Ban Mai has clearly said she wants to go home. She is owed about a decade in unpaid salary. If she considers herself one of the Abdallah family and wishes to return to them after visiting Nepal, that is her choice. But only when she is back in Nepal, amongst her own people, will Ban Mai’s story be fully known.

UPDATE: Ban Mai Is Home — But Justice Remains Out of Reach

Ban Mai is home in Nepal, among her own people. Her story, however, is far from over. What happened to her is now documented in painful detail. 

For years, while Ban Mai was still in Lebanon, This Is Lebanon worked on her case. We engaged a lawyer to negotiate with Nawaf, arranged for a foreign journalist to visit Ban Mai’s family in Nepal and report on her story, kept the consulate informed, liaised with Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and maintained contact with Ban Mai herself.

After our involvement began, Ban Mai was given a telephone. On rare occasions, she was permitted to leave the house. But these limited concessions did not change the fundamental reality: she remained under Nawaf’s control.

During one of those rare outings, Ban Mai told other Nepali women that she was worried about how Nawaf would make his coffee while she was away.

That detail illustrates the extraordinary degree of control she appeared to have internalised. Under those circumstances, pursuing a General Security investigation was unlikely to produce a meaningful result. Ban Mai did not see herself as a victim. She trusted her employers completely. She believed they would ultimately do the right thing, pay the salary she was owed and send her home. Had she been questioned by investigators at the time, she would almost certainly have defended them.

That trust was misplaced.

The day Ban Mai was abandoned

On 11 April 2025, Ban Mai believed she was finally being sent home to Nepal. She packed her belongings and went to the supermarket next door to buy a few last-minute items.

When she returned, her bag was outside. The door was locked.

A stranger found her crying and in shock on the pavement and took her to KAFA, where she was given shelter.

This Is Lebanon subsequently established that Nawaf and Asia had boarded a flight to South Africa, apparently to join their daughter, Layal, who has lived there for more than a decade.

On 29 April 2025, KAFA purchased Ban Mai a ticket home. This Is Lebanon arranged for her brother to meet her at the airport and provided accommodation for her in Kathmandu, where she remained for approximately a year.

Even after arriving in Nepal, Ban Mai continued to believe that ‘Baba’ and ‘Mama’ or their children – Firas, Achraf and Layal – would pay her. For a time, Achraf remained in contact, telling her to be patient and promising that money would be sent. No money came. Eventually, both he and Firas stopped answering her calls.

The $400,000 story

It was only when Ban Mai contacted Firas from a Canadian telephone number that he answered.

What followed was a remarkable tale.

Firas claimed that his father had withdrawn approximately $400,000 from the banks, but that nobody knew what had happened to the money because his father had lost his memory and had become, in Firas’s words, “like a child.”

According to Firas, he and his brother had searched the house from top to bottom for the missing money and the ownership documents for their father’s properties, which they intended to sell. They had found neither. He said police were investigating whether someone had taken advantage of his father.

Ban Mai’s concern was considerably simpler.

“I have nothing, Firas. Nothing,” she told him, explaining that she needed the salary she had earned.

Firas expressed sympathy. “I know the situation is shit there,” he told her. He promised to call her within two days and said they would “get something” for her.

He never called and subsequently declined further calls.

The family’s response

Ban Mai then asked the negotiator to contact Zahraa El Eit, the niece of Nawaf and Asia.

Initially, Zahraa appeared sympathetic. She was, after all, the person who had given Ban Mai the $200 she left Lebanon with.

Zahraa said Nawaf was now senile, but assured the negotiator that Firas and Achraf were “good people” and that she had spoken to them and they had agreed to pay Ban Mai. When asked how Asia could have allowed Ban Mai to leave without her wages, Zahraa reportedly said that Asia was “weak, had no say and would receive a beating if she tried to intervene.”

This Is Lebanon subsequently contacted all three Abdallah children in a WhatsApp group.

We told them that legal action had been initiated against their parents. We appealed directly to their humanity, explaining that Ban Mai was in desperate circumstances and saying:

“Ban Mai is now in dire need and suicidal. It is time for you to step up and do what is right – as your father always promised her you would do.”

They were told that Ban Mai was owed $36,200, but that she was prepared to accept substantially less.

Layal responded on behalf of the siblings.

Her position was unequivocal. She said they were not concerned by the matter, had “absolutely no involvement in it,” and had no further contact with Nawaf. She said any legal action should be taken directly against him because, in their view, “He is the only individual concerned by this matter.”

After we sent Layal audio recordings of conversations with Firas and Zahraa, she responded “Mrs Zahraa and Mr Firas were trying to be class and understand the situation.” She subsequently threatened legal consequences for what she described as harassment of innocent people.

The allegations against Ban Mai

When Zahraa was contacted again, she raised a set of allegations.

According to Zahraa, her cousins had searched Ban Mai’s telephone and discovered that she held an account with GS, a major Beirut retailer, and had purchased numerous items. She also claimed they had found evidence on Ban Mai’s phone that she had stolen property from the house.

There is a fundamental problem with these claims.

Ban Mai is illiterate. She rarely left the house. The suggestion that she had somehow established a retail account and accumulated purchases is difficult to reconcile with the circumstances in which she lived.

More importantly, when Ban Mai entered the shelter, no stolen property was found in her bag.

Zahraa also claimed that her cousins possessed records proving that Ban Mai had been paid her salary.

The negotiator asked for those records to be provided.

They never were.

What happens now?

There is a legal case against Nawaf Abdallah.

But the reality is stark: the case will never reach a meaningful conclusion.

Nawaf is elderly and, according to accounts provided to us by members of his own family, suffering from significant cognitive decline. Given that the legal process takes years, the defendant will be dead before the matter is resolved.

And that leaves Ban Mai facing the reality that the passage of time itself will become the mechanism by which justice disappears.

The Abdallah children may be legally insulated from their father’s obligations – they say they have no involvement in the matter – but when a family knows what has happened to a worker who served their parents for years, when they know she has returned home with virtually nothing, and when they are asked to intervene and simply walk away, what does that say about them?

Ban Mai is finally home.

But going home is not the same thing as receiving justice.