Traffic Light

Chapter 3: Transitions

I’m swaying back and forth, it’s the same sensation you get from laying on a hammock by the beach. My body is heavy, my vision is blurred. I can barely move let alone think of moving. The whole world is swaying back and forth. My vision begins to improve, before me I see an endless dark spiral with dim lit colours of red towards the end. It’s all still very blurry, I’m trying to make sense of whatever is closing in from the other end of the spiral. There’s a silhouette of a figure, he either has a very large head or is wearing something very long on that same head. The figure moves too slowly forward. I can’t make out a damn thing and the endless swaying is starting to make me nauseas.

Suddenly I hear a low voice off in the distance somewhere, “Good morning princess.” It’s slow and mocking, but very close and very clear. My vision now begins to warp into something else. The swaying starts to get more violent as I am shoved from wooden surface to concrete base. Swaying left to right, my head hits the cold rusty edge of some metallic pipe with force. I come to, looking around me in a complete daze. I have new clothes, though already stained with sweat and old vomit dribbled down from the top of my collar down towards the section of my waist where a belt would belong.

I’m sitting flat on a surface of some kind. Head in palm, suffering from a severe case of some form of momentary vertigo. I slowly look up towards a glaring light to see yet another silhouette of a face. The same loud, low voice erupts once more. “You’ve been puking your guts out for hours. Before you finally passed out, I dragged you to this corner. You’re safe from any swaying debris here. It’s a storm out there, they’re gonna go right through it the crazy bastards.” He laughs in a rather demonic and sinister but at the same time comforting tone. It somehow helped to hear human laughter at a confusing and frightening time like this.

I’m still looking around, trying to catch my breath. Looking like an untamed zebra stunned by his current environment, waking up after being tranquilised. I’m still trying to figure out which reality was the right one, the dimly lit red spiral or the swaying, dark, wet asylum I’m in at this point, until my silhouetted friend speaks up again. “Dear Sir, are you serious?” I’m looking at him like the victim of a grenade blast. “Sir, you’re in a ship right now. You’ve had a violent reaction to some serious sea sickness, followed by a migraine. You have just woken up at the bottom most cargo section of a ship. We’re going through a little storm, you’re in a ship, you hear? A ship, you understand?” I glare at him for a moment and nod slowly, coughing up some excess water from the scrappy cargo floor that must have gotten in my mouth somehow while I was unconscious.

That’s right, I’ve done it. It’s already done. Things are coming back to me now. The recent series of events are currently in a big pile of mess somewhere in my head but I’m reorganising all the sections now. In order, all in readable order. I’m on the ship. I’ve been on the ship for a day or two haven’t I? I ask my friend, sitting slightly above my body on a mountain of metallic contraptions that look slightly like disassembled cages. “Yes about two days by now.” His face is slowly coming into clearer vision. The generic face of a man, the same race as me. He is either slightly older or just looks older than those his age. He has a rather thick moustache and a mud covered khafia around his neck. He is shirtless and he is covered from head to toe, as am I, with either sweat or salt water seeping in through the smallest cracks here below the deck.

I remember my pouch and feel around my back with my arms to find it safe and sound. My documents, my identification, all of what I have left is in that single pouch. I felt very vulnerable at the time. When I notice that we aren’t alone. At the far end opposite corner of this noisy, frantically shaky, post-apocalyptic underworld that I’ve found myself in, there are more shrouded figures hunched over in the distance. Huddled together, only the white of their eyes glaring back at mine. We’re all headed in the same direction, we’re all headed towards the storm. Sounds of heavy downpour followed by streaks of rapid thunderclaps are all that echo into the night sky.

The closer we got to the eye of the storm, the louder we had to shout at each other to say anything. So eventually we avoided talking. I just curled up into a ball, utilising my small stature to fit into the tightest space I could. The whole situation still felt like a strange dream that I would get shaken out of any time now by my mother. My mother, I wonder how she’s doing at this moment. I wonder if the new medication is taking effect yet. I wonder if the money I deposited will be enough to cover the costs while I’m gone. I wonder if loans count as agents of even more chaos, or if they act as opportunities when the timing is right and the perfect chance comes your way. I swear I’m not usually the risk-taking kind, yet I do feel a slight sense of pride for this new-found bravery that I have. No way in the world did I think that I would be able to sail half way across the world, put down a loan or make friends with people far from my own low-class district, if it all weren’t for dire situations. Dire situations sometimes act as catalysts for the greatest adventures.

My trail of thought was interrupted by a loud sneeze from above me, where my low voiced friend rubbed his nose in annoyance and slumped back down to close his eyes and try to get some rest. I suppose the wet, cold, humid environment wasn’t doing us any favors. Still, I’m glad I have some company at least. I look up from underneath my hole and ask him how many days we have left until expected arrival? He pauses for a moment then mentions that he heard it takes roughly a week to reach the shore. So it would take another four or five days before we finally see the city of money.

