PZA: Travels with Nicolau Ribeiro 11-12

Nico travels with his master to the Ottoman border where he puts his training in warfare to practice during the day and his training in man-boy love to practice at night. Captured by the Janissaries, he is taken to Istanbul where, after a meeting with Sultan Bayazid II, he becomes employed as a tellak boy in the Istanbul baths in the hopes of earning enough money to pay for his passage back home. As a beautiful and skilled bath boy, he becomes extremely popular with the customers, which brings new problems.

Nicolau Ribeiro (14yo)
Mt – cons/slave mast oral anal – prost

The next morning we rode out, following an old Roman road west to the ancient fortress of Adana. Passing through fields of wheat and barley and orchards of grapes and olives, all now barren and dormant for the winter, we continued north along a caravan trail following a river twisting up into the mountains, until we reached a plateau upon which was built the town of Kayseri where our company of two hundred joined another three hundred soldiers, with, I was told, still another two hundred expected and three hundred more already deployed in the hills around the city. We had ridden hard from dawn to dusk, breaking our fast before the sun rose and cooking our evening meal after the sun had set and pausing only for prayers between, making the journey in six days.

In those six days I got to know quite a number of the soldiers, especially those who were accompanied by young apprentices as when we pitched our tents, those who were friends or of similar rank pitched their tents beside each other and we shared the same cooking fire. Everyone, young and old, had the same interests, warfare, horses and Islam, in that order, and conversations each night usually involved all three. The older and more experienced told of past battles they had engaged in, and the strategies their amirs had used to rout the enemy, and the techniques, and oft times sheer luck, that had resulted in their own personal successes. Cleaning up afterward was most often a responsibility of us recruits, and oft times we would talk about those under whom we were training, and invariably the comments were praiseworthy and thankful, though there were tales of others who were not as fortunate as we, of masters who were unreasonably cruel or insufferably proud. I had noticed immediately the close camaraderie and an esprit de corps among the soldiers, a loyalty and respect for each other and for our leaders, and I myself began to develop a sense of companionship among those I knew the closest.

Although exhausted when we at last retired to our tents, Usama and I were not that exhausted that we neglected one ritual we had begun on the very first day we had left Cairo. We inspected our saddles and bridles and oiled the straps to keep them flexible, and we cleaned our weapons thoroughly, removing every speck of dust from the day's travel. Usama told me repeatedly of men who did not do so and went into battle only to be killed because of a cracked cinch or a dirty sword caught momentarily in its scabbard. Nor were we that exhausted that we did not have the energy to make love either, which had also become a ritual, one which I had noticed was practised by the majority of other soldiers and their young recruits. Though done always in private, it was common knowledge and the other soldiers who had no apprentices and did not engage in sex did not appear to care.

One day after a particularly rough ride with an overcast sky and chilling north wind that cut though our leather armour to the bone, my ass felt sorer than usual and my legs felt like I had spent the day in one of those torture racks I had seen in the torture chambers in Castile. While we cleaned our swords, I cursed Usama under my breath for insisting we do so, certain there would be no harm in skipping just one night, and I thought how inviting crawling under my blanket was going to be. To my disbelief and dismay, Usama observed that this was a fitting night to teach me another pleasure of the flesh, one that men engaged in when alone to bring themselves pleasure after a particularly hard day. Hanging up our weapons, we stripped naked and sat facing each other, the patient teacher and the reluctant pupil. Reaching out and picking up my limp member between his thumb and first finger, Usama slowly began to stroke the shaft. As I reached over to take his, he told me to just concentrate on what he did and the pleasure I was feeling.

In the past whenever I had fondled myself or had caressed another's member, I had stroked not just the shaft but the bulb also. He did not. As I watched his fingers stroking that most private of parts, the sight of fingers other than my own touching me there, a man's large, calloused fingers, and the memory of the pleasures I had brought myself that way caused my member to begin to swell. He continued until I was erect, not once touching my bulb, and then he released my member and told me to now do the same to him. I did so, and the sight of his large prick and my slender fingers wrapped about his shaft caused my member to twitch. Boys, and men, I had been told all of my life, do not touch themselves there, and certainly not other males. It was taboo. Istimna Mustafa had called it and had said it was forbidden for Moslems too. Josepe had said one who engaged in such an act, alone or with others, deserved death, even if he stopped before he emitted his seed, and if he did it even without spending his seed he was to wash his entire body, and again seven days later, and give two doves to a priest to sacrifice while asking forgiveness from God. The ship's doctor had said it was an illness of the mind and a weakness of the spirit, and caused an imbalance in the humours of the body. How different, and how preferable, was the Mameluke perspective of the matter.

Usama's member slowly began to swell of course, and once he was erect he had me release it and he once again took mine in his hand. This time he slowly ran his fingertip along the rim of my bulb with a feather-light touch, causing it to twitch of course as shards of arousal pierced my bulb and caused the opening of my member to open and close in response. He continued to do so until the first droplet of my clear nectar oozed out of the tip of my verga. He again released my now itching member and told me to do to him what he had just done to me. I did so, knowing full well the arousal I would be causing. I thought of that as I ran my fingertip ever so lightly around the rim of his bulb, and the thought caused another droplet of my nectar to ooze out of my verga, and with the first, begin to ooze down the slope of my bulb. Soon, the first of what he called his special honey oozed out of the opening of his own member.

He once more told me to stop and he this time wrapped his fingers and thumb about my member, and squeezing it gently, he slowly began to stroke it, from the base to the tip and back down again. Of course the desire to shoot my seed quickly returned and as he slowly stroked my swollen member it began to go numb and I arched my back with the anticipation and desire to squirt. Wrapping his first finger and thumb about my member below the bulb, he squeezed tightly until the urge to squirt ceased. That, of course, came as no surprise, Prince Afonso's bastard brother Jorge and the Berber thief Ahmed both having used their lips on me with the same result, and the eight-year-old Berber in Dzayer having introduced me to the same thing using his butthole muscle.

Usama then had me do the same to him, and I wrapped my fingers about his stiff member and stroked it as he had stroked mine, eager to bring him the same pleasure as he had brought me. It felt strange, holding a cock twice the size of my own in my hand and holding the cock of a man twice my age. Although it was the same act as I had engaged in with boys closer to my age, our differences in size and age made it seem totally different. It took much longer for me to bring Usama to the same point of arousal as he had brought me, Usama having much more control than I, but in time he too had to tell me to squeeze his cock below the bulb to stop him from squirting. He said that what we had been doing could be done just using a man's beard, or a boy's smooth lips, and that he knew men who enjoyed having it done using a boy's feet, and he had heard of others doing it to themselves and to others with just the touch of a feather.

He resumed stroking me until I reached that point once more, far too quickly, and then I did him a second time to that point also. He said that some men could stroke themselves all night that way and never squirt, and that it was something that some men practised so they could resist the urge to squirt using only their mind and thus prolong the act of sex with other men, or with women. I observed that would take a lot of practice, and he laughed and said, "ah yes, but what joyful practice that would be," causing me to laugh also. It dawned on me then that those soldiers I had assumed were living chaste lives could very well be performing this act alone in their tents, and could likely be doing so that very moment. The thought of hundreds of men all around me delightfully stroking their members caused my member to wag, and it was not scolding me for the obscene thought.

Slipping his fingers about my verga still again, he told me to do him at the same time, and that we would do it this time to the end. Desiring that ultimate pleasure of the flesh more strongly than ever before with our frequent delays, I did so most eagerly, and I sensed he was feeling the desire just as strongly. Sitting there facing each other, our fingers tightly wrapped about each other's stiff member and slowly stroking each other, we both knew the pleasure we were feeling between our legs was the same pleasure as the other was feeling. We sat there, the man purposefully bringing the boy to the point of releasing his seed and the boy doing the same to the man, and we knew that despite what others said about what we were doing, it felt good. I was definitely beginning to appreciate the Mameluke way of thinking.

Our breathing grew deeper and faster as we approached that peak until I felt the familiar twang deep in my groin and as I felt my seed gush up the core of my member I felt his member throb and I knew he was about to squirt also. We did, twin fountains sending our seed up into the air to fall back down on our ruddy, blood-engorged knobs and to cascade down over our fingers, his hot, thick seed oozing like custard pudding over my fingers and my thin, watery boy seed flooding over his. I inhaled deeply, sucking in the nutty-scented air, the scent of his seed and mine. I felt wonderful, the cold and all aches and pains forgotten, and that night I slept deeply and peacefully curled up against his naked body, his strong arms about me.

After a day's rest, we continued west in search of the enemy whom we were told were making almost daily raids into Mameluke territory, seizing horses and livestock and packing away whatever winter storage they could find. Our commander, an amir-i-nuyan, a commander of a thousand, split us up into five groups of two hundred each and fanned us out to scour the countryside.

Mid afternoon of the next day we engaged the enemy, a small company of mounted soldiers. With our advanced numbers it was a quick and bloody battle, leaving the entire company dead. Whether any of them had been felled by my arrows I had no idea, but the sight of so many corpses, blood oozing from gaping wounds, sightless eyes staring up at the grey sky, caused my stomach to heave and to my embarrassment and shame I leaned over my horse and emptied my stomach. That night I had no desire to eat. After our evening prayer, I asked Usama if he had ever killed another man face to face, and he said he had, many times. When I asked him if he had ever been frightened when he went into battle, to my surprise he said he was every time he went into battle, and when I asked how it had felt to kill another man, he said it had troubled him greatly the first time, but after a while I would get used to it. It was the only indication he had given that he had noticed my reaction that afternoon. Although I said nothing, I was certain that when the time came, I would not be able to kill another, and I knew with full certainly that I would never get use to it.

I found the answer to the first all too soon. The next morning we were attacked by surprise, the enemy having gone unnoticed by our scouts. As I saw my companions falling about me, fear gripped me as sure as I could feel death's boney hand gripping my heart, and I would have turned my mount around and rode back the way we had come had it not been impossible with the press of soldiers behind me. Half of our company was felled by arrow in what seemed a dozen heartbeats, but our commander ordered us to advance. I suppose it was the correct response, for once we engaged the enemy in hand to hand combat their archers could no longer risk firing upon us without hitting one of their own. As the enemy came in sight we charged each other with our lances lowered, myself included, fear still gripping my heart, though not as tightly in at least I could now see the person attacking me and do something about it. And then I was fighting for my life and was too busy concentrating avoiding the lance and the sword of my enemy and watching for an opening to dispatch him for there to be any fear. Soon the battlefield was too crowded to use anything else but sword and mace. I ducked the first swipe of my attacker's sword and blocked the second with my shield and then ducking low to avoid the third I saw my opening and thrust my arm forward, plunging my sword into his side below his sword arm, more a result of the advantage of being short and more agile. His blood spurted over my hand and arm and in my face, shockingly hot and wet and sticky.

And then there was another man in front of me trying to kill me and I had no further time to think on it as our blades clashed, both, I noticed, red with blood. At times I was aware of Usama there beside me fighting his own combatant, other times coming to my assistance, and on rare occasions we engaged a single enemy at the same time, one of us on either side. Other times I had no idea where he was and at those times I feared more for him than myself, but in the heat of the battle there was no time to worry such things. Seeing a fellow recruit, a boy two years my senior who had often shared our cookfire and had become a close friend in our short time together, fending off two of the enemy, I screamed a bloodcurdling challenge and spurred my horse toward them to assist him without a moment's thought of my own safety.

It was not until the last few of the remaining enemy fled and I wearily slipped off my horse and looked at my blood stained uniform and my bloody hands that I thought back to that first man and the look on his face as I had thrust my sword into his chest, the look of surprise as blood spurted out of his mouth, and then the brief look of pain, and then the look of death as his eyes stared at me but saw nothing and his soul left his body. I was splattered with his blood, and the blood of how many other men? Shaking, my legs no longer able to support me, I dropped to my knees and heaved, and heaved, until there was nothing left to heave. I was still on my knees, the sour taste of vomit and death in my mouth, when Usama found me and helped me to my feet. He said nothing as we looked to our wounded and dead and left the battlefield, nor as we stripped naked and cleaned our clothing and bodies with sand, there being barely enough water to wash our hands and face. Nor did he say anything as we saw to our horses, cleaned our weapons, and sat down to our evening meal, the number of our comrades who normally shared our campfire noticeably fewer. As we were about to retire to our tents, Abi Ya'qub, the boy whose rescue I had come to, reached out and stopped me, and gripping my forearm and squeezing it tightly as I squeezed his, his dark eyes expressed his gratitude better than any words could. "May Allah bless you with a long and fruitful life, my friend," he whispered and I returned the wish. As I followed Usama into our tent, a happiness like I had never felt before passed over me and for the first time I truly understood the friendship and camaraderie the others talked about and I had seen around me.

It was not until after our evening prayer that Usama spoke. "How many men did you kill today?"

Ahl-as-saif. Men of the Sword. We made love violently that night, both of us painfully aware it was very possible that could be the last time we would ever engage in such pleasure together. The following day I could be dead, or Usama, or both of us. Our kisses were forceful, driven not out of passion but out of desperation. We pressed our lips together and sucked as if drawing in our last breath. He caressed my body firmly as if needing to be reassured it existed, and I massaged his with equal force. It was as if our bodies, wound up by the violence and tension of that afternoon, were incapable of relaxing. When I knelt and presented my backside to him, he penetrated me forcefully, not brutally nor painfully, but with a sense of urgency, and I responded likewise, pressing back against him in a desperate desire to have as much of him inside me as possible. Grasping my hips he fucked me hard, thrusting his hips forward and driving his stiff cock up my rectum until his coarse hairs were pressed against my backside, and then pulling back until the knob of his cock was stretching open my anus and then thrusting forward again.

He grunted and panted with the exertion and I snorted and gasped for breath in return as I felt his stiff cock ramming in and out of my asshole, causing the rim of my hole to burn as if on fire. We were on fire, both of us, and lust consumed us, flaring up from between our loins and engulfing us. As his bulb brushed against that hard marble deep inside me and sent pangs of desire through my loins and up my swollen, aching cock, I tensed with the intense pleasure and as his swollen cock throbbed deep up my rectum my flesh throbbed in unison with his and my cock ached and itched as if being skinned. Despite the chill of the night air, our lust was so hot our flesh began to sweat and my body glowed, beginning at our union and passing down my legs and up my back. Faster and faster we fucked, him ramming his body against mine, me thrusting my body back against his. Man and boy. As I felt the pressure increasing in my loins I ached to release my seed and ached to feel my rectum flooded with his. There was no pausing this night, no resting, as the two of us fucked until drawn as taut as a bowstring, our bodies released the seed deep inside our loins. Mine shot out the tip of my cock with a blissful, painful pleasure as I felt his hot, thick seed shoot up my rectum. He grasped me tightly as he shot his seed, his cock buried up my rectum to the hilt, and I arched my back and quivered with the pleasure of releasing my seed and receiving his.

For another thirteen days we engaged the enemy, slowly driving them back into their own country, each day making less progress as they were now the defenders and we the invaders. The days all blurred into one. I killed more men, how many I do not know as in the fury of the battle one does not have time to count. I narrowly avoided several death blows, by luck, by chance, or by instinct, and although receiving more bruises and cuts than most with my inexperience, I received no disabling wounds. Our days ended with lovemaking, sometimes tender, other times furious, but never as furious as that first night on the battlefield. Usama had told me the following night that he had taken me as a recruit with reluctance back at the Citadel, and that truthfully he had little choice, Bayed having been the most skilled of the recruits and none of the others having impressed him. Actually, he confessed, he had almost left without me, but had been impressed by my attitude and that I had attacked a larger, more skilled boy as I had, and had figured as untrained as I was I still had to be better than the rest he had to choose from. He had added, with a smile, that being attractive had not hurt my cause either, though boy love had never been a great interest of his.

His confession gave me pause to think about myself. Until I had set off to the Kongo I had few thoughts about sex other than those musing all pubescent boys have with their fellows about girls and what it might be like and who did it and who did not, but the idea of actually engaging in sex was something far off into the future when I was an adult. I certainly had never imagined I would engage in the sin of sex with others of my gender, something I and everyone I knew considered an abomination in the eyes of God and a filthy perversion engaged in by the most degenerate of persons. It came as a shock two months after my fourteenth birthday to discover the pleasure one felt engaging in sex with a boy half my age, and over the following months I had struggled with my strange, new feelings and my unreasonable desire to have sex with other boys, and with my discovery that more and more boys, especially those of position and good breeding, had no such reservations about engaging in the pleasure as I had.

Even while that vile temptation grew in appeal and my ability to resist it declined, my lack of interest in congress with a man did not change, and indeed, as I witnessed with my own eyes the congress of men with other men and between men and boys my revulsion grew. Unlike my other experiences, my sole venturing into sex with an adult male back in Florence had not enticed me to seek out sex with men.

Why then had I so willingly engaged in sex with Usama, a man twice my age, three weeks ago, and why had I looked forward to engaging in sex with him each night these past three weeks? And, even more shameful, why had I enjoyed it so? I could say I did it with him because he was my master and I was his slave, sworn to obey, but that would be a lie. He had not once forced himself upon me. Although our relationship was that of master and slave, that was not how we saw each other, and our sex was not like I had witnessed back in Rome between master and slave, coarse and performed as a duty. I could say he had taken advantage of me. Missing my father, alone amongst total strangers and desperate for love in the absence of family, he had taken advantage of me in my weakness. That too would be a lie. He had comforted me, and that had resulted in us engaging in sex, but I was not so weak then that I would have succumbed to his advances. Besides, Usama was not one to take advantage of another. At all times he has treated me as a friend, and with compassion and concern, and with love.

How often had I dismissed the notion that a man can love a man as a man loves a woman? Yet had I not seen evidence of that in Florence? Had not men more learned and experienced than I expressed the idea that such love existed, and even existed without the inclusion of sex? What had they called it… platonic love? And had someone not said love was even better with sex involved? Or had it been I who had concluded that sex was better between those who loved each other? I no longer remember. I do know it had been between Ahmar and myself, though it might be questioned if we really loved each other. Even so, how can a man and boy love each other, not as does a father and son or uncle and nephew, but as lovers, as do a man and a woman? Those at the party in Florence had hinted at such a thing, but I had paid it no heed then, and did not understand how it could be so even now.

