Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave Read Free Page B

to hold close and treasure the positive memories and the good feelings they give me.
    One day our entire household was in an uproar because one of my older sisters had been dismissed from her job in a shameful manner. I was eight years old by this time, and my sister Zahra, one of the twins, had been working for some time for a wealthy man and his wife in Egypt’s capital city of Cairo. Our town near Alexandria was several hours north and west of Cairo by car, and after Zahra went to work in Cairo, I did not see her much. Not that I had seen her much before. Zahra was quite a bit older than I was—when I was eight, she could have been anywhere from sixteen to twenty, or maybe even older—and the age difference between us, and her frequent absences from our home, had made bonding next to impossible.
    My parents had arranged for Zahra to work for this family, and while she had been paid a pittance (which my mother had picked up every month), she’d technically been held in bondage. I later learned that Zahra had never had days off, had not been able to leave the home of her employers unescorted and without permission, and had had to endure all sorts of physical and verbal abuse. My sister had essentially worked from sun up to sun down.
    In Egypt it is not unusual for a poor family to make a contract like this with a richer family. I think the contract my parents made with this family said that Zahra was supposed to work for them for ten years, and she was into the contract for only two or three years when she was “fired.” When we learned Zahra had been dismissed, there was a lot of yelling. And on this day my father’s yells were exceptionally irate.
    A few days later my mother, my youngest sister, and I went to visit Zahra’s former employers in Cairo. I was the oldest girl living at home, so I often traveled with my mother. Most of the travel was to the market or to help her with errands near our apartment. But my baby sister and I had occasionally accompanied our mother when she’d go to pick up Zahra’s “pay.” On a few of those trips I saw the family’s twin boys, who were younger than I was, and their youngest daughter, who was about my age.
    Few things stick in my mind from our trip to see Zahra’s former employers, but I do know that I stood in the enormous bedroom of the woman of the house as I held my baby sister. I could not have loved that little girl more if she had been my own child. I am sad to say that I no longer recall her name.
    On that day there was another lady in the room. I came to understand that Nebit was a relative of the employer family, and that her family lived in that huge house too. The first woman was lying in her bed, and she told my mom that my sister had stolen money from them. More than my family could ever pay back. My mother had already confirmed this fact with my sister and knew the accusation to be true.
    “You can’t pay back what your girl stole,” said the lady in Arabic. “So you can either provide us with someone else to work to repay the debt or we’ll call the police.”
    Tears leaked from my mother’s eyes. I stood, silent, holding back my wild emotions. I felt afraid of this lady’s threat, and sad for my mother’s tears.
    Then the woman said, “I can train the young one from the ground up, and we won’t have these adult issues of stealing.”
    From what I could gather from the rest of the conversation, the contract my parents had made with this family was that my sister was supposed to have lived in this home and helped with the cooking and cleaning. Then I heard my mother agree that the fair thing for everyone was for another girl to work in Zahra’s place.
    “All right. It’s a deal,” the woman said in Arabic.
    The pit of my stomach lurched when I realized the girl they were talking about was me.
    Then my mother began to talk about me as if I were nothing more than a piece of furniture, a commodity. How could she talk about me in this callous