The men were at prayer. Facing in the direction of Mecca, they stood heads uplifted, eyes closed. All at once, with the precision of ballet dancers, they knelt together and prostrated themselves. ...
Ann watched the dance-like movements of worship with fascination. It was strange to see Yakub, his hands grasping his ears, his eyes tightly closed, solemnly bowed in prayer. She found it hard to believe that this was the same man whose strong hands had brutally violated her body, and for whose pleasure-giving loins she had left behind a lifetime. She had just arrived at this village where Yakub's small house nestled, like a small mushroom, among the foothills of the
Hindu Kush. Ann sat down wearily. She had ridden until nightfall behind the Afridi peasant who had picked her up at Abbotabad. Since then she had traveled-she did not know exactly for how many days - on horseback, on foot, and in strange, lurching bullock carts, until, at last, she found herself face to face with Yakub. The Pathan had evinced no great surprise at her arrival, but Ann knew that mysteriously rapid messenger system among the tribesmen had already warned him of her projected visit. He had merely greeted her and asked her to sit and wait until the evening prayers were finished.
Worship was over. The men stood up. To Ann's deep amazement Yakub Khan walked into the house with them and left her sitting alone on the hillside. She rose indignantly, dusted her skirt, and walked with her mother's determined step toward the little house. She had hardly taken a few steps when two heavily garbed 'women, wearing the concealing cloak-like burkha came out of the house and signaled to her. One was a tall, mature woman of about thirty, who seemed vaguely familiar to Ann; the other-she realized with a shock - was the child bride of Abbotabad. The older woman raised her hand to her forehead in greeting.
"Khoda Hafeez. The master says that you are to dispose of your European clothes and put on native dress." She spoke in a strange formal manner.
Ann followed the two women, who led her through the back of the house into a small courtyard. They stopped beside a little murky pond, and told her to undress. Ann thankfully slipped off her dirty riding habit, and dipped a white leg into the cool water.
"How white she is, Shaukat Bibi... just like snow..." the little girl cried excitedly.
Ann looked at herself reflected in the dirty pond. Her body glowed like a white chambella flower, that hides in the dark forests of India. A bright yellow leaf, floating on the water, coquettishly came to anchor on the reflected image of her mound. Smiling, Ann stirred the water with her toes, causing the leaf to sail round and round her rippling image-sometimes settling on her breast; sometimes brushing her full, pink mouth and then sliding downward, like an excited finger, and caressing the whole slim length of her leg. The older woman had filled an earthen jar with water and she poured some of it over Ann's body. Then taking a handful of dried grass, she plastered the weeds with wet mud and started to rub Ann's body. She looked like a strange wood nymph standing in the middle of the pond - her body speckled brown and white, and her long, fair hair fluttering in the evening breeze. Sitting down in the shallow pool Ann gave herself up completely to the soothing, sensual pressure of the Indian woman's hands on her wet body.
After the bath they led her indoors and told her to lie down on the string bed. The older woman asked her to raise her arms above her head and she tied her wrists to the head of the wooden bed frame.
The younger girl took some resinous gum out of a small jar and started to soften its consistency, working it energetically between her fingers. Then holding Ann's arm taut, she started to pluck the sparse blonde hairs from under her arms. Ann screamed. She tried to struggle, but the older woman impassively held her legs. She twisted her body in an effort to escape but the more she struggled the more it hurt. However, the little girl was very quick and efficient and in a very short while she had completely denuded the white woman's armpits of hair. The older woman now tied Ann's feet to the bed and bending over she held her hips firmly down against the dirty cloth mattress. Ann watched with horror, as the little girl, flicking her fingers, approached the sensitive forest of her mound. She groaned and writhed, for it seemed as if a thousand little needles were being driven into her body. The little girl looked up and laughed.
"Shaukat Bibi, this one is happy to look like a bear! Chee! Fancy a man sleeping with that - he may as well take a dog to bed with him," and she savagely plucked another golden shoot from Ann's smarting thigh. Then with a quick movement she parted Ann's knees and started to pluck the hairs from the sensitive lips of her sex. Ann cried out with the pain. She tried to move, but in vain; she was securely tied and the older woman bore down heavily on her trembling loins. When the depilatory torture was over, Ann was released.