I’m reorganising the thoughts in my head again, I’m shuffling my memories back and forth. I remember on some nights Jake and I would sit on the small patch of grass in front of his home and look up, just watching the stars. And he’d tell me about all the strange and fantastic things over at where he managed to earn this lifestyle. Over there, he says, there are more shopping malls than you can count. On top of these malls, are large surface areas dedicated specifically to rooftop beaches. Man-made pools for self-made people, beverage bars, lined up to the end with bikini-laced women. In this land he was going to take me, people barely walked. They simply called cabs or limos, or drove their own BMWs or gold-plated Lambos.

Large mansions for houses and technology never seen before by the average Dhaka local. They had reached the pinnacle of robotics over there, kitchens that automated cooking simulations with physical ingredients, acting as mechanical chefs just as good as any real culinary expert. The cars over there had the feature of autopilot. Whenever you were stuck in a jam or if you had nothing but 4 hours of straight road, autopilot features allowed the driver to let go of the wheel and let the car itself become a master controller. Jake had seen entire families just laying back and reading books in the cars on the roads over there.

Whenever they celebrated New Year, if he wasn’t in Dhaka, his friends would invite him up to one of the tallest skyscrapers in this city. They would do the countdown and fireworks would shoot through the air and reach the stars, replacing them with a million tiny sparks and a series of deafening booms in the air. At that point in time, some of these concepts were difficult for me to grasp. A firecracker that reached the stretch of the entire skyscraper sounded like a wild tale, but obviously, Jake was someone whose word I took for gold. A lot of the stories and things that come out of his mouth usually do sound like nonsensical creations and ideas of a 12 year old sometimes. Nevertheless, whenever or wherever he could, he’d prove to me when something was for real. Eventually, after a couple more times of that, I’d felt like he just knew for a fact that reality is truly stranger than fiction.

My trail of thought was interrupted once more. “Hey brother, what kind of cigarettes do you have?” I heard it from above me, but it wasn’t the same low voiced friend that was here a moment ago. It’s a different guy, looking almost exactly like him except he has a shirt on and a sillier voice. “I don’t have any.” I murmured in response before pulling my head back into the coziness of my dry and immovable hole in the corner, trying to keep dry and trying to keep still.

I left my mother a note. I don’t know why I didn’t say goodbye. I was probably afraid of what she’d say or how she’d react. If I intended to be back in five or six months’ time, then what’s the point of even having any farewells? The note I left her was placed under her pillow the night I set out, I just watched her sleeping for the longest time. Her heavy wheezing and twitching eyes, she laid on her side looking as uncomfortable as ever. I pulled her blanket higher up above her shoulders to hide her sunken stomach and rib-cage visible even through the thin cloth she slept in. Her soft face was the last thing I wanted to see before I made my move. In the corner of our house were three large brown bags full of plastic wrappers bundled up by the dozens, some ten to twenty translucent capsules encased in each one. The note that I gently slipped underneath her pillow read something along the lines of “Will be back in six months, with enough for food and treatment. Please take your new medication and make it last. Love you ma. Your son.” Stuck to the back of the note, was a wad of cash. Just enough for bare necessities. It was all I had, I left it with her to hold out a little while I was away.

The low voiced brother kneeled down in front of my tight space. He stuck his hand in to the opening holding out a piece of some form of bread. I don’t bother asking what it is, I just grab it and bite down. It was sweet and creamy albeit slightly stale, it tasted like one of the snacks you’d be able to find in the little shops of the sub-districts of Dhaka. Holding that thought for a moment, I forgot for a split second that I wasn’t at home anymore. We were hundreds of miles away from everything we ever knew. I focused on chewing the stale snack to distract me from the potential panic I’d be facing if I pondered on that thought for too long. Crawling out from underneath my hiding space, bread clenched between my teeth, I look up at my low voiced friend and thank him. He asks me where I’m from, I tell him Dhaka. He gestures at me knowingly with one hand while holding on to a much bigger piece of bread than I have with his other hand.

His name is Sabr and he tells me he’s from the North of Dhaka, a small typical Bangladeshi village hidden by vast mountain tops and endless streams of rivers. His home sits smack in the middle of a giant plain with no end in sight. “We use donkeys to travel from one place to another.” He announced loudly. As the seasons change it would get very cold and windy, so they managed to build a shelter that leads down into the soft dirt with a small chimney and a make-shift fireplace at the bottom of the structure for villagers to keep warm. “When the cold comes, our crops can never grow right. Long after the cold is gone, the crops take much longer to normalise. It interrupts our schedule for gathering and selling to the nearby markets. We make very little cash during these harsh seasons. We cannot survive with the little supplies that we have. Many of our women go to the city and w***e themselves out in the brothels for some extra penance. Some never even return and go missing. Some are found dead.”

One day, during one of these harsh cold seasons, Sabr and his family are packing the shelter with fodder for the fire when he sees something in the distance. As the object comes closer, he realises it’s a white truck, filled with a few other men at the back. They pull up in the center of the village. A few large men start coming out from the driver’s section to shake hands with the elders and the men. We all head into the large shelter for some warmth. In the dark underground safe-haven, away from the teeth-chattering cold, the elders and these men sit in a circle and discuss a possible way for the villagers to better survive these harsh seasons. “SO here I am.” Sabr concludes, with a large smile on his face. “There are a few more of us men from my village. Only a handful of us are on this boat right now. This time round, we are considering this tactic a test-run. If the next few months are successful, God willing we will be back for the next batch of jobs. Then our village will truly flourish.”

