It all started five years ago at Al Azhar university in Cairo. How proud I was when I first enrolled as a mature student there under a different name. Yet I was not entirely comfortable with the thought that I had raised the money through selling hashish. The profits went to a Syrian farmer, from Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, who claimed he donated regularly to Hezbollah while my principal buyers were ( thank Allah for this fortuitous irony ) the Israeli military.On the darkest nights I waded across the Jordan river to sell to my contacts on the West Bank but sometimes the Zionist junkies ( may they all one day be captured, forced into fetters and chains, savagely sodomized and then sent to suffer the torment of eternal hell fire ) refused my shipment and I was forced to sell the excess cheaply to my fellow Palestinians in Zarqa. At the time I convinced myself that the means justified the ends - finding the best tutors to lead me closer to God.
Unfortunately I had to strike an even more unpleasant deal with Satan while trying to get to Cairo to start my studies. I hadn't been able to aquire my "permission to leave Jordan" permit as I had never completed my military service and desperate attempts to bribe bureaucrats in the army and government had failed miserably.
As a last resort I had befriended Adel (name changed), a young man who had once played half back with my cousin on Zarqa's football team but was now employed as a passport controller on the "rustbucket run" from Aqaba to Nuewieba ( actual ferry route was different ). It was well known that Adel's fantasy was to get a real deepthroat experience, so much so that when a well endowed local lad had refused to oblige, he importuned a virile pig which he found tethered in a farm yard on the outskirts of the Christian quarter. All went well until Adel decided to reverse roles. Unfortunately the pig looked on the young man's delicate penis as a modest hors-d'oeuvres and as Adel desperately tried to prize open the beast's jaws, the food demanding grunts of the animal's greedy brothers and Adel's own squeals of pain panicked the chickens and they in turn the dog and horses and the resulting commotion roused the farmer who peppered the yard with gunshot.
Since then Adel had spent as little time in Zarqa as possible as he had not been able to quell the gossip. When I met him it was far from Zarqa in a small office on Aqaba's seafront adjacent the port's RO RO berth. I tried to bribe him to help me pass through passport control, but he explained that the paltry sum of money I offered as an inducement was in no way sufficient to compensate for the risk he would be taking in smuggling me off the ferry at Nuweiba without a thorough documentation check. He added that he was only a junior official and as such never routinely checked passports and documents himself, but only the particular details of a few difficult cases at the direct request of more senior officers.
Adel assured me however that he had a foolproof plan providing I could "pay the price" and I was quickly persuaded by his newly found self-confidence. But in the event it proved to be far from easy. As he escorted me from a private cabin down a steep stairwell towards the car deck, we were spotted by a uniformed officer who sported so many stars on his epaulets that I couldn't determine his exact rank.
"Where are you going ?" he barked so as to be heard above the engine noise. "This is the son of General Mohammed Hafez," Adel cooly replied, "and my boss has asked me to look after him."
"Well hurry up and get back as soon as you can. There's a huge pile of processed passports waiting for collection upstairs and no one to hand them back to the passengers." I followed Adel down on to the car deck where he produced a key with which he was able to open the back door of a refrigerated meat lorry.
"Now for my reward !" he exclaimed excitedly as he closed the door behind us. He ignited his cigarette lighter so that I could just make out the outline of several carcasses hanging from hooks. Then falling on his knees he calmly lifted my gallibaya and received my shrivelled penis into his gentle grip. I was grateful for the meagre warmth of his hands but the whole ambiance, together with the freezing temperature and the fear of our imminent discovery prevented my member from performing as it should.
So I slapped his face hard so that he momentarily reeled in pain and instructed him to concentrate on licking my sweaty testicles while I allowed my own expert fingers to massage my cock, stopping only occasionally so as to spit on the queer's face. By doing this I was able to enjoy my own inner fantasy of having my shisha blown by a plump Cairene belly dancer while the dollops of saliva spattering his face reassured me that I had no sympathy, let alone interest, in his own perverted inclinations.
