“It's fine,” I yelled up the stairs. “Don’t worry about the converter. I don’t need it.”
She shouted to me as I opened the door to leave something about outlets and voltage. That was one thing I would sometimes get impatient with, all the shouting, not even anger, just loud voices; I loved her, but there was simply no way. Outside a jet black Buick honked notifying me of its presence.
“I have to go Katy.”
The creaking wood floors beneath her soft footsteps and the smell of her as she brushed up against me for one last embrace made me want to stay, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Again I opened our front door, which now seems not mine at all, but hers, all hers. We painted it the day we moved in. She told me on our first date that her favorite color was red, but not just red. She described it with her hands, brushing through the air of my imagination a violet-red-rouge color that at the time I never knew I would one day see. We painted our front door a year into our relationship later. She picked it out at Inman’s Paint on the corner of Ledge and Morningside just past Don’s Finest Foods downtown. I remember her coming home with three large cans for about six square feet. She always knew how to make me laugh, even if it was unintentional.
That was two years ago, and we were still in graduate school at Stanford. She was there for a Masters in Art History and printmaking. I was finishing graduate school and beginning the strenuous process of receiving a PhD in International studies. We met at O’Keefe’s, a local bar rarely visited by the loads of undergrad students who frequented the downtown scene.
***
She tapped on my shoulder.
“Do you have a cigarette?”
I turned around to find a short brunette woman smiling coyly. The freckles across the bridge of her nose danced as she smiled at me. At that moment all I wanted was a cigarette to give her — Parliaments, Virginia Slims, anything.
“Damn, I’m sorry, I don’t smoke,” I said. Feeling like an idiot for listening to the Surgeon General, I leaned back around to pick up my Heineken.
“Great. I don’t either,” she said taking the seat to my right. “I just wanted to make sure you didn’t because man, I hate it...Hi, I’m Katy.”
“I’m James,” I said extending my hand.
And that’s how we started. Shortly after the pop quiz we left O’Keefe’s. It was only about 7 p.m so we strolled about looking into boutique windows and speaking about ourselves, then I walked her home. She gave me her number and we just sort of started being a ‘thing.’ At first she was pretty anti-titles, so I never called her my girlfriend and she never called me her boyfriend. We just sort of, were.
***
I got into the car bound for the San Jose airport to make my 10:53 a.m. flight. That’s one thing I never could quite understand, the way flight times are — never 11 a.m. or 6 p.m., simply 1:38 a.m. Be there or be square. I felt so old planning my flight, taking action in the decisions I know will affect me wherever I end up ten years from now. It’s May, and I just graduated. I’m now Dr. James Napier. I wasn’t trained to clean wounds or heal the lame, I wasn’t taught to listen to the problems of others or use a stethoscope. Being a doctor of International Studies, doesn’t seem like much of a doctor job. My specialty’s in human rights, while I mostly deal in issues of human trafficking in third world countries from Bangladesh to Laos. Straight out of the University of Chicago where I attended undergrad, I applied to work for the United States Peace Corps in Malaysia, but I pulled out after only six months on sight. Since then I haven’t been able to sleep through the night.
Even after I came back to the states and started with school again, I knew I couldn’t live as an academic forever, and Katy always knew I wasn’t planning on being stagnant in California forever.
“So where are you off to?” asked the driver.
“Going to Cambodia.” Hearing myself say it made the tiniest hairs prick up on the nape of my neck. I was surprised that my hands weren’t shaking, but as I repositioned myself in the back of the car I rubbed my clammy palms against the soft black leather seat.
The driver’s eyes darted back at me in the rearview mirror as I said it. “Off getting yourself a tan?” he asked.
I cracked a smile and said, “I can get a tan here. No, I’ll be going there to research human trafficking.”
“Oh,” he said. That was it.
“Have you heard of what’s going on over in East Asia at all?”
He seemed to be concentrating on the road as I tried to pry my way into his mind. Holding the wheel with two hands he slid in and out of lanes passing the green exit signs with caution as not to miss the terminal.
“I’m sorry, what was that, sir?”
His voice seemed tired, slightly distressed and very uninterested. Glancing out the window I starred up at the clear skies and then down at the shadows of palm trees gliding along the pavement.
“Oh, it was nothing.”
