For sex workers in Bangladesh’s grimy brothels, the future is as bleak as the past
- Our writer returns to Faridpur in Bangladesh after five years to see how life has changed for sex workers in the city’s brothels
- Many of the women were tricked, trapped and forced into prostitution, often when they were underage, and rely on drugs to ‘survive’
A little over five years ago, Bristi had just turned 15. She is now about to celebrate her 18th birthday.
Indeed, the maths don’t add up. That’s because in 2011, when we last encountered her, Bristi lied about her age.
“I had to say that because, otherwise, the madam would’ve hit me,” she admits now.
Back then, she appeared to be an active, lively and smiling teenager, and so one of the most sought-after girls at the C&B Ghat brothel, in Faridpur, a chaotic town in central Bangladesh.
In the five years since, she seems to have aged excessively and you’d be forgiven for thinking she was now well into her 20s. Her hands tremble from drug abuse, her arms are scarred with self-inflicted cuts and her teeth betray a fondness for nicotine and alcohol. The only recognisable feature of the person we met in 2011 is the broad smile, now flashed rarely.
Bristi’s new place of work, the Town Brothel, Faridpur’s other house of sex, hasn’t changed much; it remains the grimy collection of concrete buildings we found on our previous visit. The walls of the warren-like alleyways and the women’s cells are now dirtier, the spittle stains of red betel – a plant stimulant widely used in South Asia – having climbed higher, a metaphor, perhaps, for the conditions those working inside must endure.