As I felt my orgasm surging, I grabbed his hair violently pulling his already open mouth forwards so as to receive my semen, lest any evidence of our wretched encounter ever be discovered on the floor of the lorry. Then I quickly covered myself again and reminded Adel that his absence on deck would soon be noticed, my passage into Egypt having now been secured.
My arrival at the Al Azhar in Cairo held out the promise of finding a deeper spiritual satisfaction. Al Azhar was the world's oldest university. The first lecture delivered in 975AD. Its' porticoed mosque and buildings stood at the heart of Islamic Cairo; the crowded threadlike streets constantly alive to the honking traffic and the petitions of beggars, gold and copper merchants and souvenir salesmen.
It was here where I first made contact with a few other middle class students who shared an adventurous and romantic inclination, fortified by youthful idealism, to join the Taliban in their jihad to create a new Umma or Islamic nation in Afghanistan. I was twenty nine, a student of Islamic studies and, despite my age, a little naive. I do not wish to disclose who at the University was my spiritual guru but his inspirational magic also effected my best friend Omar (false name.) In Afghanistan, he promised us, we could finally be true mujahideen. Holy warriors like those that had defended the Prophet in the epic battles around Mecca and Medina so many centuries before. We would be the spearhead, the enabling vanguard, and the bridge on which the Islamic nation would cross over to the victory that is promised and the tomorrow to which we now aspired.
However, for me, it had already become a less glorious ambition. I was desperate to break free from alcohol and sex. How I loathed the Pyramids Road where the clubs reaked of booze and the cheap perfume of down at heel working girls. For all its' worldly pleasures Cairo had become my own private hell.
Sometimes I used to go with Omar and few other students to find the latest hot arrivals on "the Road" - mostly slim dark Eritrean or Sudanese girls. We fucked them with barely disguised contempt, but I think deep down we despised ourselves more for discussing the word of God at Quranic history seminars and then going down to the Road a few hours later to shag sharameet. Doubtless, some Al Azhar students would have been horrified by our activities.
Omar and I had become hopelessly addicted to Cairo's seedy pickup joints. The meaninglessness and pace of Cairene life, the endless smoking of shishas, the noise, the smog, the constant visits to tower block brothels; it had all become too much. We were desperate to put these shameful routines behind us. So we set off for Afghanistan. Our first transit stop would be Karachi, Pakistan. Finally, we hoped, we would discover a stricter more austere, but infinitely more rewarding, existence.
When we landed at Karachi's Quaid-e-Azam international airport we knew it was probably going to be our last opportunity to sample cosmopolitan pleasures. I had secretly feared that among all the touts and officials milling about the arrivals area, I might spot a bearded Taliban meet and greet who would shepherd us in to a waiting Toyota pick-up truck, but on exiting customs we were very much on our own. Obviously Allah had decided to allow us one last opportunity to indulge our veracious sexual appetites, perhaps in order to cellebrate the dawning of a new age. Surely he would forgive us.
We spent almost one thousand rupees between us that night. Much of it on buying the right to deflower a couple of imported virgin Bengali call girls. The normal price was 300 rupees for such a privilege, but due to the recent economic downturn we were getting a bargain at just 150 rupees, the well dressed jawada ( lit. "the open-handed one" or famale pimp ) assured us.
We had obtained helpful directions earlier from one of the university lecturers who had warned us which parts of Karachi "to avoid." He explained that the red light areas of the city had changed little since the British set up official areas of tolerance during the Empire. If he ever reads this, let me say in my own defense that I wasted a little less money than Omar since I didn't tip my girl, but then Omar was from a comfortably off family, his father a senior commander in the Egyptian Air Force, and his wages were subsidized by U.S. aid so I suppose ironically it was the American taxpayer who had indirectly funded our trip.
I should also add, in case readers are annoyed at my ruthless indifference to my virgin's subsequent fate, that I never penetrated her but left that to the next lucky customer. I did spend a little time in idle chat as she had learned some elementary arabic back in her Bangladesh madrasa. I told her about my plan to fight the Americans but she didn't seem too interested. She said that if she had another chance to travel - she wanted to go to America to find work. I reminded her that prostitution was a grave sin and that to sell herself to Americans, would be an unforgivable crime. Besides, how could she remain a virgin that long and once deflowered she would worth no more than so much rotten fish.
