FOR A WHILE after I got the news about my hearing date I just went away, somewhere out of myself, someplace far away from Esmor. It was nice there. Peaceful. I didn’t have to hang in and be strong there. I stayed there for a while, not even knowing I’d gone anywhere, and then one day I came back. Somehow in the midst of my blackout I’d realized I had to get down to the business of surviving.
I began by resuming my prayers. I rose every morning at five A.M., spread a towel on the floor, washed, wrapped myself in the spare sheet Elsie had smuggled in to me, put my mother’s tasbih on the towel, stepped barefoot onto the towel, and began to pray. ‘Trust in God,’ my mother always said. ‘God will protect you.’ I put my trust in God. If it was His desire that I endure and survive, I’d endure and survive. If not, I wouldn’t.
I endured. I survived.
I soon realized that if I was going to be there five months, I was going to have to find something to do with myself. The only thing there was to do was work in the laundry. But Miss Jones had said no to that request once already and I was too frightened to ask again. But I’m a hard worker by nature and that would be my route to her favor, I decided. Miss Jones liked people who worked hard.
She was a hard worker herself. She worked six A.M. to two P.M., Monday through Friday, and was often still there working long after her shift ended. One of the things she did was to serve breakfast and lunch. So one day I volunteered to hand out and collect the food trays. She accepted my offer. It worked out well for both of us. I got out of the dorm for a little while, she didn’t have to work so hard.
‘Thank you, Seven Six One.’
‘You’re welcome, Miss Jones.’
‘Would you like to help again tomorrow?’
‘Yes, please.’
I didn’t have a name yet, but I had a job.
A week or so later, something went wrong in the laundry and a huge amount of washing, drying, and folding had to be done in a day. It was much more work than the women on laundry duty could finish in that time so Mr Williams came around with Miss Jones, pushing a cart full of clean, unfolded laundry, asking women if they’d be willing to do some folding. When they got to our dorm, Mr Williams asked Mary if she’d help, since she knew how to do it, having worked with him before, but she said no, she was too tired. Tired from doing nothing. I was beginning to feel that same kind of tiredness creeping into me. It felt like a sickness trying to take hold. I was determined to fight it.
‘I’ll help,’ I said, getting up off my bed.
‘Thank you, Seven Six One,’ Miss Jones said.
She plopped a big pile of men’s clothes on the table and I started folding. Mary kept watching TV, but my other dorm mates came to help too. We finished in no time. I knocked on the window for Miss Jones to collect the laundry.
She was impressed. ‘That was quick. Would you be willing to do more?’
Mr Williams brought us another pile.
‘Are you going to pay us?’ I asked, smiling shyly. I was teasing, sort of.
He returned my smile. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘If you come work in the laundry, I’ll pay you a dollar a day.’
‘Can I?’
‘Not right now. I don’t need anyone right now. But I might soon. You never know.’
He was right about that – righter than he knew. On the day we spoke he had a full crew of workers – Mary’s friend Elsie and five other women from N dorm. Then suddenly he had none.
It was all because of something that happened about a week after that conversation. One minute we were having one of our typical dull, routine, endless days, the next minute the place was swarming with officers in uniforms who stormed in with big dogs on leashes.
‘Move! Against the wall! Everybody up against the wall!’ they shouted. My dorm mates and I jumped off our beds and huddled against the wall under the television, terrified, while the dogs ran all over the room, sniffing. Whatever it was they were looking for, wasn’t in our dorm, or, so far as I know, in any other dorm. But N dorm got into trouble that day. While the women in N were standing huddled against the wall, waiting for the raid to end, one male officer had said to another, ‘Let’s strip-search ’em. What’dya say?’ The other had laughed. ‘You wanna?’ They assumed nobody knew enough English to understand their lewd joke, but Elsie did. She translated what they had said for her dorm mates, and she and a few of her laundry co-workers decided to retaliate. At a signal from her, they dropped their pants and lifted their shirts, exposing their bras and underpants. The male officers were embarrassed at being found out and left.
I couldn’t believe Elsie had done such an outrageous thing, but I kind of admired her for it. I thought the guards had gotten what they deserved. When Miss Jones found out about it the next morning, however, she was furious and fired the entire laundry crew on the spot. Mr Williams suddenly needed a whole new crew. Miss Jones came around asking who wanted to work.
‘Seven Six One, do you want to work in the laundry?’
I leapt off my bed. ‘Yes!’
That’s how I started working in the laundry.
