Cockroaches

Yesterday our concierge rang our doorbell, bringing a man in a jumpsuit carrying one of those spray bottles you hold in one hand, with a hose and a nozzle for spraying in the other. Mr. Abdullah, our concierge, speaks very – and I mean VERY - limited English, but made me understand that they were here to look down our trash chute and that it had something to do with tiny bugs. I assumed cockroaches, since this is an apparent problem throughout the building. On the kitchen balcony they started spraying poison down the chute, and then proceeded to start opening the floor drains, which are made of metal and stuck tight. I haven’t seen a lot of cockroaches around our house, only a couple, but every time I’ve opened a drain in any room there has been a cockroach, and especially in the bathrooms. I am therefore very happy that they are stuck; that is obviously where the cockroaches actually live – in the sewer and pipes. I soon realized that the pest fighter’s plan was to spray down every drain in our house. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like cockroaches, but when the guy got ready to start a poison spray fest in my house, I had to protest. With children in the house, it is simply not safe. Now, Abdullah speaks nearly no English and this guy obviously spoke not a word of any other language than Arabic, and a local version at that, and my Arabic is very limited. Especially words like ‘poisonous,’ and ‘toddler’ did not come fast enough. Very soon though they understood that I did not want them to spray poison around our apartment. Either that or my alarming appearance scared them so much that they thought it was better to leave. In any case, they closed the drains they had opened and left. What a relief. Although now I am worried that if they did spray down all the drains in all the rest of the house, our apartment will turn into some kind of cockroach refuge.