“Home” can be a very complex thing. For a lot of migrant domestic workers, home is often out of reach.
In Beirut, there are a group of women that are unseen in the public eye. Some of them have lived in the city for decades, working tirelessly as live-in maids to send money home to their own families. But their working conditions leave much to be desired.
French-Canadian-Moroccan filmmaker Lamia Chraibi’s short documentary Like a Spiral (Comme une spirale) had its world premiere at VIFF 2024. The film is a conversation between five women and the city of Beirut. These five women come from different places and speak different languages, but they all live and work in the city under the kafala system. This system is established in many countries within the Middle East: it “requires migrant workers to have an in-country sponsor, usually their employer, who is responsible for their visa and legal status”. However, this leads to the exploitation of workers whose passports are often taken away as soon as they pass through customs.
Scenes of the city play out through hypnotising shifts of light while the women tell their stories in their mother tongues. The majority of the film only captures the buildings and streets of the city. Beirut is almost like a “character” itself, listening and responding to the women’s confessions.
“Beirut is a city that really fascinated me,” Chraibi tells Pancouver over Zoom. “You can see that the revolution is still very present in the walls, everywhere in the city. It’s physically marked by its very sad history.”
The women, in return, speak to Beirut with raw honesty. Their complex feelings about the city, love and hate, are laid bare in the harsh realities of their working conditions.
“It was very important for me to give a voice to women from different countries who speak different languages as well,” Chraibi says, “because that’s the reality there.”
Her filmmaking team was small, but it was important for her to include migrant domestic workers in the process. When she interviewed the women, her translators were often a migrant domestic worker themselves or a child of one, and her camera assistant Veronicah Mage is also a domestic migrant worker who they trained to be part of the team.
Many of the migrant domestic workers are from Africa or Southeast Asia, from different religions and ethnicities. The majority of them are mothers, feeling the weight of responsibility to provide for their families back home. Despite spending their entire days with their employer’s family, these women see their own families very rarely.
Under the system, all migrant domestic workers must live in the same place as their employer. Depending on the family they are working for, some of them are barely even allowed to leave the house. They are the invisible inhabitants of the city.
But invisibility does not mean silence. Some of these women are organizing their own groups and awareness campaigns despite the restrictions in place preventing them from gathering together. They warn others in their home countries about what the kafala system is, and even found ways to create shelters for migrant workers.
The day the kafala system is dismantled may still be far away. In the meantime, these women are building their own support networks and are working hard to see the system abolished in the near future. Their activism, and this film, hopes to raise their voices so people in Lebanon and around the world can hear them, too.
In August 2020, Beirut suffered a large explosion that resulted in many casualties and destroyed much of the city. Migrant workers were often at the bottom of the list for relief efforts, or excluded altogether. But in times of crisis, the migrant workers came together to provide help for those in need. They came out to help clean the streets, distribute food, and joined the efforts to rebuild the city. Their contributions drew attention from the media.
“It was one of the first times they were visible in the public space,” Chraibi says.
With the recent and ongoing Israeli airstrikes, a similar scene is unfolding on the streets of Beirut right now.
“Some migrant domestic workers are abandoned by their employers,” Chraibi says. “And struggle to find transportation to leave the impacted areas… And some are forced to stay with their employers even if it’s very dangerous for them.”
Many migrant communities have opened their own doors for other migrant domestic workers fleeing the targeted neighbourhoods. “Private homes have become storage spaces, community kitchens, and shelters,” Chraibi says. But these spaces are at constant risk of eviction.
Chraibi does mention, however, that there are organizations led by migrant domestic workers that aim to provide humanitarian relief to their communities. Organizations such as REMAN, TRES MARIAS, DOWAN and NEHNA HON and others have launched a united emergency response campaign “Voices of the Unseen”, urging people beyond their community to help where they can.
“I hope that this film can bring awareness about this reality,” Chraibi says. “And I hope that it will encourage people to honour everything they do to survive and to help people who are currently displaced in Lebanon.”
Like a Spiral (Comme une spirale) was screened as part of the 2024 Vancouver International Film Festival’s Short Forum. For those able to donate, please consider the the “Voices of the Unseen” campaign and REMAN’s gofundme.