Perhaps love had nothing to do with it. Perhaps love was nothing more than an excuse men gave for engaging in the perversion, to justify their weakness of character. Perhaps I had given in to my baser side for no other reason than because everyone did it, at least all masters with their recruits. It was something expected, the norm. I was, after all, living in the midst of heathens who committed all kinds of abominations. I was a mere fourteen years of age. It was not that I had not succumbed to the temptations of Satan before this. I was only falling deeper into his clutches, seeking the pleasures of the flesh not with just boys of my age, but now with adult men. And why not? Was I not facing death each passing day? Why not seek pleasure, even such base pleasure? Tomorrow I could be laying on the bloody battlefield in a pool of my own hot blood staring sightlessly up at the sky. I felt no sense of sin nor shame in our congress, and the guilt was nothing more than the result of words of priests who knew nothing of war and killing, nor of living and the pleasure of having balls. I was one of the ahl-as-saif, one of the people of the sword. I was a man who lived by his colhões, by his balls, not some cagão who hid behind the pages of a book or his mother's skirts. I was eone of the ahl-as-saif, and as one I lived by the dictates of furusiyya, the code of courage and honour and comradeship.

With each passing day more friends and companions were too badly injured to continue or were killed and as our numbers decreased we were regrouped, but the number of our enemies decreased even faster. Each one I fought with, man and boy alike, was a fierce fighter, and each was certain that if he did well he would be rewarded and granted freedom and position. The present Sultan of all Egypt, Al-Ashraf Sayf al-Din Qa'it Bay had been born a Circassian, purchased as a slave late at the uncustomary age of twenty to serve as a palace guard, and went on to become an amir-i-nuyan, a commander of a thousand, and eventually Sultan at the age of fifty-two, and he had been governing now for twenty-two years, an exceptionally long time considering the number of those desirous of holding his position and plotting how to do so. Throughout it all, however, despite what Usama had said, I never once became accustomed to killing.

On the fourteenth day I awoke in a gloomy mood, for by my calculations it was the day of the birth of Our Lord, December 25th. Usama confirmed the date when I inquired.

"So, Naqi," he said, calling me by the name I had assumed upon my arrival in Cairo as it had been the closest Arab name to my own that Mustafa could think of and we had all decided it best not to reveal our true nationality if we could conceal it. "I know you are a Christian, and I have suspected from the west. Your observation that today is the birth of the prophet Jesus confirms my suspicion."

"The western Christians who follow the Roman Pope believe the birth of Christ was on December 25. Christians from Yerevan, where I was born, do not follow the dictates of Rome. They use the Greek calendar and believe the birth of Christ was January 6."

"Your priests trained you well in the history of your faith." I shrugged, finding being reminded of my Christian training uncomfortable. "Did they tell you that the day of his crucifixion was the same day as his conception?" I shook my head. "No?" he asked with a smile. "That is not a surprise. Priests of all faiths are uncomfortable about discussing sex, and the Christians even more so about the conception of their Saviour, though they have a feast to commemorate it, the Feast of the Annunciation. Our priests say that day is April 6, yours say March 25." (1)

We fought especially hard that day, losing many men without gaining a furlong. Our amir-i-nuyan was no longer a commander of a thousand and though he had done what he had been sent to do and could have turned back with honour, he was pig-headed and proud and determined to push the Ottoman soldiers even further back in their own country. Despite the strong loyalty of his troops, there were growing grumbles of discontent. Usama and I had sex passionately that night, the night I still believed to be the birth of Our Saviour, the two of us glad to be alive, and glad to have each other. For those who have not felt such things I find it difficult to explain how a fourteen-year-old boy can so willingly and so happily drop to his hands and knees and offer up his naked backside to a man twice his age, and especially on such a sacred day, and to a heathen besides. I can explain it no more than I can explain how a boy can find such delight in being penetrated by another boy to those who feel that sex should only be between those of opposite sex, or even more exclusively between a man and his wife.

As I knelt there on hands and knees in our little tent, I closed my eyes in pleasure as my lover thrust his hips to and fro, driving his stiff, throbbing cock in and out of my rectum. He grasped my hips to steady himself as lust pulsated through his loins and took control of his mind just as it pulsated through my loins and caused me to arch my back and gasp with the shards of pleasure shooting out from the mysterious button deep up my bowels and up my swollen member as my asshole burned with the same raw pleasure as the rim of my knob. Usama's hot breath panted against the back of my neck and as he pressed his naked, sweating body against mine he nibbled on my neck and my ears, and as he thrust his aching cock in and out of my body he reached around under me and grasping my much smaller and slender member in his large, coarse hand, he squeezed it tightly and stroked it, adding to my pleasure. I tightened my anal muscle about his cock as he withdrew it and relaxed as he plunged it back up my rectum, and I opened and closed the opening to my member as the rim burned and I felt the shaft go numb. I concentrated on those pleasures and as my blood pulsated through my swollen member and around his stiff cock embedded up my rectum so did it pulsate through my mind.

We gasped and snorted in our delight, giving ourselves up totally to the physical pleasure of the flesh, for man and boy together can experience such pleasure just as surely as man and boy can stand side by side and empty their bladders, just as they can ride side by side and slaughter their common enemy. We were one, in mind, in body, and in spirit. On this day, the day of the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, I felt Usama's hot, thick seed flood my rectum and my own gush up the core of my swollen, numb member and spurt out the tip as my little opening and blood-engorged knob burned with raw pleasure. Spurt after spurt erupted from our bodies and we inhaled the warm air rank with the scent of our seed and grew dizzy with the heady fragrance as our loins grew weak with the emptying of our balls. As I lay cuddled in his strong, hairy arms afterward, my beardless cheek against his hairy chest as it slowly rose and fell, our members limp and the tips wet with our seed, I was filled with bliss and contentment.

The next day the Ottoman army was joined by a new contingent of soldiers, foot soldiers resplendently dressed in bright pantaloons, flowing open sleeved robes, and strange pointed helmets with a large white flap. Although we were mounted and they were on foot, they were a formidable enemy and their commander a talented and clearly an experienced soldier. Before engaging us in hand to hand combat, we were attacked by their archers, who proved to be as skilled as our own. We then engaged them face on, and they fought just as fiercely as we, and, I found, each was an expert in his chosen weapon, arrow, axe or kilij, the latter being a short sabre about the length of a man's arm, like mine, but unlike mine, single edged and with a forward curve at the hilt flaring out the last quarter of the blade which added to its cutting power.

"Who were those soldiers we fought today?" I asked as we set up our tents for the night under double guards.

"They are called yenicen in their tongue, which means new soldier, or recruit. They are also known as the kapikullan, door servants, from the fact they were originally a specially selected group of warriors chosen by the Ottoman Sultan Murad I, grandson of the great warrior Osman who founded the Ottoman dynasty, to serve as his bodyguard and household troop a hundred years ago. Since then they have become a standing army of the Sultan's and are growing continually. They are selected every five years from Christian boys between the ages of ten and twelve, converted to Islam, and taught warfare." (2)

"Christian boys, yes, but not like us. They come mostly from the west, and not as slaves. They are obtained by a levy placed on those lands conquered and ruled by the Ottomans, only Christians, never Jews nor fellow Muslims. Those who cannot pay the levy in cash or goods, pay by providing service, in this case providing sons to serve in the Ottoman army. Actually many Christians will pay to have their son become a kapikulu and convert to Islam, knowing he will do far better than remaining a Christian, so weak are their own beliefs," Usama said with a smirk. (3)

I could not imagine any Christian father giving up his son to become a soldier for a heathen ruler who had conquered their country. I know Father never would. Usama was wrong about the strength of the Christian faith.

"Make love? I am told no. I am told they are not real men. Unlike the muqaddam al-tibaq, the eunuchs at the Citadel, they still have their balls, but like the priests they chose not to use them," he said. "As you saw today, they do not grow beards as real men do, and I am told they are forbidden to marry. They live only to fight. And that," he admitted grudgingly, "they do very well."

That they did, as we found out over the next two weeks. We battered at each other continually, one side advancing one day, the other side advancing the next. The date selected as the day of Christ's birth by the eastern Christians arrived and former Christians on both sides died that day in the field, and among those who survived, a few, like Usama and I, were grateful we were given another day to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. As I went down on his cock and his mouth enveloped mine that night, I thought of the strangeness of that, of Christians not knowing which day to celebrate the birth of their Saviour, of two groups of Christians converted to Islam killing each other in the name of Allah and for the glory of foreign Sultans, and of two Christians, a man and a boy, the former converted to a confirmed Moslem and the latter confused and uncertain, engaging in an act many of both faiths condemned as immoral and viewed with disgust.

It was most weird thinking those thoughts as I bobbed my head up and down, sliding my lips up and down Usama's throbbing cock and sucking on it deeply, drawing the air out of its core and sucking that prick air into my lungs as his lungs tugged on my own swollen member and his mouth tightened below my bulb to prevent me from ejaculating my seed. An even weirder thought crossed my mind. Was God truly all knowing? Did he know at this moment the two of us were sucking each other's cock, performing that perverted act on the day many of his faithful believed His Son had been born? Was this the punishment of Christians who rejected their faith for another or questioned their beliefs, to kill each other during the day and then clean their swords bloodied with Christian blood and engage in the devil's perversion with each other at night? Or, was this Allah's reward, the nonbelievers killing each other off and the survivors rewarded with pleasures of the flesh? I vaguely recalled hearing somewhere, perhaps from Rabbi Abraham or from the shoemaker spy Josepe, that the heathen Arabs believed when they went to heaven they would be served by beautiful, naked boys.

As I sucked on this stiff man cock like a starving boy sucking the marrow from a cherished bone, I concluded I had gone mad. There I was, naked, lying on my side, sucking on the cock of a twenty-eight-year-old man while he sucked on the cock of a boy half his age, and thinking about God and Allah and killing. Father would be shocked. He had been gone now how many days? I tried to count them but could not. How could a boy not know exactly how many days and how many candle marks it had been since he had last seen his father? How could a boy even think about his father as he lay there sucking a man's cock and arching his body with the pleasure of having a bearded heathen sucking his? I was mad. I was living in hell and had not yet died.

Each day was a living hell. Each day was spent preventing a stranger from taking my life and looking for the first opportunity to take his. Each day I was baptised anew by a stranger's hot blood, knowing it could be my last day, knowing I would most likely never see my father, mother, sisters, or Uncle Paolo again. I could see Uncle's face, his reassuring smile, the twinkle in his eyes as he assured me things would be all right. What would he think now if he could see his fourteen-year-old nephew stark naked in a tent sucking on the cock of a man, a beared heathen twice his age, his own cocklet throbbing with pleasure as the man sucked on it? What would he think of his nephew enjoying such perverse pleasure, the filthiest part of a man's body in his mouth, his own filthy unmentionable in another man's. Grief, fear, shame, perverse lust, hopelessness, and a physical pleasure impossible to describe assaulted my mind in turn and all together. Surely I was a condemned soul living in Dante's Inferno. Or was this Paradiso? As I sucked deeply on the throbbing member in my mouth I envisioned Uncle sitting before the fireplace back in Viano do Castelo reciting Dante's La commedia as Father, Mother, my sisters, and I sat around him, spellbound by his voice and the words.

And then my seed was gushing up the core of my cock and I trembled with the pleasure of its release, and moments later my mouth was being filled with seed also, thick, slimy and hot as one's blood, hot as the blood I had spilled that day. My cock burned with that intense pleasure and I opened and closed the opening desperately as spurt after spurt of my life-giving milk spurted not into a woman's womb to give new life, but into the mouth of another male to be swallowed and digested and to become part of him. And I eagerly drank down his thick, slimy milk, as I had done how many times before? More than I could remember. Whether down my throat or up my ass I was a willing receptacle for his seed, as he was of mine, and each day I lived for the night when we would pleasure each other. With the taste of his seed on my tongue and of his cock on my lips, I prayed to Allah in thanks, for I knew this was Paradiso.

I have from time to time, and almost daily since my enslavement and recruitment into the Mameluke army, wondered what it would be like to die. Would it be painful, or would it be like drifting off to sleep? Would I be frightened, or would I meet it courageously with head held high? Would I be welcomed by angels in heaven, or by the fires of hell? Would I die with anger and hatred in my eyes like many of those I had seen die around me, with surprise and disbelief like the many I have looked directly in the eye as my blade sliced into their body, or with that blank look, as if not seeing at all? As the yenicen's flared blade completed the arc after narrowly missing my head and began its upswing, I knew I would be unable to block it with my shield in time from slicing into my body. I remember thinking he had a look of confidence and of success in his eyes that moment. Myself, I felt neither fear nor courage in the face of my pending death. I remember only a feeling of disappointment that he had bested me, and our battle was going to be over. And, as his blade sliced into my ribs, I remember thinking death was wet, and warm, not unlike how it felt when the baby you were holding wet its swaddling clothes.

"Finish him. You know the orders. We have neither food nor medicine for prisoners."

I wanted to protest that I was not a boy but it seemed like too much effort. I would just as soon they leave and let me continue sleeping.

"What is a boy so young doing on the battlefield? He looks like he should still be tied to his mother's apron to stop him from wandering off."

"I know that one," said another voice. "I have seen him fight, several times. He is skilful with the sword, and fast."

"Then let him meet the same fate. Slit his throat and let us be off. I see no others of our own here."

Yes. Slit my throat and be gone. All this talking is keeping me awake. I knew I should care, but I was too tired. I felt the ground give as someone knelt beside me. I knew I should open my eyes, but that seemed like a lot of effort, especially since my throat was about to be sliced anyway.

There was silence and I felt myself blissfully slipping back to sleep. Maybe now I would just be left alone.

"A white eight-pointed cross. The Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. I know it for sure. I fought the bastards myself in Rhodes ten years ago."

"The Order was driven out of these lands thirty, forty years ago. What is he doing with the sword of one of their knights?"

"The members of the Order are renown as fighters. Its members are held in high regard by Sultan Bayazid himself. Could they train their knights so young?"

"Who knows? Their practices are as much a mystery to me as is the presence of this one here."

"Then let us take him. He can be questioned later. It is getting dark." There was movement around me. "Be sure to take along his sword, and his shield."

Getting dark. Good. Maybe now I can get some sleep. I did sleep. Off and on for the next three days I am told. When I awoke I found myself laying on a mat in a large room, my ribs tightly bound and a large, throbbing bruise on my forehead. There were a dozen or more men lying on mats on either side of me, some with arms in slings, others with a missing leg, all soldiers I guessed, all beardless, and not because of their age like me. yenicen. The enemy. Someone stepped up to me, jabbered something I did not understand, looked into my eyes and twisted my head back and forth, and jabbed me in the ribs. He spoke again, the same gibberish, and then repeated it, in poor Arabic. "How are you be feeling?"

"Yes." I tried to sit up but the room immediately began to spin. "Do not try that again," the man said, and then was gone.

I was joined some time later by a solider, a yenicen from his strange uniform with the pointed cap with the large white flap. He spoke better Arabic. He asked about the sword, and how it was I was fighting with the Mamelukes. I saw no reason to lie. I told him I was a Knight of the Langue of Aragon, Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, knighted by order of His Holiness Pope Innocent VIII himself. I explained how I was in Cairo with my father, a merchant, and captured and enslaved by the Mamelukes, and how I had travelled as part of a caravan guard at first, and then as part of the Mameluke royal army to fight them. He did not seem to doubt my word. I asked if there were other prisoners, and he replied it was not their practice to take prisoners, having barely enough food and resources for their own soldiers. I asked if I might talk to those who had found me, but he said they were days away, killing my comrades.

After he left a man two cots away from me came over and sat down beside me. He asked in very broken Arabic if I was really a knight of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, and when I said I was, he observed with obvious doubt that I was very young to be a knight. I shrugged, which caused me to wince with the pain in my side. He said he had seen me fight and that I was very good, and asked why I had wanted to talk to the men who had found me. I replied that I wanted to know the fate of the men who had been fighting beside me, and when he said he had been wounded and had been lying near where I had fallen, I asked about Usama, and about Abi Ya'qub, both whom I had seen near me moments before I had engaged in my last battle, describing both of them and their mounts. He said he had not recalled seeing either one of them, during the battle, nor laying in the battlefield after he himself had been wounded.

Four days later those well enough to travel, including myself, left the ancient citadel where the hospital had been set up, following the narrow, winding streets down from the hillside upon which it was perched. People filled the streets, bustling about their daily business, buying and selling, relaxing and visiting. You would never know there was a war going on only two days travel to the southeast. It was cold, hovering around freezing, and overcast with an occasional scattering of rain throughout the day, and each day following was much the same. We followed a well-used trail that in places showed it was following an ancient road, constantly heading northwest along a long plateau of dormant grain fields and native grasslands surrounded by mountains on all sides until we arrived at the city of Bursa, a city of mosques, hot sulfur springs, and hammams, baths, nestled against the slopes of a mountain they called Uludag. It was one of the most lovely cities I had seen since arriving in Cairo with wide streets and fine, clean bazaars and surrounded by gardens and running springs. On the outskirts of the city was a river of exceedingly hot water along which had been built two bathhouses, one for men and one for women.

The next day we were welcomed into the bathhouse as honoured soldiers of the Sultan's Imperial army and were treated with much respect and care as they took our clothing and lead us into the first of three rooms, which they called the sıcaklık. Nobody mentioned that I was a prisoner and not one of them, and I saw no reason to enlighten anyone. We lay down on large, flat marble slabs in the centre of the room and soaked up the steam arising from the hot water and inhaled the pungent air, which at first to me smelled like rotten eggs but which I was told was the natural odour of the water and had healing powers. I found my senses quickly became numbed to the odour and as my body began to sweat from the heat and the steam I felt my muscles relax and I had to admit I did feel good. One of the soldiers said that people came from all around for the healing waters, some travelling a month to get there. From there we went into the second room, the tepidarium, in which the water was not so hot and we submerged ourselves in the water and were attended by handsome teenage boys wearing nothing but towels and wooden sandals and who scrubbed our bodies with a coarse, perfumed soap and a horsehair brush. From there we went to the third and last room, the sogukluk, the coolest of the rooms where we dressed and relaxed and were served small cups of a dark, bitter drink, which I was told was called coffee.

