THE UNIQUE EXPERIENCE: PART IX
Within seconds the guard dropped from view, taking with his colleague the last of us three to his place for the night, as a slave never walks alone. I heard their footsteps and the clanking of the chains of G 17 gradually fade away as they moved on through the corridor to the left. What happened further to my poor slave-fellow I can't tell you, but I presume he was decently delivered to his own dungeon.
I stood in mine now, and gazed through the vertical bars into the corridor. That was the most refreshing position I could take, judging from the bad odor that floated in my direction from inside my cell. The foul stench that the straw of the dungeon produced seemed unbearable to me. How the hell could I cope with that, apart from everything else? Should I ask the guards for another dungeon, a more fragrant one? Well, the chance they indeed would give me one if I asked them kindly, seemed not very great to me. The chance that they would react with sarcastic laughter was a thousand times greater.
So I would have to cope with it - there was no alternative. And well, if you stay long enough in a fuggy environment, in the end you don't really recognize the fugginess anymore. But for the meantime it was that worse, that I decided to stand where I stood, directly behind the bars, as the bad smell was at least less all-dominating there than in the parts of my cell farther back.
As the grated door, seen from the corridor, was rather recessed, and the walls to the right and left that separated my dungeon of that of my neighboring slaves protruded out for several feet, my outward view was very limited, even more as the grated door didn't extend the whole width of my dungeon, leaving a short piece of wall to the left of it. Only at the right side it reached to the sidewall that partitioned my cell from number 48.
Cell 45, that should lodge my neighbor across the way, still was empty, as were 43 and 41 to the left of it. Of course cell 45 was empty, I realized now: there the intractable guy that had overhauled us in our way down to the dungeons in principle was supposed to be locked up, but apparently because of his behavior the guards had put him in one of the dark dungeons at the other end of the corridor, where I had heard him battering with his fists against the thick iron door of his abode. Cell 49 seemed empty, too, but that was difficult to determine as I had to look into a ceiling-light in that direction. In cell 47 I on the contrary could clearly recognize some slow movement and soft sounds in the darkness; the slave over there apparently was lying on the ground, perhaps trying to sleep, and when turning over, his chains made some noise.
I realized again, that from now on that also would be so in my case: rather every movement I would make, even the slightest, would be accompanied nearly inevitably by the sound of rattling, the chains that were riveted to my limbs would produce. At least some sound nearly always would be there. It requires the utmost concentration of the slave who has to wear the chains, to prevent any rattling at all. To succeed really in doing this, you can't pay much attention to anything else.
That is a big disadvantage, especially if you want - and which slave in the beginning will at least not WANT that - to try to escape, as you only have a chance to succeed in doing so if you can slink away silently. Totally concentrating on that, you cannot concentrate on other things. That means, to succeed really in slinking away silently by not making any rattling-noise, you also can't pay much attention to all those other things which paying attention to indeed might be very useful in case you want to escape. Suspicious overseers, for instance, by experience know that most slaves would like to put an end to their slavery whenever a chance presents itself, especially when they are just enslaved and not have accommodated mentally with the fact that they have lost all freedom forever.
But that's not all. You not only have to concentrate on preventing any chains from rattling AND at the same time concentrate on what is happening all around you, if you want to have a chance of success when trying to escape. You also have to walk very, very slowly away to prevent that rattling, which in the case of trying to flee is not very helpful in effecting your purpose, as it increases your chance to flee if you attempt the combination of actions needed for that a little bit quickly. Chains, as I would learn later, therefore not only have the function of restricting movements of the slaves that have to wear them, but also of constantly signaling to their overseers where their slaves are. This makes it very difficult for chained slaves to escape their fate.
You may wonder why this is relevant for galley slaves, as they are always chained to the oars too, so always to be found on the same square feet; but not all labor slaves toil on the galleys. Others work in the quarries, in the fields or on a construction site, and because of the task they have to conduct - cutting stones, harvesting wheat or dragging away bricks - they should be able to move from or at least around the spot. In that case it is very practical that a slave driver not only can see, but also always can hear, where his slaves hang about. It's just as with the bells that cattle wear in the mountains: a sheep straying from the flock can be more easily found this way.
But at the very moment I gazed through the bars of my cell, of course I didn't know about that extra function of my chains, as I still didn't know very much about slavery at all, even less about slavery in the Arab world, and nearly nothing about the kind of slavery I was to endure in the future. I only feared it, and I feared it very much, for good reason.