***
When I got to Cambodia it was 96 degrees and the locals were getting ready for the autumnal floods headed their way over the next few weeks. I was stationed in the country’s capital to do most of my research through one of the NGOs I randomly picked after scanning through the list the previous spring. I chose the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association and when I told one of my professors of my decision to work there he told me it was the leading organization in the fight against Cambodian human trafficking.
The airport was a sea of colors and languages and music and animals. I had never seen anything like it. I got off the plane headed for the baggage claim along with the hundreds of other foreigners streaming into Cambodia’s singular international airport. “Sir, sir, sir, sir!” Those were the first attempted English words I heard people shout at me as I picked up my luggage in Phnom Penh International Airport. I suppose my dehydrated, pallid face nearly pristine white to them gave me away as an outsider. My pathetic attempt to disguise myself rather as an experienced traveler was clearly a failure upon arrival as my camping-styled Mountain Hardware hiking bag’s front pocket exploded with about twenty Ralph Lauren Polo socks. Immediately I was taken up by the flood of invitations from Cambodian’s to ‘come with them’ and ended up getting a ride to a hotel around the corner from my new place of business by way of a kind gentleman named Prahsuit. He seemed to know English well and after speaking with him for a few minutes I had found out about nearly his entire family and learned of how he had been learning English for the last fifteen years driving tourists here and there.
“Where you from?” inquired Prahsuit.
I hadn’t been expecting much conversation initially, but I answered plainly, “The United States.”
He laughed showing his rotted out gums reminding me that I hadn’t gone to the dentist myself in close to a year.
“I know you from U.S.A., but where you from?” he continued. “I know people who live there.”
Of course he knows people who live there. Of course, already I was the American guilty of underestimating the rest of the world.
“I’m from Michigan. It’s close to Canada.”
“Canada? Oh, Canada. Not French.”
It struck me as odd that he seemed to know a little about French colonization in the Western hemisphere. Taking out a reporter notebook I bought at Walgreen’s a few days before I wrote down the remark and placed a large star beside it. Below it I wrote to buy an international cell phone, but in the mean time to call Katy using the hotel line.
***
“James Napier?”
A loud receptionist at the head of the waiting room finally called my name. She said it like it was doubtful if I would actually be there or not—like they didn’t have faith that a real down on the farm Michigan boy couldn’t possibly find himself at the other side of the globe. Maybe it was just my insecurities shouting into my psyche.
“Yes, yes, that’s me.”
She nodded her head, which carried with it a code of ‘come with me.’ I followed the tiny woman to a small, vacant room with two chairs, one desk reminiscent of post-Soviet Union classrooms, and a small window that had large steel beams cross over it.
“Your advisor will be with you in a moment.” She left me in the room where I made myself comfortable sitting in one of the chairs. The linoleum floors and cement block walls reminded me of my first dormitory at UC. There were traces of foot prints and dust bunnies everywhere. Before I could speculate more Dr. Marvin Shuckhorn preceded into what I learned was his office.
“Hello,” he said extending his large callused hand. “So how are things so far? You’ve been here, what, a few days? Have you met your colleagues? How are they? Do you guys get along? Are you all here for the same purpose?”
After his machinegun shoot-off of questions I was finally able to answer.
“Things so far are, well, for sure they’re different.”
“Well of course they’re different,” he said with a Santa Claus-like twinkle in his eye. “You know it’s not USA college life out there, is it?” He trailed off laughing at his own ‘dad joke.’
“Yeah, it’s no USA,” I said skeptically. “Anyway, I’ve met a few people. I noticed that this is much more of an international workplace than I had expected. I was sort of thinking I’d be the only American in a predominantly Cambodian office. It’s interesting for sure.”
“So you think the ‘melting pot,’ if you will, works here? Good, I’m glad. You know, we were a bit worried that a multinational group would lose sight of the human rights for Cambodians would be a problem.”
“No, no, it’s good.”
“Good. Yeah, I guess it does work. Yeah, because, hey, we’re all people here. We all need rights, and have them, innately, that is. Hmm, so who do you have a connection with in the group so far?”
“Oh, well, I met a French woman named Marion Clair. She’s from the town in France my sister studied in.”
“Yeah, Marion, she’s a good girl. Very smart. Interested in reporting human rights issues, I hear. Good girl, yeah. Very pretty, too, I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
“Oh, yeah, well, she’s fine, but I have a girl at home, so,” I said. Then trying to change the subject, I added, “So yeah, the other members are great so far too. I met a Belgian some other Americans and a few Spaniards—yeah, we all live in the same housing complex up the road.”
