NAGMA - The Search

 The loss of her has made me frustrated. How could she disappear like this? . I searched her place where her father was sipping on a cup of tea completely unawares. I asked him about
. He literally threw me out of the house and didn't seem to be bothered about Nagma.


It has been 2 years now and still I had no idea what happened to her. Did she die ? I f she died then how come her father didn't tell me? How come?
That night , I secretly went to her home. Her father was sleeping. I went to her room and found her diary and what I learnt , literally shook the earth beneath my feet.
Nagma grew up in a very poor country of Afghanistan and then Pakistan where there were few opportunities for advancement.
When she was 13 years old, a friend of a friend told her she could get a well-paid job as a waitress in Istanbul and could train to become a hair-dresser. She was introduced to an agent who paid for her to get a passport and arranged her travel costs. She arrived at an Irish airport on a weekend when security was lax, and was met by somebody she did not know. He took her passport and brought her to a house occupied by two other women from abroad.


Very soon she discovered that the ‘job’ she was to do was to provide sexual services for men on a 24/7 basis. When she objected, her ‘minder’ beat her up.  He then went on to rape her.


He warned her that she was an illegal immigrant and that he had her passport. He then left her locked up to ‘think things over’, as he said. He also reminded her that she owed him Rs 3,000 to cover the cost of her travel and said her family at home would suffer if she did not earn that money quickly.


The other women advised her that if she went to the authorities she would be sent back to her own country at once — and she knew that the Rs 3,000 would then be demanded from her family. Nagma felt she was left with no choice but to agree to prostitute herself at least for a time. She was 14. She felt confident that one of the men who came to her for sex would listen to her story and would help her.


However, she soon found that she was not allowed to stay long enough in any town or city to find her way around and get to know people. Each week she had to move to a different location. Furthermore, she found that the men who came looking for sex had no interest in her story or in her as a person. They made it clear that they simply wanted ‘good value for money’. They wanted her to pretend to be excited by the sex and to enjoy it. Many of them also demanded perverted forms of sex, and sex without any protection. Whenever she failed to give them what they demanded they complained to the pimp and he beat her up again.


Some of the ‘customers’ linked sex with violence, and at times she was seriously injured.
Nagma was given a mobile phone and she had hoped to use it to contact some friend to rescue her from her slavery. But she found she could use it only to receive calls from ‘clients’ or from her pimp-manager. Even when she was allowed out she was too scared to talk or to seek help from anybody.


Nagma found  herself trapped — tied down, not physically, but effectively imprisoned by her fear and by being cut off from any help. She has been silenced and can see no escape.


She was deeply ashamed, blaming herself for what has happened to her. She has been severely damaged at a psychological level and was very depressed state.




When she was 15, she met one of her customer, who listened to her story. That man was Amir. Amir Fetton and her wife Bellana