Part Two___Confessions of a former Housemaid in Dubai

By Jeanette Atim Niwabine

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Continuation from part one….

I was shocked to wake up in a stable. A stable is a home for donkeys. My employers the Arabic woman, instead of taking me to a hospital, had felt it wise that I get treatment from the same place where their donkeys sleep. I was confused when I woke up and saw 3 donkeys just adjacent to me.

Was I dreaming? Out of fear, I made an alarm only to see another African girl from Ghana standing on top of me holding a dish with water and a wet rag “they dragged you here all unconscious. I thought you were dead. They told me to give you water and some medicine”. “Your boss also told me to notify them if you do not wake up in 4hrs, you are lucky to wake up”.

Then she dropped the bullet by saying. “Had you not, I think they would have taken you to the mortuary. They usually do that. Recently, they took a girl who was still alive to the mortuary and said thinking she was dead. They paid some little money and that was the end. I think she died in that mortuary” my heart was beating like a drum.

The thought of me waking up from unconsciousness and finding myself surrounded by dead bodies in a mortuary even scared me more. Surely I was not in Dubai. This must have been a different place, I told myself.

Minutes later, the new lady boss came to me excited that I was awake. She was all jolly, talked nicely and called me by my sweet name Atim. She claimed that name was simple and precise. She even said she liked me!  “How do you now feel” She said in broken English mixed with Arabic. I replied am fine. She asked me to follow her to the car and we drove off. To my surprise, we drove for almost a kilometer before we could reach her home.

This shocked me more. How the hell did these women drag my lifeless body through this long distance? What were they planning?

When we arrived at her home, she ordered me out of the car, straight into her house and that’s when hell broke loose. 
A second ago she was a kind-hearted, jovial, cheerful fellow trying to share happiness with me.

A second later – I was staring into the face of a vicious and angry woman – her eyes turned red – her voice changed, the smiles gone. I had been brought back to reality from a utopian world! 
The devil had awoken! Death was coming….to be continued in part 4 of our series: Confession of a maid