1.
This was not my first time in the air. I had flown before to the
south of Kyrgyzstan and even to Azerbaijan on that student exchange
long ago. But now, I was not thinking about flying. I was too worried,
and could not stop trying to figure out what had really happened with
the police officer at the airport. Why had they pulled me aside? Why
had they asked me for money? And, why did they let me go after
that? I was worried that Nurgul may not wait for me at Dubai Airport.
What if she was not there? I had no money. I did not know the city. I
also thought about arriving in a foreign country. Would it be easy and
smooth? What if they pulled me aside like they had in Bishkek? How
would I communicate with them?
Again, I had so many questions, and I could only pray that everything
would turn out as promised. I tried to calm myself by watching and
listening to the other people on the plane. Many of them looked
ordinary like me, and they even spoke the same language. I felt
protected by their presence. A Russian lady in her early forties and
her teenage daughter sat next to me. She told me that she worked as
a hairdresser at the military base near Dubai and that she lived there
more than four years.
“Is it your first time going to Dubai?” she asked. I told her yes, and
that I was going to visit my sister who worked in Iran, but she was
now waiting for me in Dubai. She spoke positively about Dubai. She
said that I would be very surprised by the tall buildings and luxury
everywhere. “You’ve never seen such luxury before!” Then, tired of
talking to me, she reached for a fashion magazine and started reading.
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I turned to look through the window. The plane was flying over the
peaks of our Kyrgyz mountains. Surrounded by clouds, they looked
like islands. Leaving them behind made me feel miserable. Up in the
sky and closer to God, again I felt that this trip made no sense to me. I
had left behind my children, my family and my country, and I did not
know what was going to happen to me in this foreign world. I thought
about little Bolot. This was the first morning that I did not breastfeed
him. I felt guilty and my shirt around my breast became wet. I slipped
two napkins under my bra to absorb the sticky liquid, and zipped up
my jacket.
The Russian lady did not notice. She still read her colorful magazine
full of beautiful girls. The plane flew fast and quickly passed over the
mountainous part of Kyrgyzstan, and then over plain whiteness. Flight
attendants came with food and drinks, handing out aluminum boxes of
reheated rice and beef. I was already hungry, and somehow every bite
of food brought me unexpected optimism. I thought again about the
reasons why I had to leave. I went over them in my head, and they
were suddenly so clear. At this moment, I managed to remember the
elusive purpose of my journey again. I wanted nothing else but to
earn money and to provide my family with all the things we wanted.
I wanted to see my children properly dressed and wearing new shoes.
I thought about a washing machine, which we never had. I wanted to
feed us with some of the food we saw in television commercials. Our
people say, “Leave with a light bag and return with a filled suitcase.”
The clouds disappeared and I saw the flat, endless desert on one side
and the huge, endless blue sea on the other. Dubai now was beneath
us and we landed quickly. The police officer here was not surprised
that I came to visit my sister. She was a lady with a covered head who
gave me an absent look and did not ask much. She let me pass through
quickly. It was too fast and too easy to be true. Was it really that easy?
She did not even stamp my passport. I was confused. No one would
ever believe that I had been to Dubai! I asked myself if I should go
back to check if she had made a mistake. How could I explain what I
wanted? Maybe it was better just to carry on.
It seemed that in rich countries police officers were much better than
in poor ones. Or maybe they were just absent-minded. I was stunned
by the luxury of Dubai’s airport. The place was like another planet;
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everything was shiny and new. I wanted to sit down to look all around,
but I continued following everyone else from our plane to avoid
getting lost. I saw the Russian lady with her daughter and I rushed to
catch up with her. They were well dressed and acting little arrogant
around me. We walked through long corridors before we came to the
place to wait for our bags. The baggage came, people grabbed their
own and then disappeared. I was happy to finally see mine come out.
We both had arrived safely in Dubai.
***
I grabbed my bag and walked further, still following the few
recognizable people. As soon as I came to where visitors mixed with
the arriving passengers a young woman approached me and asked if I
was Gulnara, Nurgul’s sister-in-law. “Yes I am!” I heard myself say.
She spoke Kyrgyz, and she looked Kyrgyz. How grateful I was that
she had spotted me that fast. I wanted to kiss her and hug her as if
she were someone already close to me. I thought this was a good sign,
and I was relieved as my first big fear that no one would meet me
disappeared.
The young woman asked me to call her Adele, and she quickly added
that Nurgul had asked her to take care of me, because she could not
come to pick me up. Adele was younger than me, maybe 26 or 27
years old, and an ordinary Kyrgyz girl, who felt superior enough to
treat me as if she was older. Before I said anything else, I told her that
I was married and had four children.
