Prologue

 

My name is Shafiqah.

It is the only name you will need to know me by.

You who eventually come across this journal must also be told that I write this simply for my own pleasure and that if you are reading these words I am either long since removed from this life or my private thoughts have been purloined after some fashion.

No matter.

Be this stolen or otherwise it is written in such a way as to make it impossible for any scandal to attach itself to my revered and beloved father who made my dream possible. Though I have little doubt that those of you who read this who are not of either my region, faith or mindset will certainly be scandalised. But then, how could you not be to find a young woman who is not only brutally honest about her passions and how she satisfies them but writes this simply as a means of reliving the deep joy of what perversion, as some would describe it, has brought her.

As I say, my name is Shafiqah and I am from...

No.

As I also say, I have no desire to give clues that would bring infidel opprobrium upon my ageing father's head so be content to know that, if you are American or European, my country is not yours.

And, to dwell on the subject of the respective merits possessed by these hypothetical countries, neither is it saddled by the troublesome notions of personal liberty that we find so unnatural and so against progress and which hamper your Western societies.

What I will tell you is that my country is oil-rich and I am the only daughter - the only child - of one of its wealthiest and most powerful men.

My mother having passed shortly after my birth it is not so surprising that he would revere his surviving offspring in such a way and it is fair to say that I am not just his only daughter but his highly regarded daughter, as well as his most vociferous and loyal ally.

And you must believe me when I tell you that my father is not wanting for support.

But, to reference my looks, it is only proper to say that it is not to these alone that I owe his devotion to me. Rather, it is a certain symbiotic likeness that makes our thinking indistinguishable from each other's and the loyalty of a father to his only daughter that is returned with equal amounts of love and sincerity. For though I have a young and firm body that is not displeasing to me, I must confess also that I am unlikely to ever be regarded a beauty by dint of my somewhat sharp and angular features and the scimitar nose that could equally accurately be described, and no doubt has been, as "avian".

The "kittenish" and soft behaviour many women use to gain there ends is beyond me by reason of looks as well as temperament and I should sooner suffer the ancient punishment of impalement as beg a man for his favours - no matter how much they might prove to be in my interest.

I was educated at Oxford - though only money gained me entry and not academic ability - for which capacity I have none - and it was there that my dislike of the English, and especially their men, turned gradually to hatred and a need to have one of my very own that I may torment, dominate and, eventually, domesticate one of the breed.

In short I wanted a slave.

An English slave.

More than this, I wanted an English slave who would hate both his slavery and me but be conditioned, just the same, to obey and revere his Arab mistress.

You must make the most of this clue as to my exact nationality as no more will be forthcoming.

Even as that "English slave" wishes to take my slender neck between his powerful hands and squeeze until the life leaves my eyes, my servant and creature would be so conditioned that he would obey despite his antipathy.

You who are reading this and hail from what is considered a more "enlightened" culture no doubt consider me frivolous and unrealistic in my perversity?

I must warn you that, if you decide to continue reading this journal that has somehow found its way into your hands, then you must be prepared to not only acknowledge such an error of judgement but concede that the men of your race - and most certainly the one to whom I will shortly be introducing you - are not, perhaps, the gods you have come to see them as being.

Do not be deluded, as most Western women are deluded, into believing that the women of my culture are held to be second class citizens by its men. This is a misconception as old as your history and equally as tiresome. It is only the low-grade man in my country who rules a woman through terror and violence and such a man is regarded as less than vermin by those true men whose women respect them for that reason.

Likewise, and the reading of this journal must persuade you, do not anchor yourself with the thought that it is only the Western woman who is truly liberated. This is a refusal to engage with a different reality and the ways in which the women of my region and faith come to terms with it. For there is no shortage of powerful and influential women throughout Islam and the Englishman I am about to bring to your attention would speak very eloquently on the subject were he to be given permission to do so by his Arab, and female, master.

Of course, in my world, of course, this man is seen and regarded as my personal property as - though our part of the world pays lip service to Western notions of democracy and personal freedoms - we know that the old ways work best and that only by personal service to a superior can a person of inferior abilities and personal strength be fulfilled.

For the infidel, however, it is different and you have fashioned for yourself a mendacious world where weakness is applauded as moral strength and the more commanding individual vilified should he or she ever give vent to the superiority gifted them by nature.

It is a world I have lived in and visit still and, apart from a weakness for certain facets of its social make-up, have little in the way of time for.

