From engineer to street dweller in UAE

Abu Dhabi: A mechanical engineer who lead a comfortable life for a long time in the capital is now sleeping on the streets and eating from garbage bins over the past one month, Gulf News has learnt. He is reported to be mentally disturbed.

When Gulf News visited him Monday, he showed us his labour card (expired in 2011) which reads his personal details — Name: Ayad A Zaki, Profession: Mechanical Engineer, Nationality: Iraqi. Zaki, who is in is his 50s, spoke in fluent English about his past in Abu Dhabi.

Evicted for unpaid rent

Zaki claimed that his company had not been renewing his residence visa and paying his salary dues. He had been living in a company accommodation in an old building in Khalidiya, but was evicted by the landlord on a court order for not paying rent.

He has been seen sitting on the pavement near the building during the day and sleeping on streets at night for almost a month, according to residents in the area. He was often seen searching for food remnants in garbage bins, they added.

Showing his swollen legs, he said, “I am diabetic and my injured leg pains a lot.”

Although he speaks normally and remembers his past well, his justification for wearing dirty clothes, eating from garbage bins and sleeping on the streets reveals his unstable mental state.

Iraqi Army training

“I had worked in the Iraqi Army for three years in the desert as part of compulsory army training during Saddam Hussain’s rule. So, I don’t have any problem to withstand the weather on the street,” Zaki said.

He said he gets money from residents in the area to buy food from restaurants. He said his wife and a son are in Iraq and another son is studying in Malaysia. “They don’t want me to go back home because they said I would be abducted by criminals on arriving in Iraq. I will go home when the situation improves there.”

Soon after Gulf News met him, one of his former colleagues took him to a company accommodation in Mussaffah. “I have already resigned from the company but when I saw him on the street, I persuaded him to move to the company’s building in Mussaffah. I don’t know how long he will stay there,” the former colleague, who did not want to be named, said. He was the best mechanical engineer in the company but started showing signs of mental disturbance every summer about five years ago, he said.

Court order

A senior officer from his company said they have already secured a court order to cancel Zaki’s visa without a fine, but he was not up for it. “He always asks more time as he doesn’t want to go back to Iraq,” the officer said on condition of anonymity.

He said Zaki had refused to go to the staff accommodation facility in Mussaffah after being evicted from the flat in Khalidiya.

“We don’t know how to deal with this mentally disturbed man. We hospitalised him several times but the hospital discharges him after a few days or weeks, saying that he’s been cured,”  he said.

— With additional inputs from Nada Al Taher, Staff Reporter