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| Captured Christian white slaves being auctioned in the Muslim Ottoman Empire |
When I was 19 and young, naive and innocent I went to school in Padua and Venice staying with friends of my parents, Carlo and Ann. It was a glorious experience but often I think back to how I certainly was almost kidnapped, drugged and sold into the white slave market. (Today it's called human trafficking.) At that time people thought the destination of a white slave was a harem deep in Saudi Arabia where women were cosseted and plied with lotions and oil on their skin, watched over by a eunuch and called to the bed of the sheikh at his command. However, now a more likely fate occurs to me - I might have been pimped out by the Mafia or sold to a Neapolitan drug gang.
