The Domestics by Mohana Rajakumar #excerpt #booktrailer @Moha_doha
I’m pleased to share the latest from author Mohana Rajakumar. Her latest release is one that sounds like another must for readers.
Necessity is the mother of all friendships. The Dohmestics explores the ups and downs of six women thrown together by fate in the quintessential Middle Eastern compound; a neighborhood enclosed by a boundary wall with a security gate. Emma, Nouf, Rosa, and Maya are part of the sophomoric fish bowl no one can escape, where rumors can ruin marriages or jobs. Daily life is an array of coffee mornings, book clubs, and single parenting for Emma whose pilot husband is away more than at home. She can barely remember the workaholic professional she was before becoming a trailing spouse. Noof, a female Arab lawyer, struggles between her traditional values and Western education. She’s a mother, wife, and friend, like society expects of her, but she wants to establish an identity of her own. Rosa was the regional winner of a beauty pageant in the Philippines. Now, she is a full time maid and nanny for a family who treats her well. But will sacrificing her future for her sisters’ be worth it? Country girl Lillie is fired a few months into her first job as a housemaid. She can’t go back home; too many people need her income. Without a reference, no one will employ her. Maya, a seamstress in Sri Lanka, lost everything in the Asian tsunami. She bears her tyrannical boss’ demands, in hopes of rebuilding a life back home. Amira, the compound’s unofficial head cheerleader, appears to have it all. Yet, as everyone knows, because each is desperately trying to hide her own: we all have secrets.
The Dohmestics Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar
Chapter One
Dust laid a film of grit on the boxes in the entryway of the sand-colored duplex. Emma pulled straying pieces of elbow-length hair back into the bun, held together by a pencil spiked through the center. Dust, heat, desert. Their new life, waiting for Adam to become full captain. Four years. Maybe longer. The wilted plants in ceramic pots on doorsteps up and down the street were evidence the desert sun was winning. Emma tasted particulate on her tongue; the sandstorms would play havoc with Adam’s sinuses. Everywhere she looked, there were buildings similar to hers; whether villas, apartments, or duplexes, the exteriors were the same beige cinderblock front. Wider entryways for duplexes and three steps for the approach to villas distinguished the bigger units from the smaller ones. No driveways for the neighborhood existed inside the compound boundary wall. Four years was fast tracking in the airline industry, but Emma felt each of these early days pass like a month. At noon the parking spaces were empty; the beige canvas awnings melded into the adobe-colored walls of the buildings. Across the street were the wider front entrances of the villas; there was a bit more variety in these that more resembled houses back home. These were two story affairs, with wide fronts to the street, beige again with beveled glass, three actual steps for an entrance, rather than the flat approach to the rest of the buildings, like the one Emma lived in. She swiped at the sweat on the back of her neck. Her footsteps echoed on the tile, determined to unpack the next set of boxes. Adam was away. Alice was at school. The silence was deafening. “Why not get a job?” Adam had asked. “We could save that money too, for the house?” “I can’t tell them I have to leave halfway through the day to go pick up our daughter, now, can I?” “Hire a maid,” Adam replied with a shrug, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “But that would cost money,” she protested. “We’re trying to save money.” Their love of entertaining had built up quite a pile of bills. “No one pays them that much,” he said. “A few hundred riyals.” “To have someone in the house with us, when we’re tight on space as it is.” She shook her head. “Plus, is that legal, a few hundred riyals?” She didn’t get a reply before he left for the gym, a workout an essential for the days he was home to balance so much time in the air. Gone was the routine schedule as co-pilot of a cargo plane, as regular as the post, bringing Adam home every night for dinner. The company had folded in the financial crisis. Commercial airlines were hiring—foreign companies anyway. Now they were in the Middle East with Adam flying anywhere from Hong Kong to New York, while she stayed at home. Her thumbnail broke as she ripped the tape off the next lid. She chewed off the rest of the nail, glad Alice wasn’t there to see the forbidden act. Emma’s eyes drifted to the pile of adverts left in the door overnight; a glossy one featured women with blow-dried hair sipping tea. Yes, maybe that’s exactly what she needed. She snatched up the house keys and made her way down the street towards the clubhouse. The weekly neighborhood coffee morning was one of those all-female, expat gatherings Emma had read about on forums before making the move to the Arabian Peninsula. She hadn’t planned on attending one, but the stifling silence drove her out of the house, looking for adult conversation that didn’t involve flight schedules or school pick-up routes. “Where are you from?” asked a woman with wire-framed glasses that made her brown eyes owlish. “England,” Emma said. She answered a string of familiar questions in every group she came to, the most common being, “How long have you been here?” Those who answered in the longest number of years to this question seemed to be mostly Indian, clustered together away from the other women. Everyone white wanted to know whether or not she worked. When Emma said she didn’t and confessed her school pick-up dilemma, the women had the solution: a full-time housemaid. “You’ll have so much more time to spend together, with your husband,” said a petite brunette with a waist the size of a teenager’s. “And you won’t spend it doing those tasks that you have to do again and again, like cooking or laundry. You can spend it with your child,” a blonde with perky breasts chimed in. “Do they steal things?” The blonde and brunette shook their heads as one, sharing a glance. “If they do, they’ll be jailed,” the brunette said, the dimples disappearing from her heart shaped face. “Or worse,” the blonde intoned. “Worse?” “Deported.” “But another person,” Emma fretted, another worry with the new concern about flight attendants. There had been none for airfreight. “Do I have to be with her all the time?” “She’s your employee,” the blonde emphasized. “She works for you. She isn’t your friend.” “But you have to watch the younger ones,” the brunette insisted. “Especially Filipinas.” “Watch them? They steal?” The women tittered. “That’s not the worst.” “Your husband is a pilot?” Emma nodded the affirmation. “Stop scaring her, ladies.” A statuesque woman interrupted the onslaught, waving her immaculate nails hello. “Amira.” Her manicured hand reached out for hers. “Emma,” she said stuttering at the sound of her own name. “I meant, would she need entertaining? Would the two of us watch television together?” Amira laughed, as if Emma had told her a funny joke. “You’re new. You’ll see. They make it so you can entertain yourself.” “Myself?” The word sounded lonelier than she had intended. Amira led her away from the group, motioning over to the tray of cookies. “Your maid is the least glamorous and last person to worry about. My husband is a pilot as well. They’re around gorgeous, young girls all the time. You know the airline. Men, women, everyone is impeccable.” She wiggled her eyebrows with a wink. “I had noticed,” Emma said with a laugh. “But is there someone else I should worry about?” She looked around the room of immaculately groomed women. “Should I lock up my husband?” Amira laughed.
Her coming of age novel, An Unlikely Goddess, won the SheWrites New Novelist competition in 2011.
Her recent books have focused on various aspects of life in Qatar. From Dunes to Dior, named as a Best Indie book in 2013, is a collection of essays related to her experiences as a female South Asian American living in the Arabian Gulf. Love Comes Later was the winner of the Best Indie Book Award for Romance in 2013 and is a literary romance set in Qatar and London. The Dohmestics is an inside look into compound life as well as the secrets kept between housemaids and their employers.
After she joined the e-book revolution, Mohana dreams in plotlines. Learn more about her work on her website at www.mohadoha.com or follow her latest on Twitter: @moha_doha. Mohana is currently working on her first historical novel, set in the East Asian country of Laos.
The Domestics can be purchased from Amazon
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