Two Kyrgyz Women by Marinka Franulovic - HTML preview

something was wrong. Somehow, she found out what I had said, and

she grabbed my arm and cursed in my ear, saying that will be the last

time I ever said “busy” to anyone. Later, when I got back to my room,

the dictionaries were gone.

The next day, Adele told me that I was going to learn what real work

was. She said that she had been too good to me, and I did not know

how to appreciate it. Tonight, I was going to work for Manon, who

had an order for a girl in her thirties, not too tall and not too thin, and

that was going to be me.

At seven o’clock, a taxi came to pick me up. I was brought to Manon’s

apartment, where she waited to personally dress and make me up. At

over forty, Manon was much older than Adele. She wore a blue mini-

skirt with matching shadow above her eyes. For some reason, she did

not speak Kyrgyz to me, but spoke Russian instead. She looked like

someone you could not share a laugh with. She looked frightening.

From the moment I was delivered to her, she only barked orders at me.

“Put this on. Sit down here. Close your eyes. Open them. Stretch your

lips. Color your nails. Get your condom,” she would command.

She gave me a very revealing black mini-skirt to wear, and she applied

much more makeup on my face than Adele ever did. All the while,

she complained about how Adele was too young to do this job, too

inexperienced, and clearly gave too much freedom to her girls. She

was happy to tell me that, in her opinion, Adele had a long way to go

before she could reach this level of service and clientele.

Manon bragged about how disciplined her own girls were, and how

important this was. She listed all the things forbidden to her girls.

Then she told me how important her clients were, and these rich and

powerful men were the best her girls could ever hope for.

Manon talked and smoked with her face close to mine, blowing smoke

directly at me. After she applied bright red lipstick on my lips, she told

me to smile. When she saw my two golden teeth, one on the left and

140

one on the right, she erupted in anger and insulted me saying that I

was a mere village girl, too ugly for her very refined clients.

“European men hate that!” she exclaimed. “For them, golden teeth

are primitive. Once they found a few golden teeth on one of my girls

and they made fun of her. She needed to show it off like a donkey

at the marketplace. They laughed at her so much they even took

a picture of it to laugh about it later. You had better smile without

showing your teeth.”

Manon was happy when my face was done. When I saw myself in the

mirror, I wanted to die. I looked like the very lowest street prostitute.

She told me that I had been ordered as a special present for a guest

from France and I needed to do my best to serve him well. If I made

any mistake, I would answer directly to her. When she saw my sad

face she tried to cheer me up by saying something in French, not only

pleasant, but something elegant and aristocratic. Maybe it was out of

a movie. She sent me off by saying, “Just don’t show him your teeth.

Keep your mouth covered all the time!”

***

Manon sent a man to escort me to the fourteenth floor of a residential

hotel, to make sure that I arrived where I needed to be. Once delivered

inside the room, I saw a man in his middle forties who looked at me

as uncomfortably as I looked at him. He had a rounded mustache

connected with a narrow beard, which was very neatly shaped. He

looked Arab, not French. I was extremely embarrassed. I felt terrible

about what I wore and how I looked. Most of all, I was mortified about

why I had been brought to him.

I quickly realized that this man looked normal enough. When I met

his eyes, I felt my long awaited chance, the one I had rehearsed in

my mind many times by now. I said it fast like a child sings a well-

rehearsed song, not knowing how it was supposed to sound or if he

was going to understand me.

“I mother four children,” I proclaimed. “I no prostitute. Promise work

supermarket. Help me. I want go home my children. I live Kyrgyzstan.

Please, help me!”

141

I did not stop at this, I could not; I continued talking, trying to make

the most of these fifteen words. I mixed them with Kyrgyz and

Russian. I spoke all languages I knew, I gestured to try to explain what

had happened to me. I said “baby” and I took my breast out to show

him those few drops of milk still leaking from me. Before I could

realize it, I started crying as sadly and as honestly as I could, from the

bottom of my heart. This took no effort at all.

The man brought me a glass of water and I used it to wash off the

makeup. The prostitute’s face did not belong to me, and I did not

want to wear it ever again. The man watched me. He was confused

and did not seem to know what to do. He started pacing the room,

and saying something in English, which I could not understand. I

understood when he said that he was a journalist. We say journalist

in Russian, too. Then, he started calling other people on the phone. I

think he spoke in French, and his conversations were long. I stood in

the corner, waiting for what was going to happen next. My life was

again in somebody else’s hands.

