A New Beginning

by Mark David Abbott

  “Amira, I will help you, but first, you need to go back to the apartment. You need to keep working for Hassan while we work out how to fix this. If you leave now, he could punish your family, and we don’t want that, do we?”

  Amira shook her head and sniffed. Her tears had stopped, and she looked at him hopefully.

  “Keep working, try not to make him angry, and we will soon get you out of there. Okay?”

  Amira nodded.

  “But if it gets too bad, we won’t wait. You have Adriana’s number. You can call her anytime, and we will come and get you. Understood?”

  Amira nodded again.

  “How did you call last time? Do you have a phone?”

  “I used the phone in the house.”

  “Hmm, okay. It’s too risky for us to call you there.”

  John thought for a moment.

  “Can you get out of the house tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time?”

  “Maybe when Hassan Sir goes to the restaurant? About five o’clock.”

  “Okay, I will wait for you outside the building and give you a phone. You keep it on silent, and whenever we need to contact you, we’ll send you a message. Okay?

  “Good. So, you go back now, and I will see you tomorrow. Then either Adriana or I will be in touch once we have worked out a plan. Okay?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Amira nodded. “Thank you, Sir.” She looked at Adriana and held her hand. “Thank you, Ma’am.”

  John stood and smiled. “Don’t worry, everything will be okay.”

  The corners of Amira’s mouth twitched as she gave a slight smile and nodded.

  “Now, go. You need to be back before he gets home.”

  “Yes, Sir.” She turned and hurried toward the park entrance.

  They watched her leave, then Adriana touched John on the arm.

  “What are you going to do, John?”

  “I have no idea, Adriana, absolutely no idea.”

  21

  John pumped his arms harder as he rounded the bend and crossed the finish line. He slowed and checked his watch. He was getting faster.

  He slowed to a jog, then a walk, catching his breath. Sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes, and he wiped it away with the hem of his shirt. He was soaked through but felt good. He hadn’t slept well, his mind racing with thoughts of Amira’s situation. When he woke, he wasn’t rested and half contemplated skipping his early morning exercise and sleeping longer, but running always made him feel better, and it helped him think. He had his best ideas when running, his mind achieving a clarity he got from no other activity. Plus, it kept him fit.

  A series of beeps sounded over the Park’s tannoy system. It was eight a.m., and the National Anthem of Thailand was about to be played. He stopped walking and stood still as all around him everyone else did the same.

  It had taken him a while to get used to it. The first time he’d heard the broadcast, he had been mid-run and almost ran into the people who had stopped in front of him. Now, he was prepared and always timed his exercise to finish before it played. As the sound of the anthem rang out across the park, he let his mind wander. He thought about Hassan.

  Why would a wealthy, successful businessman keep someone as a slave? He could afford to employ anyone. John could never understand what went on in people’s heads, the way they treated their fellow human beings. It was beyond his understanding. What was even stranger was if someone wanted a slave, why would they choose their own country folk? Surely, there would be a modicum of respect for someone from the same culture as you?

  The anthem ended, and John started walking. He would never solve the problem of human cruelty, but he could at least work out a way to free Amira. The problem was, as Amira said, the police were involved, and judging by Hassan’s drinking companion last night, his connections were high up indeed. John also needed to avoid anything happening to Amira’s family in retaliation.

  He wasn’t sure of the best way to deal with it but was meeting Adriana for breakfast, so hopefully, the two of them would find a solution.

  22

  “We can’t leave her there.”

  “I know,” John nodded and took another sip of his coffee. “But her situation is much more complicated than just sending her home.”

  Adriana placed her hand on John’s arm. “It’s very generous of you to offer to pay her debt.”

  “It’s okay. I have the money, I might as well put it to good use.”

  “Yes, but most people wouldn’t bother. It’s a wonderful thing you are doing.”

  They both sat in silence for a moment, John feeling a little embarrassed.

  “If we can’t go to the police, do you think the UNHCR will help? They’ve been doing a lot of work with refugees in the Mediterranean.”

  “Hmmm, I doubt they can help. I did some research on this last night. Thailand, unfortunately, is not a signatory of the UN Refugee Convention and doesn’t recognize refugees. Besides, she’s not strictly a refugee. Amira is what they call an economic migrant, so she won’t get much sympathy from the Thai Government. She could end up in a detention center for years while they figure out what to do with her. She would be exchanging one prison for another.”

  John picked up his coffee cup and stared into it before setting it down again without drinking.

  “I’m more worried about the repercussions for her family. We can rescue her ourselves and somehow send her back to Dhaka, and I can pay the money to settle her debt. But who’s to say Hassan won’t take out his anger on her or her family later? Or that Karim and the traffickers, thinking they will get easy money, don’t try to kidnap her again for ransom.”

  “They could move from where they live now.”

  “I doubt they have enough money to do that.”

  “Hmmm.”

  John stared out the window of the café, watching the traffic stream by.

  “So, there are three things we need to do. One, get Amira out of the house and somewhere safe. Two, move her family, and three, pay off her debt.”

  “There’s a fourth thing.”

