Shores of Tripoli

For several days in the Tripoli harbor fortress prison cell, Billy and Adam were unchained to crouch on the floor to eat two mean meals a day and to go to a small, outside walled enclosure near the cell to piss, defecate, and stretch their legs. Drinking water was brought to them periodically throughout the day, mostly by the men who arrived to fuck them. A couple of times a day, each was doused with a bucket of water to clean the stench off them. Once they had lost the sailor’s cut-off trousers and vests they’d worn at the dressing out on the day of the Philadelphia’s capture, Billy and Adam remained naked. Over time Billy was able to ascertain that it seemed to be some thirty pirates and local Tripoli soldiers to whose entertainment they had been relegated. He had no idea how any of the other members of the crew were faring.

After the first three days, he had to help Adam eat and hobble out to the relief yard. Billy had been steeled to this type of treatment. Adam clearly had not.

The last time Billy ever saw or heard of Adam was a week after they had been put in the cell—if Billy’s reckoning of the passage of time by the periods of lightness and darkness and the counting of the calls to prayer that permeated the sounds of the town could be trusted.

Billy was chained to the wall and being fucked by one of the pirates, who was crouched between Billy’s spread legs and supporting the crook of Billy’s knees on his hips with his arms. Early on, Billy had decided that his best chance at survival and not being beaten, as the more cruel of Adam’s assaulters were doing, was to make his assailants enjoy the fuck—and therefore want to treat Billy better. He made each man who took him believe that he had succumbed to their mastery and was pleased with the coupling. He would make the desired moans and groans and little vocal encouragements—learning ones in Arabic that impressed the Tripolians. He matched the rhythm of the fuck in the motion of his hips, and if the assailant wanted to possess his mouth during the fuck, he showed some enthusiasm.

Thus, the man fucking him was more involved in a sexual experience than just the fuck when a contingent of Arabs, dressed in long white robes that Billy later learned were called thawbs and were typically worn by Arab men, arrived. The man was alternating between kissing Billy on the mouth and leaning his face down and sucking on Billy’s nipples during the fuck. And Billy was reacting as if this was the best experience he’d had in a fortnight.

The small group of officious-looking men were just passing by, but at hearing the sounds of more enthusiastic giving and receiving coming from the cell than they normally would expect, they paused and watched.

There was a leader among them, one who appeared to be about thirty, who obviously was well pampered and who was receiving deference from the rest. Rather than watching from the corridor, he drew inside the cell. The guards at either side of the door into the cell went into stiff attention, another sign of the importance of this man. He was tall and dark. His figure was thin, and both his bejeweled fingers and the toes in his costly looking leather sandals were long and sensuous in their movement. His fingers fluttered about his thawb as he watched the fucking—not just Billy and the one pirate at the wall, but also the two on the floor who had a limp, half dead Adam between them, with both of them sharing his channel. And his long toes scrunched up and then released in rhythm with the fucking of Billy. His piercing black eyes slitted in pleasure and his tongue darted out to lick his lips.

His retinue had entered the cell with him but held back close to the door, alert to exactly whatever his desire was. He motioned with his hand, and one of the men came to his side, lifted the hem of the man’s thawb, ran a hand up underneath, and the puckering and undulating of the rich white material of the man’s thawb at his groin revealed that his cock was receiving attention.

When the man was satisfied, the young man withdrew his hand and then the rest of his body to the back of the cell. Billy had come for the assaulting pirate in a spouting of cum and cries of awe and pleasure. Whether or not the response was feigned, it doesn’t really matter. Billy had been initiated to the pleasure of the cruel and rough fuck.

Taking one last look at the tableau and then down at the men still sharing Adam’s channel, the officious man turned and walked back into the corridor. There he spoke to one of the guards at the door, who left his post immediately, and shortly thereafter came back with the man Billy believed to be the cellblock commander.

After a short conversation, the officious man and his retinue moved on. But within an hour, Billy was being unchained, he was being doused by a succession of buckets of water, a clean, white thawb was being pulled down over his head, he was being blindfolded, and the hands of several men were picking him up and carrying him out of the cell.

He spoke what he hoped were words of assurance to the solitary figure of Adam on the floor, splayed out on his back, but there was no answering response from the young cabin boy.

* * * *

The new “home” for Billy, at least temporarily, was a palace on top of the rise from the harbor at Tripoli, or rather, a wing of the palace. He was surprised to find that there was more of Tripoli on the plain behind that rise than he had seen from the Philadelphia looking into the Tripoli harbor. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Tripoli was even larger, in population certainly, than his own Boston. Tripoli wasn’t just the name of the city; it also was the name of the ill-defined region.

