Dunes of Gor Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen: Aleah Sasani

“Should you even be here, Lady?” asked the guard outside the door to the dungeon cell. 

Reyhan stood there with a folded bundle of cloth in her arms. She was veiled and in her modest hijab as she gazed at the man in his calf length djellaba. 

“I am the Lady of this house and I come and go as I please,” she said. “Stand aside.”

The man did so, nodding to her, though he didn’t seem too happy with the order. The Khuda, Daan Shahzad had ordered that no one be admitted to the dungeon cell, though perhaps the order had not been meant to apply to the Khuda’s  free companion. It was a difficult call to make, and the guard had erred on the side of not offending the Lady. He unlocked the cell door, swung it open, and permitted Reyhan to enter.

Inside was a young girl of seventeen years of age. She looked terrified, and somewhat dishevelled from her recent kidnapping from the Academy where she was being taught etiquette, poise, decorum, polite manners and deference befitting a young Lady, by a stern faced Mother of Virtue. The Mothers of Virtue produced perfect results, but were known to apply strict discipline during their teachings.  

“Oh, Aleah, you poor thing…” said Reyhan as she looked upon the naked girl who now crossed her legs and tried to cover her breasts with her hands. “What have they done to you… I have brought you some clothing.” She placed the bundle of cloth on the simple cot bed and looked around at the cell. It was bare stone walls, a straw covered cement floor and not much else. A narrow barred window, set high on the wall, over looked the gardens below. Unfortunately for the young Sasani girl, she had nothing to stand on that might allow her to peer through the high window. The cell was built into one of the uppermost floors of a tower.

“Amita!” cried Aleah, recognising her aunt by her voice. “What is going on? Why has Eami done this to me?” She began to cry. “I was taken and stripped and brought here, Amita! I am scared! What is happening?”

“You poor child.” Reyhan walked towards the girl, her niece, and took the girl’s head and rested it on her shoulder, stroking her hair in comfort. “You poor, poor child.”

“Men stripped me at al’akadimia,” she cried. “They came with swords and killed my guards. They stripped me with their scimitars! They tied my wrists and gagged me and dressed me in a haik before they marched me through the streets. Please, Amita, what have I done wrong? I don’t know why I have made you angry!”

“Hush, child, hush,” said Reyhan as she hugged her niece. “It must have been terrible. Men can be such brutes. But I’m here now. You feel safe with me, don’t you?” Reyhan continued to stroke the hair of her niece and comfort her. “I have brought you clothes. Would you like clothes?”

“Yes, Amita, but I want to go home! Please let me go home! My mother will be worried and…”

“Mothers are always worried when their daughters disappear for a while,” said Reyhan. “It is the worst thing in the world.” She paused and stroked Aleah’s head again. “Where is Serafina? Where is my baby?”

“I don’t know… I don’t know what you mean, Amita? It has been weeks since I saw Serafina or Jaleesa. What do you mean?”

“Where is Serafina?” said Reyhan again, kindly. “Where is my baby girl? You know something, don’t you, sweet little one? You heard something, perhaps? Something your mother let slip? Hmm?”

“Has something happened to Serafina? I… I don’t know…”

Reyhan smiled softly and nodded. “Let us get you dressed, Aleah. You should not be naked. That was wrong of the men.” She stood her niece up and then reached for the folded cloth. She produced a long sleeved djellaba, loose, but cut high on the thighs. It was the kind of djellaba a slave girl would wear in the desert at night to keep warm. Reyhan had Aleah raise her arms and then she drew the garment down over the girl’s head and body, smoothing the hem as far as it might go on the girl’s pretty legs.

“Amita?” The girl recognised instantly that this garment was not perhaps designed for free women. “My legs…”

“Are very pretty, Aleah. You have been blessed with pretty legs. You can thank your mother for that.”

“Can I please wear something else, Amita?” cried the girl.

“No. Now listen to me, no one is going to hurt you, but we think your father has done something very bad. We think he has abducted Serafina.”

“No… no, father wouldn’t do that!”