We were already outside, and she signaled for a taxi, speaking English
to the driver. In the car, she was chatty and praised the city as if it were
her hometown, telling me to look at this and that as we sped along.
“You have never seen such a beautiful city!” she told me confidently.
Compared to Tokmok, Dubai looked like a tall, well-decorated
wedding cake, and I supposed that everyone living here never went
hungry. The new buildings stood high and were made out of huge
pieces of glass, metal and concrete. Even in Bishkek, we did not have
buildings like these – not a single one! Adele saw that I was impressed
by the architecture, and she continued showing me the important
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buildings we passed. She did it with a proud passion, as if she had
built them herself. She lived in Dubai for almost two years now, and
she wanted to show me that she felt at home.
I asked her why her name was Adele, which is not a Kyrgyz name. “I
now live in Dubai, and my name should sound appropriate for Dubai,”
she said matter-of-factly, almost as if people normally changed their
names for every city they live in. I wondered if Gulnara was a name
appropriate for Dubai. I suspected that it was not. I guessed that Adele
sounded like a brand new Dubai building, and Gulnara sounded like a
Tokmok Stalinka
Stalink .
I realized that Adele was dressed very much like Nurgul; they looked
almost as if they were sisters. They even behaved similarly. The way
she held her shiny cell phone, her thick and shiny nail polish, and her
self-important business-like attitude were all the same. Also, they both
spoke Kyrgyz with the same accent, different from an ordinary accent,
as if they tried to show that they had forgotten the language a little bit.
She continued by comparing her previous life in Kyrgyzstan with her
new one in Dubai.
“Oh, how happy I am here!” she repeated continuously, “I am so
thankful to Nurgul’s sister Anara, who took me away from my dull life
in Tokmok. She really saved my life!”
Like me, Adele was from Tokmok. There she was married to a very
religious man. She had a daughter with him and they lived together in
a small one-room apartment. In that flat there was no furniture; they
slept and ate on the floor. She even needed to cook on the floor using
a small electric plate. Can you imagine? Her husband was going to a
mosque to pray five times a day, and in the evening he brought home
nothing but scant money for some potatoes and meat. They wore
the same old clothes, but when she said that she wanted to work, he
forbade her. In the end, he even started pressuring her to pray.
Anara helped her to run away from him, and Anara helped her start a
new independent life far away. Truly she did miss her daughter, but
she said she was convinced that one day the girl would understand
why her mother had needed to leave her. “She will learn to respect the
money I’m saving for her,” Adele said without bitterness.
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I asked Adele when Nurgul was coming, and when I was going to get
my visa for Iran. I explained to her that my family was in desperate
need of money and that I could not wait to start earning. She replied
that there was no need to rush – I had just arrived. “Live now, and
enjoy Dubai first!” Adele added that the next day, after I had had
rested, she would talk to me about everything.
The taxi stopped in front of a tall apartment building. Adele proudly
gestured to a security guard standing near the entrance desk. “We
have two guards here, and they are here 24 hours,” she bragged. But
the man with the dark face did not bother to say hello to us. He did
it unwillingly, only after Adele greeted him. The apartment where
Adele brought me was on the second floor. She explained that the first
floor was a big garage for cars. They wasted a floor of such a beautiful
building just for cars? She rang the apartment door twice, and another
Kyrgyz girl opened it. I came in and said hello. The apartment was
nice and spacious – we do not have apartments like that in Tokmok.
Three more girls sat at a table eating and, as Kyrygz usually do, they
invited me to sit and have dinner with them.
***
Many different fruits sat in a bowl on the table: bananas, kiwis, grapes
and some other unusual fruit I had never seen before. The girls smoked
long, narrow cigarettes and ate plo v. They offered me a cigarette, and
I told them I did not smoke. Adele introduced me to all four women.
They were my age or younger, and they all came from Tokmok. What
a long day! It had started with my mother-in-law’s plov for breakfast
in Tokmok and it seemed to me that this had been weeks ago. And
now, in the very same day I was in Dubai and I was eating plov for
dinner, too.
You do not sit at someone’s table without bringing a present, so I took
the bottle of vodka from my bag and put it on the table. Although they
already had wine in their glasses, they happily switched to vodka.
They were delighted that I offered it. “We knew it!” they laughed,
“Our people always travel with bottles of vodka!” The kitchen
was luxurious; there was a shiny stove with gas and electricity, a
fashionable metallic refrigerator, and a dishwashing machine. The girls
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munched and swallowed, but when they saw the bottle of vodka, they
opened it quickly and filled their glasses generously.