As we sat and relaxed, I learned from my fellow soldiers that Bursa was a major trade city which received from Tabriz in the Northeast silks from the Caspian lands which lay even further north and spices brought in by caravan from the east. Merchants from Genoa, I was told, had obtained trading privileges from the third Ottoman Sultan, Orhan, almost a hundred and fifty years ago. As a merchant's son I was well aware of Genoese shipbuilding and naval power, and of their extensive trade connections with the east resulting largely from the first crusades. Although no friends of Portugal, and, in fact, seen as rival and powerful merchants, my hopes rose of possibly catching a Genoese ship to Genoa and making my way back to Portugal or at least down the coast to Rome. At the moment, unfortunately, I was being too heavily watched to even think about escape, but there was hope.

From Bursa we turned east and followed a well-used road along the shoreline of what I was told was the Bosporus Strait, a hundred and sixty furlong long and four to twelve furlong wide, which connected the Mediterranean with the Black Sea. We were ferried across the swiftly moving water to the town of Pera where lived many western merchants, particularly Italian, who regularly travelled to Bursa with their cotton goods to exchange for silks and spices. Pera was adjacent to Istanbul, which had been known as Constantinople when ruled by the Christian emperor Constantine, and as Byzantium before him. The city was, I was told, built on seven hills just as was Rome. Much of the city had fallen into ruin during the war with the Ottomans, which was still evident as we rode through the city, but the Ottoman sultans were sparing no cost in restoring the buildings of what was now their capital. It was not the first city I had travelled through that had seen the ravages of war, and it made me wonder how permanent any city was and about these turbulent times of warfare with nation competing against nation for land and resources and if we would ever know peace, and why each conquering hero had to demolish what was there and create his own monuments, only to have his own replaced by the next conqueror. It seemed a stupendous waste of time and money. Most of the Christian churches I noticed had been converted into mosques and tall, narrow minarets added to them.

As we travelled into the city, we passed one of the largest and most ornate buildings I have ever seen, the Hagia Sophia. I was told it was built as a Christian church almost a thousand years ago when the area was under the Roman Empire and with the conquering of the city by the Ottoman it had been converted into a mosque. We stayed that night at the barracks of the Imperial Army, those injured who had family going to stay with them and those whose wounds were more serious staying at the army hospital. What with the rain and needing a slower pace to transport the injured, the trip had taken us nine days, including the one day stopover we had spent at Bursa. It had been sixteen since I had fallen in battle.

Eager to hear news about the border battle first hand, the Ottoman ruler, Sultan Bayazid II, received the officer who had escorted the wounded back to Istanbul the next morning and I was taken along to report first hand to him what I knew about the Mameluke intent, and because the officer knew the sultan would be interested in my claim to be a knight of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. I was given new clothes for the occasion, a vest, blouse and pantaloons, plain but clean, and I wore the only possession I still had other than my weapons, the silver clasp in the shape of a rearing horse that Prince Afonso had given me which I now wore on my vest.

The palace was, as one would expect, a huge, sprawling edifice. The sultan was, I was told, a patron of learning and a lover of splendour, and what I saw of the palace was proof of that. Ornately carved pillars of marble supported high-domed ceilings which were plastered and stippled in intricate designs typical of those found in Arab buildings. The floor of the throne room, or reception room or wherever it was that I was received, was inlaid with an intricate mosaic of colourful stones and carpeted with an intricate burgundy and blue coloured carpet interwoven with gold threads. Rich tapestries hung from the walls along with huge portraits and other paintings. The Sultan sat upon a gilded throne surrounded by a dozen pillows of assorted sizes, shapes and colours. His robe was the purest white I have ever seen and made of fine silk and he wore a huge turban in the shape of an onion bedecked with silver threads and sparkling jewels. He had a thin face with a pointed, dark black beard and moustache and a narrow, hawk-like nose. To my surprise he looked young, only a year or two older than Father, who was thirty-nine.

The Captain gave his report, and I was called upon to tell what I knew about the Mameluke intentions. Although I had been in their presence for just a little over two weeks, I had learned enough of the Turkish tongue, it not being that different from Arabic, that I had been able to follow what the Captain had said, and I felt confident I could explain my situation. I had been told to tell the truth upon the threat of decapitation, and in that I knew little and considering my circumstances, I saw no reason to lie. So I told him what I knew, about being part of a caravan guard, and being called to Kayseri to fight whom we were told were invaders pillaging and killing along the Mameluke border. I told him to the best of my ability the size of the army I had travelled with, and the casualties as I knew them, from both sides. One of the soldiers who had accompanied us as my guard, the wounded soldier who had seen me fall and who had talked to me in the hospital in Angora, stepped forward and showed the sultan the sword I had been carrying and scabbard I was wearing along with my other weapons, my bow and quiver of arrows and my dagger, a gift I had received at the age of ten from Uncle Paolo and whose workmanship the soldiers had praised.

He was particularly interested in how I had come to be in possession of the sword. I had been told that he held the Order in great regard. When Constantinople had fallen to his father, he had only been five, but he remembered that the Order had been asked to become vassals to his father but had refused and had left Constantinople and resettled in Rhodes. Ten years ago his father had sent seventy thousand men and fifty ships to attack Rhodes and his men had been held off by two thousand militia and mercenaries and six hundred knights of the Order. So impressed was his father by their bravery and skill that he had sent them some of the spoils he had won in taking over Constantinople and the sacred relic, the hand of Saint John the Baptist. He died a year later and his son had become sultan.

"You are very young to have been made a knight," he observed after I had explained how and why my knighthood had come about, studying me so intently I had to drop my eyes. "But the tales of your bravery and skill in using the sword do not surprise me. The Order of Saint John of Jerusalem only takes the very best."

"I… I… thank you," I stammered, blushing brightly and not knowing what to say.

"I… I bear a message to you… from Pope Innocent VIII," I blurted as I realized we were about to be dismissed.

"You do?" he asked, looking at me in surprise, and glancing up at the captain who looked just as surprised, and apprehensive what the consequences might be having been unaware of the fact. I nodded. "And what might that message be?"

"He said that should my journeys take me to Jerusalem or beyond, that I might further the interests of the Holy See regarding the availability of artifacts and other things of interest in the Holy Land, and in particular, I was charged to inquire about the delay in him receiving the Holy Lance, should the occasion arise."

A flash of displeasure suddenly darkened the man's face and I noticed the captain flinch at my comments and the boldness with which I had made them. "Did he now?" he asked, a definite coldness in his voice. "And did he have anything else to say?"

"No… your holy-… your, ah, Eminence." I had no idea how one addressed a sultan.

"I… ah…," I stammered, shocked he would call the Holy Father such. "He seems to be fine, though perhaps a bit frail. He looks much older than he is. There are those who say he is not well and are already speculating on who shall be the next pope."

"He is still a young man, not like Al-Ashraf Sayf al-Din Qa'it Bay," he said, referring to the Sultan ruling Cairo and the Holy Land and for whom I had recently worked for. "Now, when that one passes on to the Promised Land, and may that be soon, Allah the Merciful and Compassionate willing, we might consider more seriously taking over the rule of his lands for his heir." He paused and stared off as if savouring the thought. "Who are they speculating will be the next Holy Father?"

"Several. Cardinal Borja and Cardinal Rovere and… Cardinal Sforza. Cardinal Borja I am told is sympathetic to the Jews," I added, recalling it having been said that Sultan Bayazid was also. He grunted but said nothing.

"Your brother Djem seems in good health," I offered, hoping to make up for whatever I had said earlier that had made him so angry.

"He seemed healthy. And quite content. It is rumoured that almost all the women in Rome are in love with him, and many he has bedded."

"There is rumour that he has… ah… designs on Cardinal Borja's ten-year-old daughter."

"Now that does sound like Djem," he snorted again. "Well, and content you say. That is too bad." From his frown, I evidently had not said the right thing again.

"Well, your information has been interesting. When you see your Pope, you can tell him it takes time to arrange the transfer of a relic such as the Holy Lance to ensure its safety… but perhaps it could be transported faster if… if certain threats to the Ottoman throne were to be removed. Do you think you can remember that, as I have said it?"

"Yes. I certainly can," I replied. "Though I do not know when I will be able to deliver it. As I explained, I was in Cairo with my father, who is a merchant, when I was captured and forced into the Mameluke army. That was… more than two and a half months ago. I have no way to return to Rome."

"Then I guess the message will have to wait until you find a way," he observed. With a slight flick of his hand, we were dismissed. The captain hesitated, clearly uncomfortable. "Yes?" the Sultan asked, raising an eyebrow and his voice once again becoming cold as he looked at him.

"Ah, forgive me, Your Most Benevolent and Gracious Majesty, but what would you have me do with this prisoner?"

"Release him. As formidable as he is, I do not believe he will be a threat to my person. And return his sword and any other belongings." He turned his head and looked directly at me. "Do not mistake my generosity, or give me reason to regret my decision. Understand if you were not a knight of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem I would have had you beheaded. Besides, one who is missing his head gives a different message than I would have you deliver to your Pope." If he smiled, it was too slight for me to notice. He cocked his head and gave me a strange look, like I have seen on the face of a man appraising some item he was considering purchasing. "There are few merchants travelling the seas at this time of year," he observed, "and fewer travelling overland, and none would likely have need for a boy guard. You might want to get hire as a tellak boy at one of the hammams. With your looks you should easily earn your fair on a ship or caravan and then some by spring."

I headed down to the docks nonetheless, but he was right. There were only two ships in dock, one heading to Alexandria and the other to Dzayer on the Barbary Coast, neither of which was going to get me any closer to home, and neither taking me to a safer destination though the possibility of joining Ahmar in Dzayer did give me a moment's thought. No foreign ships were expected, and nobody knew of any caravans heading west. "In the spring," I was told. There were several dozen hammams however, and everyone knew directions to them all. Unanimously they recommended the Golden Horn Hammam if it was work I was looking for. I needed money for food and lodging and not knowing what else to do, I trekked across the city back toward the Palace of Sultans. Upon announcing my intention at the entryway to the hammam, I was immediately taken to the man who ran the establishment, a fat, unbearded Turk by the name of Sulayman.

"Hmm," he said, obviously disappointed as he leaned forward and looked at me more closely. "Where?"

"Let me see. Strip." I hesitated, and then removed my tunic and blouse. He examined my arms and hands, and ran his fingers over the scar on my ribs. "No matter. Besides, it is not your ribs the customers will be interested in. Remove your trousers and let me see all of you." I hesitated again. "You have the face, and the eyes, and a nice chest. If the rest of your body can compare, your ass will be making more money than your hands," he observed. "You know that?" I did not, but I nodded anyway. "So strip. Let me see the rest of you."

I reluctantly removed my pantaloons and breechcloth and stood there naked before him. He stepped up and examined me closely, paying particular attention to my mouth, my genitals and my anus and causing me to blush with embarrassment.

"You have been had by a man before," he observed, and I nodded. What was it about my mouth, genitals, or anus that had given me away? Could everyone tell or just those such as this man who knew what to look for? "And yet you blush like a girl child on her wedding night. If you can do that at will you will bring in many customers," he observed, a twinkle in his eyes and the look of a man who had discovered a pot of gold. Telling me to get dressed, he rang a bell and an elderly, thin man appeared almost immediately, as if he had been waiting behind the door for just such a summons. "New tellak boy," he said. "Take him to Ishaq. Do you have a place to sleep?" he asked, addressing me.

Ishaq, it turned out, was a senior tellak boy, eighteen, very handsome. He glanced at me quickly, which with his experienced eye was enough. "What is your name?"

"Yes, why?" I asked, my heart rising in apprehension. I should have known he would suspect I was not Arab. The man who had just hired me had known immediately, but my nationality had not seemed to matter to him.

"You know your name means pure," he observed, making it a statement, not a question.

"If Sulayman sent you to me, you have provided pleasure to men before," he said, "in which case you are far from pure. If you have not, he expects you will be, and that you will be good at it, which is no surprise with your looks. You will not be known as pure for long if that is the case," he observed with a smirk.

The Golden Horn Hammam, I discovered, was not one of the largest baths, but was one of the more elite, catering to the richest and most powerful in the city, men in high political, military and financial positions. Every one of the boys was selected for his extraordinary physical beauty, and every one of them provided additional private services besides a body scrub, and those services came with a very high cost. I was shown a hook where I could hang my clothes above which was a shelf to store my other personal belongings. Tellak boys not normally arriving with a sword, scabbard and dagger, Ishaq stored them in a special cabinet to which only he had the key with instructions not to bring them the next day. Removing my clothing, I was given a pestemal, a long cotton towel, and showed how to wrap it about my loins and tuck in the ends so it would stay up. In addition I was given a pair of nalin, plain wooden clogs, so I would not slip on the wet floor, a kese, a rough mitt of coarse horse hair, and a plain soap box, my new uniform and the tools of my new trade.

I was introduced to the other tellak boys, all between the ages of twelve and nineteen, all handsome, smooth cheeked and smooth chested, and all with skin as soft and smooth as a baby's bottom. They were a mixture of Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Roma, and Christians, Constantinople having been the centre of Eastern Christendom for over a thousand years until the Ottoman Turks conquered the city in 1453 and changed its name to Istanbul. The present Sultan still recognized the Patriarch of Istanbul as the religious and political spokesman for the Christian population in the Ottoman Empire and the Patriarch of Alexandria and Patriarch of Jerusalem as spokesmen for Christians in the rest of the Arab world. To my surprise there were among the boys even a few Jews, Ishaq reminding me that Islam was a tolerant religion. Despite the range in nationalities, they all had three things in common, their beauty, their youth, and a willingness to have sex with the men who came to the baths.

The Golden Horn Hammam was typical of all Turkish baths, differing only in its opulence and extraordinary cleanliness. Like the bath in Bursa, it consisted of three rooms: the sıcaklık (hot room) which in the Golden Horn had a large dome and small glass windows to create a half light, a large marble stone called the göbek taşı (tummy stone) in the centre for customers to lie on, fountains in the corners, and niches for soaking up steam and getting private scrub massages; the tepidarium (intermediate room) with moderately warm water and used for washing up with soap and water; and the sogukluk (cool room) where patrons could dress, relax with friends, have tea or some other refreshing drink, and nap in a private cubicle after a massage or sex. (4)

Myself, I was restricted to scrubbing dirty bodies and providing massages the first week, it being Sulayman's intent to entice his patrons and build up their interest and desire. I was paid three dinars a day, one of the highest rates in the city. My room, on the third floor of a three-story building, was two arm spreads wide and three long, windowless, contained a thin, straw mat, pitcher and wash basin and cost one dinar a day. At least it was clean, as was the common privy at the end of the hall. Having learned the techniques of giving a massage while in the Mameluke army, a welcome pleasure after a day in the saddle or on foot or after a day of battle, I needed little instruction. By the end of my first week many regular customers were eager to receive the additional special service available from me, something that not all but many of the customers sought and something that Sulayman encouraged but left up to the option of the tellak boys, all of whom provided it. By then I had learned that the youngest and least skilled were being paid fifty dinars, the most experienced and skilled, Ishaq and Andreas, a Greek boy, three hundred, and the others scattered between the two, one tenth of the fee going to Sulayman. Gauging the interest and desire of his customers, by the end of the week Sulayman said I could begin providing that extra service if I so wished, with of course the encouragement that I do. When I replied that I would, at a charge of three hundred and twenty dinars, he laughed and said in that case nobody would want my services and he would have to let me go. What he did not know was that I had been gauging the interest of his customers also, and observing Ishaq and Andreas at their work.

My first customer was one Hakeem ibn Waliba al-Habab, a man whose body I had scrubbed daily and whom I knew not only desired me, but wanted to be the first of Sulayman's customers to have me. He was a possessive and arrogant man, one whom I knew would spread word of my abilities for it would also spread word of his own sexual prowess. I knew the personality. That he was a trader in gems and regularly traded with the west and a man I hoped would provide me an opportunity to return to my homeland in the future was also a large part of the reason for choosing him for my first customer. He was fat and soft, with a double chin and ruddy cheeks and a bulbous nose from too much wine, but I figured the advantages of engaging in sex with him would outweigh his lack of attractiveness. As Sulayman had warned, he thought the fee I was asking outrageous, but also as I had suspected he was flattered I had chosen him to be the first, and enticed by the possibility of announcing to the others he had received a quality of service better than any of them had received from Ishaq or Andreas, which he warned me had better be the case or he would demand his money back and pay me nothing at all.

Retiring to one of the recesses, he lay down on his back and I began arousing him, gently brushing my hands, lips, and smooth cheeks against his body and providing him discrete glimpses of more and more of my flesh. Already desiring me, he was erect in a matter of heartbeats. I knew that there were two criteria upon which a tellak boy was ranked, the skill with which he could bring the bather pleasure, and the number of times he could cause the bather to ejaculate. I was determined to add a third, the length of time I could provide the customer that pleasure.

I applied those techniques I had learned from Usama and had provided out of my love and devotion to him, teasingly approaching but at the last moment avoiding those areas of the body that are particularly sensitive to arousal, the lips, the nipples, the inside of the thighs, the anus, and of course the genitals themselves. I carefully watched the fat merchant and noted which actions caused his fat prick to wag with desire and which did not, applying the former sparingly yet frequently enough to keep him erect. I was also most careful not to deny those pleasures for too long lest the wait become an annoyance and not an anticipation.

