I Am Fatima Matar, a Refugee From Kuwait and I Am a Parent.

Fatima Matar is a lawyer, law professor and activist based in Kuwait. Speaking out against human rights abuses, government corruption, honor killings, bans on books and in support of the rights of the LGBT community, she left her home country in 2018 out of fears of imprisonment and her personal safety. She and her teenage daughter, Jory, have applied for asylum in the United States and they are currently living in the Cleveland area awaiting their immigration court.

Life in Kuwait

My life in Kuwait was like a tiny room with a very low ceiling. I couldn’t get far; I had to keep my head down and I had to slouch all the time. When you are threatened from a very young age, “you better not think about it; you better not say that, ”it terrorizes you. It keeps you small and anxious.

As a child, I didn’t have feminist terminology. I’ve never heard words like feminism, patriarchy, misogyny, or sexism. My feminism was organic. It wasn’t from a book I read or a movie I watched – it was a fire that burned in me every time I was subjected to slavery simply because I was a girl. Serving food for men, washing dirty dishes for men, responding to angry shouts of men: this outraged me, and I asked: “Why?” Why should I help prepare and serve food at family gatherings while my uncles and cousins ​​sat and drank endless cups of tea, pretending that I was solving the world’s problems, and I was waiting for them?

Why did I have to run back and forth to the kitchen bringing more plates and cutlery? Why would we women hide in another room while the men ate, waiting for our turn to eat after they finished, when all the dishes were disturbed, eaten, dirty – dirty from spilled greasy stew and scattered salad? “This is wrong,” I argued. “Shouldn’t men help too? This is also their home; this is also their food. Why can’t we eat together? “Why was my brother sent to an expensive private school, while we five girls went to free public schools?” And why, as a woman, I had no freedom of choice in the simplest decision – what to wear? Or the most important decision – who to marry?

At home I had to be afraid of my father. My mother persuaded me to obey and obey, warning: “Your father better not hear you speak, otherwise he will kill you.” The cruel, domineering and unkind father was later replaced by an equally unkind, cruel and domineering husband. The third time my husband hit me, he also promised to never hit me again for the third time. There was also psychological, emotional and financial abuse. Growing up, I saw how my mother was abused by my father, and I had no intention of exposing my daughter to this trauma, so I divorced him despite my parents’ disapproval and my mother’s statement: “All men are cruel; the wife’s duty is to be patient. ” In addition, outside my home, I had to fear the sheikh who would imprison anyone who criticized him.

Despite tight control over my life, I did well in college and received a scholarship to pursue an MA and JD in the United Kingdom – a privilege that few women in my home country enjoy. As a lawyer, law professor and feminist, I strongly believe in democracy, free speech and gender equality, but I could not live my beliefs in Kuwait. I spoke about the violation of human rights against “ stateless persons ” (tens of thousands of people who are long-term residents, but are deprived of citizenship, health, education and work). I blamed the sheikh for their tragedy; I called him corrupt and was held accountable. I spoke about the growing problem of honor killings (killings of women) in Kuwait, and for this I was prosecuted. I called for the protection of LGBT rights in a country where homosexuality is still illegal and organized protests against the government’s banning of more than 5,000 books.

When my imprisonment became inevitable in 2018, I fled knowing that my daughter Jory and I would never be safe in Kuwait.

Arriving in America

I visited America as a tourist in 2014 when I took Jory to Disneyland when she was nine. But we have never lived in America. I asked my friend Mohammed for advice. Mo, as his friends call him, is one of the Kuwaiti stateless people who left the abuse in Kuwait for a better life in the United States. He studied and worked in Cleveland for many years; he said the winters are cold, but the spring, summer and fall are beautiful and the people are wonderful. Mo ended up helping me find a good school for Jory and an apartment near her school. But arriving in the United States did not go as planned with Jory.

Although we had valid passports and visitor visas, the date on our return tickets exceeded the allowable six-month stay and raised suspicions. Our luggage was searched and the documents I brought with me were found to support my prosecution in Kuwait – translated documents detailing that I was being tried for my political and religious views and my social activism.

We were held in a tiny room at the Department of Homeland Security for four days while they were looking for a place in one of the detention centers in the south of the country. The floor was covered with two old dirty sports mattresses – these were our beds. Three cameras watched Jory and me from all directions, and the fluorescent lights that never turned off made my eyes water and cause a debilitating headache, making my teeth grinding in pain. When I asked if I could get the aspirin out of the confiscated bag, I was refused. When we asked if we could read the books that were in our luggage, we were also refused. We spent four days without a shower, with only access to a filthy public toilet. We lay in horror, not knowing what would happen to us. I couldn’t voice my biggest concerns to Jory: Will they divide us at the detention center?