He brought me a phone and he told me that I could call anyone I

wanted. “Call Kyrgyzstan,” he said. I did not even know how to dial

my own country. I was embarrassed about this, and I was sure he

thought I was very stupid. And, it was true that I was stupid. It took

him a long time to find the numbers to make a call to Kyrgyzstan.

When he passed me the receiver, I suddenly did not even know whom

to call. What could I say to my husband if I called him? Could I

announce that I was in a hotel room with a foreign man, and that I had

been brought to have sex with him? How could I even start explaining

what had happened to me? No, there was no way I could say that to

my husband or to my mother-in-law. It would be too embarrassing.

So whom to call? I could not spend too much time thinking or this man

would think that had I made up the entire story, or that at least some

of it was a lie. I needed to call someone from my family, but only if

they could handle the shame of what I had to tell them. I decided to

call my other jeng e, the wife of my older brother. She was one of the

most reasonable women in my family, and only she might help me.

My heart beat faster when her phone started ringing, and I prayed that

she would answer. She did. I told her that Nurgul had cheated me– I

was not in Iran where she had promised me work.

142

Instead, I was in Dubai in a terrible situation. I asked her to call the

police, to call the Kyrgyz consulate in Dubai, to do anything to get me

out. I needed her to save my life.

The man asked me to call him Rashid. He was French-Arab. He

explained to me that he needed time to think of what he could do about

my situation. We needed to wait until the next day. He asked me to call

Manon and to tell her that he wanted me to stay with him the whole

night and the next day as well. I did what he said, and Manon was

delighted. She said it was okay, but that I should write down for the

man how much it would cost, and to make sure that he understood and

agreed. Then she told me that I needed to bring the money to Adele

the next day. She finished by excitedly adding, “Just don’t let him see

your gold teeth! You may spoil everything!”

The rest of the evening the man sat in front of his computer. He

allowed me to call my jenge again. She had already reached a senior

police officer she knew in Bishkek, and he promised to contact the

Kyrgyz consul in Dubai. He also let her know that it was much better

to do this from Kyrgyzstan, as we were doing. If I had made contact

with the consular office from Dubai, they might have hung up the

phone, because they would not have known who I was.

Rashid ordered sandwiches and beer for dinner. Again, I could not

eat. He explained to me that he had not wanted a prostitute. He lived

in France where he had his family. He showed me a photo of himself

with his wife and small child. I managed to let him know that I had a

child of the same age. He told me that here in Dubai, he had a friend

who always sent him girls, and that it would be offensive to reject his

friend’s generosity. So, he usually paid the girls and let them go.

I did not know if this was true or not, but this man was nice to me.

He let me sleep on the sofa bed and worked on his computer until

late. However, neither he nor I slept well. His breathing was deep

and irregular and he turned a lot. The presence of a foreign man made

me uncomfortable and I was too nervous to fall asleep. Finally, when

the morning light came in and he got his wake-up call we were both

still tired. He asked me to wait in the room until he came back from

work. He spoke about some interview, but I could not understand.

Then, he left. The freedom of being alone made me feel better, and I

143

felt that circumstances moved slightly in my favor. I even felt slightly

optimistic. I told myself Rashid was a good man, who understood

what had happened to me and was going to help me.

Then, my cell phone rang. First, it was Adele, and then it was Manon.

They wanted to make sure that everything was fine and they were full

of questions. Why did the man want to have me for the whole day?

Did he work? Who was he? Afraid that they might have suspected

something, I was submissive. I pretended that I was more naïve than

I was, and asked them what to do if the man wanted me to stay for

one more night after this. Reassured, they said it would be fine. I just

needed to bring the money for the first day to them, and if he wanted

to have me for one more night, he could make the whole arrangement

for the following day again.

“He didn’t pay in advance. Dear, if he pays in advance, he can have

you as long as he wants. Make him pay in advance,” Manon insisted.

***

I had breakfast in the room, and then I watched television for a long

time. I think that Rashid had ordered lunch for me because around

noon food was delivered. It was the same sandwich he had ordered

the night before. It looked appealing, but it tasted like rubber and I

left it untouched. There was time to kill, and I watched movies about

soldiers and a crime series about the rich. In the crime series a good-

looking female Russian police inspector managed to catch all the

criminals. I felt better after two episodes, until I realized that nothing

had actually changed in my own situation. A man I did not know had

promised to help me. I had no idea, however, if he really could or

would. I suddenly resented myself for having felt better so easily.

