By Heather Ellis
Winter 2017 Kaplan Award Winner
I’ve cried long enough for my eyelids to swell before I finally pull out my Bible. I hadn’t been sure why I was taking it with me, and it hadn’t been opened since my dad gave it to me when I was fourteen. What I really want to do is chuck it across the room and scream some more, but my throat is raw, my head hurts, and my whole body is telling me it’s time to stop fighting.
Isaiah 61
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
2to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
3and provide for those who grieve in Zion-”
Echoes of the call to prayer from the small mosque down the street slip through the bars of my open window. Too dehydrated by the Malaysian heat for more tears to spill, I curl up shaking and try to reconcile this message of salvation with the new world God is showing to me. I try breathing… bind up the brokenhearted… proclaim freedom… release from darkness… calm settles on me long enough to roll to my back and stare at the black mold on the edges of the ceiling.
She was only 14…I don’t know how I can forgive what was done to her except through God.
§ § §
In the neutral-tone, PowerPoint-heavy, 200 pages of reading a week classes I’d sat in for the last four years it had seemed like the world was tedious, yes, but ultimately tidy-able. Not even answers to the most complicated questions seemed to be able to hide from the bright fluorescence of academia. Why did colonialism happen? We’d examine the economic and sociological processes leading to the subjugation of whole continents. Why does genocide happen? We’d talk about the development of the concept of race, power, and then colonialism some more. Why are developing nations still poor? More about colonialism. Neocolonialism. Foreign policy. Lack of education, lack of health care. Oppression of women.
All these why questions explained with how answers… even as we collectively agreed about things that were wrong, it all was sterile enough that I never really thought about the capacity of an individual to participate in heinous acts. There was an erasure of agency for all but the leaders of movements—everyone else was following along, doing their job. There were reasonable explanations for their actions, so they were excused from responsibility in the name of moving forward to the next chapter. I maintained belief that all people are basically good, just poorly informed and corruptible based on their circumstances. Evil was an external idea that acted upon humans, upon me. It took less than a week of work in Malaysia for that worldview to be crushed. The evil is in us, it’s in me.
§ § §
The NGO’s shelter is clean and airy, but the doors are still barred and locked. The girls bully me into dancing. I don’t dance, but I figure this isn’t the place to put my discomfort above the throbbing boredom of being stuck in a house with a three page list of rules to govern the residents every action. Eventually we get all five of the residents dancing with us, though one girl with a braid that reaches her waist is just moving her feet and holding her stomach. The other intern, Mandy, pulls out Twister and I’m voluntold to go first. The girl with the braid, who turns out to be the one who speaks the most English, has never actually played and approaches the mat committing half a foot to a blue dot, then her other foot to green. She struggles enough to balance that even with just the two of us we end up in a heap on the floor laughing at the whole room laughing at us. We opt out after two rounds, and start singing American pop songs. The girl with the braid is cuddled up next to me on the couch. I know it’s just part of the vernacular in Bangladesh, where she’s from, and here in Malaysia, to refer to any female around the same age as ‘sister’, but I still glow a little bit whenever she addresses me as such.
We stay at the shelter for about four hours because Randheer, the NGO’s van driver, is late. We don’t call Ubers to the shelter for security reasons. Around five he drops Mandy and me near the LRT station. We walk quietly past gardens of coconut trees and bird-of-paradise that almost manage to disguise the filth of the open drainage culverts filled with litter.
“Hey, what was the girl’s name with the braid again? I’ve got such trouble with names…” She glances at me, surprised.
“Heather that was Amala…” I stop dead in my tracks.
That name I do remember, and I didn’t know it was the girl with the braid because no one told me her name today. “…you didn’t recognize her?”
“Her face was blurred in the interview videos.”
“I guess that’s right.” Mandy is near the end of her term at the NGO, things aren’t fresh for her anymore, she’s had time to numb out a little. I haven’t. Unfortunately or fortunately I’ve never been less numb in my life. I turn my face away from her so she won’t see I’m crying.
