She was probably in her early fifties but looked twenty years older as she shuffled around the room bent over at a ninety-degree angle and muttering to herself in Urdu.
I was in the Marriott Lahore, arguably the best hotel in Pakistan. My sponsor, USAID, provided a modest per diem for consultants, barely enough to cover necessities. As usual, I upgraded at my own expense for security, comfort, and convenience.
Pakistan, like most Muslim countries, is misunderstood in the developed world. I was there doing economic development work under a foreign aid grant. Part of a team of American ex-pats working for a small consulting group retained by USAID to implement an agribusiness competitiveness project. The COP, Chief of Party, had a PhD in economics from Harvard and was a brilliant, if not reckless, project manager.
At first, I didn’t feel it, that strange sensation that comes over you when first entering a new country. I knew Pakistan was Muslim, I was well briefed on its history going back to 1947 and the separation from British controlled India. Pakistan was carved out of the cultural, religious, and political mud of the times, the mid-1940s after WW11. India was and is a Hindu state, Muslims were a distinct and abused minority. The iconic Mahatma Gandhi changed all that with his passive approach to resisting the oppressive Hindu power structure sanctioned by the British.
The British solution to political dysfunction based upon culture and religion was to establish an entirely new protectorate leading to independence, Israel and Pakistan were shining, if not tarnished, examples.
The Marriott had cornered the market in the third world with hotels offering western comfort, convenience, and amenities.
It was mid-morning on a Saturday, my day off, I had just returned from a leisurely breakfast on the VIP floor, that ubiquitous perk provided to guests with enough points in the Marriott Rewards program. My 15-inch MacBook-Pro with 16 GB of ex-pat project memory was tucked under my arm. My breakfast habit was to catch up on time adjusted Skype correspondence with family and colleagues in the US and UK, the Marriott always had good WIFI and western-style electrical outlets near each table.
Approaching my room on the third floor I saw the cart, overflowing with clean towels and sheets, the door to my room was propped open, this was for the security of staff, always a woman, and for the guest.
I walked in with a cheery “hello” to let her know I was there and not to be alarmed. The bathroom door was ajar.
She shuffled out with a dour expression on her face and a wide sweeping gesture with her free arm, the other holding a wash bucket and the tools of her trade. She wanted to know if I would allow her to finish the work.
I nodded yes and indicated with my ex-pat sign language that I wanted more regular coffee packs, not the decaf kind. She looked at me like I had asked her for a bottle of Dom Perignon and a side of caviar. There was not a hint of agreement on her face.
I gave up and went about reconnecting my MacBook.
The vacuum was insistent and loud; I was having doubts about being so accommodating, I should have insisted she come back later.
When the noise stopped, she was fussing over the tables and adjusting the placement of the lamp, phone, and alarm clock on the bedside table.
It was then she saw it, I had replaced the Koran with my copy of the NIV Bible. It was a beautiful book, a black soft leather cover with thumb dividers for each chapter. It had two bookmark ribbons, one purple, and one blue. I used purple for the new testament, I kept it on Romans and used blue for the old, I kept it on my favorite, the book of Job.
I was focused on a dreary report about the Pakistani cotton spinning industry when the sound reached me; it was a gasp.
"Mister, Mister".
I turned to see her pointing to my bible with what only could be described as a look of awe.
Her dour expression had turned to a wide toothless grin and the miraculous ability to speak English, if only with an indecipherable accent.
“You Christian”
This was a statement, not a question, the woman was on the verge of tears, I would have said yes if my name was Goldberg.
My yes produced an almost beatific response, she wiped a tear from her cheek, smiled, and answered, “me too Mister”.
That brief exchange started a stream of consciousness; she couldn’t stop talking, broken English interspersed with Urdu and a Fodor’s dictionary of local dialects.
She told me that Christians were a tiny minority of Lahore’s Muslim population, that they were persecuted in hundreds of ways large and small and relegated to the lowliest manual tasks that Muslims refused to perform like cleaning public toilets. The lucky ones worked in hotels.
She spoke hesitantly but with passion; “we Christians need to stick together; we need to help each other”. For the first time in my life, I understood what it meant to be a minority. To feel a sense of persecution for an accident of birth. I began to understand the solidarity that comes from oppression from surviving in a society bent upon your humiliation. People with common purpose soon learn that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and that if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
This humble cleaning lady on the staff of an American Hotel chain in Lahore, Pakistan was teaching me something profound, something I never learned in the Ivy League. The maxim that minorities stick together, Jews, Armenians, Muslims, or Christians is about survival, it’s about dignity and respect, it’s about who you are not what you have.
“We help each other Mister,” she said with a grin as she loaded my coffee tray with caffeinated packets. “If you need extra towels or soap, you let me know.”
She handed me the guest survey form with a wink.
I was stunned, this woman was teaching me the Golden Rule, a powerful lesson, do on to others as you would have them do on to you.
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