"Jennie?" asked Amira. "What are you wearing for your first day of class tomorrow?"
"Uh," delayed Jennie. "I haven't really thought about that. Probably jeans and a t-shirt, I guess."
"Ugh, I'm so nervous for tomorrow!" shrieked Amira in excitement. "I think I'm going to sit next to the most handsome man I see in all of my classes."
"Whatever gets you to class!" laughed Jennie.
"I'm serious, though. I want to meet an American man."
"Well," interjected Jennie with a smirk. "If you happen to meet two boys tomorrow you have to introduce one of them to me."
"Deal," she concurred with a confident nod and smile.
"Back home, men don't appreciate a woman. Here in America, men love women, and they're not afraid to show it."
"I guess so," pondered Jennie, reluctant to agree with her roommate. "But you have to be careful with American boys. Most of them, like 99.9% of them, just want to get into your pants as quickly and as cheaply as possible. You have to be careful, especially with college parties and stuff."
"They can get into my pants as much as they would like!" enthused Amira, biting her bottom lip to conceal her dashing smile.
"Amira!" retaliated Jennie, now embarrassed and blushing beet red.
"What?" she asked with surprise. "American men are much better than Iraqis. Iraqi men have no restrictions—they do as they please whenever and wherever they please to do it. Here in America, men restrict what they want to say and, instead, they say what I would like to hear."
"Is that any better?" hesitated Jennie with a mild laugh of disbelief.
"Well, of course it is!" laughed Amira. "American men are much more respectful of women. And some are much better looking, too! I'll have a boyfriend by the end of the week—you just wait—I might even have two! And then you can my other one."
"Well, thanks," quivered Jennie, now unsure of her roommate.
"You just don't know how well you have it in America," stated Amira as she plopped onto her bed, overwhelmed with making a decision on an outfit for the next day.
"I guess so," said Jennie before she sat in silence, thinking about what life could be like elsewhere around the world.
Amira remained motionless, her legs dangling over the side of her twin bed, staring up at the ceiling with her arms sprawled over her entire bed.
"What was life like in Iraq, anyways?" asked Jennie, finally breaking the silence.
"It could have been worse," responded Amira after remaining quiet for some time. "I mean, it was bad enough that I wanted to leave, and that is why I'm here."
"Do you think you'll ever go back?"
"I don't know," she answered as she continued to stare up at the ceiling. "My plan was to get them to move here after I graduated. But you never really know what the future holds. Maybe after I graduate I'll want to return and try to improve my country. Maybe I'll say 'screw it' and move my family here like I had planned all along!"
"I'm sure you'll have changed your mind and thought it through and made the best decision by then. What made it so bad in Iraq?"
"Everything," she replied with haste. "Absolutely everything."
"Were you not allowed to do anything? Like, why do you hate it so much?" asked Jennie, carefully asking questions as to not encroach or anger Amira.
"Well," began Amira before hesitating, wisely selecting her words. "Let me put it this way—women, you and me? We have no rights. In Iraq, we simply exist to bear sons to become soldiers. We serve our fathers until our fathers decide whom we should marry, usually around our age now. Then, we serve that man and bear his burdens and his children, hopefully sons. We feed our husbands, we do the chores, and we hide in the house all day until our husbands return to rape us. If we dare go outside, we're dressed in all black and hide our faces."
Jennie remained silent as she tried to quiet her gulp of regret for pressing more questions.
"Not to mention the camel spiders. Those are disgusting and creepy as hell," added Amira, sensing Jennie's discomfort.
Jennie laughed with Amira. "All spiders are creepy. It's funny, how we're so much bigger and so much more destructive than a tiny little spider; yet, we're so scared of them. I wonder if they are scared of us, even."
"Oh, camel spiders are not 'tiny little things.' These things are huge! And disgusting. Here, I'll show you," said Amira as she sat up and reached over to her desk to grab her computer.
"I don't even know if you have anything this disgusting in America. I have nightmares over Iraqi camel spiders. They hiss in the dark and they run so fast."
Amira turned her computer on and search for an online image of the camel spider.
"Here," she insisted. "Look at this."
"Ew!" eked Jennie in astonishment. "That is a spider? That's gigantic!"
"I told you!" reiterated Amira. "Imagine seeing these things nearly every day, just hiding in corners and outside. They make a little hissing sound, it kind of sounds like soft typing on keyboard. If you mistakenly get too close to them, that's how you usually find out if they're around. You hear that little sound. Then, I scream and run away."
"I am so glad I don't like in Iraq," for that reason alone.
"Believe me, there's much worse things than camel spiders," exhorted Amira, returning to seriousness. "I love my father, but he does do as he pleases with my mother. I feel like he doesn't even want to do the things he does—he just does them because he is afraid to break the customs of masculinity and paternalism. He really doesn't do it often, only really to make a scene every once in a while so that people know he's in control."
Jennie gulped in discomfort once again. "What," she began with a dry throat. "What does he do to her?"
Amira paused, closing her laptop and placing it back on her desk. "He isn't that violent. I've only seen him hit her once. My mother wandered outside for a minute to hang wet clothes without her burka. My father came home early that day and saw her outside with it on, without her face covered up. He had to."
"That's so unfair," replied Jennie in anger. "Why do women even have to do that?"
"I don't know," said Amira. "It's just a way to demean women, really. It's tradition, that's really the only logical explanation besides the men trying to limit women to a secondary role in society. I'm so glad I don't have to wear that thing here."
"Has anyone ever hit you before?" questioned Jennie, trying to ask if her father ever beat her but afraid to directly ask.
"You mean my father? Yes, but I probably deserved it. I was always careful to wear my burka outside. But it's not so much my father; he was simply disciplining me for misbehavior. The most dangerous thing for women to do is to venture outside and then go inside elsewhere. Any place behind closed doors with men is dangerous. I made that mistake a few times."
"Why, what happened?" asked Jennie, moving to go sit next to Amira on her bed.
"Well," her voice cracked in nervousness. "Once, I went to my father's friends house to fix supper for them. His wife has just passed and my father thought it a nice gesture to prepare supper for the family, the family's survivors were all men, the youngest son about my age now, seventeen or eighteen. As I prepared supper, the father was in the back room, I in the kitchen. The son wrapped his arms around me and told me to relax. He raped me right there, in the kitchen."
Amira's eyes watered and her hands shook in trauma. Jennie wrapped her arms around her, trying to comfort her.
"I'm so sorry, Amira," she whispered into her ear, holding back her own tears. "That is so terrible."
Jennie continued to hug Amira as she recollected her composure with a few sniffles.
"The worst part is, my father knew it would
happen. He told me to be careful before I left, I wasn't sure of what I should
be careful about, though. I knew afterwards. I came home and cried myself to
sleep. My father hugged me and told me he was going to get me to America and
that he would never let that happen again. I never told him that it happened;
he just knew," she explained. "That's a big reason why I'm here. And I thank my
father for that. He loves me."