「Since the police could not help me, my target was to somehow reach the Bangladesh Embassy in Beijing, which is around 200 km from my place,」 she says.
「I had an old Symphony phone from Bangladesh. It had IMO (A video call and chat app). I needed to get access to the Internet for which I needed to get out. So, the first thing I did was to pamper my husband and get him to give me a duplicate copy of the house key. It took me a month,」 says Manisha.
One afternoon, after her husband got drunk and passed out, she took her phone and slipped out. She went to numerous shops and begged them for wifi passwords. Eventually, she found a a parlour, run by a couple, who agreed to give it to her.
「The password was easy to remember. It was 1 to 9. The moment I got online, hundreds of messages flooded my IMO. I can't explain how I felt at that moment. I felt relief,」 she says.
Manisha asked one of her friends in Bangladesh to send the address of the Bangladesh Embassy in Beijing. She noted it down.
The next hurdle was to find out someone who could read English and tell her how to get to Beijing. That task was a lot harder than it seemed with English-speaking residents a rarity in her area.
After an hour, Manisha got desperate, and entered a 'big' bank, hoping to find a senior officer who would know English.
「There was only one lady who knew English. I told her about how I was assaulted by my husband. She felt bad for me and told me about the trains and buses that could take me to Beijing,」 says Manisha. However, Manisha would need her passport to travel by either train or bus. Since she didn't have it, the lady in the bank advised her to take a cab.
Manisha returned to the bank the next morning with all her jewellery from Bangladesh. With the help of her new friend she managed to sell the gold for RMB 1,500 (around Tk 18,652).
「The lady at the bank taught me how to talk to a taxi driver in Chinese. I wrote it all down in my notebook.」
Manisha went back home, hid the money and was all set to leave the next afternoon. Unfortunately for her, her husband decided not to go to work that day. He wasn't sleeping either. Manisha had to wait till 6:00 am the next day, when her husband finally fell asleep, before making her move.
「As soon as he slept, I got out of the house and ran for 15 to 20 minutes. I reached the main road and started looking for taxis with female drivers because I had heard that taxis in China are not that safe.」
「It took me more than one hour to find a taxi. China is a place where there are CCTV cameras everywhere. If my husband had woken up, he could have found me in just 10 minutes,」 says Manisha.
The taxi agreed to take her to Beijing for RMB 1000. Manisha began to breathe easy, the moment her taxi began to move. All her problems, she thought, would be solved now.
However, there was one more hurdle remaining. She had to pass through a check post before entering Beijing where officials would require her passport.
「I was shivering. When they asked me for my passport I began looking inside my bag pretending as though it was in there.」
「I took my time. By then a long line had formed behind our car on the highway. I kept telling the officer that the passport was in there somewhere. I was scared that I would be sent back to my husband and I began to pray to God,」 recalls Manisha.
「I don't know what happened. But at that moment, the police officer, looking at the traffic behind us, asked us to leave and move ahead. I was so relieved that I actually started crying in the car,」 she says. Manisha eventually reached the Bangladeshi embassy in Beijing and stayed there for the rest of her time in China.