If I were a maid?

Yesterday I tried to have my usual half an hour (ok maybe sometimes abit longer) afternoon nap. I tried to close my eyes I couldn't. A close family friend has gone for a short vacation and has left the maid with us and since there wasn't much space in any other room and it wouldn't work out otherwise, the maid is sleeping on the mattress in my room. She was having her afternoon nap as well. I don't think she could sleep either I think I caught a glimpse of her still awake. What was going through her mind? I would think of my personal trivial problems, how many assignments I have left, what to do after I graduate, etc. What was she thinking? Was she wondering whether her small brothers and sisters had enough food for the day? Was she counting the dirhams she's saved so far and what it would bring for her parents?

I found out that she was the same age as me. She's been a maid for my family friend for over 2 years and she had worked before that in other houses too. She must have been 15 or 16 when she first had to start this job. Did she know since she was little that she would eventually have to do this? Or was she told one day that she would have to leave her country, home, family and friends to live under the orders and commands of a family she did not know? What was she thinking on the plane? Probably wondering about how the family she would go to would be. Whether the mother would slap her if she did wrong or the father would harass her when no one was around. But she has seen the poverty in her homeland and the hunger of her city's babies. She knew there was no other choice if she wanted them to still be alive in 5 years.

We're both having an afternoon nap in the same room. She might be wishing we could switch roles and that she would be in my place instead. I hear about poverty and starvation on CNN but I am sleeping in the same room as a person whose family background is in the same condition, if not worse, as those on TV. A lot of us wish we could go to Somalia to help the people we see on TV when we have a poor, weak person in our own homes.

She is the same age as me. She is the same gender. It just happened to be that Allah decided that she should be born in a country that is disadvantaged and I should be born in a country that's not. Allah decided that this family shouldn't have enough money to eat and this family should have two cars. Allah could decide to switch roles. Overnight if He wants He could turn me into a maid and she into who tells me what to do.

But either way they're both tests! Allah didn't put me in a comfortable setting because my patience and tolerance don't need to be tested. She has no choice but to be patient and she will be rewarded for her patience. I could be grateful for the blessings He has given me and be rewarded or I could very easily and absent mindedly forget that Allah has given me these blessings and be ungrateful. In that case Allah would take these blessings away.

"If the most abundant of blessings reach you, do not drive them away by your lack of gratitude", Imam Ali (A.S.)