CHAPTER ONE
Leslie Harrington watched from the balcony of her third story bedroom as the early
morning sun broke over the far distant horizon. The whitewashed buildings of the small,
Tunisian town glowed light pink and orange as they caught the first rays of the emerging
orb that would later punish them with its stifling, merciless heat. At 6 a.m., the air was
still redolent with the cold of the neighboring desert night. Leslie took a deep breath,
reveling in her good fortune.
The 22 year old, shapely, Bryn Mawr graduate had jumped at the opportunity to
become the private secretary of Mr. Hassen Ben Moussa. She had been out of school for
about six months and heard about the job from a professor at her college. She had been
hired based on her resume, her recommendations and a telephone interview. She had to send
a picture too. She had made sure she sent a good one and had paid a friend who was a
professional photographer to take some really good shots, ones that showed her serious,
competent side, but also a little cheesecake. It never hurt, you know?
Mr. Moussa was the wealthy owner of an international trading company based in the
small town of Dar Al Jamah located a few miles from the Mediterranean coast and about 85
miles southeast of Tunis. Leslie had studied both French and business back at Bryn Mawr
and the job was a golden opportunity to gain experience in both while, at the same time,
satisfying her desire to see more of the world than presented by the rolling Pennsylvania
countryside. Mr. Moussa needed a secretary who could decipher both English and French as
he dealt with American and European companies, trading the numerous commodities that
flowed from the Middle East and Africa to the developed world and then back again as
finished products.
She had only been at her job for a little over two weeks. So far, she had seen
little of the town itself, having been driven here directly from the airport in Tunis by
Mr. Moussa’s chauffer. It was tantalizing to have seen from the back seat windows of the
long, stretch Mercedes the desert countryside, the looming Atlas Mountains far off in the
distance and the exotically bedecked natives. She had even seen some camels driven by
white robed men along the sparsely traveled roadway.
Dressed in her sheer, flowing, blue tinted, lace trimmed nightgown, Leslie relished
the slight breeze that wafted its way over the rooftops below, lifting loose strands of
her shoulder length chestnut colored hair. It was early March and the harbingers of the
desert spring were in the air. She knew that she should not be showing herself at the
window dressed as she was. Mr. Moussa’s aide, Faraq, had given her a stern lecture about
the differences between local sensibilities about women’s bodies and that of the West. She
was not in the more cosmopolitan capital of this Muslim country where some deviation from
strict dress codes was tolerated. Leslie had seen some burkha clad women when they had
driven through the town’s narrow streets on the evening of her arrival. The young girl had
shivered as she thought of the constrictions the young women had to live under.
Now, looking over the panorama from the balcony off of her luxurious bedroom,
Leslie peered cautiously about to make sure that no one could see her. Seeing no one, she
stretched her long, thin, graceful arms up over her head and let the early morning sun
flow over her. Her motion stretched the bodice of her filmy nightgown tautly, pressing it
hard against her firm, heavy, young breasts. The nightgown was long and rose to the tops
of her ankles as she spread her feet widely. A close observer would have been just able to
make out the dark red, almost purplish areola that adorned her sweet orbs, the light
brown, trimmed bush that covered her sex and the soft, pinkish flesh of her graceful,
smooth thighs.
Today was an off day for Leslie. Mr. Moussa was away in Paris for business. He had
taken Faraq with him. Leslie did not like the tall, thin, surreptitious looking man. His
face, unlike Mr. Moussa’s, carried more than a hint of cruelty and disdain. Leslie had the
distinct impression he did not approve that his employer and master had hired an infidel
from the West to do his work when a good local Muslim girl would have suited him just
fine. But translating documents into English from French or vice versa required a delicate
sensibility to the nuances of language and idiom and Leslie was sure that she was the
right choice to do the work. She was confident in her abilities.
She was also sure that Mr. Moussa was happy with her services. He was a pleasant,
older man, in his sixties, she believed. He had strong, noble features and wore expertly
trimmed, silver hair with a finely sculpted Van Dyke beard and mustache. His interactions
with her were always suitably formal and decorous. Leslie had been worried for a while,
when she was pondering whether to accept the job in the faraway land, that her employer
was just seeking a pretty young thing to serve as his mistress, not that she would have
necessarily rejected that out of hand. She just hadn’t seen how good looking Mr. Moussa
was. She had had a few flings and knew that love and sex didn’t necessarily need to go
together. But Mr. Moussa turned out to be nothing like that.