I massaged and squeezed his fat breasts, gradually working my fingers toward his nipples and then brushing my lips against them. I caressed his fat thighs with a feather-light touch and then brushed my smooth cheek against them, causing his cock to jerk with desire. I bent over and looked down at him with half-closed eyes and he quaked with desire. When I knew he could take no more, I fastened my lips about his right nipple and sucked on it and ran my tongue over the swollen bud until he was squirming and gasping for breath and then moved to the left and did the same to it. While still in the throes of the pleasure pulsating through his fat breasts, I swooped down on his stiff cock and enveloping the knob with my lips I sucked on it gently, trying as best I could to keep my lips perfectly still to avoid brushing against the sensitive rim of his knob. All the while I let my towel slip lower to reveal the slope of my groin until my fine, soft hairs began to appear above the edge. I rearranged my towel as if a natural shifting of the cotton cloth as I changed my balance from one leg to another, now revealing a thigh, and then the briefest of glimpses at my young, dangling balls with their beginning of peach fuzz.

Finally, knowing he could not stand the delay any longer, I lubed his cock and straddled him and slowly eased back and down, reaching behind me to guide his anxious cock to my rectum. I sat down on it, impelling myself with his fat, fleshy sword, and I paused to allow him to relish the pleasure of having his cock surrounded by my hot, moist, velvet-smooth rectum, and for his passion to subside. I waited until he made the first move, drawing his hips back and sliding forward on the smooth marble bench stone, easing his cock in and out of my rectum, and then I took over for him, slowly riding him, easing up on his swollen, throbbing cock and then pausing and descending again, keeping my anus tightly clamped about his rod. I rode his cock with tantalizing slowness, fast enough to keep stimulating his knob, but slowly so as not to overstimulate him and bring him to the point of ejaculation.

Of course that point was inevitable and at the last possible moment I paused and clamped my anus tightly about his throbbing cock below his knob. I remained motionless as I counted the heartbeats until I was sure I had quelled his desire, and then I resumed to ride his stiff cock. He lay there in ecstasy, his head thrown back, his jaw slack, a dribble of drool trickling from the corner of his mouth as I slowly brought him to that peak a second time. Unlike with Usama, I brought him to it much sooner, the fat merchant lacking the control of mind to dampen his lust, and knowing he did not have the stamina to prolong our sex play any longer, I brought him over the brink. When he came, he did so violently and noisily, grunting and snorting with the effort and with the pleasure, his fat cock throbbing hotly in my rectum and his hot, thick cream spurting deep up my rectum and rapidly filling it. I moaned and sighed with the exquisite pleasure of having a man ejaculate his seed deep up my body, for such an experience is a pleasure, one equal to one's own ejaculation, and I needed not to fake my own enjoyment. As his spurts subsided, I sat there quietly, my legs straddling his fat, perspiring belly and supporting most of my weight, my soft bottom barely more than a feather touch on his stomach.

He was, I think, perplexed that I continued to sit there with his member still up my ass, and after waiting a bit he began ease his hips back and his cock, having recently lost its rigidness, out of my body. I responded by sliding back also, keeping his cock in my rectum, and bending over, I kissed him on the lips ever so lightly. His cock responded immediately with a throb and I extended my tongue and licked his lips, causing his cock to throb more forcefully and begin to swell once more. I kissed him again and looked down at him dreamily behind half-closed lids, my eyes clouded with genuine pleasure. As he looked up into my eyes, his own filled with lust and desire, causing my little cocklet to jerk with arousal and slap his stomach and a blush to come to my cheeks, causing his cock to begin swelling still faster. I did nothing other than sit there and allow my velvet-lined rectum and my innocent, boyish looks bring him back to a full erection.

This time I did not begin to rock to and fro but instead I sat there, his cock buried deep up my ass, and I reached out and began to once again caress and knead his flabby breasts and I looked down at his nipples with all the innocent curiosity and desire of a teenage boy and the look in my eyes and the blush of my cheeks caused his cock to throb with renewed lust. I still did not move my hips and instead I reached out and caressed his breasts, running my hands in concentric circles about his nipples, drawing closer and closer in until at last I brushed them with a feather-tight touch with my fingertips and he arched his back and whimpered with desire. I continued to tease his nipples until the pleasure of stimulation was about to become the pain of denial, and then I lowered my hands to my lap and ever so slowly began to ride him again.

It being his second time, it took him much longer to reach the point of ejaculation, but looking up into my lust-filled eyes and having my rectum clutching his rigid cock each time I drew up and then sinking back down to envelop it from tip to hairy base, he eventually approached that peak for a second time. I stopped for him to relish the pounding between his legs and to allow it to subside, but he began to work his hips, pushing his cock into me and easing it back out, fucking my ass as he lay there on his back and I straddled his fat, perspiring body. I bent forward and brushed his lips with mine, and then kissed him firmly and passionately. He was gasping and panting with exertion and with desire once again, and I sat up and pushed back on his upper legs to stop him, or at least slow him down, but he would have none of it. Grasping my hips, he began to thrust his own to and fro, fucking me furiously, pumping his fat cock in and out of my rectum, now lubed with his first shot of seed.

I knew he should pause and enjoy the pleasure, but I also knew that he was accustomed to having his pleasure when he wanted it and how he wanted it so I made no effort to stop him, nor to take over for him. Being his second time, it did take him longer to work up enough pressure within his loins to shoot his seed, and when he shot this second time his seed was thicker and less voluminous. Again he began to ease his body back and draw his cock out, but again I eased back along with him, keeping his limp cock inside me. Knowing my intention, he grasped my hips and pushed me forward as he continued to draw back, observing that it was possible to die of too much pleasure, and that he would definitely do so if we continued.

Taking a damp cloth set aside for that exact purpose, I washed off his perspiring body and his flaccid member and helped him dress. With an exhausted but exuberant smile, he observed that I had well earned my money.

Word spread quickly and by the end of that second week men were arranging for me to be their tellak boy two or even three days in advance such was the demand on my time. Of course I could not be selective, and anyone who met the price had the use of my body. At the same time, those whom I found more desirable or who could be of greater assistance to me in the future I applied my skills to with more dedication and effort. For the others, especially toward the end of each day, I went through the motions, barely aware of them inside me, often my mind wandering back to those intimate nights with my master, or dreaming of the day I no longer had to do this and would have money for passage home. At the beginning of the third week such was my popularity I was able to raise my fee to three hundred and sixty dinars for those who had not already requested my time, an unheard of price in Sulayman's memory, shortening the number of months I would have to spend at the baths, for that was always foremost on my mind.

Besides the fee, some men, particularly grateful, would slip me an extra bonus, telling me to keep it secret from Sulayman, and others began to gift me with semiprecious jewels, elaborately sculptured and inlaid jewel boxes, gilded soap boxes, nalin inlaid with silver, embroidered vests and tunics, fine silks, mirrors mounted in ornate metal frames, henna bowls and bottles of perfume. Remembering each, I was sure to use that same scented soap or perfume or use the same soap box the next time we retired to one of the private niches. That alone heightened their pleasure and guaranteed me further gifts and monetary bonuses.

Along with my fame and wealth came the envy and jealousy of the other bath boys, and ultimately open hatred, especially by the top-paid tellak boys. I was, after all, robbing them of customers who would otherwise be paying for their services and gifting them. I was cutting into their income, and I was overshadowing their fame and reputations. Sulayman soon discovered who was giving me extra monetary bonuses and how much and demanded his ten percent of them also, and there was no doubt in my mind who had revealed the secret. I had to begin locking up my gifts or they would be stolen, or worse, smashed and left for me to discover them, and of course I had to pay Sulayman a handsome price for a locked cabinet.

Ishaq and Andreas openly insulted me and began to push me about, challenging me to fights for the slightest and totally imagined slight, which they figured they would win, being older and bigger, the intent being to bruise my body or disfigure my face so customers would find me less attractive. That plan quickly came to an end when they discovered my Mameluke training included using my fists and it was they who ended up with the split lips and black eyes, which ironically reduced the requests for their services. That I would have taken great delight in except it angered Sulayman who took it out on all three of us. When I left the hammam at night, I had to take circuitous and different routes to avoid being robbed of my money and gifts for the day, and I had to begin leaving my treasures and weapons with the innkeeper for safe keeping in the fear of having my little room burglarized while I was away, which to my great dismay cut further into my savings.

Toward the end of my third week I was attacked from behind on my way to the inn's privy, obviously not for my money as I was carrying none, and suspiciously only a couple days after Sulayman had put an end to Ishaq and Andreas's bullying. There was no doubt in my mind that the intent was to injure me so I could not continue working, or even worse, to disfigure my face so I would no longer be desired. Fortunately for me my attacker was incompetent, probably the consequence of the fee he had been paid, and unfortunately for him I turned the dagger he had intended on using on me on him, and again I thanked Usama for his training.

Several days later, the last day of Hızır Orucu, a three day fast during which comfort, enjoyment, food and water were avoided for one day, I was attacked by two men as I approached the inn I was staying at, paid cutthroats who showed no honour in their methods and whom I was certain had intended on putting an end to not just my livelihood as a tellak boy, but to put an end to my life itself. I do not know what they had been told, but they were clearly expecting a tellak boy, not a former Mameluke soldier, and by the end, there were two dead men in the alley, killed by their own weapons but by my own hand. They may have been looking for my earnings, but from the look of surprise on Ishaq's face when I arrived unscathed the next day, I suspected otherwise. I came to the baths fully armed that day, and telling Sulayman of my most recent attack, requested he safeguard my weapons until I returned home. He was about to state a fee for doing so, but there must have been something in my eyes or in the tone of my voice that he changed his mind.

At the end of that week, my fourth as a tellak boy, a man arrived at the Golden Horn Hammam in the early afternoon seeking my services specifically, the son of a cousin by marriage to the nephew of the Sultan, come to visit his esteemed relative. Although my time had already been arranged to be spent with another, one of Sulayman's (and my) regular customers, he demanded he take the man's place and he was given it, evidence of the power and authority he held. I of course was bound to provide my service to anyone who met the fee. So, I joined him in the sıcaklık and we retired immediately to one of the private niches. He was obscenely obese, at least thirty stone, and I exaggerate not that he was as hairy as one of the apes that live on Jabal Tariq, the northernmost promontory at the entrance of the Mediterranean that was known by the ancients as one of the Pillars of Hercules, and as ugly as one. His breath smelled of garlic and sour wine, and he was loud, demanding, and thoroughly obnoxious, obviously a man who had been spoiled his entire life.

Upon seeing him, I had immediately decided to provide the man the least of my services, enough that he could not complain about the price he had paid, but not going out of my way to provide him any extra pleasure. We almost immediately dispensed with the body scrub and went directly to him demanding sex, which was fine with me. The sooner we got this over with the happier I was going to be. I began with my usual foreplay, the teasing techniques that made men ache for my body and that had built my reputation in less than a week. He was not interested in any of that, however, nor was he about to allow me to set the pace, which of course was what men had been paying me for. Nor was he going to allow me to take the lead. When it came to appreciating the finer qualities of making love, he was a boor, a Barbary ape that he so resembled.

He was quickly aroused, and he quickly mounted me, without the advantage of the two of us being fully prepared and without the advantage of lubricant. Fortunately for me I had enough experience at being penetrated and his member had been soaped sufficiently that we united with a minimum of pain. That he came within a hundred heartbeats, far sooner than was customary for my least skilled customers, did not concern him. Clearly, he was incapable of appreciating the pleasures I could bring him. He quite simply wanted a young, beautiful body to deposit his seed in, and to be allowed to deposit it as often and as roughly as he wanted. Any of the boys in the hammam would have served his purpose, and indeed, any of the boys in the cheapest of the baths in Istanbul as long as they were fair of face and body, but he wanted the best, and unfortunately, he had been told that was me.

Pulling out his cock, he spun me around and kissed me on the mouth roughly and sloppily, his drool and the foul odour of his breath making me want to gag. Reaching down between my legs, he grabbed my genitals and roughly manhandled them, squeezing my testicles and tugging on my limp member, coarsely referring to it as my bamya, a Turkish slang insult for a small penis. I found no pleasure in his foreplay, but he evidently did, soon becoming fully erect once again. Spinning me around and slamming me up against the marble slab, he grabbed me by the hair and yanking my head back, he rammed his cock up my rectum a second time. Holding my strands of hair as if they were reins on a horse, he began to pound my ass with a ferocity that had no pleasure in it at all. Slamming my body against the marble slab, he yanked on my hair, pulling a fistful out by the roots. Oblivious to my pain and discomfort, he pumped his hips to and fro rapidly with only one intent in mind, to bring himself to a climax as quickly as he could.

Now Sulayman had very strict rules about just how rough a customer could get, the condition of his boys being directly related to the amount of money he took in as nobody wanted damaged goods. Those who liked their sex rough never made it through his doors. Being the son of a cousin of the nephew of the Sultan evidently excluded you from those rules. The niches were recessed for privacy, but open enough that other customers or bath boys or Sulayman's guards could tell if a boy was being abused. This particular afternoon the few customers who were present chose to be as far away from the niche we were occupying as possible, if not out of fear of the royal client then because they could not bear to watch what was happening. The guards were conspicuously absent. As my rectum was filled with his slime for the second time, I prayed that he was finished, but he had only begun. The man had a sexual appetite and stamina as great as he was ugly.

We had wet cloths for wiping ourselves and our customers clean between bouts of sex, but the boor would have nothing to do with that. Forcing me onto my knees, he had me lick his partially erect member clean, taking great delight in watching my tongue lap up the smear of his seed along with my ass slime and bits of shit from my rectum. It was only with supreme effort that I stopped myself from puking, knowing to do so would do me no good, and as it was I could not stop myself from gagging as I swallowed the slime and shit I had licked from his cock. It was as arousing for him as it was disgusting for me and to my dismay his cock began to swell once again. He purposefully wiped it on my cheeks, befouling my face arousing him more than any feather touches from me ever could.

As I knelt there, unable to protest, I wondered what sort of man took such delight in befouling a fourteen-year-old boy with his own ass slime and shit. And, as he had me lay on my back and he mounted me for a third time, I wondered if Sulayman was making no effort to intervene because of the man's position, or if it was because he figured my time at the baths was drawing to a close anyway. Having already warded off two attacks, it would only be a matter of time before one of my assailants was successful. A broken nose, a slash across my face, and my career as a tellak boy would be over.

I was not even aware of the hairy brute ejaculating his seed so numbed I had become to what I can only describe as being attacked. I do not know how many times he mounted me. I lost count after the fourth. He had me arouse him repeatedly with my hands or my mouth, and then took me, on hands and knees, on my stomach, on my back, standing with my legs spread, the position did not matter to him. He thrust his member in and out of me as if it were a sword, and took delight in the speed with which he could reach his climax. Throughout it all he said nothing, and when he was finally satiated, he left me there, my anus raw and bleeding, my head throbbing and eyes aching, and my anus oozing with his slime.

"Su surtuk sikilmeyi sever," he heard him laugh as he left, to whom I have no idea. "That slut loves to get fucked." Keeping my eyes downcast, I lifted myself up out of the baths and with my legs spread wide painfully waddled to the back room, filled with shame and with anger.

"Well, not so pure now, are we?" asked Ishaq and he and Andreas exchanged gleeful glances. The Sultan's nephew's cousin's son had done what neither of them had been able to do. "Instead of Naqi, I think we should change your name to Sharmuuta," he observed, and the two of them laughed. That, I knew, was Arabic for whore.

Sulayman had the hammam doctor apply a salve to my anus and sent me home, not out of any concern for me, but knowing I would be useless for the rest of the day. He was not happy about the loss of income for the day, but there was little he could do about it. I was just as unhappy as he was.

Returning to my small room, I lay down on my stomach and tried to get some sleep, but I could not. My asshole was burning as if on fire and despite having had a steam bath and the doctor having given me an enema my body felt like it was crawling with lice and my rectum felt like it was filled with the man's filthy slime. So did my stomach even though upon returning home I had vomited up what little had been in my stomach, and I could still taste the man's seed and his foul cock on my lips and in my mouth despite having washed it out with anise water, a common practice among tellak boys to freshen their breaths between customers and which not only left one with a warm, sweet taste but gave one renewed energy besides.

My feeling of filth extended beyond my body however. Ishaq was right. I was an orospu, a whore, a filthy cock-loving, cock-sucking whore. I had serviced so many men I had no idea their number, and most of them I could not tell you their name nor anything about them. Those whom I could identify, I knew not out of love or fellowship or duty, I knew because they gifted me the most, or I figured I could use them in the future to get back to Portugal. I sold my body for sex, and I sold my soul for money. The realization of what I had become hurt even more than my anus. I could only thank God that Father and Uncle could not see me now. I barked out a laugh at that thought, and once I began to laugh I could not stop. I laughed as a man demented. Thank God. Right! More suiting, it should be curse God, and Allah, and whatever other gods existed. What good had it been to be a good son, a good Christian, or a good Moslem for that matter? I had lived my life trying to be good, trying to obey the law and word of God, and what good had it done me? I was alone in a foreign land selling my body to the heathens like a wanton harlot. Where had God or Allah been? What had they done to protect me? Well, as I told Ishaq and Andreas they could do, the gods could siktir git, they could fuck off. I was the Devil's boy, revelling in sin and his worship. Daily before his altar I bent over and if he were there his göt lalesi I would eagerly sniff and praise its fragrance. Göt lalesi. Ass-tulip. Who else but the heathen, boy-loving Turks would come up with a name like that for one's asshole? And tomorrow I would be back at the baths for more, for I had nowhere else to go, and one day I will let my guard down and I will die in the filthy streets of this godforsaken land.

Nico is reluctant to return to the baths and jumps at the opportunity to leave Istanbul with a troupe of entertainers, erroneously thinking the caravan is heading west and discovering too late it is heading east. As they travel along the coast of the Black Sea, he is trained how to be a köçek, a young male dancer highly respected in the Ottoman culture for dancing skills, musical ability, androgynous looks and for pleasing men.

