Finding The Girl From Barukastan

This story has been re-released with an updated expanded version following feedback from loyal readers and a sequel has been added, introducing a new twist to the characters. I hope you enjoy it. I welcome your comments.

*

Thomas finally arrived at the rural village of Bal. After a two hour drive in his rented Toyota, he was excited and nervous. As the country road turned into the village's main street, he slowed down enough to look at what there was of the residents' community. A small Russian Orthodox church, a single floor school, what might be a community center, and a general store. Perhaps there was a postal office and village office somewhere.

Thomas took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. There is a lot at stake in what is about to happen. If this plays out as hoped, it will change his life. A lot went into getting to this moment. He wanted to see her, hear her voice in person, touch her skin. She was intended to be his wife after all, but this will be their first time seeing each other that is not over the Internet.

As she instructed, he stopped the car in front of the church building and shut the engine off. He got out, dressed in his jeans and sports jacket, to look around for any sign of someone he was supposed to meet. The sky was blue and he felt the sunshine, on an otherwise cool day.

A middle-aged woman walked towards him from a bench. She must have seen him arriving and he clearly was an outsider.

"TOMASS?" she said with an inquiring tone.

"Yes, I am Thomas," he replied with a smile.

She smiled back, saying something he could not understand, and seemed to gesture that he follow her. Thomas caught up with her as they walked past several houses. They had no common language so the walk was quiet. The houses were modest but respectable and well kept. She came to one house, knocked on the door, and stepped to the side. Thomas stood in front of the door and waited to see if Oksana would be the one to open it.

The door opened and an old woman stood. She smiled, looked at him up and down, and gestured to him to come in. Sitting in the living room was a man that Thomas assumed was Oksana's grandfather. The old man looked at him carefully trying to size him up. Thomas did his best to smile warmly, and respectfully approached the old man and held out his hands. The old man said a few things, stood up, and took Thomas' hands and smiled.

All heads turned towards a doorway to see a girl standing and nervously smiling. She was about 5'4", blond, wearing a traditionally colored dress and flat-heeled shoes, and looked straight at Thomas.

"You are Thomas?" she asked anxiously and in a soft voice. "I am Oksana."

Thomas turned to her fully and smiled. She was stunning in person. He took both her hands, and reached over to kiss her on the cheek. He knew others were watching and he did not want to move too quickly with a kiss on the lips. "It is so wonderful to finally see you, to hold your hands," he said quietly.

They sat next to each other on the sofa, and she made the introductions. Indeed, the old man was her grandfather, the old woman was a family friend, and the woman that brought him to the house was her aunt. Thomas respectfully smiled at each of them.

With all eyes on him, he pulled out a narrow jewelry box and gave it to Oksana.

"My dear, this is my gift to you," he said.

She smiled and opened the box. It was a gold necklace.

"Thank you very much, Thomas," she breathed, and delicately took it out of the box.

"May I put it on you now?"

"Yes of course."

Thomas pushed back her long blond hair, unclasped the necklace, and moved his hand around her neck to refasten it. She touched it lightly, and sighed softly. He heard the older woman say something about it. Oksana turned to her grandfather, and he nodded approvingly.

"It looks lovely on you, Oksana," Thomas told her.

With Oksana interpreting, Thomas asked to hear her grandfather's own story and his story about raising Oksana. Then Thomas gave his own story back to her grandfather.

"Sir, I believe in tradition," he continued. "I believe a man should be strong and true. A man must take care of his woman and his family. I promise to take care of your treasure. I will protect her and she will never be hungry. I will provide her with guidance and love. We will learn to love each other."

The old man asked something and Oksana interpreted. "He wants to know if you will be firm with me. You said you will give me guidance. But if I do something I am not supposed to do, if I disobey you, will you punish me?" She ended this question by looking downwards.

Thomas wondered if this was a trap and had to be careful with this question. So he tried to feel out the expectation first.

"Oksana, is it normal in your culture for a husband to punish his wife if she does wrong things?"

