Homeless 77-year-old woman sleeping in small shop dreams of going back home

Abu Dhabi: Najat Abbassi, 77, is trying to overcome her difficulty in walking due to medical problems by cracking jokes that leave everyone around her howling with laughter.

But that pleasant nature does not help the elderly widow to face the uncertainty over her dream of going back home to Tunisia to see her only son and his five-year-old daughter. She burst into tears as she showed the picture of her only granddaughter whom she has never met.

“This is my last wish... and my only prayer these days..."

She has been sleeping alone in her small shop for a few years. Her shoe repair shop, located for many years in Khalidiya area, became her makeshift residence after a series of tragic events in her life.

Without any income and no family or relatives in the UAE to support her, she is able to eat only when a good Samaritan offers her food.

She walks to a nearby mosque every morning as there is no toilet in her shop. She stops drinking any liquids at 6pm as she is afraid of going alone outside at night to use the toilet at the mosque.

“Sometimes I am unable to sleep ...afraid of being alone...”

Suffering from diabetes and high cholesterol, life is a nightmare for her without a toilet to use. She takes a shower at the mosque and, as there is no door, she yells out whenever she hears footsteps. During winter she finds it difficult to have a shower as the water is freezing.

As her health card expired a few months ago, medical treatment is also not an option.

Her UAE residence visa says her profession is ‘[business] partner’ and expires by the end of the month.

“I am a business partner without a penny,” she says with a smile.

She fears becoming an illegal and facing legal action for not renewing her visa and for dishonoured cheques for unpaid rent for her shop. “Dh27,000 is already due out of the Dh35,000 annual rent,” she says.

She owes someone in Tunisia Dh10,000 which she had borrowed during hard times. “It is already a legal problem and I may be arrested at the border if I go back home without repaying that debt.” Her son in Tunisia is unemployed and cannot help her clear that debt.

Life was all good when Abbassi reached the UAE in 1975 with her husband who ran three shoe repair shops in Abu Dhabi. But everything turned upside down when her husband passed away in 2002.

The husband’s first wife and ten children inherited the two shops, which they sold and went back to Tunisia after his death.

“I and my son were left alone; we don’t have anybody else here.”

She had to send her son back to Tunisia after he ran into some legal problems in Abu Dhabi, causing her a huge financial burden.

Due to unpaid rent, she was evicted from her flat in Madinat Zayed in 2008 and began living in the shop.

While the business continued with two workers, a fire gutted the shop in 2012, leaving her homeless and without any income for one year. She lived with some friends and repaired the shop with the help of some kind-hearted people but the business never thrived. “With piling debts, I had to retrench one worker. I caught the other one for theft and had to initiate legal proceedings.”

“I still dream of going back home to see my only son and her daughter,” she says with hope.

Fatima Yousuf, a Somalia Australian homemaker who drew Gulf News’ attention to the sad plight of Abbassi, says: “I admire her. Despite life’s hardships she still manages to laugh and crack jokes.”