§ § §
Case file—Amala:
Sent to Malaysia at 14 for domestic work. Beaten with electrical wire and locked in a bathroom. Pinned to bed by the husband and wife while they repeatedly inserted bamboo poles into the vagina and anus. Ruptured rectum and stomach. Collapsed vaginal wall. Forced to remove the bedsheets stained with the blood of the assault. Escaped house, still bleeding after one week. Seven surgeries. Restricted diet for life. Urination via catheter for life. Blackmailed out of filing a case. Employers walk free. Ongoing treatment financed by Swiss embassy.
They mutilated her.
§ § §
The blinking cursor is nagging me again, and I’m fed up with the report. “The ILO estimates there are between 300,000 and 400,000 migrant domestic workers in Malaysia. This would represent near 20% of the total registered migrant workers in Malaysia, making domestic workers an important group to consider in forming migration policy.” After a month I’ve still only written 10 pages of it, because I feel its obsolescence is as planned as an iPhone. Granted, that would imply there would be a time where it wasn’t obsolete. The pep talk I got from the French volunteer I worked with amounted to “Yes we all know only five people will ever read this report and yes it is doomed to be dry… but just think! In a couple years it might be exactly what an intern like yourself needs! Think of them!” I’ve felt the futility of academic analysis in development work before, but it had never felt quite so exhausting. “Domestic workers are vulnerable to some of the most severe forms of physical, sexual, mental, and emotional abuse because of their isolation and lack of recognition as ‘real’ workers.” The case studies in the report have each been reduced to one page to make sure the booklet is accessible. The case studies. The women. The human beings. Amala. Dahlia. The five other pseudonyms that were chosen to guise the hyper-condensed versions of years of human lives offered up to support my statement that domestic workers are ‘vulnerable to…abuse’. I walk outside into the heat—the mosquitos less of a nag and threat than the blinking cursor asking me to make Dahlia and Amala into a number for the ILO, or at best a one page entry in a report five people will read.
§ § §
Fluorescent light is unavoidably glaring, but the restaurant my coworker takes me to has nothing of the sterility of offices or classrooms. It’s open to the night air and smells of masalas and meat—the kind of place I give up on being vegan and smile gratefully at compliance with requests for vegetarian. My coworker, Akhdan, brags that he made it a month as a vegetarian, winning a bet with his Hindu friend, but conceding on the last day so as to keep the friend from having to start eating meat as per his end of the deal. He wouldn’t want to be responsible for someone going against their religion, he says. Most of what he says comes out as a mean joke, and he likes it that way. I like it that way, in a sense. He’s not at all concerned about my feelings, and that sort of objective perspective is refreshing.
“So do you want to see pictures of where I went last night?”
“Yeah.”
His phone lends a view into another fluorescently lit room—this one filled to the brim with clothes hanging in rows that seem to stretch out 30 feet. There are people crouched underneath, shielding their faces from the camera.
“How many people were there?”
“Probably 40. Half of them chained.”
“…Chained?”
“Yes, you know. To make sure they don’t run. And to shame them, mostly, for making a mistake. Most of them wouldn’t run, it’s just punishment. Still, we had a fun party. I filled them in on the scores from the last football game.” I’m staring at him, and he’s smiling at my shock. It’s different than when he’s teasing me, though.
“..So, what do you do next?” His pause betrays the hurt he likes to pretend doesn’t affect him anymore. He’s the organizations main field guy—he’s never on time to work because he’s been out all night making friends with traffickers and the trafficked. He’s the one who knows the dirtiest of undersides in Malaysia, he’s the organization’s swashbuckling hero.