She glanced at his eyes while still looking down, "yes, I think a little, he is expected to be like a father, and spank her if she does this."

Spank her? Corporal punishment is expected? He didn't know about anything like this.

"Please tell your esteemed grandfather that I am older than you. I have greater wisdom and I am responsible for you. I will provide you with guidance and I will be very fair and understanding. If you do wrong, then I will explain it to you."

She listened intently, and interpreted this to her grandfather, but there was a tone of greater expectation from them both, which Thomas was observing carefully.

"Also tell him, that I am responsible for you like a father is to his children. If you still do not obey me, if you continue to do wrong things, then I will do what I must and correct your behavior. I will not hesitate to raise my hand on your behind."

Her own facial reaction showed relief. She interpreted again to her grandfather and he smiled and nodded back to Thomas, saying something.

"He said to be firm and fair with me," Oksana said.

The old man spoke again and Oksana interpreted. "He says you are very respectful. He thinks you are honorable. He will give me to you." She said this with more emotions, and then cried and kissed her grandfather in appreciation.

Thomas smiled back. "Please tell him I thank him for his trust. I know how difficult it must be to let you go to a strange man from a strange land."

After she exchanged this with her grandfather, she said, "he says before he will give you his approval, you need to first go with this woman," gesturing towards the old woman.

"I don't understand," Thomas replied.

The old man stood up and left the room. Oksana looked at him unsure, "I do not know what he meant." The old woman stood up and held his arm and said something to Oksana.

"She said you need to go with her, and I am to stay here."

Thomas smiled and said, "alright, sure, no problem. I will go with her and see you later."

Thomas followed the old woman out of the house and noticed that the aunt joined them. They walked two blocks and entered another house. She led him to a bedroom, and gestured to him to remove his shoes. After he did, she gestured to him to lie on the bed.

Thomas started to get wind of what might be happening here. This was what Chemin had alluded to back in Canada.

As he lay on his back, the old woman placed her palm on his chest and spoke quietly. He sensed she was trying to calm him. He smiled back at her.

Then she used both her hands to raise his shirt to his chest and began to open his pants. Thomas took a deep breath and tried to relax as he realized the old woman was tasked with somehow assessing his sexual ability to be with their Oksana.

The old woman pulled down his pants and briefs down to his knees and Thomas looked at their expressions. With their eyes on his penis, they started talking in hushed voices with each other. Then the old woman used both her hands to hold his testicles. She felt them carefully and squeezed them slightly. Then she let the aunt also feel his testicles. They again spoke in their hushed voices.

The old woman lifted his penis with one hand and Thomas began growing an erection. Both women smiled. "Oksana," she said, nodding. Thomas tried to smile back awkwardly and nodded too.

*************

At 38, he was professionally successful. He worked independently as a technology compliance consultant, mostly for remote clients. This gave him the freedom to work from anywhere, and mostly from his home office. His home was in downtown Toronto. He bought that three-bedroom house following his divorce two years earlier.

It was a friendly divorce, and they wished the best for each other, though not sure if they'll stay friends. His ex-wife was a lawyer and well on the partner track. She was ambitious and wanted success and money. It was not what he expected when they married. He wanted children, and she changed her tune about wanting them after professing that she did when they dated. She seemed to relish her success and that she was making more of an income than he. His pride was hurt by this, and his hopes for a family with her fleeted. Eventually the sex ended too.

Thomas came out of it with a clearer understanding of what he wanted in a wife. It was a traditional-roles old-fashioned relationship, something that men and women had practiced in all cultures for thousands of years. Not the

equal partners

notion of the last 40 years in the west, where both are seeking ambitious careers at the cost of raising a family and domestic peace. His own parents were traditional, and he respected this model. His father was thirteen years older than his mother, he was the breadwinner and head of the house, and she raised Thomas and his two siblings. As a child, he liked knowing that his mother was home when he finished school. His mom worked part time in community roles but was mainly the heart of the home.

