noor

yesterday noor, my host family's filipino maid, asked me if the reason american people had blue and green eyes was because of the weather? and she was perfectly, innocently serious.
noor is 19 years old, and is the 7th of 10 children in a family from a rural province of the philippines. she came to jordan with one of her sisters, but that sister works in a city a couple hours away so she rarely sees her. noor came to jordan to work as a live-in maid on a two-year (now extended to three-year) contract to earn money to put one of her older sisters through college at home. in jordan today there is an increasingly common practice, supported by the embassies of the respective countries, of bringing domestic workers from the philippines and sri lanka to work as household maids for middle class and wealthy families here. although their wages are determined by legal minimums, the quality of life for these immigrant workers varies greatly from family to family and often does not meet standards that i would consider conducive to basic human dignity. living with a very wealthy family that has a maid is a challenge for me emotionally and morally, and unfortunately my only option is to accept the situation as is without comment or action. noor is hard at work every day cleaning, cooking, doing any/all household chores. she rarely gets to leave the house, and when she does it is mostly to accompany my host mom on errands. her room is a small one just off the kitchen that also serves as a partial laundry and storage room. her bed is a mattress on the floor. she speaks pretty good english, which she learned in school, and over the two years she's been here has learned all arabic necessary for her daily life (at home in the philippines she speaks tagalog). when she has free time noor likes to listen to the radio, read magazines from the house, and talk to her sister on the phone. noor is luckier than the other situations i've seen here in that her relationship with my host family is a positive one (or as positive as possible, considering). what i mean by this is that i can see that after two years they, especially my host mom, really love her and consider her as much a part of the family as their social divide permits them to. however, this does not stop any member of the family from telling her what to do. the thing i find really unbearable is when my (somewhat spoiled) host siblings will sit in the living room watching tv and instead of walking into the kitchen to get it themselves, will yell for noor at the top of their voice and instruct her to bring them a glass of water.
noor amazes me because despite the hardships and monotony of the life she is leading, she is one of the most truly sweet and kind-hearted people i have ever met. she has informed my parents via skype that i am her new sister, and no matter how much work she has done she is always smiling and offering to make me food. her name means 'light', and the radiance of her heart really does embody her name.