The new crew consisted of me, Lola, Jasmine, Maria, and Rosa, plus two Chinese women from J dorm, Siu Sing and Wang. Poor Mr Williams. He had to train us all from scratch, and there was a lot to learn about doing laundry for such a large institution. There were nine men’s dorms at Esmor, A through I, and five much smaller women’s dorms, J through N, housing about 300 INS detainees, about 54 of whom were women. Since I was the only member of the crew who spoke English, and I was the one who caught on fastest and worked hardest, I became Mr Williams’s deputy in charge. He knew he could rely on me. We became friends. He started calling me ‘Fauz.’ I started calling him ‘Frank.’
It was a real education, working in the laundry. It was pitiful, the clothes people were given to wear in that place. Since there wasn’t enough women’s underwear for all the women, a lot of their rolls had to be made up with men’s underwear. Not surprisingly, some of the women broke the rule that said you were supposed to turn in your underwear with the rest of your dirty laundry. Once they got their hands on a semi-decent pair of underwear, they held on to it and washed it themselves. I felt especially bad for the men. Their uniforms were even more tattered and stained and in even shorter supply than the women’s clothing, and their underwear was especially disgusting. Frank said he’d told his bosses about the situation time after time, but they never did anything about it.
I was very glad to have my work in the laundry. It passed the time, and it took my mind off things. But even when I was hard at work I never knew when grief would overwhelm me. Sometimes I’d be in the middle of doing something and I’d see my father’s face or think of Amariya and suddenly break down sobbing. At those moments Frank would come over and put a gentle arm around my shoulder. He was so kind, so unfailingly kind. He’d let me bury my head against his chest, my tears soaking his shirt, as I cried and cried. ‘It’s OK,’ he’d say gently. ‘Go ahead and cry.’ Frank cared for me like the father I’d lost.
My co-workers and I all knew how lucky we were to have our laundry jobs. We worked hard. We wanted to hold on to this good thing we’d found.
‘Hey, Fauz! I need ten rolls!’
‘OK-la.’
That’s what my Chinese co-workers, Siu Sing and Wang, always said. ‘OK-la.’ I started saying it too. They taught me Chinese. I taught them English. But their pronunciation always made me laugh. ‘Fonsinya’ they called me. If I did something they thought was funny, they’d tell me I was ‘clasy.’
Frank tried to make things as pleasant as he could for us. He brought in a tape player so we could listen to music while we worked. I couldn’t get enough of Whitney Houston singing ‘I Will Always Love You’ from the soundtrack of The Bodyguard. What a song! What a voice! Sometimes, when there was no work to do, the other women and I would turn up the volume and dance. Frank would sit and watch, laughing and clapping.
‘Go, Fauz! Oh, Fauz, can you dance!’
Miss Jones sometimes came in when we were dancing or playing cards. It was OK with her. As long as we got our work done, she didn’t mind if we enjoyed ourselves too.
Actually, she seemed to want to make things more bearable for us. Once she came into my dorm with a bottle of perfume. She had noticed that one of the women in the dorm didn’t shower as often as the rest of us would have liked – it was hard not to notice, since the dorms weren’t ventilated – and she walked around the room spraying whiffs of perfume in the air. It was the same light, fresh scent I’d smelled on her my first Monday at Esmor. She winked at me as she left. I wished I could capture the scent, preserve it, make it last. But of course it didn’t last. It lingered for a couple of days and then it died. That’s what life was like at Esmor. An occasional whiff of perfume, an hour of dancing to Video Music Box, a few hours each weekday working in the laundry, and then it was always back to the same cold, stinky, airless, windowless, noisy, harshly lit room, back to the same inedible food and hard, crackly mattresses, back to nothing to do but watch TV or lie on my bed thinking, thinking and crying, hour after hour, day after endless day.
But there came a time when that dorm would seem like heaven to me. Mary had warned me I didn’t ever want to find out what segregation was like. Soon I would understand what she meant. After I’d been at Esmor a few weeks, we were all told we couldn’t take showers before six A.M. wake-up. I didn’t shower early, but I did rise every morning at five to wash and pray first prayers. Kim, the same guard who was so mean to us when she did count at night, was often still on duty at five. I was just finishing my washing one morning when she came banging into the room.
‘Turn the water off!’ she yelled. ‘No showering before six!’
‘I’m not showering,’ I said. ‘I’m washing for prayer.’ I was standing at the sink, fully dressed. She could see I wasn’t showering. I kept washing and silently reciting the words Muslims use as we wash different parts of our body in preparation for prayer. She walked over to the sink, turned off the water, and walked away. I hadn’t finished yet. I still had to wash my legs. I turned it back on.
‘I said turn it off!’ she bellowed. I was finished now. I turned off the water. She left, letting the door bang shut behind her even though people were still trying to sleep, and I performed my morning prayers.
She was on duty again the next morning. It was almost like she was waiting to catch me. The moment I turned on the water, she came banging into the room.
‘Turn it off!’
‘But I have to wash for prayers,’ I said calmly.