My deepest fears and worries came to the surface again. Although I

had informed my family about my situation here, I knew how slow

and how inefficient Kyrgyz officials could be, especially if you did not

have money to pay for better service. I was still in a foreign country,

forced to do this embarrassing job in the room of a stranger without

money and without my documents. If the man called the police, I

could be jailed for prostitution. I could spend a long time in prison,

and maybe would never see my children again.

144

It was early afternoon when Rashid returned, and he immediately told

me to get ready to go out with him. I still wore the horrible mini-skirt

– there was nothing else to change into – and I went out following

him. The inappropriate clothes made me feel miserable, but at least

we did not need to walk. A car in front of the hotel was waiting for us.

Maybe God had helped me to communicate with this man the night

before, because he seemed to understand what I was telling him, and I

could understand him, too. However, when he spoke to me in the car,

I did not have any idea what he was saying. He brought me to a bar

where everything was tropical. Artificial palms with plastic coconuts

stood in the middle of a splashing fountain. The waitresses wore skirts

imitating banana leaves. The music was happy and loud. It was all

beautiful and very colorful, and I suddenly hoped that we were going

to sit down to enjoy the surroundings.

Rashid, however, looked as if he was in a hurry. He waved for me to

follow him toward some other rooms away from the restaurant. I did

not know where he was going to bring me. When he opened one of

the doors along the long corridor, I saw that there were four people

inside the room waiting for us. One of them had a video camera and

the others were busy with their computers. One of them, a European-

looking man, asked me in bad Russian if I could sit on the chair in the

middle of the room and tell my story to his video camera. “Please, just

tell us what happened to you, but speak Russian, not Kyrgyz,” he said,

and then added gently, “It is for television, we are journalists.”

I sat and I spoke for more than fifteen minutes looking into the video

camera. At one point, I broke down in tears and they seemed happy

with that. When I thought that I had said whatever was important to

say, my phone rang. It was Adele checking again where I was and

what I was doing. “I am doing whatever my client wants,” I said to her

without irony, “this is what a prostitute does.”

She told me that she wanted me to bring the money to her at the

apartment immediately. She said it was urgent. Rashid told me to do

what Adele said and we would continue recording the next day. He

mentioned something about the Kyrgyz consulate and said the word

“tomorrow” a few times. Rashid gave me the money to pay Adele for

one more day, so that she would not notice that anything was going on.

He also asked me to try to get my passport from the apartment.

145

The taxi brought me there quickly and I held tightly the money Rashid

had given me. I rang the bell and Adele opened the apartment door.

As soon as I entered, she grabbed me by my hair and, with another

woman I did not know, started to beat me. They both shouted at me,

“You called Kyrgyzstan and you asked to get you from here!” They

cursed and promised that I would never be able to disobey the rules

again. Adele screamed that she would keep me locked up and working

out of the apartment, until I earned every penny she had invested in

me. While the two women continued to beat me, Adele shouted that

she had been too nice to me - that was why I had mistreated her. Now

it was time for someone else to deal with me. She swore that I would

finally know what it was like to be raped by twenty Arabs.

I pushed past them with all my strength, and somehow managed to

escape from the door. Running as fast as I could, I was too panicked

to think about which way to go, and I ended up in the garage on the

first floor. I could not find my way out. I knew that Adele did not

expect this from me. She was too confident. She thought I would be

too afraid to run away on the street dressed this way, knowing nothing

and being without money and documents. But, she had no idea that I

had Rashid’s money hidden in the pocket of my short skirt. I only had

to find the way out from that absurdly huge garage.

Where to go? I hid behind a parked car and waited. I knew that no

one could find me there if I only stayed still and waited long enough.

It was already night outside when a car drove through, and the light

instantly turned on. I followed the car out of the garage and I found

myself outside on the main street. Without losing a second, I stopped

the first taxi I saw, and jumped inside. The taxi driver said something

about the way I looked. I knew I looked inappropriate for the streets of

a Muslim city. I said, “Go police station.” Maybe he wanted to know

which police station, or maybe he was asking me something else, I

did not know. I could not say anything but “police station,” again and

again, until off he went along the wide busy and shiny boulevards that

did not belong to me. And - they never would.

146

3.

No one welcomed me at the police station. They directed me to

sit down and wait for someone to come who could translate for me.

I sat and waited for a long time. Then, an Arab woman arrived. What

I had told to Rashid’s video camera before, I now told to the woman

translating for the police. She said that the police officer thought I was

brave. Not many women come to police station just like that. I did not

understand what they meant by “just like that.” What else could I have

done?