  John turned to study her face. She looked determined and had a fierce light in her eye.

  “What’s that?”

  “I need to expose these traffickers and get them shut down.”

  “That will be dangerous. The police are involved, and who knows whether other government officials are as well. You will need to be very careful.”

  “Yes, I know, but I can’t sit by and know things like this are happening and do nothing about it. Know I just took the safe route and continued writing about restaurants and cafés.”

  John nodded slowly, looking at the fire flashing in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. He leaned forward slowly and gently kissed her on the lips.

  Adriana didn’t pull away but looked surprised, the color in her cheeks spreading to the rest of her face.

  “John, I…”

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve wanted to do that for days… I-I… apologize, it was wrong of me.” John studied the countertop.

  Damn it. What was he doing? He hadn’t been able to help himself. After all this time alone, she was the first woman he was attracted to, the first woman he felt he could build a life with… and now, he had blown it.

  “It wasn’t wrong,” Adriana spoke softly.

  John looked up. She was smiling, and perhaps that was a tear in her eye?

  Adriana reached across, placed her hand behind his neck, and gently guided him forward. She kissed him, and this time, John felt a rush of energy shooting through his body. His eyes watered as he felt his long-closed heart open, emotions not felt for years flooding out.

  He pulled away and gazed into her eyes, his own moist with tears.

  “I’ll help you, Adriana. It will be dangerous though… The thing is…” He looked away, his voice catching in his throat. He swallowed and looked back. “The thing is… I have lost someone before, and I don’t want to lose you.”

 
; Adriana smiled and squeezed his hand.

  “Nor I you, Mr. Hayes.”

  23

  John sat on his balcony and gazed out at the twinkling lights of the suburbs. The sun had set not long before, and there was still a glow on the horizon, the residual light from the sun turning the fringes of the sky red and orange. Smog made for some beautiful sunsets. John took a large swallow of his gin and tonic as he listened to the background hum of the city.

  He had met Amira earlier and passed over a mobile phone with instructions on how to use it. She seemed a little happier, more confident now, the thought of escape giving her hope.

  John still didn’t know what to do. Paying off the debt and getting her out of the house were easy tasks although the more he thought about it, the less inclined he was to pay Hassan or the traffickers and reward them for their evil trade. It was nothing more than slavery, and he was reluctant to encourage it in any way. Even if he did pay, preventing any long term negative repercussions against Amira and her family would be a lot more difficult.

  John certainly didn’t want to get into trouble himself. Hassan was obviously a bully, and he wouldn’t react well to Amira fleeing his employ—if you could call it employment. He was bound to strike out at her family if only out of spite. John couldn’t go to the police because they themselves were involved. How would John know which police to trust? His experience in the past, both in India1 and in Hong Kong2, had taught him to be careful when dealing with the authorities, and he had seen Hassan had high-level connections. If he found out John and Adriana were involved in freeing Amira, who knows what trouble he could cause them.

  He sighed. It wouldn’t be easy, but like that old saying, ‘How do you eat an elephant?… one bite at a time,’ he had to break the seemingly insurmountable problem into smaller achievable tasks—one step at a time.

  First thing, he needed to make sure Amira’s family was safe before freeing her. Then he had to decide whether to pay off Hassan and the traffickers, and he needed to prevent Hassan from lashing out. Stopping the traffickers? That would never happen, and John wasn’t interested in getting involved in a one-man crusade against human trafficking. He played with his glass, clinking the ice cubes against the side. There were still too many questions and not a solution in sight.

  He picked up his phone and typed in a message. “Call me when it’s safe. John.” He needed to find out more from Amira.

  He had finished his second gin and tonic by the time the phone rang. Making sure Amira’s family was safe was priority number one. They needed to be contacted and moved out of the slum, but John couldn’t do it himself—a white man wandering around the slum would draw too much attention.

  He picked up his phone.

  “Amira, is everything okay?”

  “Yes, Sir. He is at the restaurant. He won’t be back until late tonight.”

  “Okay, Amira. I need to ask you some questions.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “How do you contact your parents? Do they have a phone?”

  “No, Sir. I’ve not been able to speak to them since I left. Hassan Sir said he would send them a message, but I don’t believe him.”

  “Hmmm, okay.” John stood up and paced around the apartment, an idea forming in his mind.

  “Amira, what is the address of your home?”

  “There is no address, Sir. My family lives in the Korail Slum. We don’t have streets or numbers.”

  “Then how does anyone find where people live?”

  “Sir, we just know. We were born there, we know every gully, every hut, and everyone knows everyone.”

  John thought some more.

  “Okay, could you draw me a map?”

  “I think so, Sir.” Amira sounded hesitant.

  “Good, find some paper and draw a map to where your family lives. Then take a photo of the map with the phone and send it to me. Do you know how to use the phone camera?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Good, do it straight away.”

  “Okay, Sir. But Sir, what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll let you know soon, Amira. Don’t worry. I have an idea. Just send me that map.”

  1 See “Vengeance” - John Hayes #1

  2 See “A Million Reasons” - John Hayes #2

  24

  Thapa paid the rickshaw wallah and stepped down onto the street. He thumbed open the photo app on his phone and consulted the map. Looking up and down the street to get his bearings, he set off, checking the map all the while until he found the landmark drawn on the sketch map as a starting point.

  He had flown in the night before on the Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong and gone straight to a hotel where he had booked two rooms. It was a cheap travelers’ hotel in the Gulshan district of Dhaka, close to Korail Basti, basic, clean, they asked few questions, and accepted cash. That morning, he had taken a rickshaw to the Banani Super Market and picked up a local SIM and a cheap Chinese-made phone. He had also bought a kurta and pajama, the long shirt and baggy pants worn by the local men and a pair of cheap rubber flip-flops. He didn’t look like the typical Bangladeshi from Dhaka, but with his Nepalese features, he might pass for someone from the North of Bangladesh up near the border with North East India, particularly, if dressed like a local. He wasn’t worried about the language either. Bangladeshis spoke Bengali or Urdu, and both were close enough to Hindi for him to get by. He changed in the hotel and waited for dusk. The timing was important.

  John had called him two days previously, requesting his help, and Thapa had jumped at the chance. The last time he had helped John, it had been dangerous but exciting, and Thapa had even earned a tidy amount of money from the adventure1. This time was different though. It wouldn’t be as dangerous, and there was no big payout for him, but the chance for Thapa to hit back at human traffickers, even in a small way, was one he couldn’t refuse.

  He hated the trade in human lives. Young girls were trafficked all the time from remote villages in Nepal for brothels in India, Pakistan, and the Middle East. Yet another curse inflicted on the poor in their fight for survival. Thapa wished he could do more, but if they could save at least one girl, it would be worth it.

  Thapa found the barbershop he was looking for, nothing more than a three-sided corrugated iron shack with two chairs and a broken mirror on the wall. Both chairs were occupied, their occupants leaning back in the chair with their faces lathered and the barbers shaving them with cut-throat razors. Beside the barber shop, a narrow lane ran into the slum, and after checking the map once more, he entered.

  The lane was narrow and dark, the only light coming from the occasional fluorescent tube or naked light bulb hanging from wires overhead. It became even darker as he walked further in, the slum huts, precarious two and three-level constructions built out of scavenged materials, leaning in overhead. Raw sewage ran along both sides of the lane, overflowing in places. Thapa hitched up the pants of his pajama as he waded through the puddles, trying not to think about what he was stepping in. People pushed past in both directions, rushing to and from their places of work while undernourished and dirty children played in the dirt, watched over by thin, elderly people sitting in their doorways.

  Thapa tried not to breathe too deeply, his nose wrinkling at the stench from the open drains as he counted the cross-lanes until he reached the third. He consulted the map again, then turned right. He passed another two cross-lanes before taking a left. The deeper he reached into the slum, the more people looked at him quizzically, knowing he was not a local, wondering what a stranger was doing there. He was glad of his local clothing and realized why John couldn’t have come himself.

  Four huts in from the last turn, he paused, took one final look at the map to confirm, then approached the hut to his left while the neighbors stared. He bent down and peered into the dimly lit, smoke-filled interior.

  “As salaam aleikum.”

  A tired-looking woman glanced up from the cooking fire where she squatted, stirring a pot of b
oiling dahl, the lentils that formed the only source of protein the poor could afford.

  “Wa aleikum salaam.”

  The reply came from the left side of the hut, and Thapa looked to see a man reclining on a mat on the floor. He pushed himself up to peer at Thapa, a questioning look on his face. He was thin and clad only in a dirty, torn, white vest and a blue and black checked sarong. Next to him, a girl of about ten years old looked up from a battered textbook she was studying in the light of a kerosene lamp.

  “Nazir Mustafi?”

  The man glanced at his wife, a worried look on his face, then looked back at Thapa.

  “Yes.”

  “I have news from Amira. She is safe.”

  The woman gasped, her hands flying to her face, and started crying.

  “Alhamdulilah. Thank God.” Nazir beckoned Thapa inside. “Aiyee andar. Please, come inside.”

  Thapa slipped off his flip-flops and ducked down to enter the hut. Nazir pulled out a mat from a stack of bedding in the corner and spread it on the floor, motioning for Thapa to sit down.

  “Beitiye, please sit.”

  Thapa made himself comfortable and looked around the hut. It was a single room with a cooking fire in one corner, the walls and the roof blackened by the smoke. Battered stainless steel pots and plastic containers of dahl and rice filled a shelf on the wall, and a tin trunk in the corner served as the only furniture. Both Nazir and Amira’s mother, Parveen, waited nervously for Thapa to say something. He gave them a reassuring smile.

  “She is okay. She’s in Thailand, in Bangkok.”

  Parveen reached for Amira’s sister, Zaara, and pulled her close, hugging her tightly.

  Nazir placed his hand on Thapa’s arm.

  “But who are you, and how do you know? You are not from here are you?”

  “No, I have been sent here by a friend. He wants you to know Amira is safe, and she will come home soon.” Thapa looked at his watch. Just in time. He removed the mobile phone from his pocket and dialed.