A Lonely Arrival

Kheria, born and raised in Tripoli, Libya, was 22 years old when she first set foot in the United States with her husband in the early 1980s. She recalls how much she dreamt of coming to the United States because as she says, “it would mean a new life. I wanted to see the United States, I mean every person wished to come to the United States…it was every Arab person’s dream.” As a soon to be newlywed, her dream was about to come true because her husband received a scholarship/grant from the Libyan government through the University of Tripoli, Al Fateh, to get his master’s degree in chemistry in the United States. Newly wed, she bid her farewell to her family and friends back home in Tripoli, Libya and flew in with her husband to the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland to receive his student visa, which she was included under as his spouse. After this trip to the embassy, with nothing but their clothes, their own money and the Libyan government’s full financial backing, they made their way directly to the United States.

When Kheria first arrived in the U.S., she says, “I did not like it…because I feel alone, I did not speak English, I wasn’t driving or going out, my husband, he is busy with school.” When she first stepped foot in New York, she was also shocked to find police cars everywhere going “‘WOO WOO WOO’…you feel like you were staying in a country of criminals or something,” she says. It was not a sight Kheria expected. As soon as she arrived in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where her husband was set to study, that fearful feeling did not leave her because she was constantly told by the also newly arrived Libyan group of women whose husbands studied with Kheria’s husband, about the crime Bridgeport had. Kheria goes on to say “the Libyan group we were with scared us in Connecticut…where they would say don’t open your doors up, don’t go out. Because all of us were alone, so we were scaring each other, you know. So I spent almost 3 years without answering, or speaking to anyone, or doing anything else….until I moved here to Delaware and I felt there was some safety.” Back in Connecticut, she says “I stayed so scared…the door, there was no way, no way that I would ever open the door.” Kheria and the other Libyan women would only go out when their husbands came back from their studies because of how scared they were. It was a new country, a new place, and Kheria and her husband were all alone except for another small group of Libyans who just arrived around the same time as Kheria. Kheria came from a big family, so she says, “when I came to the US, I missed the crowd and the noise…I would find myself alone you know…and when I sleep, I dream of them and when I open my eyes I find myself alone. This was really difficult…”

Keeping in touch with new Libyan friends she made in the U.S., who lived farther away, and family in the 1980s was difficult for Kheria as well, which did not help with her feeling of loneliness in this new foreign land. Kheria says “calls were very expensive. The phone, you know, if I am going to call out of state, in order for it to be a bit cheap, calls had to be made after midnight.” Calling her parents was very difficult for Kheria as well because it would be difficult to receive calls from overseas from her parents’ house. Kheria says “my aunt’s husband, may God have mercy on him…he used to work at the post office so he would give them [her parents] the phone line. But my father, may God have mercy on him, to call me, he would have to call from the post office…And at the post office, they [the Libyan government under Gaddafi] used to intercept, spy, probe them on their calls.” At the time, tension between Libya and the United States was brewing, which explains why calls received from the U.S. were monitored in Libya. This influenced what was to come in Kheria’s immigrant journey in the U.S.

Politics Changing the Tides for Kheria

Soon, around 1986 when the U.S. launched airstrikes against Libya, the Libyan government revoked or discontinued the scholarship or grant Kheria’s husband was receiving to pay for her husband’s schooling and their living expenses. “All of the students had to go back home…yeah they revoked the scholarship/grant and Libyan students went home, like it was over, but we did not want to go back home” says Kheria. Although Kheria would not have minded going back to Libya since her children did not start school yet, her husband did not want to go back because he wanted to complete his studies, earn his PhD and he “didn’t like the politics and the life there at all,” Kheria says. After all of the time her husband spent applying for PhD programs once he completed his master’s degree in Connecticut because the Immigration office sent him a notice that he had 6 months to find a job or continue his studies or they had to leave, and after securing a place at the University of Delaware, this scholarship/grant revocation, which annulled the visa, put her family in a difficult situation. Kheria’s husband did not want to go back because the political situation back in Libya was not a comfortable one for students like her husband. Kheria explains, “when students would go back in the summer to Libya, they [the Libyan government and universities] would hold them in an encampment and would give them lectures and whatever else…my husband did not like going back to Libya.” Kheria then says, “For those who go back to Libya, the government would [also] bother their parents because they consider those of us who stayed in the U.S. and didn’t return home…for them it meant that we didn’t like Gaddafi.” That is what Gaddafi thought of anyone who lived abroad for a long time even though Kheria and her husband “”didn’t do anything against him or even enter politics or anything” Kheria says. Kheria ended up staying “almost 20 years without going back” she says, because Gaddafi was making circumstances more difficult for returning Libyans and students living abroad and there was this fear as Kheria explains, “if I didn’t have a U.S. passport…they just might not let you leave the country anymore.”

