By Anthony Shadid
The
Migrant workers creating splendor are abandoned with no pay.
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Sharjah, United Arab Emirates - A sweltering fog still shrouded the East Coast & Hamriah Co. labor camp when, dressed in the equivalent of their Sunday best, the migrant workers set out after dawn Tuesday. They didn't shower beforehand. Water was cut last year to their shantytown, now abandoned by their employer. They didn't eat breakfast. They have no electricity to cook.
They simply bundled into plastic bags their yellowing court papers, an 18-month chronicle of their attempt to get paid by a now bankrupt company, and began their trek on foot - six, maybe seven miles - to the Sharjah Federal Court. They walked out a bent and rusted gate, past a crumbling cinder-block wall and through a sprawling pool of sewage, which splashed over their sandaled feet.
"Either they pay us or send our corpses home," said Imtiaz Ahmed Siddiq, one of the South Asian laborers, who has made the trek to the court more than 50 times since last year. "If they pay us, we'll go home alive. If they don't pay us, we'll go home dead."
For a decade now, the United Arab Emirates and, in particular, its powerhouse of a city-state, Dubai, have represented a rare success story in a troubled Arab world, a story of breakneck, even reckless development, investment and optimism. Nothing is too grand in the Emirates' Oz-like vision - an underwater hotel, an indoor ski slope and man-made islands shaped like the palms that grace
Although unions are banned, workers have launched strikes over the past year to protest living conditions, salaries of between $4 and $7 a day and hazardous workplaces, where human rights groups say deaths are sometimes covered up. In March, workers rioted at the site of Burj Dubai - envisioned as the world's tallest skyscraper - wrecking cars, computers and construction equipment. Last weekend, 1,000 workers rampaged in their camp.
Siddiq and the workers of the East Coast & Hamriah Co. live in conditions so bleak as to test their lingering faith. Their story is a Kafkaesque tale of those left behind, as they pursue salaries of hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars by trekking every few days to a court that has become their bane and hope.
"They keep us coming and going," Siddiq said, as the fog started to give way to the desert sun.
Their camp is in an industrial area on the edge of Sharjah, one of seven emirates that make up the UAE. With no money for taxis, the men walked down the dirt road, past piles of gravel and heavy machinery. They turned left. There were murmurs, but usually they just stayed silent, as if idle talk would attract too much attention.
The landscape before them opened like a quilt: Dirt roads soon gave way to paved streets, cinder block and corrugated tin to concrete, battered
They passed shops with state-of-the-art bathroom fixtures and window displays of granite counters and marble columns. They passed the Mega Mall, the
"It would be a nice life here, if you were paid," said Banwari Lal Bairawa, a 30-year-old Indian.
Siddiq nodded and pulled out a telegram from his brother, Mumtaz. It was dated
"I wonder why I ever came here," Siddiq said.
Over the year, Siddiq and Bairawa have emerged as leaders of sorts of the 30 or so men who live in the camp, a warren of collapsing prefabricated dwellings set over dirt packed as hard as concrete. Water bottles, white yogurt containers, discarded shoes, newspapers and other trash are piled along one of the shanties. Across other paths, pools of sewage collect, runoff from a latrine flooded long ago. The water dispenser is rusted; water was cut two months ago after the company stopped paying bills. Kitchens - each little more than a dank room with a butane tank hooked to a burner - are abandoned. With electricity cut, the rooms are too dark to use.
The doors in the compound all stay open, letting in a breeze to compensate for idle fans. That, in turn, lets in mosquitoes and the stench. Sometimes seven to a room, the beds are a mix of thin mattresses, tattered foam or, in a few cases, a piece of plywood. On one sits a newspaper advertisement: "Emirates Hills Villas for
"Everything was a dream," Siddiq said. "We thought we would build our lives and instead they've been destroyed."
Siddiq's story is much like the others': Raised on Indian films and stories told by returning emigrants with cellphones, cameras and fancy clothes, he paid an agent $1,000 nine years ago to help him secure a job in the Emirates. Once here, he was paid about $200 a month. He was almost never paid on time and when he was, money was deducted for housing, medical insurance, visas and so on. Fed up, he quit on Dec. 31, 2004, and demanded what he was owed. The following year, the company went bankrupt: The Lebanese owner went to Canada, and the other owner, from the Emirates, was absolved of liability, according to Hussein Yusuf, the company's attorney.
