Ismat left home for Dubai as her day labourer husband Helal Uddin, who had been remaining sick almost all year round, could not manage to earn enough to meet everyday expenditures. She got married when she was 14 and has been facing hardship since then. Ismat, who had no money, had to collect 60,000 Taka to finance her trip to Dubai. Some of the money was donated by her neighbours and some of it came from personal loans. Ashraful, a manpower agent from Rampal village in Munshiganj, Bangladesh, managed a visa to Dubai for her as a domestic help. Only after 15 days of her initiation at work as a domestic help in an eight-member family in Dubai, the housewife and three of her daughters unleashed endless torture on Ismat, even over the simplest unintended mistakes. She was never allowed to meet anyone and was kept isolated from the outside world. The one-storey house where she used to work was in a huge compound with twelve rooms, five bathrooms, and two big balconies. As the lone domestic...
Anecdotes