As I walked out of a midtown Manhattan building after visiting a friend, I bumped into an Enrique Iglesias look-alike who rushed to open the building s door for me. Have a great day , he said with a disarming smile.
I later understood that Miguel, half Colombian half Peruvian, worked in this building where a one-room flat cost over 3000 dollars a month to rent. Miguel, who could be an actor in any Mexican 350-episode series, arrived in NYC some 5 years ago and was lucky enough to find this job which paid him the minimum wage of $ 7.15 per hour. He works 40 hours a week, and is all smiles.
Down the street I stopped for a bagel, and was greeted by a very Middle-Eastern looking young man, who asked me whether I wanted any filling. I couldn t help but pop up the question about his origins, which turned out to be.Egyptian. Ali filled my bagel with cream cheese, asked me about Cairo, and told me he had landed in Manhattan 3 years before. His wage vaguely equals Miguel s, but he gets more tips from bagel lovers.
I wondered why young men like Miguel or Ali left home, left their friends and families, for minimum-wage jobs in one of the world s most expensive cities. Of course neither of them would dream of making 1,300 dollars a month back home. This would be one obvious answer.
Let s do some calculations. If Miguel or Ali rented a flat, along with three other friends, in one of New York s modest suburbs, they would probably pay some $ 300 each per month as their share in the rent. Keeping a basic diet would more likely cost them around 400 dollars a month. Bills and transportation would amount to $ 200. This would still leave them over $ 400 to send (entirely or in part) to their families back home: the amount would allow an entire family to survive in places like Lima or Cairo for a month.
Is it only money that prompts people to leave their homes and live in unfamiliar, sometimes hostile, and often faraway places?
Minimum wage and access to basic decent health services (on the condition that one s status is legal) are the main items in the package. Also in the package comes one s treatment (by others) as a respectable human being. Good morning and thank you , as well as please are words people use when addressing Miguel and Ali. And although Miguel would rush to help with a heavy suitcase or with carrier bags, he actually is not obliged to do so: his job is to open the building door to the inhabitants.
Money and the respect of their dignity as human beings seem to be enough a reason for working in Manhattan and living so faraway from home. In return, their efficiency is measured by the number of bagels Ali can sell every day, and the smiles and have a great day s Miguel gives away every hour. All this under the observant eyes of their supervisors, who can replace them with the flick of two fingers if their skills drop at any moment. This is why Miguel plasters a smile on his face and spends his 8 hours standing straight, parallel to the revolving door, ready to push or pull it any second. This is also why Ali does not halt his movements even while chatting with a customer. Competition is fierce, and anyone can be thrown out in a second.
For friends and family back home, both young men have made it to America : they send a monthly check that is the pride and joy of their parents, and they visit at best every other year. Families usually know little about the homesickness and loneliness Ali or Miguel feel, or about the work they really do. I have a son in America , Abu Ali would tell his neighbors. And while Um Ali misses her son every Ramadan, she knows this is the price to pay to marry her daughter in dignity (the parents of the bride in Egypt are in charge of furnishing the flat that the groom has bought). Chances are that Ali would not even be able to fly home for the wedding.
I could see Ali s eyes water as I spoke to him about Cairo, Alexandria and the upcoming festive season of Ramadan. Meanwhile, Miguel s face lit up when I asked him about his family and whether every self-respecting Colombian could really dance Salsa. Isn t the price too high for living in a city that has managed to expel all those who do not make enough money to pay the astronomical rent of its flats and settle the bills of its flashy restaurants? NYC has surely proven Darwin s theory of the survival of the fittest. Financially fittest that is. Yet, the likes of Miguel and Ali are everywhere, rendering services, smiling to customers, and missing home. In that sense, NYC has also proven that only the emotionally fittest could also survive being so far from loved ones in return for minimum wage, health care and.dignity.
Tamara Al-Rifaiisa Cairo-based Syrian who works for an international organization concerned with humanitarian and media issue-related issues. This commentary is special to DAILY NEWS EGYPT.
