Chapter 3. A mullah’s flogging.
The day of our court appearance dawned bright and hot. Suddenly and without any inkling
that it was time for us to appear in court, the Sultan’s Janissaries appeared in the cell.
The door thundered open wide, slamming against the back wall, and in its opening stood
four fearsome looking men, with others behind them.
We were all taken into the mullah’s court with our hands tied behind our backs and
stripped to the waist. The guards pushed and kicked us to hurry us on. When we reached the
courthouse, it was full of people anxious to see what was to be done with the annoying and
noisy women who protested and caused trouble beyond their worth.
We thronged the dock and then the three ringleaders were drawn from our number and
pushed forward. At that moment, the mullah himself entered the court and approached his
seat of judgment. He looked surprisingly unkempt, even shabby, in a coarse linen burnoose
and a large, untidy turban shading his small face, which was buried in a grey, unkempt
beard. He carried with him a spiteful looking quirt whip, which he placed on the bench in
front of him as he sat down. One of the Janissaries stepped forward.
“The principals stand before you, holy one!” The mullah looked at them, half-naked,
sweating, grimy and unkempt after their hot, two-day incarceration. Though she looked as
grimy as the rest of us and her white loose pants were stained and grubby, I still thought
the blonde ringleader looked fabulous. Suddenly, one of the guards turned on her, slashing
her brutally across the face with his heavy riding whip.
“Avert your worthless gaze from the holy one! How dare you look upon him directly?” He
struck her across her back, as she bent forward in pain from being hit across her face.
The shouting and the singularly brutal way we were being treated cowed us all
immediately. The mullah stared at the three accused and waited until the whole court fell
silent.
“Look at you now, all of you. You look every bit the worthless bodies that you are.
Stinking, dirty, sweating and captured, you will be sure that I am going to make sure
those time wasting bodies of yours are put to some good use. If you have the energy to
prance about the town, gazing at men and encouraging their attentions, then you will have
energy that can be put to good, productive work and it will be used, make no mistake. Any
shirking and the work will be whipped out of those salacious bodies of yours.” The mullah
was always suspicious of all women’s intentions, sure as ever that our sole motivation was
geared around men and sex.
I chanced a look at our blonde leader and she stood now with her head suitably downcast,
a long, deep red furrow laid the full width of her back where the guard had slashed her
and that sight depressed me deeply, it seemed she too had been subdued.
“I have not come into this court to waste words with you; too much time has been devoted
to you worthless pieces of humanity already. I do not intend to allow you to linger and
stink up my court. You three have been identified as the main ringleaders,” and the angry
looking mullah pointed at the three downcast women. “The three of you look fit enough and
strong enough and so I propose that your option to waste time and cause trouble needs to
be removed and removed it will be. Not for thirty days, not for five or eight years, but
for life! The three of you will wear a state brand and work where the state demands your
labour be best utilised, be it on the farm, mill, galley or quarry and a miserable life
the three of you have to come, I assure you!” there was a gasp about the court and the
nine of us joined them. I stared at them aghast and I saw the downcast blonde slowly
shaking her head. “I see it as my duty to ensure the valuable asset of freedom is not
wasted on troublesome dogs as you. You now have a new role in life and be sure there are
men and masters who will ensure you stick to it.” The mullah was not done with them yet,
however.
“Also, as a visible example of how we deal with sedition in Talinin, the three of you
will hang from my own whipping post and suffer eighty lashes of the three cord scourge.
Take them away!” and immediately, Janissaries closed on the three and dragged them from
the court. I saw the leaders head go up, a look of grim acceptance on her face. I am sure
I had a look of horror on mine that was reflected on the faces of the eight girls I was
herded in with. The three leaders had their wrists cut free and we watched horrified as
they were pushed and wrestled brusquely from the court. Then the mullah levelled at the
rest of us.
“As for you pathetic wretches, your limbs too have lain idle for too long,” I was sure
we were going to get five to eight years in the galleys and I began to feel sick. “Be sure
that Satan finds work for the idle and so he has. I intend to punish you, sure that these
sentences will be an end to your miserable little sect. Your accursed gender so often
ruled by your bodies rather than your minds, will find physical pain a most severe
deterrent. If I hurt those ruling bodies, you will so often return to the right path
readily enough; I have seen it so many times that I am forced to use corporal punishment
on your wretched types again and again and as I see, will have to continue to do so.
