The Middle of Everywhere (6 page)

We started out driving on Saturdays, in parking lots and on empty streets. Shireen or Shehla would drive first, then the others. We laughed a lot. I kidded them about my hair getting grayer every time we drove, and we teased Meena, saying she would be a race-car driver because she skidded on the corners. Shireen and Shehla had practiced driving in Pakistan, but Meena started from scratch. She was nervous when the car jerked, died, and screeched. When Meena finally executed a smooth start, Shireen shouted, "You go, girl."

I noticed that Meena became anxious whenever we passed a speed limit sign. Finally, I asked her what made her upset when she saw these signs. She explained that it was hard to drive the car at exactly the speed limit, not one mile faster or slower. This misconception made me remember a Hungarian woman who thought that at intersections she was supposed to drive right under the red light and stop. Before I figured out what she was thinking, she almost got us killed.

Later the sisters practiced driving at the Department of Motor Vehicles. There were always other immigrants in the parking lot learning to drive in old beat-up cars. I pretended to be the examiner and said officiously, "Young lady, you have done very well." Even such a small joke elicited a laugh.

The sisters wanted to know how I became a psychologist and writer. They didn't understand how the different colleges in our city connected with the GED program. They were desperate to catch up. Meena wanted her GED immediately, but her teacher had urged her to be patient. I said, "Don't worry, Meena, someday you will be president." But she told me, "Only people born in America can be president."

We talked about what psychologists would label post-traumatic stress disorder. The sisters had nightmares and trouble sleeping. They had memories that kept them from concentrating on their schoolwork. Shireen had visited a doctor who gave her sleeping pills. I encouraged them to talk to each other, to write in journals, and to consider seeing counselors. I worried about what we didn't talk about. Today they were stylish young women learning to drive, but I wondered what psychological damage had been done. What must they forgive in order to be healthy?

Shireen loved learning to swim at school. She passed her lifeguard training and joined the synchronized swim team. She taught her sisters how to swim, and they joined a club so that they could swim regularly. Otherwise, they worked long hours in a factory. In Iraq they had a sister with breast cancer to support and they had to repay their passage from Pakistan.

I wanted to make sure they learned about the good things in our city. Advertisers would direct them to the bars, the malls, and anything that cost money. I told them about what I loved: the parks and prairies, the lakes and sunsets, the sculpture garden, and the free concerts. I lent them books with Georgia O'Keeffe paintings and pictures of our national parks.

For a while I was so involved with the lives of the sisters that Zeenat told me that her daughters were now my daughters. I was touched that she was willing to give her daughters away so that they could advance. I tactfully suggested we could share her daughters, but that she would always be the real mother.

The sisters talked about the differences between the United States and Pakistan. They said even the light was brighter here. I taught them the names of trees and, when spring came, I taught them to identify jonquil, tulip, redbud, cardinal, and finch. One day we passed a goldenrain tree and I said its name. Meena said it could be called the tree of golden tears.

Sometimes I inadvertently frightened them. During the Bush/Gore presidential race, I explained the differences between the two candidates to the sisters. To my puzzlement, they looked increasingly alarmed as I talked. I finally asked, "Are you okay?" Shireen explained that they had been in Iraq and seen the rise of Hussein. Then they were in Pakistan after Benazir Bhutto lost her election. They'd seen women storied in the streets. Meena asked, "If Bush is elected, will you be killed?"

They thought ordinary neighborhoods were for rich people. I never showed them the starter castles south of town because I was too embarrassed by our distribution of wealth. What would I say? "This is the home of the factory owner who pays you minimum wage?"

Very soon we all grew to depend on our weekly lessons. They needed my advice and support and I needed their joy at seeing me and their curiosity about the world. Often we talked of their nightmares about being chased or locked up. I was struck by how little they complained and by how eager they were to share everything they had, including stories.

When someone asked the sisters where they were from, they didn't know what to say. Meena laughed as she told me that one time in frustration Tanya said, "We are from Italy."

