Alimah Koumi: Beautiful Sudanese expatriate.
Marcos Ferrari: Young Argentine student.
Sanwarit Eyasu: Young Ethiopian woman, Alimah´s companion in her captivity.
Charles Barlow: “Uncle Charley”. Craftsman born in Mississippi and living in Harlem, Marcos´ friend .
Jemal Gebre: Eritrean people trafficker.
Patrick Paddy O'Halloran: NYPD Lieutenant.
Laura Sandoval: NYPD Sergeant.
Vincent Caruso: NYPD officer.
Leroy Washington: NYPD office
Walter Kolski: NYPD office
Doc Jim: Medical Dr., former Uncle Charley´s army comrade.
Eric Murphy: Veteran NYPD sergeant
Sheila Flynn O'Halloran: Paddy O'Halloran´s wife and daughter of an old Eric Murphy´s friend.
Loretta Gardner Washington: Leroy´s wife.
Philip Gardner: Loretta´s father. Manhattan City Councilor.
Dr Herbert Plummer: Director of the Comptroller Office of the New York City Mayor.
Gonzalo and Fernanda Ferrari: Marcos´ uncle and aunt, residents in Buenos Aires.
Prologue
The girl ran along the isolated alley not daring to look back; as her high-heeled shoes prevented her from speeding she took them off with a quick gesture and continued her race barefoot running on the cold pavement of the dark street in Harlem. She heard a noise coming from the pursuers following her, three or four burly Africans who had participated in the horrible scene that she was leaving behind. The girl shook her head trying to ward off the recent memory that had shocked her to such an extreme degree. Her pace was very fast, like a woman born and raised in the steppes of Africa who as a child had run alongside their brothers. The woman knew that the heavy human bloodhounds who pursued her would not be able to catch with her and the distance between them widened every second. The same thought the pursuers who were at the end of their breathing capabilities. Several screams were heard, the men were shouting to each other giving orders in their dialect and Alimah trembled guessing what they were saying; without missing a beat she prepared for what she knew was coming next . Three detonations sounded reverberating through the narrow alley. The woman closed her eyes waiting for the result of the shooting. She felt a profound and gnawing pain in the right shoulder. Alimah knew that the bullet had entered her from the back and exited through the front of the shoulder so the blood loss would be twofold. The girl stumbled momentarily but could recover her step. Her father´s face passed fleetingly through her mind. She knew that wherever he was the old warrior would pride of his daughter.
Thoughts from that moment began to fray although her legs still responded to a center of will over which the woman had no longer control, her brain darkened and Alimah passed out. Her body still toured several steps led by inertia and finally rolled between some trash bins resulting in their fall with a great clatter. A bitter cold began to invade her body.
The recent events immediately prior to the persecution paraded through her fevered and delirious mind. What her psyche had been dodging to remember when she was fleeing to avoid its crushing weight now returned to her memory, devoid of the protection of the will. The image of Samwarit, the beautiful Ethiopian girl that had tried to escape with her from the hands of their captors clearly appeared in her memory, as well as Jemal´s, the human beings trafficker band leader in whose hands the girls had fallen with the complicity of the ship captain that had brought them to New York. Alimah recalled the twenty-five day’s journey from the distant port on the Red Sea, located near Port Sudan but devoid of any control by the local authorities. On that ship traveled twenty Ethiopian, Eritrean, Sudanese and Somali women, all young and beautiful, in what undoubtedly was a human trafficking trip linked to prostitution. All were constrained to stay inside two grimy containers within which they sometimes had to do their physiological needs, and out of which they were only allowed to come to breath pure air on deck when the ship was far from shore and out of busy shipping routes .
Upon reaching their destination they had entered the port of New York inside the containers and were carried overnight out of the port area and brought to what they later learned was Harlem. As the area was strongly patrolled by the city police, the women practically were not allowed to leave the abandoned warehouse where they were kept.
