Black Book of Arabia (18 page)

After another hour, the van pulled up to a concrete building. It looked like a lonely labor camp in the middle
of the desert. Violeta could not stop comparing it in her mind to Alcatraz prison, which she had seen in the movies. The building was a plain white-washed building of four floors with railed windows. There were air-conditioning boxes in every other window on the lower floor and fewer on the higher floors.

The girls were led one by one to their rooms. Violeta had a small room with no windows, only a wall fan and a lazy rotating fan above her bed. She had a ceiling fan in the Philippines that she always found uncomfortable to sleep under after a shower or walking home in the rain, as she would end up with a cold.

She unpacked her things and looked around the room. The lack of windows and the single bulb hanging from the ceiling seemed prison-like, and she began thinking of the flower-patterned lampshades that she used to stretch over thin wire and sell at the Sunday market in her village. She could easily make one to dress up the room. This was going to be her home for the next two years, and she was determined to make the atmosphere homey and cozy.

There was no kitchen, just a single wooden table with a matching chair. The bed was a low queen-sized bed with white sheets. It seemed large for her, but she reveled in the one touch of luxury. A single mirror hung above a white washbasin. On the opposite wall hung a painting of a forest and lake with birds on the horizon. The room was clean and neat, and Violeta thought about where she could put a flowerpot. She could not help feeling like she was in a forced dormitory, a strict Catholic boarding school, or a penitentiary.

When evening came, Mrs Santos summoned everyone on Violeta's floor into the hallway. The girls stood in front of the doors to their rooms like prisoners in front of their cells or nervous soldiers meeting their general for the first time. Mrs Santos gave each young woman a Panadol and a sip of water from a small paper cup. “This will help you sleep better,” she said.

Violeta could not help but feel like she was back in Catholic girls school and Mrs Santos was the priest, giving the sacramental wafer. Mrs Santos said she was being supportive of her fellow
kabayans
because they needed to be bright-eyed for the next day. The young women were all nervous, curious, and guarded as they took the pill before going to bed. Violeta slept soundly, for which she was grateful because she had not stopped thinking of her family and her hopes of changing everything for the best.

She woke the next day feeling dizzy and lazy. She went to the bathroom but had to wait twenty minutes for a shower. The conversation among the women was friendlier than the day before. It was an international group made up of young women from the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Armenia, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Morocco, and Egypt. Apparently none of them measured up for working in the posh hotels, as they had been sent to this hostel until further notice. All seemed pretty and full of promise. A few were weepy and others prayed that they could climb up the ladder.

Violeta's tears ran like a stream in the hot shower. She felt like she had poured her last asset down the drain.
She was determined to speak to Mrs Santos,
kabayan
to
kabayan
. Surely Mrs Santos could find her a better position. Lucas had said his colleague's girlfriend and friends were all working in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah as cooks, maids, tailors, receptionists, manicurists, and teachers' assistants. Could they help? She could not go back to the Philippines now. She could work as a maid for $200 a month for two years and be fine, since the family would provide meals and accommodations.

Claustrophobia began to set in. Violeta disliked how she and her colleagues were herded like cattle into the halls. She could not shake off the jet lag. That morning Mrs Santos said that due to their appearance, they would not work in a hotel. Ever. Some of the women started weeping and blowing their noses, making a dull murmur in the background. Violeta stood up and asked what kind of work they were supposed to do. She pointed out that she had personally pawned her last asset to be able to work; she did not mention that she was the sole breadwinner and needed some job—any job—to support her dependent family. She stood there, looking at Mrs Santos, demanding an answer politely but firmly, hoping she would not notice her trembling fingers.

That was when the gates of hell opened.

Mrs Santos said that the women would receive a bed and meals plus a salary of $136 a month to entertain customers.

“My dear, the most I can do for you is to introduce you to your customers, and you will be taken care of.” She
paused to see if her meaning was clear. “This means you will have to sleep with your customers,” Mrs Santos added quietly and ever so coolly, as if she were asking if  Violeta would like one cube of sugar for her tea, or two.

