Her situation was complicated by a local culture opposed to women in the work place, which forced her to dress as a man and work outside the home to support her baby daughter Houda.
She worked making bricks and polishing shoes in the street among other jobs. Eventually, she married off her daughter to a man who later fell ill and couldn’t work. So, being a resourceful woman, Abu Daooh kept up her work as the breadwinner of her family.
She donned a local “jilbab” – a loose, full-length robe with wide sleeves – as well as a white turban, or sometimes a men’s hat known as a “Taqiyah” and black masculine shoes.
“I preferred working in hard labor like lifting bricks and cement bags and cleaning shoes to begging in the streets in order to earn a living for myself and for my daughter and her children,” she said.
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