Lured by the Glow of a False Promise

My name is Amara and my first memory is looking up into the canopy of bamboo swaying in the wind, and the sounds of birds.

I was born in Wat Chalat Rakhang in northern Thailand.  I lived there with my family and we had a small plot of land that we farmed.  We lived near a bamboo forest where my family would go to harvest mushrooms and herbs.

My brother and sister were younger than me, and we were happy playing together while my parents worked.  We were happy, but my parents were sad.  They worked hard, but we could tell they struggled.  

Sometimes there were men who seemed angry who came to our hut.  My father was always bowing to them.  My mother would cry when they left.  My sister and brother and I would sit quietly in a corner, and my sister, the youngest, sometimes shivered.  The mean men scared her.

At night we would watch the television.  It seemed like another world, television, and I wanted to see it one day.  So many beautiful people in nice clothes and dancing.  It seemed like a dream.  My brother and sister and I practiced dancing with them. I loved to dance and when I got older I started braiding and putting up my hair so that it would look like the women did on the television.

___

When I was 10, there were people with big cameras who came to Wat Chalat Rakhang.  All the kids followed them around.  It was so exciting.  At home later, we would pretend to be them.  Taking pictures and posing and laughing.  They stayed in our village for a few weeks.  It was so interesting and fun to watch them.

One day, one of the women who was with the camera people came to me.  She spoke in a funny accent, and asked me if I wanted her to take my picture too.  I said yes.  She showed me how to pose for the camera.  My sister and brother's mouths were open in amazement.  

I felt like a real princess.

The next day, she gave me and my brother and sister some of the pictures and we took them home to show my parents.  We all laughed at all the poses I made.  My brother and sister imitated me, and my mother and father smiled while they made a fire and dinner.  It was especially funny when my brother did it since he is a boy and is not supposed to pose like that. It was one of the best days of my life.

We came to town together a few days later to shop with my parents.  The lady who took my picture was there with her camera, and she came over to us.  She was very polite to my parents, and they seemed very impressed.  She said that I was very pretty, and that there were openings for work in Pattaya City for girls like me making clothing for the movies and fancy stores.  She waved at one of the people she was with, and he brought packages.  She gave them to my parents, and said they were samples of the clothes that they made, and that we could take them home.  That they were for us.  My brother and sister and I started laughing and cheering.  She said that some of the money I made working could be sent back home.  

She offered to take me there to work in Pattaya City.  My parents said they would think about it and the camera lady said that they were leaving tomorrow, and that if my parents were interested they should meet them here tomorrow morning.  My parents thanked her and we walked back home.

___

“Please, mama,” I said.  “I want to go.”  My mother and father looked at one another and my mother said they would talk about it.  

My mother and father, once we were in bed, went outside to talk.  I got out of bed to see if I could hear them, but I couldn’t.  So I lay down by the door and waited for them to come back.  

My mother woke me up the next morning in my bed.  She said that they had spoken about it and that they had decided it was okay.  I was so happy.  I wore my new dress, and my mother had packed me a bag with some food.  Father said he would walk me to town, and my mother was crying when she hugged me.  She put something cold and hard in my hand and held it with both of her hands, and then she said, “Go.”

I waved to my brother and sister and my father took my hand and we started the walk to town.

When we got there, my father greeted the camera people.  He looked sad when I got in the van, but he told me he was proud of me, and to mind the adults.

___

I got in the van and there was another girl there.  We smiled at one another, and the car started driving.  I looked for my father, and saw him waving, and then he turned around to walk back home.

The other girl's name was Achara and we talked and played in the car the whole way there.  We were so excited.  We talked about all the movie stars we were going to meet, and about the pretty clothes we would have.  We wondered if they would let us wear makeup, and we pretended we were models.  I missed my family a little, but I was excited for my new adventure.

When we arrived in Pittaya City, there were so many lights, and big cars.  It was night, and it looked just like things did in the television.  So glamorous.  They took us to a big warehouse, and there were other girls there too.  They gave us some water and food, and they took us to some mats on the floor and told us to get ready for bed.  I was getting so tired, and I wanted to stay up and talk with the other girls, but many of them were already asleep.  The room seemed blurry, and I was just very tired...

___

I woke up to the sound of a distant horn, and creeking. Darkness.  We seemed to be moving but slowly and sometimes up and down.  I could tell there were other girls there, but I could not see them very clearly.  I suddenly felt sick, and I threw up on the floor next to me.  The room smelled bad, and one of the girls was crying.  I was scared.  

More of the girls started waking up.  Some of them also threw up.  Others were crying.  It was horrible.  I needed to go to the bathroom bad, and I finally got up and looked for a door, but it was all just walls.  The room was not very big. I could not hold it anymore, and so I went in the corner by a round barrel that was full of water.  

Someone had the same idea before me and my foot squished into her pile.  The smell was so bad, and the floor was slippery at this point with vomit and pee and water sloshing from the barrel.

I thought of my mother and father, and remembered the cold hard object my mother put in my hand as I was leaving.  I was so excited about my adventure that I had put it in my pocket and forgot to look at it.  The thought of that made me so sad.  I reached for my pocket and found it but it was too dark to tell what it was.  It felt like a little metal or stone statue.  I was so sad that I had not paid any attention to it up until that point, and realized that I had given up my family so easily and now we were all being punished for it together.  I started crying too.

It seemed to take forever in the room.  I could not tell how many days because it was always dark.  And the smell just kept getting worse and worse.  One of the girls started throwing up and then just shaking in the corner until she was very still.  No one said anything but we all just knew.  

