by Shyima Hall
Eventually I heard the door slam, and The Dad said in Arabic, “I didn’t have to let them in. They didn’t have a warrant.”
I didn’t yet understand that the authorities had come for me. The Dad had gotten into trouble in Egypt, and I thought it was more of that. Specifically what “that” was, I didn’t know. But I knew The Mom and The Dad thought it was bad. The Mom and The Dad talked for a few minutes. Then there was another loud knock on the door. Plus, this time the doorbell rang. I’ll never know why The Dad answered the door. He must have known who it was on the other side. He must have known they had gotten a warrant.
This time the officers were allowed into the house, and they were a lot madder than they’d been the first time. There was a lot more arguing and yelling, and then I was called to the door where a man physically put himself between The Dad and me. Then a woman took me by the hand and led me out of the house.
Before I was hustled out of the house, the Dad hissed into my ear, “Do not tell them anything. Say you do not work for me.” I was terrified. For many years my captors had told me stories about all of the bad things that would happen to me if the police ever found me. Now those stories were at the forefront of my mind. My life with The Mom and The Dad had been awful, but I had been told that life with the police would be much, much worse. I did what The Dad said.
“I do not work here,” I said in Arabic. “I do not work here.”
The woman was nice and tried to talk with me, but she did not understand Arabic. My English of words “hi,” “dolphin,” and “stepsister” wouldn’t go far here.
Before I knew it, I found myself in the front seat of a marked police car with a police officer. He handed me a phone, and I found a man who spoke Arabic on the other end. He was a translator, a person who knows two languages who helps people communicate with each other. This was exceptionally scary for me, and I wanted to cry. On top of my deep fear of authorities, everything in my Muslim culture forbade me to speak to a man who was not a member of my household. Plus, I had rarely spoken on the phone, as I had been forbidden to do so. Here I was breaking three taboos at once.
The man on the phone tried to reassure me that the people who had taken me out of my captors’ home were not bad people. “These are good people, people who are there to rescue you from your bondage,” he said. I was quite confused. I didn’t know who or what to believe. I had been brainwashed for years about many things in life, especially the roles of people. My distorted view of who men, women, slaves, and authority figures were—and how they should act—was hard for me to discount.
Eventually I did start to cry, and when I started, I couldn’t stop. I never knew my body could produce that many tears. Many things were rushing through my brain, but most of all I was concerned about what would happen to me. My brain kept defaulting to what I had always been taught. Police were bad. If asked, I was to say I was a stepsister who was visiting.
Also, it had been a long time since anyone had treated me nicely and with respect, and I didn’t know how to react when the officers were kind to me. My captors’ home had been filled with fear, abuse, hatred—and constant physical, mental, and emotional battles. I could barely remember what a warm, loving, safe, nurturing environment was like.
After a while I settled down enough to tell the man on the phone my name. Then he asked what my dad’s name was, and I told him. He asked a few other questions, such as if I had ever been to school and how long I had been in the country. The first question was easy. No, I had never been to school. Not here in the United States and not back home in Egypt. How long I had been in the US was another story, though. I didn’t know. I later was startled to find that when I was rescued, I was six months shy of my thirteenth birthday. I had been in the United States for a little more than twenty months. It had seemed like forever.
• • •
I was taken by car from my captors’ house in the gated community in Irvine, California, to what was then called Orangewood Children’s Home. It has since been renamed the Orangewood Children and Family Center, but its services are basically the same. It is an emergency shelter for neglected and sexually, physically, or emotionally abused children, and is located in Santa Ana, California. Each year the home provides refuge for more than a thousand kids who have been removed from their caretakers and placed into protective custody.
It seemed like the ride took forever, although we couldn’t have traveled much more than fifteen miles. Then again, in California traffic fifteen miles can take forever. I had no idea where I was going or what was happening. I didn’t even understand that I had been rescued, that I would no longer have to serve The Mom and The Dad eighteen to twenty hours a day, or live in fear that he or she would slap me, or that their kids would yell at me. Instead, in the police car, I was so afraid of what might happen next that I shook throughout the entire ride.
When we arrived at Orangewood, I was first taken to the medical clinic, where I went through all sorts of tests. Then I was given a shot, and my hand, which had been hurting badly for a long time, was bandaged. Later a social worker named Hana Hana, a short, dark-haired Arab woman with a kind face, told me it was broken, although I have no remembrance of what could have caused that to happen.
By this time the kindness everyone had shown me allowed me to relax some. There was no rudeness from anyone, no accusations, and no hitting or slapping. Even though I could not understand the words, I was able to understand the tone of voice, and that made me give them the tiniest bit of my trust.
Someone then took me to the housing area and showed me around the facility and to my room. After that I was directed to a large bathroom that was used by everyone on the floor. I took a shower and couldn’t believe it when someone gave me a pair of pajamas. In all my life I had never worn pajamas. These pajamas had a black, gray, and white check pattern. They were so fresh and clean I couldn’t believe I would be allowed to wear them. Compared to the dirty castoffs that I usually wore to sleep in, these clothes were amazing. I treasured the pajamas then and now, and the fact that I still have them shows how much they mean to me.
