The Middle of Everywhere (5 page)

However, their father had opposed Saddam Hussein, and from the time of Shireen's birth, his life was in danger. After Hussein came to power, terrible things happened to families like theirs. One family of eleven was taken to jail by his security forces and tortured to death. Prisoners were often fed rice mixed with glass so that they would quietly bleed to death in their cells. Girls were raped and impregnated by the security police. Afterward, they were murdered or killed themselves.

It was a hideous time. Schoolteachers tried to get children to betray their parents. One night the police broke into the family's house. They tore up the beds, bookcases, and the kitchen, and they took their Western clothes and tapes. After that night, all of the family except for one married sister made a daring escape into Iran.

Meena said, "It was a long time ago but I can see everything today." There was no legal way to go north, so they walked through Kurdistan at night and slept under bushes in the day. They found a guide who made his living escorting Kurds over the mountains. Twice they crossed rivers near flood stage. Entire families had been swept away by the waters and one of the sisters almost drowned when she fell off her horse. The trails were steep and narrow and another sister fell and broke her leg. Meena was in a bag slung over the guide's horse for three days. She remembered how stiff she felt in the bag, and Shireen remembered screaming, "I want my mama."

This was in the 1980s. While this was happening I was a psychologist building my private practice and a young mother taking my kids to
Sesame Street Live
and Vacation Village on Lake Okoboji. I was dancing to the music of my husband's band, Sour Mash, listening to Van Morrison and Jackson Browne and reading P. D. James and Anne Tyler. Could my life have been happening on the same planet?

The family made it to a refugee camp in Iran. It was a miserable place with smelly tents and almost no supplies. Shireen said this was rough on her older siblings who had led lives of luxury. She and Meena adjusted more quickly. The sisters studied in an Iranian school for refugees.

They endured this makeshift camp for one very bad year. The Iranians insisted that all the women in the camp wear heavy scarves and robes and conform to strict rules. The soldiers in the camp shouted at them if they wore even a little lipstick. Shireen once saw a young girl wearing makeup stopped by a guard who rubbed it off her face. He had put ground glass in the tissue so that her cheeks bled afterward.

They decided to get out of Iran and traveled the only direction they could, east into Pakistan. They walked all the way with nothing to drink except salty water that made them even thirstier. I asked how long the trip took and Shireen said three days. Meena quickly corrected her: "Ten years."

Once in Pakistan they were settled by a relief agency in a border town called Quetta, where strangers were not welcome. The family lived in a small house with electricity that worked only sporadically. The stress of all the moves broke the family apart. The men left the women and the family has never reunited.

Single women in Quetta couldn't leave home unescorted and the sisters had no men to escort them. Only their mother, Zeenat, dared go out to look for food. As Meena put it, "She took good care of us and now we will take care of her."

The sisters almost never left the hut, but when they did, they wore robes as thick and heavy as black carpets. Meena demonstrated how hard it was to walk in these clothes and how she often fell down. Even properly dressed, they were chased by local men. When they rode the bus to buy vegetables, they were harassed.

Without their heroic mother, they couldn't have survived. For weeks at a time, the family was trapped inside the hut. At night the locals would break their windows with stones and taunt the sisters with threats of rape. Meena interrupted to say that every house in the village but theirs had weapons. Shireen said incredulously, "There were no laws in that place. Guns were laws."

One night some men broke into their hut and took what little money and jewelry they had left. They had been sleeping and woke to see guns flashing around them. The next day they reported the break-in to the police. Shireen said, "The police told us to get our own guns." Meena said, "We were nothing to them. The police slapped and pushed us. We were afraid to provoke them."

During the time they were there, the Pakistanis tested a nuclear bomb nearby and they all got sick. An older sister had seizures from the stress of their lives. Shireen said defiantly, "It was hard, but we got used to hard."

Still, the young women laughed as they told me about the black robes and the men with guns. Their laughter was a complicated mixture of anxiety, embarrassment, and relief that it was over. It was perhaps also an attempt to distance themselves from that time and place.

