Page 33 - The Gluckman Occasional 7

Yeah, I’d like to have seen his face when he finally figured things
out. I still only half-believed him, it was such a crazy story. How
could anyone be so stupid? Well, they say the white slave trade
still operates out of Marseilles, so maybe it’s not so difficult to
wave some goodies in front of someone and then shanghai him.
What do you think?

Yeah, I agree one hundred percent! So, what happened next?
Well, according to him, he decided to play along with her until he
could find a way to escape. They took away his clothes and made
him wear that get-up I was telling you about. They gave him
some kind of Arabic name and he had to come running whenever
she called. There were a couple of other women servants in the
house, but they avoided him like the plague. So he tried a few
things. First he went snooping around for extra sets of car keys,
but there weren’t any. Then he had the idea of setting up towels
on the roof to spell out SOS, but the laundry was carefully
supervised by an old woman who kept track of everything.
Finally, he saw that his only chance would be to get back to the
capital and then make a run for it.

More easily said than done! He told her he needed some toiletries
which only he could choose, but that was rejected out of hand.
Then he said that if he didn’t pick up his mail at the hotel, it
would be sent back and his friends in the States would get
suspicious. She laughed at that, and said he had no friends.
Meanwhile he had to perform. You know what I mean! No, he
didn’t say what she was like, but you can leave that to your
imagination. All he knew was he wanted out, and he decided to
risk getting killed trying to escape.

No, no. Not by going over the wall. He knew he’d never get away
with that. Instead, he told her one night that he had the clap. Of
course, she thought he was making it up, but he plays it cool
again, acting as if he didn’t care whether she believed him or not.
After a few days, it began to bother her. That was the crucial
moment: she could have gotten rid of him and gone back to the
States for fresh meat, but instead she decided to find out if he
was lying. Suddenly she and the eunuch pushed him into the car