My long hair was apparently matted, and another kind lady brushed it for me. I didn’t know when anyone had treated me as nicely, and here I was in a place where many people were wonderful. By this time I was overwhelmed and didn’t know what to think. I was still crying and could not begin to process what was happening. I didn’t understand that I was to stay there, didn’t realize I was never to go back to the home of my captors. It was too much, and I was grateful when someone told me I could take a nap.
Later that day I was taken to a small conference room and spoke in Arabic with Hana Hana, who explained to me that the people at Orangewood were nice people. “These people,” she said, “don’t like to see kids mistreated or taken advantage of. Instead they try to put kids in foster care with nice families or, even better, reunite the kids with their own families.”
Hearing her words, I had my first glimmer of hope. Would I get to go home and see my family? Would I finally be able to hug my younger brothers and sisters and see my mom? All the anger I had toward my parents for allowing me to be mistreated by my captors melted away. Maybe my prayers were finally being answered.
After my conversation with Hana, a small group of people came into the room. Hana translated my words as a man asked questions such as:
“Shyima, who lives in The Mom and The Dad’s house?”
I remained silent, and he tried again.
“What was your role there? What did you do?”
I was afraid to say anything, so I kept my mouth shut.
“What were your days like, Shyima? How did they treat you?”
I realized that the man was not going to give up. I had to say something. My captors had ingrained in me what I should say and do if a situation like this ever occurred, and I stayed close to their script. Even though I knew on some level that this was my chance to go home, I did what The Dad had told me to do and said, “Nothing was
wrong in the house. The Mom and The Dad treated me like a daughter. Everything is fine.” That’s how terrified I still was of my captors.
The next day everyone came back and got my mom and dad on the phone. I couldn’t believe I was going to get to talk with them. I had missed them badly and could not wait to talk to them! But my excitement was not to last long. When a different social worker told my dad what was going on, my dad began to yell at me as she listened on another extension in the room.
“How could you leave those people who took such good care of you?” he shouted. “Those people treated you right. How can you listen to these people now? By leaving the home of these people, you have disrespected me. And you have caused your mother to have a heart attack. You must go back and behave yourself.”
As angry as he had often been when I was young, as angry as I had seen The Mom and The Dad, I had never heard such a hateful tone coming from another human being. My eyes welled, and tears soon streamed down my face. How could my dad say those things? How could he want me to go back to my captors, to live such a terrible life?
In the years since, I have been able to come up with only two answers to my questions of that day. One is money. I had been sold to my captors for a sum that was less than twenty dollars a month. Even though some of the money had gone to repay what my sister had stolen, I believe my parents were still getting part of it. Twenty dollars goes much further for a poor family in Egypt than it does here. Even so, it was not a huge sum.
The other reason is honor. My sister had disgraced our family, and it was my job to uphold honor for my mom and dad, and for my siblings. That may be hard for people here in the United States to understand, but in many other countries this is an important matter.
In the middle of my dad yelling at me, I found some nerve and began to yell back. “How dare you speak to me like this! How dare you suggest that I go back to a family that refused to provide me medical care, who regularly yelled at and slapped me, and made me sleep in a garage while they were surrounded by luxury. How dare you!”
It felt great to let loose and tell my father what I had been feeling. I had never yelled at him before. Even though I had been outspoken when I’d lived with my family, never had I been disrespectful enough to yell at either of my parents. In fact, once I got going, I didn’t stop yelling for several minutes. That was about the maddest that I have ever been.
I then spoke to my mother. Briefly. I never learned if she had had a heart attack or not, or if I had been the cause of it. But she, in softer words and tone, echoed my dad. I couldn’t believe that she, too, wanted me to stay. What had I ever done to deserve this? Back on the line my dad told the social worker that he was coming to get me, but she said, “No, you have no visa. You cannot come.”
The reality was that after hearing my dad’s rant, no one in the room, including me, had any assurance that my dad would not send me back into slavery. That’s why I decided in that single moment that, no, I was not going to go back to Egypt. I was done with my parents. All my hopes and dreams of being reunited with my family had just been shattered. I, too, had been shattered, but I was not going to go back to Egypt or to my captors’ house. No, I would take my chances with the foster care system here in the United States.
After the call ended, the translator wanted to talk with me, but my mind was spinning all over the place, and I refused. Instead I walked back to my room and stayed there by myself for the rest of the day.
Later that week I told the police about the slave girl who had visited us with her captors. In case she had not been able to run away, I wanted authorities to know about her. I was shown pictures of people that The Dad might have known, and I was able to pick out her captor. Sometime after that I learned that the police tried to find her, but by the time they got to the home, her family had left the country. In fact, they had probably fled within hours of learning of my rescue. That girl was older than I was, and she was smart. I think of her often and hope that she, too, found freedom.