To have a better look at it, more than taking a look at myself, was yet impossible. The view from my cell on my future was limited, literally as well as metaphorically. As the grated doors were recessed, I just could see the bars of cells 41, 43, 45, 47 and 49, and not much more. As the corridor was much brighter than the dungeons, and in fact the dungeons across the way for that reason were seen by me in backlight, I couldn't peer very far into those dungeons themselves. As said, I only vaguely could see that cell 47 was occupied, and that some other slave - presumably slave G 47 - made some movements over there.
Of my closest neighbors I of course could see nothing and would see nothing. Even when the slave inside 44 - so slave G 44 - would stretch out his hands as far as possible through the bars, I wouldn't be able to see them; the walls separating us therefore just protruded too far. I only would be able to hear slave 44 (and, when in some near future delivered too, slave 48), when the sounds coming out from his cell, via a detour through the corridor would reach in a muted way my ear. The walls themselves seemed too thick to make direct communication possible, which of course was in the interest of our enslavers.
For the time being, there were no sounds coming out of cell 44 as there had been when I was forced into my own cell a few minutes ago. However, contact would be not very easy, to say the least, apart from the fact that there were guards in the corridor walking back and forth quietly, and that all slaves were forbidden to speak unless asked. And the first hour nobody asked, at least not me. So I stayed silent.
While I stood silently behind my bars, both guards who had brought me here returned from - presumably - cell 17. They passed beyond my cell, without any slave now as one would expect, heading for the stairs at the beginning of the corridor. They took no notice of me behind bars - well, I wasn't the first and only desperate guy inside here that just was enslaved by them, and as I was safely locked behind bars now, without any risk of escape, there indeed wasn't any reason to take any notice of me. A slave is never looked more after than is strictly necessary. And well, in the forthcoming weeks and months there were to come a lot of moments when I would have preferred that my overseers wouldn't have felt that necessity, and that they overlooked me more often. After being looked after by a overseer, I mostly felt it in a rather painful way on my back, I can already tell you.
When their quick steps had faded away, I sat down in the straw on the floor. It was totally quiet now outside, apparently both walking guards had halted for a while, far out of my sight. For the moment I could see nobody, I could hear nobody. I was alone, and I felt very lonely in my cell. I stared at my shackles and chains, and started to weep.
My whole misery now had become too much for me. I wept silently, and wept so for several minutes. There was nobody to comfort me. The shock of the first encounter with my horrible change of state from free man to slave, and the infernal physical pain of the piercing and the branding, had started to make way for the notion that a gloomy future was ahead of unknown duration, of which I couldn't have the slightest idea. How many months, or even years, of slavery were to come? How long would I have to serve chained at the oars? How would I cope with it? Would I survive it? Rowing a boat as an athlete for the limited time and distance of a regatta is one thing - toiling on the oars of a galley for an unknown stretch of time another.
I even didn't know when the whole would start, as nobody told me and would tell me. Slaves are seldom told what will happen to them. It just happens to them - and at the moment that it happens to them, it's mostly still early enough to make clear to them what will happen next. Labor slaves are not only treated by their Masters as soulless machines, they for that reason are also regarded as soulless machines. And would you tell a machine what is going to happen? Well, some guys indeed do - we even once in Holland had a royal princess who talked to trees - but most will not. Most guys just start the machine up. So slave drivers in the same sense just start up their slaves.
So for the time being I was left alone in my own private dungeon, as G 17 and G 59 were, and all the other guys already dungeoned along the corridor. How long would we have to stay here in this gloom before we would be taken out to the galley and get assigned our seats there? A day, a week, perhaps even more? How quickly would all the other cells be filled with slaves? One thing was clear: I had plenty of time ahead, and apart from the pain the branding and piercing had inflicted on my body I above all would have to fight boredom. I had some idea of the tempo the slave production line could reach, but it would totally depend on the arrivals of new slaves. Planes bringing in new victims didn't land every hour at the Djeddah airport. Even those slavers who had become all-powerful in regard to us slaves were dependent on timetables and flight schedules to become all-powerful over more slaves.
