Homemade and homebred: Our cotton fields are no fig of fiction but real!
Take a peek with "thine own eyes"! There is a whole variety of them in each of our own vicinities! Or even better, meet those whose stubbed, scarred and scabbed fingers are the "proof of the cotton-picking pudding"!
Take Zakir and Bilal for example, who have come all the way from Bangladesh for the pleasure of cleaning our street cotton fields. So loyal they are, that they work round the clock (according to my honest-to-God 16-hour stake out - until sleep ran me over. When and where were they dropped off or picked up from? God knows).
So content, healthy, fulfilled, well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed etc., they are, that they can go months without their SR700 salaries (yes, I admit the sum most likely is exaggerated here) unneeded by their families back home who are also so content, healthy, fulfilled, well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed!
They are super beings (possible Superman descendants? Fictional fig or not!) feeding on scraps (so affordable even without the exaggerated SR700!) lest they outgrow their cotton field purple gowns costing us to inconveniently accommodate their grand bodies!
Then there is Leila (her actual name is - but who cares? What's in a name? She's yours! Call her as you may eh?) She is 32 years old (actually 17 but shshsh! - never ask about a woman's age...that is of course what she is? Or is she? Who cares?) She flew all the way from Indonesia to run her fingers through our cotton field houses! She's a Wonder Woman in no guise at all! She-"sleepless in Sea-cotton-field-attle": Cooks your food, does your bathrooms, cleans your dishes, washes and irons your clothes, rears your children: NON-STOP! Really, so tireless she is and so effortless her days are, that she forfeits off days (remember Wonder Woman doesn't need them!) Sure she may (literally) get her share of kicks, her share of pats on the back (more like WHACKS! - oh I'm sorry did that hurt? Well, meet the truth!!) and may even cut herself - accidentally of course (or someone else will sponsor the favor). And yes, she's no "Maid in Manhattan", nowhere near as lucky as Jennifer Lopez. But she just may be baking a cotton-field bun in her oven, on her way home: Hers for keeps! Lucky, lucky Leila! Yours truly, cotton-field owner (& sons).
Did I mention that so content, healthy, fulfilled, well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed lucky lucky Leila is (her family back home too), that she can (and does) leave the cotton fields empty-handed with ONLY the cotton-field bun. Even during her cotton-field stay here she can go without pay AND forfeit any remaining dues (after all Wonder Woman aka lucky lucky Leila isn't in need of such things!)
Ah how moving and so self-sacrificial! (Bless them all! - their sacrifices water our cotton fields!) And we, all the better and richer for it!
Next, meet Mustafa! All the way from Pakistan to play his part in assembling our cotton-field buildings (our rare and so unique monuments of civilization! One can only squeal at the touch of modernity, such monuments give us!)
Mustafa is a hero, climbing to all sorts of incredible heights with no safety belts, nets or harnesses! For the sake of our cotton-field construction, he risks his all, like so many of the countless cotton-field construction on-site volunteers (well, they must be volunteers: Anonymously working for scarcely any substantial pay if not for free! Aren't employees supposed to be official and contractually paid? Oh, labor laws yet to be activated and humanized?) So often Mustafa (as any covolunteer) having had his fill of climbing heights, may fall into the arms of gravity (replaying scene of Isaac Newton's apple!) Indeed, Mustafa under his worn and torn garb is a Spiderman! (So that's why no safety belts, nets or harnesses! Oddly enough, at the morgue, the deceased's Spiderman costume was nowhere to be found! Invisible to the human eye!) What astounding cotton-field martyrdom! No medical insurance, no end-of-service dues and not even every dead Muslim's basic right to immediate burial rites! So hard it is for dead construction workers to depart from our cotton-field sites that their departure from our morgues is painstakingly slow as they lay there for months (because no one cares, sorry knows they're dead?) Oh and of course having lived so content, healthy, fulfilled, well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed, Mustafa's family back home lives so-content, healthy, fulfilled, well-fed, well-housed and well-clothed ever after!