Therefore, all of you now will be given fifty strokes of the rod on your backs and then
you can all be put to hard labour for thirty days. Out now!” he chimed and I was stunned
with the announcement. In the same minute, I felt that we had witnessed extreme brutality
and leniency with the stroke of a pen.
I knew that the way they counted up thirty days labour, we would all do more like over
fifty days, but that was better than the five years slavery I was sure we were to be
served with. In addition, thirty days labour meant no brand, not an insignificant
consideration in my opinion.
Guards did not cut our wrists free, but instead led us out of the court for our beating
and to be truthful, although I was not relishing the idea of what was to come, I was still
reeling from the labour term in the stead of slavery and I was therefore, strangely
relieved, even elated. I looked at Meesha, the pretty thing that was with me in the
procession and I could see from her looks that she did not seem to share my relief.
“Hold firm Meesha, we didn’t get slavery at least!” I hissed under my breath.
“No but we are all going to be beaten,” she groaned.
As we left the court, the ringleaders whipping had begun and it was a sickening scene.
Two of the girls, the delicious blonde amongst them, had been tied to the post. Both stood
with their arms bound over their heads, so that the whole of their stripped bodies were
available to flog. The third had been made to kneel away from the scene to await her fate
as the post only had two stations. She knelt, head downcast, with a grim and fearful
expression on her face. Two guards had been appointed and so only one girl suffered at a
time. The blonde was getting hers first. The men whipping her were again the Sultan’s
Janissaries and both were wearing their police patrol dress. It comprised of leather knee
length battle skirts, sandals, and the familiar round iron helmets they wore with broad
chinstraps. They had knotted kerchiefs about their necks and both men had removed their
shirts stripped for the job. Both looked tough, as indeed Janissaries were, but the one
looked hugely so, with large, suntanned arms like logs and a huge, muscle-bound chest and
stomach. Despite his ugly job, I thought he looked like a God. I have to admit, I thought
he was the loveliest man I had ever seen and I was strangely envious of the leader at that
instant. Envious that he was staring at her, intent on her and that her stripped body was
his entire World. I wanted him to see me, to stare at me and indeed, if he did nothing
else, at least he could hurt me. Use his strength on me, look at my body, and grit his
teeth as he lunged at me. Would that not be better than him not even knowing I existed? In
that instant, I wanted him more than I wanted my adorable Saahir.
Then I blanched and the other girls gave groans and gasps of anguish as this God struck
at the leader. Standing someway from her, he paced towards her, drawing the scourge
through his hands as he went and then with a full lunge of that powerful body, pivoting
from the hip, he hurled his whip full and hard across her back. She arched back and yelled
loudly in pain as the Janissary stepped away and made way for his companion whipping her
from the other side to deliver his stroke. Those few lashes we saw made me feel sick and
we could hear the pelts and yells of pain as we were led on up the street.
The scourges they used were terrifyingly brutal, made of tough, twisted buffalo or
ox-hide, knotted and then braided with an outer core of coarse, knotted wire, the whole
ugly assemblage gathered at the cord’s tip with an ugly twist of wire. They were not the
instruments of brutality usually levelled at younger girls such as us. Indeed, the
ringleaders were probably at just about the age that such whips might be considered for
them. These whips were commonly used on the repeat and obstinate fornicatresses and
adulteresses, usually those women who had braved the cat and even the mullah’s branding
iron. Often the women who stood stripped for this weapon bared bodies that carried the
punishment brands of repeated sexual misconduct and a stiff measure of the heavy duty
weapon made even such hardened sluts as these shiver and shrink from the thought of a
repeat lesson.
“Eighty of those will kill them!” Meesha mumbled to me.
“God it looked terrifying, but they are all strong, they’ll survive, I know they will,”
I tried to sound like I wasn’t trying to convince myself.
“Quiet you dogs, all of you. Any one found talking will get extra strokes!” and we
walked in the heat of the day in silence.
We were being taken to just past the middle of the town, for Talinin had a unique stone
feature there. In a circle were assembled some old, rectangular stone pillars. There were
some thirteen of them and exactly what their original use was is unclear, but they all had
three sets of holes running right through them. When the Talasians took Talinin and
re-assembled the old Sultanate and Playa judiciary there, they were quick to see the
benefits of the old town feature and soon, shackles appeared through the upper holes of
eight of them. Standing at about chest height, they made ideal whipping posts and so the
Judiciary had reserved them for that purpose.
