While my partner and I were in transit at the Abu Dhabi airport, unsure whether my jetlagged body wanted dinner or breakfast, I ordered an Americano. As I waited at the food court café, a striking Arab woman in a black headscarf and abaya came up to the counter to pay for a small Caesar salad. As we smiled at each other, we heard a crash from near the espresso machine. The flustered barista, a young, brown-skinned woman probably from Southeast Asia, bustled apologetically.
“It happens,” the Arab woman reassured the barista. “Don’t worry.”
“Are you okay?” I asked the barista, as she started again on the Americano. Turning to my fellow customer, I said, “Dangerous work!”
She nodded. “And they are under so much pressure. Long shifts, and they have to smile all the time.”
“I was just thinking that,” I replied, flashing back on the promotional videos about Abu Dhabi I had watched on the Etihad Airways flight: smiling African or Asian faces greeted guests at luxurious hotels and clubs. “They smile all the time as they serve people, but they can’t afford the luxuries they are serving.”
The barista set my Americano in front of me and gave me change for a twenty-dollar bill. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
“No problem,” I smiled at her and at the woman with the Caesar salad, which she paid for in local dirhams. As I sipped my coffee, I noticed her at a nearby table, talking on her cell phone.
A little later, she came over to the table where I was sitting with my partner, held out her hand to shake ours, and said she had noticed us taking photos. “Would you like me to take a photo of the two of you together?” she smiled. As she handed the camera back to me, she asked how we were doing and where we were headed. When my partner asked, she told us she was off on a two-day business trip to Doha, and then, leather tote bag on her shoulder, she went down the escalator toward the flight gates.
Our paths are unlikely to cross again, but I will look for her the next time I am in transit in Abu Dhabi.
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| Looking down from the food court at Abu Dhabi airport |
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| Light and glass decorate the airport in Abu Dhabi |
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