Me and my Sheghala

As she swept and dusted, she hacked up Cairosmog in piteous blasts, wiping her hand on her heather-grey hijab. She is our sheghala, the Arabic word for maid, of undisclosed age, although probably in her thirties (it is impossible to tell under the hijab). Her skin is smooth and latte-colored and her jawbone firm, giving her face a graceful look despite her typically multi-colored teeth. The latte skin darkens on her knuckles and cracks on her palms, much like my mother’s dishwater-and-diaper-weathered hands. I do not know how many children the sheghala has, although I assume she has them and has thus necessitated her profession. She must really need the money too, because this cough sounded nasty enough to drive even the most devoted worker to take a sick day. I wanted to make her a Get Well card with flowers but all I had was Lipton, of which I made for her two cups. The first one earned me a grateful touch to the arm, the second one a hug. My cup ranneth over and I said the phrase for sick people I had been practicing in my room before coming out with the tea: “Rubbina yi’awwimik bissalaama (which means roughly, “May God strengthen you in peace”).” I wished I had the linguistic wherewithall to tell her how strange it felt that she cleaned my house, that I had never hired anyone to clean for me, or really do anything for me before now. I had hired the sheghala because it seemed that everyone does it here. In situations like these, I try to remind myself that I cannot begin to guess at the extent to which my assessment derives from uninformed subjectivity. After all, the economy works differently here; who am I to judge what is a reasonable or frivolous way to spend money? We pay her between forty and fifty Egyptian pounds a session, which amounts to less than ten dollars. This woman needs those crumpled bills as much as I need my free time, right? Aren’t we just helping each other? Isn’t that how the world goes ‘round? At any rate, none of these furtive reassurances can make up for twenty-four years of grouping all manner of hired help into a rather fantastical category of servants associated with fairy tale palaces or the sumptuous homes of the anonymous rich, whose behavior I imagined to be necessarily despotic regarding their minions.
I did not want this poor coughing woman to feel like a minion. It does not help that the language barrier between us only strengthens the likeness of the whole affair to the novelistic version in my mind. However, usually the maid is the mute foreigner and the mistress the haughty command-giver, whereas the sheghala and I often end up in opposite positions, or at least I perceive them to be such. Our exchanges prior to the tea-op consisted of rooting through stuffed cabinets full of mystery items looking for a product described by her vague gesturing. Each time I resolve to ask my dialect teacher for a list of this vocabulary, as I eventually give a helpless shrug , say “ma‘alesh” and slink off to my room. (Sarah likes to say that the maid actually “sends her to her room” while cleaning the rest of the apartment.) And by the way, why am I just calling her “the sheghala,” if indeed tortured by this ineffable compassion? Because I never thought to ask her name. I have been thinking about why and here are the reasons I can offer:

1. I never ask anyone’s name. I do not require names until repeated encounters affirm the necessity of my knowing them.
2. We call her the “sheghala,” which to me already feels like a name because it is a new word and she is the only “sheghala” I have ever had.
3. I tend not to ask for information from people in a language in which I feel uncomfortable, due to an irrational fear of not understanding the response and finding myself thereafter responsible for the information given and missed.
4. She never introduced herself. So I never introduced myself. And now it feels too late, since she has come three times without this basic information being exchanged. I feel almost as if asking her name at this point would be insulting.

Whatever the excuses, I do not know my sheghala’s name so her name is the Sheghala. But I feel confident in saying that my ignorance of her name does not in any way reflect my respect for her and interest in her. Our relationship simply presents one more example of the impossibility of assessing social distances and expectations in a new culture. Was I out of line offering the tea? Or was I out of line not buying the Get Well card and flowers? As a foreigner am I even expected to pick up on any of these social cues, or was the sheghala warned from the beginning not to expect anything but rudeness from these uncivilized Western sluts? Her true feelings I may never know, but my conscience seems to have no problem basing its reactions on the feelings it has projected on to her (concocted from an unsavory mixture of Orientalism, poor-snobbism, and Marxism – yikes). I hover in the entryway as she bustles around our dining room. I feel decadent and repressive, dreaming up all manner of meaner barbs I feel certain she must be devising as she sweeps up the veritable blanket of dead leaves beneath our neglected plants. She must be concluding to herself with vindictive satisfaction that our mistreatment of the plants reveals the carelessness and self-centeredness governing our approach to life in general. Typical, she must be snorting. Just look at how these entitled brats treat beautiful nature. No respect for anything or anyone. Cough cough. My guilt intensifies with each trip she makes from the scene of the carnage to the garbage can, clutching the fallen victims to her chest in crackly green bundles. The lie escapes me before I can stop myself: “Kunna nisafir,” I excused my guilty bum. “We were traveling.” She nodded in understanding and made some indecipherable grunt through her cough-clogged throat. Regardless, she seemed to have pocketed the counterfeit; I registered shamefaced relief. I resolved to water my silent, oxygen-giving friends with more regularity in the future, lest their visible ailing continue to allow the sheghala to derive my rotten character.
If I felt uncomfortable about the plants, I felt positively mortified when our sheghala had to clean out the disgusting remains of our housewarming party. We had slept through her original appointment, so when Nabil escorted her up for the second time, she was privy to the talking-to he dealt us: people in the hall smoking! Sudanese! Egyptians! So much noise! I apologized as sincerely as my Arabic would allow, frantic to express how sorry I really was. The party had gotten out of hand, and I ended up having to shoo out a bunch of people I didn’t know around three. I had never imagined that three girls who just moved to this city could draw such a crowd, but there you are: Ben warned us that you can’t have a small party in Cairo. Too many folks around, I guess. My explanations failed to budge Nabil’s scowl so I resorted to repeating “akhir marra (last time)” over and over until finally he left. The sheghala stepped into our sticky, beer-bottle-filled kitchen with tangible disdain. We cowered in our rooms, wincing with each clink of heathenous bottle, taking furtive dashes to the bathroom, as if we were worried that the sheghala might spank us if she caught us alone. I felt like I deserved a spanking. I felt like I had trespassed all possible codes of acceptability. In the eyes of this hard-working, respectable woman I had sprung from latent to explicit levels of haram.
At long last, the sheghala gestured that she had finished. She donned her black outside robe and gathered together the plastic bags of empty bottles she had amassed from the night’s debauchery. I comforted myself in that she could probably get a few piasters for each one somewhere; at least our sins would amount to something useful. I fished out a fifty and pressed it into her hand. As is the custom for the acceptance of payment in such positions, she kissed it without counting it and stuffed it into a fold of her cloak. I stepped back and smiled a last sheepish apology. She smiled back and produced one of our remaining cold beers from her voluminous sleeves. “May I?” she gestured. “ ‘Ashan al-har,” she explained. “It’s so hot out there.” I was baffled, delighted and rectified. “Tafaddali!” I urged her, “Go right ahead!” She gave one of her goose-like nods, perhaps only exaggerated for my benefit but which have come to define her, and shuffled out the door. I wondered what else I might be wrong about. But these worries faded into a comfortable distance and a new preoccupation replaced them: where did the sheghala plan to enjoy her Meister Max, Egypt’s finest beer at eight percent alcohol content? Oh well. Bottoms up!