When I made contact with that first Mohamed - the guy I never saw, if he existed at all - about picking me up after my arrival in Saudi Arabia, I had understood that the regatta - would there be one, or was that fake too? - would start rather quickly, the next day or so, but as I saw things going on now and the still many empty cells, I realized that it would take a lot more time until all new arrivals were turned properly into chained slaves. If we had been free rowers, they wouldn't have needed many minutes to register us, and they could have received several of us at one time. But as we were to become galley slaves, they had to receive us one at a time to prevent any escape. And the whole process of individually chaining, collaring, shaving, piercing, branding and stowing away each oarsman takes some time.
Done this way they needed fewer guards to control us, especially in the very beginning when we were still unchained. All of us were confronted with three guys at the start, and although some guys may have resisted or try to flee, as I did in the reception room, one against three for all of us - or at least for nearly all of us: the intractable guy that was dragged away before we went downstairs might have needed more than just three men to be captured - was a hopeless game. And after we were chained, a few guards could control more of us. And after we were locked away in our dungeons, even fewer guards could control us all - assuming that the grilled doors were strong, solid and secure.
After I stopped crying, I rose from the floor and tested the bars to see if they were strong, solid and secure indeed. Of course they were. I tried it in a very prudent way, at a moment when none of the two walking guards was in view, as I felt a little bit ridiculous about trying it, not wanting them to see that I tried the ridiculous. Well, to feel shame is one thing a slave has to unlearn, but in the beginning, having been a free man up until just a few hours before, one still is very sensitive in that respect, I can assure you.
Well, every new slave indeed will have tried what I tried, I suppose, as one doesn't want to miss the slightest chance in this hopeless circumstances. You would feel yourself a fool if you didn't try, and if then in the end it had turned out - how improbable it may seem beforehand - that the bars really weren't as strong as they should and seemed, and that there had existed a - thanks to your own stupid resignation bypassed - real chance to escape. At the same time, you would feel yourself a fool too, when no such chance exists and the guards see that you are searching desperately in vain for it. They may like to see your desperation, but you may not like them to see yours. One thing a slave has to learn is not to show his desperation - indeed, to show none of his thoughts and feelings at all - to his Masters, as his fear and their knowledge of that will give them extra power over him.
Well, to give you a short report of my examination of the grilled door that kept me inside: the bars, going up from doorstep to lintel without any interruption apart from just one cross-bar, were very strong and secure. They each were some two inches thick, and the space between them was perhaps treble that. No, I am slender, but not so slender that an opening of six inches is wide enough for me to wriggle through, and I suppose the same wouldn't do for you.
After having come to the inevitable conclusion that the bars were solid and that the big lock at the left that kept the bolt at the outside at its place was so too, I sank again on the straw, and again stared in front of me. No, there was no escape.
What does a chained slave do when he has nothing to do? Perhaps he starts to inspect his chains, to see if perhaps they aren't as solid and strong as they should be. At least, that's what I did now. After having inspected the grilled door and come to the conclusion that I wouldn't be able to break it, I started to inspect myself. I looked down at my shackles, and tried, one after another, if still perhaps, perhaps, perhaps there would be some movement possible in the rivets that kept both halves of the cuffs encircling my limbs together. There wasn't. There wasn't at the manacle that cuffed my right hand, not at the manacle that cuffed my left hand, not at the fetter that cuffed my right ankle. Not a hundredth of an inch did the rivet move, whatever I pushed or pulled on the irons. Of course I knew that, but of course I tried.
Well, they had delivered professional work, I had to grant them that. All three shackles were solid and strong and would stay on. They would at least stay on as long as my captors wanted. There was nothing I could do to change that. And the links of the chains that connected my manacles to my fetter were as solid and strong too. I sighed and looked at my fetter - and again recognized the big thick vertical ring that was attached to it on the outside, opposite the flat ends that held the rivet and where both chains were attached. The big ring quivered and oscillated with every movement I made with my right leg; it was in a rather flexible (but not fragile) way attached to the heavy fetter. I pushed against the ring with my right hand and thus let it swing. When, after some dangling it came to a standstill, I took it in my hands and rotated it thoughtlessly in the clip welded to the fetter that held it. I still wondered about it being there. At this point the ring made no sense to me at all. What the hell was it for?
Of course I not only tried out my shackles, I also put my hand on the heavy collar encircling my throat. Only by sitting down on the straw on the floor and bowing my knees thereafter, was this possible - the chains between my manacles and my anklet were too short to do this while standing upright. In that case I would be forced to bow my head and the whole upper part of my body into nearly a right angle to reach my collar with my hands.