I sit cross legged on top of a few wooden boards listening to his story. I’m seeing some correlation between Sabr’s story and Jake’s. I’m wondering why the team likes to carry out recruitment initiatives in the outskirts of the city. I remember asking Jake something along the lines of that, with him giving me an answer that’s something along the lines of; they do recruit in the cities, but not many are interested. The team would rather benefit from the good work-ethic and humbleness of villagers instead of prideful urbanites. It made sense to me when I thought about it. Then again, as long as Jake told it to me, I thought it made sense.

I told Sabr that I have a friend that shares the exact same story as him, or at least it is very similar. He asks where he is and that he would love to meet him. I tell him my good friend Jake will be seeing us in a few months’ time. He hasn’t been called back for his shift yet. It seems they run a strict schedule that revolves around the tasks and functions of each individual employee. Even if there are long breaks in between work, punctuality is absolutely vital to the organisation. You miss your flight, or your ship, you’re out of your division and are demoted to a lower position. If it happens a second time, you’re out of the force entirely.

This is from what Jake tells me about the organisation. Sabr is listening to this and nods his head intrigued by the news. He seems rather intimidated after hearing about the tight regulations. “They must have quite an expansive influence, seeing that I heard from one of the men upstairs that we won’t be going through standard custom procedures on this trip. Apparently, we’re behind on schedule, so the runners upstairs, the ones who are taking care of us, they will be bringing us to an insider that will process our arrivals in less than half an hour instead of the usual two to three hours.” Sabr says.

“They must have quite an operation going on.” I tell him. I found myself wandering, for the first time during the trip, about the future. Allowing myself for the first time, to get a little excited about what was in store for us. What kind of accommodation would be waiting for us? What kind of a feast was being prepared in our honor, after a long arduous journey to this far and foreign land? How will they refer to us? What will they be briefing us on in the first few hours of us safely landing? My mind begins to race with the many things that could be. As I sat on the wooden planks, my legs started to sway above the ground freely and a very subtle smirk formed on my face as I looked up at the rocking light on the ceiling. With each giant swing, a loud creak echoed throughout the dark, hollow section of the ship.

This vessel that we were on, turned from one large, confusing nightmarish, metallic realm of endless compartments and valve-filled chambers for me in the first few days to a pretty enchanting and surreal experience by the time we had almost reached the shore. The ship’s control cabin wasn’t for us to enter. So I never did see what the cockpit looked like. All I did see was a blurry silhouette of the captain, stirring the giant wheel and talking rapidly on his radio. For the most part, being a rather conservative and anti-social individual, I kept to myself, except for a conversation or two with the brothers I had already met, Sabr included.

It seemed that there were at least forty of us on this ship. Every time I thought I had finally accounted for everyone, an unfamiliar face pops out from the corner and my numbering is lost again. One thing I’m sure of was that there were about forty of us. The storm lasted the first three days, of which I spent either huddled up in a ball underneath the surface or face down in the docks letting my stomach go free. Once the storm had settled, I had lost so much weight I didn’t even think it was possible to see any more of my ribs than at that point.

We had nothing much to eat except an endless supply of bread and potatoes, with sweets and snacks separated in various other compartments of the kitchen area. It made me wonder why a company with such an expansive influence, couldn’t even provide decent food to their recruits, let alone some meat. I brought it up with Sabr and he looked at me, mouth full of potatoes. He swallowed and agreed that it was a good point. For a long journey such as this, they wouldn’t have thought to be better supplied.

In the last few days of our travels, we were all getting quite restless. I remember walking in circles around the deck. Still wondering what the reason was for the company to be so short on this journey’s food supplies. As days went by, my excitement turned back to anxiety again. Judging from the condition of this ship and the unimpressive food selection, I was becoming of the opinion that there really wasn’t anything too much to look forward to, other than the enormous payday.

Even Sabr was becoming rather impatient with the whole journey. He’d walk up to me and ask me for a light, then forget that I don’t smoke. He’ll pace around the cabin, sit in a corner than switch to another. I don’t think any of us had ever really been on a big ship in the middle of the ocean before. It was a new experience for almost every one of us. So it wasn’t surprising to notice that toward the end of the journey, we were all acting a little strange. There’d be constant arguing at the back of the cargo section in the dark, probably for sleeping space. I’d see other passengers just walking around in the middle of the night, or jumping up and making weird gestures in the still night. Other times, manic laughter would abrupt out of nowhere, for no apparent reason.

The environment was becoming a little intense, from all the waiting and all the lack of physical freedom. This must have been what so many sailors had experienced before us, I found myself wondering what they did to kill the time or make life a little more interesting for themselves. They probably played games. They probably had a deck of cards. We didn’t have a deck of cards and we were all probably too weak without any sea-legs to perform any proper physical exercise, let alone play a quick game of football. By the time the shoreline became barely visible in the misty night air, we were all limp as rag-dolls. Lying around the deck and below the cargo slouched up on large boxes, were the passengers with no experience in surviving the sea. The captain, who I seldom saw throughout the entire journey, opened his cabin door looking as healthy as an ox and as fresh as a beauty pageant contestant and screamed at the top of his lungs to announce that we had finally reached our destination.