Nicolau Ribeiro (14yo)
Supporting characters ages 8 to 50 plus
Mt tb – cons/slave oral anal mast – prost cross-dressing

Deciding my anus needed an extra day to heal, I did not return to the Golden Horn Hammam the next day. The following morning, and the morning after that, I decided that my anus was still too tender to be able to provide my customers the level of pleasure they had come to expect. To be honest, my major reason was that I was in no mood to provide anyone pleasure. There were men who had scheduled time with me and I knew they would be angry over my absence, and I knew when I returned Sulayman would be even angrier, and would most likely demand a higher percentage of my earnings to make up for the money he had been expecting me to bring in but I did not care. I spent each day laying on my stomach on my thin straw mat, venturing out only to fetch water to wash my hands, face and feet and to keep my anus clean. To take my mind off my raw asshole and my disgust for myself, I sang the ditties that Father and Uncle and I used to sing back home and while on the Theresa del Morau, but thinking of happier times only made me all the more sorrowful. I made up my own tunes on the nay, the reed flute, I had boughten, the one luxury I had allowed myself upon earning money, it being the closest thing I could find to a panpipe. On the afternoon of my third day away from the hammam there was a knock on the door of my room. It took several knocks before I realized it was my door, and several more knocks before I responded. In the four weeks I had been living there, nobody had ever come to see me. Taking down my sword and gripping it tightly, I slid back the bolt on my door and opened it a crack. To my surprise it was the gem merchant Hakeem ibn Waliba al-Habab.

He was puffing and gasping for breath, and although it was a cool afternoon, sweat was trickling down his forehead. Climbing the three flights of stairs had done the man in. Inviting him in, I offered him my sleeping mat to sit on and apologized for not having anything more appropriate for him to sit upon, and for not having anything to relieve him of his thirst. He accepted my offer of the mat and sat down heavily.

"Well, Naqi," he said after he caught his breath, using my false name of course in that he did not know my real one, "you are a difficult boy to find."

"I heard what happened at the Golden Horn. We have all heard. I have been worried about you."

"Thank you. I am most honoured by your concern. And I am sorry to have worried you. I am all right." He looked at me skeptically. "Honestly. My tulip has healed."

"May Allah, a thousand blessings on His name, curse the unworthy dog with boils on his arse and on his nose for the rest of his life," he spat. "May his member become infected with maggots and rot and fall off."

"I can take you to one. Do not worry about the cost," he said, holding up his hand before I could speak. "I will pay for whatever medicine you need."

He studied me with a critical eye until I stared down at my feet and shuffled uncomfortably. "But there is no salve for the other wounds," he finally said sadly. I did not reply. "Will you return to the baths?" I had no answer to that either. "Sulayman is very angry with you, that you did not come back the next day, not for any love of you, but for the love of the money you did not earn for him. He has blamed Ishaq and Andreas for your trouble, saying that they left rumours about your greatness so that accursed unworthy dog, may a thousand fleas infect his crotch, would seek you out. Of course they deny it, and I have to believe them. Their time as tellak boys is too limited for them to risk something so foolish. No, I believe they would be spending every moment of their time courting some potential patron to take care of them in the future rather than taking time to seek a way to injure their obvious replacement. Any day now their beards will come in and their careers will be over."

"Ishaq's already is. He scrapes it off in private with a honed blade every morning, and again in the afternoon." It was a secret among us tellak boys, but I owned the bastard nothing.

"No, but he fears it will any time now. He says among his people it grows early, and dark."

"Sulayman is also afraid you might have thought it safer to go work at the Babur Hammam."

"Not when it comes to men of power and position such as the accursed dog who maltreated you. The owner is perhaps not as unfeeling about the boys who work for him as is Sulayman, but, he is a business man," he said, throwing his arms up in an expression of helpless acceptance. "He must make a profit if he is to stay in business."

"Then there is no point in going elsewhere." He frowned and repeated the gesture. "I am most honoured you have come to inquire about my health, Bey Hakeem ibn Waliba al-Habab, and so sorry that I have caused you worry," I said again, and I apologized once more for having nothing to relieve his thirst or for him to eat. "I can run to the vendors up the street," I offered. "It is not far. I know a vendor that makes a very nice honey cake with almonds, and I could fetch a flagon of winter wine, not as fine as I am sure you are accustomed, but I have sampled it and it is better than most."

"Thank you, no," he said with a wave of the hand and a shake of his head. "Now I know you are alive, I must be going."

"Of course. I am sure you have many important matters to attend to. I am so sorry I have taken up your time," I said, helping him to his feet, which given his weight was no easy matter without the buoyancy of the waters of the bath.

"Stop apologizing, Naqi," he scolded somewhat sharply. "You are a very precious boy. And, it is the least I can do," he added with a smile, "I will never forget you gave me the opportunity and great honour to be your first at the Golden Horn." He took several steps to the door. Pausing, he turned to me. "You mentioned to me you would travel, and were saving your money to buy passage by ship or caravan."

"You were singing when I arrived outside your room. And playing the nay. Do you perhaps dance?"

"No matter. I am sure you could learn. You are very bright. With your fine features and beautiful hair, you would make a wonderful köçek. A good köçek can make as much as a top tellak boy, even more, and is much esteemed. If anyone were to harm a köçek like you were harmed, they would be hung by their balls at the city gate and left to die, even the son of a nephew of a cousin of a sultan. And some köçekler travel about the country besides. If you are interested, I can make inquiries."

"Yes!" I blurted, and then quickly remembered my manners. "I… I would be greatly indebted to you. If such a thing were possible, that I did not have to return to the baths, and might travel, I would be eternally grateful. I do not know how I would ever be able to pay you."

"We will worry about that if the time comes," he said with a smile. "Now, I have business to attend to." I saw him down to the street and wished him well, bowing and thanking him profusely again, and returned to my room happier than I had been since arriving in Istanbul. That evening as the sun was about to set, there was a knock at my door. Twice in one day! I almost opened the door in the hope that it was Bey Hakeem, but realizing at the last moment that was a foolish hope, I again took down my sword and slowly opened the door, my heart rising in my chest in apprehension. Hakeem could have mentioned having talked to me, and word could have gotten back to people I did not want to see. There at my door was a barefoot boy of seven or eight carrying a bundle in his arms.

"I bring you a message from Bey Hakeem ibn Waliba al-Habab, may Allah smile a thousand smiles upon him," the boy said. "And I bring you these," he said, thrusting the bundle at me.

The boy shook his head. Motioning him inside and opening up the bundle, I found it was a new set of clothes, very bright and colourful and made of linen of such a fine thread it felt like silk. Quickly washing my face, hands, hair and feet, and wishing I had time and the water for a proper bath, I donned the new clothes, a breechclout finer than anything I have ever worn, a pale blue blouse and matching pantaloons, a dark blue vest embroidered with silver thread, sandals, and a black, cylindrical, felt hat called a fez that I noticed many men in this city wore. They all fit perfectly and I had to wonder how Hakeem had guessed my sizes so accurately.

I attached my silver clasp of a rearing horse to my vest, the one possession that I had left from Portugal and the most valued, tucked my dagger inside my pantaloons, and strapped on my sword and scabbard. I did not know where we were going, but I was not going outside at night unarmed. As we approached the Golden Horn Hammam my fear rose, as did my heart in my chest, but my suspicion and apprehension were unfounded as we turned still several streets away and headed toward the Royal Palace. Continuing beyond it, we entered a part of the city where the homes were evidently of the rich from their size and exterior decoration and from the cleanliness of the streets. Arriving at a large, and clearly expensive, tavern, I followed the boy inside. The tavern was full and very noisy. Following the boy, he lead me to a table where there sat Hakeem and another man whom I figured to be about the same age as Hakeem or perhaps a few years older and whom I had never seen before.

"Ah, Naqi! Wonderful," shouted Hakeem with a wide grin. "Well done," he said to the boy, and taking out his purse, he opened it up and gave the boy a dinar. The boy bobbed in thanks and disappeared. Hakeem motioned for me to take the empty chair between him and the other man. "This is the boy I have been telling you about," he said to the other man. "This is the illustrious Bey Lutufkar al-Hamyd ibn Muhammad al'Kazzar," he said, introducing the other man with genuine admiration. I nodded respectfully.

"Very richly dressed for a tellak boy, especially one so young," he observed, appraising me as I have seen men appraise a piece of merchandise in my father's shop.

"Gifts," I said, looking over with thanks at Hakeem, who quickly gestured below the table not to mention himself.

"From what Hakeem tells me, you have earned many gifts as a tellak boy," Lutufkar observed.

"So I hear," Lutufkar replied. I wondered just how much Hakeem had told him. "I also hear you are looking for a caravan to travel with."

"Yes, I am," I replied, my hopes rising but this time curbing my enthusiasm, not wanting to sound too eager.

Before we could continue our conversation, there was a sudden drum roll, ending with the clash of cymbals, and everyone fell silent. "Gentlemen, for your entertainment tonight, we have four performers from the Ghilman Entertainment Troupe," announced the owner of the tavern. The first performer was a slim, good-looking, bare-chested boy in his late teens. He began a slow dance with the second performer, a cute-looking younger boy of about nine, establishing the beat on a pair of small hourglass-shaped drums. As he danced, he tossed a stiletto into the air and caught it, then two, and then three and finally four, and as the drummer speeded up so did the dancer until he was spinning and leaping so fast his bare feet were barely touching the ground, and at the same time he was tossing the four daggers into the air and deftly catching them by the handles. I sat there and stared in amazement, certain he would cut off a finger or stab his naked foot any moment. I was not the only one as the entire room fell silent in apprehension and appreciation. When he was done he received a tremendous ovation for his skill and several in the audience threw coins at a fez I had not noticed on the floor before him.

He was followed by a boy of about my age who played what they called an ud, which to me looked like a pear-shaped lute and sounded much the same. From his long hair and smooth complexion and dark eyes he would have made an excellent tellak boy. As he began to sing the room again fell silent in awe of his beautiful voice and I was reminded of the young boys in the Sistine choir, especially as he hit the highest notes that only prepubescent boys and the castrato were able to achieve. He too received a thunderous ovation and even more men threw coins in the fez.

Following him was a young girl also about my age with beautiful long, black, curly hair and dark eyes with long, feathery eyelashes. Her dancing was slow and provocative, moving her hands slowly along her thighs and as if caressing her small, budding breasts, and gyrating and looking out at the audience with a sultry look. There was, however, something strange about her, and about half way through her performance I realized what it was. This was no girl. It was a young boy dressed in the silk blouse and long, embroidered skirt of a girl with sparkling bracelets and necklaces as women wear. His erotic moves and gestures as he ran his long, ringed fingers over his body and twisted his upper body and rotated his hips before the room full of men took on a much different meaning, and when he looked across the room it seemed like he was looking right at me. To my surprise and great embarrassment, I suddenly became fully erect and I was thankful I was sitting and wearing the baggy trousers Hakeem had sent me. Of all the performers, he received the loudest ovation, and the greatest number of coins.

"So, do you think you could do that?" the man called Lutufkar asked, turning and looking at me.

"With the stilettos I think after the first week I would be missing all my fingers and toes," I replied, to his amusement. "But I have been told I have a good singing voice, and I can play the panpipes if there were any to be found. I have not danced, but I think I could learn to do it with practice."

"Some köçekler perform more intimate private dances, for a fee," he observed.

"I think I could do that best," I replied, knowing what he meant, and he smiled.

"Yes, I think you could," he replied. "You would have to train long and hard to be a köçek, every day. Vedat began training seven years ago, when he was seven. You and he are of the same age I would guess, and you have had no training."

"Hakeem has sung your praise very loudly and most persuasively, so I will take a chance on you. We leave tomorrow morning at dawn, if you wish to travel with the Troupe. If you are as good as I am told you are and you can earn your way, you can stay with us as long as you wish."

The singer with the ud came back out. "I had best go if we are to leave at dawn," I said, getting up before the boy began. I would have liked to have stayed to watch more for all of the boys were talented, and, I must confess, all I found attractive in a sensual sense, but I did not want to outstay my welcome, and our business was concluded. One thing I had learned from Father and Uncle was that a merchant who knew when to leave was more likely to be invited back again.

"I had best also," said Hakeem, rising to his feet, "as much as I would enjoy staying and watching your young performers."

"I understand," Lutufkar said, giving him a strange half smirk and half smile. "May Allah, Praise His Name a thousand times, grant you a prosperous and long life, my friend."

"And you," Hakeem replied, bowing respectfully and adding with that same half smile half smirk, "and when we meet the next time you can thank me for my recommendation." The other man returned the smile and we quickly departed as the boy began to sing again.

"So, tomorrow you are on your way. I am very happy for you, though it saddens me that I will not see you again."

"I am greatly indebted to you Bey al-Habab," I replied. "There are no words that can properly describe my gratitude, nor enough riches in all of Istanbul to pay you for the kindness you have shown me. I would return these fine clothes to you before I leave, though I fear I will have no time to clean them first. And, if you will, I would bestow upon you all my worldly possessions, as meagre as they are. They will be of little use or value to you, soap boxes, a couple pairs of nalin, one inlaid with mother of pearl," I said, referring the wooden clogs tellak boys wear in the baths and these gifts of some of my customers. "Bottles of perfume," I continued, "clothes for a boy, but some are very beautiful, and perhaps you can sell them or maybe gift some other boy-."

Hakeem cut off my rambling. "You have earned everything you own. I could not take a single thing from you. And you own me nothing for what I have done. My memories of our first time together in the baths, and the many times since are all the payment I need."

"Then, perhaps, I can leave you with one last memory," I suggested, looking up at him. I know how wanton that must sound to one reading this account of my travels, and one must wonder I so easily flip from one opinion to the opposite regarding sexual congress with those of the same gender, like some mindless girl. I had not taken leave of my senses nor had I forgotten my disgust with myself and my revulsion over what I had become that night after I had been so brutally abused in the baths, but I was exceedingly grateful to Hakeem for this opportunity, and I knew of only one way to repay his kindness if he would not accept my coin and gifts. It did not make me any less filthy or any less a sinner, but to leave the deed he had performed without thanks was an even greater sin.

He smiled, knowing what I meant. "Lutufkar will leave early. You will need your sleep."

"A boy does not need much sleep," I replied. "Besides, I have been doing nothing but lay around these past three days."

"One last memory would be nice," he mused, and, I suspect, had been hoping I would make some such offer. "Your belongings. I did not see a chest or a place for storing these valuables you mentioned."

"Humph, and at a handsome price too I would guess," he snorted. "I will see they are brought to my residence and you can depart for the East Gate with them from my home in the morning. It will save you some time."

His home was befitting his station, large and expensive, but not overly extravagant. Unlike most merchants in most of the cities and towns I have visited, he did not live above his shop but instead lived in another part of the city where there were only homes. We went directly to a room that had to be where he conducted his business from its furnishings and he penned a note to the innkeeper. Summoning a servant and a household guard, a giant of a man with a scowl that made me cringe despite the fact I was a welcome guest, he gave them the note and sent them to fetch my belongings and settle with the innkeeper. I suspected the man would not appreciate being woken in the middle of the night, but I also figured he would not object too loudly nor attempt to cheat me given the prominence of my benefactor and the size of the guard he was sending.

As we headed for one of the guest rooms, where I was prepared to do my best to reward him for his kindness, we passed through a room which was richly decorated with expensive vases, paintings and tapestries, a room where I surmised he did his entertaining. I noticed on the wall a large painting of himself, a woman in her early forties who had to be his wife, he being around Uncle's age, forty-seven or so, and four girls, three older than myself and one younger, whom I assumed were his daughters.

The guest room was not large, and was dominated by a huge bed covered with an assortment of pillows. One entire wall was painted as a forest scene with naked and near naked nymphs and young boys, houris and ghilman I was told later, cavorting in a meadow and a pool, and lounging beside a stream where they were drinking from fine goblets and reaching for platters piled with food. This room was also obviously one where he entertained, though the entertainment was of a more private nature. He sat down on the bed and I began by slowly disrobing him and kissing and caressing each newly exposed part of his body, being careful to avoid overly sensitive areas so as not to arouse him too quickly. Having had sex with him frequently over the past three weeks, I knew exactly what those areas were. At the same time I slowly disrobed so that we ended up totally naked at the same time. Snuggling up to his fat body, I caressed his flabby breasts, kneading them as a woman might knead bread dough, and I caressed and kissed his nipples with a feather-light touch, causing them to become erect instantly. His thick, fat cock was already erect and I paused to stroke it a few times and then to encircle it below the knob with my first finger and thumb and squeeze tightly to cut off his desire to release his seed.

I proceeded to his thighs and again caressed and kissed them with a feather-light touch, causing his erect cock to jerk with excitement and desire. I nuzzled up to his balls and sniffed them, inhaling their rank fragrance, which was like that of a strong goat cheese, and I kissed them and caressed them with my lips. As the first drop of his clear nectar oozed out the tip of his twitching cock, I grasped his member by the base and flicked up the droplet with the tip of my tongue. It of course was quickly followed by a second, and then a third, which I also readily consumed. Looking down at him with half-closed, sultry eyes, a look I had perfected early as a tellak boy, I licked my lips seductively and then descended on his stiff member, enveloping his knob with my mouth and gently sucking on it, and then slowly easing my lips down his shaft, down to the hairy base despite his size, and then drawing them back up. I worked slowly and deliberately, knowing that he would be quick to come. As he approached that point I clamped my lips about his throbbing cock just below the bulb as tightly as I could. It was a technique I had used many times before and one he was familiar with and his cock responded accordingly.

I waited a reasonable amount of time, allowing his passion to subside and him time to enjoy his arousal, but not so long as to cause him to grow impatient, and then began to suck on his member once more as I resumed easing my lips up and down the shaft. I know there are many who would find the idea of a fourteen-year-old boy sucking on that most private and foul part of a man's body repulsive and would question how any boy could take delight in doing such a thing, but I also know there are just as many who take great delight in having it done to them and are of the opinion that the delight they feel in having it done is equal to the delight a boy feels in doing it.