“Next? I guess just write a report about it so that the White people will keep giving us money. Hey!” He beckons the server, a tall and severe looking Pakistani man who keeps casting befuddled looks towards the odd duo we are—a short chubby Bangladeshi man and a skinny American girl with uncovered hair. “Limau ais?” This is among the only words either of us speak in Malay. Akhdan is a foreigner here, too, on a visa to finish his PhD at the university while he teaches and ‘volunteers’ for the NGO. The server says nothing but nods and strides away again to prep the drink.
“Uhm… you’re not going to… try to get them out?” He laughs, but doesn’t really seem amused.
“My poor little White American,” (this is a term of endearment by now) “tell me what they’re going to do if I get them out. Assuming I could even get out five that would probably be the most I could get at once, and then the next day the place will be shut down. Anyway, those five. Then what? Most of them don’t have papers. I can’t prosecute on their behalf. If I do, they’ll get deported anyway. They won’t get compensated. Then they’re back in Bangladesh in the same poverty they ran from. No, better I let them be. Most of these ones chose to be there, that’s why they don’t run themselves. I’d rather see them in a sweatshop making two dollars a day by their own choice than back at home begging. Here they have more dignity.”
We sit in silence.
“What city are you from again?”
“Seattle.”
“Seattle. Yeah. That’s right. There are 20 girls in your China town locked in a basement. Trafficked.”
“How can I—”
“You can’t.”
“What do you mean I can’t—”
“I’m not going to tell you anything else, I don’t want you to go do something stupid and lose me my contact.”
“Just tell me enough to help the pol—”
“No, my contact would trace it back to me.”
“Then why did you tell me.”
“You just seem to like knowing things. Thought you should know since you’ll be going back home after your little field trip to the developing world to see sad brown people.”
“Right.”
“Sorry. The world’s pretty shitty, isn’t it? Are you going to finish that?” He points to my drink and I push it towards him with what’s left on my plate. I’m not hungry anymore.
Back in my room I peel out of my office clothes and stare at the fan for a while—it sways threateningly but it’s whir has become to me like the sound machines I turn on for the infants of the wealthy doctors I nanny for back in the States. One of my loose receipts blows from the peeling desk I eat my solitary dinners at most nights. Either an intern or the original owner of the desk had carved into the false wood “TRUST NO ONE”. The first week I’d arrived I’d scowled at it for a while. After days of contemplation I decided to edit the recommendation. With a bobby-pin I manage to shift some letters and scratch the rest out, so that now whenever the desk is clean it reminds me to “TRUST GOD.”
Days like this one that feels like a complicated suggestion.
Everything seems to keep oscillating between clear-cut and greyer than the molding walls in my room. Like the walls, though, everything seems closer to the unfavorable side of things. Unlike the walls, though, there seems to be no straight forward way of scrubbing things clean.
§ § §
Luke 12:6-7
“6Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?
Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.
7And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
I peak over the Stonehenge of computer towers that dominate our colony of desks to the poor woman who’s had to take on all the case files the last employee to quit left behind. The desks already tend towards chaos, and her rainbow-tiger stripe shirt almost manages to blend in against the stacks of orange, green, blue, and pink case folders. Refugees, labor claims, domestic workers, trafficking.
“Hey Maitri, how’s Dahlia’s case going? Did the police ever bring her things to the shelter?”
“Yeah…. The case is going okay…” her eyebrows knit together and lips purse, she’s often grumpy on account of Akhdan’s antics in the office, but her eyes indicate something beyond annoyance. “It’s just she’s been lying to us a lot.”
“What?”
“Yeah, lah… the employers are willing to settle and that’s good that we don’t have to go to court, but it just seems like we might not have had a strong case anyway.”
“What do you mean she’s lying?”
“She’s just telling a different story than we got when we filed the report. Things keep changing. It happens a lot, you know, lah…” she gives me a shrug. “We know people make things sound worse than they are, because they know it’s the only way they’ll get help. It might not be as bad as the first story they tell, but you know they’re still desperate enough to be asking us to get them out, right? It’s still our duty to God to help them, even if they’re lying. All the migrants, all the refugees and workers. They still need protection, lah.” She collates the case papers in a blue folder and leaves the office.