Drawing closer to this land, shrouded in cold darkness of the night, my heart started to beat in time to the droves of footsteps behind me as I stood by the edge of the dock. Footsteps scurrying around in preparation for our journey’s end. As we draw closer still, I see the blurry edges of the depot, completely barren except for a couple of black figures carrying ropes and hooks of various shapes and sizes. This land of dreams and money that I’ve been promised, the land of solutions and fixes, lies before me looking like the deep end of an old, ominous well. Holding so many questions and mysteries, none having revealed themselves just yet, but soon they will. As the men on the depot glide closer towards us their ropes latch on to our ship, which slowly screeches to a loud and flimsy halt. The walking bridges are descended onto the platforms and we are instructed to form lines. One by one, we walk the planks with what little belongings we have and the clothes on our backs, none the wiser to whatever these herders have in store for us.

I remember touching the hard concrete of the depot floor, looking up to see the men with their ropes, clothed in black leather, faces covered by thick bushy beards and beret hats on their heads. My foggy breathing starts to accelerate, mist forming out of my mouth with every exhale. One of the men, pale chalky skin and a thick stubble, donning a leather jacket and black gloves, he motions at us to follow him through the maze of giant red and yellow containers piled up on top of each other. It’s dark and we all hold each other by the collars, taking small steps like children huddling together in a long row, being led by the only man with the torchlight past a plethora of chains, hooks, dusty vehicles, nets, tools and large dead machinery on all sides of us. Finally we enter what looks like a way to the bottom floors. Slowly, we take the stairs lower into what looks like a station of some sort of a terminal that has been closed for the day.

At the end of the stairs we are met by two more of the man’s teammates, he keeps his light on and as he walks towards one of his friends, he gestures at us with the light to approach the other man who stands by a small gate at the corner of the entrance section. Our former guide now stands with his friend speaking in some other language in low whispers while waving his light left and right, motioning for us to keep moving along, guiding the oncoming traffic towards the gate keeper, who holds a couple of sheets of paper.

As we approach him one by one he looks up at us with an expression of cold, indifference. He says in a quiet yet stern voice “Passport please”. A couple of guys down the line is me, watching as the first lad pulls out his passport to show to the gatekeeper. He swiftly takes it and opens it to the visa page, squinting at the details then jotting something down for record in the sheets that he cradles with his left arm. “Next please.” The line is nudged forward while everyone at the back starts pulling out their documents. I notice this and reach for my pouch, unzipping it and pulling out my slightly wet but still in one piece passport.

As I get closer, my heart beat intensifies. I’m noticing something strange as I get nearer, I realise he’s taking passports from our hands, jotting down some details on his sheets and then dropping our passports in an open sling hanging from his right shoulder. I’m watching this happen in sequence and my paranoia begins to set in. I feel like a cow in a slaughter house, lined up by the butchering machine, as each one before me is slain, my time draws closer. With every step I take forward, something inside me is flinching back and I don’t quite understand what the matter is. Everything’s moving too fast, I’m justifying to myself that this is just procedure. Queuing up for things can sometimes make you a little on edge. It’s no big deal. Still, my heart is pounding until finally he’s looking up at me with a dead stare. “Passport please.”

And with that ladies and gentleman, I’d like to point out right here, at this moment, that I’m making one of the biggest mistakes that I’ll ever make in my entire life. That’s saying a lot, seeing that I’ve made quite a few mistakes in my time. This however, is one of those mistakes that sticks with you. The worst part of this mistake, was that my intuition was letting me know beforehand that I was making a mistake and those are the most regretful kinds of mistakes one can make.

I watch my passport in his hand as I walk through the gate and into the deep, dark tunnel, looking back at him as he casually drops my passport into the big open sling bag. I turn to face my front and watch as all the other young lads before me slowly fade into a dark abyss. Body gestures of uncertainty and confusion. An entire line of lost sheep in search for a new herder to pull them along into the next routine step. I lag behind, my soul sitting in an open sling bag. I follow the vanishing crowd into the void.

-

It’s two thirty five in the morning. In a quiet diner somewhere in Los Angeles, there sits a man by the counter. The man wears a black bomber jacket and has long oily hair that sits slightly below his ears. His face is a pale skull with bulging eyes, wrapped tightly with a thin sheet of skin, sunken cheek bones that draw a strong sharp shade follow his rather strong jawline and is centered by thin, dry lips. He has a neutral, sickly smile on his face. He’s holding up a small, black DSLR camcorder, the glaring light from the screen reflects a bluish colour on his joyless smirk. He’s got a thick, blue, tall glass of some ultra-sweet shake juice special.