They asked me how life was in Kyrgyzstan in general and in Tokmok
in particular. What was new in the motherland? What could I say?
There was nothing good. There were revolutions and unemployment,
and even with four young children I needed to come all this way to
find work!
It turned out that most of the women had left behind their families
too. They eagerly criticized life in Kyrgyzstan. “There was no future
there!” they all agreed. Dubai, on the other hand, was a city from a
fairy tale and life here was how it should be. “Look at the fruits we
have on the table,” one of them pointed out as she peeled and sliced
kiwis, “We live like this everyday. You can have as much as you want,
and you can eat such luxury food three times a day, not only on special
occasions.”
They suddenly got very passionate about this and I did not know what
to say to them. I realized that these young women were from much
poorer families than I was. My life did have very hard moments, but
I never starved and I knew what good food was. Tropical fruits were
not so unusual for me. We used to buy them during the better times
when Bakyt earned well. For these girls, however, having such food
on the table was a lifetime achievement. I then realized that the bottle
of vodka was empty.
I asked them where they worked, and if they were happy with their
salaries. At first they laughed as if they did not know what to say. Then
they said that they worked the night shift at the supermarket. When
they laughed and giggled again, I realized that they were drunk. As
I wondered how they would work drunk, they stood up one by one.
They wore jeans and long skirts.
I was already tired, so I thanked them for dinner. They told me there
was no need to thank them for food. I was going to start earning
soon, and then I would contribute for the rent and for the food too. I
reminded them that I was there only for a while, until my sister Nurgul
came, and then I was going to work in Iran. They did not listen to me
any more as they were busy getting ready and soon they were gone.
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Adele showed me where I was going to sleep and told me that I could
enjoy some privacy until the morning, when the girls would return
from their night shift. The apartment had two bedrooms and the room
where I was going to sleep had four beds. It was a clean room with
thick curtains and no personal touches. There was one bedside table
with two identical Russian-English dictionaries sitting on it.
Adele also showed me to her bedroom. It was a big room with a king-
sized bed that she shared with her boyfriend, a Lebanese-Canadian
in his fifties, who worked for a construction company. He was on a
business trip, but she expected him to return in the morning. The
apartment had also a spacious living room with a television set and
a big aquarium. Adele proudly showed me all this property, as it
represented her own achievement. For some reason she felt the need
to impress me with that. So, I expressed my appreciation to her, and I
said that I looked forward to hearing about Nurgul the next day.
Before I went to sleep, I peeked thought the window just to make sure
that I was really in Dubai – maybe everything was just a dream and
I was still in Tokmok. But the street beneath my window was far too
shiny and busy, and the cars were too big. I was indeed in a foreign
country, and I was indeed in Dubai.
***
I do not know when I woke up in the morning, because my watch
still showed Kyrgyz time and I knew that there must have been a
time difference. The room where I slept was filled with other sleeping
women. Two of them I knew from the previous night, but two of
them I did not recognize. I peeked through the window to see how
the city looked in the morning. The big sea I saw from the airplane
was not visible and I wondered where it was. I thought about the
previous evening, and although the women were kind to me the day
before, I really wanted to see Nurgul to find out about my visa and
going to Iran.
Though it was only late May the sun outside seemed very strong
and the air-conditioning continuously blew cool air. Apart from this
sound, it was quiet in the apartment. I dressed quickly and went to
the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator I did not feel comfortable taking
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individual pieces of cheese. Instead, I chose the leftover plov. Adele
came in and asked me to fry two eggs and sausages for her boyfriend
who was back.
Without saying hello, he appeared in the kitchen door, his face full of
shaving cream. After I served the dish, Adele asked me to go to living
room for a while – her boyfriend liked to eat breakfast in private. She
also reminded me that after everyone had woken up and left, we were
going to talk. I went to the living room and switched on the television
to the same Russian channel we usually watched at home.
Adele was different toward me this morning, rather cold and bossy,
so when I saw the familiar television personality’s face I felt more
comfortable than before. I watched the news, and although I had been
at home less than two days ago, I suddenly found myself eagerly
expecting to hear news about Kyrgyzstan. Gradually, all the girls
awoke. The toilet was constantly occupied and the doors of all the
rooms opened and closed.
I noticed that the women did not sound very friendly with each other.
Adele argued with one of them about money, while two others fought
about whose turn it was to vacuum and who was going to wash the
dishes. I wondered why they bragged about the dishwasher if they
fought about doing dishes. I felt uncomfortable listening to them, so
I suggested that I could do both. At any rate, this apartment was so
much easier to clean than my mother-in-law’s. The girls ignored me
completely.
