All the participants of tonight’s event are given numbers as if we’re competing in some kind of a beauty pageant. Since I get the number twenty-two, I’m instructed to occupy the second lavishly brocaded armchair in the third row. My hands and legs are shaking as the low temperature of the air-conditioned room adds to the frigidity I'm feeling within.
“The ladies who got the numbers one to five, please follow our coordinators,” says the man on the stage.
The evidently wealthy but grim-looking women on the front row proceed ambling through the narrow corridor that’s perpendicular to the stage's location. The way each of them thrusts their long slim legs is gracious. It’s as if they’ve been training how to walk like a lady since they were still toddlers. It’s hard to concentrate on what’s
