For a bit of context, I am a 22 year old American native. My father is Palestinian and my mother is from NewYork, my mom and dad share a ten year age gap and are from wildly different cultures. I have two younger sisters, age 16 and 19, and two older brothers in their late 20s and early 30s.
my dad has always been controlling. My brothers were allowed summer jobs during high school, I wasn’t. My brothers were allowed to travel alone long distances, I wasn’t. My brothers got their drivers license, they pushed off me getting a license until I gave up, claiming they had no money (but somehow had money for my two older brothers.) the list goes on, but you get the idea. Fine, whatever, totally fair to put it in the concerned overprotective father territory. But that’s not the case.
Starting at around the age of 10 or earlier, I remember my father being paranoid about a coming political war. He warned me several times every year tanks were going to come down our streets, soldiers were going to force us to stay in our home, we’d get shot if we go outside, there’d be no food or water… basically, it was going to be doomsday. He’d famously say “it’s going to happen in a month, two months max. Just watch.” Of course, it never happened. My father is also extremely religious in the Islamic faith, somehow always tying what was happening in his life or the media to religion.
Fast forward many years, I’m about 12-16. The family dynamic is toxic beyond belief. Every morning its fighting, every night its fighting, and shattered dishes, broken objects, physical fighting, and thrown plates of food became common occurrences. The only reason why nobody ever called the police on us was likely due to the fact our house was bought during that lucky time where boomers could buy a pretty house in a suburb for two pennies and a can of sprite, so nobody could hear us. I wasn’t allowed to have friends irl or online, nor talk about what happened within the home. I wasn’t allowed a phone until I was 17, had monitored internet access, and was homeschooled by my mom so I couldn’t interact with those outside my home, as my dad called them “bad influences“ And “bullies”. If I ever did rarely make a friend, my dad always found a reason why I had to drop them, I was alone with no friends other than my sisters my entire childhood. In fact, I barely remember my childhood outside of photographs and stories my mom reminds me of.
Around the age of 20 after being fed up with the abuse (I didn’t share all of the abuse, but just know my dad had ultimately betrayed my trust by allowing my abuser to come live with us for a short while before kicking him out because he didnt want to stop taking his own kid to church), I had tried moving out for a short while, but I was foolish and gave into my father’s tears begging me to come home. He told me seeing my empty room broke him, and through pity, I returned. He apologized to me for the first time in his life, as he never apologizes for anything, which was quite a memorable moment. But, it didn’t last long.
He was moving my family around from Airbnb to Airbnb, putting my childhood home up for sale. While I was away, I discovered he had thrown out all my belongings, including irreplaceable gifts from my passed grandmother I’ve had since I was maybe around 6. My clothes, jewelry, dozens of old childhood art books, penpal postcards from around the world, he erased the hard drive to the pc I bought with my own money, the same one he refused to return to me while I was moved out so he could sell it, full of digital artwork, 3D models, homework, thesis papers, and much more. Everything was gone. He had even sold my bed, all of this happened while he was begging me to return.
He had sold one of the two cars he had to pay for the Airbnbs. That money was gone in just a few short months. We eventually had to move back into the now empty house and sleep on the floors with mattresses he found someone giving away on the side of the road. After the house finally sold after almost two years of trying, he received a grand total of about 90k or so.
But why was he doing all this? To move to Morocco, a country he’s never been to, has no family in, knows nothing about, and only knows his information from ChatGPT and YouTube. He said we’d be rich in Morocco, that the dollar would stretch so far we’d never worry again and we’d live in a private villa with a pool and a garage with mountains of food, a maid, and live like kings. He said he’d make an income by filming YouTube vlogs in Morocco and writing a book. The book, of course, written by ChatGPT. ChatGPT is his closest friend, telling him his YouTube videos will be making 3 million views and his book hundreds of thousands of sales, and that he’s always right and his family is always out to get him.
With that money he paid my second oldest brother about 20k to make up for all the money he took from him while he wasn’t working to pay for the mortgage. Another huge sum went to pay off his second car, which he ended up having to sell anyway.