Not being able to see it, I could only touch it, feel the huge width and height with my fingers. I let the forefinger of my right hand slide over the thick upper brim from the right over the back to the left. I felt the hinges, I felt the flattened nose of the big rivet in my neck that kept the band of steel locked securely. The whole was hopeless - if I ever might have thought that there might have been a possibility to get rid of the collar by getting the rivet out, I lost that illusion now. It was made bombproof. My forefinger therefore slid powerlessly back from the left to the right.
Raising my hands even higher I reached my shaved skull, and the ugly mohawk reaching from my collared neck to my forehead, that was all what had remained in the middle of my once fashionable haircut. Well, fashionable in a way it was, just not my preferred fashion. It was the fashion prescribed for slaves by the Saudian law, as I later would learn. All slaves, without regard to who their Owners were or what their duties were, had haircuts that looked like ours; the only legal alternative was to shave their heads completely bald, in case of very bad conduct - that therefore was a extra severe humiliation. This special haircut too made slaves - if ever they succeeded in breaking their chains - clearly recognizable as such. Free men in the Arab world once grown-up wore all full hair and beards. A slave has lost the right to both, and after his enslavement as a standard immediately is clipped like a piece of cattle. So I had been, and my skin still was raw from the brutal treatment it had endured upstairs.
After having had my right hand pass through the last remainder of my tuft of hair, I felt at the front of the collar, and there my fingers found the big circular slave-tag swinging below, with my new name - if you can call it a name - 'Slave G-46' stamped on it. I could feel the imprint, but could not determine the separate symbols with my fingers, and I wasn't able to see it when it was just hanging down, therefore it was close to my chin. But if I took it in my hands and bent it upwards, I could decipher the ciphers upside down, although they were too close to my eyes to see them sharply; and reading-glasses in this unholy place weren't delivered to us here to make this easier. Above that, I had seen the slave-tag, before the collar was riveted around my throat, so I knew pretty well what everybody else would be able to read. And I had seen the slave-tags of G 17 and G 59 as well.
The slave-tag was very solid too, as was its connection to the collar. I wouldn't be able to break that just with my bare hands - and even when I would, how would it help me? The slave-tag just told others what I had become but didn't change anything in regard to becoming that. A new one could be easily attached to replace the 'lost' old one, I presumed. Only breaking my chains would perhaps give me some - some - chance to escape my fate of becoming a galley slave. Being signed out with a slave-tag or not didn't make any difference in this respect. It only might exercise some mental influence on the wearer, and in my case indeed it did. I felt myself numbered and looked with disgust for some ten, fifteen seconds at the imprinted ciphers, and then let the slave-tag fall out of my hands. It swung a little underneath my chin, till it regained its equilibrium.
With even more disgust thereupon I looked down at my left chest. The branding of my eternal slave-number meanwhile had turned from fiery red into dark black. Thanks to that it had become even more clearly visible, inescapably visible, also from a far distance it must have been quite legible now, as the black contrasted as much as possible with my white skin. The edges of all the separate characters were sharply cut. It was done in a very professional way, without any fuzziness, I must agree. SLAVE B-2307-X-1856. The whole text filled quite a few square inches above my left nipple, and it still hurt. Well, the vehement pain directly after the branding had gone meanwhile, to be replaced by a sore one, but the spot still was very sensitive, as I found out when I touched it carefully.
Also sore was the pain in my penis, which was pierced in such a brutal way and soon after, when G-59 had fallen on me upstairs, was shoved in such a crude way against the floor. Carefully I pushed the downward flap of the loincloth to one side to have a look at it. Well, my cock luckily was not bleeding, only looking still raw and red. My penis still was flaccid, all the lust inside for the time being totally gone, as was the same for my aching balls. Luckily it was totally gone, as getting a hard on would be very painful because of the piercing and the short chain connecting the Prince Albert to the ring around my testicles that would prevent any full erection definitively, I was bloody aware of that.
This disgustingly big Prince Albert ring hadn't widened the pierced hole much further yet. Very carefully again I took it in my hands and rotated it slowly. It as such also was well done. They were professionals, I couldn't deny that. But this observation didn't help me very much - it frightened me even more. In a way, rather the professional way of the whole imprinted the idea on me that for me as a slave there was no way out. And that may have been intended too. And even when this was not especially intended, it had that effect, and that at least the slavers would not regret.
