North to Paradise

by Ousman Umar

In that basement in Casablanca, we met several women who had been trafficked and subjected to unspeakable sexual violence. Many had become pregnant and were now traveling with newborn babies: children of the connection houses. Even with all the suffering I experienced, I know that my hardship pales in comparison to what female migrants endure. At least I had some freedom. But in a country like Libya, where women must be accompanied in public by a male family member, it’s impossible for female migrants to find work, and they have no choice but to enter de facto slavery in the country’s forced prostitution networks. Otherwise, they don’t eat. Rape is so commonplace along the journey north, in and out of the connection houses, that these women have to find ways of coping with it; if they didn’t somehow adapt to their reality—if they fully acknowledged and processed this violence—the trauma could kill them.