Gaddafi made circumstances very difficult for Libyans living abroad, and after revoking the grant and scholarship from students like her husband, Kheria, her husband and their then young American born children were put in a difficult situation because they wanted to stay. That is when Kheria and her husband decided to apply for political asylum, which was around the time her husband was just starting his PhD program at the University of Delaware, when his scholarship/grant was revoked. At this time, Kheria says “there was no more money…we considered this to be very difficult for us.” There was no steady income because their financial backing from the Libyan government was cut. Kheria and her family relied on those funds to live as her husband studied. “So when my husband began his PhD program, he had to stop and go work at a gas station until he got the job [in his field] in New Jersey. So I mean it was very difficult for us! I mean like someone who was working on his PhD, he would go work at a gas station so he can feed his kids,” says Kheria. All that was on their minds and “of most importance to us was how we can live, eat and rent the apartment” says Kheria. Kheria and her husband decided at the time to apply for political asylum because of the student visa situation they were in and because they did not want to go back to the political situation in Libya. Kheria explains “in the past, it was easier to get political asylum, not like today. So right away, they gave us the green card. Especially since we were here for studies and our kids were born here…” The student scholarship and grant revocation was a turning point for Kheria’s immigrant journey because she no longer had the money to go back home to visit her family like she did in the first few years of her arrival since those trips back to Libya were paid for by the scholarship and grant, Kheria’s husband gave up his PhD studies in order to work full time to support his family all of a sudden, and with the granting of political asylum and the swift acquisition of green cards, they were able to stay in the U.S. and move more freely although they could not afford to.

However, before this situation, Kheria says she “was dependent on him [her husband] for everything…to the point where I really did not need to or it was not necessary for me to learn how to drive.” Kheria began to rely on herself when they moved to Delaware and her husband was working full time. She says, “I started to learn how to drive only when we moved to Delaware and he was working and my kids were young so I needed a way to take them out take them to their doctor’s appointments…when the kids grew up a bit, I found myself needing to go learn how to drive because sometimes…I had 4 kids…so sometimes one had a doctor’s appointment, or other time, the school would want me to come in, so I mean…I had to. And he was working in New Jersey, so it didn’t make sense every few hours or so for him to return to the house to pick me up or the kids up and drop us off places…” This was the point in Kheria’s life where she was forced to become more independent and connected with the outside world in the United States. This was also the time Kheria began to feel like she was forming a community. For instance, Kheria says, “I was learning [to drive] during that time so even I could take the kids out, you know. We would go to the park with friends, I mean we would go to fun places, them and me, because when they were young for example, I would take them to the masjid for Friday prayers and then I would take them to Delcastle Park, we would go for lunch, and I would get together with my friends…” Kheria explains how “when he [her husband] started working, times became difficult. He would work from the morning and come back at night. There was no way I was going to wait for him every day.” A lonely experience was slowly starting to unravel as she began to create connections with her community while her husband worked. She was creating her roots in Delaware while holding on to her identity as a Muslim Libyan soon to be American.

Holding on to her Identity

When Kheria began her independent journey, venturing outside in the U.S. on her own with her children while her husband worked, it was a time where she began to recognize and solidify how she wanted to bring up her children in this new land. This played a part in how she started to form a community in the U.S. Kheria says, “the most important thing for me was Islam…how they [her children] protect and preserve their Islamic identity.” Kheria realized it was not the Libyan culture she cared about preserving, but it was her religion that she hoped her children would hold onto forever as their identity as they grew up in the U.S. At that time in Delaware, as Kheria explains, “this [trying to bring her children up as Muslims] was tiring me because during the days they were kids, there weren’t Islamic schools that could help you, there weren’t mosques/masjids…when we first arrived in the U.S., there weren’t any…There weren’t many Muslims back then. I was scared for my kids that they would become lost. I didn’t want them to feel like they didn’t have anyone. I didn’t want them to feel like strangers or foreigners. I would always try to confirm with them that this is their country because they were born here, they are American. I mean they were Muslim Americans.” Kheria wanted her children to “be proud that they were Muslim Americans, I mean. I didn’t want them to be shy from or push aside their religion,” she says. This is why Kheria decided to look for friends and a community that would support and uplift her and her children’s identity which was quite “othered” in the U.S. at the time. Kheria says, “that is why I was looking for friends and a community. So we could see gatherings and families who are living here like us…and we would mingle with them, so they could feel like there are people with them who are also Muslim and strong. Thank God then we began to have our own mosque/masjid and I would take them [to the mosque] during Ramadan to go break their fast and eat iftar so they could feel like there are other people like them…” Kheria did not want her children to feel alone and also began taking them to youth groups and meetings Muslims would go to in Philadelphia. Her community network was growing and all of her efforts to keep her and her family’s identity intact were well worth it today as now she says, her “(eldest daughter) does the same thing with her kids, I mean. She would drop them off at youth meetings and take them to the mosque/masjid, she would talk to them about Islam, and if there is a conference, she would take them. It’s a must that they preserve identity and learn…”

