by Hall, Shyima
Basically Sarah was nice, but she had listened too much and too long to her own mother. Day after day both women made my life difficult. Nothing I did was right. Some of the fighting that started between us, though, was my beginning to assert my own individuality and opinions. Looking back, this was a huge milestone. I was displaying normal teen defiance! But once, after a particularly heated argument, Sarah’s mother said, “That’s it. It’s either Shyima or me.”
I didn’t leave right away. With the help of my social worker, we looked around for a new foster family while I remained in my current home. I spent a few nights with different families, but none was a good fit until an opportunity in Arizona came along. Sarah even went with me to visit this new family over a long weekend. My English was much improved, but I was still far behind other kids my age in every possible way, and I knew that any placement was going to be difficult. But I wanted to show everyone that I had a positive attitude and was doing my part, so I agreed to stay with this new family. Unfortunately, we could all see right away that the fit was not good, and when the school in Arizona said they didn’t know what to do with me, I came back.
• • •
I learned a lot from my first foster family. I had many firsts with them, and with Assana’s family, and I felt that I was starting to fit into American life. I was with this family for nearly two years, and during my second year there I even began thinking some phrases in English. That was another huge milestone.
Through the years I saw many social workers. I believe they had to swap cases with others in their office every few months to prevent a social worker from getting too invested in someone like me and losing their objectivity. I also, on occasion, had conversations with Mark Abend through an interpreter. In my meetings with him I learned that the United States government was still investigating my former captors. I also knew there was a jurisdictional fight brewing over who was going to handle the case. For some reason the FBI wanted it, but Mark was adamant that his division of Homeland Security was going to prosecute. I didn’t care.
It was far too much for me. I was busy trying to deal with daily life—trying to learn English and fit in with other kids my age—and didn’t want to be brought into the case. I had no desire to ever see my captors again and thought if they fell off the face of the earth, that would be fine with me.
I understood that building the case would take time, so I didn’t think too much about it. My mind was directed instead toward my next foster family.
CHAPTER NINE
My second foster home turned out to be in central California, and I was again living with a Muslim family. There was a mom and a dad, Rachel and Manjit, and an older girl who was in college but who lived at home. There was also a boy who was in high school, and then a younger girl.
The landscape there was much greener and far more beautiful than I was used to. Many of the trees and shrubs were different from those in Orange County, and it took some time for me to get used to the change. Even though most of the city was clean, we lived in a run-down area. But the home was larger and nicer than I had lived in for my first foster placement, and even had a pool.
Instead of having my own room, I shared with the family’s older daughter. I came to this family right after the first of the year, and for the first time I was able to go to public school. The other kids in the family went to a Muslim school, but as had happened with my first foster placement, I was far enough behind for my age that the Muslim school here was not equipped to educate me. In public school I was put in the eighth grade even though my education level was in the lower elementary grades. I believe that my social workers had recommended that I be with kids closer to my own age because I was quite far behind socially.
I was excited about school. My English was good enough that I could make my needs known, and if people spoke slowly, I understood a lot of what they said. I was looking forward to making friends and learning as much as possible so I could eventually make my way in my new country.
My excitement, however, was quickly dashed, for this school was not anything like I had imagined. The first problem I encountered was the gangs. These were punk middle school gangs, the baby version of the Bloods and the Crips. I had no idea about gangs or what they were, and I got between the two factions several times. It seemed like both sides competed to see which could make my life the most miserable.
There were police officers on the school grounds and inside the school at all times to help teachers keep the kids under control, but their presence did nothing to ease my mind. Even though police had rescued me, and even though I’d had positive dealings with the court system on the issue of my staying in the United States, I still did not trust authorities. For many years I had been told that the police were bad, and it was hard for me to now see them as the good guys. This meant I was just as nervous about the police presence as I was about the gangs.
Most of the kids in school were not in gangs, but they came from tough backgrounds. These kids were harsh in their language and their actions, which made it hard for quiet me to fit in. I had to adapt quickly. It was the whole “eat or be eaten” scenario, and I’d had more than my share of bullying in my captors’ home and in my first foster home. I wasn’t going to put up with it anymore. But that was easier to think about than actually accomplish.
Kids of middle school age are hard to be around in the best of circumstances. They are desperate to fit in, and those who do not mold to the cookie-cutter image of everyone else are picked on. That was me. I was the only student in the school who was Muslim. Because my new foster family held tightly to their faith, I had to wear a head covering at school. And I was the only student who did not speak English well. Those two things alone made me the subject of ridicule, and I was taunted, bullied, pushed, pinched, and bruised every day. I tried my best not to cry, because I knew if I did that it would be a huge sign of weakness to the other students, but I couldn’t help myself. Most days I broke down well before the lunch hour.
I was put into as many remedial classes as the school staff could find for me, and as far as the other kids were concerned, those classes labeled me as stupid. That’s how I became the dumb girl who dressed and talked funny. No one there knew my story, of course, and with this group of kids I am not sure it would have made a difference if they had.
