by Shyima Hall
Every day when I woke up in the home of my captors, the first thing I thought of was the home and beloved family I had left behind. And, whenever I had a free moment during the day—which wasn’t often—my family popped back into the forefront of my mind.
I’d had many friends in our neighborhood. I had loved my mother, my younger siblings, our neighbors, and my extended family. I had loved my life and my sense of belonging, and I hated that when I was sent to live with my captors, my parents allowed all that to be taken away.
CHAPTER THREE
Abdel Nasser Eid Youssef Ibrahim and his now former wife, Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd Motelib, were my captors. I addressed them as sir and ma’am, as I was not allowed to call them by their names, but in private I did not give them that kind of respect. Instead I thought of them as The Mom and The Dad. They called me “stupid girl.”
I would soon realize that The Mom always had a sour expression on her face. Nothing anyone ever did was good enough for her. She was always displeased, and always entitled. The Dad was on the phone so much, I am surprised it did not attach itself permanently to his ear. He always argued with whomever he was talking to, and his eyebrows knitting together accompanied his angry voice. He also touched his forehead often in an effort to help himself relax. In retrospect, his face was not anywhere near as mean as his wife’s.
My captors wore Western-style clothes, and by that I do not mean cowboy clothes but clothes that the average person would wear here in the United States. For them it was all about the brand. If a specific exclusive designer would impress other people, those were the clothes that they wore.
The Mom and The Dad and their five children lived in a five-story, gated, brick home on sprawling grounds. I thought the house looked like a castle. I did not go out of the house much, but when I did, each time I was amazed at the size of the property. To get there you would turn off the main road onto a long drive and pass several houses that were spaced far apart. These were houses for groundskeepers and others who were employed on the estate. You’d then pass a large and beautiful garden that looked like something you’d see in a famous painting.
The main house had a seventeen-car garage and an elevator, and on the first floor was an indoor pool with a retractable roof that opened to the sky. The family accessed the pool from either the elevator or a broad set of stairs, but I had to use a separate staircase, one that descended from the kitchen and was reserved for the help.
The rest of the first floor was furnished to impress guests and was filled with expensive sofas, chairs, and tables, with luxurious lighting and lots of knickknacks. Except for using the pool, none of the family hung out on the first floor, and the children of the family were specifically banned from the area. Instead, The Dad rented the space out to film companies and to corporations that held big parties and other events there.
The second floor held several large bedrooms. The Mom’s brother and his wife and kids had rooms there, and the master bedroom was large enough to be a house by itself. There was a huge round bed in the middle of the room, with a sitting area by a large window. The master bathroom had two bathtubs and what seemed like acres of marble.
My captors had five children, and the two youngest were identical twin boys who were about five when I came into the household. The boys had a cute Winnie-the-Pooh–themed room on the second floor, with bunk beds; and the youngest daughter, who was close to me in age, had a beautiful Barbie-decorated room. To me it looked like a room a princess might sleep in.
Also on the second floor was a humungous kitchen that came fully equipped with a staff person who cooked for the family. The stairs that I was allowed to use to go from floor to floor were accessed from a corner of the kitchen.
The two oldest daughters slept on the third floor. The oldest had a weird totally black room with black walls and black carpet, while the second daughter had a room complete with posters that could have been any teen girl’s room here in the United States.
Also on the third floor was a fully-equipped game room, and two huge sitting areas with televisions. The laundry facilities were on this floor too, which meant I spent a lot of time there. The fourth floor was reserved for guests and was rarely used, while the servants, myself included, slept on the fifth floor.
All of this was a culture shock for me. I couldn’t believe homes and furnishings like this existed, and it was hard for me to fathom that people could live in such luxury.
• • •
A home like this required a small army of servants. There were four or five of us who lived in the house and cared for the family, but most of the others lived in separate servants quarters on the estate, or came in for the day. Each of us had different “employment” arrangements. Some servants worked for a small salary, while others had room and board as part of their compensation. These servants were not slaves and could return to their homes and families when they were not working.
Those of us who lived at the house slept in bunk beds in one of two rooms on the fifth-floor attic level. Some of these people were live-in maids, while others might have been indentured servants, or were being held in bondage, like me. Unfortunately, none of the other servants thought it odd that I was enslaved with this family. It is sad that child bondage was, and still is, common enough in Egypt that most people did not think too much about it.
My life in the mansion was strange in many ways that you might not imagine. This was the first time I had ever slept in a bed, the first time I ever had a pillow, and those were novelties unto themselves. (Not that I got to enjoy sleeping much.) Next to the two servant bedrooms there was a fairly large bathroom with two sinks, a bathtub, and a separate shower.
Even though the family ate from beautiful dishes and used nice silverware, the servants always ate from paper plates, drank from red plastic cups, and used cheap plastic silverware. It was never said, but it was always implied that we were not good enough to use the family’s dishes.
