Despite her state of dehydration, she felt a pressing urge to relieve herself, for it had been at least a full day and night now since she had last passed water.
‘Sir? Excuse me, sir,’ she ventured in a meek voice, speaking slowly so that the driver could understand.
‘What?’ he responded with gruff annoyance.
‘I was wondering if … if I could use the bathroom?’
‘What? I no understand.’
‘Bathroom. I need to use the bathroom, please.’
Another woman murmured in agreement.
‘Oh, oh, bathroom,’ he replied, his mouth twisting into a strange smile. ‘Yes, yes.’
‘Thank you sir, thank you,’ Adriana murmured as she started to rise, her stiff joints burning with pain from the extended hours of being cramped into a position that essentially amounted to a contortionist’s pretzel.
‘No! No! You no get out!’ the driver shouted harshly, his smile metamorphosing into a menacing snarl. ‘You stay! No get out!’
‘But … the bathroom, you said—’ Adriana retorted weakly.
‘Here bathroom!’ the driver barked, snatching a grimy, oil-stained bucket from a corner of the truck. ‘This, this bathroom. Understand?’
He shoved the bucket into her hands, and she sat in mute silence for a few moments as his black eyes bored with lecherous hunger into her own.
‘You no want bathroom? No? You no want?’ he probed, his face now right up in front of hers. His breath reeked of pungent halitosis, and the vileness of it overpowered even the stench of the unwashed bodies and the choking diesel fumes.
Adriana, however, could no longer resist the pressing urge.
‘I do need to use the bathroom, yes,’ she conceded in a cracking, defeated tone. ‘I’ll use the bucket, thank you sir. But, um, could I please have some privacy?’
‘What that word mean? I no understand. You need bathroom? Yes? No?’
‘Yes I do, sir, I just wanted to have some—’
‘Then you do bathroom! Now! Do it!’
Now Adriana understood, and once again the awful cocktail of helplessness, rage, fear, shame and revulsion frothed deep within her core. She grimaced, her lips drawn tight and her eyes stony, and then turned to the side, pulled down her jeans and underwear and squatted over the bucket to urinate. She looked away, but there was no way to escape driver’s leering eyes and violating gaze. This had been the pattern of every interaction she had had with men since the start of this journey, and in some tragic manner she had almost resigned herself to simply accept it now. After a while she finished and pulled up her underwear and jeans and turned to the others.
‘Does anyone else need to use the restroom?’
They all nodded, and each took their turn, trembling with fear, shame and impotent anger before the salacious gaze of the truck driver. Even the stoic Japanese woman needed to go, and she had no option but to squat in front of the driver like the rest of them, her face reddening with bristling anger. After the last woman had relieved herself, the grinning buffoon grabbed the bucket from her hands and threw the urine out onto the road.
‘Now we go,’ he announced, his betel-nut stained teeth glinting in the first rays of the sun, the light red and weak through the dense haze of air pollution. ‘You keep quiet, all you!’
At the end of the day they reached their destination. All around the truck the sound of heavy city traffic crashed and rolled in waves; a stormy ocean of honking horns punctuated by the hornet-swarm buzz of small motorcycle engines, drifting above which was the almost tangible fog of millions of chattering, laughing, yelling and clamouring human voices. The vehicle clattered through a narrow alley, its grumbling engine reverberating a brash rumble that ricocheted off the walls and doors of haphazardly constructed concrete buildings. Finally it came to a stop, and the darkness in the back of the truck was shattered by a painfully piercing blaze of light when the driver hauled open the doors. Two Thai men dressed in waiters’ garb climbed into the back and began unloading the crates, ignoring the women completely, as if their souls had already left the world of mortals and were now hovering like translucent spirits above the surface of the truck bed.
‘You! All you, get out!’ the driver commanded.
Adriana took Roxana’s hand and helped her to stand up. Her joints ached and stabs of pain shot through her limbs as she struggled to get her blood flowing to her extremities after two days of being cramped in the tiny space. Daylight, dirty and harsh from the polluted sky, shoved searing light-blindness like white-hot steel rods through her dark-accustomed eyes. The truck driver showed neither sympathy nor kindness, however, as he grabbed Adriana’s arm and yanked her out of the back.
‘Hurry up! Get out!’
He shoved her forward and then walked around to the front of the truck to make a call on his phone. Adriana stumbled and fell onto the concrete, and gasped from a jolt of sharp pain, skinning her knee. A tributary of blood trickled down her ivory skin as she tried to struggle to her feet, but, abruptly, a strong hand wrapped itself around her forearm and helped her to her feet.
‘Stand up,
