Cost of Dignity

I'm the eldest. There's nine of me below, and they're my responsibility now. Dad passed a few years back and life hasn't been the same since. Where we grew up, luxury is hard to come by, but what's important to maintain is pride. Pride of the self, and pride in those around you. I didn't work for riches or greed, but for life and love. And first, life took me to Lebanon.

***

Originally, the agency had promised I'd be a carer in a hospital. Once I'd arrived, I was driven to a house on the outskirts of town and told to unpack in the room furthest down the hall on the left. A mattress hung over the edges of the wiry metal bedframe and the light was too harsh without a shade. I lived with an elderly couple, the husband struggling with prostate cancer and his wife too old to manage alone. "Good morning, Mr Khoury." I would say, three knocks to the door inviting me in to hand over his morning medication. They were kind, to begin with, and I felt comfortable in their company. I was paid little, especially for the long days, but money is hard to turn down. I had to protect my family's pride, and the cost of dignity is high.

I spent most of the days there cleaning, cooking in batches, in the very same way I would for my siblings, and using any free time to rest. As he grew older, Mr Khoury became more demanding, and soon the shifts lasted nearly twenty hours. My contract was due to end a week on Monday, so I knocked on his door a little louder one morning.

"Yes, yes, come in." He shouted, his illness making him irritable. His beard was thick and collected crumbs when he chewed. "What is it?"

"Good morning, Mr Khoury." I said, as per, "I wanted to remind you that my contract ends soon, and I'll be going back to Kenya." He sat up, grumbling slowly.

"What? Says who?"

I entered further into the room. "My contract, it ends next week." My palms were stickier, the room hotter than when I'd entered. "I need to see my family, I've got children." I pleaded.

"You'll stay another year, then we can replace you." He wafted his arm away for me to leave, but I stayed..

"I can't. I need to go."

"Six months."

"Please. I need to back to Kenya. They're only babies, and my husband can only last so long alone. I've been here for, what? Two years? I'm sorry sir, Mr Khoury, I must go and see them."

I argued, but he was in control. I was nothing to him, but his money was everything to me. I hadn't been paid in a while, and I needed to leave on good terms. "I'm very sorry, Sir." I begged, but I would never bow my head.

He lifted his legs and lugged them off the side of the bed. They slid into his slippers and he shuffled in my direction. His finger raised, almost touching my chest. "You," He sighed through every word, "You leave when I tell you. This is my house, you're the maid. Learn your place." His shoulder bumps past me and he pokes back through the door before closing it. "You want your money? Your little family want to survive? Make the bed first."

***

Lebanese embassies turned me away, so I went to the foreign consulate. My passport was denied, and I didn't have a Lebanese ID. They told me I couldn't leave, but there was nowhere I was allowed to stay. I had no work, so I had to make things work. The cost of pride isn't only financial. Once again, I knocked three times, entering the house through the side door. I would get fifty dollars, and it'd keep me alive for the rest of the week. Luckily enough, the hunger had detached my body and my mind. One stayed with me; the other was given to him.

Paint stripped from the thin clay walls in the room he asked me to wait in. I didn't have anything with me, so I stood in the centre of the space. I could hear him rattling between rooms, metal clanging against itself whilst I shivered in the heat. My skin was alive, rippling and pulsing with fear, my heart unsettlingly still. It was as though emotions no longer pushed through the border of my blood, as if the terror had repurposed my creation, like I was alone with God as I walked to hell. There was a bed in the corner, bedsheets scrambled along the bottom and some plastic zip ties wrapped along the wooden adornments.

He didn't knock. "Go on, then." He said, but I didn't move. I didn't want to, and, truthfully, didn't know how to. My legs stiffened as he traced his fingers along them, the air creeping out of my lungs as his breath tickled my neck. He stopped, closed the window, and returned to me. His fingernails brushed the back of my neck as our eyes met for the first time since I'd entered. "Bed?" He asked, and I obliged, though it seemed survival was not worth the truth of the life I was living. I refused to let his face be the last thing I remembered of myself.

Whatever happened before my memory realigned itself is not something I try hard to recall. "Thank you, Sir." I nodded, gathering myself together and gently nodding my head towards him. He still laid there, a cigarette perched between pursing lips. "I need, I need my money now, please."

"Ha!" He puffed, flicking ash onto the floor. "What money?"

"Fifty, uhh, fifty dollars, Sir. You promised."

"For that?" He stood, clothing himself, "You must be mad, woman."

I shook my head, my jaw biting through my bottom teeth. "No! You said you'd pay me, now pay me!" The words seem to jump from my throat themselves, barking out at him. "Fifty dollars, for whatever you did to me!"

I stepped back, shocked at my own outburst, my back pressing into the door handle. I'm not sure I even recognised my own voice. He didn't speak, but reached underneath the pillow on the bed we'd been in. A rusted revolver. He flicked his thumb and the chamber span, thumping the stumpy handle against the palm of his hand. My mouth frosted dry, cold air collapsing out of my lungs. I scratched behind my back for the handle as it seemed to sand itself further into the door, the barrel looking back at me.

I screamed, turned, and shot out of the front door. I didn't stop running until I made it home, and I'm still not sure whether he ever left the room at all.

***

Home, or wherever home was that night. The government wouldn't give me housing until I'd secured my ID, and there was nobody I could fall back on. I bundled myself into the corner of the shop window, and wrapped the bed sheet around me. It wasn't much, but it was clean, and that made me human. It'd been gifted to me by a kind elderly man who'd told me to go and visit the church, and that's what I did later that night.

"Hello, Father. I need help, please." He opened the doors and the wooden squeal echoed between the drystone walls.

He was older than me, but not as old as I'd expected. His eyes wore a kindness to them I hadn't yet seen since I arrived here, and he welcomed me through the doors as soon as he'd opened them. "Come, sit, sit." His voice was deep and soulful, and I could tell he'd helped people before. He held an authoritarian gaze which never broke while I was speaking, listening intently to my story as I explained it. I told him about the old couple, about my housing challenges and eventually about how I made the money to survive. He waited until I'd finished, until my tears were dried by my sleeve, and then stood.

"The church will pay for your flights," he continued. "Stay here, sleep in the convent, and tomorrow I'll collect your passport." He made the sign of the cross over my forehead, and long since anybody had before, looked into my eyes. I didn't see him again until morning, though everything went as he told me it would, and I was back home as soon as I knew it.

***

I wouldn't say life has turned out as planned, but I'm alive. I lost my boys and my husband to an accident a few years back, but they live on in my heart. A heart I know is stronger now, and a heart that is learning to hold onto pride. I'm working in a café; now, and I don't hold any resentment in my heart. Not for the individuals I met, or the trauma I felt, but only for those in higher places. Those who know about girls like me. Those who learn but will never understand. Those who see the battles we fight through and do nothing to protect us. Those who starve us of any other life, of any other options on who we can be to survive. Those who saw me leave my family as Caroline and return as someone else. Those, like the Kenyan government.