i have this friend. he is the head of his family and is very respected in his community. so when his uncle had a problem, he came to my friend to help solve it. the problem was this: his daughter, my friend's cousin, used to date a guy who treated her very badly. they eventually broke up, but now the daughter/cousin is about to get back together with him. the uncle came to my friend to ask him to talk to his daughter, to reason with her, to try to talk her out of making this mistake.
last night, i was talking with my friend, and i asked him how his cousin was doing. he explained that she's being really stubborn. then he started to tell me more about the situation. his cousin is nana. one day, while this guy and nana were still dating, the guy came to my friend's house and was showing him pictures of himself kissing another girl (very culturally inappropriate). now, this guy doesn't know that my friend and nana are cousins. so my friend asked, "aren't you dating nana?" and guy answered, "no, we broke up 2 days ago." my friend also happened to know the girl in the picture, dian. she's a prostitute. and other guy was "seeing" her WHILE dating nana as well as after breaking up with her. he would tell my friend about it, but when my friend would talk to nana about it, she didn't want to hear it. obviously, everybody breathed a sigh of relief when they eventually broke up. everybody except nana.
my friend has been trying to explain this to nana lately. he's a jerk. when they were dating, he was cheating on her. with a hooker. he didn't sleep with nana, but he was having sex with other women. she should NOT get back together with him. but nana has rationalized this in her mind by telling herself that he was just with dian to "have fun" (an indonesian slang word for sex is "main", which literally means "to play"), and that he didn't really care about dian, he loved HER (nana). in her mind, they are meant to be together. things will get better.
so it's all pretty messed up. the story seemed very dramatic and ridiculous. and then my friend mentioned something about middle school. i thought he meant that he knew all these people since middle school. i asked a question to clarify. no. these people are all IN middle school. nana, the rebellious daughter. the cheating jerk who lives across the street from her and visits prostitutes. and even dian, the prostitute. they are all 14 and 15 years old.
i sat there for a minute to take this all in. i had a lot of questions. but the one i cared about the most was: what is dian's story?
when she was a child, she was traveling in a car with her parents and there was a bad wreck. both her parents were killed and she lived. so dian went to live with her grandmother, who is the madame of a brothel in town. not long after moving in with her, gramma sold her to a wealthy chinese man. and ever since then, dian has worked for her grandmother. one time, she ran away, and her grandmother threatened to kill everyone helping hide her. she is now 14 and has earned enough money to buy her own house, where she lives alone. but she still works for gramma.
when he finished talking, i sat in stunned silence. and then i just cried.
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