She rose trembling from her bed, her body a mass of pain. The little girl brought her a scrap of broken mirror and held it before her. Ann gasped. Her mound, deprived of hair, rose like a small cleft vase between her legs-pink and pure and clean. Despite the pain, she could not help but smile, as she looked at the soft, smooth, girlish swelling with its tempting deep pink slit. The women now sat her down and combed and oiled her long blonde hair which they deftly wove into a heavy chignon at the nape of her neck. Then gently pushing her back on the bed they massaged her body allover with some heavy, musky oil. As their slim flexible fingers traveled over her body, Ann felt the familiar dull excitement start to throb in her belly, and she looked forward with longing to the night and the punishing limbs of Yakub.
The women had dressed Ann in wide, white pajamas and a long printed shin. Around her head and over her shoulders they had draped a huge cotton shawl, and had placed open-toed sandals on her feet. They told her to sit quietly in the room and wait for their return.
Ann sat patiently in the dark stuffy little chamber, heavy with the scent of oil and resin. Soon, the women were back with some food.
Though Ann was hungry she ate the spiced mutton stew and stiff wheat cake without much relish. A little later the young girl came back bringing her a bowl of light green tea.
"The master says that you are to sleep with us here, and tomorrow you are to share the work of the house and fields - memsahib," she added mockingly, calling her by the flattering title given to all European women. Ann had a sudden impulse to strike the impudent girl. The latter, guessing her intention, ran suddenly from the room stopping only to look back at the angry woman with narrow, mocking eyes.
Ann lay on one of the cloth mats laid out on the floor. Evidently the bed was purely ornamental, for she was soon joined by the other two women who spread their thin mattresses on either side of her.
They slept in their clothes, slightly loosening the cord of their pajamas, and when they saw that Ann was about to undress they sharply reprimanded her and told her to sleep in the clothes she had on. Ann lay down but she could not sleep. She was wondering why Yakub had not yet come to see her. The heavy cotton pajamas rubbed against her naked mound, the gentle friction only serving to increase her desire. Suddenly she heard footsteps and looking up she saw Yakub Khan come into the room. She sat upright and threw off her cotton covering.
"Yakub - at last here you are!"
He ignored her as if he had not heard her. He turned to the little girl and gently kicked her. She raised her head and looked up at her husband with large startled eyes.
"Chaleya - come."
"Hajee."
Abruptly he turned and left the room. Ann was too surprised to stop him. She got up immediately too follow him out but the old woman's hand was grasping her arm.
"You are not to go unless called." There was something menacing in her tone. Ann obeyed. She lay down again and watched the little girl. She had sleepily left her bed and was groping her way to the window sill. She pulled down a little jar of ointment, and spreading her legs, she rubbed it into the narrow sex. Taking a little oil from another bottle, she lifted her long, white shirt and massaged her small pointed breasts, polishing the nipples until they became as hard and as pointed as the sharp spikes on Arab shields. Then sighing deeply and looking back longingly at her bed, she dragged herself out of the room. Ann lay still, her heart beating. The heavy oil filled the room with its musky odor. She tossed on her thin mat, her senses excited by the perfume, but she did not dare get up as she knew that the still woman next to her watched her closely with her hard, dark eyes.
Suddenly a moan broke the heavy silence of the night. Ann trembled... she could hear the string bed creak and strain and the whole house seemed filled with the odor of semen and sweat. Ann thought of the little bed in Yakub's hut in Abbotabad and, turning over on her stomach, she buried her face in the dirty mattress and wept.
A week had passed...
