Сигрид Нуньес - The Friend

My friend wanted me to watch a Swedish film called Lilya 4-Ever . In fact I had already seen it, years ago, when it first came out. At the time, I didn’t know that it was based on a true story. I didn’t know much of anything about it; I had decided to see it one day on the spur of the moment because I had liked an earlier film by the same director and because it was playing close by. It is more than possible that if I had known what to expect I might never have gone to see Lilya 4-Ever . As it was, the experience was indelible: even more than a decade later, there was no need for me to see it again.

Lilya is a sixteen-year-old girl living with her mother in a bleak housing project somewhere in the former Soviet Union. She believes that she and her mother and the mother’s boyfriend are all about to emigrate to the US, but when the time comes Lilya is left behind. Then a heartless aunt takes over the apartment where Lilya has been living, forcing her to move into what is no more than a filthy hole. Abandoned, moneyless, Lilya skids into prostitution.

From the people around her, Lilya has learned to expect only cruelty and betrayal. The exception is Volodya, a boy a few years younger than Lilya who is much abused by his drunken father. Volodya loves Lilya, who befriends and shelters him after his father throws him out. Together the two waifs share a few happy moments. But, for the most part, Lilya’s life is grim.

Hope arrives in the form of a handsome, soft-voiced young Swede named Andrei. He tells Lilya, who falls instantly in love with him, that, with his help, she can move to Sweden and start a new life. She jumps at the chance, in spite of what this will mean for Volodya, who in fact responds to the departure of his only friend in the world by killing himself.

Volodya continues to appear in the film in the form of an angel.

Lilya arrives in Sweden, alone (Andrei has promised to join her later), and is met at the airport by the man she’s been told will take her under his wing. The man drives her to her new home, a tower apartment high above the street, and locks her in. Rapunzel, Rapunzel. He is the first to rape her. Lilya’s new life has begun. Now day after day she is delivered into the hands of clients—a broad range of ages and types—none of whom allows either her obvious youth or the obvious fact that she is acting against her will to interfere with his lust. On the contrary, everyone behaves as if sex slavery is what Lilya has been put on this earth for.

The first time she tries to escape, Lilya is caught and beaten. The second time, she finds herself on an expressway bridge. Though help in the form of a policewoman is near, Lilya panics and jumps.

After she jumped, the girl on whose life and death Lilya 4-Ever was based was found to have on her body some letters she’d written. This was how her story came to be known.

When I saw the film, alone, at my small neighborhood art house, it was a weekday afternoon. Only a handful of people were in the audience. I remember, after it was over, having to wait so that I could compose myself before leaving the theater. It was a humiliating feeling. Several rows ahead of me sat another woman who’d come to the theater alone and who was now sobbing. When I finally left she was sitting there still, still sobbing. I felt humiliated for her, too.

According to my friend, Lilya 4-Ever has often been shown to humanitarian and human rights groups and in schools in areas where girls are known to be especially vulnerable to traffickers.

Not brutal enough was the response from a group of Moldovan prostitutes who were asked to watch the film.

Even more shocking, to me, was hearing the director say that he believed that God took care of Lilya (like Volodya, after her death she appears on-screen as an angel), that without this belief he could not have made the film. I think I would have killed myself, he said.

And what does this mean he thinks that those who are without such belief, those who not for one minute trust that God takes care of the Lilyas of the world, should do?

My friend said, For people who have themselves been victims of inequality and exploitation, like the people trapped in Lilya’s slum, there might be some understanding for the way they mistreat one another. There might even be forgiveness, she said. But the depraved behavior of all those privileged members of the prosperous Nordic welfare state—this is harder to accept.

I once saw a photograph in a magazine: a long line of men snaking outside a shack being used by some teen prostitutes. I don’t remember what part of the world it was. I do remember that there was nothing about the men to suggest anything out of the ordinary. Several of them are smoking cigarettes. This one is looking at his watch, that one is studying the sky, another is reading a newspaper. Overall, an air of patient boredom. They might have been waiting for a bus, or for their turn at the DMV.

My friend told me about another case. Again, doctors could find no injury or disease that would have prevented the patient from speaking like any normal person. But she would not speak. When it was suggested that she start journaling, she was enthusiastic. In a week she had filled a whole stack of notebooks. She wrote in an astonishingly cramped script, the tiniest letters imaginable, my friend said. Just watching her scribbling away was frightening. Her hand ballooned, her fingers blistered and bled, but she wouldn’t—couldn’t—stop.

We never knew what she was writing because she didn’t share it with us, my friend said. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was mostly repetition and nonsense. Fortunately, we were able to give her medication that helped her stop the maniacal writing and start speaking again.

According to Larette, she, too, had gone through a period of mutism. Whenever she tried to speak her throat would close painfully, as if invisible hands were choking her.

I would try very hard, in spite of the pain, but the most I could manage was a dry squeak, like an asthmatic mouse, which made people laugh. I was so ashamed that I stopped trying. When I wanted to communicate I’d use writing or some kind of sign language or silently mouth the words. Still, my throat hurt all the time.

In therapy, she remembers an incident that she hadn’t thought about in many years. This involved her grandmother, about whom she tried to think as little as possible. When Larette was ten, her mother was stabbed to death by a boyfriend. There being no father in the picture, she was placed in the care of her grandmother. Larette referred to this woman, an increasingly desperate meth addict, as “my first slaveholder.”

She was the first one to sell me to men. I remember we were sitting at the kitchen table, and she got up and went to the fridge. She opened the freezer and took out a Popsicle, which she unwrapped and broke in two. I remember it was cherry, my favorite flavor. She popped one stick in my mouth. Lemme show you, hon. She put the other one in her own mouth and went to work on it.

This was one of several memories Larette had doubts about including in her book. She was afraid it would sound too made-up. She kept deleting it, then putting it back in, then deleting it again.

I know another woman, a writer, who has at times made her living as a sex worker. She is against the latest thinking that says every prostitute must be seen as a VOT. She wants a firm line drawn between a slave and a free and willing worker like herself. Brothel raids, john stings, and public john shaming fire her outrage.