Anna getting ready to leave the shelter.   ODESSA, UKRAINE Anna has come back from the inferno ñ you can tell from her eyes that she was there, and not very long ago. During the endless nights when men abused her body every inch of her would hurt, and her soul retreated ñ it could not take any more. It has been only a few months since she was able to escape from sexual slavery. But she is growing somewhat hopeful ñ there is a promise of happiness. Anna looks at the phone as if her ear alone were insufficient to sense the call that she expects. * * * * * Two calamities had marked her life. One affected society en masse ñ the end of the Soviet Union. As had happened to almost all of the families in the town of Kamenets-Podolsky, her parents were left jobless when the factory making electrical appliances was forced to shut down. Another blow was the death of her father. An engineer, due to the economic crisis he was forced to work as a mason and then as a construction worker ñ his heart did not survive. The combination of the end of both the welfare state and the support from her family led Anna into a free-fall into poverty. There was no future, and no drugs could change that. Then an acquaintance offered her a job as a maid in a hotel in a distant country. It appeared to be an escape from her dire circumstances. More than four million women and young girls are forced into prostitution in the world. Anna did not know that this kind of crime existed, nor that she fit the victimís profile: raised in a small town, young and jobless. The acquaintance paid her passage abroad and then she was taken on a wild trip through the desert in pickup trucks. The so-called hotel where she was to be employed as a maid turned out to be an apartment. She was locked up there ñ a guard would take her to a customer waiting at a hotel and bring her back. By day, two or three men abused her and by night there were five or six. ìI felt I was nobody, nothing,î she said. Some in Annaís situation spend years in captivity until they are discarded. She was luckier. After a few months, in a state of complete exhaustion, she was brought to meet a client who allowed her to sleep. She slept for days. He took her to the seaside. And then she could no longer go back. For a while she worked as a waitress in a restaurant where she fell in love with Reda, a local boy. But the police found her and she was deported. ìWhen I saw how the airport became smaller and then disappeared, I thought this is the end,î she said. It was winter as Annaís plane landed in the Ukraine. She was wearing summer clothes and shoes, and carried no luggage. She looked like a prisoner awaiting orders. Two social workers brought her into a shelter for women who had been similarly victimized. There she is given job training and emotional support to help rebuild her life. * * * * * Anna looks at the telephone. She is waiting for Reda to confirm his flight to Odessa. Unable to tolerate the long-distance separation, he has slowly put together the money for the ticket. He will only come to visit her this time, but later, when he has more money, he says that he will marry her. He wants to take her back home, she says, to the sea and to the happiness she so briefly knew.