The bell at the entrance clicks and the misty glass door swings open to let in somebody else. There are now all but two men in the diner. One sits beside the other. An older gentleman donning a brown trench coat with a black folder of documents in one hand and a bundle of car keys in the other. His eyes are a pair of blue icy stones, his forehead is riddled with wrinkles and his hair is a thin white mane almost completely vanished except for the top few faded strands.

The thin, camcorder wielding man notices his friend’s presence beside him. “Hey Ed.” He announces quietly. “Hey Lou. How’s business?” asks the older Ed while ordering a black coffee from the counter. Lou looks up at the diner’s old retro television set, blaring images of some horrible breaking-and-entering case currently being investigated by authorities, blurred images of bloodied bodies lying in beds, drops of blood found trailing from the porch way. “Business is good.” His smirk turns into a slightly wider grin as he briskly holds a finger up towards the muted pictures above. “Charming” exclaims Ed. “What can I do you for, my sour old friend?” Lou lowers his head towards his beverage, all the while still smiling.

Ed pulls out from his coat a thin binder of printed documents strung together with a small folder holding images of various sizes. He slowly slides it over to Lou. “Need to call in a favour. Just need you to help me with a quick whiff. Having a hard time these days, the old bloodhound’s nose ain’t too sharp no more I’m afraid.” Says Ed in a low, tired voice.

Lou, holding a small tea spoon, uses it to slightly lift the opening of the folder to peer at whatever images it contains. “Interesting. New client I presume?”

“New client, old client, what does it matter? What matters is that these fish are slippery. Very under the radar. It took me a lot just to get this far.” Ed takes a small sip of his black coffee.

“And what makes you think I could have any leads for you?” Lou goes back to his camcorder, replaying his latest cut.

“Because my client is a very generous man, and because I have little birdies pointing at your general direction.” Whispers Ed.

Lou slowly looks up from the glaring screen of his cam, large bulging eyes meeting dead icy blue stones.

“A small network making big moves, I’ve caught the scent of members in this local vicinity. For the most part, their bread and butter involves organising con jobs, scams, cooking and selling here in your very turf.” Lou pauses to take another sip of his coffee.

“What else do you know?” Lou slicks the front of his long slippery, black hair backwards.

“Well, they aren’t originally from here. We’re not exactly sure where they began but I’ve got traces of them over here, Toronto, New York, Germany and even Bangladesh. They’ve been pretty busy expanding operations across the world.” Ed points at the folder of pictures.

“The subjects in question, particularly the first one, are of interest to my client. That first picture there, good looking kid, may have cut his hair but all I know right now is that he sometimes goes by the alias; Jake. Sometimes it’s Ahmad Bahari, he may be using other names to get around. Long story short, I know for a fact that he’s got links in this network and he’s been trying to work his way up. He may be around here, or he may be in the dozen other potential nests scattered between Canada to Timbuktu. Do some digging, see what you can find. I’d really appreciate it Lou. You know how to reach me.” Ed pulls out a dollar from his coat and places it on the counter, then gets up and is about to leave when Lou asks him one final question.

“Ed, your client, just how generous is he?”

Ed turns to him as he walks out “Check the file Lou.”

Ed Kilinski is a professional. Working as an enforcer for the Russian Mafia during their emergence in America’s 1990 thug crisis, he eventually spent some time in jail for a sentence he managed to shorten due to cooperation. During the last recession, he helped various insurance companies track down fraudsters that were trying to disappear. Kilinski had a neck for finding those that didn’t want to be found. Later on he would jump the fence and help people who wanted to disappear, vanish off the face of the planet. Fake death certificates, secret hiding spots, untraceable methods of escape, you name it, Ed’s done it. Now, Ed spends most of his time focusing on clients that buy his expertise for the highest bidder. With the comprehensive experience and time spent honing his abilities in the deceitful art of hide and seek, Kilinski has an unparalleled amount of resources and contacts that prove valuable to people who need special help.

Ed is busy, he’s been busy for the past six months. Tracking specific targets for a client that wants specific information, including locations and daily routines. Number one; the client requires a hunt – to search for and triangulate on the whereabouts of targets – for all subjects on the list. Number two; the client requires a track – to keep an eye out on the movements or any major activities of these triangulated targets. In other words, the client wants to put all these subjects on the radar and he wants them to stay on the radar for the foreseeable future. This requires a considerable amount of information, effort and money. All of which the client has. In light of this, Ed Kilinski is determined to deliver. He has had his ear out, moving quietly from town to town, country to country, state to state, tactfully shifting from one lead to the other, as efficiently as he can.

He’s on a plane to Compton one morning, then talking shop with a correspondent in Osaka, Japan the next. He’s on the phone with dealers and walking into dens of snitches that’ll tell you whatever you need for a quick buck. He’s walking into bars and taverns, squeezing through tiny alleyways, knocking on large metallic backdoors in dark, shady places. He’s handing documents and folders filled with pictures, or filled with money. Each hand that reaches out for the envelopes is different from the next in skin colour, size and appearance. He’s being handed pieces of papers or strings of clues, he’s being given names, phone numbers, locations, email addresses, birthdays. He’s working his network, he’s burning midnight oil. Maybe he’s passionate about his job, maybe he really likes getting paid. Either way, he’s making progress. Slow and inconsistent but significant progress nonetheless.

