The Women Who Raised Us
by Iman Vakil
Original art by Knar Hovakimyan.
Editor’s Note:
Iman Vakhil provides us with an incisively uncomfortable piece about growing up with domestic workers. In service of providing an honest account, Iman insists on using problematic terms that we see so often in the region, such as “servant” or “maid.” She forces readers to confront the dark reality of the relationships between privileged employers and their migrant employees, whose labor fulfills very intimate functions, but whose transience desensitizes emotional attachments. The topic is often intellectualized, thrown into the world of statistics and numbers. Iman's piece instead provides a personal account, which does not sanitize the unsettling realities of domestic labor. We present her piece as an addition to the conversation about the rights of domestic workers, for how are we supposed to expect better if we cannot hold ourselves accountable in the first place?
We invite and encourage all readers to consider submitting their own reactions, and participate in, what we hope will be, an ongoing conversation on an issue that requires more attention and accountability. Being such a contentious and complicated subject to handle, we hope that this article will generate responses, interventions, and other perspectives on the issue.
*Warning: Abuse, Rape
By Knar Hovakimyan.
I leave home at seventeen, like Gulf kids do, to attend university abroad in America—the other alternative being England. Like most Gulf kids, I don’t fit in. I take a class on the political economy of women, and develop my interest in intersectionality and Marxism; and the inherent superiority complexes of American feminism. My professor often praised my attention to the nuances of class-analysis, particularly in regard to household labor. She does not, of course, know I was raised by maids.
***
If you go to a mall, restaurant, or any sort of park in the Gulf—the sanctioned leisure activities of the sacred Friday family-day afternoon—you will most certainly come across a scene of parents leading a procession of children with uniformed women behind them. You may be surprised at how the children grasp at their hands or hold onto their legs, while also managing to entirely ignore them. As the family bonds, the uniformed women negate themselves out of the interaction. Taking up as little space as possible, they remain the ghosts of child-rearing.
…Most worryingly, we pretend we are warm. We smile, arms open, capable of treating each new, semi-friend like family, and can cut them out just as easily.
There are several ways to recognize someone who has been raised by others. We speak definitively and assertively, comfortable commanding and instructing from an extremely young age. We are capable of projecting our voices to ear-splitting volumes, trained to reach every corner of the house. And finally, and most worryingly, we pretend we are warm. We smile, arms open, capable of treating each new, semi-friend like family, and can cut them out just as easily.
In Dubai, there are two kinds of raised kids: those who throw out the word “maid” without a second’s hesitation, and those who hesitate and use carefully selected titles such as “nanny” or “helper.” Girls normally fall into the latter, taught to see these women as extra-but-lesser mothers and sisters who need to be told what to do. At around age four, the Gulf-raised girl will start honing her self-presentation skills, instructing the woman who feeds her and bathes her—the woman she clings to—on which hairstyles she would like to wear that day, telling the grown woman off if she does it wrong.
With boys, after a certain age, this easily applicable, prototype familial relationship becomes inappropriate, for strict gender roles and traditional norms have rendered very visible boundaries between male and female household relations. Instead, they become indifferent to her presence but make sure to never appear in front of her without a shirt on. An old friend used to complain about all the times his mother forced him to be present while she presented a cake to their maids on their birthdays. He didn’t need to express how awkward and uncomfortable it made him feel—I knew.
A succession of women had walked in and out of my life and home. Some would pinch me when they were mad at my parents, knowing I wouldn’t understand, and one ran away with my mother’s wedding dress. But then Theresa arrived.
An old friend used to complain about all the times his mother forced him to be present while she presented a cake to their maids on their birthdays.