Whenever I showed up, I was offered food—fresh naan made by Tanya or spinach soup or curried fish. And always there was black tea or juice. Before we drove, the sisters would show me their schoolwork. The older sisters had enrolled in GED classes. Often, they worked overtime and were too tired to study. I felt sad that after losing so much of their lives to refugee camps they were now losing their lives to boring factory work.

I tried to act as a full-time encourager and helper. All the sisters tried out ideas on me—one week Meena asked me if she should join the army. Leila wondered if they could find factory work that didn't involve periodic layoffs.

One day Shireen said that in her human behavior class, they had just watched the movie,
Alive,
the grisly story of survivors of a plane crash. After the film the teacher showed interviews with the survivors. Shireen found it very upsetting and cried in class. The American students weren't so moved. Another day the sisters watched
Titanic.
They loved the movie but cried and cried. I found that this movie was a favorite of refugees. I suspect it is because it makes tragedy heroic and romantic, instead of merely sad.

One night I took the sisters to my favorite Asian restaurant in Lincoln. I also invited Anna, who is the pretty and sophisticated daughter of a friend of mine and someone I trusted to help the sisters with fashion and young adult activities.

While we waited at our table for Anna, I talked about the sandhill cranes. Every year between Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day, the cranes come to the Platté, hundreds of thousands of them. They sleep at night on the sandbars and feed in the fields along the river by day. Their cries sound like "something you heard before you were born," to quote writer Paul Gruchow, and they fill the air at sunset and sunrise. Some mornings they all lift off the river en masse like a great white cloud rising.

Anna arrived, energetic and friendly. The sisters were a little intimidated by her sophistication and were quieter than usual. They were also overwhelmed by the hundreds of menu items. They were picky eaters and wary of new foods.

We talked of many things, including how Kurdish women remove body hair by roping it -with tiny threads and then yanking it out. The sisters asked Anna about her makeup, hair-styles, and clothes. Tanya told us she used to cut hair in Pakistan, but she doubted she could go to school and get the necessary license here.

We talked about dating. Anna was going with a policeman and that led to the story of the lost purse. One night Shireen left a purse with all the family's money in a park. She was devastated but had the presence of mind to call the police. Fortunately, a kind policeman showed up later with the purse and all her money. We teased Shireen about the cute policeman. Jokes about dating always got big laughs.

Tanya said she had been asked out by a guy who showed up to take her to
The Perfect Storm.
Much to his surprise, everyone in the family wanted to go along. We all laughed at his surprise, but behind the laughter was sadness. All of these women had spent their beautiful youth locked in a hut in Quetta. Now they were out of step with their own people as well as with Americans. They were too sharp for many of the people they met on the job, and they had no money for the places frequented by educated Americans. Besides, not that many doctors, lawyers, or professors married women who worked in factories.

Meanwhile our food arrived, first hot-and-sour soup, then egg rolls and crab rangoon, followed by chicken lo mein, crispy fish, and fried eggplant and tofu. The sisters dutifully tried things; Shehla choked on a hot pepper and had to drink a gallon of water to recover. Meena and Shireen left most of the food on their plates. Some dishes may have been forbidden for religious reasons; some they just didn't like.

Anna offered to take the sisters "garage-saling" sometime, and they readily agreed. They were hungry for new friends. We opened our fortune cookies and laughed at their messages. Shehla would marry a rich man. Leila would soon have good news. Nasreen had a kind heart.

I snapped photos of our group. The sisters kept photo albums and had shown me pictures from their past lives. In the pictures at Imperial Palace we were smiling, with our arms around each other, the sisters were all dressed up and hopeful about the future, a good moment to capture.

At the end of March I arrived for a lesson on driving in snow. Zeenat came to the door, dressed in slippers and a housecoat, friendly as usual. But as we talked I could tell she was discouraged. She had learned a few phrases of English. She said what would become her mantra to me: "I am bored. I want to go back to Islamabad."