There's also Hasan, all the way from Somalia (or Ethiopia? Who cares; it's all the same color, isn't it?) to drive cotton-field vehicles for establishments or families. And what a wizard Hasan is, for his chauffeur abilities are supernatural: children's school at 5 a.m. and 2 p.m.; 9 a.m., 11 p.m drives to university campuses; 10 a.m. and 5:30 p.m drives to office, shopping malls and beauty saloons; timeless drives to mini-markets for sporadic an odd thing or two; afternoon drives to coffee shops and restaurants (where he enjoys the heat and sun basking wait - the vitamin D dosages will do him good!); 12 a.m. drive to a wedding/banquet hall and 4:30 a.m. pick-up from there (if only Cinderella's midnight worked here!)...
Did you see Supernatural Hasan sleep? Eat? Rest? Not even a single bowel movement! Any human would beg to differ at this point but no, such needs are of and for humans only. (And human treatment is beneath his supernatural status!)
And supernaturally, he is so content, healthy, fulfilled, well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed etc. and his family too, that late wages, poor wages or even no wages have no impact whatsoever on him or his family! In Hasan's case it's actually a good ending for he's not dead but still driving supernaturally ever after!
Wait! You've not met Ahmad, the Yemeni real cotton-field estate broker! So precious are our cotton-field properties, so untouchable are the cotton-field owners that he can only accept when they "give him an offer he can't refuse" (I'm sure many of us deserve the surprise of a horse's bloody severed head snuggled between our silk bed sheets! Bless Godfather Carleone! You don't know The Don? Ah the bliss of ignorance!)
You've a meeting? A call to make or take? Beckoned by a call of nature? I ask for a minute more (not a penny for your thoughts. I know, I know: You're broke, no thoughts and no change!)
Umm Hamdan (mother of Hamdan, too shy and ashamed to use her first name) is a cotton-field clerk. Almost the luckiest, she is a cotton field native, just like cotton-field owners (but DIFFERENT class than them of course, and never seen the inside of a school either!) She only has to be driven two hours daily from the three-room apartment (shared with her so content, healthy, fulfilled, well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed family of 16) to her work at a cotton-field educational institution.
Now Umm Hamdan, 51 years old, must be an ultra spiritual creature for she miraculously rises above her rheumatoid, her frail osteoporosis, spinal issues and walks the planks, department to department, shuffling the papers. So content, healthy, fulfilled, well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed Umm Hamdan is that she does not even receive minimum wages, or medical insurance. She, in fact, brings out the best in cotton-field owners (depending on moods, hairstyles and pockets) inspiring charity: SR10 from diamond and Rolex cotton-field owners! (Such charity just makes you want to weep, doesn't it?)
The privileges of being a cotton-field worker: Poor pay, delayed pay or no pay; no contract, no medical insurance; unlimited working hours; no off-days; no rights; no safety; no guarantees; no compensation; possible personal violations - just cotton, cotton and more cotton!
And let's not forget the cotton-field worker status branding you wherever you go, whether you're waiting in line at the airport passport counter, waiting to get a water truck or even waiting in your home wreck to be rescued from a city flood! (Cotton-field workers can endure waiting, thirst and floods!)
I'm sure you're drooling with enthusiasm for a cotton-field position! Anyone can apply and qualify for cotton-field jobs and treatment except for Western nationalities, the Western-accented, and cotton-field owners from certain cotton-field families.
Cotton-field recruitment checks applicants and candidates for skin color, accent, nationality West or East? (Which East too), family, appearance etc.
So tell me again: What faith are we believers of? Are we really standing on common ground where the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and Islam were "born"? Is the Hadith that we "pay the worker before his sweat dries" true? Do we subscribe to "iman" (faith) that says, "love for your brother what you love for yourself"? Are we ignorant of the fact that Zakir, Bilal, Leila, Hasan, Ahmad and Umm Hamdan are HUMAN? Do we not know that our lives and theirs, at God's Will, could trade places - just like that!
These questions are NOT rhetorical. There is no conclusion. There is no finale.
© Arab News 2010