‘No showering before six!’
‘I’m not showering,’ I said calmly. ‘I’m washing for prayers.’
‘No washing before six!’
That wasn’t the rule. The rule was no showering. ‘I’m sorry, I have to wash,’ I said calmly. ‘It’s part of what I have to do to pray.’
‘Are you getting smart with me?’
‘Excuse me?’ I’d never heard that expression. I didn’t know what it meant.
‘I said, are you arguing with me?’
‘No, I’m trying to explain. I have to—’
‘That’s it!’ She grabbed my right wrist hard in her left hand, took her handcuffs off her belt with the other hand and snapped them around my wrist. Snap!
I was stunned. ‘What are you doing!’
She snapped the handcuffs around my left wrist, grabbed my upper right arm hard, and yanked me forward. ‘You’re going to seg.’
‘No!’ I turned toward the shout. It came from Mary, who was sitting up in bed, her hands clasped over her mouth. Her eyes looked terror-stricken, grief-stricken. Her eyes were the last thing I saw as Kim half dragged me out of the dorm.
Kim took me down a maze of white hallways, stopped in front of a metal door, took off my handcuffs, opened the door, shoved me through it, and locked it behind me. I found myself in a tiny concrete cell. There was nothing in it but a metal bed, toilet, and sink. The narrow glass window in the middle of the door was so small that I couldn’t even see down the hallway. I sat down on the bed in a state of shock. The mattress was the same as the one in my dorm: thin, hard, and covered in the same crackly plastic. There was a thin pillow on the bed, also covered in plastic, a thin blanket, and one sheet. The cell was cold and harshly lit. I shivered. I was locked in a box! I was locked up all alone in a cold concrete box! No, this wasn’t really happening. Kim wouldn’t leave me here. She was just trying to scare me. She’d leave me here for a few hours and then she’d let me out. She would. She had to.
She didn’t. She left me there. I had no television, no watch, no way of telling the time, nothing, no reference points, nothing at all to pass the time with, just blank walls. Blank walls, a bed, a toilet, and a sink. Sometime during that first day a guard led me handcuffed to the shower room, the same room where I’d taken my ice-cold shower the night I arrived. The cuffs were taken off and I was allowed to shower (this time I was able to use the shower knob to turn on the hot water). Then I was handcuffed and taken back to my cell. Three times that first day the cell door opened and a guard brought me a meal on a Styrofoam tray. Sometime at the end of the day, the lights went out. Sometime, a minute or eternity later, they went back on. Lights out, lights on. One day down – and how many to go? I had no idea. Lights out, lights on. Two days. I cried. Nobody heard me. What if they kept me here forever? What if they never let me out? No! They had to let me out! They couldn’t keep me here forever! I hadn’t done anything! Lights out, lights on. Three days. I was freezing, terrified. Oh, God, what if they kept me here a month? That’s how long they’d kept Mary when she had tried to escape. I’d lose my mind. I’d go crazy! What if I couldn’t work in the laundry anymore when I got out? What if I was confined to the dorm the way Mary was? Lights out, lights on. Four days. I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore. I went numb. My mind shut down. Lights out, lights on. Five days.
On the fifth day, I was led handcuffed to a male officer who sat behind a desk. I was charged, judged, and sentenced. ‘You broke the rules and fought with an officer,’ he said. I’d done neither, but I said nothing. What was the point? Truth didn’t matter in this place. Justice didn’t exist in this place. I was in prison, where people in uniforms had absolute power to do whatever they wanted to do with me. ‘You’re sentenced to five days in segregation,’ the officer said. ‘You’ve served your sentence. You can return to your dorm.’ The guard took me back to my dorm, removed my handcuffs, opened the door, and waved me in. Mary was sitting on her bed when I walked in. She let out a cry when she saw me, rushed over and threw her arms around me. She was crying. I didn’t cry. I didn’t hug her back. I walked to my bed, sat down, drew my knees up, and stared at the television. Television. I could watch television. I didn’t have to think. I didn’t have to feel. I could just watch TV. That’s what I did.
Kim was on duty that night. That meant she’d still be there the next morning. I rose at five A.M. to wash for prayers. I went to the sink and turned the faucet little by little until water dribbled out the spigot into my right hand, then turned it off while I washed. I turned it on again little by little and washed my left hand. I washed as quietly as I could, running as little water as possible, hoping Kim wouldn’t hear it. She either didn’t hear it or ignored it. I thanked God. That’s how I washed from then on. I never stopped washing or praying. Nothing and no-one was going to stop me from praying. I didn’t want to go back to segregation ever again in my life, but if that was the price I had to pay for worshiping God properly, I would pay it. Fortunately, I didn’t have to.