The only unpleasantness, other than the sour attitude of Faraq, was Mrs. Moussa.
Her first name was Halima, but she was instructed specifically never to call her that.
Mrs. Moussa was a beautiful woman in her early forties. She had long, full black hair that
she kept in a bun, was svelte and dressed always to the nines. Leslie knew a little bit
about fashion and she recognized Mrs. Moussa’s outfits as being the latest from Paris and
New York. She wondered why the woman spent so much effort in looking pretty when, every
time that she went out, she covered herself in a deep blue ayala.
Well, Mrs. Moussa was imperious and none too happy about her husband’s selection of
a secretary. Her interactions with Leslie had been hypercorrect, bordering on rudeness.
Leslie ate dinner every night with the family and Mrs. Moussa never spoke to her. When Mr.
Moussa tried to engage her in conversation, Mrs. Moussa always interrupted with this or
that. Worse, she only spoke Arabic to Mr. Moussa at the table, although she was very
conversant in French and English, making it impossible for Leslie to know what they were
talking about.
The other occupants of the house, aside from servants, were the Moussa’s son and
daughter. Hajib was a little over twenty three years old, a little older than Leslie. He
spent much of his time in Paris partying with his friends, but Mr. Moussa had called him
home because of a few escapades he had been involved in. So he was basically home cooling
his heels until his father gave him permission to return. The daughter, Jana, was twenty
five. She had been married at one time, but her husband had been killed in a terrorist
bomb blast at a nightclub in Tunis a year ago and she had come back home in her widowhood.
So neither of the Moussa children was particularly happy to be living under the Moussa
roof. It made for a somewhat tense atmosphere at dinner time.
Jana was proper but curt in her limited dealings with Leslie. Hajib was something
else. It was clear to Leslie that the boy lusted after her. He took every opportunity to
talk to her, offer her tea, chocolates, a walk in the garden. He was polite, but his
politeness did not disguise his leers as he stared at her breasts. When Leslie walked up
the stairs to go to her room on the third floor, Hajib often stood at the bottom step, his
eyes glued to her legs. Leslie was sure that he couldn’t see more than a glimpse of thigh,
she wore knee length skirts, but it was disconcerting nonetheless.
As she peered over the roof tops, Leslie heard the sound of a wailing call to
prayer. There was a mosque a few blocks away from the large, elegant Moussa residence and
Leslie had begun to get used to hearing the undulating tones three times a day played over
the mosque’s loudspeakers. She decided that it was time to step back from her balcony, for
modesty’s sake, and get dressed.
She stripped herself of the fine, translucent garment and went to her dresser to
decide what to wear. Today, she had resolved she would go into the town. She had been
warned against it by Faraq and Mr. Moussa, but she was dying to discover more about the
mysterious urban center. After all, she didn’t take this job so that she could sit in an
air conditioned house all day.
She removed a pair of pink, lacy panties from the drawer and put them on. She
bought them in Paris on her stopover on the way to Tunisia. They were bikini cut and made
of silk. They felt luxurious next to her skin. She had decided that she would wear as
daring underwear as she could, seeing that she had to dress hyper modestly on the outside.
The panties had come with a small, matching bra. It barely covered her nipples and lifted
her breasts seductively.
“That will give Hajib something to stare at,” she thought. After she put it on, she
stepped over to the full length mirror that covered the door to her closet and admired
herself. She had been always a little chunky in high school and in the first years of
college. She had thinned out admirably after she turned 19. It was a combination of diet,
exercise and having naturally shed the baby fat that had adorned her hips. Since she had
arrived in Tunisia, she had been unable to exercise except for the push and sit ups she
did in her room every night. She was worried that she would begin to put back on the
pounds that she had lost. A good long walk around the city was just what she needed.
As she admired her curvaceous form in the mirror, she could not help speculate what
Hajib would do if he saw her like this. He would probably attack her, she thought. Now, if
Mr. Moussa ever gave her any hint that he wanted to see her in her undies, that was
something else. He featured greatly in her nightly fantasies as she stroked herself to her
daily orgasm. He was everything that she admired in a man. He was strong, aloof,
dignified. He seemed to ooze charm. Not the false charm of his randy son, but a
sophisticated, make your pussy wet charm. Mrs. Moussa was right to be nervous at her
presence.