I met Dahlia my first week in the office, I’d been taken along on her rescue. While the student lawyers along with us scrambled to file the police report in the station, I’d been left sitting alone with her, coaxing her trembling hands into accepting the fingerling bananas I’d stuffed in my backpack that morning. She’d only calmed down about eating in public when I’d also taken one, positioned myself in the most unladylike posture possible, and ensured my conspicuousness would distract completely from her. I’d been in Malaysia long enough to know despite the circumstances I was meeting her in she was lucky—she spoke English, and Filipina workers tend to receive the highest pay, at least since the government of the Philippines setting the minimum wage for recruitment agencies at $400-500USD a month[1]. Most other workers might settle for half of that—many working more than 66 hours per week[2].
“What’s your name again?”
“Dahlia, madam. It is a big flower, dahlias.” She motioned with her hands to show the breadth of the brightly colored flowers I knew were blooming in my mother’s yard across the ocean.
“Dahlia. I’m named after a flower, too. Heather. They’re small, though.” She beamed, then started to tear up again. I passed her another tissue and patted her shoulder tentatively.
“Madam I have been praying for so long that someone would come and save me. I prayed every day, I kept crying every day for God to save me. I was alone, madam. But I knew God would answer my prayers, I knew God was witnessing my suffering, and see, he has sent you!”
Cringing, I wondered if now would be a good time to mention to her that I was just an intern and had absolutely nothing to do with the fact she was no longer trapped in her employer’s house. Before I could remind her of this, though, she went on.
“They beat me, madam. They poured boiling water on my head, they threw bottles at me, made me sleep with the dog, made me sleep outside. So many mosquitos, madam, and sometimes it rains.” Sometimes was an understatement. Subang Jaya, where she was kept as a worker, has the second highest frequency of thunderstorms in the world. Always with buckets of rain. “Madam, they didn’t treat me like a human being.” Surprised and moved by her forthrightness with me, I stuck close to her the rest of the afternoon and the next day ended up handling her case file because the student lawyers didn’t write down any notes from their initial interview. When the overseeing case worker left, it felt like Dahlia’s case was partly mine, that I was responsible. I spent hours with her making sure every detail she wanted recorded was written down. She kept repeating how she knew she was being rescued because God had heard her prayers, seen her suffering. I trusted she was telling me everything truthfully, because she was doing so in God’s name.
But Maitri said she was lying.
Aceline, the French grad student who works with our refugees, gives me a sympathetic look when I bring it up later. We’re sitting on the floor of the Mon community building. It’s lunchtime, and the smell of spicy cabbage and fish lingers with the sweetness of the soap the women are learning to make to sell to expats. The UNHCR puts the number of refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia at 150,460—139,200 are from Myanmar[3].
“She’s right, you know.” Intense eyes meet me when I turn my attention from my bowl resting on the well-swept floor. “It is just like with the refugees, you know? It’s like, just because someone does not meet the technical standard of the UNHCR, does that mean they do not need to flee their country? Does that mean they do not need asylum? If they say they cannot go back, who am I to say otherwise? I do not care. I will trust them over the UN. And then there’s also that the interviews set them all up to seem like liars. How can you expect someone who’s gone through so much trauma to remember everything? Carol Lynn–” she beckons to a beautiful young woman who oversees the soap classes. “Will you tell Heather about your interview? About you and your husband getting resettled?” The radiant smile falters for a moment, then turns into excitement at the opportunity to share. Carol Lynn herself is not from Mon state, she’s from Yangon, but has Mon family, and a Chin husband. This caused her some trouble back in Myanmar, but is causing her even more trouble with the UN. Their readiness to love across ethnic lines breaks the narrative, and those who don’t fit the narrative don’t get resettled.
