As a small child living a meagre existence in what is now known as Arabia I was abducted and eventually sold into slavery in one of the large city states of Sumer.  My lot was not much changed from what I knew before slavery.  Cruelty was a way of life and I soon learned how to keep out of harms way.

As I grew into womanhood I blossomed into an attractive woman, so I was told.  I was deemed to be not beautiful or even pretty but interesting in my looks and manner. I was sold into the ruling house of the city to be trained to be a "Pleasure Woman".   Pleasure women were not for the pleasure of the ruler but were for the pleasure of the visiting dignitaries and royalty from other cities and countries.

We were treated well and at least now I was treated as a valuable possession.   I did not allow myself to think of what my fate would be when I was no longer deemed attractive.  I vowed to live each day as it came and not to think beyond that.

As a pleasure woman I was trained in all the ways to sexually please a man or a woman. I was also taught the basics of our religion and the religion of the neighbouring countries as well as the cultural differences.  Some astrology, science and statecraft were also part of my training.  Not a lot of course, but just enough to allow me to carry on an intelligent and informed conversation with the people from various places.

Because we mixed on very intimate terms with the many visiting dignitaries we gathered a lot of very interesting and significant information.  It was this aspect that caused us to become a risk to the city once we were no longer useful in our role of pleasure women. No one knew what happened to the ones who were taken away but they were never seen again.  It was whispered that they were killed to keep them quiet and I eventually found out that this was the case.  A very few remained into old age as trainers of the new girls.  Still, not one did I see actually die there.  Even the old trainers disappeared eventually. The only way to cope with this threat was to not think about it.

Whenever a pleasure woman had a child it was left exposed to the elements.   This was one heartbreak that I never knew, for some reason I never conceived a child.  At that time in my life I was glad of this but in later years it tore at my insides like a vulture tearing at a rotting carcass.

When I was about 16 years old a younger son of one of the most powerful  rulers in the area of Arabia made a state visit to our city.  Because I was of his country I was given to him for his pleasure for the duration of his stay.  The other women said that he was an unattractive young man but I for some reason found him beautiful. I fell in love with him.  I never really knew what he felt for me.   He seemed to return my love but he never said it to me.

In getting to know him I found that he was really a very minor son to his father.   He had many older brothers and felt that as the youngest he would have to make his own way in the world.  He begged his father to send him on this mission.  He had an ulterior motive that his father would have approved of but not openly sanctioned.   His intention was to get to know the city and the palace so that he could bring an army in to conquer it for himself to rule.  He felt that he would have no trouble raising his army from within the ranks of his father's army.  His intention was to take over the city, install himself as ruler and allow his soldiers and their families to become the citizens of rank and reduce the incumbent citizens to slavery.

Naturally I had no loyalty to the current rulers or citizenry.  I pledged to aid my love in what ever way I could.  As it turned out I was able to aid him in such a way as to show him a way into the city through a tunnel and a series of caves.  I was able to convince some of the pleasure women to help me drug the guards at the significant posts near the entrance of the tunnel.   This tunnel went into the dungeon area of the palace.

The take over was accomplished quite quickly once Akber had entered the palace with his men.  They swiftly killed the drugged guards and changed into their clothes.  Once disguised in the palace uniform it was easy to overcome the guards at the city gates.  Akber's army poured through the open gates and immediately started sacking the city.  Meanwhile Akber had made his way to the royal apartments and held the ruler and his family and chief advisers captive.

The fighting went on well into the next day but eventually Akber had the city firmly under his control.  It was then that Akber did something that caused me to wonder just how much of his nature he had hidden from me.

He paraded the royal family and chief aristocracy of the city in the most humiliating ways possible in front of the populace.  Then he had them publicly killed in the most cruel fashion, even the little children.  I had no love for these people but I was sickened by the cruel slaughter.  I quickly realised that if I did not stay and watch the spectacle until the very end that Akber would suspect my loyalty to him and I may find myself in a similar position to my former owners.

Akber told me that he did this thing to make the populace fear him.  His manner of rule was one of fear.  He felt that a strong ruler was one who was feared by all his subjects.  Well, he succeeded in that for from that day onwards even I who still loved him devotedly, feared him.

At the end of the horrible spectacle Akber did the most amazing thing.  He bid me come up on to the dais to be by his side.  He announced to all who were there that he owed his fine victory to me, Souiliou and told how I had helped him enter the city.  He then proclaimed to all that I was to be his first and major wife.  The gory mess around me faded into nothingness as I was consumed with happiness.  In an instant I went from slave to royalty and that is all I could think of.

In the first few years I was very happy.  I shut my eyes and ears to Akber's cruelty to his subjects.   When he was with me he was wonderful.  The only blot to my happiness was the lack of a child.  It simply did not happen.  I began to fear that Akber would take another wife even though he had promised me that he never would.  Of course it had to happen.  Akber needed an heir and also he needed to make political alliances with our neighbours and this necessitated taking minor wives.

Akber took many wives and had many children by them.  While I saw less and less of him in his bed he never removed me from my position as first and major wife.  I presided over all the official activities, ever at his side in a supportive role.  More and more I became his political confidant and even advisor.  Even though he never once said it to me I believe that he loved me.