Since then, Siddiq has received no money and like the others, has run up a debt of hundreds of dollars at a nearby store for rice, flour, oil and vegetables. He has not seen his two daughters and son since 2002 and no longer sends money home. As with most of the men, Siddiq's visa has expired, as has his Indian passport.
The other men - most from India, two from Bangladesh and one from Pakistan - huddled around him, and he pulled out a torn piece of paper, bound with masking tape and folded four times. It bore the date 13 April 2005 and was an order from the Sharjah court for the company to pay him 17,630 dirhams, almost $4,800, in addition to a ticket to his home in Bihar, India. Most of the men have similar court orders, pending appeals; the largest sum is for Chanan Rao, a 26-year veteran, who is owed nearly $6,000.
"We have no worth in this country," Siddiq said.
The words drew nods from the others, their faces gaunt.
"No one should come here," said Bairawa, who left India more than three years ago.
"Once I go home, I'll burn my passport and work as a farmer," shouted Thakur Bhai Jiva Bhai, a 38-year-old from the Indian state of Gujarat who wore a jersey that read, "Dubai OK." "If it's for a few rupees a day, that will be enough for me."
Rao, at 62 the oldest, watched from a distance. He was dignified, his pride keeping him aloof from the conversation. He has seen his six children six times in 26 years. After such sacrifices, he can't come home empty-handed.
"My children," he said, "expect something from me."
The trek to the court Tuesday took two hours, and there was a logic behind their numbers.
"If there's one or two, they won't listen to us," Siddiq said. "When there's more, they'll pay attention."
They reached a waterway that bisects Sharjah and clambered into a ferry that charged them each a 14-cent fare. Once on the other side, they walked up a red-brick sidewalk, then a staircase of red granite. They stamped their feet, covered in dust and sand, at the entrance to the domed courthouse. A look of ease graced their faces as they stood in the air-conditioned lobby.
Siddiq and Bairawa led the team to the desk, behind a colonnade of arches and arabesque.
"Not everybody here," demanded the receptionist, Ali al-Mulla. "We only need one. Everybody else out."
Siddiq spoke, grasping his court order and explaining their plight: no electricity, no water. They just wanted their salaries.
"There's no point in coming all the time," Mulla said in broken Hindi. "Our work is done. We issued the ruling."
They pleaded, and he agreed to let one of them see the judge when he arrived.
In another room stood Yusuf, the company's attorney. He didn't question the salaries they were owed, but the company, he explained, was bankrupt. Its assets - construction equipment, cars, an office and furniture - wouldn't cover what they wanted. Besides, he said, the company also owed far more money to banks, equipment contractors and dealers of building materials.
"They really are honest people," he said of the company's owners. "Their problems just became bigger than them."
For two hours, the workers sat in black leather chairs, waiting. Some used the bathroom. Others napped. Then the judge, Abdel-Rahman bin Talia, arrived, and Bairawa and Louhaya Ram, another worker, went into his office, No. 14.
"Why are you coming every day?" he bellowed as they entered.
The same list followed: electricity, water and, of course, their salaries.
"You want to take your money? Bring someone who will buy all the company's stuff," the judge said.
Bin Talia then cooled down and tried to reassure them.
"We'll see," he said. "Wait a week or two, and we'll see if something can be done."
Bairawa came out, and the men huddled around him at the entrance. He explained what had been said, and they frowned.
"It's all bad," Siddiq said, shaking his head. He clenched his jaw. "The day they tell us they're not giving us our money, we'll take our lives. Right there," he said, pointing to the courthouse's staircase. "The same day."
Bairawa, calmer, shrugged his shoulders. "We'll keep coming," he said.
At 11 a.m., the men walked down the staircase and out into the pallid sunlight. They navigated the traffic, horns blaring as the group crossed. And they clambered back into the idling boat, paying their 14 cents for the trek back.
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