I was also allowed to go back to the laundry, and I wasn’t confined to the dorm. I thanked Allah for those great kindnesses. I thanked Frank and Miss Jones too. Not in words. In my heart. Had they tried to help me when I was in segregation? Did they get me out sooner than I’d have gotten out otherwise? Was it because of them that I was able to return to the laundry? I didn’t know, but I thought so, hoped so. Anyway, it was over now, and I didn’t want to talk about it. Not to them, not to anyone. All I wanted to do was forget.
The hurt passed. And then something wonderful happened. I got a letter from Ayisha. I ripped it open and unfolded two thin sheets of paper. They were folded around two photographs. One was of my mother, my beautiful Amariya. The other was a snapshot of me and my sisters, which had been taken when I was about nine, during the festival of ’Eid al-Fitr. I thought my heart would burst from looking at it. There we were, the five of us, all dressed up and looking so happy. My sisters. ‘We’ll always have each other,’ Narhila had said the last time I’d seen them. I didn’t have them anymore. But I had this picture now. I could look at their sweet faces again. I wiped away my tears and sat looking at them, one by one. Ayisha. My beautiful Ayisha. Narhila, queen of kwalisa. Shy Shawana. Bubbly Asmahu. And me. Was that me? That lovely, well-dressed, proud-looking, confident-looking girl? Or did that only used to be me? I hadn’t seen my own face clearly since I’d arrived in America. I didn’t know what I looked like anymore, but I knew how I felt. I didn’t feel proud, dignified, or confident. When had I changed? I stared at my face in the photograph. Is that how my sisters remembered me? Would they even recognize me now?
I kissed both photographs, pressed them to my heart, put them down beside me on the bed, and picked up the two thin sheets of paper. Two letters, one from Ayisha and one from my mother. My mother! I hadn’t seen or heard from her in almost two years. It was written in Hausa. I read it hungrily for the first of a hundred times, a thousand times. I read that letter so often during my time at Esmor that I memorized it. And lucky for me I did, because there would come a time when that letter, like so much else, would be taken from me, never to be returned.
My beloved daughter, my mother had written. I am so happy to hear you are in America. I thank God you are safe. You must stay there, where nobody can hurt you. Do not come back. You can’t come back and let them do this horrible thing to you. You must stay there. Your father would wish it. I am proud of you, my daughter. Your father would also be proud. Remember that. It will give you strength. I love you and miss you. You are in my prayers always. May God bless and protect you. Your loving mother, Amariya.
My mother didn’t say where she was. She didn’t even say how she was. But she was alive. She loved me and missed me. She was proud of me and prayed for me. That would have to be enough for now.
Next I read Ayisha’s letter, which was written in English. She said nothing about whether her husband had forgiven her for disobeying his orders not to help me. But his prediction that helping me would cause trouble for them had proved true. She wrote that my uncle had gone to the police and filed a missing-person report after my aunt discovered I’d fled. The police had come to Ayisha’s home and workplace looking for me. She told them she didn’t know where I was. But they kept coming back and threatening her. They said she’d stolen someone’s wife and she’d have to go to jail if she didn’t produce me. But she held firm. She didn’t have me, she told the police, and she didn’t know where I was. Finally they stopped bothering her and left her alone. She was OK, she wrote. I wasn’t to worry. She was only telling me this because she’d sent a copy of the police report to Rahuf. She’d also sent him two letters dictated and signed by my mother, and the marriage certificate, she said. And now she was working on getting a copy of the wedding photograph. She’d send it as soon as she got it. Oh, Ayisha! I laughed out loud. She’d get the photograph! I knew she would.
My wonderful, brave, clever Ayisha. I picked up the photograph and gazed at her sweet face again. How it fooled people! They saw the sweetness. They didn’t see the strength. It didn’t show in her face, but it was there. It had always been there. Ayisha had always been strong. I looked at me again as well, that proud, dignified, confident-looking young woman I hadn’t recognized before. I remembered her now. I felt like her now. Yes. That was me.
I got another letter a few days later. This one came to me by mistake. Some of the male and female detainees wrote to each other. The nicer guards delivered letters back and forth. One of the male detainees had written a note to someone else and it was accidentally delivered to me. I sent it back with a polite note saying it had been delivered to the wrong person. He wrote back, telling me a little about himself, including the fact that he was Muslim, and asking politely if I’d be his pen pal. I was thrilled to have a chance to write to someone of my faith. It was clear from his letter that he himself was very strong in faith and very proud of his religion. I wrote back saying I was Muslim, too, and would be honored to be his pen pal. I asked if he knew when Ramadan started. He wrote back that it was coming up soon, in just a few days, on February 1, and he sent me a Muslim calendar.
