The Middle of Everywhere (28 page)

Among adults there are many psychological meltdowns. Immigrants often feel like small children. For a while they lose control of their lives and feel stupid, helpless, and lost. Lola's husband was a soccer star in Yugoslavia, but here he can't find work. He is depressed and helpless. Many fathers who are "retired" or "too sick to work" are really incapacitated by stress.

Children from traditional cultures depend on their parents for emotional support and moral guidance for as long as they live. Children owe parents lifelong respect, obedience, and love. Daughters live at home until marriage, and sons often live with their parents all their lives. In many countries, the old are revered and cared for. Nursing homes are unthinkable.

From conception until death, things are done differently in different countries. For example, in Vietnam, pregnant women are believed capable of influencing the character of their children during pregnancy. A woman who reads poetry, thinks lofty thoughts, and looks at beauty will have a more aesthetically sensitive child. Expectant mothers don't eat chicken during pregnancy because they don't want their babies to have "chicken skin." Vietnamese babies are not named at birth but are given a "milk name" until they are a little older.

In traditional cultures, a birth changes dozens of relationships within the extended family. Children fall into a carefully arranged web of family members. Mothers are expected to care for babies, toddlers, and young children. Fathers, cousins, older siblings, aunts, and uncles all have prescribed roles. Grandparents often live in the same home and play an important role in the education of their grandchildren.

I know an Asian family that consists of the parents, both university professors, their teenaged daughter, and the mothers of both parents. They live together and while the couple works, the older women cook, care for the house, and supervise the daughter after school. The mother told me, "Our mothers have gentled our daughter. If they hadn't been with us, I think she would have found trouble in junior high. But they were waiting for her after school with snacks, attention, and affection. They held her life in place."

The American custom of putting infants in day care is shocking to many newcomers. No day care even exists in most of Central and South America and the Middle East. Immigrants wonder why we, in such a rich country, leave our babies with strangers.

Developmental milestones occur at different times across cultures. In the Middle East and Southeast Asia, children are toilet trained very early by American standards. Latino mothers have more relaxed time lines for toilet training and weaning. In general, Latino mothers are more indulgent, talkative, and affectionate with babies than mothers from many other cultures. This is great for young children, but sometimes increases their separation anxiety when they begin school.

Traditional parents keep kids more involved with family and less involved with peers than do American parents. Our American ideas of overnights for children or birthday parties for friends of children strike many newcomers as odd. Children are expected to be with the family when they are not in school. In fact, often parents don't want their children to have friends because these friends could lead them into trouble.

Different cultures have different ideas about discipline and physical punishment. What many cultures consider appropriate, we define as abuse. Refugee parents have been told at cultural orientation that they will be arrested if they discipline their children with physical force. They are afraid to use what may have been their traditional ways of punishing their children, but they have no new ways. Children sometimes use their parents' fears of the law to bully them. One boy told his mother, "If you don't let me watch TV, I'll call the police."

Attitudes toward retirement vary across cultures. Middle Eastern people retire as early as fifty. Latino men generally do not retire while they are healthy. Often elders from traditional cultures watch children while parents work. Sometimes this works well, but sometimes it leaves elders lonely and vulnerable. Without English, elders may be dependent on grandchildren for the simplest things—answering the phone, helping them read their mail, or translating cooking instructions on a can of soup. Sometimes their grandchildren cannot speak the language of the old country.

Parents must learn English or they will lose authority and control of their children. As mentioned earlier, Portes and Rumbaut documented the benefits of bicultural families. They found that the best pattern was one in which the family carefully chose what to accept and reject in American culture. Second best was a pattern in which the whole family moved into mainstream America at roughly the same pace. Least healthy, but unfortunately quite common, was a pattern in which the children outstripped their parents. If the kids were in the lead, everyone was in trouble. Whatever their current stresses and past traumas, refugee parents must still be parents.

When I work with traditional families, I stress the importance of everyone learning about America. I encourage respect for parents and elders and reinforce the closeness of children and grandparents. I validate the family's past history of sticking together. I say things like, "I cannot help you if you don't help each other."

I have even been known to do a rather hokey demonstration. I set a number of small sticks out on a table. I have a volunteer from the family pick up one of the sticks and see if he or she can break it. Of course he or she breaks it easily. Then I gather all of the sticks together and tie them in a bundle. I hand this bundle to my volunteer and again ask him or her to break it. When the volunteer cannot break them, I say, "A bundle of sticks cannot be broken."

On the other hand, I encourage parents to reflect on the difficulty their kids have with our culture. I stress that this is a new
place with very different expectations for children. Teenagers are not the same in the United States as they are in the traditional homeland. I encourage parents to listen to their children's point of view and to develop some empathy for the cultural switching kids must do.

I talk about the attributes of resilience. I encourage families to be flexible, focused, attentive, and hardworking. I stress that assimilation takes time. There is a lot of trial-and-error learning. Many of the problems families have are problems of transition. I reassure families that after a year they will have solved some of their current problems, although, of course, they will have new challenges.

I ask, What do you want to keep from the old culture? What do you want to accept from America? I reinforce the importance of connections to the ethnic community as well as to American cultural brokers. I teach families that time is their greatest wealth and they must spend it carefully. I recommend parents turn off their televisions and talk to and listen to their children. I urge parents to read to their children and practice English with them. I teach families to think carefully about choices and to be careful how they spend money.

I try to teach the best American parenting practices—how to set limits, to give feedback to family members, to hug, and to praise. We have the tools to resolve problems, negotiate conflicts, and respect everyone's point of view. My goal is to help people replace despair, stress, and denigration with pride, hope, and enjoyment. Pleasurable activities and laughter can bond families just as trauma can. Fun can be deeply healing.