Perhaps it was a sense of shame at my own cool conceipt that made me impotent, but I still enjoyed an aggressive ten minutes of kissing. May Allah who knows all abslove me but I could not resist the witchery. Her mouth reminded me of a wide-open cunt and her tongue tasted of exotic fruits and coconut. As I left the bitch even managed a nervous smile. I know she wanted to devour me but some inner strength prevented me from going too far. Yet those moments proved infinitely more pleasurable and memorable than the thirty or forty fucks I had paid for on the Pyramids Road.
The next day, already short of funds and despite a sleepless night, Omar and I caught the 0935 Baluchistan Express to Quetta, a city situated 536 miles north west of Karachi on the mountainous frontier with Afghanistan. For over a hundred years it had been the main route for gun and drug smuggling across the border and now it had become a major jumping off point for would-be Taliban recruits.
Like true penetants, we purchased third class tickets. It was a token but uncomfortable economy. After hours perched on wooden seats my arse felt the same as it had three years earlier when I was raped by two Nubian farmers in Aswan. A sort of bitter-sweet pain. They had invited me to smoke some hashish in the sugar fields by the Nile. Without any encouragement one of them kindly showed me his cock, proclaiming it possibly correctly to be the largest specimen in Upper Egypt, before the other grabbed me from behind and forced me down in to the mud.
Fortunately the mountainous scenery helped to distract a little from the discomfort of such nightmarish memories as the train chugged its' relentless course past dried up river beds and mud villages, and through the steep valleys and tunnels cut through the rock by impoverished Baluchi labourers for their British masters some one hundred years before so that the soldiers of the Empire could tame "the roof of the world.". For much of the time it followed the same route the pervert Alexander "the Great" had taken on his ironfisted campaign of conquest two thousand years before and now we too were on our way to fight an as yet unseen enemy. The new imperialists. The Americans.
The train slowly gathered pace as it began to descend across a wide plateau dotted with Afghan refugee encampments and as dusk fell we arrived at Quetta's noisy railway station. We were tired but ignored the petitions of the numerous touts offering to show us cheap accommodation as we were eager to discover the Taliban recruiting headquarters which other Al Ahzar students had proudly told us about.
We struggled through a busy street market where majestic Pathan traders wearing huge turbans sold everything from Afghan carpets to dried nuts. Yet despite the chaos, finding our way was easier than we had expected as there were several hand painted posters on walls. They appealed to anyone willing to join the jihad. There was one with a picture of a bloody American hand stretched out over a map of Palestine appealing to our own anti-American sentiments and another poster with a picture of Kashmiri freedom fighters which seemed to be aimed more at the Pakistani students. We could read the script as they were phrases in Koranic Arabic. So we just followed the arrows daubed on the bottom of the pictures.
I won't tell you about the dark and seedy office were we finally enrolled as Taliban or about our days of training in Pakistan or how we crossed into Afghanistan. That can wait until another day. But I will tell you a little about our Taliban commander, Basim [name changed]. Myself except, all our unit was comprised of Egyptians and Basim constantly reminisced either about his father's role in the October War or about the girls in Alexandria. He always talked about women but he seemed to hate them.
One day as we approached a village we saw a woman loading a donkey hantoor with bags of tomatoes. The village was otherwise deserted. It was the middle of summer and the woman was exhausted from the heat and her heavy work so that she had removed her burqa. She then pulled out a hijab from a basket and, glancing around her in obvious fear that someone might notice her relative state of undress, quickly donned it but carelessly allowed a lovely fringe of hair to remain uncovered.
I remember feeling aroused but as I was imagining what her voice must sound like I saw Basim slowly raise his rifle and rest it calmly and deliberately on the side of the wall behind which we were concealed. Before anyone could stop him, a single shot ran out and as she fell, I saw Basim glow with unmitigated pride at his marksmanship.
