PK Vijayan arrived in the UAE from Kerala almost four decades ago in search of a better life.
After his father died young, he dropped out of school to work and looked to the UAE as a land of opportunity.
But he was duped by a Mumbai recruitment agent and ended up in a job to which he was totally unsuited and untrained, on a sun-punished Ruwais construction site about 240 kilometres west of Abu Dhabi.
Mr Vijayan met Lebanese businessman, Izam Al Hussain, who rescued him, gave him a better job and treated him with respect.
Over the years, the men lost touch but Mr Vijayan's daughter – Nisha Ponthathil – has now made an emotional appeal on social media for help to find the man who was kind to her father.
“I have heard so many stories from my father about him since I was a child,” said Ms Ponthathil. “He worked with many people in the Arabian Gulf but I never heard him talk so much about one person.
“My father employs many people back home in Kerala and he is kind and friendly to them. That quality he learnt from this person.”
Mr Vijayan’s story mirrors that of countless others from South Asia who came to the UAE in search of a better life.
It is a tale of loss, emigration and huge personal sacrifice set against the backdrop of economic pain in India.
When his father died, it fell to him to support his mother and six siblings. By the age of 25, an agent in Mumbai promised to bring him to the UAE on a tailor’s visa.
"Agents were everywhere in Mumbai and it was obvious he fell into the trap," Ms Ponthathil said.
Mr Vijayan arrived to a country expanding rapidly on the back on the oil boom. But he was swiftly bundled off to the oil outpost of Ruwais.
In a strange land he was short on options and with a Rs30,000 (Dh1,552 now) loan to pay back, he had no choice but to work under the sun.
“It must have been unimaginable, harrowing even,” said Ms Ponthathil.
“He came from a land of greenery, plants and water to this barren desert. He worked overtime to pay off the loan. The food was also very difficult for him and he was not eating properly.”
But the young man's fortune soon changed.
Mr Vijayan paid off his loan and, through a friend, secured the job of salesman in a fruit and vegetable shop run by Mr Al Hussain in the Adnoc housing complex in Ruwais.
Mr Al Hussain increased his salary and treated him well. Their relationship was something beyond that of an employer and an employee. Not much is known of Mr Al Hussain but it is believed he lived in Abu Dhabi and his family ran an import business.
Mr Vijayan returned to India in 1984, after three years in the UAE. He did not return to the Emirates because of his daughter, despite Mr Al Hussain asking him to.
“I was six or seven,” said Ms Ponthathil. “My mother also refused to send him back because of the visa scam.”
Mr Vijayan completed more stints in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s and Bahrain in 2000 before eventually settling back in Wayanad, Kerala, with his wife. But he and Mr Al Hussain have not met since 1984.
It was on a visit to see Ms Ponthathil and another one of his three daughters in the UAE last year that brought back these warm memories.
“Once again he proved that he never gets tired of telling stories of Izam Al Hussain. Those pictures and the story I heard the umpteenth time have urged me to write this, hoping to find Izam Al Hussain in this viral era of social media,” she wrote in the appeal.
Mr Vijayan is now in his 60s and will return to Abu Dhabi in February. Ms Ponthathil said one frustrating issue is that she has no pictures of Mr Al Hussain, only one of his brother Imad but she is hopeful nonetheless.
It is thought Mr Al Hussain could be in his sixties now.
“So many people from Kerala have even called from Ruwais to say they got the message – some said they will definitely find him if he is still there.
“The response to my appeal has so far been great. Now I want the message to go out of UAE into the region and the world.”
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
How the bonus system works
The two riders are among several riders in the UAE to receive the top payment of £10,000 under the Thank You Fund of £16 million (Dh80m), which was announced in conjunction with Deliveroo's £8 billion (Dh40bn) stock market listing earlier this year.
The £10,000 (Dh50,000) payment is made to those riders who have completed the highest number of orders in each market.
There are also riders who will receive payments of £1,000 (Dh5,000) and £500 (Dh2,500).
All riders who have worked with Deliveroo for at least one year and completed 2,000 orders will receive £200 (Dh1,000), the company said when it announced the scheme.
What to watch out for:
Algae, waste coffee grounds and orange peels will be used in the pavilion's walls and gangways
The hulls of three ships will be used for the roof
The hulls will painted to make the largest Italian tricolour in the country’s history
Several pillars more than 20 metres high will support the structure
Roughly 15 tonnes of steel will be used
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
The past Palme d'Or winners
2018 Shoplifters, Hirokazu Kore-eda
2017 The Square, Ruben Ostlund
2016 I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach
2015 Dheepan, Jacques Audiard
2014 Winter Sleep (Kış Uykusu), Nuri Bilge Ceylan
2013 Blue is the Warmest Colour (La Vie d'Adèle: Chapitres 1 et 2), Abdellatif Kechiche, Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux
2012 Amour, Michael Haneke
2011 The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick
2010 Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Lung Bunmi Raluek Chat), Apichatpong Weerasethakul
2009 The White Ribbon (Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte), Michael Haneke
2008 The Class (Entre les murs), Laurent Cantet
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
