Oh Gawd....10.
New York, December 12, 2017.
EDITORIAL: “JUSTICE” IS UNDONE IN ZILAWE
Yesterday, a young American woman, Meghan Shanahan was flogged in front of approximately 150 spectators, virtually all male, in the courtyard of a prison in Molabayo, Zilawe. Yes, this was not some spectacle from ancient times or some medieval horror, but something that took place as many of us were sleeping or going about our business. We don’t know all the details-while our reporter on the scene, Barbara Moore, witnessed the scene, she was only permitted by the Zilawean authorities to give a bare bones account (see the accompanying article in the International News section of this newspaper). Moreover, we are not sure that a full account could be published in a family newspaper.
While our focus is, as it should be, on the young woman from New Jersey who is the victim of this particular outrage, it should be pointed out that numerous Zilaweans, including some women, suffer brutal treatment at the hands of their government daily. We urge the United Nations to take up this matter urgently and we strongly encourage our own government to impose sanctions on Zilawe and penalties, including forfeiture of any financial assets within the US, on President Parambe and his sycophants.
***
I had spent most of the day crafting that commentary, refining it well into the evening to meet objections of various members of the Editorial Board. We felt that it conveyed the right tone of measured outrage. I read it over the phone to Meghan’s parents. I had to stop twice to let Mrs. Shanahan compose herself. Few things in my career have moved me as much as the tears of a mother shed for her daughter suffering a terrible fate far from home.
I knew how awful they must be feeling for their daughter and I imagined how ashamed they must feel in front of friends and other family members. After all, even though Meghan had done nothing wrong, at least not by any reasonable American standard, the whole world knew she had been exposed naked and flogged in front of an audience of leering African men. I wished there were more I could have done to help them than just scribble an angry editorial-they say the pen is mightier than the sword, but sometimes I have my doubts.
Barb looked haggard when she came on screen at the usual time. “How you doing?” I asked, trying to appear casual.
“I’ve been better,” she replied. “Watching a girl not too far from me in age and background get whipped until she was barely conscious isn’t exactly the ticket to a great night’s sleep.”
“I’m sure not,” I said, though, personally, I thought it might make terrific bedtime reading.
Barb continued, “I was able to score a brief interview this morning with Meghan in the Detention Center’s sick bay, where she’s recuperating and resting up for her wonderful all-expenses-paid vacation at the extended stay labor camp.”
“How did that go?”
“She still in pain, quite a bit, actually. The wheals and cuts are swollen and just touching her back or ass is agony. And she’s already been informed by one of the kindly guards that at the labor camp any infraction, like failing to work hard enough or not following an order quickly enough is punished by guess what?”
I pretended to think hard. “Not by a whipping?”
“Ding, ding, ding, give the man a prize. Let’s put it this way, Jerry, she’s trying to wrap her mind around the fact that the next ten years of her life are going to be an endless parade of back breaking labor in the scorching sun, with whippings to break the monotony, and, no doubt, she is looking forward to being the great white girlfriend of every guard in the place, male and female.”
“Geez, Barb, what a country they have there.”
“Yeah and that’s why I booked a seat on tomorrow morning’s 7 AM flight to Heathrow. I think I’ve gotten the story, Jerry. You’re happy, The Chief is happy, I’m sure the Publisher is happy with the clicks. I could hang around and try to get a tour of the labor camp, but I don’t think that’s very likely. Meghan will be there for the next while, assuming she survives, so we can always come back and try again.”
“Yeah, OK, Barb, I think that’s fair. I’ve been speaking with Tony del Carpio. He’s willing to consider a Sunday magazine piece and I don’t think you can write that up from there. You’ve done well. Take a couple of days and enjoy London on the way if you want. Charge it to the paper. Just don’t stay anywhere too extravagant, OK?”
“Geez, Jerry, thanks. I guess. Anyway, it’s really time that I left. I didn’t want to worry you before, Jerry, but I’m being watched. There’s this really creepy security guy, Tuma, who seems to know where I’m going before I do. There are strange clicks on the phone, too. I’m sure they’re monitoring this call, too. So it’s time to depart this sewer.”
“OK, Barb, travel safely. Email me when you get to the airport and call me from London so I know you’re OK.”
“I will, Jerry. Don’t worry, they’ll be so glad to get rid of me, I don’t think they’ll try to stop me from leaving.”
After we disconnected, I sat for a bit, watching a barge moving up the Hudson towards the George Washington Bridge. I wasn’t surprised that Barb had attracted attention in Zilawe. How could an attractive, aggressive female reporter for the world’s most important newspaper (or so we like to think) not attract attention? I suspected there was more that she wasn’t telling me, but I’d grill her when she was sitting across the desk here and it could wait until then. Meanwhile crises were breaking out everywhere from Berlin to Baghdad and from Buenos Aires to Moscow. What a world we live in…
I didn’t get home until around eight that evening, after a long day, arguing with the Board over which of our stories would get a coveted spot on the front page, since fewer and fewer people turned to the international stories on the inside of the paper. I threw some leftovers in the microwave and checked email while they were heating.
