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Kidnapped
by Daddy: A Muslim Divorce Tragedy November 11th, 2000 was the day
my little boy, Adam, was torn away from my heart.
I found out two days later on November 13th.
It is a day I relive every morning when I wake up and every night
as I try to fall asleep. I sat in complete shock as I read the e-mail his father sent
me announcing the kidnapping. I
don’t know how long I stared at my computer screen that afternoon, but I
still feel the surge of emotion that overtook me.
I was in a state of disbelief and my heart raced as my stomach
began to turn and my entire body began to shake as I sat there.
I didn’t know what to do, so I sat there and stared blankly
reading those chilling words over and over again.
I asked Allah to please help me, and then I called my lawyer.
I told his secretary it was an emergency and she told me he’d
call me right back. Momentarily,
I felt some relief thinking he could help me in some way, so I waited for
my call as I continued staring at that e-mail on the screen in front of
me. All he said was: >>Alsalaamu
Alaikum: As I sat
awaiting the call from my attorney, a Muslim friend I often chatted over
the Internet with sent me an instant message.
That was the first person I told.
My friend stayed online with me trying to calm me down over
cyberspace as I tried to get myself together.
It helped to have someone there to hold my hand those first moments
as the first stage of the reality began to set in.
It was still surreal to me at that point. But telling someone made me realize it was actually
happening. That friend became
sort of a human “guardian angel” to me.
He was a Muslim brother with whom I had often debated and discussed
politics and other issues from the Islamic cyber-community on my Internet
service. My lawyer
called and my friend stayed online waiting to help me in any way he could.
My attorney did not provide the relief I was desperately hoping
for; instead he informed me that I was in big trouble!
He told me that my son was in Egypt, a country that is not a
signatory to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International
Child Abduction, which is used in these cases, but I have now found is not
very successful anyway. Most
children do not come home! I
was frightened beyond belief! I
thought I would fall off my chair and die! The nightmare was sinking in, but I was not waking up; I was
already awake and it was too real for me.
As my
“guardian angel” sent me messages via our computers and the tears
began to stream down my cheeks, I realized that I had to tell my parents.
They loved Adam dearly and I knew that their hearts were about to
be broken, in addition to my own, which I could already feel crumbling
inside. This was not
something I could hide, so I dialed their phone number and asked Allah to
please, not let them have a heart attack upon hearing the news.
I couldn’t loose them too, yet, I pleaded with Him!
I asked Allah to give me the words.
I distinctly remember my mother answering the phone and me telling
her to get my father on the other phone because I needed to talk to them
about something. My hand trembled as I held the phone to my ear.
When they were both on the phone I told them to sit down and to
stay calm because I was upset about something. How do you tell a
grandparent that their grandchild is kidnapped calmly? I explained to them
that I had stopped home at my apartment before I went to Adam’s after
school baby-sitter to pick him up and that I had received an e-mail from
his father. Then I blurted it
out. Adam was in Egypt with
his father. He took him. I honestly can’t clearly remember the rest of the
conversation, but I recall the tears and my mother being very upset.
That was the most difficult thing I ever had to say to my parents,
to tell them that their beloved grandson was gone.
It hurt my heart, but I had to let them know.
Grandparents shouldn’t have to endure such things at their age;
that’s not the way it’s supposed to be! I don’t
remember everything I did that first night, except that I spent a lot of
time with my friend online and that I called my closest Muslim friend here
in my neighborhood. She was
in shock. The rest is a blur. I
know that I did not sleep and I remember walking in and out of Adam’s
empty bedroom on and off throughout the night.
I was supposed to take him out to dinner at one of his favorite
restaurants for ‘all you can eat shrimp’ that night because he was
being so well behaved lately and I wanted to treat him to something
special. “We never got to
go out to dinner,” I kept thinking…”and I never got to say
goodbye.” I was torn up and
didn’t know what to do. The
emptiness haunted me. I
looked at his toys all over the floor.