The same went for the furniture. I was never told not to sit on any of it, but I never did because I knew I wasn’t supposed to. On the rare occasion when I had more than a second to sit down during the day, I sat on a bench that was reserved for servants in the kitchen. Whether it was calculated or not, all of this combined to make me feel “less than,” and isn’t that how captors hope their slaves will feel? To complete the shredding of my self-esteem, I was never given any shoes to wear. Granted, everyone went barefoot inside the house, a common custom in that part of the world, but my only shoes were hand-me-down flip-flops.
Two of the women who lived in as servants were probably in their thirties. These women both had families—husbands and children—wherever home was for them. For various reasons they had fallen on hard times and worked as live-in help for The Mom and The Dad. Only on rare occasions did they go home to see their families.
The two ladies were nice and helped me a lot, especially in the first few months. I felt comfortable with them because they looked and dressed like my older sisters. In that way these two ladies reminded me of home. It is typical for Muslim women to have their hair covered with the traditional head covering, the hijab. This is a veil that covers the hair and neck and is worn in public—and in the presence of unrelated adult men—and these women covered their hair.
There was also a mother and her daughter working as servants. The daughter must have been about twenty, and didn’t want to be there. I can’t blame her. I didn’t want to be there either. Turnover for many of the workers was high, and some stayed only a few days. There must have been several dozen of these workers who were in and out quickly during the years I was there.
We were all busy and rarely got to talk to one another during the day. At night we were too exhausted, but there was always some kind of discussion going on in the kitchen about the family—usually about The Mom and how snobby she was. I did not participate much in these discussions, but I listened a lot. It gave me comfort to know that my fellow servants and slaves felt exactly the same way ab
out the family that I did.
The Mom’s attitude wasn’t the only thing that bothered people. The Dad had a bad temper. If someone displeased him, his first reaction was to slap them. If he was very angry, he’d take off his belt and give them a few whacks with it. This included not only the servants in the home but also his wife and children.
I had a lot of trouble adjusting from being the young girl who lived happily in a large impoverished but loving family, to living in a home where I was demeaned every day in hundreds of ways. Being called “stupid girl” was the least of it. There were never enough hours in the day to do all of the work that was assigned to me—even though the family had a newer vacuum and other cleaning supplies for me to use. Early on, every night I’d cry what seemed like a year’s worth of tears. How could my mother have abandoned me to this kind of life? I never understood how she—how any mother—could subject a child she loved to this. I know that to my dying day I never will understand it.
Working in the home, every day was the same. If I was not already up before dawn, one of the other servant ladies would wake me, even though I was exhausted from the day before. Then I’d hurry downstairs to the kitchen, where another lady gave me my assignments for the day. I didn’t have to worry about getting dressed, because I usually wore whatever I had slept in. And, as when I’d lived with my family, I slept in what I had worn the day before. I often had a single change of clothes, but not always.
I never ate breakfast, even though one of my first jobs for the day was to help clean the kitchen. There simply was no time to eat, as the pace was brutal. When I was done and the dishes were put away, I cleaned the second-floor bathrooms. Then on the third floor I cleaned the television area and the game room. Those rooms were always the messiest because that’s where the family hung out the most.
There were phones and intercoms throughout the house. (That’s how the family communicated with one another most of the time.) And midday every day The Mom called her food orders down to the kitchen for the cook to prepare.
Most of my day was spent on the third floor, and I continued to be amazed at the immense size of two paintings that hung on the wall there. One painting was of The Dad, and the other was of The Mom. Who does that? I thought. Who would hang enormous paintings of themselves in their home? Even at that young age I thought it was ridiculous.
I did my best to clean everything spotlessly, because if The Mom didn’t think a rug or a sink looked perfectly clean, I had to redo it. That took time I didn’t have, and my negligence might earn me a slap. Between my regular duties I had to stop everything to bring family members whatever it was that they wanted, when they wanted it.
While I spent most of my day on the third floor, when I was done, I went back to help in the kitchen. A cook was there every day, but another of my jobs was to do the dishes. With a family of seven, plus the live-in relatives and their kids, over several meals throughout the day meant that there were several hundred dishes that I had to wash. The house had a huge dishwasher, but for some reason it was used only when visitors were there. There I’d be, dog tired, standing on a stool doing the dishes, because otherwise I was not tall enough to reach the counter or sink. It took forever.
Besides the dishwasher, there were many other fancy appliances that looked brand new. I’m not sure The Mom knew what each of them was supposed to be used for, and the cook stayed mostly with the traditional pots and pans for cooking.
Late evenings were the best part of the day because that was when I finally got to eat. I never ate, or even drank water, during the day, because I was too busy. By evening I was glad of the family’s leftovers, and I ate as much as I could. I have to say that the quality of the food was better than what I’d had at home. While the family ate a lot of different dishes, usually what was left over after dinner was rice or meat. That’s what I ate.
