Perhaps at the last, none of it...
Does...
Mean...
Much.
Not to anyone, but me.
But...
When I think of myself then...
And people...
And the world...
I feel like there was a modicum of hope that textured things...
Like faerie dust...
Like magic.
And it was easy to think that way...
Until one became acquainted with reality...
With Nadja...
And God only knows how many others like her...
Who were sold...
Or for some sickening set of circumstances that came to be their...
Reality...
Sold themselves...
Into what amounted to...
Slavery.
From Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Romania...
Women and children were packed into carts, wagons, and trucks...
And shipped...
Everywhere.
They were shipped wherever demand was high...
Better when limited alternative commodities were manifest at whichever that location turned out to...
Be.
Regions and lands steeped in conflict were good.
War zones, as we like to call them.
Because we really do like to refer to them as such...
Because where there is war...
There is want...
Of...
Everything.
I had gone to the Balkans with Billings to develop a story on the ancillary effects of war on the "non-combatant."
Billings had been doing it for years.
He was even in Vietnam at the end.
The Falklands...
Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation...
Somalia...
He'd been in Iraq...
And then Bosnia...
With me.
Amid our investigations, the most compelling story...
The most sickening truth that we unearthed...
Was that of trafficking...
Of slavery.
And that is how we encountered first...
Marina...
"The Controller..."
The Madame...
And then...
Nadja.
The Dayton Accord had recently been signed and now it was left to the signatories to ensure adherence to the terms of the Treaty that had...
However fleetingly...
Brought peace to the Balkans.
Billings and I had gone to meet some representatives from the Russian and US Armies, which were colocated at Ugljevik...
Not far from the Serbian border.
We were tracking some leads...
Rather cryptic, really...
About an international broker of everything...
Including human beings.
The locals had whimsically taken to calling him "the truth."
We were to meet them at a restaurant where the food was questionable but the "atmosphere" was...
Pleasing.
When we came into the place at the prescribed hour, indeed there were two beautiful girls dancing...
Fully clothed...
Numbly...
To some sampled, dance-variation of traditional Gypsy music.
There were groups of business men in all of the large tables in the centre of the morbidly dank and dark place.
Our hosts had indeed preceded us and beckoned us over to their table in the corner at the back, right of the place.
Someone at the table next to ours was talking about a troop carrier having run over a mine on the road to Tuzla earlier in the day...
Everyone in the vehicle had died...
The men at the table ordered another round of drinks.
The music stopped and a new pair of girls languidly lurched onto the stage.
One of these girls was Nadja.
In my previous life...
Before that place...
I had not more than once or twice in my life entered such an establishment.
I had always been looking for more than the veneer...
Perhaps something...
Unattainable...
But as I was in most aspects of my way of living...
Things were black and white for me.
Good...
Bad...
Just...
Wrong...
Ugly...
And beautiful.
That was my initiation...
That war...
That woman...
Those...
Profanations...
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