Monday, November 20, 2006

Living a different life- What if I was a maid?

My mother has a maid who comes in for 3 hours, 5 times a week. I rarely speak with her, except the ocassional salam. Today, the mop bucket water had a funny smell, so I just asked her to add dettol to it. She's much older than me, but I called her by her first name. And after that, as I stepped into the car to get some groceries, I thought... what if I had to do her work? What if destiny had taken everything away from me, and only left me with the option of working as a maid...
What kind of work would I like to do?
I wouldn't mind washing the dishes.. or ironing clothes...

I live in a huge house, and through my life, I've never been refused anything I wanted. Right now, I have access to any of the 3 cars my family has, and I can travel whenever and to wherever I wish.
But if things were to change for the worse- And as a human, I would say, for the worse... then what would happen?
If I had to work as a maid....
I wouldn't like
- If kids call me by my first name, because that's my culture
- Cleaning toilets
- Massaging oil into someone's hair
- Being taunted, if I left some dust in some random corner
- Given leftovers in wierdly-shaped-century-old containers
- Picking up things from the floor that the owner of the room should have had enough discipline to not have throw down in the first place
- Cleaning @ wierd hours in a house located in the middle of no where
- Asked to participate in non-Islamic religious functions
- Taking out tonnes of smelly garbage
- Ugh... doing dirty laundry...
- Getting irregular payments
- Being forced to negotiate my salary
- ...

I'd DEFINITELY wear gloves while doing any work.
Where would I live?
What kind of clothes would I wear?
Would I feel proud of my "profession"?
Would I gossip, if I worked in multiple homes and the families knew each other?
What if I was abused? How would I make ends meet?
All this would be very very difficult. May Allah not test me severely with my health, and wealth.
Iftar time!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This got me thinking..
Gee thanks for scaring me Humairah!! Now I've to write a whole buncha exams from GMAT to LSAT to make sure I end up somewhere!
Usman

Anonymous said...

I think slavery is still practised in our soceity, but in very different forms. I remember a speaker mentioning (think it was Faraz Rabbani from Sunni Path). The way the maids/slaves/servants are treated is evil..They are human beings too - so stop treating them like objects. They aren't objects that can be bought in the market place!