for which he barely knew the proper name: the Golden Horde.
  
  Memory had already been choked out of me, along with language, or any capacity to 
reason in a consistent way. I remember the squalid rooms that must have been 
Constantinople because other people talked, and for the first time in forever, since I'd 
been ripped out of what I couldn't remember, I could understand what people said.
  
  They spoke Greek, of course, these traders who dealt in slaves for brothels in Europe. 
They knew no religious allegiance, which was all I knew, pitifully devoid of detail.
  
  I was thrown down on a thick Turkey carpet, the fancified rich floor covering one saw 
in a palace, a display rug for high-priced goods.
  
  My hair was wet and long; someone had brushed it enough to hurt me. All those personal 
things that were mine had been stripped from me and from my memory. I was naked beneath 
an old frayed tunic of gold cloth. It was hot and damp in the room. I was hungry, but 
having no hope of food, I knew this to be a pain that would spike and then, of its own, 
die away. The tunic must have given me a castoff glory, the shimmer of a fallen angel. It 
had long bell sleeves and came to my knees.
  
  When I got to my feet, which were bare of course, I saw these men and knew what they 
wanted, that this was vice, and despicable, and the price of it was Hell. Curses of 
vanished elders echoed down on me: too pretty, too soft, too pale, eyes far too full of 
the Devil, ah, the devilish smile.
  
  How intent these men were on their argument, their bargaining. How they looked at me 
without ever looking into my eyes.
  
  Suddenly I laughed. Things here were being done so hastily. Those who had delivered me 
had left me. Those who had scrubbed me had never left the tubs. I was a bundle thrown 
down on the carpet.
  
  For one moment, I had an awareness of myself as having been sharp-tongued once and 
cynical, and keenly aware of the nature of men in general. I laughed because these 
merchants thought I was a girl.
  
  I waited, listening, catching these bits and pieces of talk.
  
  We were in a broad room, with a low canopied ceiling, the silk of it sewn with tiny 
mirrors and the curlicues so loved by the Turks, and the lamps, though smoky, were 
scented and filled the air with a dusky hazy soot that burned my eyes.
  
  The men in their turbans and caftans weren't unfamiliar to me any more than the 
language. But I only caught dashes of what they said. My eyes looked for an escape. There 
was none. There were heavy, brooding men slouching near the entrances. A man far off at a 
desk used an abacus for counting. He had piles and piles of gold coins.
  
  One of the men, a tall lean one, all cheekbones and jaw, with rotted-out teeth, came 
towards me and felt of my shoulders and my neck. Then he lifted up the tunic. I stood 
stock-still, not enraged or consciously fearful, merely paralyzed. This was the land of 
the Turks, and I knew what they did to boys. Only I had never seen a picture, nor heard a 
real story of it, or known anyone who had ever really lived in it, penetrated it and come 
back home.
  
  Home. Surely I must have wanted to forget who I was. I must have. Shame must have made 
it mandatory. But at that moment, in the tent-like room with its flowered carpet, among 
the merchants and slave traders, I strained to remember as if, discovering a map in 
myself, I could follow it out of here and back to where I belonged.
  
  I did recollect the grasslands, the wild lands, lands where you don't go, except for-. 
But that was a blank. I'd been in the grasslands, defying fate, stupidly but not 
unwillingly. I'd been carrying something of the utmost importance. I got off my horse, 
ripped this big bundle loose from the leather harness and ran with the bundle clutched 
against my chest.
  
  "The trees!" he shouted, but who was he?
  
  I knew what he had meant, however, that I had to reach the copse and put this treasure 
there, this splendid and magical thing that was inside the bundle, "not made by human 
hands."
  
  I never got that far. When they grabbed hold of me, I dropped the bundle and they 
didn't even go after it, at least not as I saw. I thought, as I was hoisted into the air: 
It isn't supposed to be found like that, wrapped in cloth like that. It has to be placed 
in the trees.
  
  They must have raped me on the boat because I don't remember coming to Constantinople. 
I don't remember being hungry, cold, outraged or afraid.
  
  Now here for the first time, I knew the particulars of rape, the stinking grease, the 
squabbling, the curses over the ruin of the lamb. I felt a hideous unsupportable 
powerlessness.
  
  Loathsome men, men against God and against nature.
  
  I made a roar like an animal at the turbaned merchant, and he struck me hard on the ear 
so that I fell to the ground. I lay still looking up at him with all the contempt I could 
bring into my gaze. I didn't get up, even when he kicked me. I wouldn't speak.
  
  Thrown over his shoulder I was carried out, taken through a crowded courtyard, past 
wondrous stinking camels and donkeys and heaps of filth, out by the harbor where the 
ships waited, over the gangplank and into the ship's hold.
  
  It was filth again, the smell of hemp, the rustling of the rats on board. I was thrown 
on a pallet of rough cloth. Once again, I looked for the escape and saw only the ladder 
by which we'd descended and above heard the voices of too many men.
  
  It was still dark when the ship began to move. Within an hour I was so sick, I wanted 
simply to die. I curled up on the floor and lay as still as possible, hiding myself 
entirely under the soft clinging fabric of the old tunic. I slept for the longest time.