I was deeply touched. I sat down at the table to write a thank-you note. I meant to write a short note, but the letter got longer and longer and longer. Everything poured out in that letter, all my grief, all my heartbreak, all my sweet memories of everything I’d lost. I described what Ramadan was like back home in Togo. I told him about the delicious treats that my mother and Adjovi would prepare for us to eat when we broke fast. I told him about the boys who went from house to house calling the community awake at that same early hour, singing and reciting passages from the Qur’an. The tashey children we called them – the ‘wake-up’ children. I told him how we’d walk to the mosque for first prayers in the predawn darkness, all of us together, the whole family. I told him what a special time evenings were during Ramadan, how happy and friendly people were, talking and laughing and greeting friends and neighbors. I told him how we’d all watch the moon as it waxed and waned and finally disappeared, and how we’d begin listening to the radio then, waiting for the announcement: ‘The new moon has been sighted! Ramadan is over!’ I told him how we celebrated, the whole community together, everyone praying and celebrating together, everyone feeling renewed, reconnected, reborn.
As I wrote that letter it all became real again. I was home, my father was alive, our family was together. I didn’t ever want to stop writing. Finally, I folded the letter, went to my bed, and put the letter in the box underneath. I’d write another thank-you note tomorrow. I wouldn’t send this one. I’d keep it. I was in prison now. It was all I had now. I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. Tears ran down my cheeks and I wept. Yaya must have heard my cries, because that was the night I dreamt about his visiting me in prison. I was so happy when I was dreaming that dream, but when I woke up and realized he was gone forever, it was as though I’d lost him all over again.
Mary went back to Ghana soon afterward. I was brokenhearted. My very first day at Esmor she’d told me she was thinking of going back. It hadn’t mattered to me then. Whether she stayed or left had been her business. The more I’d come to know her and love her, the more it had become my business too. Who would I talk to if she was gone, who would take care of me?
‘Please don’t go, Mary. Please stay. Stay here with me.’
‘I can’t, Fauziya. I can’t take any more.’
She’d written letters to her lawyer, to her sister, to the INS, telling them all she wanted to go back. She was desperate for the INS to come get her.
‘What are they waiting for!’ I heard her tell her sister over the phone one day. She sounded angry. She was sounding angry more and more lately, losing control of her temper. ‘Well, call again! Yes, today! No, I don’t have to be patient! Don’t tell me to calm down! I’ve been here six months! They won’t let me see a judge for my hearing! They won’t let me out of my room! Now they won’t let me leave? What kind of craziness is this? Call again!’
She’d begun crying softly at night. She’d never cried before. I’d go to her and hold her.
‘I’m sorry, Fauziya,’ she’d say, crying uncontrollably. ‘I don’t want to leave you. You know I don’t. But I’m cracking up.’
‘I know,’ I’d say softly as I held her. ‘It’s OK. I know.’
She was cracking up, it was true. She’d been at Esmor a little less than six months. I’d arrived in December. My hearing wasn’t until June. Six months. She’d cracked in less than six months. Would I?
When the INS finally came to get her, I broke down sobbing. We hugged and kissed and held each other. I didn’t want to let go. I couldn’t bear to lose her. ‘What’s going to happen to you?’ I asked, sobbing. ‘Where will you go? What will you do?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said softly into my shoulder as I clung to her. ‘But whatever happens, it can’t be worse than staying here.’ She eased out of my embrace, reached up and laid a warm hand on my left cheek. She smiled, her eyes shining with love. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said softly. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll write and let you know where I am.’
‘Do you promise?’ I was still crying.
‘I promise, but you have to make me a promise too.’
‘What?’
‘You have to promise me you’ll stay strong.’
‘Oh, Mary!’ I covered my face with my hands, heaving with sobs.
She pulled my hands down gently but firmly, grasped my chin, and made me look her in the eye. ‘I mean it, Fauziya,’ she said, still holding my chin in her hand. ‘You have a good case. You have to hang in. Don’t give up and don’t go back, no matter how long it takes. Stay strong.’
We had one last embrace. And then a guard led her from the dorm. I never saw Mary again.
Ramadan ended on March 1. The next day was ’Eid al-Fitr, the festival of fast-breaking. Back home the whole community would be gathering together for prayers, to mark the beginning of a week of celebrating and visiting friends and neighbors. The holidays just aren’t the same when they have to be observed and celebrated alone. Communal observance, prayer and celebration, are part of what makes them so special. So another Muslim woman and I, a Somalian who’d come to work in the laundry, requested permission for the Muslim women to gather for holiday prayers in the women’s gym. Eight or nine of us gathered in the gym that day. Until then I hadn’t realized how many of us there were. Although I wasn’t the oldest present, it was decided that I would lead the prayers, because the others had heard I was good at it. I did it gladly, pleased and honored to have been asked. I thanked Allah for allowing us to come together to praise His name and for allowing us to experience some of the joy and comfort that comes of praising Him in communal worship. I closed with a prayer for all of us. ‘May Allah grant that we will all be somewhere else next year, in a better place, where we can celebrate with joy in our hearts.’