I remembered scolding him about that toy mess on the day I dropped
him off to his father’s new “wife”.
I played it back over and over again in my memory how I had kissed
him on the top of his head as he ran off into their apartment.
I realized that his stepmother didn’t seem as friendly that day
as she went into the apartment closing the door behind them.
I had said “Asalaam alaikum” to her, but that day she did not
return the greeting. I had
passed it off as her maybe not hearing me.
I never knew that I wouldn’t see him after that.
That fast kiss on the head was my only goodbye, but it was meant
only for two nights, not forever. I
was going to see him again on Monday afternoon, but I still have not seen
him. From then on I began counting the days he was gone, then the
weeks, and now the months. I
beg Allah that it will not turn into years! My story
started in 1990 when I met his father.
I was impressed with him and very interested in the fact that he
was a Muslim man. For several
years before I met him I had an interest in Islam, despite my being raised
a Catholic. I liked Islam and
I guess you could say that I had “Muslim tendencies”.
He was instrumental in helping me truly embrace Islam making it my
way of life. I was glad to be
a Muslim and wanted to marry a Muslim man.
We married in 1991 and eventually we went to Immigration to apply
for a green card. After three
years of marriage our son was born. My
husband was with me in the delivery room and he helped me get through a
very painful and difficult delivery.
Adam weighed close to 11 pounds!
He was a big baby and I loved him with all my heart.
The first night I held him in my hospital bed, as I nursed him, my
eyes filled with tears of joy. I
was so happy and grateful that I finally had a child to love and raise!
I had beautiful dreams for my little boy and for our family. As time
went on our marriage began to have difficulties. I was forced to keep my job teaching elementary school,
against my wishes because my husband said that he could not support us
alone. What could I do? I had to be a good wife and help out. I worked full time and went to college some nights and
Saturdays, to complete my Masters degree in order to maintain my teaching
certification. My husband
tried to start a business, which never worked out.
As the years went on he continued to tell me that once the business
worked I could be a stay at home mother, which was my hope.
I handed over my paychecks to him.
I even let him convince me to give him my inheritance from a
great-aunt. He also used
Adam’s part of that inheritance, but assured me that once the business
was making money he would repay both of us.
What could I do? I
wanted to be a supportive wife, so I shared everything believing that it
was for our family’s future. I
believed that what was mine was his.
By the
summer of 1998, when my son was 4 years old I sensed that something was
deeply wrong in our marriage, but I didn’t know what to do. My husband was in the habit of going out at least five nights
a week, returning late after midnight.
I was feeling very lonely. He
didn’t want to do family things with Adam and I.
I occupied my weekends and nights with Adam and became absorbed in
him. I took Adam all over the
place. We went to
children’s museums, zoos, the aquarium, spent hours at playgrounds after
I came home from work and on weekends.
Adam began to ask me why “Baba” didn’t come with us.
I had no answer for him, so I told him that he was very busy. It was sad because Adam noticed other families with their
daddies together whenever we went places.
I felt a deep ache in my heart and I kept trying to encourage my
husband to join us, but he would become angry.
That summer my husband suggested that I go on a short vacation with
Adam. He told me that he
couldn’t make it because he had “too much” to do.
It hurt me because I knew that his business was at home on the
computer, that he worked whenever he wanted and that he could have joined
us for a few days. But, I was
so lonely and upset, needing to get away from the city, and I wanted to
provide Adam with a nice time. I took him to a beach area on Long Island
where there was a nice little hotel with a pool and a secluded beach, just
Adam and I. I tried to make
it fun for him, but it was the loneliest vacation I ever took.
When I came home I found out that my husband had gone to a
friend’s home only about 20 miles from where we were that weekend.
I was hurt, but I kept it to myself.
I realized that he didn’t want to be with me.
A few
months passed and one night, during Ramadan of 1998, I told my husband
that we needed to talk about our relationship and that I was feeling lost
and lonely. I wanted to work
on things and figure out how to make our marriage happier.