A Kyrgyz-Lithuanian girl named Lolita appeared at the door of the
living room holding a vacuum cleaner, so for a while I did not hear
anything except the vacuum. When Lolita finished, she showed me a
family photo from her wallet. “My ex-husband and my daughter,” she
said. I had a feeling that I had seen them somewhere before. Tokmok
is not that big after all. Maybe in my children’s school? Or maybe
somewhere else? Were we neighbors? Had we bumped into each other
at the bazaar?
Lolita was the last one to leave and I was finally alone in the apartment
with Adele. She wanted me to talk to her in the kitchen. She acted as
if she was in a hurry and did not have much time to waste with me.
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This attitude was the very opposite from her kindness of the day before
and it confused me.
She started, “So Gulnara, can you now be honest and tell me that
you know why are you here in Dubai?” I did not understand what she
wanted to say, and my face must have shown it. So she continued.
“You know that there is no Iran for you?”
Shocked, I asked what she meant, and she answered, “I mean, do you
know that you will stay and work here in Dubai?” Of course I did not
know! Why would I stay in Dubai if a job was waiting for me in Iran?
I asked her where Nurgul was, because she had arranged everything.
With her face darkening, Adele replied with the hard and steady
strength of a train determined to push ahead. I sat, already numbed
from the inside my stomach, and she let me have it all at once: “Nurgul
is not here, and she will not come. Nurgul sold you to me for $7,000
and now you have to work to earn this money so you can repay me.
Nurgul was supposed to tell you what kind of work you had here, but
if she didn’t tell you, I will. You are going to go with the other girls to
the hotel bar, and you will work there as a prostitute. There is nothing
shameful in this job. It is a much better job for you than working in
the supermarket. Nobody goes to Iran to work in the supermarket, and
you are really stupid if you thought so. Everybody knows what kind of
job we do here!”
She continued, “Your job here, with me, is like any other job in the
world. It has working hours and it has rules. You start tonight. The
girls will dress you up, and you will go with them to the disco bar. All
the money you earn, you will give to me until you pay back the money
you owe me. When you pay off your $7,000, you can go wherever you
want. You will be free. You can start earning for yourself. When you
earn enough, you can go back to your husband if you want. But your
husband will love the money more than you, and you too will start
loving money more than your husband. This is a fact of life.”
Adele did not look as if she was joking, and this was not a dream.
Her words were as sturdy and unmovable as the walls of the apartment
where I stood, where I was suddenly captured. Her words paralyzed
me and I could not say anything. I heard her talking about how she
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started the same way, and that only after one year she found the
man she lives with now. She did not have to work anymore, others
worked for her. She continued by telling me that she was successful,
and that all the girls arrived like me: reluctant to start, afraid and with
prejudice.
She finished by saying, “But now, they are all grateful to me. I
saved them from poverty. I saved them from a life with nothing in
Kyrgyzstan. You will be grateful to me too!”
Before I knew what was happening, I slapped her on her face, and
said, “I want you to call Nurgul right now, because I don’t believe
anything you say.” Adele pushed me back strongly, and I fell down.
She was yelling now, her eyes cruel and cutting. She screamed that
she had been very good to me, but if I made her show her other face,
she would. “If you refuse to do what I tell you to do, I am going to call
twenty Arabs to rape you in this room right now, and you will agree
to everything I say, just to get them off of you! So you’d better be
reasonable!”
I begged, as a mother of four children, to let me go. I managed to
get out of the room and I tried to think of how I could run away. She
called me a stupid woman, and asked where I thought I was going.
Adele was laughing at me now, and she laughed even more scornfully
as she told me that I had no money, I did not know the city, I did not
speak the language, and that she held my passport. A man appeared
in the front door and asked Adele if she needed help. Together, they
pushed me into the bedroom and told me that I had two days to decide
if I wanted to do what she said. If I did not, they told me that they
would make me do it anyway, against my will.
***
They closed and locked the door, and their last words, “stupid
woman”, hurt me like a sharp spear through my stomach, echoing in
my head for a long time. How could I have been so stupid? How could
I have thought about a job in a supermarket, without even considering
that it may not be true? How could I have believed Nurgul so blindly?
How could it be possible that she had really done this to me?
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At this moment my life seemed like a picture on a playing card
– destined always to be in someone else’s hand. Every part of my
life now seemed meaningless, except for my children. But they were
now far away from me. Their stupid mother had left them and was
now lying on the bed of some prostitute, forced to decide whether
to become one herself. At the same time, my breasts were full of
unconsumed milk for my baby son - the baby son I had left because I
was a stupid woman, nothing but a stupid woman!