My airconditioning conked out. It was hot. Not just hot, I should say, but boiling hot. The temperature gauge on my car registered 52 degrees Celsius as we careened down the highway. “Well,” I surmised to myself, “if it’s 52 then there should be a national holiday. The labor law declares that people are forbidden from working when it’s above 50. Perhaps I should take the day off!”
I concluded smugly proud of my lethargy-inspired powers of rationalization. I felt like I would drown in my own sweat as my abaya clung to my body having welded itself in desperation to my skin. I wiped away the beads of perspiration that trickled down my face in rivulets gathering in a gully around the base of my neck and held back the desire to explode.
I couldn’t believe my luck. There I was positively melting in the unforgiving heat of the desert and I didn’t even have a functioning cooling system! I rolled down the window deluding myself into believing that I could potentially gain some respite from the breeze but as it felt more like being trapped in the heat of a hairdryer, I hurriedly reneged on my ill-advised decision.
It was then that I saw them at the side of the highway. They stood in clusters, some wearing yellow shell suits, others in regular clothes. All of them sported the checkered Saudi headdress tied firmly around their faces as if this would serve as a deterrent to the blazing inferno that the sun had now become. I squinted up toward the cloudless sky.
As my eyes descended upon the construction site, I saw some laborers stealthily scrambling up scaffolding while others precariously balanced on planks mopping their brows with the ends of their sleeves. I caught the eye of one as we slowed down and he grinned broadly in my direction. I cannot adequately describe in words what I felt at that moment. I was overcome with a sense of shame and pure humility. There he stood, smiling in the face of adversity, braving the relentless circumstances that he was subjected to on a daily basis and there I sat, in the luxury of my car, and for once, just because my A/C had failed I wallowed in self pity at the prospect of not being able to exercise my right to profligacy.
I mechanically smiled back as tears welled up in my eyes. Even now, as I write this, I am overwhelmed with self-disgust. Prior to that day, these people were invisible to me. All I saw was a series of lofty buildings and impressive skyscrapers. A collection of bricks and mortar. I never once bothered to look behind the facade to see the blood and sweat of these wretched individuals that was poured into cementing these very edifices together into the familiar landmarks that I unthinkingly used to orient myself with.
It was then that I thought about them as people, as human beings, as individuals. Not the nameless and faceless that I had so flagrantly by my non-recognition of them forced into irrelevance. I wondered what it was that brought them to the sands of Arabia. What twist of fate, what misfortune, what utter desperation drove them to abandoning all that was familiar in favor of all that was so far removed from their sphere of understanding.
I imagined them taking out heavy loans, as many of them do, to purchase a visa and a ticket in order to buy a chance at betterment. The excitement of working in a place where, as legend has it, the sands are made of pure gold. The heady aspirations of perhaps buying a house one day with their pitiful income, or getting a sister married off by paying a huge dowry, or sending their children to a school, or simply taking care of their aged parents.
I envisaged their first taste of bitter disappointment. Would it be at the hands of an embassy official, an agent on their own turf or an immigration officer as they arrived weary and disoriented at the airport? The terror writ over their faces as they were shouted at in an alien language and the callous humiliation that they would suffer periodically at the hands of many.
I saw through their eyes the pain of having to endure psychological abuse that saw no end and never reached its own conclusion. The defenselessness of silently witnessing their identities being eroded away as they were transformed from being Yusuf or Yunus or Ram or Christopher and instead became collectively “Ya Muhammad” or “Ya Rafeeq” or “Ya Sadeeq”.
I imagined what it was like to share a cramped room with several others, laying down at night on a threadbare sheet stretched across a bare floor thinking of home and missing all those who had been left behind. Speculating in that exhausted state as to how many minutes and hours and days were left before two whole years passed so that they might return to their lands laden with plastic toys and electronic gadgets and knickknacks for the home lovingly packed into cardboard cartons flicked from the dumpsters outside a supermarket.
I visualized those Friday-after-prayer telephone calls back home filled with anticipation when they queued up in their droves to pretend to their families how nice their life was and how happy they were here. The depression of finding out that a child was sick or a relative had passed away or the money being sent was not enough and the tears of helplessness being fought back.
That day and on several subsequent occasions I have felt sick to the pit of my stomach thinking about these people. They are the true unsung heroes of our society who toil in conditions of physical extremity in exchange for a pittance of a salary.
The behavior of some is exploitative. Perhaps this is a hard fact to swallow, but then the truth always is. It is not good enough to proffer the argument that such men and women come here out of choice and therefore as a society we have no responsibility toward them. The attitude that because they are earning more than they would in their own country and therefore this is sufficient for us to wash our hands of them is entirely irrelevant and furthermore completely irresponsible.
What happens when workers are sick or injured on the job or are unpaid? Most of them are illiterate even in their own language so would it be realistic to assume that they would be able to seek help or legal advice from the necessary authorities if they needed to? I, as an educated Saudi, honestly don’t think that I would know where to start, so I wonder how on earth we can support the absurdity of this argument so wholeheartedly. Many of them are terrified by their sponsors. And yes, I mean exactly that. The fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all. They don’t understand our language and they have no knowledge of our system, so what therefore is the recourse that we offer them?
I know that whenever it is that I bring up such issues that merit discussion and revision, or allude to misnomers and intrigues that have long been whispered about like a national secret, I run the risk of being labeled unpatriotic. One thing I know for certain is that I am a Muslim. Islam guarantees the rights of the oppressed, the sick and the weak above and beyond all other elements of society. Not only are we required to give people their privileges, but we are also warned specifically not to negate our actions by insulting them or injuring their dignity.
Considering the atrocities committed in the name of this great religion these days, it is up to us, each and every Muslim, to correct this misperception by respecting each and every individual in the name of Islam.
(Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.)