by Shyima Hall
Another issue was that, according to Hana and my team of other social workers and the staff at Orangewood, I should have been with my parents. But my mom and dad were in another country. If I were sent back to them, there was no guarantee that they would not sell me into slavery again. Hana and my team would not allow that to happen. It was an odd feeling for me to think that there were people who were watching out for me. That had been a rare occurrence in my life thus far.
I had told Hana about my brothers’ touching my private parts and how icky that had made me feel. She made me see how wrong and unacceptable that was. Those two factors eventually kept me here in the United States. Even though my three-month visa had long since expired, and even though that visa had been obtained illegally, a wonderful woman judge in Orange County, California, felt I would not be safe if I were sent back to Egypt.
Several times Hana and I made the five-minute walk from Orangewood to the juvenile courthouse where various aspects of my case were heard. Several other social workers acted on my behalf too. On one visit the judge gave me a stuffed tiger. It was not the first such gift I received, as a woman at Orangewood had given me a little bear with a heart on it. This gift was especially important to me, though, because tigers are strong and stand up for themselves. To me that tiger meant hope. That tiny stuffed toy represented a better future. I still have it because the gift and what it stood for meant something to me then. And you know what? It still does.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I was at Orangewood for quite a few months before I was placed in a foster home. That was probably a good thing, because it took me a while to get used to doing everyday tasks that most people enjoy. Showering daily was one thing. And having shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, soap, and other supplies was hard to get used to at first. Most people take these things and others, such as sleeping with a window and a light in the room, for granted, but I didn’t. I still don’t. When it came time to find placement for me, it was more difficult than for many of the other kids because I did not speak English. Plus, I was still way behind in my education. I was thirteen but was probably at a kindergarten level in school.
The other reason placement was difficult was that Orangewood made a real effort to screen their families well. Rather than put kids with just about anyone, as I have learned some other facilities do, the staff at Orangewood tried hard to find a good fit for their kids. Part of this process allowed the kids to interview the prospective foster parents, and to have the final say on whether or not they wanted to join the new family.
When I initially met my first foster family, I felt in the back of my mind that I was supposed to accept them no matter what. My prospective foster mom and her kids came to Orangewood, and we met in the parent area. I did like them. And this family was a Muslim one that spoke both English and Arabic, which was great because they could provide me with a strong transitional home. I knew nothing of American life. I had never been to a store or a restaurant and didn’t know such things as libraries or movie theaters existed.
This family said the right things, but I was still mistrustful of people I didn’t know, and especially of Muslim men. The men in my life so far had not been good to me, as all of them had been angry, domineering, and belligerent. But I wanted a family. I very much wanted to belong, and when the staff at Orangewood asked if I wanted to give this family a try, I said, “Sure. Let’s go for it.”
• • •
My first foster family lived about a fifteen-minute drive from Orangewood. It was a nice, calm neighborhood, with lots of retired people. There were several bedrooms and one bath in our home, along with the usual kitchen and living room.
I was thrilled to find that I had my own room. In it was a set of bunk beds—one stacked on top of the other—a chair, and a closet with no door. It was a small room, but it was mine and I was grateful for it. Next to me was my foster mom and dad’s room, and behind that, another bedroom. To get to that room you either had to walk through the mom and dad’s room or go outside and into the room through the back door. It was an odd layout.
My new family included a dad, Ahmed, who was originally from the Middle East and a mom, Sarah, who was from here in the United States. I thought of them as another version of The Mom and The Dad. Sarah was an aggressive woman of average height and blond hair who had been raised Christian but had converted to the Muslim faith when she married. Ahmed was tall and thick, and something about him gave me the creeps. I never felt comfortable around him and was never able to establish any kind of a relationship.
The couple had a son who was in his twenties who was in and out of the home with his own daughter, who was two or three. The second child was in high school, and neither of these siblings practiced their Muslim faith, even though they had been raised in it.
Ahmed and Sarah also had a young girl, who was two or three. This girl slept in the back bedroom. In addition there was a baby who slept in a crib in her parents’ room.
This family was nice to me and tried hard, but I never felt that I fit in. I had nothing in common with the other kids, and we weren’t close enough in age to be going through the same life stages together. There was a baby, a toddler, a kid in high school, a young man in his twenties—and me. Even though I knew this was supposed to be a long-term placement, every day when I woke up, I’d think, What’s next for me?
Instead of going to school, as I had hoped I would be able to do, I was homeschooled. The family did this for religious purposes, and even though I was disappointed about it at the time, it was good for me because I got more personal attention than I would have had in public school. Both Arabic and English were spoken in the home, and I believe Orangewood wanted me placed with this family so I could learn to speak, read, and write English. In that way, I was where I needed to be.
