She lay curled in a ball, as far away as possible from the stinking hole in the corner which served as a toilet. It had been days since they had given her anything to drink and her mouth tasted as foul as that disgusting hole in the corner. She no longer had any spit to swallow and thought of begging for water again. But all her cries had been ignored. When the fat eunuch did come in once, she had pleaded for water in the one Arabic word she had learned.

“Maya … maya,” she begged, going down on her knees, but the eunuch simply shook his head and left the bowl of bland hummus paste which she had learned not to eat, because it only made her thirstier. Her tongue felt enormous. It seemed to completely fill her mouth. She licked at the sweat on her forearm like a cat, but it didn’t help. Now and again she gagged with dry heaves, her body wrenching like a half-crushed insect. If she didn’t get some water soon, she would die. In her fevered mind she saw flowing streams sparkling in the sun, pouring endlessly into a clear lake the color of the sky. Her body was a useless burden to her, she thought desperately as she tossed like a restless sleeper. This water torture was worse than drugs, worse than anything she had ever imagined.

She felt herself losing consciousness again, but some part of her was screaming inside, warning her that if she let go she would die. She looked down at her lifeless hands. They were dirty and clammy. It was as if they belonged to a stranger. How could this be happening to her? And then, a more insidious question. What could she have done? Nothing, she tried to tell herself over and over. She had been helpless from the moment she drank the champagne. And after they had raped her, she had been a virtual basket case.

She remembered only the occasional pinprick of the hypodermic during the trip. There was a haze of people and jets, but no matter how hard she tried to call out, nothing came from her throat. She remembered seeing Gerard, a nasty smile on his face, looking as if he was very far away, as though seen through the wrong end of a telescope. And then she was surrounded by Arabs and people speaking a strange guttural language that she couldn’t understand. She didn’t know what drug they had used, but it made her skin tingle with electricity and try as she might, she couldn’t move. Through the plane window she saw a vast brown plain far below that seemed to go on forever and then blackness came.