“Oh yes! They asked so many questions! They ask even the details of the color of doors in detention centers, and told my husband he was lying when he couldn’t remember! How are we supposed to remember such things? We were trying to stay alive, to get out, not remember these things!” She runs off to catch a child who’s dangerously close to the Buddha alter.
“It is ridiculous,” Aceline adds in conclusion “and Maitri is right. If a person is asking for help, it is not our job to determine if they are needy enough. It is just our job to trust that they know what they need. Economic violence is still violence.” I grin at this, having just written so in the report that still glares at me daily, only begrudgingly submitting to my authorship.
“Yes, it’s all pretty ridiculous. No use in us trying to play God.”
§ § §
Mark 14:7
“The poor you will always have with you,
and you can help them whenever you want.
But you will not always have Me.”
I didn’t know what to do anymore. Before I made it to Malaysia I’d thought I’d be studying for the LSAT here and applying to law school from abroad. I had no will left to be a lawyer. Day after day I watched my supervisors try to cut through red tape to little or no avail. But the report I was still struggling through seemed just as futile. After talking with Akhdan everything seemed futile. Why was God making it so hard to serve?
I sent a message to a friend back in the States, telling her I was thinking of a writing project based on some of the domestic worker cases. She encouraged me, and when I told her I was afraid of writing ‘tragedy-porn’ and doing nothing to actually help the problem, she told me I should do it anyway to help myself process everything that was happening. Agreeing, I logged off with resolve to start writing, and then didn’t write anything about the cases. I mostly just called my only Christian friend every other day to cry. Sometimes he’d tell me he was sorry this was happening, and other times he’d be shocked enough to start crying with me. I wished I could write what I was able to tell him. I wished I could make the whole world cry and care and do something. But just as it was with the report, whenever I sat down to try, I started arguments with the blinking cursor.
A couple weeks after I got back to the States, I decided I needed to join a church. While I’d maintained some vague idea of a belief in God most of my life, I’d rejected Christianity until I went to Malaysia, and alternated between feeling deeply afraid of other Christians and downright angry at the inaction of the churches my dad was always trying to bring me to. One Saturday I wandered into a tiny church on Capitol Hill hosting a seminar titled “Social Justice and the Church.” There was a woman there speaking about human trafficking in Seattle, specifically about helping sex-trauma victims. Her message was new to me—neither about reporting the scale of the problem (though she had numbers), nor about dramatizing just how scarred the people she worked with became (though there were stories). She wasn’t even talking about evangelizing in the way I was accustomed to. Instead she talked about the importance of building relationships and loving people as fully and prodigally as possible. Just as Maitri and Aceline decided to do over and over again, regardless of the circumstances a person came to them from. It occurred to me that perhaps it was futile to try to change the entire world, just as I’d feared. The magic though, was in realizing that gave me full permission to care for individuals even they didn’t fit the bill for measures of Effective Altruism. It didn’t matter if I wrote a story or a report that didn’t move the whole world, or that others might even digest the stories I could tell as a kind of spectacle. What’s important is to tell stories that are authentic, that contain the grey, so that a reader can have a relationship with the subject. Then maybe, just maybe, be compelled to forgive them their faults, and love them.
Sources:
Marcadent, P. (2013) Snapshot ILO In Action: Domestic Workers. Geneva. ILO TRAVAIL. http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@ed_protect/@protrav/@travail/documents/publication/wcms_214499.pdf
Migrant Forum in Asia. 2012. Policy Brief No. 3: A reference wage for migrant domestic workers. ILO.
Seow, J. (2016). Bosses now must pay Filipino maids at least 550 a month. Singapore. The Straight Times. http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/manpower/bosses-must-now-pay-filipino-maids-at-least-550-a-month
Figures at a Glance. (2014) UNHCR Malaysia. https://web.archive.org/web/20141230060328/http://www.unhcr.org.my/About_Us-@-Figures_At_A_Glance.aspx