Chapter 9: Punished for a night out

"And keep her out of the sun Fahid," Sapphire instructed the man who was to be my boss for the day, "She's got to be back on harem duty the day after tomorrow and they will want to see nice white flesh, not skin blotched with red sunburn. Otherwise you can treat her like your other two girls except she isn't used to hard manual work. She has permission to photograph you and the others at work so allow her to do that." Sapphire went on to explain why I was there while I shivered in the cool air. She had woken me at 6 a.m. and led me still naked through a maze of corridors and through a side door of the palace. We stopped at a hut in the grounds that I recognised from my walk with the milkers. I had agreed to be a manual slave worker for two days and to forgo my four-hour freedom right on both days. Today I was to work with the green robes, the outside manual workers and tomorrow I would work with the kitchen staff inside the palace.

There were twelve in the group, ten men including Fahid and two girls. All were Zamarabeans and all were powerfully built. I looked frail by comparison. They all stared blankly at me but I soon found that was only while Sapphire was there. As soon as she left, they were laughing and making fun of my whiteness and my large breasts, but not in a malicious way. Fahid was the exception. He seemed to resent my presence. "Come and I'll find you a robe otherwise these men will stare so long we won't get our quota done." June, one of the girls took my hand and led me inside to the accompaniment of ribald comments from the others. For some reason I blushed all over which caused them more merriment. I laughed too and remarked that I was getting sunburned and the sun wasn't even up yet which caused further laughter and seemed to get me accepted into the group especially when they saw the still colourful stripes on my arse from matron's strap. June gave me a green robe, a matching head-dress and a pair of flip-flop sandals. It was the first time for six weeks that my body was hidden from public view.

Our work was to lay a tessellated path through an avenue of palm trees. The tesserae were coloured bricks 4 inches by two and two inches square and were laid to form a complex pattern. My first job was to wheel these bricks from the storage shed to the end of the path. By now Coach had improved my physical fitness considerably but he hadn't been building up my muscles for manual labour, nor had my hands become hardened for physical work. Soon they became red and raw from the abrasive nature of the bricks. I showed them to June who had a word with Fahid and accompanied by sour comments, reluctantly found me a pair of gloves, causing more merriment from the others. I've always had a mathematical mind so I was able to pick up the repetitive pattern they were doing quite easily. Asheed, Ash we called him, laid out the pattern between string guidelines working from the one side of the path. Without being told I started from the other to match his. The others in the group lifted the tesserae and painstakingly set them in a mud-like substance or grouted those that had been laid previously. I quite enjoyed the work even though it made my hands quite sore.

When I returned with a further supply of bricks Ash had made a small mistake in the pattern, which I laughed at when I pointed it out. It was an easily done thing. Fahid though took it seriously and ordered Ash to kneel and bare his arse. Picking up a long switch he laid two hard strokes across Ash's buttocks leaving two deep red and painful stripes. I was shocked by this and whispered my apologies to Ash but he tried to grin, "Don't you make any mistakes now or you'll get the same. Fahid was only annoyed because an outsider and a girl at that, spotted it." Thereafter I checked every piece before I laid it in place and when Ash again made a little mistake I corrected it without Fahid knowing. Ash gave me a little smile of appreciation and did the same for me when I went wrong.

After working for a couple of hours our breakfast arrived and we sat in the shade to eat it. It was plain, wholesome food; filling but nothing fancy. Fahid made me expose my tits and sit in facing the others. "You show your big tits in harem, now you show them to us," he averred. By comparison the other two girls were small in the tit department. Mine still showed the stripes from the Jap whipping but they had faded considerably. Nevertheless I had to tell them how I got them, which revived the unpleasant memory.