Old, Sri-Lankan Theresa and my little girl self could barely communicate, but we soon learned to understand each other perfectly through developing our own strain of broken English. Oh, that’s another clue, children raised by others can slip into “broken English” without a pause. It is the unofficial language of the Gulf, where somehow the same disregard for filler words and grammar are collectively shared in a South-Asian street style. If you live in Dubai, you are either a working-class South Asian immigrant, or raised by one—class cuts cleanly here. There is no “I will go,” only “I going,” where “It is difficult to” becomes “too much problem have.” You will hear this language as soon as you land in the Gulf: a CEO asking his office boy to make tea; Indian cab drivers quickly barking “make left” to their colleagues who need directions at the traffic lights; security at the airport explaining procedures to sunburnt tourists; nurses telling patients I take blood pressure now.
Theresa washed me, tricked me into eating the vegetables I hated while I blanked out to TV, and sat down to watch me while I swam in the pool outside. Theresa used to tell me she often dreamt about me drowning in our pool, and it scared her. The space under her long, full, traditional skirts she wore every day became a colorful sanctuary. When I came home from school or in moments she felt tender while mopping floors and scrubbing surfaces, sturdy Theresa would scoop me up, her gold cross pressing against my face, and cover me in kisses. Or rather, deep long inhales, which I think was her version of kisses. Eventually, I felt smothered. I was reaching my adolescence, and outgrowing her.
In my uncle’s house, the kitchen is separated from the rest of the house by two formidable doors, shutting off the unsightly smells of masala, loud chatter, clanging of pots and the scream of the pressure cooker. As a child, I spent much time there, rather than joining the rest of my oversized family in the living room; I knew exactly where the chocolate was, and the table provided a space that I could draw and daydream uninterrupted, avoiding the sloppy kisses and overbearing hugs of my relatives. But things are different now: I join my family in the living room. Years of visits can go by without my ever finding the need to go in there. On the rare occasion that I follow my aunt into the kitchen, the chatter stops. The faces are unrecognizable, and always different. In politeness, they avert their eyes. This, I suspect, is what it must feel like to be a man.
Theresa’s room, where I would creep in at night when the dark was too much to handle and my parents were out, was less than half the size of our bedrooms. While all our bedrooms were upstairs, hers was downstairs, next to the kitchen. Small or large, all of the houses in Dubai are built like that—little, closet-like rooms with their own bathrooms tucked neatly behind the kitchen.
In politeness, they avert their eyes. This, I suspect, is what it must feel like to be a man.
Unlike most families, Theresa was allowed to shout at me and tell me off, which she did with no qualms—she was not the type of woman you messed with. There were plenty of times I was angry with her, refusing to talk to her when she came to make up after disciplining me. Eventually, each and every child, unconsciously internalizing the severe power dynamics in the home, will test the limit of how much she can terrorize her maid (I call it the masochistic phase). Trust me, there is nothing more painful to watch a maid struggling to stop a child in a tantrum in her subordinate position—a soft “No”is nowhere near threatening enough to stop the slaps of the child.
Another thing that will tell you a lot about a person is the number of maids they were raised with—and if they wore role-marking uniforms or not. The higher the number of maids in the home, the less you feel their presence, and the more you become used to anonymous, silent individuals cleaning up after you. Lower class families start with one—including every European family that settles here, by the way—and have to recognize her and build a relationship with her. Higher class families will have a team of roughly five, leaving the “training” up to the older ones.
The maid’s uniform is usually a thick, short sleeve white, pale pink, or pale blue shirt with big plastic buttons down the middle, and loose, matching pants, with no visible logos. We didn’t have uniforms or a dress code in my house, but I am pretty sure that most of my community, a liberal, educated elite, had their maids wear uniforms—not that we talk about these things. Instead, our helpers would usually wear big T-shirts that were my hand-me-downs: the free T-shirt I got for participating in a Breast Cancer run, the T-shirt my school made for our sports teams, and so on. But really, these clothes were not necessarily less role marking than the uniforms.
Whenever I did a spring cleaning of my things, it all went to Theresa, who would disperse it through her networks that were forever unknown to me. Absolutely everything was of use and interest to her: the shell box I made when I was six would hold her keys in her room, the glitter pillow I bought in my girly phase and quickly outgrew would decorate her bed.
