Mariaam Bhatti: Tales of a Domestic Worker
After a few unsuccessful attempts to persuade my employer and her husband to pay my remaining salary, I finally gave up. I had proof enough that I had politely ‘begged’ them to pay me what they owed me; I didn’t want them to claim I was harassing them, but my heart was raging with anger and dismay.
I could take being treated as sub-human in the time I worked for them; being taken as someone with no brains, no education, no goals in life, only fit for scrubbing the bathroom walls. But I could never accept working the whole month and not being paid for it.
Life is like a wheel; at some point, all parts of the wheel will reach the bottom, but the wheel always turns and those parts will always rise again.
To my employer and her husband, I suppose I was a bargain. I was possibly getting deported soon, and that meant their problem was going away. But to me, it showed what some people really think of their employees, how much they undervalue migrant workers – and more specifically, domestic workers.
Meanwhile, I was familiarising myself with life in the shelter. I quickly learned that meals were served at certain times, and if one missed that time they would go to bed hungry.
On my third day there at dinnertime, I met another girl from South Africa who showed me the ropes, since nothing had been explained to me by the people at the reception nor the immigration officers.
I found myself asking the girl what kind of a place the shelter was, looking right into her eyes, as if searching for answers directly from them. She looked back with surprise and a bit of embarrassment, which I didn’t understand, as she whispered: “It’s an asylum seekers hostel.” At last, it all became clear to me why there were so many different Africans here, and people from the Middle East, Asia and other parts of Europe.
“Oh? Okay,” I replied, after a thoughtful pause, and I began to eat my not so appetising food while she and her friend hurried to pick trays and cutlery before joining the long queue for dinner.
The setting, and the little steel soup bowls, reminded me of prison scenes from movies on TV. I looked around, deep in thought, sitting alone at a big table enough for eight people.
The centre was very big and could easily accommodate 500 people at a time. Kids played as if nothing was wrong – they had no idea. But the adults walked around like lost souls.
Some made friends with their roommates, often seen together at the shared laundry room. I also had two roommates, from central and west Africa. They had a common language in French, and did not understand or speak a single word of English. Yet despite my lack of French, after a week I was able to say ‘bonjour’ in the morning and ‘merci’ for ‘thank you’ and that brought us all smiles.
To be continued...
Mariaam Bhatti is a member of the Domestic Workers Action Group and Forced Labour Action Group of the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland.