He stared me right in the face and told me that he decided that he
didn’t want to be married. A
day later he left and moved into another apartment with.
It was unexpected and a deep emotional shock to me.
It took me several months to begin accepting the finality of my
marriage breakup, but I somehow managed to slowly rebuild a life for Adam
and I. I had a meeting with
my husband on my birthday that May. I
thought that maybe, since it was my birthday, he was ready to discuss
reconciling; instead he told me that he decided to divorce me.
He never pronounced the divorce in front of me, but eventually
after a year he sent me a flimsy Xeroxed paper with two witnesses’
signatures written in Arabic. Even
before receiving that paper he told me that he had Islamically divorced
me, so I figured that I was divorced in the eyes of Allah, but I needed to
get a legal divorce. I went
to a lawyer and we started the painful process. My husband resisted cooperating because he was angry that I
was asking for $200.00 a month in child support.
We went back and forth between lawyers, but he still would not sign
an agreement. He told me that
I was trying to take money from his future family!
I told him that I didn’t want money and that I could support Adam
with my teaching salary, but that the judge would never grant us a divorce
without a child support settlement. I
told my lawyer to ask for the minimum allowed because I didn’t want the
money. This whole process
lasted about a year and a half and to this day we still are not legally
divorced, but my husband married a woman from Egypt anyway.
Before
Adam was abducted, we had all worked as best we could to provide as normal
a life as possible for a child of divorce.
Adam stayed with me on weekdays so that I could help him with his
schoolwork. He went to his
father’s on weekends. His
stepmother became the caretaker at that home.
Once I came to know her I actually liked her and we became somewhat
friendly. We were two Muslim
sisters, I had thought, and divorce happens, but I had to deal with her
peacefully for the well-being of my child.
I decided that I would forge a working relationship with her.
I came to trust her and whenever I dropped Adam at their apartment
she and I would chat pleasantly for several minutes in the lobby of the
building. I felt good knowing
that he was in the hands of a loving stepmother.
Things were looking up. I
trusted her and she reassured me that she loved Adam and looked at me as
her sister. I could buy that;
it made sense! It seemed like
the “Muslim” thing to do. I
was feeling much better about the way things were turning out and most of
all Adam, who had been having emotional and behavioral problems due to the
breakup, was improving. He
was not having any problems in first grade.
The first year of the divorce situation he had become a major
behavior problem in kindergarten, even kicking his teacher once.
But now he was doing very well!
I thanked Allah, and believed that my little boy was healing and
felt more secure now. The night
of November 11th my little Adam was lured onto a plane bound
for Egypt by his father and his stepmother.
I had warned him as a precaution not to ever get on a plane with
his daddy unless I was at the airport, waving goodbye to him.
My lawyer had warned me about this, but I refused to ask for
supervised visitation because I thought that it would destroy any chances
of a normal relationship between Adam and his father.
I wanted my son’s father in his life.
I wanted to be a good mother.
I did not want to divorce Adam from his father, so I had worked on
a very liberal visitation and joint custody.
One day his stepmother told me that Adam told her that I warned him
not to get on a plane unless I was waving goodbye to him.
She was upset that I had told him that, but she reassured me, even
swearing in Allah’s name that she could never do that and neither could
his father because they were Muslim.
I believed her promise in good faith with all my heart!
But, they took him anyway less than a year later. As I
write this article it has been over six months since my son was parentally
abducted to Egypt. I have not
laid eyes on him, nor been sent a picture to see how he now looks.
I have no address where I can send my child cards, or gifts or
clothing. After a few weeks his father e-mailed me a cell phone number.
I am allowed to call him once a week, but if I say anything that
can be construed as negative by his father, who monitors each call, I can
be cut off at any time. Each
call hurts my heart because I hear things that are painful to listen to,
but I keep calling so that I can let my son hear my voice hoping that as
he lays in bed that night, a small seed of love might nurture him as he
falls asleep. It is the only link I have to my child.
