that rough razor in such a rude and speedy manner as if he was clearing his way through some African brushwood. Have you ever had your balls shaved with a machine that seems designed more for shaving the balls of bulls? If so, then in that case you would be an exception in Europe or America, I would guess. Well, up until that moment at least, I wasn't that exception. For me this was all an unknown experience, and I would have preferred that it had stayed that way. The feeling of this primitive machine touching and clearing my skin was as if Mehmed used the coarsest kind of sandpaper to remove all my pubic hair. I groaned because of the pain it produced, but Mehmed didn't cast a glance at my suffering and went on with his job in a surly manner.
To my horror, Mehmed's indifferent handling of my male member moreover caused me to get an erection, which I wasn't able to suppress immediately - only after having for a short while pricked challengingly in the air, my cock softened again, when Mehmed was already moving his machine to the next square inch of my crotch. My God, this fucking bastard might think that I was a masochist and would like being treated like that! But again, the barber didn't raise an eyebrow, as he wasn't interested in my reaction at all, neither my mental nor my sexual one. My person didn't bother him, I was just a piece of hairy slavemeat to him, only to be prepared in a proper and efficient way for its future life on the galley. He was just doing the job he was intended to do, he did his best and he did it fast.
In the end my pubic hair indeed was gone. I can't say that he did it very securely, but he did it in a profound way. Not only nearly all my hair was gone afterwards, some parts of my skin were too. My cock felt utterly raw and vulnerable now, as if it had been shredded like a carrot. Its color now was as red as that. And the same was true for my balls. But at least they were still there. I recognized some little bleeding on the left one, but that stopped very quickly. That wasn't the worse. The worse was that for the time being all the feeling was gone out of my genitals, it was in a way as though they were not there any more, as if I had become an eunuch. Luckily, I wasn't to be mutilated as far as that.
Work having finished downstairs, after pushing back the front flap of my waist-cloth, Mehmed moved his razor up to my chest. Like a lawnmower he let it go from left to right and back. When all my chest hair was gone too, my skin there felt as raw as that in the region of my crotch. Then it was my armpits' turn: the same shaving method, the same bald result, the same raw feeling afterward.
You may wonder why they all did this to me and shaved all my body hair to give me smooth skin everywhere, as I wasn't prepared for a beauty contest but for serving at the oars. The reason is first and foremost a hygienic one, as slaves being chained to their seat at a galley, being chained already as such, have some problems cleaning all parts of their body as carefully as somebody would do who is going up for an important job interview. Well, up for a job application I had been indeed, but for the task that was lying ahead my muscular power was more important than my vocal one, and in fact I was supposed to keep my mouth shut during the whole admission procedure and thereafter, only perhaps to be pardoned for breaking the silence for some more or less loud 'Ahhhs' if the pain that their harsh treatment of my body created would be agreeable, unbearable, or at least more than I could suffer. It soon was to be.
However, being shaved makes it easier for a galleyslave to become not as quickly the evil-smelling working-animal as otherwise would be the case. Because I can assure you: all those toiling bodies at the oars, forced to slave more than they would do voluntarily thanks to the whip, produce a lot of sweat every minute, and their continuous perspiration, hour after hour, day after day, gives that special odor to the half-open, not really air conditioned rowing section of the galley that somebody who is forced to stay there already for more than ten minutes - and a galleyslave is so - will not easily forget.
For that reason, everything that may possibly help to counteract the stench of sweat I would soon, from the moment that I was chained to my oar the first time, more than welcome. And although I hated this rough and rather painful treatment of my body by that fucking razor machine, it would be used on all the slaves regularly when the galley was resting in port, and I was always afterward in a way thankful that they had freed me from my superfluous body hair, which otherwise would cling to my skin because of the surface sweat and dirt, and together with that in that case could make a good hiding place for all kinds of still more unwelcome vermin.
