The Hole

It did have a formal name but everyone called it The Hole. All it showed to the outside world was a blank concrete wall topped by razor wire with a guard tower beside the steel gates. Above the wall one could glimpse a stark building rather like a multi storey car park with ranks of barred windows. Its purpose was, just by existing, to terrorize the populace into submission.

Picture a row of cages with iron bars floor to ceiling and a broad passageway running along one side. Each cage contains thirty women, all totally naked. Uniforms cost money and can be used to hide contraband. Each woman sits or reclines on a blue, plastic mattress. They all wear a collar around their neck like a bicycle lock; it is a chain encased in plastic attached to an oval metal plate stamped with a number.

There are no facilities for washing or for sanitary needs and some mattresses are stained with menstrual blood. Women and cells are washed thoroughly on alternate days when high pressure hoses blast the cages. At the back of each cage is a hole in the floor which serves as a toilet. Once each day a large trolley is pushed along the passageway heaped with plastic food containers which are issued, one at a time, through a horizontal gap in the bars. Every meal is a plastic bottle of water with a dish of some sort of meat stew and a piece of baguette.

These women do no work, they rarely leave their cage, but they do earn revenue for the state. Jane recalled the first time that it was her turn. Guards came into the passageway and women would be pointed out and ordered to go into the passageway to be handcuffed and led away.

About ten of them were led downstairs watched by guards who wielded long, black batons. They came to a white tiled area with showers along one side and plastic bottles of liquid soap on a small ledge. All the guards in The Hole were men but all these women had been here too long not to have become used to men seeing every part of their bodies.

When the guards decided that the showering was complete, an order was barked to turn off the water and coarse, cheap towels were handed out. After that, each woman was handed a dark green smock which could loosely be described as a dress. No footwear, no underwear.

Then a short march out to the bus with its blacked-out windows. The drive took them to an institution with a long dormitory; each small bed divided from its neighbors by a wooden screen. When the women had been assigned each to her own bedspace, the clients were allowed in.

This was a common brothel for “working” men and soldiers. There was no choice but to allow the client to do whatever he wished. None of the men had any “finesse” or gentleness; they had paid for a set time and were hungry to wring the most satisfaction from every minute. The feelings of the piece of meat they were using played no part. The operation was slick in that just enough women were brought in to cope with the demand so there was no down time. As soon as one man left, taking his sweat and his semen with him, the next would come in and it would begin again.

For hour after hour, Jane’s body was subjected to pain, abuse and degradation. When the “shift” was complete, the guards were there again and, handcuffed, the women were herded back onto the bus. All of them stank and most were weeping with semen still staining their bodies. Many had blood running down their legs. Back to The Hole, the green dresses stripped off and the women thrown back into their cages.

So how were wounds treated?