The untold story of kindness toward maids

LASTING IMPRESSION: Some maids remember their benevolent employers years after returning home.

JEDDAH: Behind the walls of Saudi houses, the human stories that reflect the special relations between families and their domestic workers are seldom told.
Relating such stories recently, some maids could not hold back their tears and emotions while expressing the generosity of their sponsors, or the beautiful and good surprises they encountered during their work.
A few days ago an Indonesian maid attracted thousands of tweets after she published a video from inside her house which she built with the little salary she received in Saudi Arabia. The video showed her employer the whole house, room by room, while the maid was seen saying: “Thank you baba for everything.”
An Ethiopian maid, Naema, could not hold her tears when her employer held a ceremony to honor her after she memorized a section of the holy Qur’an.
Twitter users circulated on April 30 a video from Yanbu of the employer talking about his maid and his insistence on throwing a party with his family to honor her after she memorized a part of the Holy Qur’an and once she knew of the ceremony she cried as an expression of joy.
In a courageous brave act, a Filipino maid managed to save the two babies of her employer last May after a big snake entered the family house in Al-Dilimi village to the north of Bisha.
The head of the family said the children were in the kitchen with the maid when the snake slithered into the place. She immediately took the children out into the courtyard, went back in and killed the snake.
In another story which revealed the depth of the relationship between Saudi families and domestic workers, citizen Salah Sioufi talked in a video about the care his family gave to a maid called Nora for 19 years.
The video showed Sioufi saying that Nora was working for another sponsor but woke up one morning suffering from a type of paralysis in her hand and two feet. The former sponsor was about to complete the procedures to send her back to her country of origin, but the family of Sioufi asked to transfer the sponsorship to them and took care of her.
A Saudi citizen in Qasim surprised his maid by canceling the lawsuit he filled against her when he learned she converted to Islam, although she defamed him on social media and the media outlets in her country, and confessed to the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution that she had stolen money from his house.