"Sharmurta wehesha" - dirty prostitute -
he declared cooly, as he lowered his rifle.
We hadn't seen a woman for days and several of us felt more contempt at Basim than we had ever felt for the peasant woman. She may not have been conversant with all the hadith but she was working hard for a family. If there were a few who felt she had committed an offence in not wearing the burqa, even they were a little anxious that Basim was becoming a loaded loose cannon. We all called him "Mussolini," jokingly at first, but soon some of us used the nickname with a nervous sincerity, only thinly disguised by humour.
We had been operating in the mountains to the south west of the Panjshir Valley and it was with some luck and great relief that one day we discovered an abandoned Lada Niva four wheel drive by a dried up wadi at the edge of a steep escarpment. Amazingly it seemed undamaged and though the keys were missing it was something of a mystery as to why it had been abandoned. Especially when we discovered a rod for the starter moter left with apparent indifference on the front passenger seat.
But Basim wasted no time deliberating on the mystery. He seized the rod, rolled back the right hand sleeve of his gallibaya revealing more of his bicep muscle than was technically allowed and then thrust the starter handle rod into the front of the bonnet. "Mafeesh moshkila" [no problem] he reassured calmly as he exerted only a portion of his huge strength to turn the motor. But his efforts were rewarded only by the silence of the desert.
Again he tried. This time summoning all his strength with the strain showing clearly on his brow and the patches of sweat rapidly darkening his gallibaya. As I watched him I could sense among my comrades the growing disillusionment with this man's brutality and vanity and seeing a brown paper bag left on the back seat of the car I took it and moments before Basim was to make one last push - I imploded the bag loudly with a clap of my hands. Just as I had expected Basim thought it was a gunshot. His life now seemed to him to be in imminent danger. His exertion on the starter motor handle had already forced him off balance and when the "gunshot" rang out he fell face forward to the ground.
I expected words of anger - even physical violence - as Basim picked himself up from the rocky ground but his crazed reaction was as bizarre as it was intimidating. "Paper bags are haram. You should know that. You fucking little sharmurta [female prostitute]. Son of your mother's cunt. You are finished."
Then, Omar, sensing the situation was already out of hand, tried to restrain Basim. But Basim, now enraged, pulled Omar's restraining hand into an arm lock and threw him head first onto the rocks. I will never forget the cracking noise of Omar's skull splitting open, the crimson gentle flow of blood from his open mouth and the deceptively radiant olive complexion of his skin. Indeed I will never forget any part of the picture. Even the harsh unforgiving contrast of the burning blue sky with the dark crags of the surrounding mountains. The others made no move. They knew Basim's greater strength and power. But I stared at him with a hatred that I could not have disguised and at that moment it was my only consolation that he should know that I would kill him. To my bitter disappointment it seemed that even Basim knew that there were times to be cautious. And he barked at the two men standing next to me. "Take him. Tie His hands up."
Then summoning his one trusted lieutenant he instructed the others to wait by the car while they would take me for my punishment. They began to march me back towards the mountain cave we had left two hours before that morning. They walked some thirty paces behind me and were talking in an angry tone but too quietly to hear.
I wondered what would happen. Surely they would kill me. Nobody would find my body. But would the others perhaps hear the gunshot ring out. Or perhaps the Lieutenant had other ideas.
He was nicknamed "Khashaba" [block of wood] because of the thick solid appearance of his cock. Almost every evening he would casually extract it from his jallibaya as he related stories, by the campfire, of European and Israeli women he had "conquered" when he used to run a small food supermarket in the backpacker beach town of Dahab, back in Egypt.
But everyone knew that his sexual energy now found other even more dubious targets. Afghan village women who were shias - but who he dismissed as "sharmutaat", [prostitutes] and, on at least one ocassion I witnessed, one of their young sons - who he declared would be better of dead than to be indoctrinated into such an evil perversion of the Islamic faith. So Khashaba dragged him by his feet screaming into a farm outhouse after he had got one of us to tie his hands.