His ex couldn't have been more different from his mom. But Thomas also knew that meeting someone who wanted a traditional relationship was going to be difficult in today's Canada. She also had to be young enough to be fertile and energetic to have children.

And so when his friend Chemin asked him over beers when he will remarry and he told Chemin what he was looking for, it began a chain of events that he couldn't have imagined in his wildest dreams. Chemin was in his mid-40s, and an immigrant from a country Thomas knew nothing about. Chemin was part of an ethnic Russian population in the small country of Barukastan bordering Siberia. Russians had settled there in their own towns in the early nineteenth century to escape the Tzar. While they retained the Russian language, their culture had evolved and even their Russian Orthodox practices diverged from the old motherland's and took on some tribal elements of their adopted land.

Chemin still had close contacts in Barukastan and did business with them. One day he called up Thomas and asked to meet with him. When they met at a coffee house, Chemin said he knew someone who knew a family back in Barukastan with a daughter. "It's a good family, and she's a good girl," he said. "This he told me and I trust him."

"But Chemin, how can that work? She can't come here? We won't have anything in common. We won't even be able to talk with each other."

"She speaks English," he replied. "Apparently she speaks English very well."

"Chemin, this is absurd. How can she come here?"

"Look, people come to Canada all the time. Canada always welcomes new immigrants. In my community here, we see how people from my country can get accepted to come here." He took out a piece of paper. "I have her email address. You can contact her and see if you like her. She can send you a photo. You have nothing to lose."

Thomas knew this would be a useless exercise but to placate his friend and in appreciation for his efforts, Thomas wrote an introductory email to her. Her name was Oksana.

Oksana wrote back the next day and he was surprised by her letter. Indeed her English was quite good, and she seemed earnest. Oksana wrote that Chemin's friend mentioned Thomas to her, but it would be inappropriate for her as the female to start a correspondence. Her email included a couple of photos of her.

In the ensuing email exchanges between Thomas and Oksana, he learned more about her. Her parents were killed in a car accident when she was six and she doesn't remember them very well. They were ethnic Russian, her father educated in the prestigious Moscow State University with a PhD in chemistry and taught at the National University in Rog, the capital of Barukastan. Her mother also was educated, with a degree as a pharmacist from the same National University. They met when he was her professor, twenty years her senior.

Oksana was an only child and raised by her mother's parents in their village of Bal after her parents died. Her father was fluent in English and French and emphasized the importance of languages so she spent most of her education in a private school in Rog that taught English. This was her backstory.

Oksana was 19 years old. And from the photos she attached in her emails, Thomas also saw that she was quite beautiful and shapely, with long blond hair and small features. She intentionally included one photo wearing a bathing suit to show her figure, and it was hourglass-shaped with full breasts. Indeed, Thomas felt an immediate physical attraction to the girl in the photos, and in fact, arousal.

Oksana progressed quickly in her schooling owing to the private school and entered the National University two years early at 17 in the English literature program. But now it was summer and she was living with her grandfather (her grandmother died three years earlier) in the village of Bal.

Thomas and Oksana switched their correspondence to WhatsApp, first for texting, and then to video calls. Suddenly they came to life with each other, hearing each other's voices and seeing each other's faces.

"Yes of course I want to leave here," she said with a slight British accent. "My grandfather has told me for many years that I have no future in this country. There are no rights and it is bad for women. It is difficult to have a good life here. We know of people from our country in Canada and so this is why we asked them about moving."

Thomas used the video call to show her his house, his home office, his kitchen, his car, and the neighborhood street. Though Oksana had been in the city of Rog, she had never seen a modern house and neighborhood that Thomas showed her.

They discussed relationships and what her expectations were. In her culture, the man was always older, sometimes much older, than the woman, as was the case with her parents. She believed in traditional roles for men and women in the relationship, where he would be established and reliable, providing leadership and means for the family while she provides care for the children and hearth. The woman's role is to defer to the man.

