I could never talk about my fears or concerns, not to my parents, or even to my sisters. It wasn’t part of our family’s ethos. My family lived by a code: work hard, stay focused, always give whatever you do your best efforts. If you encountered an obstacle, you rallied to overcome it. Expressing negative feelings would have been seen as whining or complaining—that was unacceptable. Instead, my family took the practical “let’s tackle this problem and solve it” approach. We didn’t look back; we forged ahead. As the oldest daughter, I felt a particular responsibility to remain strong and hold my emotions together. I didn’t want to disappoint my parents or let my sisters down. I put a great deal of pressure on myself, and looking back, I realize that I shut down emotionally. Rather than deal with the fear and anxiety I had around the situation in Kuwait, I pretended it didn’t exist.
For a while, I clung to the wildly optimistic belief that we would eventually go back to Kuwait to resume our lives—anything else was unthinkable. My mother was more realistic. Every day, riveted to the news, she saw the life she and my father had worked so hard to build going up in smoke.
In the blink of an eye, both my parents had lost their jobs, their savings, and their home. Yet we were better off than most expats: We had a loving family that took us in and a roof over our heads. We moved into one of the empty flats in my grandparents’ villa along with our Filipino nanny, Linda, who had accompanied us on the trip.
My grandfather assured my mother that Iraq would eventually be defeated. But he also knew that this ordeal would not be resolved quickly, and that there was no chance of our going home anytime soon. My grandfather advised my mother to start looking for schools for us. That’s when it began to sink in that our lives were never going to be the same.
Years later, my mother confessed to me that during this time she was deeply distressed over my father’s absence and their prospects for the future. But she hid it well from us. There was much to be done—the beginning of the new school year was fast approaching. My mother went on a whirlwind tour of Cairo’s top private schools. Her goal was to duplicate the progressive but academically rigorous, British-style liberal arts education we’d had at our old school. Finally, she found a school that met her high standards: the Thebes International School, a respected private school that was opening a new campus in Heliopolis, close to where we lived. I think what sold her on the school was the Olympic-size swimming pool, which meant that my sisters and I could continue swimming competitively.
Then, just as school started, we finally received some good news. My father called. He had been hiding in the apartment since the invasion. He was told that foreign nationals would be allowed to leave Kuwait soon. A great weight was lifted in our household. In early November, he and a few friends were allowed to leave, driving a long and treacherous route through the desert from Kuwait via Jordan to Cairo.
When my dad returned, he started working in Cairo as an IT consultant. Soon, my mother was back at work, too. The National Bank of Kuwait had set up shop in Cairo. They paid my mom a percentage of the monthly salary she had received in Kuwait, to help keep the bank operational, which was a real lifesaver.
The Thebes School, while academically strong, was much more traditional than my school back in Kuwait, with a greater emphasis on rote learning and memorization. I had a reputation for being a studious, well-behaved student, so the headmaster chose me to be class prefect, which is sort of a glorified hall monitor. In some classrooms, even the most minor infractions would elicit a rapid and harsh corporal punishment. One day, I showed up in my homeroom class wearing a blue hair band that was a few shades lighter than the officially approved school color. The irate teacher walked over to my desk, her face red and furious, and abruptly slammed a ruler down on my hands. I was outraged by her assault, but I kept my mouth shut. This was the school’s culture. From then on, my mother and I did a careful check of my headband every morning before school.
People unfamiliar with the Middle East often think of it as one big monolithic entity, where people dress the same, eat the same food, and follow the same customs and rules. Nothing could be further from the truth. Each country has its own distinct personality and cultural norms. My Egyptian school may not have been as academically progressive as my Kuwaiti school, but socially, Cairo was light-years ahead of the more conservative Gulf countries. Many teenagers at my school were allowed to date. Compared to my sedate, buttoned-down Kuwaiti school, Thebes was loud and chaotic. Kids talked back to teachers. Boys and girls held hands in the yard. A few even smoked. I was shocked—that was way out of my comfort zone.
All this was quite eye-opening, and very unsettling.
I was the new kid on the block, raised in a different country with different cultural mores, and because I had skipped two grades (first and eighth), I was just twelve years old, two years younger than everybody in my class. And given my parents’ no-dating policy, I was doomed to be an outsider in the school’s social scene, too. This made me feel even more isolated from my classmates, but I was also fascinated by this new environment. I became very curious about the intricacies of boy-girl relationships. So, I began studying my fellow classmates.
I began observing their faces, watching the boys and girls in class exchange furtive looks, and monitoring their actions after class. I began to figure out who liked whom, and who was on the verge of breaking up—often before the couple themselves knew it.
For example, I noticed that Rashida, a pretty, dark-eyed girl with long, wavy hair who was dating Mukhtar, a gifted science student, was constantly casting glances at Mohammed, a good-looking boy with an athletic build. Mohammed, in turn, would look back at her and then quickly look away. A few days after I first noticed this, Rashida was holding Mohammed’s hand, while Mukhtar looked forlornly at his now ex-girlfriend. So, I had an uncanny knack for getting it right, and eventually I felt confident enough to make predictions to my friends about their future romances: “Oh, he has a crush on you,” “Watch out, he’s got a roving eye.” Before long, I became the go-to expert for romantic advice.
I made a few friends, but I still felt very lonely. I was something of a misfit, not just because I couldn’t date, but because, unlike most teenagers, I loved school and I loved studying. This really set me apart from my classmates. I didn’t complain about homework; I looked forward to it! Long after the household had gone to sleep, I would stay up late at night, solving math problems, reading, thinking, with books sprawled all over the dining-room table. On one of these nights, I looked out the window and noticed that the neighborhood was dark, except for a single light two buildings away. There in the distance I could see a young man sitting at a desk, with a lamp, absorbed in a book, studying, too. He looked up. I waved and he waved back. We would stay up late and synchronize when we’d switch off our lights. After midnight, one of us would take the lead and call it a day and the other would follow. It was almost my way of flirting. I felt like I was in a relationship, and he was my secret late-night date. In my naïve young brain it was a borderline romantic relationship—my first boyfriend, albeit from a distance.