Invisible by Pai Hsiao-Hung;

Author:Pai, Hsiao-Hung;
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Saqi

Risks and Rewards

The flat in Soho was full and there was no shortage of workers. Business was good. Beata was taking turns with two other women to work on the first floor. Twenty-two-year-old Sabrina from Albania worked on Wednesday and Thursday, while Linda from Thailand worked on Friday and Saturday. Pam was maiding for both Beata and Linda, and occasionally for Sabrina when her regular maid was off.

The tall, dyed-blonde Sabrina was a likeable character – always making fun of her own broken English and acting the fool. It was as if she thought remaining in high spirits was part of the job description. Pam didn’t get it – how could a woman like her, who’d suffered so much during her desperate working life, remain so cheerful? Her laughter and open-mindedness made her a very popular character.

Sabrina had been introduced by an Albanian man who, like Beata’s Robert, said he was her boyfriend who ‘looked after’ her. Like many Albanian women sex workers, Sabrina passed herself off as Polish, because she had no work papers. She had come from a village where few jobs were available for young people. ‘Every young man and woman wants to leave. We all want to go as far as possible, best to western Europe, where we can find work and a future,’ Sabrina said to Pam.

Following the collapse of its communist government in 1990, poor Albanians began to migrate in large numbers, and by 2000 it was estimated that at least 600,000, that is one in five Albanians, had left the country – the largest rate of emigration among the Balkan and Baltic nations. (No surprise there, as Albania’s per capita income is the lowest in the area, with privatisation and rampant corruption eroding people’s livelihood.)

Facing such desperate economic circumstances and with little chance of entering western Europe legally, Sabrina and many young women like her became an easy target for Albania’s opportunistic profiteers, who were among the few making money out of the country’s poverty.

‘When I met Jack, I was fifteen. We met at a party. He came up to me and his eyes never moved away from me,’ Sabrina told Pam. ‘We met a few times after that. Then he told me he was in love with me. He said he could take me to Italy and we could get married there. I thought I was getting lucky. Really lucky. We were going to have such a happy life together, far away from my village, far away from Albania.’

When Jack proposed, Sabrina said yes at once. ‘My heart was flying when he said the words “marry me”.’

‘You poor thing,’ Pam said, already guessing how her story would develop, for Pam knew well the pimp who’d sent her to this flat.

‘Then Jack helped me with all the procedures. He got me the passport and everything. I had no idea how he did all that, but I never doubted him. He was very close to me and I believed every word he said. Besides, he didn’t ask me for money at all.

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