Americans are good at having fun with children. Newcomers can learn from us how to have family vacations, picnics, and educational and recreational outings. In Nebraska, families enjoy the migrating sandhill cranes in spring and the wild geese in the fell. We celebrate birthdays and milestones of all kinds. We like family reunions and potlucks, events almost all people can enjoy.

I attended a group held at a community center for Afghani and Middle Eastern women who met for cultural orientation, English practice, and emotional support. I was invited by Leda, a Kurdish woman, who asked me to help her group heal from the past.

I had known Leda for six months. Her family had suffered in about every way a family could suffer. They had lost their home, their country, and their relatives. Her husband, Ahmad, had been forced to be a soldier and he told me, "In one battle that lasted forty days, I saw thirty thousand young Iraqis killed." He said, "Men who wouldn't fight had their ears cut off; but if they fought they would die, so losing ears was good."

After Ahmad escaped the army, he and Leda had no choice but to flee their country. Their youngest child was born in a meadow. The other children were educated on the run. At one point Leda tied the baby to her back and the family walked across the desert for weeks. They moved only at night and hid under bushes with snakes and scorpions by day. They •were thirsty and had only dried bread. The children cried soundlessly for hours. One night they passed so close to soldiers they could see the embers of their cigarettes. As Leda put it, "We had months when everyone we encountered wanted us dead."

But they were doing well in America. Many times Leda prepared me meals in their home. That was the only place she was without her hijab, and she looked very different. Her beautiful long hair swirled as she moved, and her mobile fece was
filled with expression. Their small house was clean and calm, even with five children.

Our first meal together had been awkward. Leda served naan, shish kebabs and dolmas stuffed with rice, tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. I knew that she had worked all week in the factory and then spent her weekend cooking this meal. I was embarrassed that she wouldn't allow me to help serve and that she wouldn't sit down with Ahmad and me for the meal. As the two of us ate and Leda served, Ahmad stated, "We Iraqis treat our women like queens."

Leda and Ahmad had an arranged marriage. However, they clearly loved and respected each other. For his time and place, Ahmad was actually a feminist. He cared for the kids while Leda learned English. When she talked about her current job at the dog food factory, he looked sorrowful. He said, "I want Leda to get an American degree."

Leda said her job was very difficult and unpleasant. Some of her coworkers were kind, but many were unintelligent racists. She felt humiliated by this work, but she would do anything for the family.

Ahmad worked hard, too. In Iraq he'd been an architect. Here he worked as a clerk at a convenience store and as a baker. He -believed girls and boys should be educated equally. He felt they could study together until junior high, but then they distracted each other. He argued that adolescents were unable to work in the presence of the opposite sex, a point I found hard to dispute.

Leda disapproved of public displays of affection and the way American women show their bodies. She said, "Women are jewels, not toys. They should respect themselves."

Both Ahmad and Leda felt women should be able to divorce and keep legal rights to their children. Neither believed men should be allowed to beat their wives. Still, they disapproved of the high divorce rate in America. Ahmad said, "In Iraq, marriage is a shirt you wear the rest of your life. If you tear it, you mend it."

Both Ahmad and Leda were unfailingly kind to me. In spite of their economic situation, they often gave me gifts, not only of the meals but of flowers or books by Iraqi writers. When I left, Ahmad would say to me, "I am your brother. Leda is your sister."

It was Leda who encouraged the women in the support group to talk openly to an outsider. Thanks to her, I had been greeted as a friend. I'd been coming for a while now and I approached the meeting with eagerness but also anxiety that my skills were not adequate to the sorrow of this group.

Tonight it was early June. I walked under linden trees, with their sweet aroma, and entered the community center. The women were waiting for me at a table with hot tea, nuts, and dried fruit.

The Afghani women had been in Lincoln only a few months. They had come to escape the brutal civil war, the repression of women by the Taliban, and the famine. When the Taliban came to power in 1996, it prohibited women from going to school, working, driving, or leaving home without a male relative. All women were ordered to be covered in "black tents."

The Afghani women were coming from a place where seven-year-old girls were sold as wives for a few bags of wheat; where women who taught girls to read, even in their own homes, could be killed; and where villages were invaded and all the men between seventeen and seventy were lined up and shot. They arrived from a place where families froze to death and all women's health facilities were closed.

Leda knew the Afghani women from her work at a dog food company, rather grisly work for women who had seen so much blood and death. The four women in this group, Leda, Ritu, Zahra, and Nessima, were a complex combination of similar and different. All belonged to the community of the bereaved and downtrodden. Yet they brought very different characteristics and human capital into their new situations. Zahra was in her sixties and alone; Ritu, who was only in her late twenties, was widowed, pregnant, and supporting three children. Nessima was stoic and a hard worker, but she had been an arranged bride at fourteen and couldn't read or write in any language. Her husband was unhappy in America and sometimes took his frustrations out on his family.

Ritu was dressed in slacks and a shirt. Leda and Zahra wore traditional head coverings, and Nessima was totally covered in a long robe that even had black embroidery covering her eyes. The women spoke broken English, although Leda's English was amazingly good and she often translated for me with the others.

Zahra had lost almost everyone, including her husband, her three daughters, two of her sons, and her grandchildren. Her husband had been shot in front of her, her daughters raped and killed. Her daughters had tried to hide their attractiveness by smearing their faces with engine oil, but the soldiers had made them wash and then had raped them. Her only surviving son was in prison in Turkey with passport problems. He could buy his way to freedom, but neither he nor Zahra had any money.