It was out of desperation that Hamadeh turned to cleaning. Once a mobile phone repairman, Hamadeh lost his job in Lebanon’s jaw-dropping economic crisis, which erupted in October 2019 and has since slashed the Lebanese lira’s value by 90 percent. Last August, laden with debt and financially responsible for his parents, Hamadeh needed to find other work. His predicament is common among Lebanese; his response is anything but.
Of the 40-strong staff at the cleaning company he works for, Velvet Services, Hamadeh is the only Lebanese among mostly Bangladeshis. “Honestly, I know [Lebanese] people who really need work, but none of them work as cleaners,” Hamadeh said. “I know that they wouldn’t do this kind of work.”
Nivine Zarzour, Hamadeh’s boss, has tried to hire more Lebanese, whom she can pay with lira instead of increasingly scarce—and expensive—U.S. dollars. But she has failed to attract Lebanese recruits, which she traces to a deep-seated cultural stigma. “The main reason is not the salary,” Zarzour said. “We always had foreign cleaners and helpers.”