“Right, ok,” he said. Getting down to the real meat of the meeting, he said, “Now, let me see here...”
Adjusting his bifocals so they’d sit on the brim of his large nose rather than the tip where they continually fell, he said, “So, I see you’re a doctor?”
“Yeah, but not in the way you might think. I’m a researcher. I study human development and specialize in the human trafficking that has become a phenomenon over the past few decades.”
At this he gave me a half smile and said sarcastically one word, “Phenomenon?”
I had heard all the arguments before regarding the time period before, but I was prepared for Shuckhorn’s undoubtedly longwinded explanation of the time frame.
“Phenomenon?” he repeated. “Let me tell you something, human trafficking is anything but a phenomenon. It’s a damn catastrophe. I tell you, if people think major environmental disasters are a problem, think about the estimated 600,000 to 820,000 men, women, and children that are trafficked across international borders each year. I mean, Jesus.”
At that he placed both hands on his brows. His brown eyes darted from side to side as he meticulously calculated the amount of human suffering that must occur each day in this godforsaken world we live in.
“We live in a world where crafty businessmen think it’s their birthright to suppress the suppressible, stomp on the weak and sell the ones left over.”
As he said this I starred up from my hands which I had been cracking rapidly during his much deserved soliloquy.
“You want to see your life here researching ‘phenomenal issues’ matter?” he asked in a tone more like a statement. “Then don’t go on telling people things that are just plain false.”
For a while we both were quiet. I was back in my place as a subordinate to a much higher ruling party than I and was ready to receive information about my time constraints, financial measures and permanent living assessment.
“Now, you’re here to get your assignment and to explain your proposed research inquiry. At the end of your session here you will turn in a short report regarding your position on the issue of human trafficking in Eastern Asia, in specific regard to Cambodia.”
He stopped to breathe.
“Is this clear?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered. “It’s clear.”
“So, go ahead. Explain briefly your reasons in working for the CHRD.”
I was taken off-guard. I hadn’t realized until that very moment why I had decided CHRD, why I had decided on human rights. I couldn’t remember for the life of me why I was there, why I felt like I needed to make a difference, why my life could impact the lives of others. For a while, probably a few seconds that felt like a few hours we both sat in silence. Dr. Shuckhorn’s clothing smelled unwashed and faintly of river water and sweat. His odor made it difficult to concentrate. Perspiration pockets built up beneath my armpits and a single bead floated down my spine dipping into the small of my back.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You want me to explain right now my position on trafficking in brief and give a smaller version of my research topic?”
Shifting in his seat leaning toward the open window, he said, “Yeah, if you can. If you aren’t prepared or need a few minutes, that’s fine.”
“No, no, that’s alright. I can explain it now,” I said. Then it came to me. All my ideas surged out in one big splat of an idea. “Ok, so the United Nations has in the past put sanctions on Cambodia after various other nations have left their footprint in the Cambodian sands — well, the UN ruled under transitional authority from ’89 to ’93, but they left the country to the restored monarchy in ’94. That said, serious sex trafficking was witnessed and reported increases after peacekeeping forces moved in and after they left. I plan to explore the link between these peacekeeping forces like the UN and NATO and increased amount of sexual human trafficking in Cambodia, while also using countries like Bosnia and Kosovo as other examples.”
I came out like tidal wave of well-researched thoughts.
“What do you think?” I asked Shuckhorn.
“Sounds like you have a good head on your shoulders, and hopefully you’ll uncover something those other payroll researchers haven’t yet.”
With that he stood up to shake my hand and bring me out of the office. Walking at his heels I noticed his balding blonde and grey swirl of hair on the top of his head and the sun marks like wrinkles and sunspots popped up at me. I suppose that’s what one would look like if they lived her for the rest of their days.
“You’ll need to set up an appointment for every third of the month to check up with research and theories. Let yourself out. It’s been nice meeting you.”
“Yeah, you too,” I said. “Thanks for the input on ideas. I’ll see you in a month.”
By then he was practically at the end of the hallway, but then turned around slightly to add in another tidbit of wisdom.
“Don’t forget what I said about phenomenon.”
***
I had been researching on the local trade culture regarding the deals involving slave trades or similar trades like sex trades and favors for about a month already. So far it didn’t seem anything out of the normal in regard to the nature of selling humans for financial gains. The UN had pulled out of the country just over a decade before and the bulk of my studies dealt with the overwhelming aftermath of their lack of paying attention, while they were in country, to the underground thriving industry of the sale of men, women and children. According to past statements they said the ‘phenomenon’ of human trafficking in Cambodia is relatively new, although globally it has been a problem for centuries upon centuries. The issue has come to light as a problem in the ‘90s, but very little knowledge of why it is occurring there or who is participating is known.