‘Insha-Allah’ (by the will of God).
We all cried and hugged and held one another then, a small community of Muslim women refugees, strangers, sisters, united in sorrows, connected in our love of God. And then we parted and returned to our separate dorms. As it turned out, we would all be somewhere else next Ramadan. Everyone at Esmor would. Perhaps some of them landed in better places, as I had prayed to Allah would happen, but not me. I’d be someplace far worse.
Days passed. Weeks passed. Day after endless, identical day, week after endless, identical week. Weekends were hardest. The laundry was closed on weekends, and there was nothing else to distract me from my problems. A lot of the other detainees had visitors – I’d see them pass by my dorm all visibly excited for their company – but no-one came to see me. Rahuf lived too far away and worked weekends. And, of course, my uncle who lived in Newark never came.
I called Frank at home sometimes on weekends. He’d given me his number and told me to call anytime I needed to talk. I didn’t call a lot, because I didn’t want to run up his phone bill, but it meant the world to me to know I could. It made me feel cared for, watched over, protected, a little less lonely. The calls really made me feel like I was part of a family. Frank is Catholic, a good Christian man in the truest sense of the word. He reminded me of Ayisha. He had the same gentleness, the same goodness, and the same inner strength. As Ayisha was a second mother to me, Frank was a second father to me. I lived for Mondays when I could go back to the laundry and see him.
Shortly after Mary left, two more of my dorm mates were deported. People were always getting deported and new people were always coming in to fill their beds. Fortunately, this time the two new people were my two Chinese co-workers from the laundry, Siu Sing and Wang, who moved from J dorm into my dorm, K dorm. Another of my dorm mates, an African woman from Cameroon named Laura, who had moved in not long ago, was chosen to join the rest of us in the laundry service.
Frank still needed one more worker. Miss Jones selected a young woman named Esther. She’d recently arrived from Ghana, so they’d put her in N dorm with the other Ghanaians. I’ll never forget the first time I saw her. There were a lot of lovely women at Esmor, but Esther was stunning. She was twenty-five, about my height, slender but shapely, with smooth dark skin, delicate features, and long, shiny black hair. She had a femininity that I lacked entirely and a queenly bearing that reminded me a little of Narhila. She had a slight touch of vanity that also reminded me of Narhila. I would tease her about it when I got to know her better. She was like a princess, a sweet, modest, gentle, beautiful princess. I learned later that her father was a king and she really was a princess. At home she would have been dressed in jewel-colored silks, satins, and velvets, but at Esmor she wore the same tattered clothing all of us wore. But unlike us, she looked beautiful in it. There were certain similarities between her story and mine, but the exact details of why she had to flee I wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing.
At first I was too awed by her beauty to even speak to her. But she was so sweet, warm, and unpretentious that we soon became friends. She came to visit me one afternoon in K dorm. ‘Euugh,’ she said. ‘I don’t like this dorm. It’s too small. It feels like a cell.’
I laughed. ‘Not to me it doesn’t.’
‘Well, it does to me. Come visit me next time.’
I visited her often after that. There was a window in N dorm, too narrow to see much out of; but sometimes I could catch sight of a plane if it was flying low, and I could hear the noise of its engines. I stared and stared at the little I could see. There was a different world out there, right there on the other side of the window. I wondered what the outside world was like.
I missed the outdoors so much – the air, the sights, and the natural light too. The harsh prison lighting made my eyes burn and water horribly, especially whenever I tried to read or watch TV. The problem had gotten so bad that I’d filed another request to see the prison doctor. I was hoping to get a different doctor, but it was the same one. I told him my problem. He told me not to read so much. It was the same kind of advice he’d given me last time. ‘You itch when you shower? Don’t shower.’ ‘Your eyes burn when you read? Don’t read.’
My health just seemed to be giving out. Besides the fact that my eyes were bothering me more and more, I was being troubled again by boils for the first time in years, and my back hurt much of the time. None of this was hard to understand. The prison lights were harsh, the mattress I slept on, hard and thin. I was getting no exercise, no fresh air. The food was inedible. I was living mainly on starch and the occasional piece of fruit. Kim was still playing her nasty night games. I was desperately homesick, and filled with anxiety about the future.
I knew I had to be strong, and I tried to be, but my body wasn’t cooperating. Allah took mercy. He’d heard my cries when I’d lain in bed on my stomach one night, whimpering in pain from a boil on the back side of my leg, calling out for my mother. He didn’t send me my mother. But he did send Sylvie in her place. Esther and Sylvie – God sent me both at the same time, a wonderful friend and a loving second mother.
