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Aurora Delacruz, a mother of three, widowed at a young age is forced to accept a job as a "domestic helper" in the jail like estate of a very wealthy, Saudi business man, Mishaal al Mureidi. There she is treated as an object and submitted to all sorts of humiliations, including rape attempts. She befriends Inas, the pregnant youngest wife of her polygamist employer. Solitude in the confined environment brings the two women closer in a short lived love story that ends up when Inas miscarries, loses the baby boy, and is pushed to suicide by the husband.

After Inas’ death, life takes a turn for the worse for the Phillipina. She succeeds to escape the dungeon type estate with the help of the Phillipino underground "mafia" and begins the life of a "run away", working as house maid in Western compounds. She meets a middle aged Canadian divorcee, Alan Collins, they fall in love and after several month of life together, he proposes her. A wedding is impossible in Saudi Arabia, so Aurora, with neither passport nor exit visa, has no other alternative than to surrender herself to the Saudi immigration authorities, expecting to be deported back to her country.

Her Saudi ex employer shows up at the most inopportune place. He had found traces of the adulterous relationship with his deceased wife and using his contacts, placed a reward on his ex maid. He accuses Aurora of drawing his wife in debauchery and being responsible of his son’s death. Without Sharia’s valid evidences he cannot get her the homosexual adulterous punishment, stoning. He nevertheless gets her convicted on trumped charges of thievery not without commandeering a gang rape party, his personal punishment. She is sent incommunicado to a far away isolated penitentiary where depression and despair, in addition to lack of hygiene and bad food destroy her vitality and she dies of untreated dysentery.

Alan, left without news for next to a year finally gets the bad news through a released Aurora’s fellow prisoner. Using his computer knowledge, he gets his revenge by destroying Mishaal al Mureidi’s reputation. Then keeping the promise he made to Aurora to take care of her children, he retires in Manila, and marries Aurora’s unwed kid sister giving the orphan children a surrogate family.

An extended version of the traditional disclaimer concerning the characters found in the novel.

Departure from Manila, Aurora who has never left her barrio is lost in an alien environment, the airport and almost misses her plane.

Arrival in Saudi Arabia. A description of how Asian female staff is mistreated from day one by the Saudi immigration. Meeting with her employer, a wealthy business man who will act as the devilish character all across the book. Mishaal al Mureidi.

Back in time. Through Aurora’s relationship with her fiancé Litto, a basket ball star and a promising cadet at the police academy, their wedding and honey moon in a low budget "quickie", her family, the book describes the life in the barrios shanty towns, the main supplier of Saudi Arabia unqualified staff.

Litto and Aurora have been happily married for four years, they have two children, and she is pregnant of their third. Litto is on his way up and future looks rosy. A stupid accident leaves her widowed and slowly all Aurora’s life falls apart pushing her to accept a job as a house maid in Saudi Arabia. More description of barrio’s life and traditions.

Introduction of Aurora to the al Mureidi estate’s life as a member of the staff. The undignified living conditions, the harsh regulations that reduces her to the status of quasi slave. The humiliating work imposed to her. Through staff gossips, Aurora learns about some of the skeletons in the al Mureidi’s closets plus, in this chapter and subsequent one, how some Saudi fortunes were built

Continuation of the life in the estate. More humiliations and degrading work, and all the tricks used to cut an already meager salary. The book describes the life in the estate including a major Saudi party that turns into a grotesque farce, a tentative of rape and the ordeal of Ethiopian sex objects Mishaal bought for his younger brother.

Aurora meets Inas, Mishaal’s third wife. She is Aurora’s age and two month pregnant. Inas likes Aurora and uses her position to get exclusive use of the Phillipina. In reality, she is a lonely deserted wife looking for a friend and a confident. She buys Aurora’s friendship and confides to her new friend her surrealist wedding night when she was rapped by her husband. Aurora’s conservative upbringing is confronted with Inas’ Middle Eastern sensuality.

Inas works hard to break Aurora’s inhibitions and gain her fondness. She obviously needs more than a friend, she want to get with her Phillipina friend the love and warmth she had been deprived from by her husband. Aurora’s inhibitions slowly fade away and after a few weeks break away completely, they become lovers. Nether women see that as a lesbian relationship. They are both blinded by their craving for affection and the need to fill the void of her loneliness.

The love story terminates tragically.

Inas has a miscarriage and learns that complications will prevent her to conceive again. While Inas is in hospital, Aurora loses her protection and has to go back to her old job. When Mishaal learns that his wife is bare, he repudiates her, sending her back to her family to the disgraced life of misery of a divorced bare woman. Left totally alone, Inas kills herself by slashing her wrists in her bathtub.

Aurora, having lost her privilege status, is told that because she cannot repay for Inas largesse, she will be deprived of her salary. Mishaal’s grudge against his deceased wife flows down on her best friend. Aurora is made to share the punishment.

With the help of the Phillipino mafia underground, Aurora succeed to escape the dungeon type estate and after a day of suspenseful events, ends up in the "run-away" world: the paperless workers who have escaped their employer for various reasons and cannot leave the country for lack of exit visa. She is told that the only way out is to save enough for plane ticket and bribes by working in Western compounds.

Aurora has been working as maid in a large Western compound for over a year. She has several customers and can see the day coming she will be able to go back to her family. One of her new found friends, Pia, the Phillipina wife of an Austrian engineer, Udo, plays match maker to get her to meet her ex employer, a middle age Canadian computer engineer, Allan Collins. It works.

Allan and Aurora are living happily together when Alan loses his job. He finds a new job, but in another town. Again using the Phillipino mafia underground, Aurora is smuggled across the multiple highway checkpoints designed to catch illegals like her. After a few weeks, Alan, faithful to a promise he made when they first met, proposes her.

A wedding being impossible in Saudi Arabia, Aurora is forced to surrender to the immigration expecting to be expelled. With Allan’s help, she has enough money to pay for plane ticket and bribes. Allan drops her at the Philippines embassy that will process her through deportation. This is the last time he will see her.

One year later, Allan is contacted by a Pakistani woman, Nour, who met Aurora in jail. She is the one to announce her death.

Aurora’s ordeal from the time she left Allan at the gate of the embassy until her demise, based on second hand story from Nour who was next to her until she passed away from dysentery and despair.

Using his computer skills, his Phillipino staff, and hackers he found on the Internet, Allan retrieves most of Mishaal’s social, business, and family contacts on Al Mureidi enterprise computers. On Aurora’s death anniversary, a Trojan horse virus installed on each computer spits hundred of emails and faxes to all the contacts revealing to the world Mishaal al Mureidi’s darker side in full and graphic details.

The already overweight Saudi’s shock is so hard he is victim of a stroke, leaving him crippled for the rest of his life.

Allan retires to the Philippines to take care of Aurora’s children. He marries his fiancée’s kid sister to give the orphaned children a surrogate family.