A FEW WEEKS after my asylum decision, I sat on the floor of Dee-Ann’s apartment in Detroit, where she had moved after a promotion. My summer job at Smith had ended, and my parents expected me back by Monday. I knew it was impossible for my friend to imagine—parents turning their backs on their own child. That night, with Dee-Ann’s cat purring in my lap, I dialed the numbers on the back of a calling card. “I’m not coming back. I don’t want to live in Jordan. I can’t live in Jordan.” “You are not my daughter,” my father said, and I knew he meant it. I called a friend back at Smith to let her know I had made it to Detroit and talked to my parents. It was a phone call, and it went exactly how I thought it would.” She cut me off. “But they want you back. Your family knows people in high places,” he told me, as if I didn’t know. I swallowed hard and placed the phone back on the hook.
Clearly, my parents were angry and determined to get me back to Jordan, regardless of whatever danger might wait for me there. I had tried to plan for worst-case scenarios, but never in all of my planning did I imagine my family would call in a political favor or get the FBI involved. I went back to the station. I stayed on a bus for days, seeing the United States, my new home, from an oversized, dirty window, sitting next to people I assumed were like me: people running away from something, people with nowhere to go. I think of the man who was only trying to be kind, to pull the jacket that had fallen back over me as I slept—“Everything is okay, no one is going to hurt you,” he said—as I took my hands from his neck. Every once in a while, I’d make some phone calls using a prepaid card. Richard told me the FBI had shown up at his office, too. Dee-Ann told me an uncle of mine (following my credit card trail, apparently) had called and asked her to meet him at the Ritz in Dearborn. Finally, I called Misty. Nobody up there trusts the government; you’ll be in good hands.” It sounded like my kind of town.