 |
|
We proceeded to Jimmy’s house for the Christmas potluck. There were lots of food, and my homemade brew made the going quite lively.
Soon after they arrived in Dhahran, Jimmy bought a used piano and being quite accomplished, he played all sorts of Christmas songs after dinner. “Silent Night.” “The First Noel.” “O Come All Ye Faithful.” At times the music became so pensive it brought tears to our eyes. This was inevitable because some of us left members of our families in North America. Our two older children were in Edmonton. The Parks left theirs in Toronto. When the voices of both adults and children were thoroughly spent, Jimmy brought out his magician’s kit. He was a real entertainer with a contagious sense of humor and everybody had a ball. Luckily, nothing untoward happened with all the merry making. Not yet.
Close to midnight, there was a very light knock on the door. Nobody heard it as we were all laughing and gabbing and singing. When it grew louder and more persistent, one of the kids yelled, “Someone’s at the door.” We quieted down and Jimmy headed to the door. We were wondering if the mutawain got wind of our party. “Who’s there?” Jimmy asked. And a familiar female voice replied, pleading to talk with him.
When Jimmy opened the door, it turned out to be Anita Robles, the Filipina nanny who looked after Dr. Abdel Majid’s little boy, Ali. I had seen her with the boy at the Rec Centre, and my wife had chatted with her in Filipino. That’s how we found out that she was a mother of four kids ranging in age from a toddler to a teenager, all in the care of her extended family—mother, aunt, older sister, and husband who drove a pedicab in Metro Manila for a living. Anita looked much younger than her 37. She had finished two years of college and was working as a sales clerk at a mall in Parañaque when they decided for her to accept the job in Saudi Arabia, the better to afford a house and a car with her expected increased income. She spoke good English and was a charm with the boy and the people she met at the Rec Center, other nannies, faculty wives, and staff. She had been here four months and looked happy.
That night she was all but happy. She was sweating, her face was flushed, brow wrinkled, and she was in tears. After Jimmy closed the door behind her, she told us between sobs that Abdel Majid’s younger brother, a student at the Jameah Betrol, tried to molest her. When she resisted and fought back, he slapped her hard. That’s when she started to scream and created a furor until Mrs. Abdel Majid came and intervened. She didn’t understand the stream of loud Arabic epithets coming from her lady boss, but she felt some security albeit temporary.
It was early in the evening after supper when all these happened. When the brother was sent home, she continued her work, some laundry, some tidying up of the dining room and kitchen, and putting little Ali to sleep before she went to her room. She tried to sleep but she couldn’t. For two or three hours she tossed and turned thinking of her near disaster, her family back home, her regrets in coming, her helplessness while tears dripped down on her pillow. She must have said all fifteen mysteries of her rosary. Finally, she thought she would sneak out to the Underwoods two houses up the street and ask my help. Somehow, the nannies knew that some of the expatriate Christian professors were having a Christmas party in the Underwood house. Indeed, they knew most of what’s happening there in the compound.
She begged me to contact the Philippine Consulate in Dhahran or the Embassy in Riyadh to get her to leave the country. She wanted me to help her convince Dr. Abdel Majid to let her go, to break her two-year contract with penalty if needed. I told her I would try and that she should go home before she got into more trouble. Like her and most foreign workers, I felt a certain amount of insecurity after we settled down in Dhahran. For one, we had to surrender our passports and had them deposited at the Business Office.
Boxing Day was a weekday, but I couldn’t get hold of the Philippine consular services in either Dhahran or Riyadh because of poor connection. I did talk to Abdel Majid, who was a nodding acquaintance in the faculty, he being in business administration and I in science. A graduate of Wharton College in Pennsylvania, United States, Abdel Majid was the epitome of Arabic social grace. He poured me a demitasse of strong tea from a pointy brass Arabic teapot as he explained his dilemma of letting Anita go. He would not allow his good name to be smeared by what happened especially if Anita were around to spread the gossip and he could not recoup his loss in paying for Anita’s airfare were he to let her go.
I did not have Solomon’s wisdom, but I suggested that perhaps Anita could pay him back some of his losses. My respect for the Arab mind went up a notch when he did not take offence at my intrusion and seemed to favor my suggestion. Being a fellow Filipina mother, my wife slipped Anita some money to assuage her hurt and maybe get the process of leaving started.
That year, we expatriates celebrated Al Isa’s birthday with quiet devotion, gaiety, camaraderie, trepidation, and even sorrow and sympathy.