They discussed the bedroom and intimacy. She made it clear that he was the lion for her. She also confided that she had no experience with a man. In their conservative society, she was expected to keep her virginity for her husband. She emphasized that no man had ever entered her.

They continued these video conversations, including when he was getting dressed and making a meal in the kitchen. Her comment while he was undressed was "Thomas, you are a strong man. You need a woman to take care of you." Her comment while he was cooking was "you should have a woman taking care of your stomach, not yourself."

But hers was a conservative and traditional culture. Her grandfather would have to meet him and agree that his precious granddaughter be in the lifetime care of this strange man from a strange country. And besides, Thomas did not want Oksana to navigate the bureaucratic process alone and certainly not travel by herself. Traveling between her village and Canada would be a journey in itself. Thomas would have to go to her village, meet her and her grandfather, and if they are all in agreement, he would take her through the passage back to his house.

Again, he had a beer with his friend Chemin about the customs he would encounter. At one point, Chemin hesitated, to bring up a detail.

"Usually, the girl's grandmother is responsible for the girl's virginity. So she checks her. It is part of family honor."

"Really, she would check her?" Thomas responded with surprise. "Okay, but she has no grandmother."

"Yes, so perhaps it will be a close family friend, but it will have to be an older woman."

"Let's hope this is not an issue."

"It should not be." But Chemin seemed to pause longer now. "Uhh, there is another thing... the grandmother, well, whoever old woman it will be, uhh..."

"Yes?"

"She is also responsible for the man's, uhh, ability... uhh, his ability for the, uhh, to satisfy the girl and be a father."

Thomas stared at him. "What does that mean?"

"Well, I am not sure, actually. I was married here in Canada so it did not happen to me. The women usually do not speak about it."

"I see..." Thomas said, wondering if this was some kind of rumor that the men would have.

Over the next two weeks, Thomas researched the process of how to bring Oksana to Canada. He consulted an immigration lawyer and Barukastan community members through Chemin. The quickest process would be to marry her in Barukastan by a church official first, and after that, getting residency would not be difficult and could be done at the Canadian embassy in the capital Rog. He went over this with Oksana over video and they gave each other big smiles.

His flight to the capital Rog had a 6-hour layover in Istanbul's airport. Then in Rog, he stayed in a 4-star hotel and rested. He knew that he would need to be in Barukastan for at least three to four weeks and so brought his laptop so he can work remotely for his clients. But her village had poor Internet, which he knew from the spotty video calls he had with Oksana. So he figured he would be staying each night in this hotel and drive to her village until they would be together waiting for the residency permit.

The next day, he rented that Toyota and drove to the village of Bal.

*************

So it was that Thomas lay on his back in that house in the village of Bal with his pants and briefs down to his knees in front of the two elder women with his genitals in their hands, and getting an erection.

The old woman spit into one of her hands and began to stimulate his penis, while caressing his testicles.

"Oh my god," he thought. "They're giving me a handjob."

They both had their attention and focus on his penis, without once looking at his face. And it didn't take long before they accomplished their goal. He released his load, and they smiled again. They appeared to be most satisfied with the performance of his sex.

After a cleanup, the old woman and the aunt led him back to Oksana's house. Thomas wasn't sure if he felt a bit proud or a bit humiliated but thought he had passed some kind of test.

He sat on the sofa next to Oksana, while he watched the old woman speak with her grandfather quietly. The old man nodded, glancing at him. The aunt, meanwhile, said something to Oksana. Oksana looked at Thomas and smiled.

The old man returned to the living room and stood in front of Thomas. Thomas immediately stood up to face him. The old man took both of Thomas' hands and said something smiling.

"He said he is happy to give you his approval to have me," Oksana shrieked in happiness.

"I'm happy to hear that," Thomas said. "Please tell him I thank you, sir."

The old woman and the aunt smiled and clapped.

"Oksana, do you think we can go for a walk and talk, just the two of us? We haven't had any time alone so far."

Oksana said a few things to her grandfather and he replied back to her, and sat down.