They'd studied English in the hut and made plans for their future in America or Europe. Shireen said, "I always knew that we would escape that place."

In Quetta the family waited ten years for papers that would allow them to immigrate. Shireen looked at me and said, "I lost my teenage years there—all my teenage years."

Finally, in frustration, the family went on a hunger strike. They told the relief workers they would not eat until they were allowed to leave Quetta. After a few days, the agency paperwork was delivered and the family was permitted to board a train for Islamabad.

In Islamabad they lived in a small apartment with no air conditioning. Every morning they would soak their curtains in water to try to cool their rooms. It was dusty and polluted and they got typhoid fever and heat sickness. They had a year of interviews and waiting before papers arrived that allowed them to leave for America. Still, it was a year of hope. Zeenat picked up cans along the roads to make money. One sister ran a beauty parlor from their home. They all watched American television, studied English, and dreamed of a good future.

Finally they flew to America—Islamabad to Karachi to Amsterdam to New York to St. Louis to Lincoln. Shireen said, "We came in at night. There were lights spread out over the dark land. Lincoln looked beautiful."

We talked about their adjustment to Lincoln. Five of the sisters had found work. They didn't have enough money though, and they didn't like the cold. Meena needed three root canals and Zeenat had many missing teeth and needed bridgework, false teeth, everything really. Still, they were enjoying the sense of possibilities unfolding. Shireen put it this way, "In America, we have rights." She pronounced "rights" as if it were a sacred word.

Meena mentioned that traffic here was more orderly and less dangerous than in Pakistan. The girls loved American clothes and makeup. Two of their sisters wanted to design clothes. Another was already learning to do American hairstyles so that she could work in a beauty shop. Meena wanted to be a nurse and Shireen a model or flight attendant. She said, "I have traveled so much against my will. Now I would like to see the world in a good way."

Shireen said that it was scary to go to the high school. Fortunately, her study of English in Pakistan made it easy for her to learn Nebraska English. She liked her teachers but said the American students mostly ignored her, especially when they heard her thick accent.

One boy had accosted her in the hall and asked her, "Do you suck dick?" She hadn't even known what he meant, but she'd asked her teacher to translate. The teacher had encouraged her to report the harassment and she had. "I am through suffering," Shireen said. "If it happens again, I will slap him."

I was struck by the resilience of these sisters. In all the awful places they had been, they'd found ways to survive and even joke about their troubles. These young women used their intelligence to survive. Had they lived different lives, they would probably have been doctors and astrophysicists. Since they'd been in Lincoln, they'd been happy. Shireen said, "Of course we have problems, but they are easy problems."

I gave the sisters a ride home in my old Honda. They invited me in for tea, but I didn't have time. Instead I wrote out my phone number and told them to call if I could help them in any way.

When I said good-bye, I had no idea how soon and how intensely I would become involved in the lives of this family. Two weeks later Shireen called to ask about an art course advertised on a book of matches. It promised a college degree for thirty-five dollars. I said, "Don't do it." A couple of weeks later she called again. This time she had seen an ad for models. She wondered if she should pay and enter the modeling contest. Again I advised, "Don't do it." I was embarrassed to tell her that we Americans lie to people to make money. Before I hung up, we chatted for a while. I liked her enthusiasm and openness to experience. I asked, "Do you need some help?" She said, "My sisters and I need to learn to drive."

I went by the family's rental, a small house on a street of grocery stores, fast-food places, and pawnshops. The house was decorated Goodwill-style with Kurdish touches. The sisters came and went in various stages of dress, all with skin creams on their faces. A big can of cashews and a pot of strong black tea sat on the table. The rooms smelled of garlic, onions, and cooking oil. Later I learned that someone was always cooking something delicious.

I met all the sisters and their mother. Zeenat was short, with reddish hair and deep worry lines around her eyes. She couldn't speak English, but she smiled broadly. It was amazing how much we could communicate to each other with no language in common. Zeenat could convey a great deal with her dramatic body language. At first she mainly conveyed humor and joy at seeing me. Later, I would sense her deep sorrow.

