A Special Place in Hell
By: Jacob Twig
Tags: Prostitution, Human Behavior, Humanity, Poverty

The knocking was very soft, almost inaudible; even with the music turned down.

It had to be Najla; my dad was asleep in his room.

“Yes?”

Nothing.

I got up to see what was going on.

She was just standing there, completely naked; hands down at her sides.

“Does my body please you? I know how to give you pleasure.”

“What’re you doing, what’s going on?”

She was beautiful; and in my younger days, I’d have been tempted.

But now I was angry.

I guess she figured that out.

She lifted her hands to cover herself and then ran back into her room.

I called my wife and told her what had just happened.

She turned around and came home right away.

My wife and I had come to Tunisia to visit my parents who had retired there.

Tunisia is a beautiful country, in North Africa, right on the Mediterranean.

Lots of sunshine. Great food. Great wine. Especially a red wine called Magon.

I’m not normally a wine drinker, but wow, that stuff is great.

It was May 2011, and the country was going through a revolution that threw out the dictator Ben Ali.

He had an iron grip on the throat of his country for more than 20 years.

His wife and her family had their hands in everything that moved.

The people wanted democracy, but the political squabbles that went on after he was thrown out created serious economic problems.

The country almost collapsed.

I guess that’s the price of freedom.

Thousands of bright young university graduates with nothing to look forward to.

Outside the main cities, it was much worse.

Unemployment was at 26%, but that’s the official line.

I think it was worse.

Food supply lines had been completely disrupted and the price of food was skyrocketing.

People always use situations like that to take advantage of others, typical human behavior.

The new government’s trying to keep things under control, but it hasn’t been easy.

They’ve been focusing on sealing off the borders in order to prevent the infiltration of terrorists.

It’s been extremely difficult to find help for my parents.

We’ve been looking for someone for over 6 months.

My Dad’s almost 90 now; and it’s a lot of work taking care of him.

My mom’s not far behind.

Even if there were such things as private Senior Retirement Homes here, I’d never put either of them into one.

My family’s been separated for far too long.

We needed a live-in, the roads were still too dangerous the be travelling back and forth.

My wife’s been doing her best to help out around the house, but the work’s wearing her down.

We’ve tried so many employment agencies. The agencies had a scam going; for an up-front fee; they would guarantee to bring in three workers and the employer could choose the one that suited.

If the employer wasn’t satisfied, he could request the second and then the third.

Of course, none of them would work out; and the employer would lose his payment. Then the same three workers would go to other houses and repeat the same story.

So we put an ad in the paper. We chose to put it in newspapers that were in the southern part of the country, the areas that were worst hit by unemployment.

A majority of that area doesn’t have hot and cold running water; they have to go to wells.

Some of the towns don’t even have electricity lines to private homes; most don’t even have paved roads.

When Najla called about the ad, my wife didn’t want to hire her; she could tell that she was very young.

She was afraid that it was one of those blackmail games.

Despite the fact that she kept calling and telling us how badly she needed the job, my wife hesitated.

Since she knew more about this type of thing, I agreed with her.

It was only when her father called that we changed our minds.

Well, my wife was still unconvinced, but I guess I kind of pushed it a bit.

I couldn’t stand to see how tired she was every day.

I thought we should at least give her a try.

What he said touched me deeply.

“Please give her a chance. I’m embarrassed to say this but I’m a poor man, I need help to support the family. My wife is sick and can’t go to work; I can hardly keep things together. I can’t give my daughters an education. Please give us a chance.”

“You don’t need to be embarrassed or ashamed about being poor. I know what it’s like; my family was once like that” I replied.

I understood his pain.

There was a time when I needed a chance; and then somehow, a miracle happened.

And now; it was only right to extend that chance to someone else that needed it.

“Please come in, you’re always welcome in our home. This couldn’t have been easy on you, waking up so early in the morning to take a 3-hour trip to the city just for an interview; and then returning home to go to work. It’s got to be especially hard on you when you’re fasting.”

It was Ramadan, a month that’s considered especially holy by devout Muslims; a month of fasting from sunrise to sunset every day.

Although it was only 6:30 in the morning, it was already stifling hot.

Going without food or water for 16 hours a day is hard enough, but it’ s even worse when the temperature climbs to over 104 degrees.

Judging by the clothes they were wearing; it was obvious that they were very poor.

I could also see that hardship had left its marks on his face; he looked worn out and tired.

“I hope you understand that I wanted to accompany her here, to make sure she was alright, and to have an opportunity for myself to see who you were. No insult intended, but as a father, I have to be sure.”

“Of course, I understand, I have daughters myself and I would want to be comfortable about where they worked. We want to help, and that’s why we offered to pay for your trip down here.”

Najla kept her eyes down; looking at the ground as she dutifully followed her father into our house. I couldn’t help but think, “even someone as poor as this has retained his dignity and has educated his daughter well.”

Have you ever been desperate for something, and then, when you find something that looks exactly like what you are looking for, you tend to ignore the little faults it might have?

Ok, she was young, 21 according to her father, but other than that, the story seemed perfect.

A young girl needing a job and a chance to prove herself; with a loving father who would keep an eye on things from a distance.

There was something bothering me though, his story.

It didn’t jibe with what Najla said on the phone.

Maybe I didn’t hear her story correctly in the first place.

Maybe I just wanted a solution.

When my wife got back, I could see that she was really angry.

“I told you, I was working, I heard knocking, I asked who it was, no answer; I opened the door, and she was standing there.”

We called her to come to the living room.

She sat on the edge of the couch crying, the tears flooding down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to do it; my father forced me.”

“What the hell’s all this about; prostitution?”

“No, not really; the idea was to find a teenage son, get pregnant…”

“I know about this game; it’s to force a marriage into a family that has money; or to blackmail them.”

My wife was a local; she knew all about these things.

“I told my father there wasn’t a teenager here, but he told me to work on you instead.”

“And then what?”

“There’s an old lady in our village, she knows what to do.”

“And then?”

“I guess I’m supposed to go out again, like my sister. That’s why she isn’t working now; she needs time to recover. But I don’t want to do this. I want to go home.” She was sobbing now, her body convulsing with each breath.

“You’re faking.”

“No, please believe me, it was all his idea. He’s been forcing us to do this for a while now. He said if we didn’t earn enough, we couldn’t come home.”

We left her in her room and went into the kitchen to discuss what we should do.

Call the police, call her father; or throw her out.

Without telling her, I decided to call the police.

“There’s really nothing we can do. This is happening a lot these days. Even if we give him a hard time, they’ll probably lose all their income.”

I asked her to call her father to ask him to come and get her.

Neither of us wanted to talk to him.

She called, and as she was talking to him; she began crying.

“He just told me to come home. That’s it.”

I told her to call him again and say that if he didn’t personally come down to get her; I was going to call the police.

When he arrived, I escorted her out to the top of the stairs.

I didn’t want him to come into my house again.

An impoverished young man set himself on fire, to protest the dictator’s injustice.

That’s how the “Jasmine Revolution” began.

The revolution came and went.

People protested and people died.

The world turned upside down.

People shouted, and then they argued.

Democracy replaced a dictatorship.

In the name of God, in the name of the People; it’s all the same.

It’s always about money.

The sun continues to rise and set.

And when I’m finally gone, it’ll all still be the same, nothing really changes.

But I’m still here.

I’m at peace.

It took me 3 marriages, but I finally learned not to betray.

I don’t know if God exists or not; I’m still trying to figure that out.

But, there’s one thing I do know, if there is a Hell; then Najla’s father has a special place reserved for him.