UAE Helping Hands: Woman who fled violent husband is now left homeless

After almost a decade of physical and mental abuse, Anika Akter was finally granted a divorce from her Emirati husband. What she didn’t expect is that she would soon be homeless, along with her three children.

Bangladeshi Anika Akter filed for divorce from her Emirati husband and now stays at a hotel apartment with their children. Jeffrey E Biteng / The National

ABU DHABI // After almost a decade of physical and mental abuse, Anika Akter was finally granted a divorce from her Emirati husband. What she did not expect is that she would become homeless, along with her three children.

Thirty-five-year-old Anika from Bangladesh met her Emirati ex-husband in 2006.

“He was my knight in shining armour,” she says.

Anika had divorced once before and had a daughter with her first husband. “I came to the UAE and thought all my problems would be solved. I found a job and was sending money back home.”

She left her daughter with her parents. When she met her Emirati husband soon after, she believed that her life could not get any better.

“The first shock was immediately after we got married. He took me to his house and I found another woman there.” The woman she saw was one of his two other wives.

“When I first knew him, he said he was divorced. I never knew he had two wives already.”

Soon after, Anika also discovered that her husband was an alcoholic and had affairs with other women.

“That’s when he beats me. When he drinks. He will beat me with anything and everything.”

Anika has filed several police reports but says she never followed through with the charges.

“He always apologises and promises me that he will never do it again and he would stop all his affairs.”

When Anika fled to a women’s shelter, her ex-husband promised that he would give her a UAE passport. He never did.

This year, after nine years of marriage and two children, Anika says she had enough and insisted on a divorce. She was granted her divorce a month ago. However, her ex-husband is unemployed and homeless and cannot provide for her children.

“I took the kids to a hotel and have been here for all this time.”

She cannot afford to pay the hotel bills or to buy necessities for her three children Abdullah, 8, Suhail, 5, and Koritun, 13.

“The hotel has started threatening to throw us in the streets. They want their money.”

The younger boys, who are Emirati, go to school but her daughter, Koritun, who came from Bangladesh a few years ago, stays at the hotel. “The kids go to school because they are Emirati and its free but I can’t afford to send Koritun. I wish I could send her to school. She teaches her younger brothers and was a top student in Bangladesh.”

Anika had to bring her to the UAE because her parents could not take care of her anymore.

“I miss school but I’m happy I’m next to Mama. I don’t want to leave her again,” Koritun says.

Hisham Al Zahrani, manager of Zakat and Social Services at Dar Al Ber, said: “After her divorce and years of abuse, Ms Akter thought she would finally find peace. Sadly, her anguish and suffering has not stopped. We hope you can help her stand on her own two feet and support herself and her three children.”