I Am Not Your Slave

by Tupa Tjipombo

  I liked Almaz’s directness and listened carefully to everything she told me. It was good to finally know what was happening around me, rather than to have everything simply unfold before my eyes. I appreciated having such insight now more than ever.

  “And you must know about Madam Dua,” Almaz continued. “She is the manager of the house. Maybe you have seen her already—she is the very old lady who dresses in the long black sheet.”

  “Yes,” I said, “she was the first to . . .” I was about to say she was the first person to “greet” me, but that was not the right word. “. . . see me,” I finally said.

  “She is an old cow,” Almaz said bluntly. “But she is a distant relative of the family, so she can do as she pleases. Perhaps soon God will judge her for all her evils.” She made the sign of the cross and spit on the ground. “A very bad woman,” she added. “She is our supervisor.”

  I told Almaz about meeting with Madam Dua upon my arrival and how the old woman had showed me a photograph of a Himba woman. “Why are they interested in my tribe?” I asked.

  Almaz bit her lip and turned away. “This is another matter,” she said, so faintly that it was practically a whisper. “It is about someone who is away on business now. It is not something you need to worry about at this time.” She did not elaborate further.

  After a couple of weeks of doing nothing, during which time I managed to gain most of my weight back, Madam Dua finally summoned me once again. We met in a small room off the kitchen. It was the first time I had been in the main house, and the air conditioning offered a nice respite from the relentless heat. Madam Dua wore the same black dress and headscarf, which framed her bony, lined face and accentuated its timeworn appearance.

  “You are a lucky girl,” the old lady said sharply, without looking up from some papers she was reading. “Your tests show that you do not have HIV and you are not pregnant. If you were, I would have turned you over to the police as an illegal.” I could hardly believe the good news; I had been sure that, at the very least, I was HIV positive after my long ordeal in southern Sudan. Though I had pushed it to the back of my mind, I was still living each day with the shadow of AIDS hanging over me. So now, for the first time, I felt like I could see a small glimmer of hope in the distance. Once again, the actions I took while living under Kuur’s authority had paid off. Don’t just wait for death, I thought. Always try to do something, try to find some room to maneuver. It just might work.

  Now Madam Dua looked up from her papers. She pointed her bony chin at me and immediately launched into a long list of job duties I would be expected to do each day: “You will begin each day at six o’clock AM. You will wash the cars first, then assist the gardener with watering the plants, both inside and outside; then you will wash and iron the clothes until breakfast is finished; then you will wash the dishes; then you will finish with the laundry; then you will clean the house until two o’clock PM, when you are allowed to have a thirty-minute break; then you will clean the dishes from lunch; then you will return to your house-cleaning duties. After dinner, you will clear the dishes. You will also assist the Ethiopian with the care of Master Hammad—the old man—who requires a bath every evening. You are also responsible for keeping the servants’ quarters clean and organized. You will rake the grounds in the evenings. Sometimes you will be required to help with the cooking, but this is not the usual job of our Africans. You will be working with the Ethiopian, and she will show you how each of these jobs is to be done. You will learn the details from her as you work.”

  I remained silent, relieved to know that I would be working with Almaz, “the Ethiopian,” as Madam Dua described her. The old lady spoke so quickly that it was difficult to remember everything she said. She did not elaborate or leave any impression that I should ask questions or even speak, talking at me with such rigid intensity that it felt like a chicken was pecking at my ears.

  Following the explanation of my job duties, Madam Dua then turned to the rules of the house: “You are not allowed to leave this house without permission, and you are not allowed to go anywhere by yourself. You are not allowed to communicate with anybody outside of the house. While you are working in the house, you do not speak unless you are first spoken to, especially with the family members. You do not look them in the eyes—you look down at the floor. You call the women ‘madam’ and the men ‘master.’ They are your kafeels—your sponsors—and you must always respect them, because you work for them and because they are a respected family in Dubai. They are much higher than most people. You cannot understand this, but you must always show them the proper respect. As for you, you are khaddamah—the help.”

  Madam Dua paused, presumably to catch her breath, before outlining additional rules: “While you are working in the house, you must never sit on the furniture or lie down in the beds. You must always wear the appropriate clothes that we provide you. The Ethiopian will see to it. You must keep your hair pulled back in a scarf. Your appearance and clothes must always be kept neat and clean. You must not smell, and you must shower every morning. And you must never become pregnant. The punishment for sexual relations is very hard. Do you understand this?”

  I nodded consent, but Madam Dua did not appear to notice. “You are on a probation period of three months to evaluate your performance and ensure that you are a suitable fit. During this time you will not be paid. If we decide to keep you after three months, then we will pay you the appropriate amount. But even then, for the next several years most of your paycheck will be deducted to pay back your recruiter and the costs of bringing you here.”