Fortunately, we were not separated at the San Antonio Detention Center. We slept in clean, tidy bedrooms, had 24 hour access to showers, and food was plentiful and served three times a day. There was a health center, a library, a school and a spacious open lawn where the children could play and where I jogged every morning. Volunteer immigration lawyers helped us prepare for the Credible Fear interview , which was a major challenge for Jory and me during our stay there. ICE agents conducted these interviews with detainees to determine who had sufficient reason to fear returning to their homeland and therefore had the right to stay and who did not, and who was deported. The criteria for what constitutes Credible Fear are intentionally vague and broad and left to ICE’s discretion. Jory and I were comparatively fortunate; we were interviewed for CF and left the center after two weeks. Some families have lived there for many months.

We arrived in Cleveland in mid January 2019. Our immigration lawyer told us it would take us a year to get Social Security numbers and work permits, which meant I had to save one last year. Even though we released us from custody, we still have an obligation to appear before an immigration court and convince a judge that we had sufficient grounds to seek asylum in the United States – and the date of our trial has yet to be set.

When I finally got my work permit at the end of February 2020, a pandemic broke out. I searched for college teaching work (something relevant to my law degree) but to no avail. I told myself that I can do any job, so now I work at Target and I am caring for an 11 month old baby. I also created an app called Beu Salon . Beu allows beauticians to serve clients at home. My two great loves – drawing and writing – brought in some income, albeit small and sporadic.

Raising a single person in a new country during a pandemic

I like to think that the challenges I faced as a single mother gave me character and strength. In Kuwait, it is still a shame to be a divorced woman; Wherever I went looking for an apartment for myself and Jory, I was turned down on the grounds that I was a single mother. The owners looked at me and spoke to me with contempt and disgust. They refused to look me in the eye when they said they only accept family tenants. All I had to do for my child required the presence and permission of her father. I could not enroll her in school without his signature; I could not renew her passport or issue her a civil ID. What scared me was that Kuwaiti hospitals would refuse a mother’s consent if her child needed an emergency operation – only the father’s consent was taken into account.

In the United States, I am not discriminated against on the basis of being a single mother, although it is true that in many narratives, single motherhood is still viewed as an unfortunate condition. But Jory and I have a special bond; we lift each other up, we make each other strong. We talk about everything – even awkward things. We have jokes inside and we understand each other’s body language. I and she have always been against the whole world. We were on an adventure. We didn’t just dream of a better life; we took risks to live a better life .

I always asked Jory for her opinion on everything I did, and I always took her opinion seriously. This gave her confidence and wisdom, as well as the confidence that she matters and what she thinks matters. I divorced my abusive husband when Jory was three, but if she was old enough at the time, I know she would tell me to leave.

Jory loves her school in North Olmstead, Ohio, where she made two good friends, but isolation from the pandemic has been tough for both of us. Jory was 13 when we arrived in the United States; Now she is 15. I can no longer be everything to her, as I once was a little girl – there are so many things that her friends give her, but I cannot. She (and all the other children) had to constantly adapt to extreme, rapid changes: at first, schools were closed and everything was taught online. The school then reopened and the children had to return full time. Then the number of COVID cases increased, the school closed again and students returned to online learning. They now use a hybrid system, taking face-to-face classes two days a week and distance learning three days a week. They will soon be returning to full-time face-to-face training.

The pandemic has drained us emotionally, and the cold winter has made it difficult even to go camping. I often repeat to myself the quote from Voltaire: “The happiest of all lives is busy loneliness,” but I would also like to sit out in a cafe with a friend or go to the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Looking ahead, there is still uncertainty: pandemic, immigration court. But Jory and I don’t give up hope. We immersed ourselves in our new community – we walked dogs from the shelter, helped to sort out clothes for the homeless in churches, and participated in the Black Lives Matter protests after the assassination of George Floyd. This is our home now.

Every time I am overcome with uncertainty, I remember what Jory told me when I was scared and crying when the airport police took us from that tiny room where we were detained to be sent to a detention center in Texas. I thought about asking them to send us back to Kuwait for fear of being separated from her, but Jory said, “We didn’t get that far, we got that far.”

I know I will get a teaching job at a good local college, my application will grow, I can publish my memoirs and sell more paintings . And Jory will have everything that I did not have as a child: complete autonomy over his body, mind and the most important life decisions. She will have the opportunity to speak frankly, without fear of violence and imprisonment, and dress as she pleases. She will be able to love and marry anyone, travel, study, dream and grow.