The animosity the other students had for me was building, but so was my anger and resentment toward them. I was angry at life, angry with God, mad at my foster parents for putting me into such a terrible school, mad at my social workers, parents, captors, teachers. I was one angry person, and the rage and hate had been boiling inside me for some time.
Further complicating matters, I did not know why the other kids did not like me. I had done nothing to them. I knew I looked different, talked and dressed differently, but inside I was the same as they were. It was confusing to me and added to my inner turmoil.
One afternoon I was outside, waiting for my foster sister to pick me up after school, when a Hispanic girl spit in my face. This was the worst thing that had happened to me at school, but I sucked it up, wiped the spit off my face, and walked away. However, the girl wouldn’t let up. She then called me several names, including “Arab people.” I didn’t understand what she meant, but her tone of voice let me know what she thought of me. I kept walking.
Finally she came up behind me and pulled my scarf off my head and punched me. That was it, and I let loose. All of my anger and rage came out on her—and I kicked and screamed and punched and scratched with everything I had. When all was said and done, I was in much better shape physically than she was, and while I knew that fighting was not a good way to settle differences, I have to say that afterward I felt great!
The emotions I had unleashed on the girl empowered me. Until that point, I had been a meek young teen. Much of who I was at that time was due to my captivity, and to the abusive men in my life. But no more. I was done being picked on. It was time to step up, for me to demand I be treated as re
spectfully as anyone else. If I had to do that in a fight, then so be it.
Long term, however, a fight might not have been my best choice, as I was suspended for a week. Most kids in that school would have received a one- or two-day suspension, but the teachers and other staff could see that my anger toward this girl was deep. I had put a lot of bruises on her body, and I bristled with fury anytime her name was mentioned. Because of that I got a full week. I even had to go to Saturday school for a while to make up the days that I’d missed.
After the fight I was enrolled in an Arabic kickboxing class through our mosque. Kickboxing was a way for me to let out my anger in an appropriate way. It made me feel empowered and I liked it a lot, but my foster mom was busy with work and activities for her other kids and rarely had time to take me. After a few sessions I stopped going. I had not had time to make any friends in that class, but what I had been taught stuck with me.
When I returned to my regular classes, it was evident that my teachers were as confused about me as I was. It is an unfortunate fact that the only thing teachers in this school could do was keep some semblance of order. Because the kids were out of control, the teachers got little teaching done. My foster family didn’t understand how life was for me there, because the Muslim school their own kids went to was good. The kids in that school behaved themselves and did well on academic tests. This meant my foster parents had no experience or skills to offer me to make my days easier.
While I struggled to fit in during the day, after school I struggled with my homework. Because I was slow to read and understand my studies, most days it took me hours to finish my assignments. Public school was a big change for me, and school had me totally stressed.
Adding to that was the stress I felt in the home of my foster family. I realize now that a home should be a haven, a safe place where you can relax and be yourself. But the dad in this home was as mean as the other Muslim men in my life had been. It was my luck of the draw that here was another Muslim man who did not have much control over his angry feelings.
I thought that Manjit treated his wife and children with little respect. There were many fights, and if Rachel or his daughters spoke out of turn, he’d slap them. His attitude was domineering, and that didn’t mix well with my newfound sense of personal empowerment. One area where we clashed was religion. This was a seriously strict Muslim household, which meant the dad and kids got up at four a.m. every morning to say their first prayers. They also often went to the mosque at that early hour to pray. Part of the Muslim religion is to pray five prayers every day at specific times. None of the other homes I had lived in had observed this rule, but this family did.
This family was strict about my wearing the head scarf too. Because the dad and the brother were not my real dad and brother, I had to wear the head scarf anytime they were in the house, which was often. That was hard for me. I respect women who wear the scarf as a symbol of their purity and their faith. If that is important to you, I fully support you in wearing it, but it wasn’t important to me, and when I had to wear it, I hated it.
Many of the Muslim traditions may not have been important for my foster mom either. Her own family was Christian, and because of that my foster dad did not allow his wife to see her own family, didn’t even allow them to give her gifts for Christmas. I thought this was terribly sad. Because I had been taken away from my family, I knew how important those ties were. Rachel must have missed her relatives, especially on Christian holidays. Muslim holidays were the only days when she ever went to the mosque.
My foster dad was such a domineering man that I do not know why Rachel stayed with him. I wish she could have spoken up for herself more, and maybe she had earlier in her marriage. Maybe after so many years she just tried to keep as much peace in her home as she could. I was now getting to an age where the issue of standing up for myself was important to me, and the relationship between my foster parents made me want to become a strong, independent woman.