How painful would it be if I had to piss? Well, I hadn't gone to the bathroom since my flight into Saudi Arabia, and although I hadn't had a drink since then either - and in the meantime had become rather thirsty - I now felt my bladder again pressing. During the whole enslavement procedure and the hubbub accompanying it, I had forgotten my corporal needs, but now, in the intimacy of my own private dungeon, my repose not being disturbed by any Arabian guy that wanted to torture some part of my body anymore, I remembered that my body not only had been mistreated outside, but also had been neglected inside.
With every minute I was reminded of this fact of life. And pissing in this respect became even more urgent than drinking. That was something, in a way, I could be lucky about, as for pissing I had to act totally on my own, whereas for drinking I depended on what the guards were willing to offer. As they didn't appear to me to be very attentive waiters, and I didn't dare shout through the corridor for them where my drink was, I decided to do pissing first.
But where to do that? The time had come to move away from the bars of the grilled door and to examine my temporary abode, and thus to defy the bad smell inside. Or was I already getting used to that a little, did I already smell it less? As it was, as I already stated, rather dark inside, this examination was not as easy as you might expect. As I had to sit to review my body and irons directly behind the bars, there was at least some - although not very bright - light that came from the corridor, after turning around I needed some time to have my eyes adapted to the darkness of my dungeon.
Only after a couple of seconds I could perceive how big my place was. Well, as it was to be expected, it wasn't very big. Most suites in a five-star hotel will have been bigger, and also the ordinary chamber in the three-star hotel called The Sheik of Medina (if that too really existed) that was promised me (us?) in the correspondence after I had responded to the advertisement, will have been roomier.
Mine over here however was perhaps just six feet wide - I couldn't stretch my body wholly when choosing a position crosswise - and some twenty feet deep. Indeed, it was a kind of hole, with unornamented walls made of very rugged stones and bricks, and with its own tunnel vault, that was orientated square at that of the corridor. The top of it will have been eight or nine feet above the floor - it was luckily no problem to stand erect. As it was impossible (because of the chains) for me to raise my hands higher than my waist, I lacked the means to see if I could reach the vault with stretched arms, to make my estimate more exact.
The whole floor of my dungeon was covered with a thick layer of straw, thick enough to have it warm enough. But at the same time it was this mass of straw that was evil smelling. Underneath was a cold stone floor, but thanks to the straw lying down was comfortable enough - for my body, not for my nose, as the straw smelled very old and fuggy, as if it had laid here for months and months, and had seen many slaves before. But the bad smell of old straw was surpassed by the even worse smell of old piss. At first, I couldn't figure out where it exactly came from, till I discovered that, obscured from the eye by stray straws, just next to the wall to my right (when looking in the direction of the corridor), a shallow channel ran from the back of my dungeon to the front. There was where the stench came from.
Well, to be sure, the whole channel, after I dug it out by sweeping the straw aside, was totally dry now, but the piss of former slaves had penetrated into the stone, and wasn't to vanish as long as you didn't have a lot of fresh water and some biting cleanser at hand. And I hadn't.
The channel wasn't quite level, but sloped down a little from halfway to the back AND to the front, where just next to the corner it ended in a small hole in the ground, presumably leading to some outlet-pipe underneath. The hole was apparently meant for piss and shit. But as the channel wasn't very fine-tuned, and had some bumps and breaks at several places, the liquids wouldn't have easily been washed away totally. Parts of them would have stopped and either penetrated the stone or dried up. This explained why it smelled so horrible in my dungeon and would do so in the future too.
It was in my own olfactory interest to shit and piss in the small hole in the corner, next to the entrance, where the bad air could mix most easily with the relatively fresh air outside my dungeon. But that meant I would do both in sight of my neighbors across the way and the guards passing through the corridor, as this place was very visible from the outside. However, I just decided to empty my bladder and bowels there, having already pushed my loincloth aside to start, when one of the guards approached me with a big bowl in his hand.
I immediately dropped my loincloth to hide my penis in shame.
The guard laughed disdainfully.
"Forget your civic prudery, slave. You better get used to piss in public soon", he said.
"All slaves have to, as slaves have no privacy at all. As you're not a free man anymore, you better learn to behave and think as the work-horse you've become, and not let you distract by the fact that you're always watched by your overseers and fellow-slaves".
