(1)
For its strangeness, you may think that the story is not real, but it is really true, and what happens is that questions flow in your head and the narrator tells his story, you would like it to speed up the end, but you enjoy its events even if they are sad, you imagine the farthest point that fate can lead the hero of the tale to, you hope he finds What people talk about is the light at the end of the tunnel.
In a situation like this we can imagine everything, you're in the middle of nothing, making a decision is (but) a luxury you don't have, defending yourself or showing resistance are just daydreams of heroism.
(2)
The story begins in 2006, and its hero is Vanak Baram, a simple Cambodian young man, who is waiting with his wife for their first child, preparing for the matter by all means, so that he decides to travel a little to secure what his small family needs. It is okay to spend a few months in neighboring Thailand, and then return with what He earned money for his family.
He meets one of the taxi drivers, they talk, and the latter tells him that he knows the ways to work in Thailand and the chances of getting a job in the dried fish canning factories scattered there. "Burm" is skeptical at first about it, but he gives in to the idea and decides to leave with the driver.
Already arriving in the city of Malay in the northwest of Cambodia, he is surprised that there are 30 other people who have arrived before them to get the same job, he realizes that he is facing a fait accompli, and he has no other choice.
(3)
Inside the rickety truck, everyone is huddled together, in a narrow space that can barely fit everyone, with the smugglers covering them in large pieces of cloth to hide them from the checkpoints.
The truck crosses the Cambodian border and arrives in Thailand. After many hours, the truck stops. They are locked in a concrete room that is closed from the outside, and the door can't be controlled from the inside. It's a real prison.
Burm drills a hole in the wall through which he sees fishing boats, and workers carrying large quantities of fish across shore, he quickly understands that he will not work in a dried fish factory as they told him in Cambodia, and that he has been sold to work on fishing boats on the ocean shores.
The new owners distribute work clothes to "Burm" and his comrades, and divide them into fishing boats that go as far into the water, as far as possible from land, where the choice of escape or seeking help becomes impossible.
In a situation like this we can imagine everything, you're in the middle of nothing, making a decision is (but) a luxury you don't have, defending yourself or showing resistance are just daydreams of heroism.
He and his comrades are forced to work 20 hours a day, the body wears out and he falls unconscious, his boss's ruthless wand awakens him, reminds him of his comrade who asked for some rest and ends up decapitating his head in front of everyone.
A car arrives at the police station. An officer watches as he receives money from the driver. He realizes that his suffering is not over yet, and that he is being sold again, to enter the circle of forced labor in Malaysia this time.
(4)
Brum spends 3 whole years on that boat. Every day he gets food crumbs to eat so that he doesn't die. He misses his wife and child, who was born in his absence.
He glimpses in the midst of that closed circle in which he runs a loophole through which he can penetrate into the world of freedom, the boat is approaching land for the first time, it is Malaysia and the owners of the prison boat want to obtain a permit to fish within its territorial waters.
Birm contemplates what is around him, as if he is seeing the world for the first time in his life, his enthusiasm increases to escape and save himself, but he remembers that man in his fifties who had previously tried to escape from the boat, but his body and lungs could not bear the expansion of the water, so he suffocated, and he tried to return to the boat again. He was the captain of the boat, but he ordered that it be thrown into the water again to die by drowning.
"Birm" overcomes his fears, he actually escapes from the ship, to find in front of him a vast forest, he hides inside, and he runs for miles until he reaches the urban area, and finds the nearest police station, he tells his officers what happened to him since he arrived in Thailand until he became in Malaysia, begging them to bring him back To his country, to Cambodia, where his wife and child are waiting for him, but another surprise awaits him.
(5)
A car arrives at the police station. An officer watches as he receives money from the driver. He realizes that his suffering is not over yet, and that he is being sold again, to enter the circle of forced labor in Malaysia this time.
The car takes him by force to one of the oil fields, he stays there for four whole months, it is true that he works involuntarily, and he does not get money or anything in return, but life here is a little better than working on a fishing boat.
Until one night something strange happens, his comrades who work with him forcibly decide to party and have a merry night, but the merry night is turned upside down by a brawl in which sharp weapons appear.
Although our friend was not a party to the battle, he gets his share with a piercing stab in his body, after which he is taken to the hospital, and there he thinks that the way to escape has appeared.
He finally manages to contact the authorities in Cambodia to save him, but the Malaysian authorities quickly arrest him, and bring him to court after he received treatment, where he is pressured by the police officers who sold him before, to force him to claim in court that he is an illegal immigrant, and is threatened with the consequences of things if Talk about the truth.
Because of that confession, he is sentenced to 3 months in prison, and they add another seven to spend in a correctional institution, to finally get his freedom, and to return to Cambodia after an absence of 4 full years, in which he did not achieve any of his dreams, and he was deprived of his wife and child, and he did not obtain A life similar to the normal life of any human being.
(6)
Sukon is surprised when her husband, Prem, arrives, as she has not yet imagined how things were with him all those years. The scene of his meeting with his daughter for the first time since her birth, he tells her what happened, can hardly be described.
Our friend decides not to be silent, not to consider what happened as a personal matter that has ended, taking it upon himself to warn the youth of the consequences of going down that misguided path, and being dragged behind false dreams in which the lives of youth are wasted.
He meets a journalist, tells him everything, people tell his story, his enthusiasm intensifies, he leads a campaign to educate youth.
Al-Latif is discovering a new talent in him, as he wanted to preserve his memory of all the minutes of his harsh experience, so he began to draw many of the events he lived, and record pictures of the tragedies that he witnessed with his own eyes and went through, taking advantage of his ability to embody the stories he went through.
His paintings roam Cambodia from east to west, everyone sees in his paintings a picture of a tragedy they did not go through, but they might be about to fall into if they ever decided to go that way.
In 2012, on the day of "Modern Slavery", the Cambodian authorities honored him with the Medal of Honor for his efforts in saving and educating young people, but he sees that what he is doing is nothing but to pay the survival tax.