I do not have the academic expertise in the field that my fellow speakers have. I’m an author, and can only use the one tool I have at my disposal: my writing. In my novel Town of Love I’m telling the story of some of the most underpriviliged and vulnerable women in the world, hoping that their tales will touch the readers as they touched me, and even more importantly: that they will initiate action. Because everyone who refuses to accept that human beings are bought and sold, is an activist in the battle against trafficking.

From the first little spark of an idea and until the book met its readers, it was a long journey, spanning several continents. It started in Iran, moved on to India, to Spain where the bulk of the first draft was written, to my native Norway, and to Fiji, where I lived when the book was first published in Norway in 2012. It was a journey of patience, of pain, and exasperation, but also one of hope, of strength and of love.

I was asked by a journalist some time back what I had learned from this journey, and had to think for a minute before I could answer. Because I learned so much. And the more I learned, the more I discovered that I didn’t know. The deeper I dug into the flesh trade and the mechanisms behind it, the more I realized how complex its cruelty is. Prostitution is a gender issue, but it is also a social issue - in India a caste issue - and it’s a poverty issue. I learned a lot about all those things. But what I learned most of all, and what I ended up responding to the journalist, was that what I learned, was the true meaning of human dignity. That human dignity has nothing to do with  where you come from or what your surroundings are, but with how you hold yourself, and what you deem to be right and just.

So how did the journey start? It started as a chance meeting in a Tehran garden, six years ago. I lived in Iran at the time, and my husband had an Indian colleague. This man was married, but his wife was never around, and I had heard something about her running an NGO back home in India. But she visited Tehran now and then, and during one of those visits I met Ruchira Gupta, who indirectly was the initiatior of the book. She has founded and runs the anti-trafficking NGO Apne Aap (meaning ”Self-help” in Hindi), which has helped thousands of women get out of a life of violence and rape, and for this work she has received all sorts of international prizes, she is an amazing woman. The more I listened to her, the more I wanted to know, and when all of a sudden she said, ”Why don’t you come visit me in India and see what we do?”, I thought ”Why not?”

And so the journey commenced. One trip to Bihar, which is in northern India, on the border to Nepal, led to several more. Because it became very evident to me that once I had met, and listened to the stories of Meena, Fatimah, Anwari, and the other Nat women whose tales are the base of this novel, I couldn’t just get up, turn my back to them and take my leave. So I came back, again and again, spent hours and hours, days and weeks talking with the women, establishing trust and friendship, and I knew I wanted to tell their story.

I have asked myself many times, Why the stories touch me so profoundly? Haven’t we all read countless stories about trafficking, gruelling tales of women being forced into selling their bodies?

But I know exactly why. I am the mother of three daughters. And in the Nat caste, this is what broke my heart: that the trade is inter-generational and that the Nat daughters are born into this. From when they are small, they are primed to take ”passengers” which is what they call the customers: they are raised to take over what their mothers, grandmothers, and older sisters do. They are reared to be the breadwinners of their families, it is being instilled in them from childhood that ”this is your responsibility: to feed your families.” Among the Nat, this is their livelihood, ”this is what we do”. Let me briefly explain why: The Nat caste, which has a very low status in Indian society used to be travelling people. They were known to perform dancing and acrobatics, to do small odd jobs of all kinds, and for prostituting their women. For the last hundred years or so, they have for various reasons become more stationary, and with their low status in a caste-conscious Indian society, mostly end up in very poor circumstances. And the one element that they have kept from their previous ways of earning a living, is prostituting their women. In the village that I have come to know, this was the number one source of income: the male head of the family would prostitute several of the women under his roof: his daughters, daughters-in-law, his sisters, his wife. It all happens in the home, very openly and visibly, and is what has earned the slum village its name and my book's title: ”Prem Nagar” or Town of Love.

So isn’t this their ”culture”? Isn’t this a tradition that we should leave well enough alone?

I think we hide much ugliness behind the word ”culture”. Culture is created, something that has been made into a tradition. But just because something has existed for a long time, doesn’t necesarily mean it’s good. Think about what we for so long used to conceal behind the euphemism ”domestic matters”. Today, we call it by its right name: abuse. Sure, it has existed for a long time, but that doesn’t make it right.

This is not a part of the Nat ”culture” that we should ”respect” and leave alone. Because every single time I asked one of the Nat mothers one very simple question, the answer was always the same. Whenever I asked one of them ”What dreams do you have for your daughter?” the answer was always and invariably: ”I want a different life for her.” Not ”I want her to pass on the Nat tradition”. "No - ”I want a different life for her.”

And this, the inter-generational aspect, was what hit me so hard. I couldn’t comprehend it: how it must be, how it must feel, to give birth to a baby daughter, and know, holding that tiny body in your arms, that this is going to be her future?

So I knew I wanted to write this story.

I am not Indian. But I have daughters. You, too, have daughters. I come from a country where trafficking exists, where rape exists. It exists in Australia, too, it exists everywhere. Violence against women, including sexual violence, is highlighted and exposed in the media more than ever, and it should be. 2 million women are being trafficked every year, this is a global issue. That’s why I think that the story of Tamanna, Rupa and the others, although set in India, in a particular caste in a particular village, needs to be told.

I chose to write a novel and not a documentary. This I did because I wished to be able to focus on the specific aspects of the story that I wanted to highlight. That’s why I’m writing in my introductory Author’s Note that ”some of these houses I have actually visited, others I have not. Some of the stories lie extremely close to the truth, others do not… But everything that is important in this book, is true. That human beings are bought and sold; that young girls are kidnapped and hidden away; that children are assaulted, abused, and raped …. That those who reap the benefits of the human flesh trade, with its violence and brutality, mostly walk free… But this story also finds a glimmer of hope for the women who walk the streets of the Town of Love …. A hope brought by those who care… Those who enter the rooms of Prem Nagar, push back the curtains, share the pain … Like Tamanna and Fauzia in the story, there are those who reclaim the governance of their own lives and their own bodies. The hope of this book is that there will be more of them.”

The title of this event is Contagious Justice, and I believe this is how we make justice contagious: by talking about it, standing up for it, helping every woman achieve it. And by never accepting anything less than human dignity for all.

Anne Ostby