Minaret: A Novel by Leila Aboulela

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    Yesterday's dinner plates are piled high in the sink - no one had bothered to wash them. If they had at least rinsed them, it would have been a help. Instead, hits of food are congealed and sticky on the plates. I run the hot water over them a long time, till they become unstuck. I enjoy being in a home rather than cleaning offices and hotels. I like being part of a family, touching their things, knowing what they ate, what they threw in the bin. I know them in intimate ways while they hardly know me, as if I and invisible. It still takes the by surprise how natural I and in this servant role. On my very first day as a plaid (not when I worked for Aunty Eva - I didn't feel like a maid with her - but later when I started working for her friend) memories rushed back at tile. All the ingratiating manners, the downcast eyes, the sideway movements of the servants I grew up with. I used to take them for granted. I didn't know a lot about them - our succession of Ethiopian maids, houseboys, our gardener - but I must have been close to them, absorbing their ways, so that now, years later and in another continent, I am one of them.

    I remember an Ethiopian maid who told me that her friends called her Donna Summer because she resembled the singer. She laughed when I too started to call her Donna. Donna put eggs yolk in her hair, egg white on her face, rubbed her legs with BP petroleum jelly. She wore a short pink corduroy skirt on her day out. She was a refugee in Sudan. She would talk about Ethiopia, about the cool mountains and the rains and the good schools they had there. She said she would go with her boyfriend to the States and, once she got there, escape from him at the airport, run. Why? I asked her and she said because he was not qualified, he wasn't even a mechanic she said; he just washed the glasses in a juice counter. She was fun to be with - sparkling, pretty, swinging her hips in the kitchen. She always wore a necklace, a little bronze cross shining between her collar-hones. One day she was ill and Mama and I visited her. Her home was a wretched mud house, wide and sprawling, almost like a compound. It was full of men and women, all young, all Ethiopian, all refugees. We didn't know if they were related or not. Donna was lying, thin and feverish, on a low cot. I didn't know if she was glad to see us or not. When she recovered, she stole Mania's Chanel No 5, a nightdress and a pair of sandals Mania had never worn. We never saw her again. Mama could have called the police and told them where Donna lived but she didn't - she liked her too much - and, feeling hurt, she even hid the theft from Baba. We got another Ethiopian maid - dull and untalkative, she took no pride in her looks or her figure. I like to think that Donna made it to the States; made it to that better life she felt she deserved. I wish I could meet her now, hug her with my dripping gloves which I wear because, like her, I pride myself in keeping my hands smooth. I would tell her, 'Look what happened, I'm washing dishes like you did,' and we would laugh together.

    'It's time for my coffee,' I)octora Zeinah says as she puts the kettle on, scoops Nescafe into her mug. I know now that I am expected to continue ironing - I push a button and steam heaves out, I manoeuvre the iron around the buttons.
    She surveys the kitchen. 'I took that chicken out of the freezer last night so that it would have time to melt. Otherwise, how would you cook it? I told Lamva she has to remember every night before she sleeps to take out meat or chicken so that you can cook it the next day. I hope she remembers.'
    Insha' Allah,' I murmur.
    My children grew up in Oman where we always had maids. They're very spoilt and can't look after themselves. Tamer can't even make himself a cup of tea! I wouldn't mind if he ate out, Mcl)onald's or at his college, but none of that is halal here and he's always been strict. He will only eat halal meat. I don't know where he got his