Meanwhile in another part of the forest…

She will work day and night and does not need rest, boasts Noura, a housewife in Riyadh. Gesturing to the cowering Ugandan maid next to her, who is 23 according to Noura, she adds: “If she does something wrong, you just send her to her room and do not let her out.”

Noura, who clutches gold Gucci sunglasses as she bargains for a price of £3,500 for the maid, is eager for a quick deal when she talks to an undercover Times reporter. “I can take her to your home tonight,” she says. “If you are still unsure, no problem, you can rent her instead . . . But tell me now, because by tomorrow someone else will buy her.”

Noura advertised the domestic worker on Haraj.sa, Saudi Arabia’s largest online marketplace, through which a Times investigation shows that hundreds of domestic workers are being illegally trafficked and sold to the highest bidders.

So Noura isn’t just running an employment agency with a staggeringly high fee?

In Saudi Arabia, which has the third largest migrant population in the world, foreign labourers are able to live and work through the Kafala system, where a Saudi citizen known as the “Kafeel” is legally responsible for the worker and will write up their contracts and the terms of their visa.

In the past year the government said that it had “reformed” the system as part of the 2030 Saudi Vision, a plan heralded as part of its attempt to open the country up to the world. It offered what were supposedly greater freedoms, including allowing workers to open bank accounts, move jobs and leave the country without permission.

Can they also breathe, eat, and use the toilet without permission?

The “new freedoms” don’t apply to domestic workers, farmers and drivers, all four million of them.

Every seller who spoke to The Times admitted they had been withholding their worker’s passports. Two admitted to physically disciplining their workers if they “spoke back”, and dozens said they expected their maids to work day and night without breaks for as little as £5 a day.

This is Saudi Arabia, home of Mecca, cradle of Islam. Doesn’t Islam have anything to say about slavery, cruelty, exploitation, mercy, decency, fairness, rights?

The prices vary by ethnic background. Filipino maids sell fastest and for the highest prices, and Ugandan maids are labelled by some Haraj users as “the most stubborn” and “unclean” and selling for the least amount.

Translation: lighter brown maids versus darker brown maids.

Doesn’t Islam have anything to say about that?

Valery Shebna, 30, a Kenyan maid, used the helpline for assistance to leave Saudi Arabia without her sponsors’ permission and returned to Nairobi this year. She said the family she lived with for two years in Riyadh beat her every day, refused to let her return home and withheld food as a form of discipline. “I came back emotionally scarred, and without my money, my passport documents, my education certificates. All of that was kept by the couple — my bosses. They didn’t want me to leave.”

Allah is the most merciful.