In our culture the best thing that parents could do was to get their daughters married off and pass the responsibility to someone else. As Arab Christians, divorce was not in our vocabulary.
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In our culture the best thing that parents could do was to get their daughters married off and pass the responsibility to someone else. As Arab Christians, divorce was not in our vocabulary.
For 7 years it felt like I was in prison. I wasn’t able to have a bank account or a phone. You can’t do anything if you don’t have legal documentation.
My parents weren’t required to give a dowry, but my mom had jewelry that she gave to all the daughters and daughters-in-law anyway, and there were 9 of us children.
At that point my dad said, “This is not for you. Stay home. Be the math guy with the clean clothes.”
I couldn’t tell my parents anything ahead of time, so they didn’t know that I had planned to defect.
To me it’s symbolic, because if things get difficult here, I remember that back home they are a lot more difficult.