Sylvie was from Liberia. We met when she started coming to visit a friend of hers who had moved into my dorm. Sometimes I would see her there, sometimes I would see her when I went to visit Esther in N dorm, because that’s where she lived too. She was a short, heavy, dark-skinned woman of thirty-eight. She had long black hair, twinkly eyes, and a wonderful smile. She was always smiling, at me anyway. She took a special liking to me the first time we met. ‘Oh, and who is this?’ she said, beaming at me. ‘Look at this beautiful girl!’ She came and sat down next to me on my bed. ‘What’s your name, my precious?’ I told her. ‘Fauziya,’ she said, smiling and stroking my hair. ‘What a beautiful name. A beautiful name for a beautiful girl. I have a daughter just around your age. Do you like Milky Ways?’ I nodded shyly, a little overwhelmed by her outpouring of affection. ‘Good! I have some in my box. I’ll bring you one tomorrow, OK?’ It was mother love at first sight.
She brought me treats and candies every time she visited my dorm from then on. And every time I visited Esther and Sylvie in N dorm, Sylvie would insist that I help myself to a treat from her box. She began calling me ‘Baby.’ I began calling her ‘Mom.’ Sylvie wore multiple strands of beautiful colored beads around both her ankles. I commented one day on how pretty they were and told her I was wearing beads, too, around my waist. So was she, she said. She asked to see my beads and she showed me hers. They were really beautiful, like the ones she was wearing around her ankles.
‘Would you like some?’ she asked me.
They were exquisite, as precious and meaningful to her as mine were to me, as intimate a part of her as mine were of me. ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t take your beads.’
She sat down on her bed. ‘Sit,’ she said, patting the mattress beside her. I sat. She reached down and cut a length of the beautiful beads off her left ankle. ‘Give me your foot,’ she said. I put my left foot on the bed. She lifted it onto her lap, tied the beads around my ankle, and gave my foot an affectionate squeeze. She looked up at me and smiled tenderly, her eyes filled with affection. We just sat there for a moment smiling at each other, my foot still in her lap. The relationship had been sealed. She was my mom for sure now.
My dorm mate Lola was transferred to Miami with her husband, who was living in the men’s section. After several other roommate shuffles, Sylvie came to K dorm. I had my mom in the same dorm with me now, day and night. Soon another woman who would become important to me moved in too – Oche from Nigeria. She was a tall, solidly built, light-skinned woman of twenty-eight. She was very educated. She’d graduated from university before fleeing Nigeria. She had left because her family was involved in politics and got into trouble. I admired her because she was educated and spoke English beautifully, but I didn’t like her at first. She seemed a little too full of herself, too convinced that her opinions and viewpoints were right. We were both stubborn, both strong-willed, both proud, sometimes a little too proud. We clashed at first but we soon came to like and respect each other. We became fast friends.
Sylvie and another of my dorm mates, a Chinese woman, joined the laundry crew. Five of the six women in K dorm now worked in the laundry – everyone but Oche. We were the working dorm, Frank’s special clique and Miss Jones’s special pets. As measured by prison standards, we had it pretty good. We had first pick of T-shirts, socks, underwear. We had extras of everything: underwear, uniforms, towels, sheets, blankets. We made up our beds with white sheets atop the blankets so the beds matched the white walls – the closest we could come to a decorator touch. We were hardworking, well behaved, respectful. We kept our dorm spotless. We were the model dorm, the showcase dorm. When official visitors toured Esmor, Miss Jones showed them our dorm. Sometimes she showed it when we were in the laundry and the room was quiet and empty. On another occasion we came back to our dorm to find two guards standing at the open door, barring our entrance. Miss Jones was inside with two visitors, a man and a woman, and four women inmates from other dorms. I knew those women. They were among the most soft-spoken, timid, well-behaved women in the place. They were sitting at the table playing a game of checkers, pretending they were in their own dorm, while the man videotaped them and the woman asked questions.
‘How’s the food here?’ the interviewer asked, with Miss Jones standing right there.
‘It’s all right.’
‘How do they treat you here?’
‘They treat us OK.’
‘Do you have any complaints?’
‘No.’
It made me sick. Tell them the truth! I screamed silently. Tell them what the food’s really like! Tell them how they really treat us! Tell them what they don’t even know to ask! Tell them about our torn, stained underwear. Tell them about the exposed showers. Tell them we never go outside. Tell them about the dorm search in the middle of the night. Tell them about segregation. Tell them about the so-called doctor. Tell them about being chained to a table when you’re talking to your lawyer. Tell them about waiting months to see a judge. Tell them about Kim! Tell them this isn’t even your dorm!