We worked again until noon when a light lunch was brought and then we retired to the hut for a siesta. "We don't work in the hottest part of the day," June explained, "We have a three hour break and lie on the mattresses. Normally us girls get fucked a few times but I guess you'll get all the attention today." She was right. As soon as we'd finished eating everyone went inside and stripped off. Fahid put a couple of pillows under my arse and spread my legs. My bald cunt fascinated them and they asked many questions about it. June and Aisha showed me their thick growth which they believed to be a sign of mature womanhood. "You have woman's tits and baby's cunt," June laughed. They all watched as Fahid entered me and fucked for quite a short while until he spurted his seed. After that all the men had a turn but none asked me to suck them clean afterwards, for which I was thankful. That seemed to be an upper-class fetish. I noticed the raw welts across Ash's arse when he turned to lie down and I was ashamed that I had been the cause of him receiving them but when I again whispered my apologies he just grinned.

From three o'clock we worked on the pavement again. After being in air-conditioned rooms for six weeks, the heat and the manual labour began to get to me and by the time we finished at six I was exhausted. No one had told me what I was supposed to do when we finished. "Where do I go Fahid?" I asked as the others began to pack up and leave.

"I don't know," he shrugged his reply, "We all have homes to go to."

"You can come to my home," Ash suggested, "My wife will not mind. We'll be back in time for work in the morning." That seemed a good idea and I would get to see the inside of a slave worker's home. I didn't realise it was outside the palace walls until we had walked along a labyrinth of pathways that I would never find my way back, and through a side gate. No one at the gate challenged me; I was just another green robe slave.

About a mile further on was a little shantytown of mud huts with corrugated tin roofs. Outside most stood a woman cooking on an open gas fired stove. I wondered why each had an identical gas appliance and Ash said there were too many disasters with open fires they used to have so the king provided the gas cylinders. Gas was a by-product of the oil industry so it was a cheap commodity. By the time we arrived darkness was descending in the rapid way it does in these parts and I could feel the chill of the night air through the robe. I'd heard the night temperature plummeted but so far I hadn't experienced it. Now I could feel what they meant. The midday temperature reached 30 degrees Celsius or more but at night at this time of year it fell close to freezing. Ash stopped at a hut and greeted his wife, "Malia, we have a guest tonight. This is Carol from England. She has been working with us today to see how we live and will write it in a magazine. Carol, this is Malia, my wife."

Malia gave me a smile and a hug. "You are welcome Carol. And this is our daughter, she too is named Malia but we call her Little Mal." I bent down and gave the five or six year old girl a hug and said "Hi." At first she turned shyly away but when I gave her another hug, she gave me the biggest smile I've ever seen. I tried to recapture it on camera but never quite succeeded. We all chatted and laughed and people from other huts wandered along to take a look at me. For a short while I was the star attraction for the village and I seemed to give Asheed and Malia some status. It ended when Malia announced the food was cooked and we should go inside to eat.

A single bare electric bulb lit the one room. For a family of three, this was probably considered spacious. I noticed on the way here some families had several children but the huts were all more or less the same size. Ash informed me the huts were owned by the king and made to the same plan for all the slaves. When children grew up and took a wife or a husband, they applied to the overseer and in time they'd be granted a new dwelling or that of a deceased slave. "Every house is the same so there is no favouritism," Ash said, "All have one bed along the wall and a low table in the middle." When it was pointed out I knew I would be sleeping in the same bed as the others. Fitted in the wall with the door, were a series of alcoves that served as storage places for pots and utensils. "I hear that people in your country go into others houses and steal. Here we do not do such things, the penalty is too great. People who take things are whipped until they bleed badly and then feet are cut off. Not many survive." I shuddered when Ash explained but I also realised the good side. I had left my laptop computer and my camera where anyone could take it, and it was never moved.

The meal was a meagre one of goat stew and flatbread and I felt chastened that they'd shared what they had with an extra mouth and seemed to do it so willingly. I knew enough of their culture not to refuse or they would have been offended and I could offer them nothing in return. There I had no money and no possessions; like them I am a slave albeit a temporary one. Perhaps I could send photos to them via Sapphire. Malia explained the food was provided on the basis of their needs. She got rations for three but that was reduced because Ash got fed during the day at work.

Little Mal needed to go to the toilet, which made me want to go to so Malia took us to the latrines. Although these were in the open, shielded from prying eyes only by a low wall, I could hear running water below the holes. Where the effluent went to I have no idea but at least there was neither smell nor the myriad of flies I expected.