There was no telling where most of the named “entities” in North Africa began and where they ended. They tended to be desert hinterlands of established cities. The only established boundary was the one toward the east, which separated Egypt from Tripoli. The Tripoli region took its name from the city on the western promontory of a scooped-out section of northern Africa, which also had a city, controlled by the Pasha of Tripoli, on the eastern promontory that was named Derne. To the west of Tripoli was another ill-defined territory around Tunis, and beyond that was Algiers, and beyond that, to the strait guarding the entrance to the Mediterranean from the Atlantic, was Morocco.

The pasha of Tripoli was a man named Yussif Karamanli. With the help of his younger brother, Mahmud, he had overthrown his elder brother Hamet, who was now in exile in Egypt, trying to build up support to return to power in Tripoli. The man who had seen Billy being fucked against the stone wall of his cell was the younger brother, Mahmud. And it was in Mahmud’s wing of the palace that Billy was enslaved.

There was no better term for Billy’s state at this time than enslaved. Unless it was “pet.” Mahmud referred to Billy as his male wife, but Billy didn’t really feel in such an exalted position as the man’s spouse. Mahmud also collected and flew falcons for sport. Billy was treated no better or worse than those falcons. He was kept in the palace for Mahmud’s occasional sport. Mahmud didn’t make constant demands on Billy, because he also had wives he felt the duty to keep impregnated. But when he turned to Billy, he knew how to make the best of his sporting. He was an expert in and devotee of the Indian sexual positions of the Kamasutra. And, from this, opened up a whole new aspect of Billy’s sex life.

Billy learned all of this not from Mahmud himself, but from the two Indian Eunuchs, Raatib and Fateen, who were assigned to keep Billy in shape and available whenever Mahmud called—and to train Billy to please Mahmud. The two referred to themselves as hijras, rather than eunuchs, and they assured Billy that they had willingly undergone the ceremony of nirwaan, which removed their penises, testicles, and scrotums, in India before traveling the world to offer their services to rulers with harems. Billy was not the first male wife, as they also referred to him, of Mahmud, and probably wouldn’t be the last. Mahmud tended to have only one male as a wife at a time, however, they told him, in contrast to the many females he wedded and bedded and kept pregnant. Since a male wife could not bear sons, the eunuchs said, there was no particular reason to have more than one as long as the one pleased Mahmud. When he stopped pleasing Mahmud, he was easily expendable.

Being bisexual and dominating and pleasing lovers of both sexes was considered virile in the region. No one saw enslavement and forced sex, though, as different from “pleasing.”

All of that said, Mahmud worked the male wife harder sexually than any one of the female wives—and he acquired most pleasure from the workings of the principles of the Kamasutra in his sexual dalliances with his male wife. It was much the flexibility that Billy had shown with the other man against the wall of his cell that had attracted Mahmud to him.

The hijras were chosen to watch over Billy constantly for the same reason ones of their kind watched over the women of Mahmud’s harem—to ensure that the only cock inside Billy would be Mahmud’s. Mahmud didn’t call for Billy more than a few dozen times in the months Billy was enslaved by him. This was more than enough for most men, but Billy was used to having sex daily. This periodicity would have been very frustrating for one who had led the sex life that Billy had, if Raatib and Fateen had not shown that they could be adept at using their hands and fingers and in giving suck. Officially, such sexual practices didn’t exist—unless they went with the penetration of the cock, so instances of such were overlooked, even though anyone in the court coming into the male harem when the eunuchs were servicing Billy could have seen that he could get as much arousal, pleasure, and ejaculation from their attentions as from Mahmud’s cock. Although imprisoned, Billy was obviously supposed to be kept comfortable.

Thus, the two hijras, who had learned British English in their training, were able to satisfy Billy’s curiosity within reason and to keep him from slipping over the edge of boredom in conversation and more stimulating ways, and they were polite, if strict with him.

They also were charged with keeping Billy fit, which met with Billy’s desires, as well. Billy understood that an unmanned man could easily turn to fat. This was not so with Raatib and Fateen, however. They were experts in the sport of Pehlwani, a form of Indian wrestling, and in other Indian physical training routines. These included exercise with the dar nal, stone weights, and the gada club, which was heavy and was swung around in various ways and in pairs to help build muscle.

Mahmud was a devotee of these sports himself, and Billy was to attest that it helped build strength and endurance.

Raatib and Fateen were there also, because Mahmud was a devotee to the Kamasutra, a sexual positions guide imported to the Arab world from the East. Before he first sent for Billy, Raatib and Fateen schooled Billy in the many exotic positions that would be expected of him in the taking. So well-schooled was Billy that, for the rest of his sexual life, he was unable to move into a sexual receiving position without thinking the name of the position in the gay male Kamasutra lexicon. He often found himself almost calling the positions out: Anvil, Swing, Reed, Butterfly, Tree, Octopus, Bamboo, Monkey, Missionary, The Wolf, Oyster, and so forth.

