Saturday, 27, May, 2006 (29, Rabi` al-Thani, 1427)
When Did You Last Smile at Your Maid?
Abdullah Al-Maghlouth . Al-Watan
When was the last time you saw a Saudi lady smiling at her maid while out shopping or anywhere else? This is a question that always springs to mind when I'm out at a shopping mall or an amusement park.
Saudi and Gulf women generally have a ridiculous habit of walking happily in shopping centers with their perfume lingering in the air a mile off. Trudging closely behind is usually a tired looking maid, feeling unhappy and smelling of onions and generally carrying fat crying babies not to mention the shopping bag. Scenes like these have created a generation of Saudis that lack discipline, a generation that has been raised to treat those who look after them with contempt.
So it shouldn't come as a surprise for us when we read newspaper stories of maids and children fighting, after all such relationships do begin the wrong way. Fortunately there are some homes where maids are treated with respect and dignity but sadly such homes are few and far between.
Often you see pleasant pictures of Saudi women elegantly walking in shopping centers carrying designer bags. Look further on and then you see the sad image of a tired and exhausted maid walking slowly behind. As Saudis we generally don't pity these foreign maids until we travel abroad and see people pointing fingers of blame at us as.
In the middle of last year an American newspaper published a report about Saudis enslaving maids. The report was illustrated with a huge picture of the Saudi Arabian flag with two Asian maids chained in the middle. Okay, some of these reports are exaggerated and do contain hyperbole but there is an element of truth which we need to accept and face especially if we want to project a positive image abroad.
A few weeks ago I was deeply troubled by an e-mail I received from a Filipino maid. The sender described how she was assaulted by a foreign worker in the presence of two Saudis who smilingly looked on and failed to stop the attack. Forget the moral issues connected to this, didn't it even cross the minds of these Saudis that perhaps this maid would one day react by doing something drastic like attacking their loved ones, poisoning them or even killing them?
There are 1.2 million Filipinos in Saudi Arabia who make up 15 percent of the total number of foreigners in the Kingdom and 25 percent of Filipino workers outside the Philippines. So you can imagine how many foreigners there must be from other countries living and working in Saudi Arabia.
Some may say that foreign workers do make mistakes and aren't totally blameless, but if Saudis treated workers with just a little respect by giving them basic things like time-off, suitable working hours and pay then less mistakes would be made. At the end of the day as human beings we really need to treat foreign workers kindly and welcome them as respected members of society.
Next time you're about to reprimand a maid and you begin asking God for protection from her, perhaps it would be better to begin by giving her protection yourself. How do you expect to win somebody's respect, love and loyalty if after working for years on end they can never remember having a pleasant, polite conversation?
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