Cleaning the saray

10.18. - Maintaining the Saray

An odalisque has as one of her duties the preparation, arrangement, lighting and general maintenance of atmosphere and ambience in her Keeper's saray. Her Keeper may require her to conduct such duties of cleaning only as are incidental to this.

An odalisque is not a domestic servant. She is not required to be cook and cleaner for her Master. Her duties are sexual. Unlike low slaves (memlooks) she is spared from domestic toil.

Attentive readers of Code d’ Odalisque sometimes notice, however, that the Code does provide for an odalisque cleaning her Master’s saray (play room). See article 10.18. We have received several emails pointing to this and suggesting that it is either a mistake or an inconsistency. Why does an odalisque have to clean her Master’s saray? Isn’t an odalisque free of such chores by definition?

Like many other questions the answer to this stems from the circumstances and experiences of the people who first formulated Code d’ Odalisque. In this case, this article of the Code arose from the following situation:

A gentleman owned a (low) slave and she cleaned his house. When he decided to join the “odalisque” lifestyle and raise his slave up to the status of odalisque he hired a house cleaner so that his slave would be free of domestic duties.

Not long after, though, his new housekeeper (a Roman Catholic lady it turns out) stumbled upon his stash of sex toys and slave devices while cleaning one day. Horrified, confused, and jumping to conclusions about “sex slaves”, she rang the police!

There was no prosecution or further trouble but the incident was highly embarrassing. (Moreover, the housekeeper reported his conduct to all and sundry, especially embarrassing in a smallish community.)

In the next draft of “odalisque rules”, therefore, the circle of people then forming what became Code d’ Odalisque added the exception: an odalisque may clean her Master’s playroom. This is because it is often better that a hired maid or housekeeper not have access to a man’s playroom. This, like much else in Code d’ Ode, grew out of real experiences. (Another example is the prohibition on wearing wrist watches in orgia.)

An odalisque, therefore, may be required to do cleaning duties in her Master’s play room, or where a maid or housekeeper might be privy to personal matters pertaining to the Master/slave lifestyle.

Of course, there is nothing preventing a Slavekeeper from cleaning his own saray, but the Code does allow him to make this one of duties of his odalisque. The Code does stress, though, that such duties are limited to the saray and cannot be extended to other cleaning duties. An odalisque - a beautiful treasure - cannot be treated as a common cleaner.