Five bottles of whiskey

We found out through the ARA, devastated. of the price they paid The buyers of a fourteen-year-old girl. They wanted her and got her by "marrying" her to their twenty-year-old son. The girl's parents thought it was a good deal and handed her over, perhaps satisfied with the transaction. The buyers took her and put her to work begging. They paid five thousand euros and five bottles of whiskey.

The five thousand euros is the price, and it's a price that tells us the girl must have been a good business. They marry her off to their twenty-year-old son and put her to work soliciting in the streets. Soliciting, then, especially if you're a child, must bring in quite a bit of money. On the other hand, let's not kid ourselves, entrepreneurs aren't satisfied with handouts. Surely those loving parents, who bought a girl for their son, must have thought that, when she was a little older, they could also put her to work as a prostitute. These scoundrels have very short lives; they spoil quickly.

Of this sordid story, however, what stirs our insides as if they were being hollowed out with a chisel isn't even this fictional wedding. Women have always served as spoils of war. It's the whiskey that's unbearable. They'd stash the five thousand euros for the daughter in their pockets or under a tile. But what about the whiskey? Did they drink it? Did they mix it with cola? Did they add some ice cubes to make it more palatable? And a slice of lemon? Did they resell it, perhaps? The whiskey is the joke, the festive part of the deal, the part that makes the girl's parents subhuman. Five bottles of whiskey. How nice. Let the party continue.