“We think he has.” In truth, Reyhan still had her doubts, but her man had spoken and it was her duty to support him. She had voiced her doubts and offered advice, but in the end he had decided to ignore what she had said. It was therefore now Reyhan’s duty to support Daan completely. “Now that you are missing, your father will come to his senses and will arrange with Daan to release Serafina, unharmed. Then, my precious little one, you can go home again.” Reyhan smiled and stroked her hair.

“But father wouldn’t have done this! He wouldn’t! Amita, I am so scared…”

Reyhan gazed down at her young nice and suddenly felt ashamed of herself. What was she doing? What had she become that she would give her niece a slave djellaba to wear? This girl was family. This girl loved, trusted and respected her. Reyhan had been at Aleah’s first robing, when the girl had bled as a woman for the first time. She had been there with the girl’s mother, presiding as important matriarchs of the family, fussing over the girl’s robes and gowns, just as Laleh had done when it had been the turn of Serafina and then Jaleesa. Reyhan had adjusted Aleah’s veils and had chided the girl gently when her pins were not stable. She had watched with pride as Aleah had donned her first hijab – the excitement in the young girl’s eyes so evident as she was permitted to conceal her hair for the very first time.

“Men must never see your hair,” Reyhan had warned, sternly on that day of Aleah’s first robing. “Your hair now is like colourful petals to the bees. Those naughty bees will want to steal all your nectar and feast on it in their hives.”

“I will send Jaleesa to your room with pretty gowns,” said Reyhan, changing her mind on the spot as she gazed at her niece. “Some of her finest. And a hijab,” she promised. 

“Amita!” The girl hugged her aunt who felt so ashamed of what she had been about to do.

“And veils. Good veils,” added Reyhan as she embraced her niece with love. “Veils you can wear with pride. Just bear with this djellaba for an ahn or so until Jaleesa has time to gather up what you need.”

“When can I go home, Amita?” sobbed the girl.

“Soon, my precious little flower. Very soon.”

Reyhan Shahzad left the cell and told the guard that her daughter would be along within an ahn with some further clothes for Aleah.

“The Khuda said nothing of this, Lady,” said the guard anxiously.

Reyhan stopped in her short stride and slowly turned her veiled features to gaze at the guard who towered above her. “Do not ever question my orders again, Tahid. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Lady. Of course, Lady.”  

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Reyhan found Jaleesa walking in the gardens. She was shadowed now by two armed men at all times, for even though she had the security of residing behind the high walls of the estate, House Shahzad had moved in retaliation against House Sasani, and Daan was not going to leave his younger daughter vulnerable to reprisals. Reyhan motioned with her hand for the two warriors to stand back a little as she approached her daughter. They nodded and withdrew to a respectable distance, observing the Lady as well as her daughter. Neither would be permitted to leave their sight of course. Nothing Reyhan might say would make them do that.

“Little one,” said Reyhan as she approached Jaleesa. “How are you?”

“Scared, mother. I have heard that father has…”

“Yes.’ Reyhan took the hands of her daughter in her own hands. “It is retribution for Serafina.”

“But we don’t know…” wailed Jaleesa, because she of course knew only too well that House Sasani had played no part in Serafina’s disappearance. She, even more so than her other, had reason to fear what might happen next when an innocent, offended, Hashim Sasani responded to this unprovoked aggression. 

“No, we don’t, but your father has spoken and we, his women, must listen and obey.” Reyhan touched Jaleesa’s cheek and stroked her hair. “I want you to go to your rooms and find pretty robes and gowns for your cousin to wear while she is our… guest. No cast offs. She is your cousin. She deserves a nice gallabiyah and chalwar. You two are about the same size. See that she is comfortable. Veils and hijab. I do not want her to be disrespected.”

“Yes, mother.” 

“What are you not telling me, little one?” Reyhan said. She could tell that Jaleesa was hiding something. Even veiled, in her hijab and high necked gallabiyah, Jaleesa was an open book to her mother. Something was amiss, even putting aside the concern over Serafina. “Speak to me, child, I am your mother.”

Jaleesa held back a sob. She so wanted to turn to her mother for comfort and sanctuary, as she always had, but how could she speak of any of this. How could she tell her mother that under her hijab she now wore a slave collar? That she had been sold at auction and that there were now papers lodged detailing she was a slave girl called Tepa? 