As we were led up the hill to the whipping circle, small boys carrying sticks ran after
us shouting and cheering, clearly keen to see nine girls whipped in unison. Some of the
townsfolk, spurred on by the unusual sight of such a mass flogging and some eager to see
the dissenters punished and halted, followed our little humiliating march and watched with
interest our wrists were cut free and we were put on our knees and fixed to the post for a
beating. It was a good fifteen minutes march to the whipping circle and we must have made
an awesome spectacle as we were assembled on our knees and shackled to one of the posts,
the one of our number needing to share a post and being bound to the shackles of the girl
kneeling opposite.
There were nine of us to flog and nine guards had brought us here, each armed with a
stout but remarkably flexible stick. Each one was about the gauge of a man’s thumb and
some four feet long. On arriving, the men with the whips quickly pulled off their red
shirts for the exertion of the job in hand; their broad, muscle-bound bodies gleamed in
the sun with strength and health. With the guards stood behind us to flog us and another
man in the centre to count, I gripped onto the chain of my shackles, bit my lip, closed my
eyes and awaited the first stoke with dread.
The Janissary corps was a section of the Sultan’s army steeped with ritual and ceremony
and this applied also when they were called on to administer a flogging. It was done in
the Janissaries’ own unique and idiosyncratic way. Taking their stations behind us, each
man raised his rod full over his head, grasping it either end and waited for the call of
the stroke, announced by the counter shouting the stroke number. With that, each man
hurled his stick down hard and fast over our respective, stripped backs. So, with a call
of ‘one’, our beating commenced, for with a cacophony of howling canes and flying rods,
all the girls’ backs were struck almost simultaneously, my own included. All I can
remember is learning then what blinding pain meant, for I could see nothing, my eyes were
clamped shut, but a flash appeared before me as a nauseating and all embracing bolt of
agony shot through my entire body. All I could say is I was struck across my back, for the
pain centered and emanated from there, but where precisely, I could not gauge for a few,
full seconds. I hauled on my shackles as I leaned back and all I could think of was the
agonising pain of that first swipe. I had never felt anything like it. Even my Father’s
brutal riding whip had not hurt as that stroke did and I yelled loud and hard as tears
stung my eyes. A split second later, I realised what a picture I must have made for the
mob, with the young boys cheering and laughing and the adults ruefully nodding their heads
in agreement or smiling with approval. I pulled myself straight, feeling sick and spent
after just one stroke and miserably waited for the next stroke, silently vowing not to
moan so loud again.
My resolve broke immediately as the second impacted just as hard and in almost the same
place. The rod was slashing the full width of my back, just about centrally and already it
felt thick and bruised and I was sure it would be shedding blood. That is how the flogging
continued and I have to admit, I was not a brave sect believer prepared to endure all for
my beliefs, I struggled and writhed, cried out and squirmed uncontrollably.
The flogging was inflicted with unbridled severity and as it progressed, I looked at the
others who all seemed to be writhing and crying out as freely as I was. None of us it
seemed was able to take our beating in stoic silence, enduring the strokes in mute
acceptance.
I only knew of pain and humiliation during the flogging, cheering little boys waving
sticks and dancing, but I remember hearing the counter call ‘ten’ and thinking as I was
hit that I might pass out before the end. I remember the sounds too. Howling sticks, the
flat, meaty sound as they hit our backs, and the calls and cries of the girls. I caught
glimpses of other backs; deteriorating as the beating progressed before I was blinded
again with a new stroke, so that my head flashed back and I leaned back on my shackles
again.
At one point, I was gasping and moaning and I looked down at myself. I was soaked with a
blanket of sweat and my grey pants were stained, damp and dark. They had lowered too, in
my kneeling position and were low on my hips, giving my punisher broad scope to flog me
from my shoulders to my hips, which he seemed only too anxious to do.
At one point, half-mad with pain I dragged my agonised body to the post and at that
moment, I could smell myself, hot and musky. The days of incarceration, the hot, dusty
procession and this unholy ordeal of pain, sweat and humiliation had joined to make my
lack of personal freshness the least of my priorities, even for a pretty man-hunter like
myself.
I snatched looks at my fellow sufferers and I was surprised to see that although their
backs were blanketed with deeply coloured, broad welts, they had shed no blood. That
changed as the flogging went on and soon the deep bruising and weals that banded the full
width of the sweating backs began to ooze and seep blood as they were struck across again
and again, laying more strokes on the bruises already raised and still swelling.