For my part, I must admit sucking a man's cock does bring me pleasure, both pleasure of the body, and pleasure of the mind. One cannot bring pleasure to another without some of that pleasure spreading to oneself. One cannot bring another an erection without getting one himself, and having an erection is a special pleasure that only the male can know, both boy and man. As I sucked on Hakeem's cock I knew the pleasure he was feeling having a hot mouth enveloping his bulb and sucking on it, and I could imagine the same pleasure, recalling the nights when my master Usama had done the same to me. No man had touched me intimately since my arrival at the baths, for my duty was to bring them pleasure and none had the desire nor inclination to bring the same pleasure to me. However, knowing I was bringing them that special pleasure, and doing so not just well but better than any of the other boys, brought me pleasure also, the pleasure of the mind. It was more than just the pleasure of knowing one is good at something or that he is better than his peers. It was the pleasure of knowing one is making another feel good, good in a very special way that only a man feel and that a boy can do.

By this time Hakeem had reached his peak a second time, and I let him continue, much to his delight. Seconds later he warned me he was about to shoot his seed. I prepared myself and as his first spurt struck the roof of my mouth I began to swallow, gulping down his thick, bitter juice as fast as he squirted it into my mouth. Although I had swallowed the seed of men numerous times, including his, the sensation of his hot, thick slime filling my mouth and the taste and smell of it sent a shiver up my spine and caused gooseflesh to form on my arms and thighs. I swallowed all he had to offer, and then I resumed sucking on his cock, draining out the rest of the marrow until he had no more to give.

I allowed him to rest for a while and gently caressed his body, being careful to avoid any areas that would arouse him, and then I began to arouse him again, easily bringing him back to an erection. This time I straddled him and eased back down on his stiff member, impelling myself on it. My anus had healed sufficiently for me to do so without grimacing, and to be sure, I had thoroughly lubricated my anus while he had been resting. I slowly sank down on his cock until my buttocks were pressed against his nest of curly hairs, and then I began to slowly ride him, flexing my leg muscles and lifting myself up and away from his body, and then allowing myself to sink back down, resulting in his cock easing up my rectum. I began a slow rhythm and in no time had him panting and arching his back in his desire to shoot another load. I, of course, rose up on his cock and clamped my anus tightly about it just below the bulb, effectively cutting off any desire to spurt once again.

As I paused, I wondered if his wife prolonged his pleasure in a similar way using her cunt, and if she knew that he also enjoyed congress with young boys. I wondered if when he penetrated her she ever thought about the cock up her cunt having also been up a boy's asshole. I wondered if she ever took it up her ass, or if she ever took his member in her mouth. Being his wife and the mother of his children, not some street whore or concubine, I suspected that she did not.

Waiting a bit longer to ensure his passions had cooled, I resumed riding him. Many men prefer to take an active role when it comes to fucking but Hakeem, I had found, preferred this position. I had thought it was because it was less strenuous on him, but he had confided in me it was because to him the boy seemed more eager if he was active and that he found more erotic. I suppose there is some truth to it as if one were to simply lay on one's back or one's stomach, he did not really have to take part in what was going on. What I enjoyed about the position was that you had control over the depth to which you were penetrated and the speed with which you were fucked. It was not long before I brought him to that peak once more, and this time I continued and seconds later he was squirting his hot, thick seed up my rectum. As he trembled and gasped and clasped me tightly, I knew how enjoyable that release was and I felt a sense of pleasure and achievement having brought him that pleasure a second time.

We rested again, longer this time, and once again I began to fondle his limp cock and tender balls. I leaned over him and kissed him softly on the lips and I felt his cock throb hotly in my hand in response. I pressed my naked body against his as I kissed him a second time so he could feel my own member swelling with desire, which caused his to swell even faster. Once he was erect, I sat down on his cock for a second time, his slime adequate lubricant for us to unite. I began to flex my legs, rising up on his rigid cock and then easing back down on it. I half closed my eyes with the pleasure and smiled down at him, delighting as much in having his rigid rod of flesh up my rectum as he delighted in having it surrounded by my hot, moist hole.

This being his third time it took him much longer to peak, which was quite fine with me. I concentrated on the burning pleasure rippling out from my anus and the unique pleasure of having my rectum filled with hot, throbbing flesh. As I rode him my own desire to release my seed built in my loins, causing my own rigid cock to twitch and throb with lust. His breathing grew heavier, as did mine and as he sighed with pleasure I knew he was about to release his seed again. He huffed and snorted and then tensed under me and his cock began to squirt his seed up my rectum a second time. As I felt it filling me, I trembled with the delight, my anus pulsating with pleasure and my rectum filled to the point of overflowing with his hot, wet slime. As I paused and let him fill me, I wondered if his wife felt as good as I did when he filled her with his seed.

We cuddled afterward, with me snuggled against his body and my head on his soft, hairy chest, and he whispered that I should get some sleep. As I lay there, I felt his hand slip up along the back of my thigh and caress my smooth buttocks. I was about to suggest we do it one more time, when his hand slipped up and over my hip and along my waist to my bellybutton and then down over my stomach. He paused to twirl the fine, curly hairs on my pubes, and then he continued down to gently fondle my limp member and my loose balls, rolling them gently in his fingers. I of course began to get aroused and he continued to caress my privates until I was fully erect. Wrapping his fingers about my erect member, he slowly began to stroke it and I lay there and enjoyed the pleasure the fat merchant was bringing me, marvelling at how different, and how pleasant, it was when it was another's hand stroking me instead of my own.

"The men who want more than a bath at the Golden Horn Hammam are far more interested in me touching their privates than they are in touching mine," I replied. "None of them have ever taken me in their hand." I did not mention that as a Mameluke slave boy my genitals had been fondled and more by my master, and as a free boy in the lavish home of Lorenzo de'Medici in Florence I had been masturbated by two men at the same time while I had masturbated them, figuring his pleasure would be diminished if he knew he was not the first, and seeing no reason to disappoint him.

"That comes as no surprise," he replied. "They are all arrogant and self-centred. And they are fools. To arouse a young boy, to feel his passion throbbing in his slender, young bamya, to see the blush on his cheeks as you cup his sack, soft and smooth as silk, is just as pleasurable as ejaculating one's seed, even more pleasurable." I was not about to disagree. "Can you produce seed yet?"

Rolling me over on my back, he pushed himself up on his left arm and continued to stroke my erection. He studied my cock closely as he did so, a smile on his lips, and he glanced up now and then to study my face as I stared down at my crotch, watching his fat, stubby fingers stroking my stiff verga, thinking how strange it was to have a man stroking it, and wondering what his wife or his daughters might think if they knew what he was doing, and if they knew he did such a thing with boys. Stiff, my cock was slightly longer than a man's hand was wide so when he wrapped his fingers about it they surrounded my shaft and half my bulb. He pumped his fist up and down slowly, and I could not help but quiver with pleasure as his fingers brushed against the sensitive rim of my bulb.

He of course knew what the result would be as he purposefully and ever so slowly slid his fingers up and down my throbbing, aching cock, so slowly I was tempted to begin pumping my hips and fucking his fist so great was my desire to squirt my seed. The rim of my bulb burned as if on fire and my swollen flesh grew numb and I inhaled and exhaled deeply in anticipation for the pleasure to come and squirmed uncontrollably on his bed. Even more arousing than the physical pleasure was watching this man, this husband and father of four girls, eagerly masturbating me, and taking great pleasure in doing so. Breathing heavily now, I finally felt the twang deep in my groin and I gasped, "it is going to happen!" At the same moment I was filled with apprehension, wondering if I should have warned him earlier.

My seed shot out of the tip of my cock like an arrow released from a bow, shooting up into the air and falling back down on his fist. Squirt after squirt shot into the air, thin and watery and twice as much as I would normally squirt and I quivered and whimpered and tensed and relaxed as I emptied my balls. He had stopped stroking and as the pressure in my groin subsided instead of spurting my seed flowed out the burning tip of my cock and oozed down the slope of my bulb and over his fingers. My face flushed and hot with lust, I envisioned the faces of his daughters in the painting I had seen and wondered what they would think and say if they were to walk in on their father at that moment and saw him with his fingers wrapped about my verga and rivulets of my seed rippling over them. Looking up and smiling at me, his eyes glazed as if drunk and bright with lust, Hakeem had clearly enjoyed it as much as I had.

Rasing his hand, he stuck out his tongue, and to my surprise, he began to lick off his fingers as if licking up some sticky treat. He licked his fingers clean, pursing his lips and sucking up the thicker gobs that had pooled between them. Sliding down on the bed, he bent over me and taking my still stiff cocklet in his mouth, the tip crowned with a gob of my seed, he tightened his lips about the shaft and sucked out my remaining seed as if sucking marrow from a bone, and with as much relish, sucking until he had sucked me dry.

"No nectar is so sweet as a young boy's seed," he sighed, addressing my cock as he finally raised his head, a flim of my seed on his lips and thin streamers streaking his beard.

I was up before the sun and surprised Hakeem had gotten up before me. Ensuring that all of my belongings had been collected from the innkeeper, he shoved a bundle of food in my pack and sent me off with his guard, the same one who had retrieved my belongings, with his sincerest wishes and my deepest gratitude. Arriving at the East Gate, the wagons of Lutufkar al-Hamyd ibn Muhammad al'Kazzar were easy to recognize. There were four and never have I seen wagons so garishly coloured. To my surprise, they were all packed and about to head out.

"Ah-ha! So you have made it! I thought perhaps Bey Hakeem ibn Waliba al-Habab would have worn you out so that you would not awake until noon." I could not stop myself from blushing, which caused him much amusement and satisfaction. "Do you have a horse? No, of course not," he said, answering himself for me. "What need would a tellak boy have for a horse? Well, no matter, here," he said, moving over on the seat of the wagon he was driving, "come sit up here with me and we can talk while we travel."

We talked, or rather he talked and I listened, not just for the morning, but all afternoon and into the evening. The Ghilman Entertainment Troupe, I learned, was named after the ghilman, the male counterparts of the houris, beautiful young boys who according to the Qu'ran lived in Paradise and served the righteous Moslems, providing them whatever pleasures they desired, food, drink or sex. (1) The leader of the Ghilman Entertainment Troupe had been a member of the Habab family for the past five generations, and most of the members of the troupe were the present leader's sons or nephews or younger cousins or the sons or nephews of members who had married into the Habab family. There were four men, two women, fourteen boys (two jugglers, two acrobats/tumblers, three musicians, two singers and five dancers, the latter called köçekler, two of them being in training), and two infant boys. Twenty-two in all, one of the largest troupes I was told with pride. Their main attraction however, Lutufkar admitted, were the köçekler. He explained that köçekler were originally members of harems of great and powerful sultans and other wealthy leaders and performed only for their masters and honoured guests. It was not long, however, that independent troupes such as his were formed to entertain the common masses and became in high demand for weddings, feasts and festivals. köçek training, he said, began at the ages of seven or eight and took six years. A köçek was judged not just on his skill in dancing, but also on his skill in playing a musical instrument, usually tambourines or castanets, which they called carpare, which they used to accompany themselves while they danced. They usually wore makeup and elaborate women's clothing, and he said most preferred to do so at all times, not just when performing, which I found most strange. Why would any boy prefer to dress up as a girl? The dances were usually performed with an orchestra of four or five musicians and one or two singers and were often suggestive, and after their performances, those boys who wanted to, which he implied was usually all of them, provided sexual pleasure for those who were willing to pay. Unlike Sulayman, he expected no portion of any monies the boys received in doing so. He said boys continued to be köçekler for as long as they were beardless and remained youthful looking and attractive. köçek boys were recruited from non-Muslim nations that had been conquered, particularly Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and Roma. They were often taken from their homes as "blood tax" he said. (2)

We camped on the road that night and after our evening meal I watched the company's members practice. Lutufkar brought out a nay and I played it for him, evidently not that well from the look on his face. Calling over the boy Vedat whom I had seen dance the night before and whom I had thought a girl, Lutufkar introduced him as his nephew and told him he wished him to begin teaching me how to dance.

"I was about to give the evening lesson to Yusuf and Domi, Uncle," he replied, not in objection but as an inquiry what he should do about them.

Vedat nodded and motioned for me to join him. My two fellow learners I discovered were eight and nine years of age, Yusuf being the older and a Jew, Domi being a Greek. Yusuf, I learned, had been taken from his parents as blood tax and given to one of the nobles of the royal family for his harem, but was won from the noble by Lutufkar in a game of chance before the noble had a chance to bed the boy. Domi, on the other hand, was the son of the man who served as the troupe's guard by his first wife and who was now married to Lutufkar's cousin Shayazad, one of the two women in the caravan and the mother of the two infant boys.

Vedat began with a review of moving the body rhythmically and smoothly in time to the beat of the music, and he demonstrated using a small hourglass shaped drum, beating out a rhythm with his hands and swaying his hips in time to the beats on the drum. Following his example, we practised the movement until he was satisfied and then added waving our arms, "like clouds" he instructed, and rotating our heads "which bob along in the wind like empty bladders" in time with our arms. That much amused Yusuf and Domi who giggled and bobbed their heads in exaggeration. We concluded our lesson practising what he said was a traditional Greek folk dance and which Domi had down very well. To my surprise, three candle marks had gone by. Having a small cup of their strong, bitter coffee and a generous wedge of cheese, I slipped under the wagon belonging to Timur, another of Lutufkar's many cousins, and wearily crawled between my blankets. I was asleep in a dozen heartbeats.

I awoke the next morning to the wonderful smell of fresh coffee, which seemed to be a stable of the troupe. After breaking our fast we were on the road again. This time I travelled with Timur, a man around Father's age, thirty-nine or forty, who, I discovered, was a musician. Travelling with him in his wagon were his two sons, the boy whom I had seen playing the hourglass drums and who was nine and a twelve-year-old son who was a singer, and the sixteen-year-old son of his brother who was also a musician. Why his wife was not with them and why his nephew was I do not know and did not ask. As we headed out I slowly realized that today, like yesterday, we had begun with the sun in front of us and had stopped for the night as the sun set behind us.

"No. Our route is along the shores of the Black Sea and then south and east again to Tabriz, along the old silk road. We will then loop around and follow the trails north of the desert and the mountains and be back in Istanbul for Eid al-Adha in the fall. There are other caravans who ply the western trails."

"No. We would not want that," I observed, wanting to jump off the wagon and begin running back the direction we had come.

We were going to travel for the next six months, and end up where I had begun, and there was nothing I could do about it. I sat there in stunned silence half listening to Timur. Midmorning he began giving me lessons on the nay and I concentrated on his instructions to keep my mind off my discovery, which was not an easy chore. If I had not, surely I would have broken down and cried so deep was my despair. That day seemed to pass most slowly and I know it was only because of my blighted hope. That evening I again was tutored by Vedat. Having a good ear for music helped me as I followed the beat of the drum, though Yusuf advised that I should be thrusting my hips more prominently, as if I was going ziyen, to fuck he translated from his Hebrew language, and Domi with great seriousness advised me that the whole purpose of us dancing was to arouse men so they would want to stick their kus, their member, up our bums.

And so I passed each day resolved to my fate, realizing there was nothing I was going to be able to do about Hazeem's unfortunate misunderstanding that when I said I sought passage with a caravan he had not known I had meant one heading west, and my foolish assumption in my eagerness to leave Istanbul and the hammams that the Ghilman Entertainment Troupe was heading west. On our fifth night we arrived at the town of Zonguldak. While the troupe set up camp at the edge of the town, Lutufkar, Vedat, Lutufkar's ten-year-old son, his sixteen-year-old nephew, and I changed out of our travelling clothes, the others into their performing clothes and myself into the clothes that Hakeem had given me to wear on my first meeting with Lutufkar, Lutufkar telling me to bring my sword and dagger also. Going to the town's main tavern, or meyhane, the Brass Ring, Lutufkar, evidently well known, was greeted warmly by the owner and we were given a table. A space was quickly cleared in the middle of the room as we were brought a plate of warm flat bread, a bowl of juices and fat from a goose to dunk it in, and a pitcher of cold beer. Lutufkar's son began a drum roll on a pair of small hourglass-shaped drums he had brought with him, after which Lutufkar announced the Ghilman Entertainment Troupe had arrived and was set up at the west entrance to the town where they would be putting on afternoon and evening performances, in addition to providing singers and dancers at the Brass Ring. His son then showed his skill with the drums, much to the appreciation of the audience who rewarded him with applause and coins thrown into the fez that had been placed before him. He was followed by Lutufkar's nephew who had slipped into the kitchen and stripped to the waist and oiled his body while his cousin had played. Many of the men leaned forward to better appreciate his slim, well-toned body, and the look in the eyes of many were not unfamiliar to me. He performed a number of acrobatic and tumbling moves, again to the wild appreciation of the crowd.

Vedat, dressed in the same blouse, skirt and jewellery as the night I had first seen him perform, was next and the moment he stepped into the centre of the room it fell deadly silent. Lutufkar's son began a slow, rhythmic beat on his drums and Vedat began to dance, and I have to admit he mesmerized me along with all the others and I saw how inadequate I was compared to him. He too received much applause and praise and even more coins than his cousins. Plates piled with food were brought out and set before us, some familiar and many unknown to me. There was more bread, wedges of two types of white cheese, squid, artichokes, meatballs in a sweet sauce, and cacık, a yoghurt dish with cucumber and garlic, along with more barley beer for Lutufkar and a diluted, spiced yoghurt for the rest of us that had been chilled in the tavern's well to wash the food down, all with no charge, complements of the owner of the tavern, who knew that the next few nights he would be turning customers away as word of the arrival of the Ghilman Entertainers spread.