  At this point, Madam Dua gave a long explanation of something called the kafala—sponsorship system. And though I did not understand any of it or why it was being explained to me, eventually—and with Almaz’s help—I pieced together its fundamental tenets. I discovered that maids, nannies, and other domestic workers in Dubai—and the United Arab Emirates in general—were considered part of this mysterious kafala system. In the end, it meant that they did not have access to any benefits or rights under national labor laws. Instead, they were defined as migrants who fell squarely under the realm of the Ministry of Interior, which rarely interfered in matters considered to be part of a private household. As far as the government was concerned, household or family disputes were just that, and not something the government wanted to get involved in. As migrants, domestic workers were subject to a set of immigration laws that were put in place to protect their employers, who, under the kafala system, also were their sponsors. In the end, individual households had complete and total control over their servants and could do with them as they pleased.

  At the time, however, I was simply confused. I could not understand why Madam Dua was talking about me as if I were an employee beginning a new job, rather than somebody who had been kidnapped and enslaved. Did she even know how I had come to be here? Or was this just a clever way to disguise everything?

  But the old lady left little doubt about the answers to these questions when she produced an Ethiopian passport and said, “This is your passport.” Opening it, she showed me a photo of myself that had been taken at the camp in the DRC right before I was raped by Ming. I had never owned or even seen a passport before, not even from my own country. Looking at the phony document before me now, I began to understand how extensive the connections were when it came to my abduction; the network extended from Dubai all the way back to Namibia. I could hardly believe it.

  “I will keep this,” Madam Dua continued, referring to the passport, as if it were of any real value to me. “So you must obey the rules. If you do not, there can be very big problems for you. In Dubai, you go to prison for a very long time if you fail to pay your debt. And you have signed a work contract with us. It is here.” She extended a bony finger to a document on the table before her. It was written in Arabic. “You have already signed it,” Madam Dua said. “It is the same signature as the one on your passport. It is already done.”

  The old lady sat
back and eyed me curiously. “I think you also know that you are under a very strong curse . . . yes?” I gave a small start, which prompted a triumphant sneer from Madam Dua. She continued, “And your family is also part of that curse. You do not want to do anything that would put them in danger. It would be very bad for them. You would be killing them. It has happened many times before with this curse. You cannot escape it.”

  I did not respond. Even so, Madam Dua seemed satisfied with my reaction; it was impossible to hide my distress, especially when I was reminded of the danger my family was in. It made me angry to think how easily this old woman could strike me where I was most vulnerable.

  But Madam Dua was not finished, and she proceeded to spread a series of photographs on the table. They were photos of the Chinese man raping me. Somebody had taken them without my knowledge; it was hard to remember the events of that night, in part because so many other horrible things had happened since then. Unable and unwilling to even look at them now, I turned my head away. “You understand that I have these photographs now,” said the old lady. “They are very shameful, yes? You do not want your family to see these, do you? And your friends? Everybody you know? I think that would be very bad for you. Very bad. I think you understand me. These will be given to everybody you know if you do not obey the rules.”

  Madam Dua paused again, letting everything sink in, scrutinizing me with her intense, penetrating eyes. She radiated an energy that was almost palpable, like a coiled snake ready to strike. “Now,” she said, “let us talk about this.” She placed one more photo on the table; it was the same magazine photo she had shown me before, the one of a Himba woman in traditional dress. “So you are from this tribe, yes?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “What do you call yourselves?”

  “I am from the Himba tribe. We are from Namibia.”

  “Yes, good,” said Madam Dua. “Himba.” She seemed to recognize the name as meaningful in some way. “And this . . . costume . . . you know how to make this? If you are provided with the materials?”

  I hesitated, unsure of how to respond. Beyond the strangeness of the question itself, I had no idea if the materials were available in this part of the world. And even if they were, I had not worn traditional clothes since I was a little girl and did not really know how to make them.

  But Madam Dua did not seem to think a response was necessary. She waved her hand dismissively and said, “You will be provided with materials, and the Ethiopian will help you. Do you understand everything that I have said to you here today?”

  I said yes, though in reality I understood very little.

  “Good,” Madam Dua said. “You can go, then. You begin work tonight. Find the Ethiopian. She will tell you what to do.”

  As I stepped out, Madam Dua called after me. “Wait. You understand that if anybody asks you if you are a virgin, you should say yes. Only I am to know about this.” She waved her hand over the photographs in front of her with a disgusted look. “And you,” she added ominously.

  * * *

  Over the next two weeks, I settled in to my new life, which consisted of little beyond sleep and work. I worked fifteen hours each day, waking up at 5:30 AM to begin washing the family’s four cars by 6:00 AM, a job that took a full ninety minutes to complete to Madam Dua’s satisfaction. Next, I helped the gardener—a quiet man from Pakistan—to water plants, rake the grounds, and generally help with the landscaping. The bulk of my day, however, was taken up with the endless task of cleaning the interior of the house, which was kept in such a pristine state that it approached sterility. And while cleaning the house, I was expected to find time to wash and iron clothes. On occasion, I was enlisted to work in the kitchen, especially if there was a dinner party or some other event where help was needed. Generally, however, the Sri Lankan laborers worked in the kitchen; it was not considered proper or desirable to have “the Africans” involved with food preparation.

