This video, titled Shit Lebanese Racists Say, couldn’t have come at a better time. When the country is slowly forgetting about Alem Dechassa, the Ethiopian Maid that committed suicide after being publicly abused, the Anti-Racism Movement has come up with this video that is highly poignant to say the least.
Without further ado, here it is:
Ali Mahfouz. Know the name. That is the name of a man who drove a woman to her death.
After publicly beating her up, right at the doors of her embassy, Mahfouz dragged his Ethiopian maid into his car and out of sight. The government had noticed the event and is now working to bring the man to court. But what good is it for that woman and her family back in her home country?
Mr. Mahfouz and his family created such an unstable work environment for the Ethiopian maid, whose name we still don’t know, that she drank detergent in an attempt to kill herself. That attempt was thwarted, leading to him beating up her in front of the embassy and somehow, in an interview conducted with LBC, he put the blame on the maid, denying he had even beaten her up. As if videos actually lie.
This Ethiopian maid’s death will, unfortunately, go in vain simply because there are a lot of people in Lebanon who share the same mentality as Ali Mahfouz, who see these Ethiopian (and other nationalities) maids as their “slaves,” who see nothing wrong in abusing them, be it by overworking them, beating them up, verbally abusing them, banning them from contacting their families…. Many simply don’t see them as human being. They don’t see them as people who, like us, have their own story in life, who have a voice and who need people to hear that voice.
Do you want to help me make the voices of maids heard? Then get aboard The Lebanese Help. If we manage to stop one family from being this abusive to their maid, then we can deem the plan a success.
Change starts with a whisper.
After initiating a new section on this blog called The Lebanese Help, the details of which you can check out here, LBC has procured a video of an Ethiopian maid being beaten up in front of her embassy by a Lebanese man.
I won’t comment on the content of the video. I’ll just leave you to judge.
The whole anti-racism movement in Lebanon is so weak it grasps at straws, even if it’s a harmless comedy skit. We also tend to get up in a fit the moment something like this video surfaces. We never see the maids as people who are coming here because they really have to, not because they want to.
We think with our $150 we can own them. We think with the miserable salary we give them, we can silence them.
But the maids have a story. And I will tell it. Those who will read them, good on you. Those who don’t, you’ll find company in darkness.
As I was sitting with some family members who were visiting my mother after a recent surgery, the issue of the “help” in Lebanon came up.
I sat and listened as the “grown-ups” spoke about the maids that entered their homes and left. One of my family members, however, had never had a maid. With her turning 40 and an increasing backache, she was considering the idea – especially with one being available at her disposal the moment she says yes to her sister’s offer.
But that woman was worried. The cause of her anxiety? She only had one bathroom at her house and God forbid the maid uses the same bathroom she uses.
I snapped.
I never thought the passages present in the book, The Help, would actually pop up in such dramatic fashion in a Lebanese society. I never thought for a moment the bathroom issue was actually an issue in Lebanon. Aren’t those maids cleaning the bathroom to begin with? Aren’t we, in 2012, at a level of culture and knowledge that is sufficient to know that, unlike popular belief, those maids are not bringing in with them a ton of foreign viruses the like of which Lebanon has never seen before?
I replied to my family member. I was strict and somewhat rude in my reply. I think she was offended but I didn’t care. I knew Lebanese society was racist but you never think it goes on in your family until it actually takes place in front of you.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Flash forward a few days later, I was having dinner with a couple of friends my age. And if you thought the older generation, with its minimal contact early in life with “the help,” may be justified somewhat in the racist ideas that swirl through their heads, then what “excuse” could you come up with when a twenty two year old agrees with my 40 year old family member about the bathroom issue? The justification given was: but they are “dirty.”
And it is then that the need for a Lebanese version of The Help became obvious to me. Many people had spoken about how that book, and movie, were very relevant to our society today. Most of those people had thought about that only fleetingly, for the few moments after having finished the book or the movie. Some had even blogged about its relevance
But then I thought, why not have an online version of The Help, adopted to Lebanese society, that tells stories of the maids that come to our homes, before something bad happens to them and their story becomes top news and activists get outraged at the injustice in our society when it comes to “the help.”
If you have your own maid story you want to share, don’t hesitate to contact me. I’ll start with telling the story of one of the maids that came into our home really soon.
Who among you, precious readers, has made a “Homsi” joke?
No, don’t be ashamed to raise your hand. If you’re not raising it then you are lying. We’ve all done it. We’ve all said it. We all have a connotation in our head that homsi is equal with stupid. Even when Steve Jobs died, some statuses were: “A Homsi just changed the world….”
The Homsis are also the ones getting hammered by Assad’s forces now in their revolution.
Then why don’t we all get into a fit of “OMG OMG *hyperventilates* RACISM” when everyone does the Homsi jokes?
Yes, you guessed it. No one sees it as racism. But it is. It flagrantly is.
The recent? The leading Lebanese TV station MTV featured on one of its comedy shows “Ktir Salbe” a comedy skit about migrant workers in Lebanon that many perceived as racist. BeirutSpring was even speculating about boycotting MTV as a whole, starting with deleting their app.
1) I have no idea if people in Lebanon actually think our society is NOT racist, but apparently this is the case. Why else would everyone get angry because of a comedy skit that showcases what most people do with the maids they get?
2) For those criticizing the comedy skit, I ask. How many of you watch American comedy shows such as SouthPark or Family Guy? Are you offended by the racist “slurs” those shows make? Better yet, in case “cartoons” are too childish for you, what’s your opinion on shows like The Colbert Report and other political satire shows that also make fun of racist issues? You laugh at those, right? Is your idea of “deranged comedy” only applicable when it’s done by a Lebanese?
3) Regardless of how you look at it, the Ktir Salbe skit is racist. But it’s not racist because they, as actors and personnel and TV station, are racist. The skit is as such because the show is, at the end of the day, a satire on Lebanese society. Just for reference, those same characters have had a very similar skit where they were parents at their children’s school, asking the headmistress every unimaginable thing you can come up with – including making their child sectarian. Why didn’t anyone get angry then?
4) MTV is possibly the only Lebanese TV station actually highlighting humanitarian issues in Lebanon. They even have a show “Tahkik” used exclusively for such purposes. Even the news report about foreigners in Bourj Hammoud was highlighting a social issue that many Lebanese societies have. Whether that news report was well done or not is a totally different matter. And yet, everyone had to feel involved with it. Question. Are you from Bourj Hammoud? If so, were you offended by that news report and the subsequent decision by your municipality to regulate foreign workers? If you’re from Bourj Hammoud and you were offended, then you know how to vote next elections. If you’re not from Bourj Hammoud, then you do have a right for free speech, obviously. But how do you know that the crime rates have not gone up because of an uncontrolled influx of foreign workers?
I blogged about this before with regards to the Myriam Achkar murder – foreign workers in Lebanon need to be regulated, whether you think it’s racist or not.
5) For all matters and purposes, MTV is the best Lebanese TV station. It is revolutionary in every way possible for the Lebanese scene: they have a great iOS app, they are very apt at handling social media, they use state of the art technology, etc…. Regardless of the political content of its news, so you don’t say I’m politically biased, every single show MTV airs is done with the care for details and with great execution. Their comedy shows can be lame sometimes, as is the case with every Lebanese comedy show, but it still doesn’t mean we need to bash them for the comedy they do because, at the end of the day, they are doing “comedy.”
For those who want to boycott MTV, have you tried contacting the TV station first to see what it has to say about this? A TV show does not summarize a whole TV station.
As for the rest, I quote: “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares 