by Sibel Hodge
With a kick to my back he towered over me and laughed. ‘Do you get it now?’ he said. ‘If you do not want that to happen to your daughter, you will do everything we say.’ Then he spat in my face, left the room, and locked the door behind him.
This is now my life.
Day 7
I could not bring myself to write anything for the last few days. Everywhere hurts, even my hands. I have cried so much that I do not think I have any water left in my body.
I have never believed in God but I find myself praying. I am not sure who to, but I feel like I have to. If there is a God, how could He let this happen? I do not believe there is any kind of higher being who can help me now. My prayers are not to any kind of God, they are silent messages to keep me strong.
Thoughts of Liliana and my mother fill my mind. I wish I could talk to them and tell them I miss them so much there is an ache squeezing my heart. I want to hear their voices and hold them tight. I want to wake up from this nightmare and be safe in their arms.
I think of my father and my husband Stefan, too. They have been dead several years, and for once, I am glad. It would rip them apart to know what has happened to me.
I was lucky in one way, growing up, because my father was a skilled man. If anything broke down he could usually fix it himself. He seemed to have a natural gift of understanding how things worked, and people from the surrounding villages would always call on him to repair things. Because of this, we were better off than a lot of our neighbours, and when he died, he left my mother some small savings. Things have still not been easy for us, but it helped until the money ran out and I needed desperately to get a job.
My father taught me English when I was young. I do not know where he got the books from, but somehow he could find anything he wanted – he was a very resourceful man. He knew the only way to better myself was to learn English and seek new opportunities in another country. He wanted me to do something special with my life – it was his dream to see it happen.
And maybe it would have happened if he and Stefan had not both been killed in a car accident the day I found out I was pregnant with Liliana.
I cannot change the past, and now I have no control over the future, either. It is ironic that I finally made it to another country, but it will not be to better myself.
Day 8
The woman I met with the red lipstick has been quite kind to me. Her name is Angelina and she runs this brothel. She is the girlfriend of the leader of this Italian gang who bought me. I have learned I am in Milan, but I doubt I will ever see anything of this city. I have been locked in my room since I arrived. Having seen the other girls with the dead eyes in the lounge, I think it is yet another form of punishment for me to stay in here.
Lying on the double bed, aching, I have had the chance to study my bedroom in great detail. There is nothing else for me to do that will keep my mind active, other than write in my diary.
My room is clean and bright, painted in a pale yellow with cream curtains that are frayed slightly at the edges and have a smudged stain at the top. I have a small toilet, sink, and shower in an en suite bathroom, for which I am grateful. Somehow, it makes it seem a little less like a prison cell. The second tile on the floor as you enter the bathroom has a chip on it in the shape of a star. The ceiling has an old cobweb in the far corner, dangling in the breeze. I can gaze out of the window and, through the bars, I see the cloudless blue sky, sunshine, and tops of the houses. I can hear the sounds of a busy city echoing around me – people going about their life as if everything in the world is normal.
Angelina brings me food and water, which is very basic and bland: bread, pasta, cereal, cucumbers. I long for the sweet biscuits I used to have for breakfast, and tasty meat goulash my mother makes. I can almost smell it as I wonder what is happening at home.
Every night the Rapist comes and forces himself on me. He said it is good practice for me. He is trying to break me in and make me a willing slave. He does not want to beat me anymore because he wants me to look pretty, but he told me he will if he has to. When my bruises have gone they will expect me to sleep with the men who come here. From 10 p.m. to 10 a.m. every night I must do what these men want. If I am good and cause no problems, he said nothing will happen to Liliana and my mother.
Angelina thinks I should be grateful her boyfriend bought me. There are much worse places for a girl to end up, she told me, and described shabby brothels and dirty saunas in town who buy girls.
‘They are seedier than here,’ she said. ‘They are filthy places, and the men are often drunk and they stink. They go there after working in factories or on farms and do not bother to wash beforehand. At least here the men are clean and have more manners.’ She waved her hand around the room. ‘This is one of the nicest brothels in Milan. And when you are not working you can use the lounge and kitchen space, but you cannot leave the house. There are guards here at all times. If you are good, you can stay here. If not,’ she shrugged her shoulders, as if the choice in the matter really was mine alone, ‘you will go to those other places.’
Maybe I should be grateful that I am here and not in one of the places she described, but I cannot summon that emotion from anywhere within.
She gave me lacy underwear, thongs, French knickers, bras, crotchless knickers, stockings and suspenders. I must wear only underwear when the men come to choose the girls.
I cannot look at these items. I do not want them on my body. I do not want this.
Day 9
I have never hated anyone in my life, but I hate Natalia, and I hate the Rapist. I hate the way he forces himself on me. I hate the pain he causes my insides. I hate his chilling blue eyes and his stale breath. I hate the sex.
My bruises are fading now and can be covered with make-up. Angelina has told me that tonight I must work. She told me she can give me drugs to relax me if I want. I do not know whether that is a good or bad thing. Part of me wants to be out of it; not to know what is really happening to my body, but I think that once they control you with drugs you will never get away, even if you want to.
She brushed my waist-length black hair until it was silky and told me how to wear it. She showed me how to do my make-up so I look “sexy.” She picked out which underwear to put on.
My stomach is in knots. I cannot eat anything as the minutes of the day tick by. All I can think about is what will happen to me. What will these men expect? How many will there be? Will they give me a disease? How much pain will it cause? Will they beat me? How can I get through this and still be a fully functioning person?
My mind will be raped as well as my body. I am no longer me anymore but a skeleton of the woman I was.
But I must do it for Liliana and my mother. I must act the part. I will become an Oscar winning actress, because one day I will get out of here. I do not know how long it will take, but I cannot allow myself to believe that I will never get away, because if I do believe that, then I may as well kill myself now.
I could do it easily. I could break the mirror on the dressing table and slit my wrists or my throat. I could take a knife from the kitchen and do it. I could save up all the drugs they offer me and take them all at once. I have thought about it, of course I have, but what if they take revenge on my family? I could not be responsible for that.
So I need to believe there is hope for me, even if it is just a tiny strand in the midst of all this pain. Without hope I will not survive this.
Day 10
I used to be a human being, but now I am a sex slave. I will never be clean again. No matter how many times I scrub and scrub, trying to claw off my skin, I will always have their dirt everywhere. On my skin, under my nails, inside me, and etched into my soul.
Last night the girls with dead eyes waited for men in the lounge. When the men came, they chose which slave they wanted, and the girls led them to their rooms in silence.
When I was a little girl I saw a cow being mated, and its haunting cries stayed with me all this time. It was t
ied in a narrow metal pen so it could not move, and they brought a bull in the pen behind to have sex with it. The cow’s eyes rolled in its head and it made a desperate noise, as if it wanted to escape.
Sex with these men is the same. I am trapped and I am at their mercy. I could not cry like the cow so I stayed silent, but my eyes were closed and I went to another place. I wanted to scream, “No!” but I could not. Behind my eyelids I pictured Liliana, safe with my mother, playing with her favourite soft toy, a dog called Ivan. Ivan is saggy and worn now from years of use. He has one eye missing and his right ear is half falling off, in need of stitching.
Liliana talked to me. She told me she is safe and warm and loved. She misses me and wants me to come home, and when she said this, a silent tear snaked down my cheek. The men did not notice this. They are on top of me, behind me, below me, inside me, but they do not really see me. I am a thing, a toy, an object. A slave who is there purely for them to release their fantasies.
In my daydream about Liliana she was doing well with her reading. My mother had taught her to read a new book. Liliana is bright and learns quickly. She devours stories, and one day I hope she will be a doctor or a lawyer. She had a dusting of sugar around her mouth from eating too many sweet biscuits my mother loves to make.
Ten men had sex with me last night. Part of me feels such strong emotions, and part of me feels like it has died. I am grieving for the part of me that I will never get back. I am ashamed, guilty, disgusted. I feel hatred and anger, but I cannot let that show. I had to pretend I enjoyed it, but it made me feel sick. Physically sick to my core. And there is a part of me that feels numb because I do not want to think of what has happened to me. What is happing to me. It seems like I have become a ghost, trapped in a twenty-two year old body, looking out at the world. But no one sees me.
And when I think about Stefan, I know our lovemaking was real. It was gentle and unselfish. I try not to think about that because I miss him too much. And I know I will never be normal again. I will never think about a lover in the same way as I did with Stefan. My scars will not show, but they will torture me forever.
Why did this happen to me? To the other girls? Doesn’t anyone else know what is going on in the world? Why don’t they send someone to help us?
I feel sorry for all the bad things I have done in my life, but I will never believe that this is my fault. I never asked for this, I just wanted to give my family a better life.
Now, when I look in the mirror, I have dead eyes, too.
Day 15
I have not written much because I do not want to describe the things they make me do. You can imagine every depravity and increase it a hundred times, then you will understand.
I try to take comfort in the daylight hours. The girls are allowed out of their rooms, and we can watch TV and make food for ourselves when we are not working. I do not eat much and can see my ribs and hip bones jutting through my skin. My cheeks are gaunt and my hair is dull and lifeless. Every few hours I think about killing myself. Maybe I would be better off dead. But then I think of Liliana and know I can never do it.
Most of the girls do not talk about where they are from or who they used to be before they were stolen.
I trust no one now. How do I know they would not repeat what I say to Angelina or the Rapist?
I do hang around with one girl called Sasha who is from Russia. I never speak about my own situation, but we spend time in each other’s rooms, and she told me how she was trafficked from her small village three years ago. She was living with her mother when two men came late at night and banged on the door. Her mother was working a night shift at a chicken factory so she was not there to try and protect her. When Sasha opened the door, the men knocked her unconscious, and when she woke up, she was in an apartment somewhere. She stayed there for a week as the men and his friends took turns with her. They sold her to a trader in England, and she was forced to work on the street or in massage parlours. Recently she was sold to a sauna, where she was locked in her room twenty-four hours a day. The men who came and had sex with her every night would often be drunk and beat her. The sauna charged £50 per customer, but she never received any money. She tried to tell some of the men what happened to her so they would take pity on her and get her out. None of them did. They did not care how she got there. When she refused to do things for the men, the brothel owner beat her up. Half her hair was pulled out and she had broken fingers and toes where he stamped on them. He broke a rib, as well, that hasn’t healed properly and sticks out at a strange angle. Sometimes she has trouble breathing. As she described this I could actually hear the crunching of bone in her words. She took off the wig she wears and showed me how her hair has not yet grown back properly.
After the beating she was sold to Angelina’s boyfriend and arrived here. In the last three years she has been sold eight times, but she said this is the nicest brothel she has been imprisoned in.
Do I take comfort in that? It is strange but part of me does. There are worse places I could end up.
She told me of another girl she met in England who was also from Moldova. She managed to escape and went to the Moldovan embassy who arranged for her to return to her home, but when she arrived, she discovered she was pregnant. The gang that originally trafficked her tracked her down, raped and beat her so she lost her baby. They killed her family’s pet dog as an extra punishment and threatened to kill her family if she escaped again. She was then re-trafficked back to England. Some of the girls Sasha knew have gone missing suddenly and she thinks they have been murdered.
Sasha wanted to tell me more but I stopped her. That was enough for me to hear for one day. I want to know because it might help me save myself. I want to know what makes people do this to us. I want to know how these things can happen in the twenty-first century. I want to know if I can ever find a way to escape.
Day 20
Last night the police arrived. It was after midnight and I was waiting in the lounge for yet another man to take me. Sasha was there, too, along with six other girls.
When I saw two policemen arrive in uniform with their guns strapped at their sides I thought the house was being raided. For the first time in weeks I had real hope. They would get us out of here and send me back to Moldova. Soon I would have my arms wrapped so tight around Liliana that I would never let go again. These men were going to save us!
Maybe I was wrong about God. Could he have heard my prayers for help?
I felt breathless with excitement, and I had to hold onto a table to steady my legs and stop me collapsing with relief.
‘Oh, thank you,’ escaped from my mouth before I knew I was speaking. My hands flew to my cheeks as I smiled and waited for them to get us out of there. ‘Thank you for helping us,’ I said to the policemen.
Sasha shook her head at me, giving me a silent warning that these men were not our saviours.
The older policeman in the group glanced up at me with mild amusement, and I could see from the look on his face they were not there to help us.
Suddenly I could barely breathe. My heart beat erratically, pumping hard and out of time. A crushing pain squeezed my chest and I fainted.
When I woke up I was in my bedroom. The older policemen was thrusting inside me, his coffee breath suffocating me. Then the other policeman took his turn with me. And when they were finished, the Rapist came to teach me a lesson.
Day 23
I am burning up. My body feels like it is constantly on fire, and yet I am as cold as ice. I have been in bed for three days, unable to move. Sometimes I see Liliana at my bedside. She is holding some hand-picked flowers out to me.
‘Get well soon, Mummy,’ she says.
I reach out for her, but she is too far away. Then I drift into nothingness again.
Day 25
A doctor was here. I do not know what kind of doctor he is. I thought doctors took an oath to heal their patients. How can he know I am here and just leave me with these people?
He
said I have a severe urine and kidney infection, and has given me strong antibiotics. I feel sore inside my vagina, and I know something is not right there, too.
He examined me internally and I flinched at his touch. Yet another unwanted man on my skin.
‘You have tears inside,’ he said. ‘In a few days they will heal.’
But what about my heart? Will that heal? I wanted to ask.
I feel like I am dying – burning up from the inside out. I cannot move from my bed, I am too weak, so the doctor has inserted a catheter inside me.
I do not know how much more I can take.
Angelina brought me some chicken soup and bread. She told me they will lose money because I cannot work for a while. Her boyfriend is not happy with me.
‘If you try anything like this again, we will sell you to somewhere much worse,’ she said.
I wanted to scream and cry and yell, and tell her it is not me! It is you, it is your boyfriend, it is the Rapist, it is the policemen. They are the ones who have done bad things, not me. This is not my fault.
Of course, I cannot say that. I just nodded at her so she knew I understood.
When she left I fantasized about escaping. Maybe there is a chance the policemen can help me after all. They just do not know it yet.
Day 26
Sasha keeps me company. She brushes my hair and sings to me. It reminds me of how I used to put Liliana’s hair in bunches and pigtails, making up silly songs to keep her still until I had finished.