Billy’s conditioning was not all sport, and there were pointed ways of reminding him that he was a slave. A couple of hours every morning, he was made to take a turn treading the pump device that raised water to the cistern in the palace courtyard. It was hard, back-breaking work, especially at the beginning, but it helped build and tone his leg muscles and keep his abdominals flat and ripped, for which he was grateful.

The first time Mahmud sent for Billy, he was brought before the pasha’s brother bathed and scented and in a silky white thawb—but nothing else underneath. Mahmud was similarly clothed. Billy marked the great length of the man’s fingers and toes. He’d heard that this signaled the length of the man’s penis, and after having been fucked by Mahmud, Billy was able to express belief in the theory.

Raatib and Fateen were made to stand by, while Mahmud sat close beside Billy, the male wife’s wrists shackled together, on the foot of his large, pillow-strewn bed. Mahmud held Billy close to him with one arm. The hand of the other arm went under the hem of Billy’s thawb, and Mahmud slow pumped Billy’s cock to ejaculation while the man closely watched the expressions on Billy’s face—which, as instructed, Billy tried to make as animated and pleasure-receiving as possible. Just before Billy ejaculated, Mahmud closed his mouth over the cock head and took the cum.

The hijras had told Billy he would do this—as he considered taking the other man’s cum first gave him added power over the man and made him stronger. As schooled, Billy totally relaxed at this point, showing Mahmud he was in full control—and thus validating the belief.

“You will want to do this,” Raatib had said. “You are a sensual man with a need for frequent attention, that is clearly recognized about you. He will be more the man inside you if his beliefs are supported. And he will call for you more often if he enjoys you.”

“And the one man who wouldn’t support it is no longer breathing,” Fateen added darkly.

At this point Mahmud turned Billy over to Raatib and Fateen and called out seven positions of the fuck he wanted to use that evening. They were to demonstrate with Billy that Billy could receive them as Mahmud wanted.

Having no cocks, the two hijras couldn’t do what Mahmud could, but they could play the part well enough that Mahmud was breathing heavily and Billy too was trembling and was totally open for a cock that immediately thereafter and athletically thrust deep inside Billy in the Butterfly position—Mahmud in a sitting position on the bed, his legs extended, with Billy on top of him in a belly-up crab-walk position, Mahmud fucking in an up-thrust motion and his hands working Billy’s nipples, penis, and balls—and transitioned quickly into the Anvil—Billy rolled up on his back with his legs running up Mahmud’s torso and with Mahmud on his knees, stretched over Billy’s body and rocking back and forth, letting his cock caress all of Billy’s channel walls. Billy ejaculating twice more and Mahmud three times before they had reached the seventh position of Billy draped on the front of a standing Mahmud, his torso taut as a bow, with his fists locked behind Mahmud’s neck, and Mahmud holding Billy’s thighs outside him, while his cock rammed inside Billy’s entrance again and again and again.

Mahmud always insisted on seven positions. When his senior wife conceived after that many positions when Mahmud was barely past puberty himself, she had birthed a son. And his next son was conceived from seven positions as well. He was a superstitious man, and he latched on the good omen of “seven” as his good fortune number in all matters. Then, naturally, all of his subsequent sons were conceived by seven positions as well, as he never again used fewer or more than seven.

Billy enjoyed the attention when Mahmud was there, and he did get release when Raatib and Fateen saw that he needed relief, but the sophistication and intensity of Mahmud’s fucking was only accentuated by the relatively rare contact with him. Raatib assured him that the master called for him more than he had for any of his previous male wives, but this was little solace to the young man. Billy felt just like he thought one of the man’s tethered falcons felt. Used to perfection but frequently ignored—and imprisoned in the intervals.

When Billy asked what had happened to the previous male wives, the eunuchs simply answered that he didn’t want to know. All that they would say was that no man fucked by Mahmud was ever fucked by another man.

Billy’s chamber was perched high in the palace, and he spent much of the time he wasn’t treading the water wheel or honing his body with the Indian physical training exercises out on a balcony set with bars that gave him an extraordinary view of both the harbor and the hinterland. Whenever he heard unusual sounds from the city below, he would rush to the balcony to see if he could figure out what was happening.

Thus, when he was awakened in the predawn hour of February 6th, 1804, it wasn’t just the orangish glow of the light on his chamber wall through the barred windows that sent him stumbling out onto the balcony, but it was also the keening sound from the direction of the harbor.

