My Story: Arriving in His Country (8)
In the last post that tells my story, I told about how my husband had not seen his children in 4 years because he was incarcerated and how, after being deported, he begged me to bring the kids to see him, since he couldn't enter the United States anymore. I reluctantly agreed, and we left America to fly to Yemen on April 10, 2006.
As I was preparing for the trip, I could not find anyone who was willing to house the boxes of my belongings, and I couldn't afford to keep my apartment in Ohio while staying overseas. I didn't have enough money to rent a storage unit, so when I left with the kids to go visit their father, I walked out and left everything I owned behind in the apartment that I was losing. My pictures, my household items, and all the clothes that didn't fit into one suitcase were left behind. Since there was no one to keep them while I was gone, I had no choice. I did it because I felt bad for him - I'll call him Ahmed. I knew how I would feel if I hadn't been able to see my children for 4 years, and I felt really bad for him. I put his feelings above the feelings of my own daughter, who was dead-set against going to see him. I also felt that they needed to know who their father was, since they were too young to remember much about him when he was arrested and taken away to jail.
I was so wrong.
We arrived in his country on April 12, 2006. We went to his house and promptly fell asleep from the 2-day trip. The next day, the kids awoke with enthusiasm and high expectations, because he had made so many promises to them on the phone in the previous 6 months. He had promised my son that he would wrestle with him and teach him to play soccer. My son's favorite game was "horsey" - where I would get down on hands and knees, he would climb onto my back, and he would ride his "horsey" around the house, telling me where to go and what to do. Ahmed promised to play horsey with him, and he was too excited about that.
As we were preparing for the trip, Ahmed told me not to bring any clothes for the kids because he had money, and when we arrived, he would buy them all brand new clothes. My daughters were eager to go shopping and get some new clothes, as money had been very tight while he was in jail, and it had been a while since they had gotten any new clothes. He promised my oldest daughter a cell phone of her very own, and he told my middle daughter that he would get her the horse that she had been wanting for so long.
Enthusiasm soon turned to tears, however, all in the first day after our arrival. After the kids woke up on that first day and ate breakfast, they ran to Ahmed and wanted to play with him. He was sitting on his bed reading his Arabic newspaper, and he didn't want to be bothered. When they persisted in seeking his attention, he threw his newspaper across the room, grabbed my little 5-year-old boy and threw him off the bed and screamed, "Get away from me! I don't play anymore! Go away!".
I had always given attention to my children whenever they needed it, so they, of course, didn't understand that Ahmed wasn't joking. So, they persisted. They climbed back up on the bed and again asked to go play with him, asked for him to tickle them, and asked to go outside with him. Now he was enraged, because they didn't listen and go away immediately as he had instructed. He got more violent, and he hit each and every one of them and pushed them out of the room and shut the door.
They were stunned and hurt. They all cried. I yelled at him, asking him how he could treat them like that after not having seen them for FOUR YEARS! He could care less, however, and started blaming me for raising "his" children to be so disrespctful. He told me "Here, children listen to adults the first time, without ever talking back or saying a word. Children are not allowed to speak to adults, other than when asked a question or spoken to. You've made my children bad. No child should ever have to be told twice to go away".
He had missed the point. It wasn't about whether they know how listen to adults, it was about the fact that they wanted to be near him, and he responded with cruelness and violence. Their feelings didn't matter at all to him. The worst part was that he hit them. He had said on the phone for the previous 6 months, that he was a "changed man" and that he would not hit anymore. And now here we were - in his country, on the first day, and he hit them. I was irate. I knew immediately that I had made the wrong choice, and that I should not have brought them to his country to see him.
Next post: Life in Yemen
