In a new story, Zlata Filipovicresponds to Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as part of a series in association with Amnesty International to mark the 60th anniversary of the declaration
ALL SHE WANTS is to go for a cup of coffee . . .
She looks at me. Measures up me and the other girl who came in with me today, both of us clutching our note pads, full of questions. We came to learn from her, she is a living example both of us are writing our theses about. I am here to get more of the political-social perspective, while Maya (we met on the stairs, just before entering the room) is doing her thesis on the psychological effects. Maya is the only one writing about this topic, and I can tell she is excited at the prospect of getting the position of an assistant to the main professor, all going well, fingers crossed.
Barbara keeps looking at us, while Alma, her "guardian", is explaining more about how she came to know Barbara. Rather, how Barbara ended up knowing Alma. Barbara is looking down at her hands which she crossed on her lap. She occasionally raises her eyes to look at me and Maya, while we frantically take notes. She cuts through Alma's delivery of facts and looks me straight in the eyes, then drops them to my feet and in broken language she says, "I like your sandals". I am confused, I didn't expect her to speak - to speak my language, or speak at all. Of course she would, she has been in my country for many years now. She chews her gum, sports cropped hair - that short practical hairstyle women sometimes get in their forties and carry for the rest of their life. It clashes with her young face, she is only 19. I notice her skin, beautiful, porcelain-like, and her heart-shaped face. Small blue eyes look straight into mine, she looks at me tough, provocatively. I feel she wants to show she is fine, she can manage, she will be fine. She looks both at me and the psychology MPhil student as though we are little girls, even though we are a few years older than her. There are questions in her eyes asking why are we here, what do we want. She then looks out the window, into the sunny day. The length of her gaze at the sunny town underneath screams of her desire to be outside.
I know Maya and I have both read everything there is to read on her and so many other girls, young women who ended up living her story. We have the non-governmental organisation reports, their statistics, country profiles, testimonies, legal documents, some psychological assessments. Barbara is the final link in the chain of completing our research. Then we can write it all up and submit, maybe even get a distinction.
I look at Barbara's hands. She bites her fingernails, but still has remnants of purple nail varnish close to the nail roots. There are round, light-brown marks - scars scattered along her forearms. It looks like the round marks of vaccinations we get as children. Looking at them today, we have forgotten how we screamed and cried the day we got them. But these marks are different, I have read about them - these are cigarette burns. She wears a sleeveless top, tight denim shorts, and platform mules. She doesn't mind her scars are showing.
Alma continues talking about the work of the organisation, the difficulty with funding, when Barbara jumps through Alma's words again - "You want to know what happened? That is why you are here, right? My grandmother sold me. Some men came into the village, offered a big wad of euros which she quickly took into her old, dirty hands. She said she needed the money to educate my younger brother, make something useful of him. She has been taking care of my brother and I ever since our mother left. No one knows where my mother is, I have gotten used to the fact I have no mother. Grandmother was never kind, she beat me and made me work in the house and the garden. She was glad to get rid of me, and the witch even got some money in return. And boys are always better, girls don't bring anything but trouble. She saw that with her own daughter, my mother I never knew.
"The men said I will go to Germany to work in a family as a cleaner, and they packed me and four other girls into a big van and we drove for hours, days. We had no light in there, we heard lots of different languages spoken outside of the truck, stopping every so often. They let us out twice to go to the toilet and gave us some bread. Next time I saw light I was in front of 'Arizona'. They spoke in a language similar to mine, so I understood a bit. I realised 'Arizona' was not Germany. I knew there was no family for me to work in. They packed us girls into this club - that is what 'Arizona' was. The man who looked like some boss gave us dresses and high heels and said we were lucky because we could now work and pay back the money our families got, otherwise they didn't know what they might have to do to our families. One of the girls started crying, she had a baby back home. I didn't care what happened to the old witch, but I love my little brother and didn't want anything bad to happen to him. The men said it cost them a lot to bring us here, to give us this chance. We first needed to pay back our transport and visas, and then we would pay back the money our families got. Then we would start getting something for ourselves. We had to do what they told us, but it could all be over soon, as soon as we earned back the money. So I worked, you know?"
Maya and I are no longer taking notes.
"Men kept coming in, drunken, fat, angry. They told me you had a war in this country. I don't understand, what is wrong with you people? All these men coming in to 'Arizona' were former soldiers, policemen - mad - they had to get what they wanted. Each one had a gun or a knife in their pockets, some came in their uniforms. We had to dance and when they wanted to be with us, we had to go. I didn't like the music, it was loud and had these strong beats. I like nice stuff, like this Irish band, The Corrs. I like this song Dreams, you know it?
"Sometimes, there were twelve, fifteen of them in one night. I had a boyfriend back home, he was from my town so I had already done it before. But these men asked for strange things, and if I didn't give them what they wanted, they beat me, put cigarettes into my skin, played with a knife on my body. They said I am a whore. I didn't listen, I wasn't there. I learnt this trick of not feeling like I was in the room with them.
We slept during the day in a room with lots of beds, and then had to get dressed up, put on make-up and go on the dancefloor again. Night into night, week into week. How long was I there, Alma?"
Alma responds. "Two and a half years."
"Yeah, so . . . There was a big lock on the door of the dormitory, and big men who stood on the door of the club. You couldn't go outside.
"I became friends with Lena, she was also 16, she was in the club before me. Our beds were near, so sometimes we did each other's make-up. Sometimes Lena cried and I stroked her hair like a little baby's, like my brother's. The owner of the club gave Lena some white pills one night, and Lena didn't remember what happened. She didn't know how to do the trick of not feeling like she was there. She liked not remembering, so took another pill, and one every night. She started shaking during the day, sleeping all day until I would have to get her out of bed, do her make-up, and then she'd have another pill. She stopped crying, just slept and waited for the next time she could have the little white pill. She really wasn't there, it wasn't like my trick. After one night she didn't come back to dormitory, I asked where she was. The boss slapped me hard, my nose spurted blood, it was like a bloody tap. I kept telling Lena one day we would be out, and go for coffee together and go shopping with the money we will get from all this. But after that time the boss hit me, I never saw or mentioned Lena again."
Barbara now sleeps again in another dormitory, with lots of other girls like her. They don't speak to each other. Local volunteer women come in and make them knit and draw, and talk. "It is so boring, what do I need to knit for?" It is called a safe house, there is a big sign outside called "Woman 21". Alma's son comes sometimes, he teaches computers. He is nice, has nice hands with long fingers when he types on the computer. He is the only man apart from the lawyer who comes in. They are trying to organise something with the courts, but Barbara doesn't want to go. "What do I need to go to court for? They are all the same anyway, I remember hearing the judge was sometimes coming into the club. And policemen - the same ones who said they will kill me. What do I get by going to court for?"
"Do you want to go home?" speaks Maya, for the first time.
Barbara is imprisoned even though she is now safe - she has no status, no documents. She knows too much about the dark side of this town. She has seen fathers, brothers, policemen, businessmen, judges who came to the club, they went into the rooms with her. At home, she has no one but her grandmother, maybe still her brother.
She looks out through the sun-filled window again.
"Let's go for a cup of coffee."
ARTICLE 4
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
This is one in a series of 30 stories and essays by leading Irish writers marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The series was created by Sean Love for Amnesty International and continues next Saturday. www.amnesty.ie