While most of the women were terrified and moved like zombies to the beat of the orders of the men who had imprisoned them, Alimah and Samwarit were looking from the outset for an opportunity to escape from their confinement. It had been almost a month since their clandestine arrival in New York, and some of the women had been sold to who knows what sordid brothel organization and had never returned. The girls received only one shower and decent clothes when they were exhibited to unknown buyers and delivered to their new masters.
One night the girls woke up due to an uproar coming from the ground floor of the ruined warehouse including cries of men, sounds of broken things and finally shots and groans. A rival gang had attacked the premises in order to chase the newcomers away from what they considered their hunting ground.
Alimah took Samwarit´s hand and led her down the dirty stairs leading to the ground floor. On the lower steps lay dying one of the captors, a gigantic black with his face and arms full of tattoos. He still had a knife in his hand. Amilah pushed the body down with her foot to release the stairs and as she passed by took the knife into her own hands. Sanwarit was always holding Alimah by her skirt. In one of the corridors of the ground floor lay one of the kidnappers, with several bullet wounds in his chest. The warehouse door facing the alley was ajar, but another body blocked it. The two women jumped over the corpse and finally came to the long awaited freedom. They ran towards a corner in the flickering clarity of the public lighting and their blood froze when they saw one of the thugs who appeared turning the corner less than five steps away from them. The man was even more surprised than the women and did not react immediately. Without a moment's hesitation Amilah sharp dagger stuck in his belly and the man fell heavily.
The two girls ran desperately trying to put distance to the site of their confinement but soon heard voices that were familiar. The traffickers that had held them prisoner had recovered from the attack and were already in their pursuit. Suddenly the youth heard a noise that they desperately recognized as an approaching motorcycle. They realized that fleeing on foot had some chance to escape but they could never outrun a motorcycle.
The screech of the braking vehicle sounded incredibly close. Two men, who like everyone else in the band were of Somali origin jumped on the women. One of them took Sanwarit´s long hair and cut her throat with a single stroke, while the other bore down on Amilah. However he slipped on an unseen stream of oil in the dark and fell; although he immediately tried to stand up Amilah stuck the dagger in his neck from which it began to emerge a jet of blood. She momentarily stared up and looked back to the corner Sanwarit and she had left moments before; fleetingly the girl glimpsed another car with the headlights turned on; in the light shed by them she distinguished the silhouettes of two very tall men; both were dressed in suits, unlike the thugs who were chasing her who wore baggy casual clothes. Amilah could clearly discern that one of them was white, with very light skin and blond hair, and the other was black and very corpulent. The next time she looked in that direction the car and the men had vanished. This vision, forgotten in the welter of events that unfolded later, was however recorded somewhere in Amilah´s memory.
The woman then left the place running from the scene to prevent giving other trackers time to reach her. This is where our story begins.
Human trafficking is one of the oldest and cruelest stigmas of humanity. European and Arab dominated this traffic for centuries and America was partly populated by Africans brought by slave merchants. The Arabs were very active in this traffic, particularly with supply sources throughout Africa and destination in the Middle East, the rest of Asia, Africa and Europe. It is estimated that between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries more than ten million human beings were kidnapped, taken as droves of cattle and sold as cheap labor, domestic servants, cannon fodder and basically sex slaves and prostitutes, including women and children in the latter category. In no way can it be considered these activities as part of the past as they continue in a latent form today, with the complicity of governments in the points of departure and arrival.
The Horn of Africa is a region located on the eastern tip of the African continent, on the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, and facing Yemen and Saudi Arabia. It consists of Ethiopia (the largest and most populous country), Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti. Historically it was one of the main areas of action of the slave hunters and traders, which then drove their prey in harsh caravans through its western neighbor, Sudan (one of the largest countries in Africa) to the above referred slaves markets. The various routes included the Sahara Desert, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Shipments of slaves to Europe often enter by the dilated Italian Mediterrean coast and from there they continue their to the final destinations. On a recent date have been detected boat trips to the Americas, particularly United States. This is our history.