There were the usual meeting minutes, reminders to donate to the Holiday Fund and one from Barb. It read, simply, “A holiday present for you, Jerry” and a video file was attached. It was a bit strange because it had been sent a half hour or so ago, while I was on the train going home, which was about 2:30 AM in Zilawe. ‘I guess Barb’s sleep is still disturbed from having watched Meaghan’s ordeal,’ I thought.
I clicked on the video file. The screen showed a dusty courtyard, filled with an audience of well over a hundred Africans, almost all men, as best I could tell. They were talking loudly and were clearly in a celebratory mood. The quality was good, better than the average cell phone, I reckoned.
The camera panned to a large wooden structure shaped somewhat like a letter “A” in the center of the courtyard. ‘What the hell is this?’ I thought. ‘That looks just like Barb’s description of the frame to which the Zilaweans attach someone to be whipped.’ My doubts were answered when a door in the wall behind the frame opened and a very large, muscular man entered. The crowd cheered like when the Yankees’ best hitter came to the plate with the bases loaded.
“Shit!” I muttered. Had Barb disregarded the instructions of her hosts and filmed the whipping? And she was sure she was being watched and her communications intercepted, which meant they knew she had sent this. A chill ran down my spine.
The big guy went to a table in the corner and picked up a brutal looking whip. It had a long wooden handle with several knotted cords attached. It looked every bit as fearsome as the description in Barb’s story promised. It was hard to believe that a delicate woman could survive twenty lashes with that fearsome instrument, but Meghan apparently had.
The camera panned back to the door behind the frame. A man entered carrying what I supposed was an official document. Behind him came two guards escorting a woman, a white woman, barefoot, dressed in clothes like Barb had described Meghan as having worn in court, though the straps that had held her top up were missing, presumably torn off during her protest against the injustice of her sentence, so that the material barely stayed up to cover her breasts. A close up of her face left no doubt that it was Meghan Shanahan.
“Goddamn!” I said aloud. The girl looked absolutely terrified, as who would not, at the sight of the sturdy wooden frame to which she would soon be strapped, the muscular man carrying the vicious-looking whip and the crowd assembled to revel in her degradation and pain.
She struggled to keep the shirt from falling with one hand, while holding her skirt up with the other, a hopeless attempt to protect what remained of her dignity, as the guards propelled her inexorably forward, until she stood beside the frame, facing the crowd.
The official peered at his document and read aloud, “Meghan Shanahan, having been found guilty in a court of law, you have been lawfully sentenced to be whipped with twenty lashes of the cat o’ nine tails on your naked back and to serve ten years at hard labor. The corporal part of your sentence is to be administered forthwith. Strip to the waist for your punishment.”
The poor girl stood there frozen, obviously too stunned to comply. “Ms. Shanahan, if you do not remove your shirt, the guards will do it for you,” the official in charge said loudly. Meghan looked around, seemingly in the hope that help would miraculously materialize. Realizing there was none, her shoulders visibly slumped and she pulled her shirt over her head.
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One of the guards, ever helpful, took it from her, crumpled it into a ball and threw it into the crowd, where one of the official spectators deftly caught it. The girl looked down at her feet, too ashamed at being displayed half-naked to meet the eyes of the leering crowd.
The camera zoomed in on her breasts, large milky white orbs, the nipples tumescent with fear and exposure to the air. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. And, though it pains me to admit it, I felt a strong stirring in my groin at the shameful spectacle of this woman forced to display herself in this fashion.
Finally, the camera panned back to show Meghan’s entire body as they turned her around to face the frame. Quickly, the guards stretched her arms over her head and buckled leather cuffs around her wrists. One of them pulled on a rope that hung from the top of the frame, raising her hands until she was pulled up onto her toes, her whole body stretched taut. As they did so, her skirt slipped past her hips and fell to the ground leaving her totally naked. The ever helpful guard tossed it into the crowd, another souvenir for another lucky spectator.
Then, the guards knelt and each wrapped a long piece of heavy rope around one of her ankles, tying them tightly, such that her feet were held firmly against the wood. The poor girl was now largely immobile, her entire body presented as a target for the horrible whip. I had spent many years as a foreign correspondent, often in war zones where unspeakable acts were perpetrated on a daily basis, yet the sheer cold bloodedness and studied bureaucratic way in which this brutal punishment was being carried out was as horrifying as anything I had seen. Also, I must be honest, it was probably the most erotic thing I had ever seen.