• • •
It turned out that Orangewood was a good place. It was not as plush as either of my captors’ homes, but it was by far the nicest place I had lived as a free person. The main part, where I lived, looked like a big house. When you walked in, there was a medical area on the left, and on the right was an area where parents could meet with their kids. I was to learn that many of the kids at Orangewood had been taken out of their parents’ care for one reason or another. But as the family worked through their issues, the kids were often reunited with their mom and dad. Other kids went in and out of foster care and stayed at Orangewood between placements with foster families.
The house I was in had only girls. Inside there was a hangout area for us, game area, kitchen, and dining room. Outside there was a nice yard and a pool. I shared a room with a girl I’ll call Autumn, who was about my age. She was as blond as I was dark, but she was friendly and caring, and she tried to calm me down whenever I got upset or overwhelmed—which, at first, was often. Because I didn’t speak English, I didn’t understand her words, but I could read her body language well. She became my first real friend.
I liked the comfort of our tiny room. Autumn and I shared a closet, and there were two beds, one for each of us on opposite sides of the room. And I have to say that the mattress on my bed was the most comfortable that I had ever slept on. I loved the bedspreads, which were white with tiny flowers on them. The room had a big window so we could see outside, and the door to the hallway had a little window that staff could peek in to be sure we were okay.
While I was at Orangewood, I met kids from every kind of situation imaginable. I met bratty kids, kids with entitlement issues, kids who had been horribly abused, kids who were full of rage or sadness. I even met a ten-year-old who was pregnant. Being with that many different kinds of kids made me understand that while bad things can happen, there are a lot of people out there trying to do good. I hope if someone is going through a bad time, if they are being abused in any way, that they will find a teacher, boss, friend, social worker, counselor, or pastor—someone who will help get them out of that situation. The many different situations the kids came from, contrasted with the kind, helpful people at Orangewood, convinced me that there are many good people in this world.
Even though I was surrounded by kind people, I cried all the time. The horror of the trauma, of the abuse, and of missing my family, combined with my dad’s betrayal, came pouring out in my tears. Slowly, as the days passed, I realized that I would get to stay at Orangewood, at least for a while. The relief that knowledge brought caused even more tears to fall. My years in captivity had taken a huge emotional toll.
One thing that helped me a lot was the regular routine at Orangewood. I’d had a routine in my captors’ house, but this was different. When I had breakfast at Orangewood, I did not have to cook the food—for me or for anyone else. When it was time to go to bed, I had a real bed with real blankets and lots of time to sleep and recharge for the next day.
In my first weeks at Orangewood I regularly met with Hana and other social workers and law enforcement officials. One of these people was Mark Abend. Mark’s job title is supervisory special agent, Homeland Security Investigations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He is what is known as an ICE agent. Mark told me that I was taken from the home of The Mom and The Dad because someone had seen me and thought something was not quite right. I was never in school and I worked all the time. I think the person who made the call might have been a neighbor who had seen me through a kitchen window when I was washing dishes late at night, but I will never know for sure. I am forever grateful that he or she called the local police.
Mark said, “After the police knocked on the door the first time and were denied entry, they got a warrant and came back. They asked your captor who lived in the house, and he named every person—except for you. When an officer pointed you out and asked why you were not in school, he replied that you did not want to go.
“When the o
fficers finally entered the house,” Mark continued, “they found your passport and saw that you had overstayed your three-month visitor’s visa by about eighteen months. Those were the grounds on which you were removed from the home.”
Sitting there at Orangewood with Mark, I tried to relax, but I couldn’t. Mark used humor to try to get me to open up, but Arabic prohibition against male-female interactions stopped me from engaging with him. I could not understand his words without a translator, but his friendly vibe and his facial expressions almost made me smile. Almost.
While I appreciated Mark’s efforts, I had other things to think about. School. My biggest challenge at Orangewood, by far, was school. I had never been inside a classroom, so the mechanics of school were foreign to me. What was toughest for me was that I didn’t understand anything that was being said. Physically my butt was in the chair, but mentally I quickly learned to zone out. Imagine not knowing your letters or numbers, then being put into a middle school classroom in a country that not only doesn’t speak your language but also doesn’t use the same alphabet—China for instance. It was impossible for me to learn in that setting.
All was not lost, however. Hana Hana met with me many times, and I learned to trust her and over time came to consider her a friend. In addition to the Arabic words she spoke, she looked and acted as if she cared, and I appreciated her efforts on my behalf. Hana had my back and did her best to make Orangewood the best experience it could be for me. Hana helped Orangewood put special teachers and aides next to me in the classroom, and these people taught me letters, colors, and numbers. And slowly, very slowly, I began to pick up on some of it.
Hana explained that here in the United States everyone has rights and that all kids go to school. Through her I learned how mistreated I had been, and I made up my mind that no matter what else happened, I would never allow someone to mistreat me ever again. I was no longer a helpless, naïve, eight-year-old child. By now I was almost thirteen and had been around more than my share of abusive people. No more. No matter what else happened to me in the future, I was done with that. I was old enough to advocate for myself, to speak up and tell people what I needed. My social worker taught me that here in the United States people can make their own decisions. That alone was life changing for me.