We stayed for two nights and huge crowds came to watch the afternoon and evening performances at our campsite, and the Brass Ring was filled to capacity both nights. The Ghilman Entertainment Troupe had evidently been expected because in addition to the performances for the general population, private performances were also put on by the senior members of the troupe for two weddings and a birthday. On our third morning, we broke camp early and were once again on our way, continuing to follow the well-travelled road skirting along the coast of the Black Sea. It took us seven days to reach our next stop, the town of Samsun, and again I rode with Timur and continued to practise the nay in addition to the ud and the carpare. In that we travelled from dawn to dusk, that gave me at least three candle marks to practice each. In the evenings I continued my dance lessons along with Yusuf and Domi who became like younger brothers to me though the two boys seemed to think our roles were reversed and treated me as the younger brother. In fact the two of them decided it was their role to teach me about sex.

"A köçek does more than dance and play music, you know," confided Yusuf one night, our fourth night out of Zonguldak. He and Domi had taken to sleeping under Timur's wagon with me, claiming that Shayazad's two-year-old and her eight-month-old baby cried during the night and kept them awake, and if they did not, then the love making between Shayazad and her Greek husband did.

"Many men will pay a köçek to becermek," he whispered, choosing the Ottoman word and forming a circle with his thumb and first finger of one hand and poking the circle with the first finger of the other hand in the universal gesture for fucking in case I did not understand.

"Except this is not a girl's kutu," Yusuf advised, indicating the circle. "It is a boy's göt lalesi."

"Lutufkar does not want us to do it with men, not yet. He wants us to wait a few more years. But with other boys, he does not mind so much."

"But sometimes Vedat will do us as the aktif, as the boy on top. He says to be a good pasit, a boy has to know what it is like to be the aktif also."

"Not like Rifki," Domi observed, referring to the oldest of the three köçekler, the eighteen-year-old son of still another of Lutufkar's many cousins. "Rifki would never be the boy on top. He loves being the bottom boy."

"Rifki would rather be a girl than a boy. He loves to dress and act like a girl."

"Of course his is very small, like a baby's bamya," observed Yusuf, and both boys giggled. "Yours is very big," he continued, with a hint of admiration. The two boys glanced at each other. "But we know how to make it even bigger," he whispered even more softly and the boys glanced at each other again conspiratorially.

Their hint could not be more obvious, nor their hope. "Could you show me?" I asked, not wanting to disappoint them with the revelation I already knew their secret, nor their hopes of doing something with me. It had been a week and a half since my night with Hakeem, and to be truthful, I was feeling horny, or abazan as they say in their language.

The two boys exchanged happy grins and reached for my loin wrap simultaneously. Their openness and eagerness was refreshing, and they reminded me of the little black boy in the Kongo that had introduced me to boy/boy sex only ten short months ago though it seemed twice as long. Unwrapping the cloth and revealing my cock and balls, the two boys began to fondle them, Yusuf taking my limp member and fiddling with it and stroking it and Domi cupping my balls and rolling them carefully and delicately, and then the two boys switching. Needless to say the two boys had me erect in a matter of heartbeats, and I could tell from the light of the moon and the campfire that their loincloths were sticking out, which I commented on and which they readily admitted. They happily revealed their erections to me upon my request. Their pubes were hairless of course, and their little verga, or bamya, as they would say in their language, were as small as a baby's, and as smooth I found as the two boys agreed to let me feel theirs since they had felt mine.

Getting me hard was just the beginning of course, and the two boys with great seriousness revealed to me the secret how two males can please each other, and Yusuf offered to let me try it on him, and I, of course, took him up on his offer, pretending to hesitate so as not to betray my eagerness. Lying on his stomach, he spread apart his legs and I knelt between them and leaned over him, supporting myself on my elbows as the two boys instructed. Domi worked up several gobs of spit which he used to lubricate Yusuf's asshole and my rigid cock. Yusuf pulled apart the cheeks of his ass, and I slowly lowered myself and adjusted my position so the tip of my erect member was wedged in the nine-year-old's asshole, Domi kneeling beside us and bending over and peering between our bodies to ensure I was in the right position. With him still watching, I slowly eased my hips forward and slowly penetrated the willing nine-year-old Jew. As my member sank up his rectum until my curly hairs were pressing against his smooth bottom, and as I slowly began to work my member in and out of his body, I wondered if he had any idea what his religion had to say about males engaging in sex with each other. I suspected he did not.

It was a long time since I had my cock up another boy's ass, and memories of my very first time with the six-year-old boy in the Kongo, and of the last time I had fucked a young boy, the seven-year-old German scribe in Pisa which was so long ago it seemed like another life, flashed through my mind. I closed my eyes in delight and worked my hips to and fro slowly, wanting to enjoy this pleasure for as long as I could. Yusuf was enjoying it as much as I was from the way he was breathing and squirming, and the fact that the two of us were being watched by Domi, who was eagerly and happily wanking away on his little eight-year-old sausage, added to my arousal. Having one's cock surrounded by a hot, moist asshole, and when that asshole is velvet smooth and that of a willing, young boy, is an undescribable pleasure and all too soon I could feel the pressure deep in my loins reaching the breaking point. I knew I should stop and let my passions subside and that prolonging my pleasure would make it even greater, but the weak wretch that I am, I could not.

Grasping his smooth buttocks, I began to pump my hips to and fro faster and with shorter strokes and I gasped and snorted with desire. I inhaled and exhaled deeply and unabashedly as the pressure in my loins continued to build until I felt the snap deep in my numbed loins and my seed raced up the core of my throbbing member and gushed out the tip, filling his little rectum. I trembled and threw back my head with my release, and Yusuf trembled and began jerking his hips and I knew the little Jew was having his own orgasm. Wave after wave of pleasure hit me and I wavered on my knees as the blood rushed to my head and my loins felt weak and everything about me began to spin. My cock was numb and the tip burning with that sweet pain when one shoots his seed. I remained kneeling there with my numb member up his ass until I caught my breath, which was at least ten times a dozen heartbeats, and then I slowly eased my cock out of his ass and flopped over on my back with bliss and exhaustion. Yusuf was still breathing heavily himself and just lay there in his own world of bliss.

"Did you enjoy it?" he finally asked as he rolled over and raised himself on his elbows.

We lay there in silence, each lost in his own thoughts as the adults continued talking around the campfire. Someone brought out an ud and began to sing, and several others joined in.

The eight-year-old boy's eyes sparkled and he broke into a wide grin. It did not take long for the two boys to arouse me again, and this time Domi lay on his back and Yusuf lubricated his asshole with spit and inserted his first finger and finger fucked his companion to prepare him for me. Once again I got on my knees and elbows, this time above the eight-year-old Greek boy, and once again I eased myself down and my verga was once again surrounded by a hot, moist rectum. The boy was very tight, adding to my pleasure. I pushed forward until my entire member was up his ass and my hairs were pressing against his buttocks, and then I slowly eased back, easing my stiff cock back out of his hole. I worked slowly and concentrated on the pleasure pulsating through my swollen cock and causing the rim of my bulb to itch, the same burning itch that I knew Domi's hole was feeling, having had my own ass fucked. As I thought about that I thought about what Vedat had said. He was right, to be a good köçek, just like a good tellak boy, one had to know what it was like to be a top.

It being my second time, it took longer for me to reach the point of shooting my seed, which gave both Domi and myself more time to enjoy the pulsating pleasure between our legs, for me my throbbing, stiff cock, for him his throbbing, burning asshole. It was strange how both throbbed with the same pleasure, proof, to me, that one's asshole was meant to be fucked, just as one's cock was to be used for more than just pissing. How one could say that such pleasure was wrong when God clearly meant for one to engage in sex or he would not have made it so pleasurable was impossible for me to understand, and as my cock throbbed and burned with that painful pleasure it was difficult to think about anything other than how good it felt. Domi was clearly enjoying being fucked as much as I was enjoying fucking him from the way he was squirming and gasping, and like Yusuf, when at last I came and began to fill his young rectum with my hot, slimy seed, he squirmed and gasped with his own orgasm. Just as I could not reason why it was considered so wrong for a man to fuck a woman other than his wife, and to fuck for any reason other than to produce a child, I could not reason why it was so wrong for two males to fuck when it brought them such pleasure. And why was it even more wrong for boys to engage in such pleasure? As I lay there sticky and satisfied, I had no answers. When the adults finally retired, the three of us were sound asleep.

Three nights later we arrived at our destination. Samsun was a major trade centre, situated on a fertile plain and being a source of grains, vegetables, wool, and hides. The citizens were also an often conquered people whom, I was told, had been ruled by the Greeks, then the Romans and the Byzantium Empire, the Seljuk Turks, Genoa for close to a hundred years, and now the Ottoman Empire who had taken the city from the Genoese in 1425. We spent a total of five nights at Samsun, again setting up camp at the entrance to the city and performing at the two major taverns the night of our arrival and then entertaining the citizens in two afternoon performances and one evening on the subsequent four days in addition to again performing at private functions, weddings, birthdays, and even a circumcision. The Ghilman Entertainment Troupe, I learned, followed a regular schedule every year, and these special occasions were often booked in advance the previous time the Troupe was in the city.

I was deemed good enough by then to be part of the opening acts at one of the taverns the night of our arrival. Lutufkar's wife and his cousin spent much time with me beforehand lining my eyes with henna, brushing a blue powder over my eyelids, applying rouge to my cheeks and lips, and filing and painting my fingernails and toenails, cautioning me a dozen times not to touch my face no matter how badly I thought it was itching, which of course made it itch all the more. They then dressed me in a sheer silk blouse so fine you could see my body beneath it, a silk veil of soft pink, mauve and burgundy threads that they wrapped about my neck and shoulders and draped down the front of my blouse, and a skirt made of several layers of silk strips of many different colours which hung from a gold cord tied about my waist. I felt ridiculous as I stood just inside the entrance of the kitchen awaiting my cue, Lutufkar's youngest son and the nephew I had seen perform acrobatics at Zonguldak having escorted me hidden under a plain travelling cloak through the crowd and shown me where to stand.

Lutufkar's youngest son began with a drum performance and then several songs, for which he was awarded with applause and tossed coins. He was followed by his cousin, and like before the audience admired both his skill tumbling, juggling and performing flips and his smooth, oiled body, and being able to watch unobserved from the kitchen door I knew from the looks on some of the faces that the owners of those looks were imagining engaging him in another type of dance with another type of balls. He was of course awarded with even greater applause and more coin. The youngest boy stepped forward to sing a couple more songs, these shockingly bawdy, and again I could tell from the looks on the faces of many of the men that they were becoming aroused. And then it was my turn. It was with great nervousness and self-consciousness that I dropped my cape and stepped out into the middle of the tavern, acutely aware that all eyes were on me. I swear I could hear my heart beating the room was so silent.

Lutufkar's son began a slow beat on his drum and for a moment I froze, forgetting the most basic of moves. Panic struck me as he repeated the opening beats and I wanted to bolt from the room. Inhaling deeply, I began the first steps, awkwardly and uncertainly, avoiding Lutufkar's eyes for I knew the disappointment and disapproval I would see in them. Blocking him and all the men in the room out, I concentrated on the drum beat. Closing my eyes and imagining it was just me and Vedat practising, I began to sway with the music, and as I did, I became more confident and began to move more surely, and bit by bit what I had been taught came back to me. Lutufkar was to tell me later that my initial awkwardness had not disappointed my audience, but rather had accented my inexperience, and that had aroused the men in the room even more than had I come out and performed perfectly. It was like the tellak boys always said, the virgin and unpolished are always more enticing to the customers than the experienced and more skilled boy. It was evident to everyone in the room that I was very much a virgin when it came to dancing, and, I suspect, they assumed a virgin in other respects also.

The second dance was more lively than the first and as I spun the fine silk strips flew out, revealing amidst the swirl of coloured silk my naked thighs and the briefest of glimpses of my boyhood, and I could tell from the looks of the audience that their minds were half on my dance and half on their private fantasies. As I took a break, there was much applauding and much coin tossed in the hat that had been placed on the floor before me. We took a bit of a break, remaining in the kitchen and out of the way of the servers, all of whom could not keep their eyes off us, and, I noticed especially myself, making me feel even more self-conscious. I wondered what they thought of a boy who dressed and danced like a girl.

When we performed again the songs were more bawdy and suggestive, the juggling and spinning more daring and requiring more flexing of oiled muscles and gyrations, and my dancing more erotic. The first dance required me to slowly remove the veil that was wrapped about my shoulders to reveal that my blouse was open in a V to my navel, exposing my chest. I danced along the edge of the space that had been made for us, suggestively leering at the men and batting my eyes like Lutufkar's cousin Shayazad had told me and wrapping my silk veil about the necks of the men nearest to me. My next dance was much slower and most suggestive, a lot of hip gyrations and swaying of shoulders in a figure eight pattern and then a rocking to and fro as if fucking the air, and of course spinning to show off my thighs and offer glimpses of my genitals. I must admit with the exceptionally loud applause and the amount of coin that was tossed when I was done I was very pleased with myself, not because of the effect that I had on the men but because of my accomplishment in executing the steps Vedat had taught me.

Lutufkar was very pleased also and the next day I was part of the opening act in the afternoon and accompanied Lutufkar and his two sons to the second of the inns that night. The following day, our second full day in the city, I was part of the opening act in both afternoon and evening performances. Because of the skill with which I had mastered my lessons and performed on those first days, and, I must confess, greatly helped by my good looks as a girl thanks to Lutufkar's wife and cousin, I was promoted to the latter part of the performances after the acrobats, tumblers and jugglers the remaining three days. Of course the fact that Vedat, Rifki, and Badr, the sixteen-year-old son of Shayazad's sister, the third of the three köçekler, were all in high demand at private ceremonies had much to do with my promotion as well.

On our third day in the city, Badr, myself, Lutufkar's seventeen-year-old son who was the slim juggler I had seen dancing with the stilettos back in Istanbul, and Lutufkar's brother, a big, gruff, forty-five-year-old, single man who looked after the wagons and horses besides being a guard at our camp went to the market to replenish our supplies, and, I suspect, more important, to advertise our presence outside the city gates since Lutufkar's son wore his performing clothes that revealed his smooth, nut-brown chest, and Badr and I wore our dancing clothes. That was most strange as everywhere we went people stopped and stared and whispered to each other, men, women, and children. I again felt most self-conscious dressed and painted like a girl with several necklaces about my neck, jewelled bracelets on both wrists, and gold coins woven into my hair, which, having been fashionably cut at shoulder length prior to our audience with Pope Innocent almost five months ago, and not having been cut since, was now extending over a hand's breadth down my back.

Even stranger was how we were treated. At first I had thought that Lutufkar's son with his stilettos and his brother with his sword and gruff demeanor had accompanied us not only to help pack our supplies back to our camp but also to protect us. It quickly became evident we did not need protection. Wherever we went Badr and I were treated with the greatest of respect and with awe, merchants practically grovelling at our feet and clearly honoured that we would stop at their market stall. The way they lowered their eyes when they spoke to us and bowed so low their heads were often below waist level it was as if we were the highest of nobility. Some, as we passed, even went so far as to salute us with their hands on their hearts and calling out, "kulluk, I am your slave." Never as a tellak in the baths, despite the fame I had gained, had I been treated with such obeisance and reverence.

My skills were not limited to public performances of my dancing ability either. On the evening of our third night as Lutufkar's wife and cousin reapplied my makeup and helped me dress, Lutfukar informed me, before both women much to my embarrassment, that several men had approached him asking if I was available to provide them sexual pleasure. I was much flustered being told such in front of his wife and cousin, and stood there like a slack-jawed village idiot in my dress of silk strips and painted toenails. "Everyone knows that köçekler provide such services," he admonished, seeing no reason for me to be embarrassed and seeming annoyed at my prudishness, "and everyone in the Troupe knows of your fame as a tellak boy in Istanbul, and except perhaps for Yusuf and Domi, they know that fame was not for scrubbing hairy backs." I had not realized that the others had known of my past, but it had been foolish of me not to have. One does not become a member of a group such as this without them having some knowledge about you beforehand, and one does not live in such close quarters twenty-four candle marks a day, seven days a week, without every aspect of your personal life becoming common knowledge. Still, to have my sexual activity openly discussed before the opposite sex, and especially since that sexual activity was with others of my own gender, was most uncomfortable. "You knew that you would be performing such services when you agreed to join our Troupe in Istanbul," he observed with a hint of annoyance and impatience. "In fact as I recall you said that was the one thing you could do best."

That was true, but I had been eager for him to take me, and it had been said in the company of all men. "I… well… I know how it is for a tellak boy," I replied, "the procedure that is." My face was hot with shame and I wished we could continue the conversation without the presence of the two women, not just because of my embarrassment but because I was not accustomed to speaking of sexual matters in front of the opposite sex.

"It is the same procedure for a köçek," he said abruptly. "You do whatever you are told to do. There are only so many ways for a boy to suck a man's cock, or to have his asshole penetrated."

My cheeks burned with even greater embarrassment. Even among men I was not accustomed to speaking so crudely, and never had I heard such talk before the opposite sex. Of course I had come to realize by then that unlike in my homeland while women are greatly protected by the men in these Arab lands, they are also treated as if slaves. Still, what must they be thinking of me! And that was not what I had meant by procedure! "I… uh… yes. And… uh… the fee. . . ?"

"Is whatever the customer figures you were worth. Should you develop a reputation after a few years, like Kucuk Afet, or Ismail, then you can be selective and demand a king's ransom for those you deem worthy to honour with your services. Until then you are at the whim of those you please." Such bitter envy and sarcasm in his voice I had never heard before. (3)

"Yes, of course. It is, as you said, what I expected. And," I said angrily in defence of my honour, "as I said, it is something that I do best."

When I thought about my comment later after recovering from the shock, embarrassment, and shame of having such an intimate conversation before his wife and female cousin, I realized that such a statement did nothing to redeem my honour.

My first "customer" as a köçek was a member of the city council, a very wealthy and powerful man, a lawmaker I learned, with three wives and a harem of six concubines, and a father of a dozen known children and a half dozen suspected bastards. He was in his late forties, his black hair and beard, and his pubic hair, beginning to streak with grey, with a flabby body from too much sitting and too little physical activity, a bit of a gut from too much wine and good food, and the sexual appetite of a horny goat.

