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By Root 665 0

to survive, turning themselves into machines, repressing their thoughts of autonomy, relying on their captors. Many of them are passive, thinking that what happened to them happened because they’re fundamentally weak. Others feel punished for having left their families, for having stepped out of line. They focus on making money, as if their debt still exists. Some of them constantly wash their hands, obsessively, as a way of trying to rid themselves of their dirty experience. But the very fact that they lived through the experience and managed to escape, Anna said, is a basis, though shaky, for rebuilding their self-esteem. “These girls have survived,” she said. “Now they have to take their lives into their own hands.”

It’s the girls who played a more active role in their stories, the ones who took off for reasons of opportunity or even adventure, who have the best chance of recovering a sense of self, Anna told me. They don’t see themselves entirely as victims and are more apt to be able to work their way out of the degradation, humiliation, and violence they experienced. In some ways, finally, after all they’ve been through, the terrible price they’ve paid, they may realize that they’ve managed to make their dream of living and working in Italy come true. Now they can start afresh and get a job in a boutique or trattoria. The challenge will be whether they can rewrite their stories, no longer be victimized or passive but able to heal themselves and somehow become the agents of their own lives. Giusi and my friend Carmen are doing all they can—single women devoting themselves to helping out other single, unprotected women—but at some point the girls will have to take over. I am amazed at the strength that has taken the girls this far, engineering their escapes and starting over, even if they are still in shock.

I know that for weeks after, my heart will be breaking for these girls. The consequences of their efforts to be independent are so much harsher than for American women; there’s no comparison. In their native countries, they too have grown up in a new world that requires them to work, both in the home and outside, but they’re severely limited in their movements, punished if they do what they must to survive. They’re protected as long as they adhere strictly to traditions, in cultures whose global demands no longer make that possible. They crave the freedom, education, and experiences that go along with the new roles they’ve taken on—they want to travel, have boyfriends, buy pink hoodies and silver tennis shoes—but they’re at risk of rape, exploitation, and slavery. They’re caught between the old and new worlds, bearing the brunt of the ambivalence and anger about how women and the world are changing.

LATE AT NIGHT, after we’ve made the rounds in the van, Giusi and the other social workers drop me off at my hotel. She offers to pick me up in the morning to accompany me to the train station, but I tell her I’m fine, I can take care of myself. I appreciate that it’s a natural part of the culture to take care of single women, but I don’t feel vulnerable. I can call a taxi.

I think about how easy it is for me to travel alone, how much real independence I enjoy. I can’t get the images of Marika and the other girls out of my head. It’s such a luxury to travel when women all over the world are constantly coming up against constraints to their freedoms, testing the limits out of desire or need, almost always paying a price that is measured by their culture: sometimes loneliness and uncertainty; financial instability; sometimes fear for their safety, their lives; sometimes the horrible brutality and violence the immigrant women I’ve met on this trip have endured. There is an uneasy balance everywhere of cultures wanting to protect and control women, allowing them some autonomy out of economic necessity, then punishing them for taking it, leaving them without any protection at all.

Italy has probably managed a better balance than most, making it possible for women to feel independent yet protected and included even if