When Shahadat set out for Saudi Arabia from his village in Bangladesh, he was driven by a single purpose: to earn money for his impoverished family. “If he sent money home, his family would eat. If he didn’t, they wouldn’t,” says a relative.
For years he just about scraped by, sending a little money home each month and trying to pay down the huge debt he took on to afford the illegal fees a recruitment agent had charged him to get to Saudi Arabia.