I have no idea what he is really feeling in his heart. His father lied to him saying that he was going to visit his grandma for a few weeks, but after awhile he won his little heart over by enticing him with a large family of cousins. He enrolled him in a private school with horses to ride. What six-year-old, who is an only child, could not resist these things? He is learning a bigoted and perverse brand of distorted Islam. My child has been brainwashed to hate Americans, equating us with Israelis, whom we all know are despised in the Middle East. During one call, after only the first few months, he said, “Do you know that the Americans and the Israelis will go after you, Mama? They want to kill all the Muslims!” I felt horror as I realized how indoctrinated my innocent little boy had become in such a short length of time, but there was nothing I could do. If I challenge or try to explain certain things his father could accuse me of saying negative things to my child and may not allow me to call him anymore. Every call is like walking on eggs; I am afraid that I may say the wrong thing. The day I call him I have to emotionally prepare myself because I know what’s coming...another round of upsetting conversation. I have to take a tranquilizer before the call to control the anxiety. I am upset for a day or two following each call. I never get used to this. It is torture and it is humiliating, but it is the only thread I have to hold onto. He tells me that his Christian grandparents are bad, one day even saying, “Did you know that Muslims are not allowed to sleep at a Christian’s house? I can’t sleep at Nana’s and Grandpa’s house, it’s wrong.” He forgets that his grandparents supported our practice of Islam and even sent him Eid gifts and cards, and that when his grandfather spoke of God he made it a point to use the name of Allah. He does not remember that his grandmother went out of her way to make him laugh and constantly brought him new clothing and toys and that he loved talking with both of them on the phone and looked forward to his happy stays at their home. He attacks me too telling me that I was a “bad mother.” He challenges me and once told me, “ ‘Baba’ says that the woman should do all the work at home and you were bad because you had a job!” He fails to realize that I was the main breadwinner, not out of choice, but due to his father’s refusal to get a real job. Recently, when I was crying he told me, “Stop crying or ‘Baba’ will hear you and laugh at you!” He tells me, “I don’t like you! I hate you! You are not my mama! I have a mama here!” Sometimes he tells me that he has two mothers, which I can understand. I can sense the confusion in him. The memories of his past are gradually being replaced by new reconstructed memories fed to him by his abductors as time passes. He is so confused and I wonder if one day he will emotionally break down? He is forced to believe these things about the mother he loved and lived with happily for all of his short life. How much longer will it be before he forgets everything? My
only son tells me that he remembers nothing good about me, despite the
fact that I was the parent, from birth, who provided him with all the
love, nurturing, and educational experiences while his father refused to
be involved with him and was running around late at night with friends
ignoring his family. My child tells me that
he remembers nothing good about me, despite the fact that I was the parent
from birth who provided him with all the love, nurturing, and educational
experiences while his father was running around late at night ignoring us.
He does not remember that only weeks before he was torn away, he
told me that he didn’t want to grow up and get married because he wanted
to live with me forever! He’s
just a little boy. He forgets
that we went fishing, flew kites in the park across the street, did
homework together and snuggled every night before he went to bed.
He now tells me that when he grows up he will go to a judge and
tell him that he doesn’t want to be an American anymore.
My six-year-old boy tells me that the best Muslims are in Egypt and
that I’m not a good enough Muslim because I am American.
He even laughed at me last week when I cried on the phone telling
him how much I miss him. In the background of every phone call I hear his
father’s and stepmother’s voices and their laughter as my son insults
me and tells me that he does not want to come back to the home he knew
until he was kidnapped. Now,
he identifies with his abductor and has taken on the abductor and his sick
interpretation of the world as his own.
Children
identify with the adult on whom they depend for survival.
He is a victim of what is now known as Parental Alienation Syndrome
(PAS), which is unique to children of divorce and custody battles.