I felt for her. Hard as her life had been in the past, at least she had been useful. Now she was home alone most of the time. She cooked and cleaned the house, but she had no money and no friends. She missed the intensely communal life of the past. Shireen said her mother's eyes would light up when she returned from school, but then be sad again when Shireen insisted she must sit down and study.

Today all the family was sick and demoralized by the frigid weather. They spent their days assembling computer boards and pieces of electronic equipment. At best, it was dull work that required care and close attention. At worst, it involved scornful supervisors and toxic chemicals. We talked about other job options and the sisters decided to look, as a group, for a better place to work. Then they would leave this factory en masse.

The sisters were never alone. Partly this was of necessity; they hadn't had the luxury of houses with bedrooms for each person, or of separate vehicles for outings. Partly it was tradition; they came from a part of the world legendary for its female bonding. Women cooked, ate, bathed, danced, and slept together. And partly it was for protection. One of their survival tools had been to stick together.

I learned early that whenever a decision had to be made, whichever sister was involved would say, "I will talk to the family and tell you later." Nobody thought of just going off and doing what she wanted. Always the question was, "What is good for the family?"

That didn't mean there was not tension. At first I just didn't see it. I saw nothing but sharing, taking turns, and being polite. Later I would see that communal living took a toll. Sometimes it was hard to share the phone or car. The sisters had different priorities and needs. There were arguments about decisions. The older sisters were stressed by their responsibilities to the younger ones. Goals were deferred for the good for the group, but not without resentment.

Probably the most significant tension was around the younger sisters' desire to study and the older sisters' desire that they all work and make money to buy a house or a car or to send money to Iraq. Yet no one ever questioned that issues should be resolved in a group process. No one struck out on her own. Most of the time, the sisters took turns getting their needs met. Furthermore, they were best friends who went dancing together and took each other along on dates.

This snowy morning Leila brought me strong medicinal soup of spinach and beans. Perhaps because it was snowy and they were sick, the talk was a bit grim. Shireen was being bullied by an African American girl at school. Shireen made what could be considered a racist generalization and I talked about the stereotypes and media images of blacks in this country. I encouraged Shireen to try to make friends with some of the black kids at her school.

We talked about male-female relations. The sisters worried that Kurdish men expected to be the boss. But they were also leery of American men, who they'd been warned wanted to have sex right away. Shehla wanted to go see the movie
Girl, Interrupted.
She didn't know what it was about, but she liked the name.

Another day, spring arrived and we drove to the university campus. At the campus fountain I taught the Kurdish sisters to throw pennies and make a wish, which they enjoyed very much. This was about the right level of fun. Elaborate, expensive plans could easily run amok. Small was beautiful.

I explained vocabulary words they'd heard recently. Shehla asked what
sarcastic
meant. I'd used the words
vulnerable
and
intuitive
and they wanted to understand them. After I explained them all, Meena used them in a sentence. "We are intuitive and we have been vulnerable, but we are not sarcastic." Yes, I thought, that is exactly right.

We walked to the sculpture garden. Many statues were scattered in the prairie grasses. They liked a statue of a grief-stricken daughter crying on her father's corpse. We stood a long time in front of a bronze of a buxom woman with big hips and a very small head. Finally Shireen said, "We know what the artist thought was important about women."

On a hot July night, I took the family to an outdoor musical. We carried our strawberries, naan, and goat biryani into the field that served as seating for the audience. We spread out a blanket and passed around our meal. Tanya's biryani was simple—meat, rice, onions, and cardamom pods—but incredibly delicious comfort food. Nearby, other families shared Czech runzas and kolaches. Just as the sun set and the lightning bugs appeared, the musical began.

This play helped me see how hard our language was for the sisters. I remembered reading the scene in
The God of Small Things
where the Indian narrator and her family went to the movie,
The Sound of Music.
The narrator misunderstood so much of what was happening on the screen.