Every day Ann worked with the women: cleaning the house, feeding the livestock, sewing and preparing and cooking the spiced food. She lived exclusively in a world of women - covering her face when a man approached, not so much through any newly acquired sense of values, but because she feared being recognized. Every night she waited trembling in the dark, her body afire with desire, but he only entered the room twice and each time it was to fetch the thin young wife. Ann felt deeply humiliated. Now that she had completely given herself to him, he refused to accept the generous gift of her body. Her dislike for the sharp, mocking young wife grew into hatred, and she waited for an opportunity to take revenge. Ann knew that Yakub was deliberately avoiding her to prove his absolute independence to her. To show her that she was no more the "memsahib" who commanded and he the servant who obeyed. She resolved to speak to him at the first opportunity, and to remind him of the unrestrained passion of their love. She had seen the little wife reluctantly go to his bed when called, and return tired and shaken. While the other women slept heavily, never even lifting their heads to look at their husband. Surely, she thought triumphantly, he could not fail to appreciate her after two such women. She could not help but feel that he was testing her in some mysterious way...
The next night Ann crept out of bed, telling the women that she was going to the small pit that served as a toilet. She took a little vessel of water with her and left the room. Carefully she crept around the back of the house, slipped out and waited beside the front door for Yakub to pass by. She must have been standing for about half an hour in the cool night, when she recognized his footsteps. He had been to the little outhouse that served as a barn for their thin cow, small flock of goats and horses. He stopped outside the door to clean his bare feet with a stick. Ann, seeing him absorbed in his task, rushed out and threw her arms around his neck. He jerked up in surprise and pulled himself free.
"You! " he spat out the word.
"Yakub why are you doing this? You beast. You are doing this on purpose to torture me," she sobbed hysterically, beating him with her fists. He adroitly caught both her hands and pushed her against the wall.
"Shaukat... Azurie... Jaldee... come."
The women came running out of the house, the older woman carrying a lantern.
"Quick catch this she-devil and bring her in." Without waiting for them to move he lifted her up and carried her into the house. He carried her into a room she had never entered before. It was a small room, as dark as the women's chamber, completely bare except for five rifles standing against the wall, a wooden chest and a wide string bed covered with heavy cloths and furs. Throwing Ann on the bed he ordered the women to undress her. Ann did not resist, it was a relief to have even the women's hands touch her naked body. They turned her onto her stomach and held her hands and feet. She heard him open the chest, and before she had even time to wonder what he was going to do, she felt the leather switch cut across her flaccid buttocks. She cried out, reflexively tensing her muscles for the next blow. The switch came down again and again on her hard, white rotundities, streaking them with red welts. Then turning her over onto her back he struck her across the breasts. Ann groaned, her nipples hardened provocatively as if they welcomed this brutal familiarity. Then suddenly they released her. Instinctively Ann leaped up from the bed and ran for protection to the chest. Yakub followed her with a whip. She jumped onto the wooden chest in an effort to escape the dancing lash, but it cut relentlessly across her buttocks. Jumping off, she ran to the bed, crawled on it and begged him to stop. He dropped the whip and holding her down on the bed slapped her hard across the breast. Then he dragged her off the bed and sat her on the chest, tying her hands behind her back.
Ann sat sobbing quietly on the chest, her shoulders pulled back and her trembling beasts jutting out from her body, the nipples torn and bleeding. The older woman tied her feet together and then quietly retired to a corner of the room and sat down. Yakub called to the little girl, she came passively toward him and took off her clothes. She stood in the center of the room like a shiny, black skeleton. Thin to the point of emaciation, her two small breasts looked like two small thorns on a dark rose stem. Her oiled black hair fell rippling to her tiny apple-hard buttocks. She rose on her toes and walked toward the tall man. By now, he was completely naked too and his lean body was like a flame in the orange glow of the lamp.
He sat on the edge of the bed and signaled to the girl. Like a thin curl of smoke she knelt at his feet and putting her hands on his knees she took his long firm sex into her narrow mouth. With a sudden thrust he pushed it in deep. It seemed almost too big for her delicate mouth, but she accepted it submissively opening her lips wide and running her tongue cunningly over its tip. Yakub Khan moaned and his hips began a twitching rotatory movement. Turning his head he looked at Ann with a malicious smile on his lips. Ann felt as if she would burst-her thighs were moist with the excited juices that poured out of her quivering sex. Slowly the man disengaged his throbbing organ from the girl's snakelike kisses and raising her up, he lifted her onto his knees. She stood there like a small statue of the dusky blood Goddess Kali-thin and black, her tight breasts sharp and evil as thorns. He spread his knees wide, automatically parting her legs, and her dark hairless sex opened like an orchid before his mouth. His lips closed around the smooth mound and his tongue explored the purple depths, like an inquisitive bee. The girl quivered.
