Ode to cleaning ladies

Saba Faisal may disagree, but they are a treasure to be cherished

SLOUGH, ENGLAND:

One of the best things about living in Pakistan is the luxury it allows you to be idle. For anyone wishing to tap into their lazy side, there can be no finer haven.

Have a pathological fear of ironing? Would rather stick pins in your eyes than clean toilets? Think life is not worth living if you have to scrub oily (and heavy) pots? It doesn't matter! For a nominal fee, someone – usually a woman, sometimes two women – will turn up at your door six days a week and take on all of these joyless tasks for you. They may not dust underneath ornaments with the vigour you would like, but the incontestable fact remains that they exist. Thanks to the presence of Pakistani cleaning ladies, it is entirely possible to get ironing done by mere use of the words "iron this". A shoddy job is better than no job at all – as all too many realise every Sunday when there is no one to tackle the mountain of dishes that keep reproducing like crazed rabbits.

A workforce to be cherished

If the above sounds like a love letter to cleaning ladies, it is because that is exactly what it is. It is a harsh realisation that those of us in so-called developed countries have to contend with. When one is not Marie Kondo or Mary Poppins, one has to bite the bullet and get down on one's knees to clean underneath the dining table. We have to hang up our own laundry (which rises exponentially with the same fervour as dirty dishes) alongside a whispered prayer that it takes less than two business days to dry this time. We also conclude that there are more important things in life than ironing.

All of this is a very roundabout way of saying that with however little grace Pakistan's cleaning ladies whack rugs to beat out the dust (which inevitably settles right back down from whence it came) they are nevertheless a national treasure. Without them, no one would bother sweeping under the bed, creased dupattas would become fashion law, and factories churning out ornaments would have to shut down because no one would ever let another useless dust-magnet crevice-filled crystal decoration piece enter their homes ever again.

Saba Faisal's household tips

All of this is a very roundabout way of saying that actor Saba Faisal should perhaps cherish her house help a tad more than she does. Unfortunately for her staff, however, the art of cherishing does not appear to feature in Saba's collection of household tips, although she does have her reasons for this. As the Khaie actor observed during a recent appearance on Ahmad Ali Butt's podcast, "No one causes more fights in any home than the house help."

In addition to outsourcing beastly housework, Saba is also keen to outsource any blame for any discord that may erupt amongst her family. Pay attention if you, too, need to learn how to stamp out staff-fuelled family feuds, because Saba has an iron-clad solution.

"In my house, my rule is that the house help will not talk to anyone," Saba explained. "Not even to each other. And if anyone tries to break that rule, I just shut them down."

Now, you may think that since Saba is a celebrity and must, therefore, live in a house that requires attention to detail, she is entitled to dislike meaningless chatter. However, it is not just meaningless chatter that Saba wishes to eradicate; she also requires absolute silence.

"For me, all my children and my daughters-in-law are all completely equal," she insisted. "I do not want to hear anything about anyone, so don't you dare come and backbite to me about anyone else."

Saba seems to feel that unless otherwise schooled, her staff are biologically primed to gossip amongst themselves (to the detriment of mopping under the stairs) and file complaints about her children or daughters-in-law. To get around this, perhaps she should consider investing in cleaning robots and self-operated vacuum cleaners, both of which have little interest in backbiting. On the flip side, robots still require plugging in after a hard day's work. More importantly, a robot vacuum cleaner can suck up crumbs and dust and fallen hair like a dream, but it is sadly lacking in the 'inflating my mistress's ego' department.

It's not just Saba

You may be led to conclude that Saba's tendency to wield such power over staff comes with being a member of the showbiz industry. You would be wrong. Other non-showbiz Pakistani women also follow her methods of staff ownership – and they don't even have to be in Pakistan to do it. South Africa, like Pakistan, is yet another land teeming with an assembly line of women aching to come and clean houses – and if they find themselves in a domain headed by a Pakistani woman, they had better be performing warm-up stretches before they start work.

"If I am paying her, I don't expect her to just clean," says Fatima (not her real name), a mother of three in Johannesburg. "I expect her to serve."

To 'serve' entails transforming into a Victorian housemaid. "I want her to bring me tea on a tray," continues Fatima. "She should wake up before us, get the children's lunches ready, get breakfast ready, and make sure my husband has his tea. She should also get the children ready for school, take them there, come back and get on with the cleaning."

Johannesburg is home to many Pakistani women expats who share Fatima's expectations, and they nearly always manage to find an unfortunate Zimbabwean immigrant willing to put up with them. Just like in Pakistan, their crockery is demarcated, they eat separately from the family, and it is assumed that they have as many arms as an octopus. And the way things are going, robots or not robots, none of that is about to change. Not all Pakistani women, you see, are able to overcome that pathological fear of cleaning. And until they do, the Sabas of the universe will continue to operate their military regime without anyone saying a word.