Theresa retired when I was about thirteen, but I have no memories of any sort of reaction or surprise to the situation. I don’t even remember saying goodbye to her. When she left, off to reunite with her own children after a long eight years, she asked my mother for photos of me and my siblings to take with her. Of course, we had no photos together.
When she left, off to reunite with her own children after a long eight years, she asked my mother for photos of me and my siblings to take with her. Of course, we had no photos together.
It goes like this—the older ones come back home to take care of the infants. The new mothers, usually far younger than eighteen, leave rural, desperately poor South Asian villages to work in nearby Middle Eastern countries, visiting home once every two or three years if their employers—their visa sponsors—feel kind enough to buy them tickets. While passport holding is technically illegal, most, if not all, do. In my house, my passport sits mixed in with my helpers’ passports in my father’s safe.
Many families cannot afford to wait until their children are grown, and the girls of the household are sent off to work before they are married. Sketchy third-party recruitment agencies, whose offices in Dubai are in the worst parts of town. These agencies then scour villages in the poorest parts of South Asia, promising a better life in the Gulf, high salaries, and attractive packages of healthcare and vacation days. The hopeful employee will frequently pay the agency a bogus visa fee, requiring loans or a deep dip into the family’s savings to secure a place in a household abroad. Upon landing in the Gulf, they will find a contract very different than what they agreed to. Most of the money the women earn goes back home, and generally, the head of the household decides what to do with it.
We could only manage to choke out our names to each other through tears and strained throats. I know I won’t talk to her again. I don’t think of her much, and I don’t want to, either.
My father casually mentioned one time that he calls the one phone in Theresa’s village outside Colombo every couple of years to check up on her, but he never did it in front of me. I did speak to her once, after about seven years. We could only manage to choke out our names to each other through tears and strained throats. I know I won’t talk to her again. I don’t think of her much, and I don’t want to, either. Preoccupying yourself with this not-so-hidden world is something you just don’t do.
At 21, I am told this is “trauma.” This is a conversation that took place in the West. But I disagree—all raised kids would—because, for us, it is simply a part of life.
***
The next woman to come into my life was Ditya. Diligent and super petite, she swiftly replaced Theresa in every sense of the word. It was instantly clear that she was not a mother type, but we quickly became very close and loved teasing one another. Ditya, like my grandmother, was sharp and the type of person that laughed all the time, especially cheeky jokes about my family’s habits. Like Theresa, Ditya had long, black hair, that even when braided—as she wore it every day—reached the end of her back. As a little girl I always admired it, until I became old enough to understand provinciality. At age twelve, I was already taller than Ditya, and she called me Didi (older sister) in respect. But she also came into my room whenever she felt like it, not caring if I was naked or protesting, telling me to shut up. This is, of course, only when my father was not present. If he was, she lost her ability to talk.
One day, reading in the kitchen, enjoying her presence while she quietly put things in order and prepared the breakfast I was too lazy to make, I absentmindedly asked her, “Ditya Didi? When did you start working?”
“Eight years,” she answered, going right back to singing old Hindi songs as she did every day. Despite the piercing high-pitches and over-the-top drama, the screechy classical ballads always calmed me.
“For eight years? So at twenty, twenty-one?
“No, when I eight years complete.”
Her first job was caring for an elderly lady in Nepal, who didn’t allow Ditya to leave the house, locking the doors and disconnecting the phones whenever she left.
After much pressing, and many years of knowing her, I learned that Ditya never went to school and had to support her family from the age of 8 years old onwards. Her first job was caring for an elderly lady in Nepal, who didn’t allow Ditya to leave the house, locking the doors and disconnecting the phones whenever she left. When Ditya’s family came looking for her, the lady told them that she had never even met Ditya. Her family never contacted the Nepalese authorities. I didn’t ask her why. As far as I know, the situation continued for six years, until Ditya must have been fourteen years old, and I don’t know how she left. After a year of rest at home, she moved to India to start working again. She had a couple of good experiences, she said, but she did encounter abusive households twice more. She answered my questions without detail or narrative, and never mentioned it again, preferring to continue our jokes.
