The Woman Whose Job is to Clean Toilets

To address her in a respectful manner, she expects people to call her Om Mahmoud. But since I'm her friend it's fine for me to call her Hanan. I don't know what her last name is. Either way, I doubt she would ever have the opportunity to Google her name.

Her job is to clean toilets. Make sure there is enough toilet paper, paper towels and soap. Wipe the floor after people who carelessly let the water on their arms and faces drip down. It may seem like a very simple job, but this is the first experience Hanan has with the world outside her family and it scares her every day.

When Hanan isn't cleaning toilets, she sits on a stool in the bathroom with her arm resting on the sink. She plays a few songs on her cell phone with the volume really low so as not to disturb the rest of the workers and holds the phone close to her ear to listen to the music. If she's played the songs too many times she'll call information and just listen to the automated message, pressing 1 for Arabic, 2 for the latest promotions. Another sort of music to help pass the time.

Hanan has three kids, one girl and two boys. One of her boys has a disability, although I'm not sure what. She says her husband's brother's daughter looks exactly like me. I have yet to see pictures and confirm this for myself. But still, I am happy to resemble someone close to her enough to put a smile on her face whenever I walk into the bathroom. To know that our short conversations about those scary auditors (or what she calls "wafd el 7'awaga"), her children, or my work, puts her more at ease to be leaving her house and family and stepping into a cold and lonely bathroom.

Today is Tuesday and Hanan hasn't been to work the past three days; she is out sick. And I realized today that if I were to leave my job here at IBM there are exactly two people I would miss seeing everyday: Heba Amin, who has been my buddy since our first year of university together; and Hanan.

This reminds me of the first day of our sophomore year at university when Passant Rabie and I had a bet going on to see who would say hello to more friends. Even though Passant won if we were to count university friends (she won by a small difference), she laughed at me because if we had counted all the security guards that waved at me, said hello and asked how my summer was, I would have won by a landslide.

So I see I am still as awkward as ever, not trying to fit in because I know that I never will. Nor will I ever be happy to.