Of course preserving her identity as a Muslim in the U.S. also came with the feeling that her and her family, she explains, “needed to set an example, I mean, like set an example as good Muslim people with our behaviors because the media has severely distorted the image of Islam. Now there’s islamophobia so when anyone sees anyone that’s Muslim, they would think he has bombs and whatever else. So we always try to help them [Non-Muslim Americans] understand that we love the United States and that this is our country before it is anyone else’s country…because we are living in this country and are comfortable living in this country.” In the face of rising islamophobia in the U.S., preserving her identity became more complicated as her and her family always felt they had to be the ones to set the example to counter violent and unfair narratives about Muslims spewed by the media that were believed by many in the U.S. Kheria felt that she needed to communicate how her and her family are not what is portrayed in the media so “our neighbors can rest assured,” she says.

Before Kheria and her husband were granted political asylum and were waiting for their green card documents, Kheria was thinking that they would just go back home to Libya if they did not receive these documents. She says, “I wanted to go back home to Libya during that time, anyway. It didn’t make a difference to me. When my kids were young, it would have been fine to return back home to Libya.” However, that was before she built an entire community with other Muslims in Delaware and her kids began school in the U.S. This idea of leaving or staying in the U.S. did not make a difference to Kheria when it came to preserving her identity and her family’s identity as Muslims. Kheria even recalls having been pressured or encouraged by a friend she made to not name her children names that would be difficult for other Americans to pronounce or that would mark them as different, and she did not care. Kheria would not compromise her and her family’s identity for others in the U.S and would not let any pressure to assimilate shake her and her family’s identity. However, her and the community she had built in Delaware did face those pressures as immigrants. Kheria recalls “even when I had my son Abdulrahman…when I just had him, my friend told me do not name him Abdulrahman because it is difficult…soon he will go to school and stuff, so give him a name that is light and easy…And I told her, no, I am not staying until he heads to school…I am going home before then anyway…I was like, I was going to name him Abudlrahman and I was going to return back home. I had put in my mind that I was going back home, I mean.” Little did she know that things would change, her and her husband would receive their green cards and she would stay. She says “Yeah, things changed and he stayed as ‘Abdoool’ [Laughs]…and thank God that we got our documents and stayed and so now we can go back home [Libya] and come back and go out, you know…meaning we weren’t stuck in one place.” Many immigrants face the pressures to make their children’s name conform to the mainstream dominant culture in the U.S., therefore this was one example of when Kheria was greeted with this question, and did not compromise her and her family’s identity to simply fit in. Moreover, as Kheria indicated, as soon as she received her green card, the concept of staying in the U.S. became more of a reality for her and played a huge role in her freedom of movement.

Soon, when she was applying for U.S. citizenship and her children were getting older, Kheria’s sense of identity as a Libyan began to change. She says, “I became a citizen and I was…happy because now I could travel with this citizenship, you know? I felt now I could go to any place with the American passport without any problem. This is something…and the second thing is the fact that I’ve been living here and now I finally would be able to have the same rights as my kids…I’d be like my kids and others…so this is something really good, God bless.” Receiving U.S. citizenship and the American passport, she was able to return home to visit her family with more security unafraid of the political situation or of not being able to leave Libya anymore. As she says, “with the American passport, they give you a bit more worth and value” overseas. After many years of not being able to return to Libya to visit, Kheria would often be told by friends and family that “I am still an ancient one or an old soul. I mean this is the Libya I miss, the Libya of the past. Maybe because I left Libya early and I stayed away for a long time without going back…so what stayed in my head is the stuff from the past, I mean. That’s it.” Kheria preserved the Libyan identity that she left the country with in her early 20s and that shaped how she was seen by her friends and family who still lived in Libya. Kheria, as a Libyan who hasn’t visited Libya in such a long time, realized her Libyan identity was not caught up with the modern Libyan identity in the country, but she says, “I might be different [to Libyans who never left Libya], but I still have preserved all of my past things” and traditions from Libya in the U.S., which she is proud of. Kheria held onto her identity as a Muslim Libyan, but through gaining citizenship, spending more years in the U.S. than her time living in Libya, and building her community and raising her family in Delaware, Kheria began to call the U.S. her home.

