The Grand Illusion
Psst, wanna know a secret?
You are invited to a grand feast somewhere on the Arabian peninsula. You arrive at the appointed time, enter a lavishly decorated hall, with tapestries and sheer curtains all over the walls, and a circle of overstuffed cushions arranged in a circle on the floor.
Your host rushes up to you, full of pride and gushing poetically about your auspicious presence. He guides you to your place amongst the other guests, as a band in the corner plays exotic tunes and incense clouds the room. You recline on the cushion, resting on your left arm, feet outstretched to the side.
A servant slides across the center of the room, stooped down with knuckles of his left hand dragging on the floor. He hands you a small ornate glass with a clear liquid that smells of oranges and tastes a bit like Grand Marnier.
“Arak!” your host roars festively and raises his glass in salute. The guests all follow suit and slam the contents in one go. The knuckle dragger quickly circulates, refilling the glasses.
The host claps and a small army of knuckle draggers appear with tray after tray of food - cous cous, shawarma, hummus, kabsah, stacks of flatbread called khobz. It just keeps coming and coming. Everything is eaten with only the fingers of the right hand. Exotic spices and flavors and plant leaves you’ve never seen before, but that taste strangely delicious, creating a sensory extravaganza.
Your glass of arak never sits empty and soon things get a little fuzzy. Before long, you realize that incense smells oddly familiar. That’s right! It’s opium mixed with hashish, and the smoke is so thick you can hardly see the other side of the room.
The men, and all the guests are men, laugh raucously, toasting every few minutes - mostly to the host and praising the meal and his hospitality. Just when you think you couldn’t eat another bite, out come the desserts - baklava, ma’amool, fateer. The music seems to be speeding up and there’s a strange echo in your brain. The flavors overwhelm your taste buds and beat them into submission, and the damn glass of arak refuses to stay empty.
Your head is swimming. At times, sounds seem to speed up, then suddenly slow down. The host claps and an army of knuckle draggers run in and clear away all the dishes except that damn glass of arak and a bowl of fresh fruit for each guest.
The conversations quiets down, but it may be in your head. The music stops and the lights dim slightly. You can’t be sure of anything at this point, but it seems like the smoke gets thicker, with a vaguely oily-sweet smell you can’t place.
The host is nearly on his back at this point, as are most of the guests. He waves his hand in a circular motion and the band starts up with silky, seductive sounds. The curtains across the room part and six figures run in to the center of the room, dressed in elaborate veils and shiny trinkets that jingle as they run. They take places and freeze in a tableau. The music pauses briefly, then begins a tune that sounds like a snake would sound, winding its way up your spine.
The dancers begin slowly - undulating, rippling, swaying, swirling. You feel vaguely nauseous and oddly thrilled as the pace picks up ever so slightly. The dancers’ movements are highly choreographed, yet appear fluid and natural. They tease each of the guests with preternatural muscular control. You become aware that the dancers are shedding veils with subtle twists and turns, then they are topless and from the size of their breasts, you surmise they must be quite young.
The dancing goes on for some time. You have no idea how long, because time stopped at some point in the evening when you weren’t watching. Before you realize what’s happening, they are down to nothing but a G-string. They are performing a strange ritual of oiling each other so that they glisten and shimmer in the dim lighting.
Without your befuddled mind fully comprehending what is happening, they are instantly nude and engaged in a kind of ritualized orgy, and your are transfixed by the scene, until a knuckle dragger interrupts to refill your glass for the umteenth time.
The spell is broken just long enough for you to regain part of your senses. When you look back at the performers, to your shock you realize they are all castrated boys, maybe 12, maybe younger. Without physical markers brought on by puberty, it’s quite difficult to tell.
At this point, the arak and the incense take full control. The world seems to be moving in slow-motion vignettes. People are speaking to you, but they seem far away and their voices sound like thick syrup. You think you see one of the guests dragging a dancer behind one of the sheer curtains on the wall, but you don’t trust your senses at this point.
