She grasped my hand and pulled me away.
We couldn't understand a word the other said, but I knew she wanted
me to follow her.
With gestures and Hindi words I didn't
know, she showed me her world. Little huts of concrete, straw and
sticks, sparsely furnished; worn clothes hung from clothes lines
strung between trees. I saw the pond, if you could call it that, more
piles of trash then pools of water. My sandaled feet crunching
through dry earth caked with refuse.
Clinging tightly to my hand she led me
to the rooms where women cooked, sewed, cleaned. She tried to teach
me a few Hindi words, none of which I can remember anymore.
She put her thin arms around me,
tightly wrapping them around my waist. I picked her up and carried
her effortlessly on my back. She was so small, her arms and legs so
thin, she seemed so frail. She couldn't have been older than 9 or
ten, the same age as my baby brother.
Looking at her, the sweet innocence and
childish joy, the way her big dark brown eyes sparkled when we danced
to my American tunes and her Bollywood, I would never have
guessed the things that had happened to her. I couldn't believe the
things that had been done to all of them, to all the young girls and
women there.
I was at a home in South Asia for girls and
women rescued out of the sex-slave trade. I couldn't, can't, even
begin to fathom the utterly unspeakable things they've had done to
them, the things they've endured. Ripped from your family, forced
into a life filled with fear and the knowledge men would take
advantage of you over and over every day; it is a life I cannot even
scratch the surface of understanding.
As we drove to the home, through the
narrow dirt roads of Kolkata, I prayed.
I prayed because I anticipated it being
the most difficult, heartbreaking day of my life. I prayed to see
God, because I feared I would only see hurt and hopelessness.
I expected a veil of sadness deep in
the eyes of the girls, whispering of the unspeakable things done to
them. But the veil was gone, lifted.
I know breaks and bruises remain.
Scars, brands and rough tattoos tell stories of deeper hurts than I
can ever know, but it was so very clear they were all free; free from
the physical bonds of slavery and from spiritual and emotional
captivity.
Their pasts are darker than I can
fathom. Forced to be prostitutes, raped again and again, day after
day. In those darkest of dark days I'm sure they could not imagine
freedom, thought they'd never see light.
But now, despite the hurt and
heartbreak of slavery, what I saw most was hope. Hope because fear is
gone. The veil has been lifted, they will never be taken advantage of
again, the fear of being raped every single day is gone. The
hopelessness of slavery has been vanquished.
I saw joy on the faces of the girls and
women, because they had been rescued and redeemed.
Girls about twelve or thirteen spin
around the little wooden dance platform. I joined in the dancing. We
jumped and spun and twirled. My little friend tried, vainly, to teach
me the Bollywood steps. We tried to ballroom dance across the wood
floor, taking turns spinning each other, our skirts twirling around
our ankles.
We didn't speak the same language, but
it didn't matter. Gestures and smiles spoke more than I would ever
have known they could.
There was so much joy in her big bright
eyes. She was so, so beautiful; so full of life. All the girls were
like that, beautiful and joyful, only their scars telling the stories
of their abuse and abandonment.
A girl's yellow dress spun out, her
bare feet pounding the wood floor. She reminded me of my younger
sisters, twelve and fourteen, so young and innocent and utterly full
of joy. Beside the X's branded onto her face, a whispering shadow of
her past, I saw the sparkle of restored childish hope and innocence
in her eyes, because she was finally free to dance and sing.
And I saw that hope on the face of my
little friend, holding my hands as we danced the world into a blur.
(This was written for a journalism class, telling a story of a moment or memory that impacted or influenced my life)
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