Dream shattered in Saudi Arabia

With the dream of a better life, Fatema left for Saudi Arabia without telling anyone in her family.

Fatema, the sole breadwinner of her family and a ready-made garment factory worker in Gazipur, thought her mother would not let her leave if she told her about her plans to go abroad.

"I thought I would be able to earn Tk 20,000 a month and escape poverty, as the brokers had promised, and left the country on July 17,” she said. 

Only two hours after reaching Saudi Arabia, she found herself in trouble. "My employer, an Arab man, came to my room in the dead of the night and tried to rape me."

She somehow managed to run into the bathroom and lock the door from the inside and stayed there until morning.

"It was the same the next night and I again locked myself in the bathroom until the break of day," Fatema, who prefers not to tell her real name, told The Daily Star yesterday at the office of Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) in the capital.

She used to live with her mother, grandmother and little sister in Gazipur. "I thought I would be able to support them better when I reached Saudi."

On the second day at her employer's house in Saudi Arabia, she stopped doing the household work and asked the Arab man to send her back home.

The man then sent her to the office of the overseas employment agency linked to the brokers who sent her to Saudi Arabia.

Out of the frying pan, she fell into the fire.

A staff of the office took her to another Arab household where she was starved and locked in a room for several days at times.

Finally, her presence of mind helped her escape what she termed "a nightmare": She tricked a woman of the house into giving her the WiFi password.

She contacted one of her cousins in Jessore via instant messenger of her phone. The cousin then informed local human rights activist Abdur Rahman, who conveyed the matter to ASK.

As ASK contacted authorities to arrange her return, the Arab family started torturing her. After a few days, she was moved to another house where she met two other Bangladeshi women who were also subjected to the same treatment. One of them had been there for nine months without pay and had no hope of coming back to the country.

The three Bangladeshi women were taken to another house where they met six women from Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

“They used to beat up us Bangladeshis at regular intervals. As I screamed for help one day, they tied me up and kept hitting me. I requested a Sri Lankan woman to take a picture of me being tied up and send it to Abdur Rahman,” she said.

A few days later, they were taken to another house where the inhuman treatment continued.

ASK eventually wrote to Bangladesh Embassy in Saudi Arabia and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for rescuing her and the two other Bangladeshi women.

As the authorities arranged their return, the overseas employment agency forced Fatema to testify in written that she was well in Saudi Arabia, her employer was nice and that she had no objection against anyone, said the grieving woman.

Fatema and another woman returned home Saturday night, but the fate of the other victim is not known.

Sheepa Hafiza, executive director of ASK, said it was possible to rescue Fatema for her courage and intelligence.