It looked like the whole harbor area was in flames, but it only was the grounded superstructure of the Philadelphia standing still a bit off from the harbor. Two other vessels—appearing to be American Frigates—were sailing closer in toward the harbor than usual, and Billy only got to his perch in time to see longboats being hauled back aboard these vessels.

As would be revealed later, the Pasha of Tripoli had demanded not only a high ransom for the Philadelphia and its crew but also a significant increase of the annual tribute the United States would have to pay for its ships in the Mediterranean not to be molested by Tripoli pirates. President Jefferson had balked at this, and the pasha, in turn, had cut down the flagstaff at the U.S. consulate in the city. Of all things that had already passed, this was the first that traditionally called for a declaration of war, which Jefferson promptly had proclaimed. The firing of the stranded Philadelphia by its own government constituted a U.S. declaration of war on the pirates and pasha alike.

This in itself didn’t appear to have much effect in the city or even on the Barbary pirates, as U.S. forces didn’t attack Tripoli but maintained their blockade of the port. This didn’t bother those in Tripoli all that much. The pirates shifted over to operating out of the second Tripoli port, Derne, across the scooped-out coast to the east.

But even Billy felt the ramifications of the event and the aftermath inside the palace. Rumors began to float in the city that the pasha had overstepped his capabilities. These were fueled by other rumors that the Americans, in addition to the French, were working on a plan to bring the elder Karamanli, Hamet, back to power in an assisted coup from his current exile in Egypt. Hamet was generally thought to be less despotic and cruel than the brother who had overthrown him.

Within months, Billy noticed extra guards in the areas of the palace he was permitted to see. There were other guards in this wing besides those of Mahmud, and the guards were taking a belligerent attitude toward each other.

“Mahmud is suspected of shifting his allegiance,” Raatib whispered to Billy in response to his question about the tension in the air.

“But Hamet couldn’t possibly trust Mahmud now,” Fateen added. “Mahmud is feeling compromised either way he turns.”

By now Billy had become a trusted male wife—not trusted in the sense that he wasn’t kept in his barred chamber and closely supervised by the two hijras, but trusted in that his chains were taken off at Mahmud’s bed when he was summoned there and Raatib and Fateen no longer stayed in the bedchamber while Mahmud was performing his one suck, seven-position fuck routine with Billy. The release of the chains had allowed Mahmud move on to more intricate and demanding Kamasutra positions with Billy, and he seemed pleased that Billy, thus far, had managed to handle them all.

On an evening in late February, Mahmud was in a fifth position of taking Billy in the position of the Reed, in which Mahmud was crouched over Billy’s body, facing him, with his arms under Billy’s waist and pulling the young man’s pelvis up to his cock, shifting Billy’s weight to his shoulders, when Billy saw a figure moving in the shadows near the door to a balcony. Light flashed off the blade of the knife in the interloper’s hand.

Instinctively, Billy rolled Mahmud’s body away from the line of attack. This was so much not supposed to be something Billy was permitted to do in the very formally orchestrated sex session that Mahmud kept on rolling to the edge of the bed and came up with a short sword that had been hidden beneath the edge of the bed. He whipped around, prepared to run Billy through.

But Billy was already half way across the room, his discarded chain in his hands and looped around the neck of the assailant from behind. The failed assassin was dead before Mahmud reached the two struggling bodies to dispatch the assassin with his short sword.

All hell broke out that evening. A trembling “accomplice,” bruised and battered, was thrust forward to claim that the plot against Mahmud’s life had been perpetrated by the absent, deposed elder brother, Hamet. Mahmud accepted this explanation publicly, but he could not shake the suspicion that the ruling brother, Pasha Yussif, had been attempting to cut down the number of possible pretenders to the position of Pasha of Tripoli. To add doubt to Mahmud’s mind, someone set the whisper about that the executed assassin had been seen talking with Yussif.

Some said that the agents of the French in the palace helped to increase this suspicion as well as they could on the principal of “divide and conquer.”

In fewer than three weeks, Mahmud precipitously set out into the desert on camels with his most precious possessions, striking for the second city of Derne, which had favored him in the past and would now, he hoped, shield him from both brothers equally.

Having saved his master, and having a proudly displayed bandage on a forearm that the assassin had managed to slice in his failed attempt to dislodge the strangling chain wielded by a body well-worked by the water treadmill, Indian sports, and physical training exercises, not to mention the strong and inventive cocking of Mahmud Karamanli, Billy had become one of Mahmud’s prize possession. Only a few female wives were included in the entourage.

During the long ride over the desert from west to east, Billy learned exactly what the “waves on the sea” gait of a camel felt like.