Coerced labor, beatings, and rape are a constant reality for migrant domestic workers throughout the region, particularly and infamously in the Gulf States, secured via the Kafala visa system. The Kafala visa sponsorship law withholds domestic workers from legally moving to a new job before their contract ends without the employer’s consent, their economic immobility making it so very easy. In response to numerous unresolved complaints, Ethiopia now bans its nationals from coming to the UAE. There are no shelters for abused domestic workers; help only comes from the embassies tucked away—if the workers manage to find the phone numbers first.
If you read Pardis Mahdavi’s “Gridlock: Labor, Migration, and Human Trafficking in Dubai,” you will read account after account of maids being forced to work 20 hours each day to match the nocturnal habits of the Gulf family, being forced to sleep on the floor, being chased by their male employer and chastised by their female employer, not given enough food to eat, and returned to their family if they run away to the police. In the absence of statistical data, the narrative accounts are one of the few, if not only, glimpses of the lived experiences of the domestic labor force. Like Ditya, the women matter-of-factly describe their abuse and almost negate themselves out of the experience. With no reflections on their thoughts at the time, it is a far cry from the story-telling style of the liberal elite—their perspective, as always, missing.
The Economist praises the Gulf on its ability to manage migration influxes. The article suggests that the EU may learn from the Gulf’s hardline stance on labor regulation in their terrible handling of the refugee crisis, never mind that poorer countries are accepting millions more. Slightly touching on the Kafala visa system, exploitation is noted as a slight trade-off for a system in which most migrants benefit, and most importantly, the citizens by birth and blood are happy.
Currently, Ditya is pregnant with her own baby girl. She is due to move back to Nepal after fifteen years with us, after fifteen years of desert heat, to a house she built with her Gulf money, that no heating for winter nights that will hit -20°C. On the day she bade farewell to my sister-in-law, who moved to Qatar, her eyes were red for a day, but nothing was said. I wonder if her baby girl will work when she turns eight, and what her name will be.
I feel guilty. I want to spend time with her. “Well, what are you going to do? Go for a coffee with her?” scoffs my friend. He knows he is right. This is the same sweet boy who is often teased for being too sensitive.
I want to ask her the questions I should know but never really found the time. I see her every day but I don’t know the names of her siblings: does she get along with them? Does she resent them? Does she dream of a different life or is she happy with hers? After fifteen years, is it even worth it to ask if she misses her family? Am I really going to behave the same way I did at twelve if I have the chance to be different now, and fail her?
Like many rebellious young Muslim women grappling with her love of her family, the restrictions imposed on her, and the banality of freedom in the West, I fell in love with the movie “Persepolis,” going on to read the book. A character that was conveniently left out of the movie, dominating the very opening chapters, is Satrapi’s maid. A young Marjane Satrapi depicts her child self coming to terms with the boundaries she must have with her young maid, whom she sees as a sister. Her parents may be brave enough to resist an Islamist regime, and forcefully send their daughter abroad alone, but they firmly remind her of the lines she must not cross. After that, the maid never resurfaces in the book; it seems Satrapi too, must have outgrown her.
Often, when you tell someone you are from Dubai, you can practically see their eyeballs turn into dollar signs. Sometimes they ask about hijabs and whether women can drive (wrong country, buddy), but sometimes about “servants.” How do we answer them?
Iman Vakil is a half-German, half-Kashmiri Dubai writer and journalist who is in a perpetual identity crisis. Passionate about the little-known Kashmiri occupation and dismantling classism that permeates her hometown of Dubai, she recently received her undergraduate degree from Sarah Lawrence College.