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This is the fourth in a series of posts about J.D. Long-Garcia’s trip to the Middle East last year. He didn’t finish the series then, but is revisiting it now, a year after the articles were first published in the paper.

Finding shelter

Victims of human trafficking pose for an anonymous photo Oct. 4, 2008 in Beirut, Lebanon.

First thing in the morning, after having, among other things, hummus for breakfast, the group hikes up four or five flights of stairs in a Lebanese government building. The elevator is about as big as a phone booth, and we just can’t wait for the 10 or so of us to go, two-by-two, to where we need to be.

We’re meeting with a Lebanese official who will be our guide at the migrant detention shelter today, Oct. 4, 2008. We won’t be able to take photos once inside the detention center. I’m still a bit jet-lagged and I’m preparing myself with short prayers for some hard-to-stomach living conditions. Caritas told us the detention center needs a lot of improvements.

The drivers drop us off near a freeway overpass. Where’s the detention center? We follow our guide down the sidewalk. An armed guard in fatigues stands by a door. The center, it turns out, is under the freeway overpass. The official who guides us down a short flight of stairs seemed somewhat apologetic about the conditions, but said the were doing the best they could. “We would like to look for another place where there’s light and a place that respects the human dignity of each person,” says Noha Roukoss, a Caritas social worker. As many as 500 people will be crammed into the space under the freeway, which used to be a parking garage. The parking lines painted on the floor are like a football field through the detention center. The 13 cells, which must 30 feet by 15 feet, are full of inmates — immigrants caught living in the country illegally. Without the proper paperwork, some wait months for their home countries to accept them back.

They come from Sudan, Egypt, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. During our visit, some cells have up to 20 immigrants a piece. We’re told the numbers are can get even higher. They line up, solemn, at the bars and watch us walk past. Most of us smile at them — that uncomfortable smile of sympathy, the “I wish I could help, I really do” grin of passive compassion. Others are resting on a mattress. The mattresses — which Caritas provided — are lined up side-by-side in two rows on the floor.

Some inmates say something to us in Arabic or perhaps another language I don’t understand. In one cell, as an inmate mops the concrete floor, the others stand by the bars with their mattress in hand. Pillows are stuffed between bars. Photos of family members are pined up and bags of personal items are hung up wherever possible. A large photo or Mary and another of the Sacred Heart of Jesus make me regret not being able to take photos even more. Each cell has a bathroom attached, but there’s not much space. Each person more or less has the personal space of their mattress. That’s it.

Caritas has 10 employees who work at the center, helping as nurses or just doing laundry. They also have three social workers stationed there — which isn’t much for the thousands who pass through the detention center’s bars. Caritas provides three hot meals per week. It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s welcomed by the inmates, who are fed a steady diet of sandwiches. A worker tells us that detainees spend three to nine months in custody before arriving at the detention center. The only exercise they get it washing clothes.

We speak with an Indian sister, Sr. Lily George, FMM, who works in the center. She tells us the people are very poor and that they give up everything to come to Lebanon to work. She tells us the government rewards people who drop off undocumented workers $3,500. Sr. Lily brings together inmates of different faiths and shows them how to communicate. Behind her, six sit handcuffed around a ping-pong table.

Human trafficking

From the detention center, one group goes to a migrant shelter and another to the trafficked shelter. I join the later group, though again, photos won’t be forthcoming. (The photo posted above at the shelter I had to talk everyone into. The women are pretty scared, and the Caritas workers always put their safety first.) We meet eight women who came into the country as migrant workers.

Some of them, according Anna Lee, a case worker, have been beaten by their employees. Others have been hurt with knives. One woman tells us how she was promised $150 a month, but received only $700 for the year. Another was locked in the home for more than a year and a half.

“Every time I asked for my salary, I was beaten,” another woman tells us. Many of the women have children back home.

While at the shelter, I speak with Bernadette, a Filipina woman. I don’t realize it at the time, but this interview will give structure to one of the articles eventually publish. “If they experience what I experienced, I don’t think they should come,” Bernadette tells me of other Filipinas considering domestic work in Lebanon. “I don’t want that for them.”

It’s common practice for domestic workers to surrender their passports to their employers. Employers often keep their workers documents until their visas expire. Then they threaten to turn the workers in as undocumented immigrants if they don’t do as their employer asks.

A place on a hill

Anwar Kathem, a Muslim Iraqi who also found shelter from her husband in Lebanon.

From the trafficking shelter, the group loads up in cars and drive to the Caritas Iraqi shelter, where refugees from Iraq find safe haven. Once there, we eat lunch prepared by the refugees.

Despite their trials, the refugees seem joyful. Perhaps it’s simply being out a difficult situation. They’re mostly women and children, though there’s also a Sri Lankan family there that’s been waiting to return to their come country for more than a year. Everyone else, though, is from Iraq.

“Women come here with a tired physical character,” says Nancy Chéhade, a psychologist working with Caritas. “In Iraq, it’s normal for men to beat their wives.”

I speak with two sisters first. They married two brothers. The Catholic families left Iraq and found some relief in Beirut. But the men kept beating their wives. Together, the men beat their wives and even set them on fire. I then speak with a Muslim woman, who asks her daughter to leave before speaking about her husband. Her husband on one point beat her so much that he caved in her eye socket.

The shelter helps these women get on their feet. It’s not a dead end for them, but a new beginning. It’s not unlike much of the work being done at domestic violence shelters in the United States.

Back at the hotel, a few of us have dinner together. There’s a certain, I don’t know… grief? Mourning? I’m not a stranger to third world countries. I was born in one. But this is different than what I’ve seen in the Dominican Republic. These women I spoke with today, they showed me an evil I’d never thought possible. That’s probably overstating it. It’s not that I didn’t think it was possible. I just never came face-to-face with it. It’s not just some unnamed person on the other side of the world who I’m offering up a generic prayer for. It’s a person I met. It’s a person who cried before me and shared with me things that were so intimate I wanted something as tragic to share back. It’s an encounter with darkness, or better said, it’s an encounter with a person who’s been the victim of darkness.

And what makes it worse, they didn’t have anywhere to turn. Until, that is, they found Caritas. They found our Church ready to help them, regardless of what faith they came from. And what is more moving than the darkness is their courage. These women had suffered so much, but they’re picking themselves up. They’re not through with life. It’s only just begun for them.

***

Today I turn 31. In the morning, I decide I won’t tell anyone on the trip it’s my birthday. I keep hoping, to be honest, to have this “Great Gatsby” moment where all of a sudden I, like Nick, realize, “I just remembered that today’s my birthday.” Or, I think, maybe some of the trip organizers had some surprise party planned. They don’t, of course.

But the whole time, through all the interviews, I keep this in my mind — first of all, it’s the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. And second, it was the day I was born. And the whole time, listening to these migrants recount their suffering, I just feel so grateful. Not because my life is so privileged, though I am grateful for that. But I mostly feel grateful that I get to share time with these people who I would have never met if it weren’t for the trip. The trip and these people are transforming me. It’s actually changing my life — on my birthday. It’s far and away the greatest birthday I’ve ever had.