Fleeing Bolsheviks, encountering slave traders
A tragic episode in the life or Russian emigrants, narrated by @sclava
"It's a horrible, dirty, disgusting country," my brother, Alexander Odintsov, muttered grumpily as he sat in the carriage, wearily looking out at the deserted landscape outside the window. "How glad I am that we will soon arrive in Alexandria and sail away," he added, turning to his father, who was sitting beside him.
"Why do you always complain, son ?" his father asked. Ever since we emigrated to Cairo, we have borne all the hardships in silence.
He glanced at my sister and me, then turned away and stared out the window again.
"Oh, damned Reds! The Communists destroyed our Empire... If it hadn't been for them, if it hadn't been for the shameful Peace of Brest, we would be celebrating our victory today, along with the other Entente countries. And we would not be sitting here in the backyards of the Ottoman Empire, but drinking tea and watching a parade in Constantinople."
"Don't worry, son. Our allies will soon be finished with the Bolsheviks, and we'll be back home."
"Sooner or later, dear brother, "I interjected,"the Straits will be ours and the Russian Empire...."
Suddenly the carriage stopped abruptly, cutting me off in mid-sentence. We all looked at each other. Alexander immediately ran out of the carriage.
"The coachman... !" he shouted.
"See here !" said my father, and came out after him. We both sat and shook, afraid to even look out of the window, listening to some strange speech outside. Soon the door swung open, and we both cried out. The coachman was standing outside.
"Go to that carriage, ladies," he said.
"How dare you speak to a lady!" said I, summoning up my courage, but in a trembling voice, and then I added, "Where is father? Where is my brother?"
"We must go to England," my sister added.
-"Don't ask too many questions, young ladies. It's a matter of life and death for you !" replied the coachman.
When we heard this, we held hands and got out of the carriage. Around us stood a host of camel riders, a few donkeys, and a covered coach. The coachman wanted to take us by the hand, but we wouldn't let him, saying we would go by ourselves. He escorted us to the tent under the stares of many bearded men.
"We want to know what's going on! Where..." said my sister to the man at the tent, but before she could finish, we were unceremoniously grabbed and lifted off the ground and practically thrown into a tent full of many black Abyssinian women.
As I stared at the girls in horror, I could barely utter a word. The last words I heard were in terrible Turkish, talking about plans to go either to Hijaz or to Libya.
It was a long journey from there. Despite the terrible heat, it was more or less fine inside the kibitka. My sister tried to talk to the black women, but we realized none of them understood English, Turkish, much less Russian. Sometimes we stopped and were allowed to go outside and were given water and so on. Surprisingly, we were hardly ever guarded. Of course, neither I nor my sister even thought of fleeing into the desert, where we would surely die.
Soon we arrived at a small, delightful oasis, in which by a great number of people had gathered. My sister and I were grabbed and led to a small group of men. The men were saying something that we didn't understand at all. They spun us around, forced us to bend over, kicked us, spread our legs wider, and then ripped off our clothes. My sister collapsed on the hot sand in horror, and I lowered my head in humiliation, staring at my chest trembling with nervous breathing. I could barely hold back the tears, not understanding what was happening or why we were being treated so horribly.
Finally one of the men sitting there waved his hand at the two horses and three camels that were standing nearby. The men holding us shook their heads cheerfully. We were quickly wrapped in blankets, and the one holding me said in awful Turkish, leading us to the bearded man sitting there : "Sold. You are both his slaves."
The man smiled as he sucked on his hookah, then called out to a girl and said something to her. She waved at us, and we had no choice but to follow her into a nearby tent.