Not for sale

A surprise ending

Nadia considered herself very lucky to spend only a month in the brothel in Shkodra. The Albanian pimps kept the girls moving on a treadmill. On one single day, Nadia counted twenty-five individual encounters with men paying to have sex with her. It was easy to pick out the girls who had “served a sentence” of more than six months in Shkodra. They looked utterly wasted. If a girl complained or demonstrated the least bit of resistance to her handlers, she would be treated harshly. Even if a girl acted 100 percent docile, the pimps would occasionally throw her a punch or put a gun to her head as a reminder. They beat one girl so badly that they had to remove her from the brothel, and Nadia never saw her again.

Nadia’s age turned out to be her salvation; at twenty-two, she was considered over the hill. “We have sold you to the Italians,” the cruelest of the pimps revealed to her out of the blue one day. “They don’t mind old hens in Rome, I guess,” he scoffed.

The next night Nadia was sitting in a motorized rubber raft once again. But this boat was at least four times the size of the dinghy that had carried her into Albania. If the dinghy operated like a taxi, this raft was a bus. Nearly forty passengers of all ages—even a mother who cradled a baby in one arm and sat a toddler on her knee—crammed into the boat.

Once they had moved off the shore some distance, the sea turned rough. The boat carried them up and down steep water valleys. Passengers who leaned their heads over the side of the raft to vomit more often than not received a sharp slap of water in the face. The children at first screamed in terror and then whimpered.

Two Albanian goons sat at the front, keeping a watch for any sign of lights from Italian coast guard crafts. The pilot had his hands full keeping the boat heading straight into the waves lest they get sideswiped.

Even though it was pitch-black out, Nadia kept her eyes tightly shut. She tried to focus on Stefan, wondering how her son might be faring back in Chisinau. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she admitted to herself that she would likely never see him again.

She opened her eyes and saw bright lights on the distant shore ahead. “Italy?” she asked one of the goons positioned in front of her.

“Yes, Italy,” he said without looking back at her. Nadia lost her mind for a moment. “Italy? Italy? Italy?” she kept repeating, now practically screaming.

“Damn it! I already told you! It’s Italy over there,” growled the goon angrily.

That afternoon before she had boarded the raft, the cruelest of the pimps had handed her a plastic baggie. Inside she could see her passport, a bit of Italian money, and a small card with scribbled text.

“When you reach the beach near San Foca, your new owner will be waiting,” he said. “If for some reason you get lost, I have given you his phone number and enough money to make a phone call. He will drive you to Rome, where you will work for him.” Nadia nodded. He took the gun from his belt nonetheless and put it to her head. “If you try to escape, we will hunt you down. There would be no place to hide; we have people on both sides of the sea.”

Now, perched in the hull of the raft, she had a more pressing concern. The pilot had taken the boat within twenty yards of shore, and the Albanians were yelling for everyone to jump out before the authorities detected them. Those passengers who did not comply got tossed forcibly into the sea.

As she entered the sea, the water reached up to Nadia’s nose. As the waves crested, she lost contact with the sandy floor and took in large gulps of salty water. She floated, stumbled, and fought her way to shore. A number of other passengers washed ashore on the beach at about the same moment. After a pause to gain their bearings, they all made a chaotic rush to get off the beach and avoid detection.

Nadia slept until daylight nestled in a crevice in the middle of three large rocks. The sound of a loud horn jarred her awake. Peaking over the top of the rocks, she saw a roadway no more than fifty yards in the distance. She reached inside her pants to see if the plastic baggie had survived her ordeal, and she was pleased to discover that all the documents had remained dry.

Now Nadia had to consider her next move. She knew the fate awaiting her if she called her new owner. She could never willingly go back to that hell. If the mafia wanted to track her down, so be it.

Absent a plan, she started walking in search of food. It did not take her long to reach San Foca. She used her “phone money” to buy a loaf of bread at a small bakery and started eating it greedily as soon as she hit the sidewalk. Propped against the wall of the bakery, she luxuriated as the sun came out brightly to take away the shivers that had troubled her sleep.

During the course of the morning, the owner of the bakery strolled outside her shop and noticed that Nadia had not left. Based on their brief encounter, she realized that Nadia did not understand Italian. Taking a look at her ragged appearance, the woman guessed that Nadia had recently washed ashore from Albania.

“Regina Pacis?” the woman asked.

Nadia shrugged her arms to indicate that she did not understand.

“Regina Pacis?” the woman repeated, saying the words slowly this time. “Padre Cesare?”

Once again, Nadia gave her a puzzled look. The woman smiled and gestured for Nadia to wait on the sidewalk. She went inside and made a call to the shelter.

Nadia did not know it at the time, but her torturous trek had reached its end. Years later—long after she had married a man from the village and Stefan had joined her in San Foca—she would walk by that bakery wall and smile. It was there, at that spot, when the sun had come out brightly to take her shivers away.