And at the end of his frenzied hustle that spans three different countries in four weeks, he finds himself back in the heart of New York, standing on a side walk in a quiet part of the city. His hands wrapped in large leather gloves, the collar of his coat up covering his neck. In his arms, a large black folder containing a month’s worth of findings are bundled in thick red string. A car slowly pulls up from the corner and enters the street, slowly gliding by. It comes to a silent stop right before Mr Kilinski and the window rolls down. “Christmas came early.” Announces Kilinski as he extends an arm out to offer the folder, which is met on the other end with a smooth black prosthetic, bony metallic fingers grasping at the edge of the folder and retracting back into the darkness of the tinted car. The window rolls back up and the car slowly starts gliding away from the scene while Mr Kilinski takes one look around and starts walking the opposite way.

-

The journey was an endless, bumpy ordeal. We’re all packed together like a can of sardines in large label-less buses. Two buses in total were speeding through wide-empty streets in a tight convoy. I remember thinking that I never saw a highway this gigantic before. Back in Dhaka, highways were of standard size. These highways were four times that. Beyond the high-ways, tall, monstrous headlights were lined up in perfect symmetry, casting a bright orange glow upon everything that passed by them. That’s the gist of what we saw on that night. Past the mist in the distance, slow beating lights of various colours were fused with long, meandering roads that led to an apparent nowhere. From the little that I’ve seen so far, this place was so vast, so grand yet so empty. It’s an immediate comparison to make, coming straight from the streets of Dhaka where everything is clamped up together, the same way most Asian infrastructures tend to be designed. Over in this massive, flat, land spanning hundreds or thousands of acres of concrete and tar, it feels like we’re all that’s left of the human race.

I dozed off and woke up several times, finally sitting up for good once the feeling of smooth never-ending highway turned to rocky, bumpy terrain. I looked out through the window to see a pitch black landscape, with only the closest source of light coming from the bus itself. Dust being kicked up, rocks and sand being flung from their resting places on the sandy ground underneath the bus tires were the only things that could be observed. I try to turn my head to the back of the bus and I see from the rear window what looks like a tiny speck of lights and road as what used to be the highway that we were on. I turn my head to the front of the bus and see the rest of the passengers seemingly restless, sticking their heads out from their seats and looking at each other anxiously.

The buses stop abruptly on a small hill. Below it, there is a dark silhouette of some sort of structure. There are dim, barely visible orange lights similar to candles within the blackness. We all sit in silence, unsure of what is happening, when the bus driver opened the doors and two men popped their heads in, gesturing at us to exit the vehicles. We all slowly start to stand and leave, setting foot for the first time on the unfamiliar sandy ground of this dark land. We huddle around each other, gripping our shoulders with our hands and rubbing furiously to fight against the cold. The drivers and the other staff, who were the only ones with torch lights, began gesturing for us to walk towards the tall, black structure which we could now make up as some sort of massive wall. It was made of bricks and topped off with barbed wire for maximum security of some sort.

One of the men turn to us and starts speaking in broken English “You sleep here, yes! You go please! Tomorrow I come! Now you sleep.” We all got the general idea. They wanted us to enter the massive fortress as it would be our accommodation for tonight and hopefully only for tonight. We start walking through a small steel coated door that leads us into the premise. Before even walking pass the inconveniently narrow opening, a stench burns my nostrils. I notice all the company members with thick towels wrapped against their noses and mouths. Now I’m pressing my nose closed too, as are the ones that enter after me. We’re looking around and I see streams of thick black, bubbling goo. The closer I get to the frothing liquid the more the smell intensifies. I’m beginning to realise what that is and I’m absolutely petrified at the idea of leaking sewage running past our feet. Take a minute to soak that in, a kid from the lowest gutters of Dhaka is squirming in his shoes about this situation. That’s just a little notion of how appalling the scenario was.

All around us, were tired looking skin and bones. Dark coloured people that resembled us but much worst off. It was like stepping into an alternate dimension or a time traveling machine and looking at your decomposing selves. They are scattered across the compound, some are either asleep or unconscious just inches away from running sewage. Some are awake, they just stare with eyes that reek of death and indifference. Just as we’ve about to soak in the gravity of the environment around us, we turn to see our guides closing the door shut. We hear a couple of loud metallic sounds emanating from the opposite side of that steel door. We stand still for a moment in complete shock and horror, hands still covering our nostrils, when an older, shirtless man with a long white beard and arms that looked so frail and weak they seemed like they would drop off any minute, he stands up and says “Hello sons and welcome to hell.”

If I told you that I still hadn’t grasped the reality of the situation just yet, that I hadn’t exactly put two and two together, what would you think of me? Would you think I was a fool? Would you think I was a coward? Or would you think I was an ignorant child that had just landed himself into a steaming pile of literal s**t? If you answered all of the above, you probably would have won the privilege of never having to go through what I did from here on out.