How could she describe to her mother what she had been put through these last few mornings at the house? How each morning Najina would arrive and Jaleesa would have to hurry to the centre of her room and kneel with her forehead pressed to the floor until the slave permitted her to rise. And how the slave was now teaching her slave positions each morning. This morning she had spent thirty ehn practising the position of sula, where a girl, a slave of course, is commanded to slide her legs from under her and lay on her back, her hands at her sides, palms up, her legs open. It sound easy, but the skill was in adopting the position gracefully from any other position, such as nadu. Jaleesa had earned three stripes of the switch when she had not been graceful enough in her movements. 

Tomorrow morning she would practise sula again under the watchful eyes of Najina, switch in hand. Jaleesa intended to practise alone before bed. Hoping to be better come the morning. 

“There is something you are hiding,” said Reyhan again. “Why do you not speak to me, little one?”

“I am just worried for Serafina, mother,” said Jaleesa. “I fear what is happening to her.”

“I feel the same way. But we are Shahzad women. We must be strong, in public at least. The women of this house must always be strong when men see us. But it is all right to shed tears and cry when you are alone with your mother. I will always protect you. You are my child, Jaleesa. A mother’s love knows no limits when it comes to her children. Whatever is troubling you, you can speak to me.”

Jaleesa wanted to. She so desperately wanted to, but the stakes were so high. What she had done, what Serafina had done, could ruin their House. She dared not speak of it.

Reyhan sighed as she held her daughter. Perhaps she must wait until Jaleesa felt able to talk. “We leave Tor for Al-Quada-a-Dhum in two days, Jaleesa. Make sure you are ready when the packing is done.”

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Reyhan found her free companion, ten ehn later, brooding in the Hall of Retribution. He sat gazing out into space, his sword of war sheathed and lying on a table beside his high chair. “Well?” he asked, as he heard his woman enter the hall.

“She knows nothing.”

“She lies then,” said Daan. “She will have overheard something, even if she doesn’t understand what she heard.”

“No. Beloved, the girl is innocent, ignorant, and above all, she is family.” Reyhan stood in her place – the place of a supplicant, in the Hall of Retribution, with hands clasped at her stomach as if in prayer. “She is a good girl. Any father would be proud of her.”

When Daan said nothing, Reyhan added, “Jaleesa will bring to her robes, gowns, veils and hijab. I have told her to do so.”

“And I told you the girl can wear a slave’s djellaba, Reyhan, nothing more. It is far, far better than how Hashim will be treating our Serafina by now.”

Reyhan stiffened at those words. She had been told earlier what she might be permitted to bring to poor Aleah. The djellaba had not been her idea, but Daan was her man, and she was supposed to obey him in all things.

“Beloved. I beg you.” She knelt in the place of supplication. She pressed her forehead to the ground before his high chair. She placed the palms of her hands flat on the floor. “I beg this of you, beloved. I beg of your wisdom, your charity, your compassion, and your grace, and I will myself take your rage upon myself, in place of this child, if it must be that way.”

Daan gazed down at his woman for a while. “Get up, Reyhan.”

Reyhan raised herself back to her knees and clasped her hands together before her body. “Do not humiliate her, beloved. She is of my blood. I ask so little of you, but I beg now, for you are my master in all things, and if you have any love for me, which I know you do…”

“Stop! Enough!” Daan rose and dismissed Reyhan’s words, stilling them. “Give the child whatever clothes you see fit. You are right, Reyhan, you have asked little of me during our companionship, and you have given me much. So I grant you this now.”

“Yes, I have given you two beautiful daughters, beloved, with which you may extend your power through fortuitous companionships, and I will in time give you sons, when you desire them. I give you my unconditional love, my respect, and my obedience.”

“And I love you, Reyhan, my woman.” Daan crossed the floor and took her small hands in his own. “Your words move me, and they are respectful as ever. I grant you this. Do as you will.”

Reyhan rose to her feet and pressed her forehead against Daan’s shoulder. “I thank you, beloved. I am your woman and I would stand with you against anyone and anything. My love burns brightly for you and will never diminish.”

“You always know how to make me feel ashamed of myself, Reyhan,” said Daan with a smile as he gently embraced his woman and, parting her veils, kissed her softly on the lips. “Be with me in my chambers this evening. I will not have need of my slaves tonight.”