Chapter 8. Son of a Preacher Man

​

Human traffic

 

          Nina and I disembarked at Kanchanaburi station, a sleepy town in the north-west of Thailand famed in the 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai. The movie depicted the construction of a 415-kilometre railway between Thailand and Burma during the Second World War, dubbed Death Railway after the 13 000 prisoners of war and nearly 100 000 civilians that lost their lives at the hands of the Japanese while building it. Their bodies are still buried along its now discarded tracks.

          It was the first leg of our Southeast Asia trip and Nina’s friend Simona had joined us from Munich. We were excited to visit one of Thailand’s more preserved regions, tucked away from the tired backpacker trails that have scarred its treasured culture.

          What we didn’t know about Kanchanaburi though was the murky colour of its underbelly. Beyond the glaring eye of mainstream tourism, along its myriad bars, cane barstools propped up pale-fleshed, prowling westerners like a line-up of clown heads at a carnival. It was the perfect place to disappear, where the whisky was as cheap as the girls were young. Where they could feel like men, thousands of miles from anyone who would have them do so willingly.

          Aarya was 21 when we met her that first night in the 10 Baht Bar. Open to the street, its bright neon lights and cheesy 90s beats lured in passers-by for a sweet mojito or SangSom bucket. The three of us were ushered in by a bevy of lively hostesses who couldn’t get enough of our stories of wild travels and our strange accents. As the night wore on, we played pool, drinking shots from neon plastic glasses and cramming into selfies under a disco of whirling insects.

          Aarya’s English was distinctly more refined, complements of a colonial Burmese education. Dark mocha skin lent an exotic flair to her natural beauty, her eyes lively as the drink, yet tempered before her time.

          Of all the girls, she was the most curious about the places we’d been, the people we’d met, the stories we’d earned. In return we learned of her proficiency with languages, her approaching degree in engineering and her two younger siblings at home in Mandalay. There were shades of brightness about her which were captivating, yet overshadowed at times by an awkward wariness, as if she kept remembering. We would soon learn why.

          Come the witching hour, we watched in horror as a thick-set female proprietor tapped them on the shoulder in turn. Each would disappear to the back room to freshen her lipstick and brush her hair, then re-emerge to perch next to an overweight, tattoo-riddled predator nursing a perspiring lager.

          The men for their part avoided our stares, perhaps too ashamed or just too busy ogling. And before the booze-fuelled anger could take over, I grabbed Nina and Simona by the hands and slunk away into the humid night.

          Nina would be the undeserving recipient of my anger that night, as much as I was of hers, like we’d both been thrown into someone else’s ring. It was necessary madness, but under a creaking ceiling fan the solace of sleep defied me that night. Nothing would blur the images burning in my mind’s eye, no food or drink quell the creeping nausea.

          As a new day broke over the Kwai, I stood staring out of our floating bamboo hut at the pond skaters going about their business, admiring the freedom with which they glided across the undisturbed glass-like surface.

          Nina came up from behind and wrapped her arms around me, breaking my thoughts. ‘Couldn’t sleep either, huh?’ I just pulled her in closer.

          ‘Last night …’ I said eventually.

          ‘I know. Me too.’

          ‘I can’t get it out of my head.’

          For a while we stood in silent embrace. I had nothing but deep empathy for Nina, for how she might feel being a woman. I pictured Aarya waking in another strange bed, wondered what she might have dreamed and whether she had any place she might call home.

          We returned to the 10 Baht Bar that night, apprehensive but with our eyes wide open. I needed to speak to Aarya, to understand how and why. Or perhaps just to quell my own unease.

          The same smiling girls greeted us, only this time like long-lost friends. In and among the frivolity we knew to be their only elixir, we managed to snatch Aarya away for a spell. Had she worn the pain of her story you wouldn’t have known it:

          She’d been sold to Burmese traffickers by her own parents. They had no other option, the money she made put food on their table, she said. It meant her brother and sister could go to school, maybe one day to university. It had given them a chance of a better life.

          Poverty can be a cruel master and her own hourglass had run out of sand. Seeing her family only in her dreams, they were happy, thriving even, she said. It was all that allowed her to sleep at night under sweat-stained sheets.

          It was a common trade, scooping up beautiful young girls and marching them along Death Railway under the veil of a new moon, straight into the arms of servitude. How many of her pennies would trickle back along its broken tracks, I wondered? How many nights crushed under lecherous monsters, choking on their panting, acrid breath. They might just as well have laid a fresh grave and written her name in the sand.

          Aarya had no idea how long she would be there. The girls were her family now she said and she was theirs. She needed to be strong for them, they looked up to her, followed her example. Each of them wrote home frequently but all that came back was cool assurance from their oppressors. It was a life built on trust and hope.   

          Come midnight and the same song played on the juke box. Different men this time but wearing the same uniform. We didn’t hang around for it, just exchanged details and bid our farewells. And as our sleeper train bound for Chiang Mai clattered across the River Kwai the next afternoon, it wasn’t the souls of those who died building it that occupied my mind.

          I wondered how far I might have to go along the meandering shore before I’d stumble across a father crouched at its edge, staring into the swirling tea-coloured water as he mourned the loss of his first born. If her brother and sister might study a little harder knowing of her sacrifice, or whether the guilt would forever cloud their own journeys. The cruel injustice of it all was impossible to reconcile.

          A spluttering air conditioner snapped me back to the carriage. I stared up at a piece of tickertape flapping in the burst of cold air. Such a luxury Aarya would surely only know in the arms of her next perpetrator. I slunk back against the faux leather seat and watched the sun droop through a milky haze. I felt powerless and raw.

          Zopiclone alone would get me through the 16-hour journey north that followed. But that time in Kanchanaburi kept tapping away at my conscience like a vivid, recurring dream. From the corner of my eye, I’d see Aarya disappear around a Chiang Mai street corner, or a flash of her yellow singlet at the far end of the food markets. A song we’d danced to would drift out from a nearby bar, like I wasn’t allowed to forget.

          It stirred in me an unshakeable yearning to act and it is Aarya who ultimately led me to take up writing. It was the only channel I knew to try and make a difference, perhaps by just a few more people being aware of the plight of so many caught in the web of global trafficking. Or stoking up enough public ire that the offenders might think twice before boarding the next plane. But stand idly by as they gorged on the cadavers of tomorrow’s Aaryas I simply could not.

          With every passing day the yearning grew and once settled in Sydney a novel depicting Aarya as its female protagonist began to take shape. It would be the birth of a pastime that has seen me find my true passion and while the pages on which she still rests have been set aside for now, my hope is one day to finish her story.