Jina promised drama.
For days leading up to her court hearing, Jina rehearsed the whole scene—placing the judge there, the man and his wife there, the audience there—to the delight of her inmate friends. She played all the parts and enacted her flawless arguments. We looked forward to her courts dates as much as she did. Although she had about as much success as the rest of us, we appreciated the entertainment.
You see, the rest of us had learned not to expect much from court. A typical court hearing took a matter of minutes and carried on a predictable script:
“What do you want?”
“I want to go out.”
“Come back two weeks.”
We would come back and wait two weeks and repeat it all again. Most of us in that facility were compliant Asian women who could not dream of speaking up.
Besides, we had given up. “Qatar crazy,” we shrugged.
But Jina was different. She was everything I was not: out-going, loud, flamboyant and full of exuberance and—drama. She chaffed against the injustice of her situation and was determined to make something happen, do something, fight, be heard.
Nineteen-year-old Jina had left Kenya for a promised office job in Qatar only to find herself employed instead as babysitter in her employer’s home. She was not allowed to leave the house, her employer kept her passport, and the husband began to drug her and use her at night. Sometimes, he shared drugs—and the babysitter—with his friends. Finally, she knew she had to run away. “If I stay here, I’m going die,” she thought. She escaped, found her way to a police station, and reported the man for drug possession. The police took her to the house, found the evidence—and sent her to prison.
“I want to know why I’m here.” Her arm swept the room as she glared at the invisible judge at the foot of the bunk. “Let me go out and steal something. Then you can put me here. At least it’ll make sense!”
After court, she took the stage for replays. She described each hearing—what she said, what the judge said, the expressions on the faces of her employers—with great flourish and exaggeration and even as we laughed, we secretly wished we had her pluck. It thrilled us when she got a judge to see her, glance for the first time at the file in front of him, and direct a question in her direction. She got him to notice.
After weeks of her stories, I decided to screw up my courage and try it for myself. I resolved to say something at my next hearing. What did I want? I asked myself. I’ll ask for my children out of the orphanage. More than my own freedom, I wanted the safety of my boys.
The opportunity came soon enough. “I want my children back,” I squeaked up at the judge.
He did not even look at me. At my elbow, I heard the even tones of the interpreter, “That is not the concern of the court. Come back two weeks.”
Before my mind even registered his answer, we had been escorted out of the courtroom and I couldn’t shout back, “If not you, then who? Who’s keeping my children?”
Another court hearing, over.
It’s not that I would’ve shouted anyway. I didn’t speak Arabic, no one would’ve listened, that’s the way the system worked — I accepted my invisibility.
But in the end, neither Jina’s drama nor my compliance made any difference. All of us felt helplessly stuck in a cycle that made no sense. After awhile, even Jina stopped rehearsing for court hearings. She got into the van without a word, head down, not bothering to answer the teasing of the guards. It didn’t matter. Why bother trying?
There is such helplessness in knowing that no matter what you say, nothing will make a difference. No one will listen. Come back. Wait. That’s not our concern.
Here and now, is that not the frustration of our black brothers and sisters? With yet more senseless deaths, it seems evident that neither fighting nor silence made any difference. The same nonsense happens over and over. Do we say, “Racism crazy,” and shrug?
What are they supposed to do?
Even though I had given up on the courts, friends and family and supporters did not give up advocating on my behalf. I don’t know all that happened on the outside, the letters and phone calls and petitions, the work of raising awareness, the practical and financial help that it took to get me out. I just knew you were there.
In spite of my helplessness, I never felt abandoned.
And Jina? She, too, gained freedom with the help of my friends.
Some inmates assumed that I counted on the power of my passport. “You are lucky. America embassy strong.”
“No,” I shook my head. “It’s not that. It’s the people. They believe in doing something about injustice.”
Today, I hope I was right.
