Before you read this, make sure you read Part 1 of Mae’s story.
Over the past couple weeks I have been getting to know Mae more and more. We go to the bar where she works every other night, and she and I usually spend most of the time talking. When we arrive she hugs me long and hard. I’ve never been the biggest fan of awkwardly long eye contact, but she is not afraid to hold my gaze for thirty seconds or more. In those moments I can see the pain in her eyes, and I know she is searching for so much more in her life. One night she told me that she usually does not open up to people, but occasionally she meets someone that she feels comfortable with. She touched her heart, and then reached her hand towards my heart…“I feel you. You like me. I talk to you.”
Last Tuesday evening I ran into Mae with a man down the street from the bars a few hours before we were planning to visit her. She was excited to introduce me to her “new friend.” She explained to me that they were going out of town for a few days. “He’s going to take me to the north on holiday. I’m very lucky.”
A few hours later they showed up at the bar while we were there. Mae was tired of trying to make conversation with the man, so she had brought him to talk to me because he is Italian, and she thought we could speak Spanish together. I tried to keep him entertained for awhile to give her a break. When I was standing with the two of them, the ladyboy who is in charge of the bar’s bookings approached us. She took a wad of money from the man, handed a small chunk of it to Mae, and shook the man’s hand. She was sold right before my eyes.
Since Mae is Burmese and does not have Thai citizenship or immigration papers, my team and I were very worried that the man would try to take her across the border and she would not be back. I told her that she had to be safe because we had more to talk about when she returned. She hugged me for a long time. “I hope I come back safely.” I whispered in her ear a promise that my team and I would pray for her safe return, and then I sat down next to the man and explained very firmly in a combination of Spanish, Italian, and his broken English that under no circumstances should he take her out of the country.
Four days passed, and we returned to the bars on Saturday. When I walked in I did not see Mae there, and I immediately began to worry. Maybe she had been deported and we would never get to finish our talks. And then I saw her sitting in the corner, waiting for me. She hugged me longer than ever. “Sit down, I have a story for you!”
She proceeded to tell me this amazing story:
The Italian man had taken Mae to a town in northern Thailand, up in the mountains for a few days of vacation. He promised that they would not try to cross the Burmese border, but she was still worried because northern Thailand is full of checkpoint roadblocks where immigration agents look for illegal Burmese immigrants and deport them. On the way there they saw a few roadblocks, so he promised to take a different road home.
On the way home she fell asleep. She awoke to police surrounding the vehicle, knocking on the windows. They asked for her papers, and when she couldn’t produce any, they took her back to the city to the police station. They put her in a room and questioned her. She had no papers, no Thai identification, only her Burmese passport, which may as well be a deportation ticket. The Italian man offered to pay them a bribe, but they told him no. They had decided to deport her. “I tell them, just send me back. I give up.”
Then a different man from immigration services walked in the room. “I want to help you,” he said. She asked him how much money he wanted. “I tell him I pay you and then I just not pay my electric bill or buy food this month.” He told her no, he would not take money. “I just want to help you,” he said. She didn’t believe him, but she went along with it. He asked her if she had anything…absolutely anything…with some sort of identification on it. That’s when she remembered the paper. It wasn’t an ID card. It wasn’t even valid in Burma, but she had been carrying it for years. Some time ago, Mae had been in Burma and fallen ill. She needed a medicine that is only available in Thailand, so they had given her a pass that allowed her to cross the border to receive the medical care and then return. It had long since expired and was of absolutely no worth, but she was still carrying it anyway, and she went to the car to get it. The immigration agent looked at it. “This will do,” he said. “You can go.” “How much money do you want?” He told her, “I don’t want any money–I just want to help you. Get in your car, drive away, and don’t come back.” So she did.
“I was so nervous. My heart was pounding, and I smoked a whole pack of cigarettes, but when he tell me I can go I was so excited. I was jumping up and down.” She and the Italian man got in their car and drove away from the police station. She turned to him and said, “I have to tell my American friend! Before we leave, she tell me that she and her friends pray to God for me to have a safe trip and to come back safely. She will be so happy. This no happen for other people. I never see this happen before…everyone else get deported.”
I hugged her, told her I was indeed very happy, and explained that God protected her because she and I have some talking to do.
To be continued…