He rushed buying tickets to Morocco, and we were off no time later. I don’t speak Arabic or French, none of my family does other than my dad who only speaks traditional Arabic and English, but my mom was already checked out mentally and she didn’t care at this point. She used to try and insist she loved her house and didn’t want to leave America, but he yelled at her and abused her so much she for some reason now agreed to go, and is just mentally gone. I think her extremely powerful anti depressants make her mushy and not really there. They had to take my youngest sister out of high school to do this, enrolling her in some international online school with no teachers and is barely accredited.
We made it to Morocco. The second we land, I have the worst Crohn’s flare up I’ve ever had in my life. I’m not medicated, and all I could do was scrunch up in a little ball and pray I get to live. Of course, we just landed in Morocco. The apartment my dad wanted to live in didn’t exist, who would’ve thought ChatGPT was wrong, and we had a local lead us to their friends apartment, who let us stay because I was dying. My dad doesn’t know anything about Morocco, let alone the hospitals. So what does he do? He buys plane tickets for the next morning to fly back to the United States. Yep. 8+ hours traveling forward, sleep for maybe a few hours max, then another 8+ hours back. We spend the next year or so in America living in a small but decent apartment where I can get proper medical care because we understand the system. we probably spent close to 10k alone on just plane tickets to end up right where we started.
My dad at this point is becoming more and more restless. Whenever he gets mad and starts screaming at everyone, he says weird things like how he knows the rest of his daughters are just going to abandon him just like his two sons, how nobody loves him because he’s Arab and Muslim, how we hate our culture and who we are and deny being Arab despite never having said that ourselves, how we’re all spoiled Americans and hate him. It goes on and on. It became obvious he was scared staying in America meant he was losing control, since his children have clear rights and can flee the nest any time. He seemed to hate that. We just shrugged off his rants as usual, since that’s what he always does, rants and insults and throwing things violently to try and intimidate us and provoke a reaction and then a few hours later offer us ice cream outside.
He especially hated when I would bring up my education. I was only about a year away from graduating with my bachelors, and my dream was to attend uni again for a masters in clinical psychology or law school. He told me he didn’t give a crap about my education and that nothing, including my dreams, was going to get in the way of moving to Morocco and leaving America. I am just a broke university student with no family outside of these people, there was nothing I could do. My dreams were thrown away just like the wolf plush my grandma had given me, something I still grieve to this day.
My 22 birthday finally comes around. My father and mother both forget. My father’s birthday comes before mine, and for his birthday they did balloons, wrapped gifts, cake, dinner, decorations, music, confetti, the whole bang. For mine, they watched tv like normal. Of course, I got upset, and went to my room. My dad took this as offense, and started screaming at my mom. He then barged into my room, telling me these exact words:
”I never loved you”,
“I wish I never had kids”,
“you’re spoiled, you’re just an American brat who never appreciates anything”,
“you think because you’re in university now you’re above all of us”,
“I’m going to book a ticket to Morocco just for myself and abandon all of you here, and I’m going to adopt new children in Morocco who will actually love and respect me”, he never left by himself that Friday like he said he would.
“everyone hates the gifts you buy them, nobody wants anything from you”, referring to the early birthday present I bought my youngest sister months in advance, where she got upset it wasn’t the full size body cream from Lush but was the half size one, so she complained to my parents.
My 22nd birthday ended with my dad and mom leaving the house the entire day without me or my sisters. They went on a date to the library and ate dinner together, bringing back a cheap sheet cake with whipped cream frosting despite telling them several times I heavily dislike that kind and Chinese food, knowing I have told them several times I dislike Chinese food and it upsets my stomach. The only thing that makes my birthday better is my secret fiancée who lives in Chile. She’s an angel, and by far is the biggest reason why I’m still here on this earth. Of course, she’s kept a secret since my dad is extremely homophobic, and the last thing he needs to know is his daughter is a lesbian.