Manjit had many rules for our home, and one of them was that we were to speak only Arabic inside the house. This didn’t make much sense to me. Here I was trying as hard as I could to learn English, and they couldn’t support my speaking it at home. No matter the rule, I made the decision to use English only. I was living in an English-speaking country, and I needed to know the language. My decision caused more than one argument, because if someone spoke to me at home in Arabic, I’d answer as best I could in English. Of course, there wasn’t that much talking going on inside the house anyway.
Another contradiction was that even though my social workers encouraged me to make friends, I could not bring anyone home, as only those of the Muslim faith were allowed in the house. In fact, I was actively encouraged to stay away from non-Muslims. This didn’t make much sense either. I was the only Muslim student in my school, so it was impossible to meet others of my faith.
After school was the best time of the day for me. The school was only a few minutes away from our house, and my foster sister usually picked me up. My foster mom couldn’t because she juggled working, and her kids’ sports and other after-school schedules. But the older girl had her own car and was usually able to get me. I had to call my foster dad as soon as I got home, though. If I didn’t call him a few minutes after school let out, he’d start to call the house, and I’d better have been there. He always dropped me off at school in the morning; maybe he made me call him after school because he wanted to be sure I had stayed at school all day. After the call I’d settle into my room to begin the lengthy process of my homework.
After my homework was finished—and on weekends—I read a lot and watched TV. Most of the books I read were children’s books, such as those written by Dr. Seuss. My reading and English language skills were still basic—again, mostly because we spoke Arabic in the home. Those books were special to me, though, especially because my foster dad didn’t allow us to go anywhere, so entertainment choices were limited. We did go to Lake Tahoe as a family several times for vacations, and that was a lot of fun. I saw snow for the first time when I was there and totally fell in love with it. Tahoe had deep, deep snow when we were there, and the novelty of being out in it was fun. Even my foster dad relaxed some on those trips, and we had some good times. I wished he could have been that much fun all the time.
Obviously, this family and my relationship with them was complicated. I believe my foster mom and the kids liked me. In fact, my foster dad spoke with my social worker about adopting me, but I didn’t want to do that. First, he never talked to me about it but instead went behind my back to try to get the adoption started. It did not help that I did not respect him and didn’t agree with the strictness in which he made his family practice their faith. The amount of fighting in the house discouraged me from making this my permanent home, even though I longed for a family to call my own.
• • •
Months went by and my anger with my experiences in life only deepened. I began to see another therapist. I had seen one when I was with my first foster family, but even though the speaking in those sessions had been in Arabic, I had not spoken much. I’d been still mistrustful at that point, and far too weighed down by the changes in my life to begin to make any sense of them.
But this time it was different. I was more mature and had the ability to express myself better. I told my therapist how disappointed I was that not a single person from my foster family attended my eighth-grade graduation. It seemed as if every kid had someone there to support them—except me. If my foster family cared about me, as they said they did, why couldn’t my foster mom have taken a few hours off from work that day? Why couldn’t the older daughter have come? Or my foster dad? I felt miserable on a day that should have been joyful, and that made me mad.
I was finding that I was the kind of person who kept anger bottled up inside. That isn’t necessarily a good thing, because people wouldn’t even know I was angry with them. We’d have a conversation, something would set me off, and my pent-up anger would
spew forth in an explosion of hateful words. Many times when I was in my room, I again asked myself why my parents had sold me into slavery. Why had my captors been cruel to me? What had I ever done to deserve any of what had happened? The questions went round and round in my head, and there were never any answers, and I was filled with a mixture of sadness and anger.
My fury, along with my confused feelings, had troubled me since before I’d been rescued. As I mentioned, at Orangewood I’d been given medicine to help me sleep. Because I’d been extremely anxious about the changes in my life during that time, sleep had been impossible. When I’d been with my first foster family, the medicine prescribed for anxiety and depression had helped balance my moods, which had been all over the place. But the talk part of the therapy had been as helpful, even if I hadn’t done very much talking.
I discovered that now that I’d been physically free for a period of time, I was emotionally freer. My small freedoms of being able to go to school and make choices about my spare time at home had done wonders for my state of mind. Now that I was more receptive, my therapist was able to teach me fully how wrong slavery is. I had been told that before but hadn’t understood the concept as well as I did now. Through her I learned that it was okay to be mad about my years in captivity. I told her how unhappy I was at school and with my foster family, and she helped me understand more about relationships between people. I had not understood any of those ideas before, and that new knowledge helped me in my interactions with the people around me.
I had never anticipated how difficult it would be to change my mind-set from being a captive to being a free person, or how complicated life could get in the process. Many people in my life thought I should be happy for what I had, happy simply for my freedom, but it wasn’t that easy. Happiness is not a switch people can turn off and on. Not that I wasn’t happy. In fact, I was thrilled that I no longer had to wait on The Mom and The Dad and their entitled kids. But for many years I had thought I would be happy if only I could see my family. Now I knew that was just a fantasy, and that happiness and disappointment can be tightly intertwined.