He first of all had me dance for him and at first it felt strange dancing for an audience of one, but as I saw his eyes narrow with lust and he shifted uncomfortably it was evident that he was becoming aroused, which, after all, was the purpose of the dance. It was not unlike the teasing and posturing one engaged in before having sex at the hammam except there was no physical contact, and in a strange way, that made it even more erotic. I was arousing a man by only my moves and gestures, besides my looks of course, without laying a hand on him, and to my shame I must confess I felt a certain pride as I realized my power over him, and the power I had over other men who had watched me at the meyhanes and at our camp. I twisted and gyrated even more suggestively, rotating my hips and my shoulders in a figure eight, and I gave him a sultry look as I stretched and showed him more thigh.

As I danced, I slowly untied my blouse and removed it, and then my skirt. Continuing to rotate my hips, I wove over to him and sitting down beside him, began to caress him and remove his clothing. For a man of his age, he did not have an unpleasant body other than as I mentioned his protruding stomach and flabbiness. As I caressed and massaged him I brushed my naked body against his and he was soon erect.

He took over from there, having me lie on my back with my hips propped up with pillows. Opening a jar of lubricant, he smeared the ruddy knob of his cock and then wiped his fingers off by inserting them one by one up my ass. He then shuffled over on his knees and positioning his stiff cock between my legs with the tip wedged into my anus, he pushed forward, easily sinking his greased cock up my rectum. He pushed until his pubes and stomach were pressing against my widespread thighs and then he began to fuck. He did so rapidly, caught up in his lust for my body, his sole goal being to satisfy his desire and bring himself pleasure. Of course as his knob brushed against the spot deep inside my body that sent spasms of pleasure through my loins and up my swelling cock, I squirmed with pleasure also, but he reached his own peak far too soon for me to even become erect. He closed his eyes with delight as he filled my rectum with his seed, and as I lay there on my back I could not help wonder what his wife and concubines thought about him seeking pleasure that night with me instead of them, and spending his seed up my ass instead of in their wombs where it might become a child. I also could not help but wonder if any of his children knew that he enjoyed the pleasures of a köçek. That would have to be strange to be a boy and know your father enjoyed fucking boys, or to be a girl and know your father found pleasure in boys the age of your brother.

As I said, the man had the sexual appetite of a horny goat, and it was not long before I spread my legs once more and he mounted me again. Having spent his seed perhaps half a candle mark earlier, it took him a longer time to come the second time, longer still to come the third, and twice as long to come for the fourth time. Resigned to my fate, I lay back and concentrated on the physical pleasure of being fucked, and of course the longer it took him to come the longer I had to enjoy that pleasure.

He lay there contentedly with me in his arms and my body snuggled up against his and he soon drifted off to sleep. Not knowing what was expected of me, I lay there and soon drifted off to sleep myself. When I awoke, the sun was already above the horizon and he was still laying beside me. My stirring must have woken him for he stretched and yawned and slowly opened his eyes and glanced over at me.

"What a sweet delight to wake up to," he observed with a grin. "Come, let me taste your lips and see if they are as sweet as they look."

Propping myself up on my left elbow, I leaned forward and we kissed. That of course leads to another and a third, and he began to caress my body and to kiss it. That of course had the effect one would expect, on both of us, and me once more spread my legs and he mounted me. It felt strange doing it the first thing upon waking up, but I found it was not an unpleasant way to begin the morning. When we were done, he rang a bell at the end of a sash beside the bed and a servant girl about my age arrived so quickly she had to have been waiting at the door. He sent her off and she returned with amazing speed with a second girl a few years younger, the two of them carrying large basins of warm water, wash clothes, and large, fleecy towels.

If they were surprised to see me, or offended, they gave no sign of it as the older began to bathe her master and the younger began to bathe me. Accustomed to bathing myself, it felt strange having someone else soaping up my body and scrubbing it, especially someone of the opposite sex, and especially a girl who could be no older than nine or ten, the age of my second youngest sister. I felt most embarrassed standing and turning my back to her so she could wash my buttocks, and most uncomfortable as she paid particular attention to my anus. Even more embarrassing was to turn again and face her and having her soap up my cock and balls and then rinse them off. To my horror my member began to swell, but thankfully she was done before it stood upright. I would surely have died of embarrassment if I had become fully erect. After dressing, I followed him to his dining room where two women, his wives or concubines I do not know, and a boy a few years older than myself, a son I assumed, were finishing their morning meal.

"This is Naqi, a köçek, a very talented köçek," he said. The three bowed their heads respectfully.

"I will see that food is brought, my husband," said the older of the two women, and the three of them quickly stood and left. They, like the serving girls, showed no surprise nor offense at my presence. It was a lavish meal, far more and better than I have had since arriving in these heathen lands, a bowl of boiled millet with honey, soft-boiled hens' eggs, warm, fresh buns with butter, slabs of a pale yellow cheese with a sharp taste which I have never tasted before, red jam of a berry I was not acquainted with, and a chilled jug of milk. After eating my fill, he told me to wait until he returned, which he did so quickly with my payment, six silver pieces, each worth a hundred dinar, a bottle of very expensive perfume and a delicate shell comb for my hair. The latter two he requested I wear when I performed that night.

That afternoon I had another request for my extra services, from a merchant who dealt in hides from the north, who though stern and rough in appearance and behaviour, was as gentle and tender in the bedroom as any man I have known, and I was rewarded for my extra service with five more silver and a thick mohair blanket to snuggle under on cold nights, or to lay upon to add softness to my bed in the summer. The city council member was in the audience at our camp performance that evening and I danced specifically for him, looking directly at him as I gyrated and stepping up close to him so he could smell the perfume and see the shell comb he had given me. I had expected that he would want my services again that night from the look of pleasure on his face, but instead I went with the owner of a vineyard, who observed that I had come highly recommended by the councilman.

On our fifth and final day, instead of performing for the populace in the afternoon, I went to the home of one of the city's aristocrats and danced before him and his family and friends, who numbered over a hundred, in honour of his eight-year-old son's birthday, and then while the son and guests were entertained in the courtyard by two of Lutufkar's nephews, fifteen and sixteen year old brothers who performed acrobatic acts and feats of tumbling together, and by the fourteen-year-old son of a cousin of Lutufkar's, Iskender, the boy I had seen play the ud and sing in Istanbul, I entertained the birthday boy's father privately in one of the bedrooms of his lavish mansion.

He sat and watched me disrobe, his eyes growing brighter with each article of clothing I removed. It was strange to see the lust in his eyes as I stood there naked before him, his eyes devouring me much as his son's eyes had devoured the honey cake that had been set before him. He quickly shed his clothes and as he dropped his pantaloons his cock stood up in the air eager to begin. It was long and slender, and had a pronounced curve at the end, absurdly reminding me of a kilij, the curved sabre of the Janissary. Lubing up his cock, he had me drop to my knees and elbows and he took me kneeling from behind. It was strange hearing the squeals of pleasure of his young son over some acrobatic feat by the two brothers as his father penetrated me. My absence and that of his father was evident and he had to know why even at his young age given the prominence of the köçekler in their society.

He penetrated me farther than most men are capable of, and I quivered with the pleasure of having my rectum stuffed so deeply. He was skilled at the art of becermek and pumped his hips to and fro slowly and rhythmically, and I reciprocated by tightening my anus when he withdrew and relaxing it when he sank his cock up my rectum. He also paused frequently to enjoy the pleasure of having his stiff cock surrounded by my hot, moist ass flesh and to let his ardour subside, allowing me time to enjoy the pleasure of having my ass stuffed with a stiff cock. The beautiful voice of Iskender could be heard through the open window and he fucked me in time to the melody of the song and the ud. Gradually our breathing grew more laboured as we approached our orgasms and I feared our passion might be overheard through the open window.

I had to wonder what the boy's mother and the other guests were thinking about our absence, or if they were thinking about it at all. It appeared to me that the congress of men and young boys among the Ottoman was as common and as accepted as the congress between a man and his wife. That was far different from the attitude in my homeland and something that still surprised me. As he thrust his cock in and out of my ass, the physical pleasure of being fucked and the pleasure that comes from knowing the pleasure you are providing the man penetrating you pushed aside all other thoughts and I began to pump my body in time with him, thrusting my hips back as he lunged forward and drawing my hips forward as he withdrew, just as eager for him to spill his seed as he was. When he at last shot his seed up my rectum I arched my back and whimpered with delight for him, the need to shoot my own seed aching deep in my loins and causing my body to tense as tight as a drawn bow string. The tip of my cock was wet with that sweet nectar that precedes one's seed and my member ached to be stroked, but I remembered Domi's comment that a köçek is always pasit and so did nothing to bring relief to my desire.

He left abruptly when he was done and advised me to remain where I was. I wondered if he had left to get my payment, or if maybe he was going to join his son and family for a while and then intended on returning. After perhaps half a candle mark a servant arrived with a basin and towels. I washed up and dressed and waited. Outside in the courtyard there was applause and murmurs of appreciation as the entertainment continued. Another half a candle mark passed when to my surprise I was joined by the man's twenty-one-year-old son, a brother of the birthday boy. He had me dance and then disrobe as he watched, and then he removed his robe and stepped out of his baggy pantaloons. He was of the same height and build as his father, only a younger version, his abdomen muscles perhaps more solid and his arms and legs not so hairy. Even his cock was like his father's, long, slender, and with the same curve at the end.

This was, he explained, also a celebration for him. He was unmarried and had refrained from taking advantage of the advances of the local maidens, of which there were many who would share their bed with him, he being rich and from a powerful family and not being unpleasant to look at in body nor in face. Indeed, his body was muscular and athletic and far more fit than most of the bodies I had washed at the Golden Horn Hammam, and he was darkly handsome, for a Turk, with long, black hair and deep brown eyes, and unlike most, clean shaven. He also disdained to avail himself of the services of harlots who sold their services, finding them repugnant and having no desire to risk catching any one of a number of lover's diseases they likely carried considering the lowlife they offered their bodies to. Nor, he admitted with a blush, had he ever had a boy though, like the maidens, there were many who would bend over for him. So, on this day, while his eight-year-old brother celebrated his birthday, he was celebrating the loss of his virginity. I gazed upon him in open-mouthed surprise. Twenty-one and a virgin! And I was the one chosen to end it.

He then took me as his father had, in the same bed, in the same way, from behind with me on my knees and elbows. His inexperience was evident as he awkwardly got into position between my outspread legs, but I made up for his lack of knowledge with my experience and adjusted my position inconspicuously so that he could penetrate me with the least difficulty. As I felt his cock slowly entering my body, I wondered if his younger brother or mother knew of his personal celebration that afternoon. He pushed forward until his coarse, curly hairs were pressing against my buttocks, and then he drew back, easing his cock back out the way it had come until his knob began to stretch open my anus and he almost drew back too far. He quickly sank his cock back up my rectum and I knew at the speed he was going he would be shooting his seed in no time.

"Unless you are in a hurry to rejoin your parents and your brother, let me set the rhythm," I offered, trying to make my voice sound husky and seductive.

He stopped and I began to rock back and forth, riding his stiff cock so slowly that I was sure the pace was driving him insane. After perhaps two dozen times back and forth, I stopped and advised him one should pause frequently to concentrate on the pleasure he was feeling, and then told him to continue. He did so willingly, and did try to keep a slow pace. When he paused, I drew my hips forward and clamped my anus just below his bulb as tightly as I could. We paused one more time, and as he resumed pumping his hips to and fro and sliding his cock in and out of my ass I thought of my first time fucking a boy's ass and how mysterious and how wonderful it had been. That this was the first time for this man who was as old as I and half again I found arousing. He was experiencing something he had never experienced before, and though he might experience it many times in the future, it would never be the same as his very first time. And I was part of it! He would remember his first time for the rest of his life, when he drifted off to sleep, when his mind wandered in the middle of a hot afternoon, when he had sex with another boy. I did. Knowing his lust and what was going through his mind at that moment, I felt a pang of desire in my loins and I ached with the need to shoot my own seed so badly my stiff cock jerked and the opening opened and closed in an effort to squirt.

I hoped he was feeling as desperate to squirt as I was and that I had made his first experience as memorable and as enjoyable as that young black boy had made mine. As he began to speed up I made no effort to slow him down or stop him. By then his breathing was laboured and jagged, and his thrusts were short and jerky. Finally with a groan of pleasure he shot his seed up my rectum. He trembled and inhaled sharply and held his breath for the initial squirts, and then grasping my hips tightly he gasped and panted deeply and began ramming his burning, spurting cock up my rectum with long, rapid thrusts as he continued to empty his swollen, tight balls.

"Oh fuck," he gasped, "oh fuck. You are even better than the poets say a köçek is."

Finally pulling out his cock, he wrapped his arms about me and drew me to his muscular, hairy chest and kissed the back of my neck. Turning me around, he leaned forward and kissed me on the lips, gently and with thanks, and as we separated and I looked up into his eyes the pleasure and gratitude in his eyes gave me a warm feeling. It was not a look unfamiliar to me, but was exceptionable in its intensity and in that this had been his very first experience.

After washing up a second time, I returned to the party and performed two final dances before we left for our camp. I was well rewarded for my afternoon, the father giving me twice the amount of coin I would normally have been given and the older son gifting me with two necklaces and four matching bracelets of silver bejewelled with semiprecious gems. I was more than satisfied, having found the afternoon quite enjoyable, the two men not unpleasant partners, and I must admit, having found it thrilling being the one to introduce the older son to the pleasure of man-boy sex. It was a delight being paid to do something one enjoyed doing.

It was no doubt because of that afternoon that I performed particularly well that evening. After my performance, I accompanied a sheikh from the countryside to his camp just outside the city where I performed for him and two of his closest friends, and then entertained them each in turn privately. Each of them was lavish in their praise of my beauty and my skill both as a dancer and, as one called me, as a pillow boy. Each presented me with beautiful, delicately moulded silver rings and bejewelled combs to wear in my hair in addition to the purse of gold and silver the sheikh had given me.

The gifts for my private performances were far more lavish than I had received from any customer at the baths, and, much to my surprise, what I was given was mine to keep. Lutufkar did not demand a portion of it. The coins that were tossed out at our public performances at our camp and at the inns were pooled to provide supplies for the Troupe, food and drink and cloth and thread for our costumes, grain and water for the horses, and whatever repairs or tools were needed for the wagons and harnesses. What was left was then divided among everyone in the troupe. The six adults contributed equally in the work and Lutufkar assigned the performances so that all the boys had close to the same number of performances, and Yusuf and Domi were responsible for chores like gathering firewood and water when we set up camp and helping the adults on top of their evening practices so everyone got close to an equal amount of what was left, each performer receiving a little bonus for a performance done particularly well.

I feared that there might be some resentment by the other köçekler in that I had joined the Troupe and so taken on customers that they would normally have had, or because despite my lack of training and my inexperience I was at times getting as much as or more than they were, but my fears were unfounded. There were more than enough customers for the four of us, and rather than being envious of my gifts, everyone admired my skill and respected me for it, the köçekler especially. That was a welcome relief, and much different from what my relationship with the senior tellak boys had been. That was not the only difference, and as we continued to make our way east along the trails and roads that followed the coastline of the Black Sea, I tried to figure out what it was about them that was different from most boys I had known, and especially what it was about the three köçekler that somehow seemed familiar to me and yet that I found irritating.

Having spent the first fourteen years of my life among merchants, fishermen and sailors and their sons, and two months in the Mameluke military, it was most strange living twenty-four candle marks a day, seven days a week with performers. For one, never have I met a group of individuals so casual and disorderly in their ways and their thinking. In commerce, on the sea, and in the military, life is definite and precise. Everything has a purpose and a direction. There appeared to be nothing definite nor precise with the Ghilman Entertainers. That, I guess, was part of their creative talent, and they were all very creative. In that sense they were similar to the artists and philosophers I had met in Florence. And, like those I had met in Florence, I found them all prideful, overly sensitive, and very self-centred to the point that I found myself thinking twice before saying anything in fear it might upset someone.

One evening after our dance practice the six of us were sitting about the campfire talking before going to bed when another campfire talk came to my mind, one back in Viano do Castelo. Normally we went to bed upon sunset, but on that particular day, an Easter Sunday, we had been allowed to stay up later and we, my sisters and I, were sitting on the beach around a campfire we had built and were talking. It was then that it struck me what it was about the köçekler that was both familiar and at the same time irritating. They were behaving exactly like my sisters. Not only did they walk and sit and gesture with their hands like them, but they had the same interests, clothing, jewellery and men, and not men in the sense of apprentice Mamelukes admiring the fighting skills and strength of their masters, or in the sense of the comradery that I had felt while with them or that I had felt with the sailors on the Theresa del Morau, but men as lovers or potential partners. They not only looked and dressed like girls, but they acted like girls too.

When I realized that, I found it most strange. My second realization was frightening. I was beginning to do the same, Lutufkar and Vedat having drilled into me over and over how I was supposed to walk with dainty steps and sit down delicately and place my hands in my lap and never ever cross my legs and a dozen other little things and insisting I practice from when I got up until I went to bed until I was doing them naturally. Dressing up as a girl was, for them, not just putting on a costume, as a jester wearing pointed shoes and a tripartite hat or a Janissary wearing his uniform, but something they enjoyed. Badr had confessed to me one day that he enjoyed it and felt more comfortable dressed as a girl than dressed as a boy. Vedat had even gone further and told me that he danced better wearing female clothing as he got sexually aroused wearing such finery. As for Raftki, there was no doubt in my mind that Yusuf and Domi were right in that he would much rather be a girl than a boy. As for Yusuf and Domi, I had never seen them in boy's clothing. I glanced around with a sick feeling in my stomach at the five of them sitting there in their long skirts and blouses, their hands in their laps and their legs uncrossed, and down at the necklace of seashells and beads and the three rings I had chosen to wear because I thought they went well with the new skirt Lutufkar's wife had sewn for me. (4)

J.O. Dickingson

Travels with Nicolau Ribeiro

Chapters 11-12

11. Istanbul

12. The Ottoman Empire