An ambulance is weaving through the chaos of the cargo depot at Dhaka’s international airport, navigating a careful route through trolleys stacked high with boxes, men hauling rolls of cloth and trucks reversing into loading bays. It stops and, shortly afterwards, from between the towering piles of goods, a coffin is wheeled out. Then another. And another. On this one day, the bodies of 10 migrant workers are being returned from Saudi Arabia back home to their families in Bangladesh.
Among those present to meet the coffins is Khadija Begum, whose 35-year-old husband, Abdul Jalil Shaikh, had gone to work in Saudi Arabia at the beginning of 2023. He left with his family’s dreams on his shoulders and now is coming back in a wooden box, most of his 500,000 taka (£3,750) debt – the price he paid a recruitment agent for his job – returning with him.