Ann sobbed. Her haunches trembled and the pain in her belly was unendurable. She looked at the fortunate girl-her thin black legs were trembling, but her face was impassive, as if the pleasure she felt in her loins was completely detached from every other part of her being. Suddenly the man pulled at her black hips and forced the little girl to sit across his knees. Groping like the light-blind mole, his heavy rod sought for the hidden cave of her vagina and deftly inserted itself.
A little cry escaped from her thin lips, but she still sat absolutely motionless and impassive, like a little black idol, on his knees. He moved her almost weightless body up and down, sometimes in a circular rotary movement and sometimes he raised and lowered her roughly on his erect sex. Ann struggled, her feet were cut by straining at the imprisoning string. She rotated her hips on the bare wooden chest in a desperate effort to relieve her pain. She wanted to throw herself between the man and the girl and to insinuate her white body between the black and the brown. She craved to bite the taut black nipples and to offer her golden slit to the thrusting, powerful organ. She cried out in her desire-but no one paid any heed to the perspiring white woman moaning in the darkness.
The black girl was now riding faster and faster on the knees of her master. And, as he felt the final convulsion rise in his loins, he seized her sharp breasts in his mouth and grasping the small fruit buttocks in his hands, he fell back on the bed, his penis stabbing the innermost depths of her being, as he buried his living seed securely within her.
The white skin began to be darkened by the sun-only the blue eyes and radiant hair revealed the origin of the third woman. One evening, as the men were away searching for stray members of their little flock of goats, Ann took the first wife aside and questioned her about many matters:
"How can you stand living in the same house when he loves Azurie more than you?"
The woman shrugged. She was tall, big-boned, silent. Her large square face was expressionless and almost manly with its long etched features and wide flat cheek bones. She gave an impression of rocklike stillness. Only the sharp, green eyes, so like her husband's, betrayed the violence of her nature.
"I am barren," she said in her slow, impersonal voice, "women are vessels to be filled by men. If I cannot contain the precious liquid, my husband has the right to choose and love another woman."
"Yes, but does it not make you angry... jealous? "
"What has it got to do with how I feel? My mother chose my husband. He has been good to me and allowed me to remain in his house. He has kept to his bargain. If he sent me away he would have to return my dowry, so you see I am not completely without protection."
"But how can you live... night after night... seeing him love the other?"
"In the beginning it used to hurt me. I traveled allover the country from Rawalpindi to Afghanistan visiting the tombs of Saints and talking to holy men, in the hope of diverting God's will. But I soon realized that Allah had ordained this, and so now I am resigned.
It is only right that I should be deprived of some of the joys of marriage, seeing that I cannot fulfill my part of the bargain and give my husband an heir."
"Why do you not return to your family?"
"And be a living reminder of my disgrace? Never. My parents would suffer greatly if their daughter was sent back by her husband. People would say, 'See that Shaukat, not only was she barren but she was so useless that her husband sent her back to her mother.' No a woman's lot is a sad one in this life and we must find the courage to bear it."
"I could not live like this... seeing him take the other woman more often than myself... I could not."
The woman shrugged disinterestedly and walked away to find sticks to light the fire for the evening meal...
Ann was sitting in the sun sifting rice in a little bamboo tray, when the girl came to call her:
"The master is calling you," she said.
Ann rose quickly, covered the rice to protect it from the marauding chickens and followed the girl, taking care to cover her face completely with her cotton shawl.
Yakub Khan was sitting on a string bed under a large umbrella-shaped tree. He was dressed in the usual gray pajamas and long shirt, but over this he wore a sleeveless gaily decorated bolero. He dismissed the young wife with a gesture and beckoned to Ann. She did not wait for him to speak but started immediately to complain of his neglect and of her unhappiness. Yakub did not interrupt her but he caught hold of her arm and squeezed it brutally until she subsided.
