Fatima and Her World

The other person who used to turn away her face whenever she saw photos of snakes, as I mentioned in “Semi-close encounters with snakes”, was the help who worked in my parents’ house. She would not give a clear answer why. Photos of snakes were just a big no.

She was originally from my mother’s hometown. A friend told Mama about a trustworthy widow who would like to move to the city and work as a help after the death of her husband. She was in her late forties and had a married son and a daughter who lived back in the village. Mama immediately accepted.

What drew my attention first was her thick accent. I had to pay good attention to understand her, although I was not completely stranger to that accent because Mama would sometimes switch to her hometown accent if she met one of her old relatives or in her rare visits to her hometown.

Fatima was fat with curved body. Living all her life in the countryside made her unaware of many aspects of life in the big city. She shocked us at the beginning with her frequently-used swear words that infiltrated her talk. She, innocently and naively, had no sense in choosing the appropriate words. It was not until Mama let her understand that such words could not be tolerated, that she stopped using them. She also used to tell stories about how her late husband loved her and how he, before their marriage, threatened to commit suicide if she did not accept his proposal. Sometimes she was real fun.

She was also a flirt. I remember once I saw her in the corner of the garden with the guard of the neighbors' house in what looked as an intimate moment. There was nothing physical, but they seemed quite cozy. I took few steps back and mentioned nothing because my parents, with their conservative attitudes, would not have tolerated it.

She worked for us many years, until suddenly one day she requested to leave because she found another job for an expatriate family with a much better salary. We were disappointed by her decision. For few months after her departure Mama was so upset that she did not return back her calls, but later our attitude became friendly, and she used to come visit us every now and then.

In the following years I left the house and the country, and I did not see much of her. Mama told me in her last years Fatima was almost unrecognizable because she lost a huge weight due to her diabetes. She passed away in her hometown, survived by her son and daughter.