I found that I could not satisfy my longing for a child of my own by visiting the children of Akber's wives.  That just seemed to make it worse.  I started to go out among the people. In disguise of course.  I soon found ways to help the poor and victimised and to offset in small ways the hardships the people had to endure under Akber's rule.  I didn't realise it for a long time but my disguise was very poor and I was quickly recognised.  The people kept quiet about my little kindnesses to protect me from Akber's anger.

Akber had kept the custom of keeping pleasure women.  It just happened that one day when I was 32 years old and on my way out of the palace in disguise as usual, I came across one of the pleasure women carrying a newly born child.  It was the child of one of the other pleasure women and she was taking it to expose it in the garbage tip just outside the city.

I don't know what possessed me but I snatched the child from her arms and ran back to my apartments with it screaming lustily in my arms.  My maids were horrified at what I had done but I would have none of their protests.  I insisted that they bring implements to wash the child to my apartments and to summon the court physician to attend me in my apartments immediately.

I did not get Akber's permission to keep this child who was a lusty little boy who I named Ali.  I just went ahead with my plans to be a mother even if to the world I was just raising this child of a slave to be my personal servant.  That is the excuse I gave about and by the time Akber heard about Ali he was firmly established in my apartments with his own wet nurse.

Akber stormed in to my apartments wanting to know what had possessed me to do such a thing behind his back.  He was going to kill Ali there and then but I threw myself upon him, kicking and screaming that I wanted to die too if I could not keep the boy.  Amazingly Akber backed down and allowed me to keep the child.  There were strict conditions of course.  He was to remain a slave and I was to train him to be my personal manservant.  This I complied with publicly but in private I was very much Ali's mother.  I didn't care what whispering went on behind my back.  Finally I was fulfilled as a mother. 

As a mother I had great ambitions for my son.  I knew that the only way he could become a freeman was to buy his own freedom.  The only way he could do this was to acquire some specialist skill that the people of the court would be willing to pay for.  In the case of a slave any money paid to him would automatically go to his owner.  However, the owner could agree to put the money aside towards the purchase of the slave's freedom.  Legal papers could be drawn up to ensure that this happened and if the owner died before the slave had earned his freedom this legality ensured that the contract between the former owner and the slave would be honoured. This was the course I planned to take with Ali.

I had become very close to Senjezzamin, the court physician who was a very learned man, greatly skilled in the healing profession.  Because of our friendship he agreed to take Ali on as an apprentice at the earliest possible age.  I made it known about the court that I was going to have Ali trained as a physician so that I would have my own personal doctor and made sure that in public we maintained the facade of owner and slave.  I arranged the best tutors for Ali as he would need to be able to read and write, among other things, if he was to become a physician.

The years went by pleasantly enough.  Akber ceased calling me to his bed but every now and then he would come to me, secretly at night.  It seemed that he still cared for me but it was not good for his image to be seen to have such a weakness.  I retained my position as first wife and was at his side at all official entertainments and ceremonies.  Ali was a brilliant student and he had a real talent as a physician.  My friend Senjezzamin was very pleased to have such an able assistant.

When Ali was about 13 years old my health started to fail.  Up to that point I had enjoyed exceptional health.  As time wore on I became very thin but my abdomen was bloated as if I finally carried the child I had longed for.  It soon became obvious that I was dying but Ali would not accept this and vowed that he would cure me or die with me.  Akber allowed me to transfer ownership of Ali to my friend Senjezzamin.  Senjezzamin vowed to me that he would continue to train Ali and at the earliest opportunity arrange for Ali to have paying customers so that he could earn his freedom.  I knew in my heart that one day Ali would be a great physician and a free man.

I was very concerned at Ali's refusal to accept that sometimes a person can not be cured, no matter how much you want them to be.  I tried to explain that my time had come and that what I needed from him most was his pledge that he would not take his life when I died.  I told him that I wanted to die knowing that he would die a free man when his time came.  Finally he gave me his pledge and Senjezzamin secretly gave me his pledge that he would watch Ali very closely during his grieving time.

As I lay in agony on my bed one of Akber's wives came to see me.  She told me that she overheard Akber screaming at Senjezzamin that he would execute him if he did not cure me.  Here I was on my deathbed and now I had the proof that Akber loved me.  He never came to see me and I thought that I was already dead to him.  However this was not the kind of proof that I wanted and I summoned all of my strength to confront him.  I sent a message to him begging for an audience.  He surprised me by coming to see me.  I think that when he laid eyes on me he realised that no one could save me now.  I had nothing to lose so I asked him for a pledge.  I wanted to make sure that I saved Senjezzamin without getting anyone else into trouble.

I explained to Akber that Senjezzamin had done all that was humanly possible for me and that I felt indebted to him for all the extra time he spent in making me comfortable.  I also explained that according to Senjezzamin Ali was destined to be a great physician and would be a great asset to Akber as long as he could continue to train under Senjezzamin.  With this I asked Akber to pledge to me that he would reward Senjezzamin with the little country villa that he had given me in the early years of our marriage and that he would honour my legal transfer of ownership of Ali to Senjezzamin.  We spoke together for a long time and at the end I was satisfied that he would not harm Senjezzamin or Ali.  Akber may have been a cruel man but he was also a man of honour.

It was not long after Akber left my bedside that I passed over.  Senjezzamin and Ali were at my side, making my passing easy.  Ali was just 14 years old.