At fifty-five, Zeenat was lost in America. She'd been left by her husband and she couldn't learn the language or find a job. She had many health problems and a deep persistent depression. Nevertheless, she remained earthy, affectionate, and expressive. She reminded me of strong women, like Thelma Ritter or Bea Arthur, with heart and spunk.

The sisters were all beautiful, smart, and assertive, with straight black hair and flashing black eyes. Their assertiveness and their sticking together was what had kept them alive. All of them loved to laugh, sing, and dance. But all of them were coping with nightmares, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, heart palpitations, and other physical symptoms of stress. Quickly, I learned how different they were from one another.

Nasreen, the oldest sister, was small and slender with a large beauty mark on her cheek. She had been educated in a private school before the family fled Baghdad. She had read feminist and political writers, poetry, and philosophy. There was an aura of sadness about Nasreen that never left, even when she smiled her slow smile. She was a poet in a factory.

Leila, the second oldest, was the tough workhorse, the leader of the family, and the moral authority. She was kindhearted and sensible. She had shopped for the family's first car and she made all the tough calls. Leila kept the family focused and calm.

Tanya had a shiny curtain of hair, a curvaceous body, and languid moves. Men were crazy about her. She often had a bouquet of roses on the table from some Back Door Johnny or other. But she seemed indifferent to these admirers, resigned to their attentions rather than pleased by them. Tanya was about as un-Nebraskan as a woman could be. She was intuitive and dramatic and spoke with her eyes and her body. Later I learned she was the family comedian and mimic. She was beautiful and sensual and could have been a great actress. But she was a lonely person, too, set apart by her strengths, too sensitive for the hard life she'd led, and isolated from American peers by her terrible history.

Shehla seemed healthy, both mentally and physically. She was pretty in a girl-next-door way, if the girl next door can be from Kurdistan. She had an eager smile and an easy laugh. She favored jeans and crisp cotton shirts. Shehla had an endearing habit of letting her sisters talk when they could, but jumping in when their English faltered. As time passed, it seemed as if Shehla allowed herself to have more problems. She had generously waited her turn and let her sisters have their problems first. When everyone else was doing better, she allowed herself the luxury of being sick.

Jabha was the second-to-youngest sister. She was fun-loving, sweet-natured, and lighthearted. She had been born during a famous battle and named Jabha, which means "battle," to commemorate that event. However, Jabha was a terrible name for her, so she was nicknamed Meena. Meena always wanted to go everywhere and to do everything. She asked lots of questions and made jokes whenever she could. Her favorite word was "tasty."

Shireen was the baby of the family. She could have been a model if we allowed our models to be size eight and of medium height. Partly because she was in school, she was the quickest to learn English and to understand American ways. She was very focused on getting a good education. Shireen had a close relationship to her mother and was used to getting star treatment in the family. Even as a new refugee in town, she was poised and confident.

That first day we talked about buying a car. Thé sisters had only been here for three months and didn't have much money. All had learner's permits. Leila said they had three thousand dollars and wanted to buy a Honda or Toyota.

Later I called a friend who sold used cars. He said he would look for a good deal. I said Jim and I would contribute some money, too. Leila came with us to the car dealer. She wore a scarf and carried a big plastic purse. It was a bitterly cold day and she shivered in the icy Nebraska wind. She test-drove the car and listened as my dealer friend explained the warranty and the car's flaws and virtues. I thought we had a deal, but after I took her home, I got a call. To my surprise, she said in her heavy accent, "I went to the library and the blue book value isn't so good for this car you showed me." I marveled that Leila, in a foreign country, somehow knew to use a blue book.

The sisters eventually bought a car and I began driving lessons with Shehla, Meena, and Shireen. These driving lessons allowed us many quiet hours to talk. After we got through the harrowing first stages of learning to drive with a stick shift, on the right side of the road, and in city traffic, I became their cultural broker for jobs, education, and physical and mental health.