Return from hell

First the passengers get off. Hundreds of Nepalis returning home, dragging trolleys and big, heavy bags. Small groups of Western tourists who have arrived in Kathmandu with backpacks and trekking boots, stand out among them. Only at the end are large, anonymous wooden boxes seen appearing, which are unloaded slowly from the 747s of Qatar Airways or Air India and accompanied on trolleys to the exit. On average two coffins arrive at Tribhuvan International Airport every day. They are bringing back the bodies of migrants, who went to work as bricklayers, workmen or drivers, but in particular as domestic servants, in the rich countries of the Middle East, the Persian Gulf or East Asia. The families wait outside, almost always in silence. They have already wept for a long time for the children, wives, husbands, sisters or brothers, whose bodies remained for months in those countries’ mortuaries, before the local authorities gave permission to bring them back home. The coffins are unloaded one by one, as usually happens with coffins from military aircraft. In this case, however, there are no flags covering the bare boxes, no parades and no state funerals. There are no politicians or television cameras. These deaths no longer make the news and now there is only a daily ritual that recurs in general indifference. In fact every family quickly loads the box onto the luggage rack of a small Toyota van, almost as though they are embarrassed by the tragic conclusion of a journey that was started full of hope, and hurry away from the airport, disappearing into the Kathmandu valley.

Nepali migrants die for different reasons, even though the stories often coincide. The medical report accompanying the body of Bimala BK in April 2011 stated that she had committed suicide five months earlier. Her family knew she had been mistreated but never thought she would return in a coffin. Bimala was 31 years old and had left the district of Udayapur in Eastern Nepal in September 2009 for Kuwait, where she had found work as a home help. Waiting for her at Tribhuvan Airport was not her husband, who had already gone to Malaysia, where he had remarried, but her son Roshan, along with her three young sisters aged 7, 12 and 14. Mani Kumar Subba, who was also a domestic servant, died in Saudi Arabia in 2009.