The first day of work went well.
I cleaned the home of a teacher from the mosque.
“Do whatever you can,” she said.
She’d check up on me every once in a while.
“Do you want some tea?”
“Are you hungry?
Have whatever you want from the fridge.
Consider yourself at home.”
That was the first day.
She was nice.

The last time was the worst.
It’s what made me stop cleaning homes.
There were two of us.
We were at a young lady’s house.
The house was a mess.
Her mother made us breakfast.
She wanted to help with the cleaning.
But her daughter would tell her,
“Don’t help them.
It’s their job.
Go outside until they finish.”

Her parents’ room was basically a pile of dust.
The balcony was full of rat droppings and garbage.
It was disgusting.
She’d close the door whenever we’d start cleaning.
“The dust makes me sick.”
Does that make you better than us?

She completely wore us out that day.
We worked from 6 am to 6 pm.
We dismantled and cleaned all the windows.
The fridge was in a terrible shape.
My neighbor, who was cleaning with me, kept scraping it with a knife for an hour.

We finally finished.
We were worn out.
Her mother was preparing food for us.
“Are you feeding them again?
They just ate, mama.”

She gave us 100 LE in the end.
“We did all this just to get 50 LE each?” my neighbor exclaimed.
“Nothing is worth 50 LE these days.
We’re not taking it.”

We gave her back the 100 LE.
It was as if we belonged to different worlds.
She looked at us in disdain.
I decided never to clean homes again because of her.