She pushed her breasts together and up, accentuating her already pleasing cleavage.
She could just make out her dark areolas behind the lacy screen of her bra. “Would you
like a taste, Mr. Moussa?” she said to the mirror. “Go right ahead.” She laughed.
In her closet was her longest skirt. She had bought it in contemplation of walking
the Arabic streets. It was light cotton, blue. It had no adornments other than the
sparkly, gold belt she liked to wear with it. She also selected a modest, white blouse. It
had half sleeves with a little lacey fringe on the ends. She looked in the mirror to make
sure that her bra did not show through. If you looked closely, you could see just a faint
tinge of pink. That was okay. She had seen Mrs. Moussa wearing things much worse.
The last adornment was a pair of sensible shoes. During the day, while she worked
for Mr. Moussa, she usually wore high heels. Today she would wear her flats, a pair of
shiny, black slip ons. She would have rather worn her Nikes but didn’t think them
appropriate. Only an American would wear sneakers with such conservative but elegant
attire, she thought. And she didn’t want anyone to think she was American. She liked to
think of herself as French, sophisticated, continental.
Once dressed, she grabbed the kerchief she had bought at the airport in Tunis,
bright red with blue and white fleur de lis imprinted on it. She knew she would be
arrested for certain if she walked about without a hair covering. That was the last thing
that she wanted to have happen. It would be so embarrassing.
Leslie ran down the stairs to breakfast. She wanted to get her walking done before
noon to avoid the extreme heat of the later hours. She figured she would walk one hour out
and then another back. That would bring her back around 9 o’clock. Nobody would even know
she had gone.
After wolfing down the thick, tart coffee and an apple croissant given her by the
ancient head cook, Leslie headed for the back door. She wanted to slip out without anyone
noticing. When she opened the rear door, she saw that no one was there. She closed it
quietly behind her, strolled quickly out to the street and she was on her way.
It felt wonderfully liberating to be out of the house. She was finally going to
have an adventure.
Her kerchief tied tightly around her neck, her head covered modestly, Leslie
strolled the narrow streets. They were mostly deserted. The buildings were almost
uniformly of whitewashed stone, at most two stories high. The streets were cobblestone.
Here and there a shop owner was opening up. She passed a couple of cafés with seated men
clad in white shirts and slacks drinking coffee. They gave her intense looks as she
passed. It was nothing she couldn’t handle. She knew that even her demure skirt and blouse
couldn’t hide her luxuriant curves. She didn’t blame them for staring.
When she came to the street with the mosque on it, she hurried past. She dreaded
being confronted by some mullah outraged by her Western garb.
The town was hilly and the walking was a little tiring. She could feel herself
sweating steadily despite the early morning hour. She crossed what she assumed was the
city center. A few more people had hit the streets. Most of the women, and there were only
a few, were robed head to toe. She saw one girl dressed like she was, but she hurried off
and was picked up by a taxi.
On her way back, Leslie was tired. She thought to herself that she had been a
little overambitious in deciding to walk for two hours in this heat. She was thirsty and
was looking forward to getting back to the Moussa compound. Out of the blue, a shiny,
black Mercedes came to a screeching halt right in front of her. Two men jumped out. They
were dressed in beige colored caftans and had maroon colored, round hats on their heads
covering their wild, black hair. They both carried long, heavy sticks and had badges
pinned to their breasts. They immediately started screaming at her in Arabic, waving their
ominous sticks around.
A pit opened up in Leslie’s belly. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. She was
only about five or six blocks away from the Moussa house. If only she had walked a little
quicker.
Her skirt had a little pocket on the side and Leslie’s hand reached for it. She
suddenly realized that although she had meant to bring her passport, she had forgotten it.
An icy feeling went through her.
The men continued to shout at her. She tried to speak to them in French to tell
them that she was sorry and would go right home. One of the men swung his stick hard at
her legs, catching her on the back of her shins. She screeched in pain and fell to her
knees on the hard, white sidewalk. Tears came to her eyes. The other man grabbed her by
the back of her hair and started to drag her to the car. People had come onto the street
and were watching. Leslie called out in French for help, but no one took any steps to
interfere.
She struggled, resisting the force that was impelling her to the car. She knew that
once she was inside she was lost. The man who had struck her struck her again, this time
across her back. She moaned in pain. Realizing that further resistance was useless, she
allowed herself to be dragged to the back door and thrown in. It slammed closed behind
her. The men got in the front and the car sped away.
Leslie sobbed heavily as the car caromed through the narrow streets. She had never
been so scared in her life. The doors had no interior handles. They were taking her in the
opposite direction from the Moussa mansion. She realized that she didn’t even know the
phone number there.
Her ride took about twenty minutes. At one point she tried to speak to the men in
the front seat, but the passenger turned and gave her a vicious poke with his stick right
in the ribs. Leslie gasped and fell back onto the rear seat. She was quiet after that.
The car pulled through a gate into a large courtyard. They came to a halt in front
of an ominous looking, white stone building. The men hopped from the front seat and the
door on the driver’s side opened. Leslie was too scared to get out. The driver reached in
and took hold of her hair again and dragged her from the car. She fell to the ground
outside. It was covered with sharp, white, crushed stones. Leslie screamed in pain. The
man just kept dragging her until they reached a large, steel door. Leslie was doing
everything to get back on her feet, but the man was moving too fast. He banged on the door
with his stick and it opened. He dragged her in.
Once inside, the man paused so that Leslie could regain her feet. He held on to the
hair at the back of her head and, when she was steady, started dragging her again down the
hall. Leslie was screeching in pain and terror. They went down a long hallway and then
down some narrow, cement stairs. They waited while a heavy wooden door was unlocked from
the other side and then she was pulled past it. She went through another door, down
another set of stairs and then was brought into a large, well lit room. There were desks
set around it with caftan attired men, cookie cutter versions of the men who had seized
her, sitting at or standing next to them. She was brought over to a long high desk with a
high, caged window. A man was sitting behind it writing on something. It took a moment for
him to look up.
The man who was holding Leslie spat some words in Arabic at him. He leaned over the
desk to take a look at Leslie’s attire. Her powder blue skirt was dirty and torn from
being dragged through the parking lot. She had lost one of her shoes. Her ribs, back and
legs ached where she had been struck. She was bent over and had to look up to see the man.
She realized that she was at some kind of booking station and that the moment to speak up
had arrived. Once she was actually booked, she would be mired in the local criminal system
and who knew what could happen after that. She hoped desperately to be able to talk her
way out of this mess.
The man behind the desk asked Leslie’s captor a question and he responded curtly.
He raised Leslie’s head so that the man behind the desk could see her face. He asked
Leslie a question in Arabic. “My name is Leslie Harrington,” she started to say in French.
The men looked at each other quizzically.
The man behind the desk repeated his question.
“Please! Please!” Leslie blurted out in English. “I’m an American. I work for…”
The man who was holding her slapped her viciously across the face. She screeched in
pain.
“Pleeeeeeease!” she shouted again. The man holding her gave her another blow and
yelled back at her.
Weeping disconsolately, Leslie decided that she best keep quiet. The men had a
further conversation and some decision was reached.
Leslie was dragged over to the door that led to the area behind the caged window.
It was opened on the inside and she was hauled past some desks to another door. This was
made of steel and a man standing next to it opened it with a large, steel key. When the
door swung open, Leslie saw that she was in a cell block. There was a long hallway with a
shiny concrete floor. Larger heavy, wooden doors lined it. Each door had a huge lock on it
and a small trap door on the top so that someone on the outside could peer into the cell.
Leslie was dragged down to the fourth or fifth door on the right. The man who had been
standing by the outside door fumbled with some keys and opened it. Leslie was pushed
inside.
She fell to the floor of the ten by ten foot cell. There was a grungy, old, narrow
pallet along the right wall and a disgusting looking bucket in the corner. The two men who
had arrested her followed her in. The door closed behind them. Leslie’s stomach went sour
as she anticipated what was to come next. What happened was not calculated to reassure
her.
One of the men jabbed her with his stick and yelled at her, using his free hand to
indicate to her that she wanted her to stand up. Frightened beyond all belief, Leslie
complied immediately. He jabbed her with the stick again and gave her a command. She
didn’t understand it and he jabbed her harder. She fell back, clutching her stomach in
pain. Tears were streaming down her face. The man stepped forward and took hold of her
skirt, pulling on it and repeated his command. Leslie understood at once that he wanted
her to take it off.