  Apparently, caring for the elderly was something that did fall within the realm of the Africans, since Almaz and I were given the particularly dreary job of looking after Master Hammad, who turned out to be the very old, bedridden father of Dr. Kassab. Each day, we had to feed and wash him, clean his bedpan, change his clothes and sheets, move him into various positions to prevent bedsores, and put him in his wheelchair and take him outside for thirty minutes during the evenings when it was cooler. Waiting on him was a thankless job made more difficult and irritating by the fact that the old man spoke only Arabic, and only then in a mumbled slur. For the most part, he lived a lonely, miserable life.

  The entire household operated on a set of simple and very conspicuous racial assumptions. Jobs were clearly defined in terms of what Madam Dua and the family assumed were the inherent skill sets and capabilities of different races, ethnicities, or national identities. To them, Pakistani men made good landscapers, Filipino women were good with children and made acceptable personal servants, Sri Lankans were good in the kitchen, and Africans—who occupied the lowest rung on the ladder in terms of pay and perceived ability—were tasked with cleaning and assisting others when needed.

  Madam Dua articulated these beliefs on a daily basis, mostly when criticizing different staff members. For example, the Filipinos were conniving, the Sri Lankans were stupid and lazy, and the Africans were a combination of all these traits and more, she said. One day, Madam Dua pulled out a local newspaper and showed me the Help Wanted section. “You see,” she said, “whenever there is a servant wanted for a cleaning position, they advertise for a woman from Africa. It is known that is all you can do.” I was not sure whether to be more astonished at the blatancy of Madam Dua’s racism or the fact that she was correct in that every cleaning position sought an “African female” or sometimes “Ethiopian female or approximate.”

  Madam Dua was fond of reading newspaper articles to the staff, especially if they were about the so-called foreigner problem, an issue that—according to her, anyway—was popular among Emirati, the citizens of the United Arab Emirates. She was particularly fond of opinion pieces that focused on how the many foreigners in the UAE were undermining Emirati society and culture. Domestic servants—because they were foreign, mostly female, and based inside the household itself—represented a particularly potent combination of risks. According to the articles Madam Dua read, they were condemned for a whole host of things, including posing a threat to Islamic norms, being a bad influence on children, using witchcraft on their employers, poisoning their sponsors’ food, and generally being walking, talking health hazards. In the same vein, the old lady once posted a dispatch from the Dubai police highlighting things “to watch out for” when monitoring domestic servants, which involved a host of potentially strange behaviors and drastic mood swings.

  As for Dr. Kassab, I rarely saw him; he often did not come home until late, when I had already finished my duties inside the main house. When I did see him, it was because he was visiting his father, Master Hammad. In fact, he was the only member of the family who dropped in on the old man for any length of time, often reading to him in Arabic from a tattered, ancient-looking book, which, according to Almaz, was a book of poems. In general, he was a quiet, even gentle man who took very little notice of me or any of the servants; in fact, I never once saw him speak to any of us, even the two Filipino women, who spent the most time around the family. It was difficult to imagine him as the person who “special ordered” me. But if it was not him, then who? It was definitely not his daughters, who were both very young. His teenage son was rarely home himself and seemed interested only in his girlfriend and his Humvee. Even when he complained that I had done a poor job cleaning his giant car, which happened on several occasions during the first few weeks, he informed Madam Dua, who would then relay that message to me, usually accompanied by a significant amount of yelling and slapping.

  Other than Madam Dua, the only family member who interacted with the servants—especially the “lower” servants like Almaz and m
e—was Dr. Kassab’s wife. Madam Kassab was a physical contrast to Madam Dua: she was plump and doughy with soft, creamy skin and a youthful, almost childlike face. She ran the household with a nervous, high-strung energy. While having none of the shrewdness or cold, calculating abilities of Madam Dua, Madam Kassab did share her enthusiasm for belittling the servants. She barely controlled her hyperanxiety and could erupt at any moment into violent screaming fits, which for the most part were directed at the servants, though sometimes Madam Dua and her two daughters were the target of her attacks. Only the male members of the family were spared. I quickly wrote off Madam Kassab as little more than a spoiled child.

  Beyond members of the Kassab family, my world was reduced to the household staff, where the racial and ethnic hierarchy that defined our work roles carried over to our interactions with one another. Sri Lankan interacted with Sri Lankan and Filipino with Filipino, which left Almaz and me to spend all our time together. The two part-timers were also African women—one was from Eritrea and the other from Ethiopia. Almaz, who was good friends with both, called them “the twins” because of their physical similarities. We looked forward to their visits, which generally took place every other weekend or whenever extra help was needed. Taken together, the household was an eclectic mix of people, half of whom dedicated their lives to maintaining a sterile, tedious existence for the other half. “The whole world is right here in this house,” observed Almaz one day. “Those who have things and those who do not. These are the only two groups in the world; everything else is meaningless.”