Silence swept through the room, then a murmur, and then as things were explained voices were raised and tones were sharper. The twenty young women began to shout at Mrs Santos. The noise was louder than anyone could comprehend. Mrs Santos told the newcomers that the entire four-story building was full of women prostituting themselves. She said it casually and lightly as if it were common practice. They all had signed contracts, and they would be compensated. She added that she was fair and kind. She said that after the two-year contract the girls could leave with their compensation and a bonus. She smiled as she said it.

Violeta went to her room to pack and leave. She would walk to the airport and head back home. Part-time jobs were available, or the family could sell part of the land. Her thoughts were racing and she was crying when quietly and quickly a strong figure came up from behind and put a handkerchief soaked in something over her mouth. Violeta was unconscious by the second breath she took.

When she awoke, her wrists and ankles had been tied to the bed. She was too drugged to yell for help, and she was still under the notion that she was back in her province. She felt that there was someone in the room, but she could not make out who it was. She was so sleepy that the fan did not even bother her.

She woke up at night with the scent of a musky men's cologne in the air, or was it on the sheets? Mrs Santos walked in and began speaking indistinctly about how she would get used to it. She told Violeta she had serviced three men already, but Violeta was too drugged to fully understand. Her tied hands itched. She sat up, but the drugs affected her balance, and she lay down once again. There was a dull pain in her private parts. Her body felt mangled.

Mrs Santos stroked Violeta's hair and dried her face with a handkerchief. Violeta was too drugged to even wipe away her tears. Food was brought in and Violeta was left alone. She had been doped and raped, and she could not do anything about it. She did not even see their faces, these men who had taken her so intimately. She did not even know their names.

A single pill would be left next to a bottle of water on the table for her to take in case she was to get pregnant. She felt like an animal in a cave. Sometimes she would fight, but that would mean being injected with more drugs, and then she would service more men and be left feeling sore and sometimes bruised by the sadistic few. She fought during the first few weeks, but eventually began taking the pills to ease the pain, to protect against pregnancy, and to sleep. The women were turned into drugged bodies to be able to handle the emotional pressure of the situation.

This was going to be her life for the next two years. She serviced as many as fifteen customers a day of different classes, nationalities, and ages. She begged the Filipino men to notify the embassy, but they did not help and sometimes
never came back to her. Some men told her to wear a cotton mask to prevent the spread of germs. Some would beat her if she refused, so she became obedient and never fought back.

As the days passed, there was no need to be tied down. Apathy descended upon the girls, who serviced a minimum of five men a day. The women were not allowed out, so others wired money to their families. The women were told that after two years they had the option of either going back to their homes or continuing their job. The flock of sheep that they were, the women sought refuge in each other's pain and stories. Some eventually gave in, but when they did, they were never the same again. They stopped complaining and even stopped talking. They became robots that wanted nothing more than for the day to end. Some attempted suicide. A few managed to kill themselves. The rest were broken into the trade by six months.

The customers were working class, single and married men. They knew the women were forced into prostitution and kept captive, and sometimes they would chat if they were sober. If they were drunk, they could get aggressive. Men were not allowed to bring sharp objects to the bedrooms. Sometimes the women would miss a fellow prisoner and would hear through whispers that she had been killed; some had been strangled, others left to bleed to death. Mrs Santos tried to keep everyone awake so they could scream if the customer became violent.

Human trafficking is illegal everywhere, but people everywhere still do it. Some are forced into it. Others are addicted
to heroin, cocaine, and other hard drugs and servicing clients was the only way to get a continued supply from the drug sellers. Sometimes female members of a household were pawned or held responsible for a drunken father or gambling husband. Violeta met European women who had been imprisoned in a hostel in Serbia and then flown to the UAE. Many were happy about the change, since they would one day earn their freedom, while European prisoners never got out.