I was homeschooled along with another Muslim family, and that mom taught us. She was a good teacher, but I was frustrated. Orangewood had given me a start, but I was far behind everyone else. I cried in frustration almost every day as I struggled to learn to say the names of letters, colors, and numbers. Then I had to learn to put meaning behind the words. I might be able to say the word “walk,” for example, but it took much longer for me to differentiate the word from the action.
Slowly, however, some of it came together. I went from learning letters to understanding how to put the letters together to make words. Remember, I didn’t even know how to do this in my native Arabic language, so every thought, concept, and idea was new to me. After I could make a few words, I learned how to put them together to make a sentence. And as my English speaking improved, my writing, reading, and comprehension did too. I was still way behind, though. Imagine being a teenager and struggling through first-grade work. That was me.
Eventually my social workers thought I was ready for more and asked my foster parents to put me in school. Because this family was a traditional Muslim one, they would consider only Muslim schools. The first school they approached, the school that was closest to where we lived, felt I was too old for the grades they offered. They were concerned that the age difference between their elementary school students and me would prove to be too much for both the other kids and me to overcome. They may have been right.
I did go for a brief time to another Muslim school, though. This school had kids my age, but even though the administrators put me into their special education classes, I was too far behind for their teachers to help me. I was perfectly happy to end up back in our little home school.
One reason I wanted to be there was that I liked my teacher a lot. She was kind and patient with me, as were her daughters, who were the other students. Of the two daughters, there was a girl my age and one a year younger. While both became dear friends, I spent more time with the younger daughter, Assana. It turned out that I wasn’t just way behind in my formal education. I was far behind in my social skills too, and because Assana was younger, she was closer to me on that level.
Without the opportunity to form friend
ships and play, as most other kids do, I had missed out on important developmental milestones. The preteen birthday parties, young-girl crushes on the boy next door, sleepovers, Girl Scouts, choir practice, camping, sports—I had experienced none of the normal things that other young girls do in America. My teacher and her girls helped me experience several of those things for the first time, and I am pleased that I got to share those times with these wonderful people.
I loved Assana and her family and stayed overnight at their home often. There I learned to ride a bike and use a computer. On a social level I didn’t understand that there was work time, playtime, break time, homework time, et cetera, and they helped me over that little hump of understanding too.
At this point in time I was a quiet person. I was unsure of what to say or do when I was around other people. And if I had something to say, my English was often not good enough for me to express my feelings. Assana was also a quiet person, and we became the kind of friends who understand each other intuitively. I often watched her to see what she would say or do in a given situation, so just by being herself she was teaching me.
• • •
While I enjoyed my time with Assana and her family, life with my foster family wasn’t turning out to be everything I had hoped. One reason was that I was overwhelmed with everything about my new life. I know I have used that word a lot, “overwhelmed,” but I have no other word to describe how emotionally overloaded I was. It was still hard for me to believe that simple freedoms—such as being able to sleep later than daybreak on a weekend morning, or sitting down at a table to eat rather than serving the meal—were mine.
I had had such a rigid schedule with my captors, and there had also been a routine at Orangewood. I had hated the first and enjoyed the second, but with my foster family the schedule was less formal, and that meant I had more time to myself. That was another new concept for me: personal time. I had no idea what I should do when I wasn’t responsible for something or someone else. There had never been time for me to explore my interests or talents, so I didn’t even know what I liked to do. Hike, sing, draw, play cards—I had no clue what I was good at or how to spend my time.
I ended up spending most of my free time alone in my room. I did puzzles and played with flash cards, both of which I am sure helped me developmentally but weren’t that exciting. My room became my best friend because there was a lot of arguing going on in my foster home. I’d had enough of that with my biological parents, and with The Mom and The Dad, and didn’t want to get involved in the fighting in this home too.
Although Ahmed was a kinder person than the other men in my life, he still was the authority figure. None of us dared question his decisions—except his mother-in-law, Sarah’s mother, who made it clear that she did not approve of Muslims.
The mother-in-law visited often. But whenever the arguing became too intense, she’d leave in a huff. Life always settled down when she was away, but after a few days, boom, there she was again.
For some reason this woman did not seem to like me and I did not feel welcome there. I don’t know if she thought I was taking up a room that the baby could be in. Or maybe she thought she should have been sleeping in the room that I was in. It’s possible that she just didn’t like me. Whatever the reason, I think she went out of her way to get me in trouble.
“Shyima pinched the baby,” she’d say. Of course I did no such thing, but she was always saying things like that.