Another, then another, and one by one, the guests slide behind curtains to relieve their pent up tensions. The world fades and sounds seem to come from great distances. Your brain has become entrained to the thrumming of the music. The sensory overload is far beyond your capacity to process. Darkness settles in.
You have just witnessed one of the oldest traditions in the Arab world. Though the women are rigidly controlled, the men are virtually unfettered by any social mores familiar to most readers.
What’s more, you have witnessed a form of slavery that is still widely practiced, but kept extremely quiet. The Bacha boys, as they are called, are an entire class unto themselves. They are raised from birth to be effeminate and are often castrated to prevent sexual maturity. From the cradle on, devices are inserted in to their anuses to expand them into a bizarre kind of sex organ. They spend their entire lives maintaining their soft features and rehearsing the performances that are a major part of their legend and mystique.
Bacha boys appear in historical records for at least the past thousand years, and likely far longer. They are found throughout North Africa, the Arabian peninsula, and across the ‘Stans. Marco Polo mentioned them in his memoirs, and the US military encountered them in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bacha boys are a form of slavery, but not one most people think of. The boys’ own mothers raise and train them - usually third sons who, like “extra” daughters, are bought and sold like commodities. They are permanent fixtures in wealthy households and, as in the scene above, are considered a form of hospitality as routine as a guest washroom.
Anyone who claims they are oppressed or deserve compensation for something they’ve never experienced, nor can even imagine, deserves to be laughed out of the room. Certainly, no American has experienced this type of treatment for generations, if ever, nor are most Westerners even vaguely familiar with these practices.
Some of the most sickening and egregious slavery is taking place right this moment in Africa and across Asia. It has nothing to do with European colonialism and it is embedded deep in the local cultures of many regions, to the point where children are raised and trained for the specific purpose of being sold into slavery.
The Bacha boys are just one example of a systemic problem that is carefully hidden and rarely discussed. The elites of the world engage in similar practices around the globe, because their wealth and positions give them access to these practices, and like a drug, it makes them feel as if they are superior and untouchable, able to buy and sell humans as playthings and domestic servants, abusing them in all horrible ways without consequences or conscience.
But it is not just the elites. The families who raise children for sale find this an acceptable practice, as each child can fetch up to USD20,000, which is a significant sum to lower classes barely able to survive otherwise. The slavery problem cannot be addressed without removing the profit incentive of raising and selling children into this market.
Slavery is an ancient and complex problem with no simple or expedient solutions. For many families, it is the only means they have to relieve crushing poverty, and for elites it is their greatest entertainment and trophy. It is not a racial problem, but a cultural and economic one.
No amount of “reparations” will stop real slavery. It will only perpetuate a group of privileged professional victims living in veritable luxury compared to much of the world’s population.
The only real solution begins with bringing this issue into the spotlight and initiating a public debate on how to fix it.
And certainly, exposing the monsters who buy humans as a symbol of their power and status.
Free the world on the Far Side:
E-book: Paper Golem: Corporate Personhood & the Legal Fiction
Contact Bernard Grover at luap.jkt @ gmail . com
Radio Far Side is a labour of love. We don’t use a paywall, and we don’t sell stuff. We just create things to inform and entertain. But like any good busker on the digital mean streets, we put our hat down and, if you feel inspired, drop a coin in to show your appreciation:
BTC wallet - bc1qth6drgzcyt7vlxxpvqh6erjm0lmaemwsvf0272
It's true. And you now see what John Podesta and Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin and Barack Obama and Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney want for America. They love the idea of so impoverishing the American people that they can buy children from their parents with complete impunity. One you have seen the Frazzledrip video you know who and what they are.
They're all congratulating themselves on installing Biden and Mayorkas and Garland. They plan to steal 2024 or call off the election. They knew McCarthy would keep anything from happening and now they know Johnson is just the same, speaker of the house of the damned.
Sick bastards.