But, of course, the women couldn’t do that. As furious as I was, I kept my mouth shut too. That’s what we all did. We kept our mouths shut. We were refugee women from countries where women are taught to be docile and submissive. And since we were in jail we were frightened and powerless in addition to being docile and submissive. We didn’t complain. We didn’t speak out.
Somebody was talking, though. I didn’t know it then, but complaints were getting out about Esmor. Looking back later, it would occur to me that this may have been why those visitors were there. The truth was starting to get out about how detainees were treated at this detention center. The inmates had begun complaining to lawyers. Lawyers and refugee-advocate groups were starting to press the INS and the people who ran Esmor to look into and respond to these complaints. Pressure was being applied from outside for changes and improvements in the way the place was run.
A different kind of pressure was building up inside. My pen pal told me in one of his letters that conditions were really bad in the men’s dorms. ‘You wouldn’t believe the way they treat us,’ he wrote. ‘Some of the men are really getting fed up and angry. I pray to Allah that we’ll both get out of here before something bad happens.’
Ironically, I would later look back on this time as the best of my bad times in prison. In fact, there was a period when things got better for a while, almost bearable, before everything became a million times worse. A new man, Willard Stovall, came in as the chief administrator. Small changes and improvements started happening around then, not enough to relieve the pressure that was building in the men’s dorms, but some. The women got some new underwear and T-shirts. I finally got a better pair of shoes to wear. I’d been wearing my broken brown plastic sandals, both for the right foot, all that time. We were allowed to receive a limited number of items from outside after Mr Stovall came in: soap, skin lotion, sanitary pads, and other necessities. Best of all, the men’s gym area was now made available to us for the first time. At first women could use it only during the morning hours, which was when I was working in the laundry, but later it was open in the afternoons, too, when I was free to use it. It was bigger than the other two exercise rooms and the roof was made like a gate, so you could get fresh air. It was almost like being outside. Exercise! Basketball! Volleyball! I loved running around and getting sweaty. It felt great to use my muscles again. I especially loved volleyball.
Another thing that happened around this time was that Miss Jones and Miss White, one of the nicest of the guards, came up with the idea of offering an aerobics class for the women. They seemed genuinely concerned that we women didn’t have anything to do except sit around all day every day watching TV and thinking about our problems. A number of women, including Sylvie, Oche, Esther, and me, signed up immediately. It sounded like fun to us.
It was. We exercised for thirty minutes every other morning in the women’s exercise room across from the L and M dorms before going to the laundry. Miss White led the class. She brought in a tape player so we could exercise to music. After the class was over, we moved out into the hall and danced! Miss White would put a dance tape in the tape player and we’d line up on both sides of the hall, everybody clapping, and take turns dancing in the middle two by two, just like back home. It was so much fun! Miss Jones always danced with me. We were partners. Frank would come to take us to the laundry and see Miss Jones and me dancing and laugh. He’d start clapping and chanting in time to the beat. ‘Go, Fauz! Go, Fauz! Go!’ Then we’d head for the laundry.
Those were the good times, the best of my prison times. They were to last less than six weeks, from the end of April until around midnight, Saturday, June 17. Things were looking up, I thought. Just a few more weeks until my hearing on June 22. I had actually just about made it to the day I had been waiting for six months. I only had to hang in, hold on, be strong for a little while longer.
My spirits really improved during those weeks. I began to see that not everybody got deported, that maybe there was hope. A woman named Susan from N dorm was granted asylum and released around the beginning of May. My pen pal, who’d appealed his ruling, won on appeal and was released around that time too. Allah had granted his prayer! He told me the good news in a letter. He sent me his Qur’an with that letter. It has given me strength, he wrote. I want you to have it. You can return it when you’re released. It was a beautiful Qur’an. I cried when I received it. I’d been without one all that time.
Somewhere around the third week in May, Miss Jones came to our dorm asking if we’d be interested in participating in a fashion show.
‘A fashion show!’ I blurted out. ‘You mean with real clothes and everything?’
She laughed. ‘Real clothes and everything.’ She and Miss White would provide the clothes, she said. Miss White would rehearse us. She’d teach us how to walk, pose, turn. If enough women were interested, of course. We were definitely interested.
A fashion show! What a great way to fill the time before I got out. I couldn’t wait to write Ayisha about it. I’d received another letter from her with pictures of Babs and Alpha. I’d write and tell her about the fashion show and tell her not to write to me again until I could give her my new address. Rahuf’s address. The mails were slow. It took weeks for her letters to reach me. Why should she write me here when there were just a few more weeks until my hearing, and then the judge would grant me asylum and release me? Better to write her from Rahuf’s with the good news. Oh, I got so excited just thinking about it!