The names of employees in this article have been changed for their protection.
Nobody knows Kawa Avenue in central Duhok, Iraq, like Abhik. He starts sweeping it before dawn, from east to west, so the sun will warm his back as it rises. Abhik says that he can calculate the time of day based on which part of the street he’s sweeping: 6 am at the section between Hamid´s falafel restaurant and Hassan´s hair salon; when he reaches the northern roundabout intersection, it’s probably 7:30 am.
For the past three years, Abhik has watched his hunched shadow lengthen and shorten on the pavement throughout the day as the sun rises and sets. Taking a short break to sip a small cup of sweet tea in the shade of an empty building, Abhik explains how he ended up in Iraqi Kurdistan.
‘In Dhaka I paid $3000 to an agency that promised me a job at Pepsi in Dubai: $500 per month for three years, those were the conditions’, he says. ‘But when we arrived at Dubai´s airport we were told that there was no work, so the company sent us to Erbil (the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan)’. The 22-year-old says he now earns just $150 a month.
It’s a common story among the hundreds of Bengalis that end up in Erbil, chasing the ‘Dubai Dream’, but ending up in an Iraqi compound that they’re barely allowed to leave.
At 12:30 pm, the street next to the dusty bus station becomes packed with men dressed in fluorescent orange work vests. But Artosh Company’s street cleaners are not bound for Erbil or Suleymaniyah. They're waiting for their company’s bus to take them back for lunch at the compound on the outskirts of Duhok, opposite the amusement park this city is famous for. This part of Iraq's Kurdish Autonomous Region is just an hour’s drive from the Turkish border, but the menu served up to the workers is 100 percent Bengali: beef or chicken depending on the day, but always cooked with curry and accompanied by huge quantities of white rice.
‘The food here is very good,’ says Charbak, 24. The job isn’t what he expected, he says, but at least he doesn’t go hungry the way he used to do in his native town of Bogra, in the north of Bangladesh.
Sitting next to him, Kashi is less upbeat. ‘My parents sold their house to pay the $3000 fee. At $500 per month we would have bought it back in less than a year, but that’s impossible with my current salary’, he complains. He says he manages to put together about $100 home each month to send home. ‘The rest I spend on the phone to chat with my wife and my two children.’
Mainak has just been talking with his wife on the phone. He has been in Duhok for a month, but still hasn’t dared tell her that he’s not a clerk in an office in Dubai but a street cleaner in Iraq.
'How can I tell her? We just got married,’ Mainak says. ‘We had planned that we’d be apart for three years but on my return we could set up our own business and live comfortably’. Like many of his fellow workers, he has spent all of his family’s savings to get here.
After lunch, the ‘orange men’ are back in trucks. The streets of Duhok are dirty again, so Rahul resumes work at the bazaar. His vest is a marked contrast with the ochre-coloured tide of people that floods the galleries of Duhok´s main commercial hub every day. But even without his work clothes, his dark skin and his sub-continent features would hardly go unnoticed among the local population. That said, he hasn’t had much chance to mingle with Iraqis.
‘Our passports are kept by the company during our three-years stay so we can’t leave Duhok because we can’t cross the checkpoint without our papers’, says Rahul amid the clatter of metal shop shutters signalling the close of business in the bazaar.
‘Not even with our passports can we cross the checkpoint’, chimes in Bardhan, one of Rahul´s fellow bazaar sweepers who says they get a tourist visa stamped on their passports, not a work one. If their documents fell into the hands of a police officer they’d be arrested for being illegal immigrants.
Meeting the Boss
Sitting in his office in the building adjacent to the dining room of the worker camp, Faris Artosh, the owner of Artosh Company, sees himself as a true ‘Kurdish patriot.’
‘I secured the cleaning contract in 2007 because it was painful to me to see my city streets in such a state of dereliction,’ Artosh says. ‘Today everyone congratulates me for my work. I’d do anything for Kurdistan,’ he says sitting beside a large Kurdish flag. On his neat desk lies an ashtray with the logo of ZERI OIL, a network of petrol stations that Artosh also owns. ‘Correct management of our energy wealth and the development of tourism in the region are two of my biggest concerns’, he says.
Artosh is dismissive of the notion that his workers are being mistreated. Regarding the complaints of the sweepers over pay and conditions, he’s quick to blame the contracting companies in Bangladesh for any irregularities. He produces a photocopy of a contract as ‘proof’ of transparency. ‘My workers enjoy free accommodation and boarding. Every six months an inspector comes from Bangladesh and he always says that my workers are better off here than back home’, he says, adding that every bedroom in the workers´ dormitory has an air-conditioner.
Artosh admits that he keeps his employees’ passports. ‘If I didn’t, many of them would try to cross the Turkish border and flee to Europe afterwards’, he explains. But, although he insists that his staff have work visas, he is unable to prove this, stating that the safe where the passports are kept can only be opened by his accountant.
Tiny Universes
Dozens of muddy rubber boots are lined up along the aisle that leads to the dormitories of Artosh Company’s workers. For many workers, the evening is the opportunity to finally enjoy a little free time. The company’s 150 employees are housed in groups of six per room in dormitories with the small patch of carpet between the three double bunk beds providing the only communal space in which they can sit together and enjoy their great passion on TV–cricket.
But most days, the workers just relax on their bunk beds, with just a draped towel or sheet offering any privacy. The walls beside the bunk beds offer a window into the lives they have left behind: photos of relatives dressed in bright colours and surrounded by lush vegetation; portraits of a lucky uncle, cousin or friend during the Hajj, the obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca; a summer cottage in the Chittagong mountains.
At 56, Naresh is the oldest worker here. Sitting on the edge of a carefully made bed, Naresh says he’ll be here for another three years. ‘Obviously, the job is far from being what I was promised back home,’ says the veteran sweeper as he prepares for bed in the cramped quarters. ‘But I think it’s still better than collecting aluminium tins in the streets of Dhaka.’