Beity Beitik (Your Home Is My Home)
© Image by Aline Deschamps
Words by Ayat Al-Muhaisen
Ameena is the first Black woman I ever met. Whenever Ameena visits our home in Amman, Mama lunges into Ameena’s open arms. Their hug is always long, their eyes squeezed shut, prompting others in the room to stare in blissful admiration. Watching them feels as though they are trying to extract every fibre of energy from the other’s body. Watching them feels as though they are masters of a wordless speech. Watching them feels like a Shakespearean Sonnet, too nuanced to singularly dissect, but so poignant that you are committed to trying.
As a young girl, I wiggled my way in between them, in an effort to take part in this passionate embrace. Cushioned between their bodies is where I felt most safe. Ameena is the woman who took care of Mama when Mama was a little girl. To me, Ameena is Mama’s safe haven and my loyal friend.
Walking in the garden hand in hand, I turn Ameena’s palm over to investigate the color contrast. The pinkish white pigment of the interior of her hand perplexes my seven-year-old-self. Why was the inside of my hand not black against my white skin?
At the dinner table, Ameena seats herself last. When we are done eating, Ameena swiftly stands and begins to clear the table. Later, she stands for hours in the kitchen cleaning every dish. No one asks Ameena to do this, yet no one questions her doing so. Despite Ameena no longer being formally employed by my mother’s family, an unspoken contract persists. Even within the walls of my progressive Arab household, unequal power relations remain so deeply entrenched into our social schemas that nothing, not even a ferocious adoration, can ever break them.
When my mind wanders to Ameena, it also finds Helen (a subconscious categorisation that again, alludes to my racial and class privilege). Unlike Ameena, Helen is not Arab or Black. Yet, like Ameena, Helen has been employed by my family for over two decades.
Like many Filipina migrant domestic workers, Helen arrived in Amman, Jordan through the controversial Kafala System - a legal-migratory framework used to monitor migrant labourers. Each migrant has a sponsor, known as a Kafil, who assumes all economic and legal responsibility for the migrant’s acts and stay.
During the sweltering Amman summer of 1995, a young Helen was placed, by a recruitment agency, in the home of two young Jordanians: my newlywed parents.
When my eldest brother Rakan was born, Helen was there. And when I arrived three years later, a rambunctious and plump baby, Helen was there too - to hold me and help nurse me, to hear me utter my first words, eat my first meal, and walk my first step. Rakan and I often discuss the ineffable affinity we feel towards Helen; “Helen is family,” he says.
Growing up, Helen showed up for us every day - an irrefutable fact. Yet, as Rakan and I reminisce on our childhood days, spent in our Amman home, with Helen, we must challenge our collective romanticisation of the past; who showed up for Helen?
I sit with Helen in the kitchen, watching her dry hands skilfully peel a stack of carrots. With age, Helen has become a woman of few words, she moves through the kitchen at a slower pace, offering much less commentary on family politics/gossip than she used to. We sit comfortably in silence, together. While Helen dismisses my offer to help, she never protests my presence. I sit watching her, hoping she reads my gesture for what it is; a weak and selfish attempt to distance myself from the dining room dynamics.
Loaded with numerous dips and salads, meticulously placed in between elaborate main dishes, the Friday Lunch spread carries the most vibrant display of Arabic cuisine. Colourful vegetables sit beside large bowls of rice and cooked beans, while pieces of fresh, oily chicken are stacked on wide trays spread across the table. The execution of the entire meal is quite extraordinary, always warranting guests to praise the hostess of this weekend’s family gathering. As I load a plate of food myself, I hear the praises sung to this week’s matriarch, my auntie Farah: “Well done Farah, this spread is incredible! So so delicious!”
While my family gathers around the table, Helen and her fellow Filipina women gather in the kitchen - no praises sung to them for preparing, plating, and placing every piece of food on that table, no invitation to join us.
Arabs are known for serving a quantity of food when we entertain. We are famous for our generosity and are proud of it, for its outward display conforms to one of Islam’s fundamental principles: that of hospitality. In fact, among Arabs, the phrase “beity beitak,” which translates to “my house is your house” in English, is rather common. We want those who enter our homes to feel welcomed, to feel appreciated, to be treated with dignity and respect - the virtues of a righteous hostess extended to everyone. Everyone except for the bodies we deem exceptional; the Asian women who wait in the kitchen, the Black Egyptian gardener who sits on the stool outside. These are the bodies hastily ushered rather than graciously welcomed into the home. These are the humans whose presence must be silent, required to delicately blend into the hidden contours of domestic life. These are the bodies not accounted for as they are regularly invisibilised by our own attitudes and actions.
While the loving embrace of Ameena and my mother is cemented in my memory, the racism that persisted must not be erased. Ameena, a Black Arab, and Helen, a Filipina woman, endure racialised expectations and gazes as we non-Black Arabs continue in our collective pursuit towards aspirational whiteness.
I walk hand-in-hand with Ameena and do not turn her palm over but instead, let it press into mine. As we, two Arab women, young and old, white and black, enjoy our afternoon stroll.
I pay a gentle nod to my auntie, the hostess, as I pick up my plate and move to the kitchen. I sit alone at the counter, watching Helen who stands by the stove. Albeit feeble, the gesture reads: I see you.