He paused, reaching the bowl with his right hand through the bars in my direction.
"Your body belongs to us now, and we don't care for your former feelings of shame and shyness. You're no more than a living machine without any personal needs other than being fed and watered at certain times, and without any personal belongings than the piece of cloth wrapped around your waist and the collar and chain riveted to your body. Your life will be nothing more than eating and drinking, pissing and shitting, sleeping and rising - and toiling at the oars for hours and hours, of course. Your mouth is nothing more than an intake to oil this toiling-machine, your dick nothing more than an outlet of the fluid waste your lubrication produces. Here's your drinking-trough for tonight. The manger with your food for this evening will follow soon".
I seized the bowl the guard offered, and while he thereupon walked away, I put it carefully on the floor, not knowing for how long I would have to manage with it. The water inside the bowl at least seemed fresh to me, without any repelling odor. Well, that I as a slave had to live in an evil-smelling entourage for awhile and also myself would smell evil soon, didn't bother my new Masters, but it was in their own interest to keep me healthy, so to have me drink unspoiled water.
Anyhow, before I started to drink, I first started to piss. The guard having gone now, I again positioned myself above the hole in the corner and shove the veil of my loincloth aside. Very slowly and carefully, as my penis was still very sensitive, I started to empty my bladder, aiming at the middle of the hole in the floor, as I tried to make dirty my dungeon as less as possible. It was the first time the piss went through the urethra of my pierced cock, and it was not a very pleasant feeling, when it exited my tortured gland. Directing the stream in the right direction was not as easy as it seemed, and I had to take care that I didn't urinate on the chain that connected the manacle around my left wrist to the fetter around my right ankle. It took some time - and a lot of chain rattling - till I had found the safest position for that. But in the end I managed to get all the liquid out, without making to big a mess.
Then, my chains inevitably rattling again while I was doing that, I sat down on the straw and took the bowl in my hands for my first drink as a slave. With greedy chugs - I had become really thirsty meanwhile - I emptied it nearly halfway, and than carefully put it down in the other corner of my cell. Well, as I had nothing to do now, I decided to lie down, and looked for an appropriate place to do so in the back of my cell.
The straw, although it pricked my skin in a lot of places, was more comfortable to lie in than I expected; at least it was comfortably warm. Less comfortable, although warm on their insides because of having adopted my body temperature, were the collar and the chains. The ponderous collar was the worst. When I lay on my back, the full weight of it pressed against my Adam's apple - it felt as if I were being strangled by it. How would I ever be able to sleep in it? The weight of the chains on my body I could handle, just letting them rest on my legs and (as they were connected to the inside of the fetter around my right ankle) in between, although to feel the thick and heavy links - contrary to the shackles being the whole time rather cold - slipping over my naked skin with the slightest movement wasn't a big pleasure either.
However, after some turning and tossing, I found a position lying on my right side that for the time being was more or less acceptable. The whole tossing of course was accompanied by the uninterrupted clanking of my chains, which moved every time I moved too. Lying on my right side, allowed me to have the fetter around my right-anklet rest on the floor, whereas I kept both my shackled wrists near to each other next to my right thigh. But it meant that both the heavy connecting chains lay together on my lower leg. I would have preferred otherwise, but I couldn't find a better solution for the moment. Based on what little I could see of other slaves turning and tossing in the forthcoming days in the neighbor cells across the way, I wasn't the only slave that was to struggle with this problem too. Anyhow, all the iron pounds of the collar now pushed not on my Adam's apple but on the side of my neck, which was preferable, as it was at least bearable. No, very comfortable it still was not.
But if you expect me now to lie down totally motionless for the next hours, I have to disappoint you. Already after some minutes I tried out a slightly different position, turning my right leg, or moving one or both of my hands. And although I thereupon thought, that it should stay like this, once more after some minutes I realized that this wasn't ideal either, and moved my limbs again to find a new position, which, alas, didn't give more satisfaction. With the result that, again after a couple of minutes, I rather irritatedly changed my position slightly for the third time, hoping to find a new and now definitive solution, the accompanying rattling of my chains each time reminding me that I never would find one.
And so on and on. Although exhausted, and desiring to sleep, I didn't succeed with all my attempts to do so. My position was just too uncomfortable, my collar was too oppressing, and my chains were too heavy to let me fall asleep. I just laid there on the floor, powerless while struggling with my fetters and rotating myself in the straw.