I didn’t think that I would get any sleep that night, with a combination of the horrible stench and extremely uncomfortable sleeping arrangements, yet I dozed off anyway, probably due to the complete mental and physical exhaustion I had just faced the whole day. Flanked between one of the older undead prisoners and a fresh faced newcomer like myself, I lied down in the dirt, covering myself only with the shirt I was wearing to shield me from the cold, blowing winds. Still, I passed out and didn’t wake up until the next morning.

A bright glowing heat was my alarm clock that day. I had to literally roll myself away from the painful morning sun and pull my own sandy body up from the ground. I coughed from all the dust in my throat and took a look around with squinted eyes, hand against my forehead. The new batch of inmates that just arrived were now thoroughly mixed in with the older workers. They dragged their feet around, picking up things from the floor or putting on their clothes, jumping over puddles and streams of waste. It then hit me that I had to take a piss. I stopped one of the elders and asked where the washroom was. He pointed at a darker, more cramped area in the corner of the large camp. Below it, slithers of green waste followed through on down towards the entrance of the compound. I wasn’t looking forward to the condition of the toilets. After using them, you feel like tearing your skin off just to give it a good wash before sewing it back on.

I sat on one of the loose bricks at the further end of the compound, observing the crowd before me, I noticed the passengers I shared my commute with all just as dazed as I was, the other faces that I didn’t recognise all had cheek bones that prodded out of their skin and looked absolutely void of any hope. I searched through the faces for someone sensible to talk to. Before I even managed to stand up, my good friend Sabr shows up out of the blue. I had forgotten he was even on this trip with me, he looks at me and he says “Brother, I was talking to one of the older ones, we are in bad trouble my friend. It seems that there is a major operation going on here. Once we give our passports to those soldiers, there is a slim chance of ever getting them back. My friend, I think we have just been convinced to give up our bare necessities to live. I think we have unofficially become enslaved to our employers.”

“Great job, you noticed that faster than most others who end up here.” The older man with a great white beard stumbled out of a hole in the corner with his walking stick, still shirtless, still smiling.

Suddenly there’s a loud clank, the metallic door opened and the drivers from yesterday have arrived once more. The new inmates quickly crowd around the employees, with Basr in the forefront. He’s pleading, asking and prodding questions that I doubt the foot soldiers are going to react to. Sabr asked in a rather clear and bold voice “Sir, passport?” The man turned to Sabr and replies with “Don’t worry, passport okay. Safe. Management hold, here not safe. Understand?”

“Yes but why did you take them in the first place?” frustrated, Sabr barked back this time in his own language, clearly not caring whether they understand him or not. A barrage of mumbling complaints began to usher out of the crowd, getting louder as more and more workers squeezed through the entrance. Another man by the opposite side of the bus heard the commotion and began walking up to the crowd beyond the fortress entrance. This guy is bearing a large weapon I’ve never really seen at this point. If you asked me now, I’d have to say by just leveraging on memory, it would have to be a large AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifle. The kinds Russians and Vietnamese used to have when they fought against the allies.

He started raising his voice with an unidentifiable string of words, holding his gun out for everyone to see. The crowd fell back, slowly scattering away from the man and his weapon. Sabr, not noticing the approaching armed man, continued to hold on to the driver, yelling incomprehensibly in his own tongue when the wooden butt of the gun is driven straight into the back of his head with a loud thwack, which left Sabr falling into the sand face first. The entire compound went silent as this happened, we all watched intently as Sabr slowly struggled to pick himself up and the armed man stood over him. The driver sighed deeply and turned over to the rest of us. “Please all be happy okay? You here you work, you here you make money. Very big money yes? All happy yes?” He announced it to us with the enthusiasm of a fitness coach trying to motivate his knackered client.

With a big grin on his face, he stretched his hands out in a seemingly welcoming gesture. We stared at him completely unconvinced of his proposition. He must not have been serious, given the previous army of malnourished and obviously underpaid workers that stood behind us. He couldn’t have thought we were that stupid. Then again, why not? We had been duped this far, what made us any wiser at this point than when we were setting off from our homeland to end up in this hell-hole.

He turned to head back into the bus and I head over to help Sabr up off his ass. He looked around with a painful expression, teeth clenched and sand pouring out of his large nose and eye lashes. “Did he just hit me with the gun? Am I bleeding? I can’t see shit.” I turned to take a look at the back of his head. “No boss, no blood. Just a bruise.” I casually told him, then I pat him on the back and start walking towards the bus with the rest of the group. Sabr slowly followed behind, dusting off whatever sand was left on his white shirt.

Goliath Residences will come to stand towering at forty one stories high, with a total of five hundred and twenty five units built within its vicinity. A total of three colossal blocks erected in a pyramid layout will be stretched across approximately three and a half acres of solid, flat land. Build-ups ranging from a thousand five hundred to two thousands six hundred feet per unit are to be expected, being sold to droves of investors and home hunters that are on the lookout for an up and coming development they can rely on to get them through the oncoming economic scare. Pioneering as a high-rise condominium that stretches the boundaries of comfort and efficiency, Goliath Residences offers an extraordinary array of facilities and amenities for the ultra-rich and ultra-powerful, featuring an indoor casino hall, eight different pools and Jacuzzi sections, a gym, three different cafes for each block and a suite of services for busy tenants that can’t afford to spend time cleaning, cooking or doing laundry.