“Please, don’t do this,” she moaned. “Please!” The man raised the stick over his
head as if to strike her a mighty blow and Leslie at once gave up her objections to
stripping. Her hands were sweaty; she had a hard time undoing her belt and loosening the
buttons on the back. When they were free, she hesitated for moment and then quickly
stepped out of her skirt. She proffered it to the man, who took it and handed it to his
companion. He then repeated his command and pulled at the tail of Leslie’s blouse. She
obeyed at once, unbuttoning the front and then pulling it off of her shoulders and arms.
Shaking, she handed it to the man who passed it on.
Things happened fast after that. The man grabbed her arm and made her turn around.
Her arms were drawn behind her back and she felt cold steel being applied to them. She was
handcuffed. The man turned her around again and produced a long chain. There was a hook in
the ceiling above her and he clipped one end to it. The other end he ran under her
handcuffs and then brought it back up. He kept pulling it until Leslie was standing on her
toes. He then clipped it to one of its links. When he stepped away, Leslie realized that
she could not lower herself to her feet without putting a strain on her confined arms. It
was a position that would become tortuous very quickly.
“Please don’t do this,” she uttered meekly. All she earned was another viscous slap
across her face. The force of the blow made her totter on her toes and her arms pull up
behind her. She moaned from the pain.
The men seemed satisfied with what they had done. For the first time since she was
arrested, they seemed to relax. They took the time to examine her near naked body. The man
who had been driving reached out and took hold of her left breast, squeezing it and saying
something humorous to his companion. The other man laughed and made some kind of
suggestion. The driver laughed back and he took the cups of Leslie’s lacey, pink bra and
pulled them up over her breasts, exposing them. There was a moan of appreciation from both
men. They took turns cupping and squeezing them.
Leslie recoiled at the offensive contact of the hot, rough hands. She tried to back
away, but the chain holding her wrists aloft wouldn’t let her. She was only able to back
off a few inches and one of the men, taking hold of her nipples, dragged her back. He gave
them a mighty pinch until Leslie called out in pain. The men laughed.
At that, they seemed satisfied. One of the men produced a black hood and it was
pulled over Leslie’s head and drawn tight at her neck. The other leaned over and removed
her remaining shoe. The men walked away and she heard the door open and slam shut behind
them. Then the lock turned with a heavy sounding, ‘clank!’
The unhappy American girl realized that she was in deep shit. No one knew where
she was and she had no way of relating to the men who held her captive who she was. They
didn’t really seem to care. That was the worst part. The slamming of the door when it shut
had seemed so final. It took her moment to realize that she was sobbing uncontrollably.
Her sobs were muffled by the hood which covered her head. It was pitch black inside. Her
shoulders ached from the chain pulling her wrists toward the ceiling behind her and her
toes were already becoming cramped. She could feel her loose breasts swaying as she tried
to keep her balance.
She heard the trap door on the upper portion of the door open and then men’s
voices. There was laughter. She realized that the men were staring at her naked breasts.
It shamed her to be seen by unknown men this way. By any men. She thought of her long,
shapely legs bared for the men’s view and the slight bulge that her pubic hair made on her
loins under her panties. Chagrinned, she tiptoed until her back was to the door,
depriving the men of their show. She knew that they were looking at her firm, plump ass,
but that was better than having her breasts exposed to them. She heard one of the men make
an unhappy comment. The trap door closed and a moment later, the door opened up again.
Men, she believed there were two of them, came into the cell. They were laughing. They
grabbed her ankles and pushed them together. She felt a pair of handcuffs being applied,
locking them to each other. She was turned around to face the door again and she felt
something tugging on the cuffs as if they were being affixed to something on the floor.
When the men stepped back, Leslie realized that she had been anchored in place. She
could no longer turn her body to hide her breasts. She whined in unhappiness. The men
played with her soft mounds for a little while, squeezing and caressing them. One of them
placed his mouth on a nipple and suckled it until she felt an unwanted pull in her loins.
The other man said something in Arabic and they made as if to leave. Then one of the men,
as if he had forgotten something, returned. She felt his hands on her hips take hold of
her panties and pull them down past her knees to her ankles. Both men laughed again. Then
they left.
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