What will happen after that?

-       I was at home until the children grew up a little bit, then I left them with some relatives and left. I had kept Elefteri’s phone number and I called him from my village. He told me to leave and that he can find me a job. At that point the borders were open, so I took the bus and on the next day I was in Arta. It was morning and Elefteri was waiting for me at the bus stop with the same pick-up truck he used to drive to work with. I had felt it before that he has a weak spot for me. He was telling to sit next to him, because I am the youngest one and he was always trying to touch me but only this, because my husband was there.

I got in the car and he drove me to a hotel. He told me that I would sleep and work there, doing laundry, helping in the kitchen. He said I would get ?600 for this. The owner, Atanasi, was a friend of his and a very good boy. He didn’t seem like a “very good boy” to me, because from the moment I met him I saw something bad in his eyes.

Elefteri left and before even changing I was already cleaning the kitchen with Atanasi’s snake sight piercing me. He didn’t speak. He looks at you with his glassy eyes and just points at the things he wants you to do. It was as if he was repulsed by me, he would come close. Everyday I was so tired I couldn’t walk. I washed so many dirty clothes and cleaned so many dirty rooms that the river under the restaurant turned black.

When it got to the point when I was thinking I would die, Elefteri came.

They sat on a table in the kitchen and I was their waitress. They ate, drank and I couldn’t even sit to rest.. it continued until midnight. They got drunk and then I slept with Elefteri. I do not remember anything. I was sleeping like a log. In the morning, when I woke up, Atanasi was next to me. I was terrified and I left the room. I wanted to leave but I have only BGN 2 in my pocket. I went on the road, outside the hotel and I tried to stop a car. I was acting like crazy and I hadn’t noticed that Atanasi was next to me, I only felt pain in my back, which restored my consciousness. He was beating me with a whip with thin ands like small snakes. I don’t know how much he had beaten me, because I had fainted from the pain. When I woke up, I was wearing other clothes and the man with the snake look was watching me. When he saw that I am awake, he shoved a bucket and a mop in my hands and left. And again I was working all day without resting. The nights it was the same. It continued like this for months.

Why didn’t you run away, the hotel was on a road and many cars were stopping by.

-       You are blaming me for not running away. I could run away but where would I go? Foreign people, foreign country…I couldn’t speak the language as well…I am not excusing myself, I could have ran away. There weren’t too many people stopping at the hotel. One day two policemen were drinking their coffees on the porch and thought about telling them but would they believe me?

What happened afterwards?