"Ann, you must not speak without permission."
"Permission? From whom? "
" Ann you are no longer the memsahib living among your own kind. You chose to follow me and live with my people, so now you must follow our ways."
Ann waited in silence. Yakub smiled seeing her suddenly so docile.
"I suppose you have been wondering why I have been avoiding you recently," he continued in his gentle voice, "I shall tell you the truth. You repulse me. I have no stomach for women who are forward, immodest and shameless. You do not yet understand what womanhood is, my child." Taking her hand gently he guided her to the bed. "Sit down and do not be afraid, men are what women make them. I am not a beast, I am a simple man of my people. To us the most attractive thing about a woman is her modesty and virtue. I am more excited by a trembling virgin or a virtuous woman who succumbs to me through complete submission than by any bitch who points her breasts indiscriminately at any man! If you live here with us you must learn the joys of complete submission..." He raised his hand.
"Stand up and undo your pajamas."
Ann hesitated. They were seated not far from the little house and she was afraid that one of the villagers might pass by. Then slowly she undid the white cord and let the heavy trousers fall to the ground. Yakub drew her close to him and gently stroked her full white thighs.
"Ours is a religion of self-control. You know that we have very definite rules with regard to our conduct. A man disposes of his leisure in accordance with his status. Moreover we are brought up to honor women and to protect them from any bodily or spiritual harm... but to honor a woman it is necessary that she herself command this respect." He got up from the bed and turning the blonde girl round he made her bend over.
"Open your legs. "
She obeyed. Without any further ceremony he quietly inserted his throbbing organ into the pocket of her womb. Ann gasped. It had been weeks now since she had had a man, and the unexpected quality of his entry only increased her passion. Trembling she began to jerk her buttocks, rotating her hips round and round as the long penis - now stiff and full-penetrated deeper into her belly. She started to shake and the bucking of her loins increased as she rose toward her climax. Suddenly, without warning. the plunging sex was violently withdrawn. For a moment she did not realize what had happened, then with a cry of rage she turned to face her tormentor. Yakub Khan gently held her off and smiled.
"Slowly... I see that it will take quite some time to make you understand. There are subtler pleasures than brutality, and there is little pleasure for a man when a woman is too eager and hot. Force is the man's role - acceptance the woman's."
Ann knelt on the hard string bed and buried her head in her hands. The string bit into her knees, and a cool breeze fanned her naked exposed buttocks, crept up the inviting channel between her thighs, making her feel naked and exposed. Once again the man mounted her. She felt the steady pressure of his rod as her muscles opened to welcome him into her body. His loins seemed content to fill her but his hands roamed over her body caressing her rock-pink nipples and brushing the golden down on her stomach and mound.
His fingers were like a sculptor's creating new sensations and deeper desires as they brushed over every pan of her eyes, lips, into the moist pink mouth, ears, breasts, back-and dived between the swelling buttocks into the secret recess of her anus. Ann bit her tongue repressing an urgent desire to cry out. She was sweating, she wanted to grasp the huge body of the man and press it against her until she either died or was finally satisfied. But she was too afraid that the weaving caressing magic hands would leave her body. She shuddered as she felt the tumult mount within her. Slowly she started "to move her hips, as if in some strange mystic dance. The man responded strongly thrusting his power within her, and his hands continued to seek out every secret of her body. She felt the torrential surge within her. Her muscles tensed-and suddenly he was gone! With a terrible effort Ann kept absolutely still. She neither moved nor cried out, waiting in an agony of suspense for the dark power to tear at her loins. Then he was back; this time he took her hard and ruthlessly, as he used to in the days when they lay struggling in his small dark room in Abbotabad. And Ann sobbed with relief as her body culminated its desire in an unendurable agony of pleasure.
Later as she lay dozing on the grass, she heard him gently order her to rejoin the other women. She rose up, at once, and bending low before him she touched his feet in respectful salutation as she had seen his wives do...

Excepts from Ataullah Mardaan's novel Kama Houri. Olympia Press, copyright 1956.