It was not an easy decision for Monowara (not her real name) to leave her home in the Dohar upazila of Dhaka district and fly 4,000km to Saudi Arabia. She was leaving behind a seven-year-old son who needed surgery to correct a speech impairment, and a 17-year-old daughter who was soon to be married off. The costs for both could not be met with the income of her husband, Abdul Baten, a betel leaf vendor. A radical solution was needed. Eight months ago, Monowara came to know about two brokers – Hashem and Kashem – and visited them at an office in the Hemayetpur area of Savar upazila. The two brothers arranged an overseas job for her and gave assurances that she would not need the help of any recruiting agency. The broker brothers said the Saudi Arabia venture would not cost her a single penny, but she ended up giving them Tk12,000 in several installments before her departure. All this was despite the forewarnings of her uncle Shahid, who was already resident in Saudi Arabia and advised her against taking the job, saying it might lead to “very bad consequences”. But for Monowara, the hardship at home was too much to endure. On February 16, she landed at King Fahad International Airport in Dammam. A man was waiting there to receive her and took her directly to a house in the city, where she was to start work as a maid for a family of 12. Monowara thought she was doing a housemaid’s job on monthly payment. It was only when she demanded her salary after six weeks that the matriarch of the family, Nawal, told her that they had actually bought her. Facing her protests, the employer paid Monowara 1,000 Riyal (Tk21,700) and took her to an office in Dammam. She was not acquainted to anyone in that office, but they arranged another job for her as a housemaid in Hafar-al-Batin city for a family of seven. The new situation was no improvement on the last: Monowara’s new employers used to call her names and began torturing her physically only one week into the placement. After Monowara refused to continue working there, her employers left her at the same office in Dammam, but without any payment. The office sent her to another house, but she returned again after 20 days this time, complaining of inhuman torture at the hands of her employees. She was given only one meal in a day at that house. Monowara cannot recall the name of the office or any of the officials except that of Adi, a man of Saudi origin. She could not contact anyone else as she had already lost her mobile phone. Adi took Monowara to the house of one of his relatives but she refused to stay there, and requested Adi to arrange for her return to Bangladesh. He refused and kept her imprisoned for 10-15 days, often threatening her with a knife. She made two attempts to escape from that house, but ended up returning both times. After her first escape, Monowara went to the nearby police station but Adi arrived and took her to that house again, promising to arrange for her return to Bangladesh. After facing a similar treatment as before, Monowara fled for the second time. She spent 15 days in police custody only to be handed over to Adi again. Adi took her to a distant location and sold her to another man of Saudi origin. Her new captor detained her in a house in a desert area for 10-15 days before sending her to a family house. Monowara said she could not do any work at that house: “There was acute pain in my limbs and all throughout the body. I could not even hold still to lift a drinking glass from the table.” After two days, she managed to run away again and went to a local police station. The law enforcers took her fingerprint and sent her to a detention centre, where Monowara found other women who had experienced similar hardships and abuse. Fortunately, the Dhaka-based organisation Ain o Salish Kendro (ASK) was able to trace Monowara to the detention centre with the assistance of officials from the Bangladesh mission in Saudi Arabia. At last, Monowara was booked onto a flight home with the help of the government officials, landing in Dhaka last Friday afternoon. Pointing to Monowara’s sad tale, ASK Executive Director Sheepa Hafiza said three in every four (76%) female migrant workers fall prey to unregistered brokers, even though there is a government-to-government system in effect for job offers in Saudi Arabia. “Neither the government nor the recruiting agencies acknowledge the existence of the brokers,” she said. “Ain o Salish Kendra has long been demanding that the government changes its attitude of denying the existence of brokers and give them formal recognition so that the ones involved in fraud can be detected.”