by Abdulhamid Qabbani

When I was in school my mum used to warn me that if I don’t work hard enough I will become zabbal (sloppy) – a derogatory term used to describe rubbish collectors. I grew up with the negative connotation of the word in my mind. Rubbish collectors remain for me the people I often see on the streets of Damascus but know little. Once I was walking down the street and bumped into one of them sweeping – without much thought I approached him and asked him for an interview - he reluctantly agreed to meet me and talk about his misunderstood profession.

On a spring day I went to meet the rubbish collector Abu Kusai. On my way I was thinking to myself about a place to sit and talk to him given his workstation is the street! As soon as I met him, however he greeted me warmly and invited me with a broad smile into a shop which sells household goods on the side of Badawi Street, his patch in central Damascus.

What struck me as odd is the respect which the shop assistant showed towards Abu Kusai. The stereotype is that street cleaners are looked down on. He immediately made us cup of tea. “He is my friend,” Abu Kusai said smiling while taking a sip of his tea. Upon introducing me as a Syria Today writer, the very first question Abu Kusai asked me was: “How can I improve my English?” I thought to myself that meeting this man would be an eye-opening experience. The other surprise came when he revealed to me that he accessed the internet using his mobile phone – something I have no idea how to do!

When we began our interview Abu Kusai chatted away about his passion for chat shows. “I like E Body, it’s a good German one” he told me. I felt like I was interviewing the IT manager of Google!

After I broke the ice with the 32-year-old whose sun-burned face made him look well over 42, I asked him about how he feels about being called zabbal. “It’s not me, who cleans up the rubbish who is ‘zabbal’, but the one who throws rubbish on the street in the first place,” he said to me. It was a very persuasive answer to the extent that I left thinking to myself who was the actual zabbal?!

Abdulhamid Qabbani is a freelance contributor to Syria Today. In the magazine’s June edition his story on Damascus’s rubbish collectors follows Abu Kusai on a revealing journey through a day in his life. The article can be viewed online here.

(Source: syria-today.com)