“Us se hath na milao. Wo kaam wali hai.” (Don’t shake her hand. She’s a maid.)
How often do we hear that sentence echo in our households, ushered by hushed whispers and condescending glances, and let ourselves be swept away by the torrent of societal norms and traditional customs just so we can fit in and enjoy the status that allows us to life, liberty and luxury of the upper-middle class of Pakistan. We glimmer with hatred for the treachery of the West against our so called “Muslim brothers” living behind their borders but when it comes to sharing a meal with those who bust their fingers over burning stoves to make our own food, we bristle with personal insult.
Are you stupid? Their raised eyebrows and flat lips seem to jaunt when the mere notion of equality is mentioned, followed by eyes stuck in constant eye-rolls and tongues that click in disdain. They are our workers, is the first line of defense. They know their place.
And what, oh sweet people, is that place, exactly?
Is it the space between the soles of your shoes where dirt smears with foliage as you move over your freshly-mowed lawn, or is it in the gnawing gap between your teeth as you hurl insults at their battered forms when they forget to dust that little corner of your book shelf.
One job. They have one job. We complain as we sit in our sun-burst living rooms, surrounded by other women brimming with the same complaints, sipping on our expensive tea presented in delicate china cups, wearing clothes that cost more than what these people make in a month. We pay them. Money doesn’t grow on trees for us either you know. Well, who ever said that it did?
But does paying them give us the right to trample all over their self-respect? Does it give us right to judge their characters or point our fingers, pythonesque, between their eyes every time something goes missing from our jewelry boxes or our wallets? Of course it was her, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Didn’t you see how her eyes followed my purse when I went inside my room? Um, no, I didn’t. And honestly, neither did she.
To the average Pakistani, a good Muslim is one who dresses decently and knows how to speak to his elders. And there, it seems, is where our imaan halts to a stop. Forget swindling a few answers in our examinations or haggling with sellers who can barely afford the fruit they’re selling, forget turning our faces away when desperate eyes peer at us from the other side of the car window and we ignore them like as if they have lesser worth than the dust on our imported running shoes (which, in retrospect, we at least acknowledge); do we ever just stop to even think about how we treat them?
No, of course not. In this fast paced world with its glass sky-scrapers and dirty politicians and trade unions and business tycoons, we barely have time to think about ourselves, let alone of people who grow in ghettos and are born of oil spills. And to let them sit on our sofas as they wait for us to get untangled from our own selfish lives and listen to their words, well what could be a bigger sin than that? The floor is their rightful place, like the high chairs are our thrones in a society that boasts of adhering to the Islamic principles and turns a blind eye to its existing prejudice, which, surprise surprise, is, in its essence, against the fundamental value of our religion. Forget about treating them as lesser Muslims, we treat them as lesser humans, as if their economic conditions garners us the authority to be the bourgeoisie to their proletariat.
So what happened to no rich man being better than the poor? What happened to protecting the rights of the underprivileged, providing for the deprived, sheltering the weak? Is this what makes us the brightest of the Muslim world as we prefer to delude ourselves to be, the saviors of the corrupting global system, upholding our ill defined morals like medals on our chests? Of course it does, is our mantra, we are the practicing Muslims. We are the future.
But somehow, equality just doesn’t seem to fit anywhere into this supposedly complex equation. And to most of us, it doesn’t really matter anyway. We have our own targets to reach, our own goals to fulfill, all others be damned. And if that means happily sharing our Wi-Fi passwords with guests and frowning when our driver asks for the same privilege, I’d say we’re well on the yellow brick road to Emerald City.
Till then, the next time you decide to rampage your keyboard with curses for Donald Trump on social media for discriminating, stare into the other side of the mirror and think twice.