I filled my stomach, but it was never enough. I was soon hungry and remained that way until the next evening.
• • •
I never thought about running away. Where would I go? I was miles and miles away from my family. The estate was gated, and I was far too small to get over the fence or the gate. Even if I made it to the main road, I wouldn’t know which way to go. I was hours away from my small town. Then there was the promise from both my mother and The Mom that if I didn’t cooperate, I would go to jail, where bad things would happen to me. I had no idea what those bad things might be, but life was already bad. I didn’t want my life to be worse.
Instead of running away I rose early, every day, even though I had no alarm clock. But it would not have made much difference if I had, for I did not know how to tell time. I instead learned to gauge my day by the sun. If sunlight was streaming into the dining room window, for example, I knew the boys would be home from school soon. I also learned to mark time by the orders barked at me. “It’s noon, stupid girl. Bring me a sandwich.”
I rose early and on time most days, because I never slept well while I was with this family. That’s because I was afraid. I kept a piece of me awake as a protective measure, because I never knew what The Mom or The Dad would do, or how they would act.
The Mom often did not rise until late morning, and The Dad was a businessman who did most of his business in one room of the house. I knew little about that, other than the bits and pieces of conversation I overheard while cleaning the house. I believe that he had inherited a steel business from his father. It was a big company, and all of his people came to him. Because of their schedules I did not interact with The Mom or The Dad much. Instead most of my contact with the family was with the kids.
The young twin boys I liked, and they seemed to like me, too. They had dark hair and dark skin and looked a lot like their mother. The two middle girls—the one my age and her next older sister, who was about thirteen—were both short with curly dark blond hair and took after their dad. They pretty much ignored me except when they wanted me to bring them a sandwich or re-iron a particular piece of clothing. The oldest girl was maybe fifteen and was the snobbiest of the kids. She was tall, dark-haired, and thin, like her mother.
When I did run into The Mom or The Dad, I tried to make myself invisible because I was terrified of them. Whenever they spoke to me, I stared at the floor. I had seen others in the household get slapped for looking The Mom or The Dad in the eye, and I didn’t want that to happen to me. In that way the floor became my friend. In fact, I stared at the floor most of the time, even when the kids of the house were speaking to me.
The meanest person in the entire house, though, was Nebit. Several times I saw her push servants who had made the mistake of walking in front of her. She was a hateful person. And that is something that puzzles me to this day. These people had a large, beautiful home. They had an incredible indoor swimming pool and servants to take care of their every need. They had good food, beautiful clothes, and many fancy cars. But they were the unhappiest, most ungrateful people I have ever met. The Mom and The Dad were not happy with each other, and the kids had a huge sense of entitlement.
How could they not see how privileged they were? How could they not see how lucky they were to live that kind of lifestyle? Why couldn’t they give thanks for their wonderful life or be appreciative of it? There are many things about my life then and the people in it that I did not understand. I probably never will.
Once or twice, though, I got to briefly speak with my mother on the phone. The calls were set up by The Mom and were mostly to discuss the details of payment for me to my parents. While I believed I had been paying off my sister’s debt, as part of their deal with my parents The Mom and The Dad were paying them a small amount each month, the equivalent of seventeen US dollars. Later I learned that this arrangement was most likely a split—if, for example, my “employment” had earned me fifty dollars a month back in Egypt, The Mom and The Dad would have given my parents less, and the difference would have gone toward the debt my family owed. Every time I said, “Mom, I want to come home,” my mothe
r replied, “You are almost done. It’s okay. You will be home soon.” But even then I knew these for the placating words they were.
Plus, every time my mother and I spoke, either The Mom or The Dad listened in on another extension. Afterward, they’d yell at me. “You are a stupid girl,” one or the other would shout. “You should be grateful for the good life we give you.” It was like a broken record, or the movie Groundhog Day, where the same events take place over and over again.
Nothing was going to change of its own accord. I knew it and knew that the adults knew it.
CHAPTER FOUR
Life went on . . . and on. Day after day I waited on this family, took care of their every need, and cleaned their house. I took their verbal abuse and received more slaps than I care to count. I never had a day off, even when I did not feel well.
Every month it seemed someone had a birthday, or there was a Muslim holiday. I was never invited to participate, nor were my own birthdays celebrated. When the twins had their second birthday celebration since I’d been in the house, I knew I had been there a long time.
I had no knowledge of the calendar, of months or how years worked. Even though before I’d come to the home of my captors I had counted my age in years, I did not have a full concept of what that meant. Time was meaningless to me. Today was just a day—as was tomorrow.
I was too tired to be resentful. Too tired to be mad that other children were celebrating milestones and I was not. When you are a slave, it does not take long for your emotions to shut down or for your mind to go into survival mode. That may be why my memories of some occasions are spotty or nonexistent. My brain was on overload trying to survive, and day-to-day details were not necessary to that process.