I remembered the cries of "No" echoing across the arid valley many times before the boy finally must have aquiesced. I never saw what happened but I already felt I knew too much. I could feel a wind picking up. It was rare to get such a strong breeze at midday. I glanced back at Basim and Khashaba. They were too close for me to try to make a dash and even if I did there was no water for perhaps two hundred miles. In front now I could clearly make out the dark entrance of the cave we had left this morning and I could just make out the large rusty metal munitions box that we had dumped carelessly on our exit. As we got near Basim and Khashaba increased their pace until I sensed they were only a step or two behind me. "Stop." I knew I had no option but to obey. Somehow I had to survive whatever was about to happen. Then calmly Basim instructed me to remove my gallibaya and bend over the rusty metal ammunition box. They were going to beat me, they were going to kill me but did they plan to rape me first ?
Even though my hands were tied, my easy compliance must have surprised them but I knew, if I wanted revenge, that I had to stay alive. But I had to think quickly. I had to make them believe I was harmless or atleast not worth killing. "I am very sorry for my reckless stupidity," I confessed, as I removed my gallibaya. "I deserve to be punished. I know my behaviour was pathetic. I am just like a worthless sharmurta. [prostitute]"
I added the last comment as a calculated risk as I knew neither of them had sex in over six weeks and that they would have willingly had intercourse with a tethered donkey. I hoped my confession conveyed an implicit offer of regular relief. But there was silence. I prayed one of them would not be too afraid to play along with my dangerous offer. Although I felt disgusted at what I was contriving, I was too frightened at the imminent possibility of death to really care.
I bent naked over the ammunition box as I had been instructed and deliberately spread my legs as wide as possible. Surely they couldn't mistake the sacrifice I was offering up to them.
Now, I could hear them talking quietly again but this time in the way mischevious children whisper secrets to each other. Then, at last, and with pathetic relief, I could hear the crunch of small scree stones as one of them approached. But what would he do ? I heard him load his rifle, and the emptry cartridge drop out. Now I knew real fear. My last thoughts were bizarrely philosophic and abstract on friendship and its' importance. I was just wondering whether my comrades would miss me when I felt the cold rifle but touch my behind. Then he pushed it with slow and deliberate care up my arse, and though I realized this could be my undignified exit from this world, I carefully and modestly feigned pleasure, moving my arse upwards and allowing the muzzle end of the rifle to ease my cheeks apart.
He spat contemptuously at my arse hole. Three times."You fucking sharmurt. I will sodomize you every day of your life." I have never been so happy in all my life. Not because I am gay but because here in his contempt was the offer of life. The sweetest gift that can be given. Now I knew it was Basim but strangely I had to fight a confused feeling of love for him - like that of a child for a harsh abusive father. He would treat me with contempt and yet my future lay in his hands. When he thrust his penis into my arse it was more painful than I had ever imagined and I think he realized that and that it pleased him that he was violating virgin territory -that he was the first to conquer me. Khashaba would have to make do with whatever sordid mess remained.
Strangely his hands didn't touch me, even though it would have been an easier job for him if he had helped to steady my body's reactions to his immense physical force - perhaps some ninety kilos of muscle. I think he felt that if he touched me it would be a sign of humanity, a sign of weakness. It would no longer be my punishment but an act bordering, if somewhat dubiously, on love.
With each thrust his penis grew in size and it became more painful. Much more painful. So painful I had to try desperately hard not to scream in pain, to make any move to escape. As his thrusts grew in speed and depth I still tried desperately hard to feign gasps of pleasure in ever more desperate attempts to earn both his total trust and complete contempt. Every now and then he would withdraw his cock, much to my relief, spit on it on and then push it back in with more force than he thought I could take. Again and again, he rammed it as far as he could up my hole. I thought the nightmare would never end. Several times I couldn't help letting out a barely restrained scream of agony, but I immediately cried out "aiywa" (yes) to disguise my desperation. I could hear his breathing grow heavier as the weight of his entire body bore down via his penis into the very depths of my being. I forcefully mastered my desperate wish to struggle free and instead tried with all my willpower to relax my buttock muscles and allow his penis to penetrate deeper than I had ever imagined possible.