After reading up on the sexual exploitation of mainly women and children who live in the country region of Cambodia and their recruitment into this line of work under the guise of factory jobs I couldn’t look out my window without feeling like all of these people were victims. Even the victimizers have their reasons for exploiting others. It’s a cycle of country self-destruction forming from the alarming amount of poverty. For days at a time I couldn’t read anything on the issue without throwing up in sheer disgust and pain for the abused.
***
“There’s no way I can get into the field work part of the job and have it count as ‘research’ Shuckhorn? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I was pissed. After two months in country and after having read every article, book, seen every amount of video coverage and scoured the Internet for anything else I missed, the last thing I had to complete was to see it with my own eyes.
“I’m sorry James. It’s just not part of why you’re here.”
“Not part of why I am here? Not part of why I am here?” I was shouting now and couldn’t for the life of me come to terms with the amount of my very heart and soul I had placed in my work.
“I need to see it Marvin.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
He left the sterile office from our first meeting and returned fifteen minutes later with a consent form and a visiting journalist named Brimt from Laos.
“This is Brimt, he needs someone to bring him up to speed in mini detail on the topic,” said Huckshorn, sighing in relief that I was no longer going to be at his heals begging for an opportunity to see the story I’ve been reading about before my eyes.
A week later I had filled in Bremt, no gaps without a line to fill it in. He was just as passionate about it as I was, but perhaps less, as I did have a much stronger foothold in the topic. We were set to leave for Battambang where sex trafficking has been known to occur and appear on and around the streets frequently.
***
“When are you going to be home James?” asked Katy. Her connection was going in and out. All week I had trouble getting a hold of her. She was either working or our time zones were off or the phone simply wasn’t working.
“Home?” I said. “Yeah, home, I should be home within the next month or so, hun. There are just a lot of new things happening every day.”
I sounded like one of those workaholic fathers that never got the chance to make it to one of their son’s soccer games. I never meant to become that guy, but while big things are going on its easy to loose sight of certain things, no matter how important what a person may be doing at the time.
“You’re not sure then?” she said. “Well, if you aren’t sure then I can’t figure out when to book your flight for and I don’t know if I should get you a ticket to Chicago to visit my parents over Christmas because if you do come then we have to go to Michigan because it’s your year.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry, I’m sorry Kate. The line’s getting fuzzy and I can’t understand everything you say. I’m getting about every third word or so.”
“O-K-well-never-mind-then,” she said slowly. “I-will-just-get-the-tickets-late-then-if-that-is-O-K-with-you.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. I gotta go now Kate,” I said. “I, I gotta go. I love you.”
“I love you too,” she answered back. “Bye.”
***
Bremt and I boarded a bus bound for Battambang the following morning. He was to pose as a possible costumer at a local restaurant who was also looking for other types of appetite-feeding activities. I was his uninterested friend who was married with four children, just in case anyone asked.
“Hello, do you speak English?” I asked a waitress at the front of Angkor, a well-known eatery in the middle of the city. We would have stayed in the capital, but while I hadn’t been to every place in town, the identities of most of the employees working against trafficking are known among sellers, so we had to go outside the walls into more rural parts then into other slightly larger locations.
Entering into the restaurant was almost surreal. One moment we were offered a place to sit and offered beverages. As a side course the restaurant manager offered Bremt and I an added pamphlet.
“This is only for special costumers,” he said. “Special price, just for you.”
I looked at the paper written in poor English with little consideration as to punctuation, spelling or grammar, but these were the least of my worries. I handed the paper to Bremt. Then I proceeded to take my camera out and take a picture with the manager, smiling and posing as though we were interested participants.
“I bring you out three ladies, and you chose,” he said.
“Oh, oh, no, no, I am not interested,” I said, “but my friend here is.”
I pointed to Bremt, who was holding the pamphlet with an eager facial expression.
“Oh, ok, I bring them out for him.”
Ten minutes later a procession of three girls, eight, twelve and fourteen years old wearing thrice recycled clothing from when I was a boy came out of the back food preparation area.