It has been compared to the Stockholm Syndrome, which is
characteristic of the behavior of hostages who come to identify with their
abductors. PAS is classified
as an extreme form of child abuse as is parental abduction.
I am now
among the thousands of parents in America and around the world known as
‘left-behind parents’. We
are parents who love our children dearly, but who can’t see or touch
them. We are victims of
adults who decided to give themselves instant child custody and get rid of
the other parent with no courts involved.
We are the broken hearted people who can’t pass a playground
without feeling a piercing pain in our hearts.
Sometimes it gets so bad, that we lock ourselves up in our homes so
that we don’t run into other children.
Our life is now defined in terms of “before the abduction” and
“after the abduction”. We
are not understood, because no one but a parent who has lost a child in
this way can understand. It
is different from losing a child through death because the pain never ends
or begins to fade. We are the
parents who can’t give up hope because we know that somewhere out there,
in a bed across a border far away is our beloved child without us.
We can’t grieve the loss, because our child has not died. We don’t fit in anywhere else.
And we have to hold on to our faith in order to make it through
another day! Our government,
our law enforcement agencies and judicial bodies, mosques and churches,
and our lawyers do not help us! We
are told that there is really nothing that can be done and that it is a
“family matter”. Our
children are held hostage in foreign countries, but our children are
abandoned and alone at the hands of an adult that did the unthinkable to
them. They are not allowed to
know their parent. Half of
their identity is stripped from them, but no one hears their cry except
the left-behind parent. This
article is intended for the Muslim community because we have a high and
growing incidence of international marriages.
We also have an alarming divorce rate.
Any of us are at risk if we have the misfortune of facing a divorce
combined with having children. This
is not a Muslim problem, but a worldwide problem.
Its impact on the Muslim community will become more evident though
due to our tendency to marry partners with ties to another country.
I am not condemning this sort of marriage for we are all Muslims
and in Islam there is no ethnic or national distinction, yet when Muslims
find themselves in a situation of divorce with children involved, things
can become very nasty and get out of hand.
Child abduction in no way can be rightly justified according to
Islam, yet there are hundreds of parents; in the case of Muslims, mainly
fathers who decide to take matters into their own hands and remove their
children from the United States to their home country.
Once our children are there we are at the mercy of the foreign
court, and basically, we can kiss our children goodbye because these
courts normally will not cooperate with a foreign parent, especially a
mother. I am not offering a
solution, but I am presenting the problem as clearly as I can.
Allah is the Merciful and Compassionate. There is no way I can ever
accept that He would condone the cruelty inflicted upon a parent or child
as is inflicted when a parent abducts.
Even if the kidnapper tries to justify it “in the name of
Islam” by removing that child from his other parent to a Muslim country.
This is not for the good of the child; it is for the self-centered
benefit of the abducting parent. We
need to start a dialogue and to educate each other in the Muslim
community. The Muslim
community is a reflection of larger society.
If we say we are different, who are we fooling, but ourselves?
This is a wakeup call. I pray
that no other parent has to endure what I have, but as I write this
article I am quite sure that a few hundred American children, many of them
Muslim, have been internationally parentally abducted today! Tonight another and another parent begins the nightmare as
they try to sleep as I did on that first night I knew my son was gone!
It is a tragic fact. The
statistics are there for all to see.
We need to be aware of the possibility that it could happen to
anyone going through a divorce with children.
With the rising rate of divorce and the high percentage of
international marriages in the Muslim community the issue of international
parental abduction must be taken seriously.
We must find ways to prevent these tragedies from occurring in the
first place. Most people who
have fallen victim to this did not think of their future divorce on their
wedding day as they signed their marriage contract at the local masjid,
but many are now facing the loss of a child abducted by an ex spouse.
The worst victims are the children, who, if not reunited with a
loving parent will be haunted and damaged psychologically and emotionally
forever. Contact Info:
For more information on Parental Abduction: American Parental Abductions Resource & supporT Organization - Laws |