After Senior High School, I came across a travel agent who convinced me to travel to Syria. He painted a picture of a paradise. “In that country, you will be full of happiness. They will pay you an equivalent of GHC3,000 every month, but you won’t even touch your salary because they’ll give you free food and plenty of clothes,” he claimed, and even added that my salary would increase every month.

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I was so happy when I got the visa. It felt like a dream come true. My mum and I rejoiced and sang praises to God. We thought I had already made it. All I had to do was get there, work hard, and send money home.

The day I arrived at Damascus airport, two men came to pick me up. They seemed friendly. I didn’t have to tell them I was hungry before they bought me food. When I finished eating, they took me to their office in Latakia. That was where I spent my first night. The reception these men gave me made me believe that everything was going to turn out well for me.

The next morning, one of the men took me to the hospital to run some tests. Immediately we got back, a driver came and took me to a house—where the nightmare began.

The moment I got to the house, the light in my spirit dimmed. I couldn’t tell why but I felt a huge sense of foreboding.

The travel agent had told me I would have my own room but I found out I was going to share a room with three Indonesian girls. I was disappointed but after meeting the woman of the house, I felt slightly better. She told me she liked me because I spoke good English. “You will take care of my son. He is eight years old,” she said.

Another disappointment happened when I couldn’t access their wifi. The travel agent had assured me I would have unlimited internet access. Two days after no contact with my family, my sadness deepened. I asked the other girls about internet connections and they told me, “We are also not able to use our phones.”

I begged the woman to let me call home, and she said she’d discuss it with her husband. She didn’t.

The next morning, I became anxious and told her I wanted to go back to the office. She calmly told me to wait for her husband in the kitchen. Before long, he was there with five strong men. He shouted some words angrily in Arabic and slapped me so hard it shook my soul. Then he ordered the men to beat me. That day I almost fainted.

One of the Indonesian girls translated his warning to me, “If you ever ask to leave again, I will kill you. Don’t you know that we bought you?”

It wasn’t enough that they left bruises on my body, they took my phone too. I cried and cried until I got tired.

From then on, I knew I was trapped. Every day I cleaned bathrooms, washed dishes, and cared for the boy. That little boy was as barbaric as his parents. This child mocked me whenever he was bored. He even teased me about how his father beat me and I screamed like an animal.

He was just eight years old but he would slap me, kick me, and shout at me whenever he felt like it. It was my job to run after him whenever he rode his scooter. One day, I got tired and asked him to stop and let me rest. He slapped me so hard I cried. Then he went inside and reported me to his father. The man came out and also slapped me. As if that wasn’t enough punishment, he pulled a gun and warned me never to disobey his son again.

Every night, broken and hopeless, I would cry naked on the bathroom floor, begging God to take me out of that hell—even if it meant returning to Ghana empty-handed.

As time passed, I grew close to one of the Indonesian women who shared her own suffering. She showed me burn marks on her back. It was the madam who did it to her. She said she broke a plate and was afraid to tell anyone. So they beat her and poured hot water on her when they found out on the camera what she did.

Although the madam never touched me, the 38-year-old Indonesian woman opened up to me that the madam often slapped her. She and I bonded over our shared trauma. It brought me some comfort.

One year into my stay there, I didn’t know if I even existed anymore. The only thing I looked forward to was going to bed at night, so I could sit on the floor naked and ask God to rescue me from that abusive home.

The day God heard my cries started like a nightmare too. It happened one night when the family of the house were out. It was just us the workers at home when some masked men attacked the house. They carried guns and bombs, but they didn’t harm us. We shivered as they went upstairs. We don’t know what they stole but they left the house unprotected after they ran off the security guards who used to beat us.

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The moment they left, the girls and I seized the opportunity and packed our bags. Like the Israelites running from Pharaoh, we took off.

When we got to the office, they tried to force us into another house. I refused. I told them I would return to Ghana. They insisted I hadn’t finished my four-year contract, so I would have to pay for my own ticket if I left. I eagerly agreed. I used the salary I had earned in one year and six months to buy my freedom.

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Even though I returned without money, I thank God I came back alive. Only God knows how I would have ended up if I had stayed there for four years.

Now that I’m back in Ghana, I want justice. I want the agent who took me there to be arrested so he can never deceive young girls like me again. Am I right to go after him? If so, how do I go about it?

—Mimi

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