Abdulaziz Al-Thekair

The headwaiter of a fancy European restaurant rebuked members of a Saudi family for sitting at a big table and making their two housemaids sit at a smaller separate table. The Saudi family did not violate the local laws but did violate the social norms of that country. According to the norms of that country, there is no difference between maids and their employers.

I read an article about an Indian man who worked for a Saudi employer for so many years  that they developed a strong relationship with each other. However, the Indian worker finally went back to his home country for good. One day, the Saudi sponsor visited the worker in India and the latter insisted on inviting him to lunch. The worker invited his neighbors and friends to the dining room and asked the sponsor to wait in another room.
When they finished eating, he called his former Saudi sponsor to the dining room and asked him to eat the leftovers.

Surprised, the Saudi asked the Indian man why he did that. This is what the man said: “I worked for you for years and I do not remember a single time when you invited me to eat at the same table with you. I did it because I wanted you to see that there is no difference between an employer and an employee.”

Our grandfathers were different. They invited their workers to eat with them from the same plate. They did not differentiate. Abbas Al-Aqqad, an outspoken political thinker and a literary critic who died in 1964, once wrote in his book “Omar Ibn Al-Khattab’s Genius” a similar story. When Ibn Al-Khattab, who was Caliph at the time, saw some servants standing while their masters were sitting and eating, he became angry and criticized the masters because they treated their servants differently. Then he asked the servants to come and sit with their masters and eat the same food.

Unfortunately, most Saudis today treat domestic workers as if they were beings from another planet. We see domestic workers working hard, doing never-ending household chores, cooking every day and doing a lot of backbreaking tasks. However, their employers do not care about them. On the contrary, some humiliate them and boast in front of others that they have a housemaid, a driver and other employees.