Creating “Home” in America

Creating this new community and network in Delaware, receiving citizenship, and watching her children grow up as Muslim Libyan Americans, and becoming a grandmother, now, when asked if Kheria felt like the U.S. was her home, Kheria says “now, yes, but in the beginning, no. In the beginning I even wished to return to Libya…enough…you know, the language, and life by myself and I just didn’t know things.” Every time Kheria would go back to visit Libya, she says “…I would miss the US…and I miss the US not only when I am in Libya, but from the minute I enter Europe [for a connecting flight]. I feel like the US is an advanced country, in the ways of its treatment…so when you arrive in any other country you feel like you were really living a blessing in treatment and conduct, in everything. But when I go over there to Libya, the first two weeks, I would miss the atmosphere of my country [Libya] and the days I was young and everything, but then, that’s it…enough, you just want to return to your life [in the U.S.] because you miss a lot of things…I mean a lot of things in your life.” Kheria goes on to explain that in the US, “you have freedom here…freedom meaning you can dress however you want, you can worship who you want and you can go pray…Here you can defend your religion, you can speak up! So this is a blessing, you know…here [in the U.S.], you can stand up for your rights if the government ever tries to do something to you because you are a US citizen…this is something amazing here, God bless,” Kheria took pride in being able to exercise such a vast array of rights in this country. She valued how much the U.S. allowed its citizenry to exercise their rights, something that was not secured or present back in Libya.

Kheria’s children and grandchildren also made this country even more of her home. Kheria says, “I feel like every year that I lived in the US didn’t count or was not calculated as part of my life/age…when I was far away from them [her family back home], I mean. Even now, I wish I can see them, but of course I don’t want to live there because I have my kids here and my grandchildren of course, and my life here, that’s it…because at this point, I have lived here longer than I have lived in Libya.” Time made a difference for Kheria. Once her family was established, they were a big part of what made her feel at home along with the rights and gifts this country provided her with. When asked if she wants to stay in the U.S. all of her life, Kheria expresses how at this point in time “for me if I were to return back home, my kids and my grandchildren would not return back home with me. So I am always going to miss them, I mean. So one would just go visit and that’s it, that’s enough.” Kheria would also ask herself “am I really going to move from Delaware after I have lived all my life in it…?…Delaware is also my country you know…that’s it…you know it’s my home. I was living in it for more than 30 years.”

My children, I wanted them to feel like this is their country…they work in this country, they study in this country…and they labor for this country and give things back to this country, I mean. And so this is our country, I mean. It is the country that admitted us, the country that we studied and learned in…we fear for this country, I mean. And we always pray for this country and say ‘May God alway repair this country…’ I mean we wish the best for this country because this is our country now, and this is our children’s country and our grandchildren’s country.

Kheria today could not even imagine leaving Delaware and moving to a different state like Florida where her eldest daughter now lives. The power of time and community is strong in creating and fostering a sense of home for Kheria. Kheria goes on to express, “my children, I wanted them to feel like this is their country…they work in this country, they study in this country…and they labor for this country and give things back to this country, I mean. And so this is our country, I mean. It is the country that admitted us, the country that we studied and learned in…we fear for this country, I mean. And we always pray for this country and say ‘May God alway repair this country…’ I mean we wish the best for this country because this is our country now, and this is our children’s country and our grandchildren’s country.” Kheria no longer thought of the U.S. as a country she was visiting, a country she was foreign to; Kheria now calls the U.S. her country and her home. When asked about whether community and friends have made things easier for her in this country, Kheria says, “of course, it allows you to actually have a life!…Like you have a life and you are not alone…you have company, I mean and it begins to feel like-,” “Home?” I ask her. She says, “yes” like home.

As a token of advice for any incoming immigrants who want to make their arrival to this country easier and eventually make it their home, Kheria says, “the thing you need to enter this country with is the idea that you should definitely mingle with people, and do not stay alone and go and learn English from the beginning. Because the mistake I made is that I stayed with a group of other Libyan women who were just sitting and that’s it, you know…Because all of us were alone, so we were scaring each other, you know…So this is really important.”

Kheria’s immigrant journey was a bumpy ride, from feeling foreign, strange and alone on this land, to missing her home country of Libya, to now calling the U.S. her home and her country. Although it took time, Kheria ended up creating her community and home away from what was once her only home, Libya. Kheria is one of many who took on this exciting and difficult journey of being an immigrant. Although Kheria finally found “home,” many others are still finding theirs today. Community and family play a powerful role in creating a sense of “home” for many immigrants. As Kheria’s journey tells us, “home” is not something given to you, it is something you gradually make. Kheria, once all alone, has finally found her “home” in the United States.