Mrs Santos constantly told Violeta and the other girls that she was their partner, that she only gave them pills, which was a light drug. She said that in the city men drove around, luring Filipina, Ethiopian and Indonesian maids who had gone grocery shopping into running away and working “part time” where they would have independence, more pay and travel to Europe. The maids would join and then be trapped in the man's apartment and forced to service clients there. If the man was desperate—a gambler or a drunk—he would lower the price, letting in as many clients as possible for as little as possible, because he simply did not care. All he cared about was collecting money for his habit at the end of the day. These were the worst situations for a woman to be in—far worse than where they were.

Violeta had read about Stockholm Syndrome and could see it developing all around her. Some of the girls grew attached to Mrs Santos for the small kindnesses she showed and for her honesty, forgetting she was their captor. Violeta found herself feeling grateful that she was not piercing her veins with the narcotics.

One morning a drug-addicted European prisoner sliced her wrists in the shower and bled to death. When Violeta walked into the shower, the woman's eyes were open, the shower was running, and her long, orange hair reached to her waist, covering her breasts. With her legs folded to one side, she looked like the Little Mermaid, and shared the same ending.

Violeta cried for the woman and for herself. The woman's heart had taken more than her body could handle. Violeta knew the woman and knew she had lost count of how many years she had been in the trade and how many abortions she had had. The woman suffered from partial amnesia of certain episodes of her life. She forgot the faces of her children, and she would cry and walk around with a pillow, thinking it was her baby. In Europe, the woman had not been taken care of by her madam, Mrs Santos said, using the episode to remind her prisoners of how much better off they were.

The police discovered the brothel one night and barged into the rooms. The women screamed, thinking they were in trouble, but the police were not there to take them to jail. They were there to set them free. Only the women's keepers were arrested. Violeta saw Mrs Santos in handcuffs being escorted by a police officer. Her head was bowed, in prayer or in shame, as she was led to the police van.

Violeta was sent to live in the Dubai Charity Home, a shelter for abused women. She stayed there for two years, recuperating physically and emotionally. She took up music while in recovery and found solace in it, playing the piano with such passion that it became an adventure, a tragedy,
and a murderous romance all in one. Through music, the spell of abuse was broken.

Violeta left the shelter, but was so moved by the experience that she decided to work in one as a way of helping others who had been put in similar circumstances. She now teaches music therapy to victims of human trafficking at a shelter in Dubai, earning enough money to put her siblings through college.

Sleeping with the Nanny

I was seated next to my husband, Eissa, when the brain surgeon at Hamad General Hospital in Doha, Qatar, informed us that my partner of seventeen years had brain cancer. Had it been another form of cancer I might have reacted more collectedly, as recovery rates for many forms of cancer are well above fifty percent. But brain cancer is different. Its recovery rates remain low, and its treatment is difficult and painful. My father had died of another deadly form of cancer, lung cancer, and the nightmare of his agony flashed before me. Cancer was taking everyone I loved from me. When were they going to invent a cure for this Black Death?

I was engulfed in fear, for here was the man I loved, at the age of thirty-nine, fighting for his life. And so began the long, emotionally exhausting journey of treatments, tests, and scans to check whether the cancer was shrinking or growing. This put a strain on all of us: my husband, me, our children, and our nanny, Veronica, who had cared for my husband since he was a child and now was helping us to raise our five children. It seemed like every ounce of energy was being drained out of our bodies. All
I wanted was for my husband and our lives to return to normal.

Throughout the travels to Germany and the UK to see cancer specialists, the hospital stays, tests, treatments, and loss of hair, Veronica was with him. As I watched how close they were, it seemed heartwarming, but slowly it turned into something else, something unseemly and almost incestuous. Ashamed of my suspicions, I punished myself for thinking the way I did. I was being selfish and jealous at a time when maturity was required. However, the situation did not make handling Eissa's illness any easier.