The same is true for your facial hair and for the hair on the rest of your head. As a galleyslave you don't need it to look more attractive for your honeymoon anymore, and in the Arab region you don't need it as a kind of protection against cold temperatures either. Apart from that, beards and moustaches (especially in the Arab world) are the sign and the right of a free man who can go where he wants. And, as perhaps will have become clear to most readers by now, a galleyslave can't.
So after having had my genitals, my chest and my armpits totally shaven, and already being without any facial hair, it now was the turn for my head, where the lack of facial hair was uptil now compensated by my beautiful wavey light-brown hair that I wore neatly trimmed, covering just my ears. I had always been very proud of it, but that no longer made any sense: it had become a obstacle for quick processing. There was a lot of work to be done by Mehmed, but he fixed it in a rather short time, not being solicitous about the details. I can't say I really had foreseen that, and I surely can't say that I liked it.
Mehmed made no ceremony of it. He placed his lawnmower an inch down from the left side from the top of my head and then just pushed it, as if he had to scrape stones, forcefully from my forehead to the back of my head, cutting off and pulling out every hair it found on its boisterous way. Thereupon the next strip was shaved, and the next, till all the hair on the left side of my head was gone. It felt very strange and naked, I never in my life had had my head shaven. As it would have made no sense to resist or even to protest, I underwent this radical change of my outward appearance rather passively, coping with my general fear for the future.
After the left side was done, Mehmed did the same with my right side: beginning just right of the top and then shaving down strip after strip, till all hair was gone on that side also, and my skin there also felt raw. And naked, very naked. But to my surprise, he thus left untouched one strip of hair on the top of my head, perhaps a couple of inches wide, only taking a pair of scissors of the table to cut it a couple of inches long. In this way, I was shaven bald left and right, with a small strip of thick hair standing upright from my forehead back to my neck, like a kind of cock's comb.
How I came to know that rather immediately? After having finished his work, Mehmed kindly took a mirror from the table and - until now having done all the stuff totally silent - waved it in front of my eyes.
'Well, boy, this is your new slave haircut for the galley. The same as all your fellows already have. Hope you like it'.
Of course I didn't. It looked horrible. I didn't recognize myself any longer in the rather anonymous face that stared at me from the mirror. Yes, those were my eyes, my nose, my mouth, my chin - but for the rest? All my personality, my own identity was gone with my hair, with this primitive shaving, I looked like a criminal, interchangeable with all other criminals - and of course this was intended. It's the reason they not only do it with prisoners, but also with recruits in the army: to alienate you from your former own appearance, your former ego, to transform you into a new person, or better: into a non-person.
And for this reason they of course do it also, and even in the first place, with slaves. Shaving slaves (nearly) bald and giving them the same identical impersonal haircut, is not only done for hygienic reasons, as in the case of shaving their armpits or genitals. It's also a standard imposed on slaves to make them look more like slaves, to deprive them of all personal marks of identification, to take away their personality, to dehumanize them and to reduce them to a number, as they are the lowest of the lowest in human society - and especially in the hierarchical one of Saudi Arabia they are! - destined never to regain any personal identity at all.
This way it helps the slaves themselves identify themselves as mere slaves too. And this in turn will make it easier for them also to really behave like slaves, to act as slaves should do, which helps them to avoid needless lashes from the bullwhips of their severe overseers, who will not accept any behavior that is not appropriate for a slave. The slave-tag and the collar, which I now for the first time could admire thanks to the offered mirror too, of course fulfill the same mental function, to promote the necessary mindshift that is needed for a slave to function well.
I for that reason was justly disgusted by what I saw. This wasn't Tom anymore, whom I was looking at. This indeed was an arbitrary slave, only on behalf of an easier identification by the authorities numbered G-46 by its slave-tag to distinguish it from all others.
But maybe I did forget to tell you a few pages of my story ago, that the worst was still to come. If so, I'll tell you now that it still was. It indeed was coming soon. Because that infernal cry of that other slave, that didn't leave my mind all the time, wasn't caused by shaving, I was rather sure about that. And my assumption proved to be right. So after being completely shaved I was not without reason frightened by the thought of what might come next.