I slept and woke up many many times. At some point I could not tell if I was awake or dreaming a nightmare.

___

At one point I woke up to the feeling I had started sliding.  The room seemed to be moving and spinning around, and there was much more noise until we thudded to the ground.

We heard men’s voices and metal clanging, and then all of a sudden one of the walls opened up.  There were men who told us to get out.  

I was so glad to be somewhere else, I did not care where.

It was night and the men had flashlights so bright it hurt my eyes.  They took us to a room full of showers, and told us to wash ourselves.  I took out the little sculpture that my mother gave me as I was leaving home and saw for the first time that it was a metal sculpture of the Goddess Phra Mae Thorani wringing water from her long beautiful hair.  I did not know where else to put it so I put her in my mouth as I showered.

When we finished they took us to a room full of clothes and told us to pick some and put them on.  The clothes were like the ones the camera lady had given my parents, but fancier and they smelled sweaty.  I found a pink dress with white sequins, and it would have made me happy before, but I was not happy.

I looked for Achara but I could not find her.

___

Once we were dressed they took us to another room, and we had to stay there.  An older woman came in, and she said that we were here to work, and that she would bring us to a man, and that we would have to do whatever he said or we would go back to the awful smelly room.

Other girls were picked first, and when they came back we all wanted to know what the man asked her to do.  Some of them talked about it and others were just quiet.  The ones who talked about it said things that sounded crazy to me, and said that it hurt, but they seemed okay.  I hid my Phra Mae Thorani statue inside my mat so that no one else would find it, and I would take it out at night and ask her to help me get back home.

When I was picked to go with a man, my heart started pounding.  Auntie (as we called her) took me into a room and pushed me towards the bed.  She nodded at him and left.  He smelled bad, and he did not look like the men in my village.  His skin was lighter, and when he talked I could not understand him.  He took my clothes off and touched me and did horrible things that I did not believe the other girls when they told us about it.  I thought they were making that part up but they were not.  It hurt so bad.  

When Auntie came to get me, it hurt to walk.  The other girls wanted to know what happened, and I did not want to talk about it.

___

After a while, I thought about home less and less.  Time passed and I just tried to be okay.

We called the old lady who took our worn clothes once a week and stayed with us through the showers and the changing room ‘Chaya’.  She was mean to some of the girls but not to me.  

One day she slapped one of them so hard that her face was bleeding.  The girl started screaming, and that’s when Auntie came in.  She looked at Chaya and screamed at her “what did you do?!?”  I could tell Chaya was terrified.  

I spoke up and said that the girl slipped in the shower, and Chaya turned to me and looked shocked.  The other girls looked down.  Auntie was angry, but she accepted my story, and told Chaya just just get us back to the room as quickly as she could, and they took the bleeding girl, who was new but I think her name was Duangkamol.  I did not see her again.

___

A week later, we were in the shower and changing rooms again, and when the other girls were distracted, Chaya told me to get inside the cart of clothes and hide.  She winked at me, and I did as she said.  After she took the girls back to the room where we stayed, Chaya came back and started rolling the cart I was in away.  Once she got out into the street and around the corner, she told me to get out.  To run.  And I did.  I ran for blocks and blocks, but I did not know where I was going, and when I got tired I stopped.  

I saw a boy selling cigarettes and tried to ask him what city this is, but he could not understand me.  I started crying, and he took my hand and led me down the street and across a long park, and took me to a small house where there were women who were dressed differently than I had seen before.  The boy spoke to one of the ladies, and she looked at me and took my hand, leading me down an alley and into a larger office.  The lady kept asking me things, but I could not understand, until she said the word ‘B̂aan’: home.  

My eyes lit up, and I repeated the words back to her.  “Home!  Home!”

She smiled and left the room, and came back with another lady who spoke my language.  I explained what happened to me, and how I left my home, and what happened after.  She told me not to worry and that I was safe now.  She asked me where my home is, and I told her the name of my village.  I asked her what city this one is, and she said, “Istanbul.”  I started crying because I had never heard of it.

She told me that she was going to find a way to bring me home to my family, but she wanted me to show her where I had been staying while I was here.  She waved over other men who looked like soldiers, and we walked until I could find and showed them where I had been let out.  It took me a while to find it.

After that, we went back to the office, and they took me to a room with a cot in it, and some bags.  I started crying because I remembered my  Phra Mae Thorani statue mama gave me, and that I had left it.  I told her about it and she asked me where it was. She put her hand on my head, and told me it was going to be okay. That I was going home and would see my mother and father again in person.

___

A few days passed, and she told me that it was time to go back home.  I was happy, but also scared that I had disappointed my mother and father by doing the things I had done.  

I felt so ashamed.

When it was time, I got into the car, and one of the soldiers came up to me while I was waiting there and opened his hand for me.  In his hand was Phra Mae Thorani.  I couldn’t believe it.  I wondered how he was able to get it.

It was a long trip home.  We went in a plane, and that was scary.  I could not believe we were flying.  And then the plane landed and we drove and drove, and at some point I started seeing trees and plants that looked like the ones in my village, and we passed a Buddhist Temple that I remember going to when my grandmother died.  I could not believe I was almost home.

And also my stomach hurt, and I was afraid I would bring my mother and father shame.

But when they saw me they both started crying and hugging me.  And I cried too.  I told them I was sorry, and they told me that they were the ones who should be so very sorry.  When they finished hugging me, I took the Phra Mae Thorani Goddess from my pocket and showed my mother.  She closed my hand around it, knelt down in front of me, and said, “I prayed she would bring you back.”