Anyhow, it was a life of service to me that I intended for the man I had chosen. Even - especially - as he went about speaking down to me in his position as my tutor at Oxford. Though, fortunately, he had not been the necessary vessel my father's money had persuaded into the awarding of at least a respectable 2-1 in English Literature.

You will not be amazed to learn that very little of what I took in regarding the subject I studied actually stayed in.

Anyhow, my problem was that I enjoyed travelling and, though I preferred the luxury of hotels rather than the tiresome necessity of having homes dotted about the globe, all of them requiring upkeep and at least some expense of effort on my part, I liked to have a servant - a manservant - to wait upon me.

And wait upon me above and beyond the attentions of the hotel staff.

"Where is the problem?" I hear you ask. Surely, my father being as wealthy as he is, and given the region we inhabit, there must be no shortage of paupers willing to sell themselves into such servitude.

And you would be right to ask such a question. There is no shortage of such creatures and my father owns many like them. But where is the deep and abiding pleasure of domination in this for a young woman such as me, yet to reach her twenty-third year, who wishes to exert absolute dominion over a mature and adult male?

A mature and adult English male.

For all my praise of them, Arab men, for me anyway, make the most dull and uninteresting of servants and slaves. Any spark of rebellion that is in them - and it is rare that such a capacity is found - soon becomes so ludicrously servile it is obvious their fawning obedience is insincere. More akin, as a point of fact, to those ludicrous black-and-white Hollywood films shown so often on television. Films that depict the Arab man in one of two ways.

He is either the handsome and dashing, English educated, romantic love interest or, equally as stereotypical, the fawning and servile, sly, disloyal and mercenary, trader or flunkey.

And where is a strong Arab woman to find the pleasure in that?

No.

What I wanted was a male creature who was both unwilling yet trainable.

Someone who, through intense conditioning and the knowledge the life he had known was no more and that I was his only future, would become my slave even as he hated the knowledge I now considered him as such.

A man so well-conditioned and with no other options I would have no concern in having him accompany me on those trips I spoke of earlier.

A man, in fact, who would be seen as a young woman's servant by his fellow Westerners - and no doubt sneered at for the service he gave to an "A-rab" - but who would know himself at heart a slave.

This is what I had asked for when my father - he shares my detestation of the English even if he does approve of their educational accomplishments - called me at the house he had rented for me in Oxford that I may be comfortable as I studied. - after, of course, I had begged that he allow me to end my studies in this hateful place, full of people I despised who looked down upon me, by way of a gift for my upcoming twenty-years and one birthday.

To my sincere disappointment - at the time at least - my father had refused.

To allow me to curtail my studies, that is.

He would though, should I at least see out my remaining terms of study and knowing the carrot would convince me, give serious thought as to how my plans for my tutor could be accomplished and see to it when I graduated.

As urgently as I wished to leave Oxford, this was one gift I could not refuse.

By way of an intermediate birthday gift a manservant, hired from an agency in London, arrived at my Oxford address a few days later.

Very nice, but not at all what I had in mind.

Though the presence of the gaunt and somewhat serious man of middle-years sent by the agency did, at least, supply my imagination with many fruitful avenues of thought.

But, when it all boiled down to it, the man was, after all, a paid servant and with flunkeys of that nature there are many limitations for a... "Master".

And imagination takes one only so far.

No matter how vast its scope.

Or vivid.

I remained excited by the promise of what was to come, just the same. To my knowledge, my father had never been known to break his word and the fact he took as many details from me regarding my tutor and would-be chattel made my lessons with the handsome and insufferable know-it-all almost bearable. It would, I knew, be no small feat on my part to endure the terms remaining to me. But my father had supplied me with the motivation to do just that. In fact the smile that lit up my eyes in what was usually a set, bored and displeased visage whenever my tutor could tear his attention from the other members of his tutorial - the prettier and Western students of a female variety that is - seemed to puzzle my late-thirty-something hate and lust object.

But then, how could he possibly know that the moment I had made my request to my father and that request had been given consent, I already owned him as surely as I owned the unseen Jimmy Choos into which my feet nestled so comfortably beneath my burqa.

Before long, and as one of our revered holy-men stated, he would be seeing much, much more of me.

"And say to the faithful women to lower their gazes, and to guard their private parts, and not to display their beauty except what is apparent of it, and to extend their head-coverings to cover their bosoms, and not to display their beauty except to their husbands, or their fathers, or their husband's fathers, or their sons, or their husband's sons, or their brothers, or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their womenfolk, or those slaves that their right hands rule."

My only addition to the wise words above, would have been that it would not be my right-hand alone that ruled him.