I thought it would soon be over but I now sensed that Khashaba was also moving in for his share of the kill. I heard his approach and then suddenly he was squatting in front of me. Throwing up his gallibaya he asked me "Takul zubree ?" "Do you want to suck my cock ?"
I was surprised he asked, rather than just doing it, although he knew I was in no position to refuse. I told him it was my dream to take it all in my mouth. But he wasn't going to let me have it so easy.
"First, you lick my arse, whore !" and he turned his behind to me and, as my hands were bound, he was kind enough to open the cheeks so my tongue could lick inside. It was the most degrading moment of my life but I knew I had no choice. How much I was learning about my self. How low human beings could go in order to cling to life.
It was not only a vile task, but because Basim was still thrusting through my body from behind with the full weight of his, it was a difficult just to keep my head sufficiently upright so my tongue could find its way inside Khashaba's hole. Then Khashaba turned round and lifted up his cock so that his smelly testicles dangled in front of my tongue. "Lick them. Lick my balls." I paused for a second because the smell of unwashed flesh was so strong. "Lick them, Whore. Lick them." "Shukran" [Thank You} I stammered, half in apology for the momentary delay as my tongue cut its way through the thick hair around his balls. Obviously he hadn't shaved himself for some time. But I was distracted from this unpleasantness by the intolerable pain created by Basim's ever deeper and faster penetration of my behind.
Several times now Basim spat on my arse as his breathing mounted. His heightened excitement seemed to infect Khashaba who now forced the whole of his massively thick penis into my mouth. Khashaba pushed the entire weight of his body to force it deep down into my throat so that I was desperate to cough to expel this suffocating intrusion. Especially, as now I was sandwiched between two merciless forces driving every ounce of energy and life from me. Just then, however, Basim suddenly extracted himself and although khashaba's thrusting thighs obscured most of my vision I could just make out a dust cloud on the horizon and a shimmering black spec at it's centre which slowly began to emerge into the form of a distant, but approaching, vehicle.
Basim watched nervously, but Khashaba was not going to have his climax postponed by anything. As he told us when he once pulled a shia woman by her hair into a vacant workshop "Don't disturb me for anything - even if Osama is assasinated." Now the rapid approach of the unidentified vehicle only hastened his thrusts. Deeper and deeper, while his hands squeezed my head tightly in a vice like grip. Then he began to take quick short breaths and moaned "fucking sharmurt" [fucking male whore] several times before ejaculating deep down inside my throat.
As he stepped back he dropped his gallibaya over his slowly deflating penis, like some giant high altitude balloon slowly losing air. He was contemplative and looked disatisfied. "You were a crap fuck," he told me as he turned away to view the approaching vehicle which was now barely a mile away. Still, Basim watched passively as the car approached. I pulled my gallibaya back over my head. Suddenly Basim seemed anxious. Straining my eyes I now recognised that the car was the very same Lada Niva which three hours earlier Basim had been unable to start.
For a few moments more Basim watched, a look of concentrated concern growing more apparent. Then suddenly he began to run for the cave. Khashaba also started to run, moments later. But too late. As a gunshot crack sounded, he fell to the ground at the same instant. Basim, not looking back, made it to the cave, dodging one last bullet. I froze. I prayed that I too was not a target, for I realized that with my hands tied and no weapon I had little chance. The car pulled up a few feet from me and a senior Taliban commander, equivalent in rank to major, got out, along with a more junior officer and two soldiers, one of them from my unit.
The major looked at me sympathetically and with it seemed not inconsiderable interest. "I know what was happening here. Your colleagues warned me. These men that did this to you were inhuman. You have done nothing wrong. You are a good and decent soldier. Your colleagues say you have excellent engineering skills. I need someone like you to work with me at our headquarters in Kandahar. Interested ?"
Little did I realize that my agreement would embark me on yet another journey into the sordid world of sex exploitation in the ranks of the sex-starved Taliban - but this time I was to discover the true character and hypocrisy of those in the highest political, religious and military ranks. What I was to discover would be truly shocking.
