I awoke alone the next morning and was soon collected by Ghoajin for a tour of the encampment. We walked among the members of her clan for most of the morning. She proudly introduced me as the goddess she had told everyone about and explained to me everything we saw, from how the women trained the children to ride horses, shoot bows, and maintain weapons to which principal members of the clan had how many herds of goats, sheep and horses.
We were followed by a trail of women and children, along with some younger boys who had not yet been sent off to the war camp nearby for further warrior training. Women ran the encampment, she told me, and what we saw seemed to support this. Aside from Batu, the only men of fighting age present were wounded, slaves, or men there for the protection of the camp.
I had run into the concept of slavery in the Old West. It made me extremely uncomfortable, but what I saw here was a little different than I expected. The slaves were expected to serve the families that owned them but were also free to intermarry with the Mongols, buy their freedom by volunteering to fight, or provided accommodations if they had special skills. Some were adopted, others rewarded with horses and others strung out in the sun with whip markings as a warning against stealing or disrespecting their owners.
It was another display of the world that bred a man like Batu: barbarity and generosity side by side with loyalty trumping pretty much everything else.
And then there was the harem. It was contained in a large tent and owned by one of Ghoajin's nephews, who was the chief of the clan. No one was permitted to enter without his permission or paying off someone.
We didn't go inside, for which I was grateful. It was hard enough for me to put aside my twenty-first century American morals and perceptions without being confronted by the existence of sex slaves. Ghoajin assured me the women were treated well, but …
It didn't sit right. In the Old West, there had been a brothel that fascinated me, but a harem sounded a little more sinister to me. I was working on not judging the culture or the people around me for living the lives they thought were natural.
We stopped at noon to give Ghoajin a break and sat down in the shade of a tree for a light lunch with several of her great grandchildren and the children of Batu's ex, who accompanied us, along with several other women. I watched the kids play with a smile.