To make life even more difficult, my foster dad and I did not get along well. There was no connection between us, and he always wanted me to go to the mosque with them. Some who practice the Muslim faith go to their place of worship every day, but most families, including this one, didn’t. Instead they usually went weekly and on special days within the faith. The reason I didn’t like to go was that it was the same mosque that The Mom and The Dad went to. They were still under investigation and had not been convicted of anything yet, which meant they were free to enjoy everything the United States had to offer, including this particular mosque. One time we went, and I saw The Mom there. I had such a horrible feeling when I saw her. I told my foster parents, and they agreed that I would not have to go back if I didn’t want to. I went a few times after that but did not see her or any other members of her family there again. Even so, that mosque remained an uneasy place for me to be.
When I had been with my captors in Egypt, I had spoken with my biological mother once or twice. Now my social workers and my foster dad encouraged me to speak to my parents again, even though it had been a while since we had talked. My social worker thought it was important that we keep the lines of communication open, so my foster dad made the calls even though I didn’t want to. I knew the outcome would be the same as it had been when we’d spoken when I was in Egypt, and when we’d spoken just after I had been rescued. I was right.
The first time I talked to my dad when I was with this foster family, all he did was yell at me. “Your mother is very sick, and it is all your fault,” he said. Forget the fact that she had eleven children and little in the way of medical care or good food. When he said, “You are a selfish child to be in that place you are now,” I began to cry, and the tears only became larger when he said, “You should be here, home with your family.”
How could he even say that? For years I had wanted nothing more than to be home with my family. The reason I wasn’t was because he and my mother had sold me into slavery. Now he dared to yell at me for not being there? I could think of nothing that was more unfair than his treatment of me.
Even though there was a chance I would be sold back into slavery, even though my brothers had touched me inappropriately, if either my dad or my mom had said in a kind tone, “We love you, we miss you, we are sorry for what happened. We can’t wait for you to come home, where we can give you a hug,” I might have thought about asking my social worker to make that happen.
The reality was, in an ideal world I did want to be with my biological family. I desperately wanted to catch up on the lost years, and I missed my younger brothers and sisters a lot. But I had learned that we do not live in a perfect world. Even though life was tough for me now, it was significantly better than it had been before. I knew I was where I needed to be.
My foster dad saw how much the phone call upset me, so several months later when my social worker thought we should try again, he was on the line with me. He interrupted my dad’s rants several times, and even became angry when my dad again blamed my mother’s heart attack on me. Even though we didn’t get along, I was glad that my foster dad defended me.
The third and last time I spoke with my parents during this period in my life, I got to talk to my mom and several of my brothers and sisters. My heart melted when my mother said, “I miss you more than I can say.” Then it hardened right back up when my dad got on the line and said, “Whenever I see you, I will march right up to you and kick you.” When my dad went on to say, “I am going to the president of the United States to tell him that the United States has stolen my daughter,” my foster dad once again intervened.
By this time my foster parents and my social workers could see that these calls were not the least bit helpful, and in fact only made matters worse. I was thankful when I learned I would not have to make those calls to Egypt anymore.
• • •
About this time I began to see an Arabic therapist. I didn’t talk much but I listened far more than my body language said I did. I was prescribed medication for anxiety and depression. This was in addition to medication I had been prescribed at Orangewood for insomnia. I think it helped, for a while. One thing was for sure: Family life was a lot more complicated than I had thought it would be.
In my foster home I was allowed to wear whatever I wanted inside the home, including makeup, which I love to this day. I had no allowance, but I had done enough good deeds at Orangewood that I had earned enough tokens to pick out a gift, and I had chosen a young girl’s makeup kit, which I treasured.
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p; Whenever I went out, though, I had to cover my head with the hijab, even though I didn’t agree with it. To my foster dad, wearing the hijab was a sign of a woman’s respect for herself. I did not agree with any man who told a woman how to best respect herself. I didn’t yet know that the United States was a country of religious freedom—that I could worship and pray to God in any manner that I chose. All I knew was that I did not believe in any religion that made women into second-class citizens, and where the man of the house could berate everyone around him.
I have since learned that not every Muslim home is like this, and that is not what the Muslim faith is about. But from my experience and perspective at the time, that’s what I felt it was. I respect people of all faiths, and respect their religious beliefs. I fully honored my friend Assana’s decision to wear the hijab. I didn’t want to be Muslim, though, and that caused a lot of stress between my foster family and me.
Another thing that was not working with this placement was that my foster mom continually corrected my English, and not in a positive manner. Rather than say, for example, “Shyima, that was better. But next time try saying ‘you’ with an ‘ooo’ sound instead of an ‘aw’ sound,” instead Sarah would say, “You didn’t say it right. How many times do I have to tell you?” Once, Sarah’s snide tone and harsh words were so evident that even her older son defended me.
Sarah’s attitude made me shut down emotionally toward her. One thing I have learned about myself is that when people do not understand that I am trying my hardest, I disconnect from them. If they cannot recognize the effort I am making, even though I do not always get things right, I don’t want to have anything more to do with that person.