The beating was along, drawn out affair, as each time we were hit, the guard returned to
his former position, raised his cane and awaited the next count, whilst I was gasping and
groaning, kneeling at the post and wavering from side to side in pain and misery. The
counter waited until all the guards were positioned and ready before he called the next
stroke, and so it must have been a full ten seconds in-between each stroke. Ten seconds
during which I could savour the agony of the last stroke laid over those already put there
and ten seconds of dread and horror waiting for the next which was as inevitable as night
following day.
I had no idea exactly how long I yelled, moaned, hauled back and forth on my shackles,
and twisted this way and that, writhing each side of the whipping block as far as my
chains would allow. All I know was it was an indecent length of time and I was sure we had
all been slashed well over fifty times, though the count refuted this notion. The watching
crowd had enjoyed a lengthy and judging by the vocalisation, a hearty enjoyable affair,
for throughout they had heckled us and jeered at us, urging the Janissaries to beat us
harder and the loud little boys had hopped and danced and cheered with the rest.
I heard the ‘fifty’ count and fell forward onto the post, gasping and I was sure
standing up again was beyond me. I looked over at the streaked and scored backs of the
other girls and I could see now that they were all bloody and I knew my back would be as
marked, bruised and littered as theirs.
Suddenly, the guards were showered with coins tossed at them by the grateful and greatly
entertained crowd who seemed happy enough to pay for the interesting diversion with odd
coins as they departed and the guards spent some minutes gathering them and snatching them
from the air. I saw one sweet vixen eye one of the burly men as she ensured her coin went
to him and she gave him a winsome smile as he snatched it and returned her a knowing look.
I looked at the guard in misery and noted that had I not been dripping with sweat with my
back in ruins, stiff with pain and thoroughly humiliated as I was by him or one of his
numbers, I too may have been tempted to flash him a smile and a discreet wave. I saw the
pretty girl coyly drop her gaze as the guard grinned back at her and she quickly and
demurely skipped away.
We were unshackled and released and as the burly guard who had beat me, released the
cuffs from my wrists, I could smell the sweat on his testosterone-laden body. As soon as
he had opened the shackles, he roughly pulled me to my feet with effortless ease. I got up
with a shout of pain as the blood rushed back to my legs and I stood, stooped and forlorn,
ruefully rubbing my sore and chaffed wrists and feeling the bruises swelling on my
throbbing back that seemed to grow by the minute. I saw Meesha; she looked as sweaty and
dishevelled as I felt. Her eyes were red and swollen from her bitter crying and her light
blue pants were stained and sweaty, with dust staining the knees where she had knelt at
the post; mine were the same.
We were marched back to town, still stripped and sweaty, showing our savagely flogged
backs to the jeering populace of Talinin.
“Ha, let’s see you march those off now!” jeered one man.
“Are you looking for one of your boyfriend’s now?” called another. It seemed many men
suspected the intention of many of us was boy hunting.
We were driven back the way we had come, towards the mullah’s court and the gate of the
thirty-nine stripes. As we approached, we were greeted with a sickening scene. The three
sect leaders had all taken their whipping and were hanging half-naked from a high wooden
rail that was also often used to truss women up for the lash. The three of them were
hanging by their wrists with their feet well clear of the ground. One of the guards
leading us gave a broad smile of satisfaction.
“Hah, the holy one has whipped them, now he’s going to let the sun do a bit of whipping
of its own,” he grinned. We all looked in horror as the three hung before us as we
struggled past, bruised and bleeding ourselves, but the picture the leaders painted was
gruesome in the extreme. Their bodies were wet with sweat and were scored over and over
with deep, blood engorged weals and bloody lacerations. Their breasts and fronts bore
heavy evidence of the scourging they had been put to and the one girl, who was facing way
from us, showed us a bloodied, scored back that was covered with whip welts from her neck
to her hips. I could not see any part of her back that did not carry stripes. They hung
limp and broken, their heads down. I even wondered if they were still alive and then I saw
the blonde beauty’s head roll back and saw her ribs heave as she drew a breath. I stumbled
away from the vile scene afraid and totally dispirited. The mullah had shown clearly
enough that he was more than the equal of our noisy but ultimately harmless little sect.
This was an end to it and that was as clear as day to all of us.
We trudged through the hot, dusty town and on into the town lock-up where we would wait
until dawn the next day, when we would all begin our impending eight weeks incarceration
and hard labour.
| 
