The water flows abundantly, while the scene of the white soap that is mixed with turmeric and henna is floating on the floor of the public steam bathhouse, crowded with women from different classes. Their voices are rising between a woman looking for a masseuse, another for a scrubber (a woman who provides full body exfoliation with Loofah), and a third one looking for someone who washes her body after the period of childbirth, as is the custom in Yemeni society.
All these roles are performed by black girls from the so-called “Muhammasheen” group (the Arabic term for marginalized), who serve, wash, and clean the women. It is a profession that is inherently linked to the class discrimination in Yemeni society. It has become the domain of Muhamasheen women, who are subjected to a lot of bullying and disparagement by society, as one of them tells "Khuyut."
A Constant Feeling of Derogation
Jamila Al-Ba’adani (40 years old), a woman from the Muhamasheen group from Ibb governorate, was displaced to Sana'a in search of a job to meet her needs. However, because she is from the Muhamasheen group, she found no choice but to join her counterparts, who are from this marginalized group, to work in the Al-Jeraf steam bathhouse after she had been stranded.
Jamila says in her interview with “Khuyut”: "We were created inferior to others—or so they always try to convince us—so how can we dream, for example, or even think to learn?
She comes to work in the bathhouse three days a week, from the sunrise until the sunset. These three days are the time allotted to women during the week; that is, an average of one day for men and one day for women, according to the tradition followed in the public steam bathhouses (saunas) in Sanaa.
"The marginalized do not receive any rights or attention from the state in relation to the jobs they do, to the extent that they do not have the minimum means of occupational protection, especially for workers in hazardous professions."
“I am fully aware that there is no shame in halal work (permissible jobs), regardless of the small amount I get after a hard and exhausting day. However, the sad thing is your feeling when one of them treats you with derogation and considers that you are a lower and inferior person in your human rank. This feeling flares up inside me whenever one of them screams at me when I clean her," Al-Ba’adani explains to "Khuyut."
She is Just a Servant
The racist impact on the Muhamasheen women working in public steam bathhouses does not stop at just bullying and verbal and moral abuse; in many cases, it extends to physical abuse, as Fadwa says, a marginalized girl in her early twenties who also works in one of the bathhouses in the airport area, north of Sanaa.
According to Fadwa’s interview with "Khuyut," she was once assaulted by two girls, who sprayed her eyes with water at boiling temperature. She says: “One day, while I was doing my job of massaging women in the bathhouse, as usual, there were two girls bullying me, and then they poured very hot water on my eyes. Although I did not resist or retaliate, and I rushed to wash my eyes with cold water to relieve the pain, I heard one of them justifying her action to the women: “What’s wrong? what'll happen? She's just a servant." Let her burn.
No Insurance, No Syndicate
From a legal point of view, it is customary for all businesses and professions to be regulated under the supervision of institutions, unions, employment laws, and insurance that guarantees those involved in the profession their rights and their insurance against risks, and this is already the case, but with the exception of the lesser professions associated with the Muhamasheen group, such as sewing shoes, washing cars, cleaning streets and public bathrooms, and sanitation (sewage).
Actually, all of those people do not have a syndicate or pressure group that defends their professional and social rights, which are granted to them by Yemeni law, like other workers in other professions, regardless of the social complexes that are intractable towards them as a group that is predominantly described as the 'Muhamasheen', the marginalized.
On the other hand, the lawyer Samar Al-Ariqi confirms in a statement to “Khuyut” that “the Yemeni constitution and law “did not differentiate between a man or a woman, white or black. However, the inherited societal view against the Muhamasheen and that they are inferior people made the state not care about regulating their various businesses or protecting them from the risks of work-related injuries and obtaining insurance.”
In the same context, Salah Dabwan, the secretary-general of the marginalized union, states to "Khuyut" by saying that "the Muhamasheen do not receive any rights or attention from the state in relation to the jobs they do, to the extent that they do not have the minimum means of occupational protection, especially for workers in hazardous professions."
Accordingly, the emotional and moral harm suffered by marginalized women working in public bathhouses continues to be one of the links in a long chain of class exclusion and governmental failure, in addition to media marginalization. Moreover, this puts us in front of a logical paradox related to those women who work in cleaning the ladies of high society: “What prevents us from also cleaning our minds of the deposits of racism and contempt towards human beings whose only fault is that they were born from families called "marginalized"?