Now comes the time my dad finally wants to try again moving back to Morocco. He keeps us in airbnbs again, working on emptying the apartment, and off we go. We’ve been in Morocco about four months now. He didn’t empty the apartment properly due to not planning shit, rushing buying the tickets, insisting everything had to be sold instead of thrown out, so he left the apartment with things still in it. He ruined all of our visa applications by spoiling the background check by having to fly back to the US to fix the apartment, since he couldn’t sign off the lease until it was empty, so now we’re just residents even longer.
Some time passes. My father had gotten physically violent with me for the first time in my life over the dishes. I had told him if we all cleaned our own dish instead of piling them in the sink and leaving a mountain of dishes for one person, it would be more fair to clean our own messes to help each other. Of course, he’s the one who makes all the mess, so that implies telling him to do his own dishes. But how dare I? According to him, Arab men don’t clean. They get served by the women around them, cooked for, cleaned for, and praised when they do anything. Of course, I will share that mentality when I am dead, and we got into an argument which resulted in me having my face beaten, body bruised from leg to face, and my soul crushed.
I ran to a neighbor who heard my screams, but by the end of it, my mother told the neighbor I hit my dad first, and the neighbor told me I should go apologize. She told me it’s normal to get beat by your father, and I need to be sorry. My father had no bruises, my face stung and my body was slammed across walls, my wrists gripped tight, my body bruised, but I had to apologize. The next night, he had printed out about eight pieces of paper written by ChatGPT about every single “horrible” thing I’ve ever done, how I’ve hurt him, how I’m the reason the family is broken, how I’m the one to blame for things I wasn’t even apart of.
He said he was being merciful by not kicking me out of the house, which by the way, we had to leave the day after to Spain to renew the temporary visa. If he had kicked me out, I would’ve been passed my due visa with nowhere to go, no car, no phone service, no money, in a country HE brought me to. It was 4 hours straight of just crushing my spirit and trying to convince me I’m an irredeemable beast with no heart, which is funny, seeing as how at the end of that day, he saw what he had done to my face, and offered me ice and medicine for it. He told me I’m the first woman he’s ever laid his hands on, and he usually protects women. Over the dishes, I wonder if I should doubt that.
the part that pisses me off the most is how during that four hour long lecture, he had let a woman non related to our family sit at the table. This woman tries to act like my mother, sides with my dad no matter what, and told me to my face I will never get anywhere in life because I “can’t cook”, so a man will never want to marry me or keep me around. My father “jokingly” flirts with this woman constantly, calling her a second wife, inviting her over constantly, buying her flowers and chocolates when she’s sick. I hate her with my entire being, and she comes to our house in full glam and dresses and heels as if to impress somebody… or my dad. My sisters guess it’s because he spends money like crazy and she thinks he’s rich.
My sister now 19 has given up playing the guitar. She isn’t part of any college or school because there are none here that teach in English. My youngest sister barely does her homework, she’s the most illiterate of all my siblings. They both sleep until sometimes 9pm at night, cook, then go back to their rooms. My parents sit at computer desks all day that they built for themselves. My mom spaces out and crochets all day and my dad talks obsessively to ChatGPT while spending money and doing pretty much nothing. The only ”family” time we have is eating dinner occasionally together or being forced to go outside with my dad somewhere. I finish university in December, and my only hope of escaping this house is somehow securing an English teaching job and saving up enough to leave before they can realize I’m gone. I did the math for the remaining time my dad has with the money left, and we’ve only got a year or two before he goes completely broke. He hasn’t made a dollar since we got here, only spending money left and right in the most ridiculous amounts. Our visas are still ruined, and he has to fly back to the United States or have new apostilles shipped, which Is going to take months.
I fear for my family, but I genuinely do not know what to think anymore. Even writing this I realize there’s so much to the story it makes my head dizzy, and I haven’t even said the entire thing. Regardless, I’m saving my pennies to get married to my fiancée and live in Chile, I don’t want my dad’s last and ultimate attempt at keeping us with him forever in his box to work.
thank you for listening, and I’m sorry if it’s long. I have so much on my chest and they denied me therapy back in America. I just want to be a better person and live a more peaceful life.