They said that they would contact the Kyrgyz consular office the next

day. It was too late to do it at that moment and I should rest and eat

something. They brought me a plate of rice with some meat on top,

and they showed me to a bed where I needed to spend the night. It

was in a room with a transparent glass wall on one side, so it remained

brightly lit the whole night. I felt better now; I felt safe. Most

importantly, however, was that no one would force me to work as a

prostitute again. So, in spite of the transparent wall and noise during

my first night of freedom, I slept well.

The next morning they brought me a sandwich and a cloak to cover

myself. They put me in a car with two police officers and brought me

to the Kyrgyz consular office. The consular officer expected us. He

greeted us warmly; first the police officer, then me. He said directly to

me, “So, you are my unfortunate Gulnara?” He told me that he already

knew my case well because the Kyrgyz police had called him about

it. But, he added that my return may not be as fast as I may wish, and

I needed to go back to the prison until he could arrange everything

for my departure. He said that he needed to find the money to pay for

my airplane ticket for Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyz consulate did not have

money for individual tickets for its citizens, but he was going to try

his best to find it. He would contact the international organization that

provides help for such tickets and see what they could do. He wished

me well and then, gave his attention to the policemen who had brought

me. He smiled at them politely and bowed in their honor.

The police van brought me to another prison. It was bigger than the

first, and very crowded. After waiting a long time I was brought to

147

another officer to retell my story. When I finished, he asked me the

address of the apartment where Adele and the girls lived. Then they

led me to a car and asked me to go with them. Our police car was

followed by a second, and finally we stopped in front of the apartment

building where I had explained that Adele lived with the girls. Four

armed policemen came out of the second car and disappeared in the

building.

Adele and three other girls were brought outside the building wearing

handcuffs. Only Lolita was missing. I saw them being pushed into the

other car. I will never forget their faces; they were frightened. Upon

seeing me, Adele cried, “ Why did you do this to us? We were so good

to you! We never did anything bad to you!

never

You betrayed us!”

They brought us to the other police station, and put us in the same

crowded prison cell with twenty other women. Here women brought

to the prison for all kinds of offenses sat on hard wooden benches.

Like the hotel bar, they were women of all kinds of nationalities.

Each woman seemed to speak a different language. I could never have

imagined that I would spend the next three days in the same prison

cell with Adele and the girls.

Unexpectedly, Adele was nice to me. She begged me not to say

anything against them to the police officials. She and her girls really

wanted to return to their business. “Don’t make them send us back

to Kyrgyzstan, we beg you!” Adele cried to me. “We cannot go back

there any more!”

One moment Adele would be sweet to me, and the next she treated me

cruelly. She told me that if I did not tell the police about her business

and what she had done to me, she would forgive my debt. She even

begged more, “Please, I also have children. Think about them!” When

she was angry, she would threaten that if I betrayed them, and if she

ended up in prison, her people would kill me when I got back to

Kyrgyzstan. She said that prison sentences were tough in Dubai, and

she did not want to spend the next ten years in prison.

On the second day the police officers called me to the special room

where I needed to show them who from the apartment forced me into

prostitution. The girls stood in front of me – I saw them but they could

148

not see me. I could have pointed out for the police officer anyone

among them. But, I told them that the girl who had forced me into

prostitution was not

not there. What else could I do? I did not want to be

killed when I got back to Kyrgyzstan. I did not

not want something bad to

happen to my family. These people were criminals and a single person

cannot win against them. Last but not least, after all the bad Adele had

done to me, I still felt pity for her. Ten years was a long time to spend

in prison. So, the next morning, Adele and her three girls walked free,

and I remained behind bars.

***

Most Russian-speaking prostitutes brought to the prison did not stay

more than two days. They were usually picked up routinely, and they

knew what to say to the police, so they managed a quick return to their

job. One Russian prostitute, who said she was from Saint Petersburg,

told me she had come to Dubai to work for two years to earn money to

buy an apartment back home.

The majority of the police officers were women dressed in long green

skirts with their heads covered and only their eyes were exposed. They

wore guns around their waists, which looked peculiar to me. They did

not let us go out to the toilet when we wanted, and smoking was not

allowed. The prison was overcrowded, so we sat near each other on

the wooden boards. The women in prison changed quickly, yet only I

remained.

We were treated badly. There was not enough space to lie down on the

floor. One woman remained on the floor for three days, however, and

we heard that she had just had surgery. Every time the guards came

in - they stepped over her. For some reason, the officers screamed

at all the women who crossed their legs. “Sit without crossing your

legs!” For some reason, crossing legs was not allowed. Many

women menstruated on themselves because no sanitary napkins were

available. A few times a day, we all needed to stand up to make space

for cleaners to mop the