The House Maids Story
by Dhamikkah Abesinghe

I saw an advertisement for a book on Amazon entitled “House Maid”.
Since I have been a house maid and many of my friends have been house maids too I naturally was interested. So, I went out and bought the book.
I was disappointed. The author knows nothing about house maids. He knows nothing about Sri Lanka either. He has probably never been to Sri Lanka. He says things in the book that are probably not true.
But he has discovered a market. More than one million Sri Lankan girls have gone to the Middle East to work as house maids. Some of us have had good experiences. Most of us have had bad experiences. A few of us (fortunately very few) have even been
killed over there.
I will tell you right off why that happens. In almost every case the house maid is killed by the madam of the house. She thinks the house maid is sleeping with her husband. So, she kills her. Our government always warns us not to sleep with the man of
the house but human nature being what it is, some of us do it.
The poor house maid is found with one hundred stab wounds all over her body. They might even find a bloody knife. So naturally it classified as a suicide. The poor girl was so distraught she stabbed herself a hundred times, they say. The dead body of the
poor girl is shipped back to Sri Lanka with the air fare for the body paid by the house maid agency that brought her here. Soon, everybody forgets about it. But this does not happen often. Only about once a month.
I have been a house maid and many of my friends have been house maids and nothing like this has happened to any of us, so do not worry about this. These stories are not published in the newspapers because they do not want to frighten the girls away from
their jobs.
I am from Sudumpolah, a Village in Kandy, Sri Lanka. When I was 17 I loved a boy. I wanted him to marry me. Every day I waited in my house hoping that he would come asking me to marry him. I waited and waited.
One day I found out that he had gone to Abu Dhabi to work as a construction worker. I was upset. He had not even told me he was leaving. My dreams of becoming his wife had been dashed.
Then I had a plan. I would go to the same country and find him and get him to marry me. I knew there were a lot of jobs for house maids there. So, I would get a job and go there.
All of my friends warned me not to do this. They said this was impossible. I would not find him. My boss would not let me marry him. There would be so many problems. They told me to forget about him. Soon he would have another girl there.
But there is an expression, “Love Will Find a Way.” I was sure that all these problems would be solved and we would soon live happily ever after.
I needed money to apply for the house maid job. I did not have any money. My mother had some money but she did not want me to go. She was afraid I would be kiled over there. I went around asking people to loan me money. Finally, I found a nice man who
loaned me enough money to apply for a passport. In downtown Kandy there are a lot of house maid agencies who find jobs for housemaids. With my new passport in hand, I applied for all of them and finally one of them found me a job.
My new employer lived on Hamdan Street in Abu Dhabi. I saw the pictures. It was a beautiful place. He even paid for my airplane ticket to go there.
I was very happy.
My airplane ticket was for me to go to Dubai. When I arrived in Dubai Airport, I had to wait in the Arrivals Lounge for my new employer to arrive. I waited in a big room with all the other Sri Lankan girls who had come to work there. There were a lot of
us. More than one hundred. They told us there was nothing we could do but wait for the employer to come.
I waited four or five hours. One-by-one the other girls were being picked up by their employers. The employer would come with the house maid visa in his hand. He would push the visa through the window. The officials would examine it and if everything was
OK the house maid would be released to his custody.
When my turn finally came, my name was called and I was released.
When I got out I found that the man who had come to pick me up was not my employer. He was a worker for the house maid agency. I had to go with him.
Naturally I was worried. Who was this man? Could be trusted? Naturally, he might do a bad thing with me.
He had come to pick up several house maids at the same time. He had a big van. He told all the girls to get into his van. He drove us to Abu Dhabi.
The first night I had to sleep in the house maid agency. I had to sleep in a big room with all the other girls. The man who had driven us there was not the boss. He was just a worker.
One by one our names were called. We were each called into the private office of the boss. They said this was for a job interview. I thought I already had a job. One-by-one each girl went in for a private job interview. When each interview was finished
they left by another door, so I never saw any of them again.
My turn came when my name was called. I went in and the boss locked the door behind me. He told me to sit down on the couch.
I sat down. He was very nice at first. He asked me routine questions, the same questions I had been asked when I first applied for the job in Sri Lanka.
I thought the interview was going well, until he sat down on the couch beside me. He put his arm around me and tried to lay me down on the couch. He grabbed my belt and tried to pull my pants off. I screamed.
I screamed that I was a virgin and I cannot do that. I have never done this. I told him to try another girl. They will do it, I said.
I fought so hard he could not overcome me. Then he gave up and stopped. He told me a van was waiting for me in the back. He also told me not to tell anybody about this or he would report me and have me fired from my job and sent back to Sri Lanka. He had
only been testing me, he said.
When I finally got there to my employers home, I was surprised to find that there were already two other girls working there as house maids. They were from Sri Lanka like me. One was nice; the other was angry. She thought I had come to take her job.

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