Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave (13 page)

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.

My therapist was a nice woman and wanted my foster family to come in for a few sessions, but my foster dad wouldn’t allow it. Instead Manjit laughed at me and called me crazy. I knew I wasn’t, but I was disappointed that he was closed-minded about the sessions.

My social worker and counselor encouraged me to again talk to my family in Egypt. Because I understood much more about people then, I agreed to give it another try, even though I was not happy about it. The only thing that was different this time around was that my foster dad was able to have several conversations with my biological father. My dad asked my foster family if they could send pictures of me, so I reluctantly dressed in my head scarf and went to a studio my foster family knew and had the pictures taken.

I had a lot of questions for my biological family, but none of them were ever answered. In fact, I never had the opportunity to ask. On the phone I was either being yelled at or was listening to my mom tell me how much she missed me. Something I wondered about was if any of my other siblings had been sold into slavery. I wanted to know if any new brothers or sisters had been born since I had left. And I worried about my mom’s health, even though I was furious with her for agreeing to sell me into slavery.

•    •    •

ICE agent Mark Abend had always been there in the background, but he became more active in my life when I was with my second foster family. As time had gone on, some things had changed in the case against my former captors, and he now wanted to see where I was emotionally. Without my cooperation his case would not be as strong, and Mark was definite that he wanted to make these people pay for what they’d done to me. I was fortunate to have him on my side, because few other people would have pursued my former captors with as strong a determination as he did.

Mark flew up from Orange County, and the first time he came, we could actually have a conversation! Before, I had always spoken to Mark through an interpreter, but now we could talk face-to-face. Once that happened, some of my ingrained fear of men fell away, and I realized what a good guy Mark was.

By this time it was May 2004, and I think my strong new personality shocked Mark. Before I had been cowed and depressed whenever I’d been in his presence. Now, several years away from captivity and lots of therapy later, I was in the beginning stages of becoming a capable young woman.

Mark filled me in on the latest events and asked if I wanted to pursue the case. I was just angry enough—and strong enough—to say yes. At that point in my life there was nothing I wanted more than for him to put those people in jail, and to make them responsible for how they’d treated me. My therapist was right: There was nothing right about slavery.

After that I saw and spoke to Mark every few months. He brought two lawyers on board, Robert Keenan and Andrew Kline, along with several members of his Homeland Security team. Together they began the process of bringing justice to me, and to the couple I had thought of for a long time as The Mom and The Dad.

•    •    •

I was thrilled that the case was moving again, but Rachel and Manjit did not share in my joy. In fact, they encouraged me to drop it and move on with my life. Manjit even asked me to lie about events that had happened when I was in captivity. That pushed me to my limit. I wished he could have lived like I had for years on end. Then we would see if he’d want to “drop it.”

Discussion of my participation in the case brought an entirely new round of arguments to my foster home, which led to fights about religious freedom, and many other things. One night at about nine p.m., after an intense argument, my foster dad kicked me out of the house.

“Put on your shoes,” he said. “Let’s go.”

I was not allowed to pack any of my things. He dropped me off at a group home, and it took a week before my social worker could straighten things out. I was heartbroken that I never got to say good-bye to my foster brother and sisters, for I had grown to love them.

In the group home I reverted to my old, quiet self and didn’t say much to anyone. All I could think was,
Here we go again,
but at least I was thinking it in English! I wondered why I couldn’t find a permanent home, a family who would love me no matter what.

My social worker eventually flew up to get me, and on the plane ride back to Orange County, and ultimately back to Orangewood, I said, “I do not want to be placed in another Muslim home. I am done with that.” I didn’t realize then that people of other faiths could be mean too, but I didn’t want any part of another domineering Muslim man in my life.

While I wanted to be with the right family, I was fine living at Orangewood until that happened. My friend Autumn was there again too, and this time I could even talk with her some in English. Her “wild side” kept her in trouble, but I found her to be an interesting person who had repeated placements with the same foster parents.

Orangewood is well run, and I easily fit back into life there. One reason I think their system runs as smoothly as it does is their point system. If you behaved well, you earned points. If you earned enough points, you got a reward. Some of the rewards included bowling or shopping, but during the time I was there one reward was to go to an Anaheim Angels baseball game. We had our own special area for seating, and while I didn’t understand the game, why we cheered when we did, or anything about what was going on, I loved every second of it. That game turned me into a lifelong Angels fan, and I still love going to their games.

On the placement side, while I wanted a family, I knew I had several strikes against me. The older a child gets, the harder he or she is to place. I was fifteen now but still far behind socially and in school. I prepared to wait, but I hoped with everything I had that I would find a real home and a loving family.

I didn’t have to wait
too long before I got my wish. Not too long after I turned fifteen, I was placed in the home of a family in Orange, about sixty-five miles from Orangewood’s location.

When my prospective mom and her youngest daughter first came to Orangewood to meet me, I was jaded by my previous foster care experiences and did not hold out much hope that this situation would be any different. I did not want to be labeled as a “difficult child,” though, so I put on my happy face for the meeting. I was glad to realize, however, that my social worker had heard my words, because this family was not Muslim.

The way foster parenting works is that the parents are paid by the state for every child they take in. Payment varies from state to state, and from each individual referring organization. I believe that foster parents of kids from Orangewood got paid a bit more than many others, because Orangewood was a good organization that tried hard to place kids in the right homes. Maybe the people who made such decisions thought the extra money would attract parents who might otherwise not be interested in fostering. In talking to other kids at Orangewood, I found that the sad reality was that this system brought in some prospective parents who were there only for the money. I sat in front of this woman and her daughter and hoped that was not the reason they were there. There was no way to know until I learned more, and the only way to do that was to spend a few days with them.

My prospective foster mom and her youngest daughter picked me up, and I went to spend a weekend with their family. I learned that the family had had foster kids in the past—and that they were taking care of the dad’s nephew plus their three biological children. If I stayed, I would become the fifth child in the home, and the oldest. The nephew was ten, and then there was a boy of seven, followed by two girls who were six and four. They seemed nice, including the dad, but by I now realized what a huge decision this was. I had found that moving in with a new family could be the answer to my dreams. It could also become my worst nightmare.