Bremt and I looked at the faces of these three children. I took a picture of the girls without the knowledge of the manager so later someone would come back for them. Walking out of the restaurant completely famished and aching all over in pain and distress I got back on the bus to Phnom Penh with Bremt. Their faces were etched in my mind, and the last thing I wanted to do after I saw their faces was leave. I wanted to punch out the manager and raid the place in search of the multiple victims.
***
“No honey, I won’t be back for Christmas...Hello? Shit.”
Standing in the middle of Phnom Penh in a bad excuse for a telephone booth almost two months after I left California, one month over due to return home, I realized that I simply couldn’t leave yet. Katy and I just had our first trans-country fight. I skulked back to where other researchers and volunteers of the foundation were standing waiting for me so we could get back to the office.
“Are you alright?” asked Marion. “You look really upset. I can tell, because you have those concerned eyes. I haven’t seen them since the first day you got here.”
Opening my now quite worn Marmot backpack I grabbed one of the granola bars my mom had mailed to me earlier last week. Food like that here was a precious commodity, but in reality I actually didn’t mind chomping on curry at every meal, or trying new things when the option arose.
“Things are fine,” I said. “— No, they’re really fine — they’re fine.”
I tried to convince myself of this as I crouched down balancing on the balls of my feet, but I kept thinking of those children in Battambang. I rubbed the sweat beads gathering on my dusty forehead dripping down the sides of my bearded cheeks. After I broke my razor during the orientation days I skipped shaving entirely and instead favored a pair of Crayola scissors for mere trims.
“No, it’s just, my girlfriend. She’s there, and I’m here, and we’re not together. And, god I just don’t know.” I could have gone on and on like that forever. There seemed to be no way out of this perpetual letting down process I was doing to her, myself, my colleagues and to the victims of these violations of human rights.
She bent down next to me and placed her hand on the soft spot of my back in between my shoulder blades and rubbed her hand around like a mother after a bad day.
“I’m sure everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.”
I looked to my left and caught a glimpse of sunlight coming through the splits between her straight honey-colored hair. All I could think was that she didn’t know how hard this was.
“Don’t give me that, you don’t know what I’m even talking about,” I said standing up leaving her on the dusty side walk.
I had met Marion on my first day of orientation at the foundation. Her French accent stuck out amid the numerous American’s, along with a few international citizens of humanity. I had studied in France for a semester during my sophomore year of college because I was originally an International Studies and French double, but mid-way through college I switched from French to Human Relations. Marion and I hit it off right away. She had been working there for close to six months at the time and had already invested herself in the people and culture much more than I could have thought possible.
I could hear the racing footsteps behind me as Marion came nearer. “You know, just because you think you know everything about me and why I’m here and who I am, doesn’t mean that you actually do.” She was out of breath and annoyed by the time I slowed down to hear her out.
“I may not know your relationship with this girl and what exactly you hoped to accomplish in a few months in one of the poorest countries in our world today, but you know what, fine,” she said, gaining momentum. “You’re an arrogant ass —”
Before she could go on and on and on, I said, “Perhaps, I don’t want to tell you everything or whatever, but you can’t just go giving advice without knowing something. What do you know anyway? We’re here in this country and it seems like no one cares and nothing is getting done and people are still being treated like cattle, and my girlfriend a million miles away is upset that I can’t foresee myself coming home for Christmas —”
She stopped to look at me again. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“I just, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I just never thought she could be so selfish.”
Marion stood up from where she was sitting and turned toward me.
“She isn’t being selfish James. She’s being, I don't know, a person on the other side of the world who just, just...she doesn’t know. That’s the fault of the rest of the world, and you’re assuming she has seen everything you’ve seen over the past weeks. You’re assuming she knows what its like to see thousands of women per day be scooped up from the streets and thrown into a situation where they’re forced to have sex or die.”
She sat back onto the curb outside a local pop shop. Clasping her hands together and placing them on her knee caps she starred back up at me. “She just doesn’t know James, and communication is key. That’s why my concentration is journalism and human rights, how to get the word out in an affective manner. People get desensitized. They can’t help it. If you’re not faced with it every day in a real way, then there’s nothing you can do but guard yourself against feeling.”
Putting my arms through the backpack straps I sat down next to her and didn’t say anything. Everything she was saying made so much sense. We sat and looked out onto the street before us bustling with farmer produce, animals, juxtaposed with the honking of several Honda’s in a long polluting procession of vehicles.
“God, the third world,” I said, half-thinking to myself.