Once the poor girl was properly secured, the muscular flogger approached, shaking his multi-thonged whip menacingly. Meghan couldn’t resist turning her head as much as her bonds allowed, to catch a glance of her soon-to-be fate, before she turned away, unable to look any more.
The flogger took his position, swishing the cords of the whip gently in the direction of the poor girl’s back, adjusting his feet so that the ends of the cords, which carried the most power, would land squarely on the defenseless flesh. Finally, he signaled that he was ready.
“Proceed,” the man who had read the sentence intoned. The flogger twisted his body, raised the lash over his head and behind him and struck with his full weight. The tails whooshed through the air and made a loud “Crack!” as they slashed across Meghan’s shoulder blades.
The audio quality was good enough to pick up Meghan’s grunt at the impact, stifled as it was by the blow having knocked the air out of her lungs. For a moment, she hung motionless. Then, as the pain hit, I could see her entire body tighten, her legs and arms pulling against the restraints that held her against the frame in a desperate, fruitless attempt to free herself. But the straps and ropes, of course, held tight and all she could do to relieve the intense pain was to gyrate her hips wildly.
The second and third lashes met a similar response. I watched mesmerized by her dance of agony, her ass shaking erotically, her torso twisting so that I could see her breasts swinging in response to her doomed attempts to escape the lash. I stared at the screen fixated, barely able to breathe. The motions of Meghan’s hips and ass were far more erotic than those of any stripper or pole dancer for being the uncontrollable reaction to searing, all-encompassing agony.
By the fourth lash, she was screaming and howling. It was hard to make out any words, but it seemed she was begging for mercy, pleading for the horrible pain to stop. But none of the officials or spectators appeared moved in the slightest.
The lashes continued, unhurriedly, the flogger waiting until the gyrations provoked by one strike to abate before delivering the next. Blood was now seeping from several places on the girl’s back, trickling lazily down onto the round globes of her ass.
Finally, came tenth, a lash which, hitting on already bruised and bleeding flesh, provoked some of the wildest gyrations yet. There could be no doubt at the extent of her suffering, surely enough to atone for even the most awful crime, let alone for her exercise of the inherent right of free speech. Yet she was only halfway through and faced another ten lashes.
At this point, the flogger, doubtless tired from his exertions and clearly sweating profusely in the hot sun, handed the whip to another official. It wouldn’t do for the second half of Meghan’s lashes to be delivered with less than full vigor, it seemed.
The new man, whether for variety’s sake or simply on a whim, decided to deliver the next several lashes to the poor girl’s buttocks. Each impact caused the flesh to jiggle madly and deep red lines to spring up on the milky white skin. I am ashamed to admit it, but I was rock hard, harder than I had been in many years, watching this spectacle of pain and degradation.
The last few lashes were delivered between her legs, the tails striking her female parts, provoking the most god-awful howls and shrieks. Finally, it was over. The camera panned in on the girl’s back and ass, both of which were covered with vivid wheals. Several rivulets of blood ran down from the most damaged areas. Then the screen faded to black.
I sat for few minutes, trying to will my heart to stop pounding in my chest. Had Barb dared to defy the orders from the Zilawean authorities not to film the punishment? If she had, how had she managed to do so without having been detected? And if the Zilaweans were monitoring her communications, then they would have seen the email she sent me and would not be pleased. Fortunately, in a few hours, Barb would be safely on a flight to London.
I opened Barb’s email again and typed, “Barb, WTF? Jerry” and hit “Reply,” then went to eat my dinner. Afterwards, I checked my email-no response from Barb. Perhaps she was still sleeping.
Unable to resist, I watched the video again, transfixed just as much as I had been the first time. Almost immediately I was hard, and this time, I couldn’t resist taking matters in hand, reaching my orgasm by the fifth lash. And I will confess to having watched the video more than once over the following couple of hours, reveling in each stroke delivered to Meghan Shanahan’s lovely flesh. Furthermore, I will confess that more than once, I fantasized that instead of Meghan, it was Barb on the frame, shaking her ass and howling in pain.
As I watched the video several times that evening, every half hour or so I checked my email, finding nothing from Barb. By 10 PM, when it was already 5 AM in Zilawe, I was very worried. I called her number, but was directed to voice mail. “Barb, where are you? Please call me as soon as you get this,” I said to the machine. Surely, Barb would be up by now for an early flight and should have responded to me very quickly.
By 11 PM, I was even more concerned; it would be 6 AM there and she would have to be at the airport for a 7 AM flight. Yet I had heard nothing,
I hated to call The Chief at home at that hour, but one of our reporters possibly in peril in a foreign country met every definition of an emergency in our business. I picked up the phone. The Chief answered after four rings. “It’s Jerry, Chief. I’m worried that Barb is in serious trouble,” I told him.
This cannot be good....