For now though, Goliath Residences sits on a sunken pit of scrap metal, oversized copper coils and hundreds of square concrete blocks. Surrounding the focal point of the development is a fleet of contracted machinery used for lifting, pushing, pulling, breaking and lifting a comprehensive list of materials, the ingredients to a dish that is bound to reward its creators with more money than they already have. Sandwiched between the Sun’s scorching heat and the incredibly complex anatomy of incomplete structures, was the work promised for us. Concentrated in the square area of this vast and barren land, are the grueling seeds of our hopes and dreams, scattered across the debris. It was all here somewhere, so we started to look, with each boulder placed on our burning backs, with each pull of the waving ropes, heaving up more concrete slabs to place on to the fringes of this monstrous creation, with each completed level, with each cleared surface, we were beginning to realise the undeniable farce that we had fallen through and we were starting to grow angry.

“Was anyone else promised an easy job position?” Sabr’s voice echoed through the large empty scaffold of an incomplete floor. Nobody responded to his obvious question, plastering large blocks of cement into place, following the order in the blueprints. I rubbed the uncovered section of my forehead directly below the discoloured yellow construction helmet I had on. Beads of sweat formed quicker than I could wipe off, many falling through the safety of my forearm and creating small ripples against the drying cement on the ground. I wondered about ten or twenty years from then, when some tuxedo wearing stock broker and his tipsy female companion are busy ravaging each other in this exact suite, air-conditioned with a wine bar and a big comfy bed for two, would they have known that they’d be making love on a thousand gallons of prisoner sweat?

The sun was setting and my group was up on the highest extension of the first erected apartment block on site. Around us, I could see a massive city, dripping in gold and orange as the wavering round ball of light slowly became enveloped in a dark never-ending skyline, lights slowly flickering on in every direction you look. I stopped cranking the lever that held up a web of intricate steel pipes, wiped the sweat off my face and gazed up at the darkening landscape. A sense of dismay, a sense of awe and a sense of bitterness swept through me as I watched on. Under these circumstances, the view of such a vibrant place looked as real as the oil-painted portrait of a soothing field. It was only a mirage, inaccessible to the likes of us.

Carrying cinder blocks, pulling large concrete pillars, pushing in columns and intricate tiles and pipes into their respectful places, then coming back to unfathomable living conditions, greeted by the grim scent from rivers of s**t and piss. That’s a nutshell description of what the next five years of my life was like. Not too many of you readers will know the sensation of scraping your hands against raw rusty scrap-metal or going for days without food while working tirelessly due to an apparent shortage of food funds for the week according to caretakers. You’ll never know the sensation of cold, roaring winds licking at your feet and face while you cower over a bed of rocks and sand, sandwiched by sticky, scrawny flesh, the feeling of filleted chicken strips pressing against your freezing skin. You’ll never comprehend the uncontrollable feeling of anger, coupled with an unshakeable fear of the future or lack of a future in this case.

Most of all, you’ll never have the pleasure of meeting Mr Boss. A large, daunting figure of a man, he stood over the rest of us with a six and a half feet of pure, unadulterated muscle and fat. A permanent scowl was sewn onto the center part of what I would call his face, if it wasn’t for all the hair that covered most of it. Coming mainly in the dead of night to check up on things, he needed to bend at the waist just to get through the entrance and wore a large brown belt the length of two workers standing beside each other with arms spread out. Its buckle was gold with the indented emblem of a bull and it was the most frightening thing to ever exist in this God-forbidden compound. If you caused trouble, it would be the last thing you see before having the lights knocked out of you, only to wake up with a pulsing migraine and a punctured lip on a thin mattress reserved for the sick or wounded. My good friend Sabr could tell you all about that wholesome experience, he could tell you about it more than once, even more than twice.

On nights that we hear his low, booming voice behind the wall that protected us from the beast, we’d all jolt up from our positions and begin grabbing our belongings to hide, scurrying away into the corners and shadows of the compound. If we heard Mr Boss snickering at a joke one of his comrades had told or if we heard his soft whistling as he came lumbering in, we’d breathe a slight sigh of relief thankful that he was in a good mood. On the nights that nothing could be heard but the sound of intimidating footsteps and the violent shaking of the metallic entrance, a dark giant with large arms emerging from the outside world, long-sleeves rolled up to the elbows, ready to do damage if necessary, we’d be on edge, avoiding eye-contact, sliding away from him wherever he went, lowering our heads as he passed us by.

On their first encounter, Sabr had approached the Boss, not in the least bit concerned about the inhuman looking thing he was walking towards and casually asked when they were getting their passports back. Mr Boss took one look at him and without a moment’s hesitation, sent one large back fist against Sabr’s narrow shaped head which upon impact, sent him sliding against the bricks on the compound wall. As his back rattled the structure, one of the old bricks already loose from time, latched off and fell on the broken body of my good friend, knocking him out almost instantly. From there on, he had unwillingly become an easy target for Mr Boss, the demonic presence that lingered over us, making our lives all the more hellish than they already were.