A Clean Slate

My name is Noor Shubair. I live with my mom, my big sister, my little brother, and my three younger sisters, here in Fairbanks, Alaska. I am majoring in Social Work.

Backstory

My dad was in the US military, as a supplier, so we travelled often. When my mom was pregnant with my little brother, I was only one, and my big sister was two. At the time, we were staying with my dad’s side of the family, and they mistreated my mom. My dad let them. When they got married, my mom left her family behind, and throughout their marriage, she didn’t see any of them at all. My mom made many sacrifices for him, and those sacrifices ultimately meant nothing. When we moved to Fairbanks, I was five, and my dad retired from the military, so we settled down here. My dad started going to UAF, it was his second time going to college. He completely flunked college the first time around, even though his parents supported him by paying for his tuition and getting him tutors. This time around, he graduated with a Masters in Business. He did not make anything out of his degree. My mom wanted him to get a job, but he thought that if he got a job, he would lose his social security payments. He got these payments once a month from the military because he faked a disability. This meant that we were stuck with him, all day long.

Growing up

My dad focused a lot on our school, to the point where he was obsessive and violent. He never let us visit other people, or go any where without him. The only thing he talked to us about was school. Outside of school or chores, I can not remember a single time where he and I just talked to each other about our day. Even to this day, I don’t know much about him. When he wasn’t studying for his Masters, he was on Facebook for hours. Even when he was in his office, when he was supposed to be studying, he would be facetiming his extended family or he would actually be on Facebook again. He used studying as an excuse to dump childrearing on my mom completely. The only thing in our lives that he bothered to focus on was our schooling. He got angry if we ever got a grade lower than a 90 on any individual assignment. When he got angry, he got incredibly loud and violent. He would have PowerSchool on his phone, an app with everyone’s grades on it, that he checked constantly. If I feel like I might get a less satisfactory grade on an assignment, I would feel a constant dread for days on end, waiting for the grade to get submitted into the grade book, then waiting for him to notice it. I hated weekends, because I had to spend them at home with him, and I hated school because that was where I got the assignments, tests, and grades that he tormented me over. I would not be able to sleep the nights before and after tests because I would stress first about whether or not I studied enough and then afterwards, I would stress about whether or not I did well enough. My only reprieve was summer vacation.

In the first picture, I’m the one with the pink bag. My little brother is next to me and my big sister is the one next to him.

Me and my little brother.

Me, my big sister, my little brother, and my mom. I’m the one in orange.

Me.

One day, my dad was late picking me up from a rifle meet, a day after a test. It had been a math test, and for some reason, I was almost one hundred percent certain that I had failed it. I knew that it would probably get graded any minute now, and that he would probably notice. I remember hoping, intrusively, for a few seconds, that maybe he got into a car accident, and maybe that would be enough to keep him distracted from my grades. It turned out that he was just running late. It also turned out that I got a perfect score on that test. I feel like the constant stress I was under, made me worry about things that shouldn’t have been so worrying. I would spend hours at night trying to make sense of his behaviour, and my own feelings. I would tell myself that he only hurt us because he wanted us to take our schooling and our futures seriously. I don’t like the person I was, when I lived with him, a complete nervous wreck. I would go from telling myself that he loved all of his kids and that I loved him, to praying that he would leave and never come back. I don’t know why he obsessed over our schooling so much. It might have been because of his own failures in school, and he could have been projecting. It doesn’t really matter in the end.

The Twins

My dad signed my mom up for work while she was pregnant with my youngest sisters, the twins. She had to get maternity leave to stay with them after she gave birth, and then she went straight to work. She got a job as a bus driver for the special needed kids. My big sister, me, my little brother, and my younger sister were all raised by my mom. This time, my mom had to go to work and my dad basically raised the twins. This was after he graduated from UAF. He ended up neglecting them. He didn’t talk to them at all or interact with them during crucial moments of their development. He spent most of his time on Facebook. They wouldn’t eat until my big sister and I came home from school and fed them, then we would leave them alone to study. My mom spent time with them when she came home late from work, but we barely saw her or them. Their speech ended up stunted. They were behind in all major developmental steps, like speech, potty training, socialization skills, and mobility.

These are pictures of the twins.

The Separation

My dad got worse the older we got. He was usually violent when we first got home school, while my mom was at work. We started to ask my mom to get a divorce. My mom was scared to because she feared that my dad would take the twins and go to his home country. I did a little research, and realised if I really wanted him to leave us alone, I would need evidence. I never bothered to get evidence before, because he always checked our phones. I got the idea to use Voice Memos on an apple watch to record him, since he never checked those. Later, my sister told me that she was sure she failed a quiz in English because she completely forgot to study for it the day before. In the end, she got a D on that quiz, and it brought her grade from and A+ to an A, which meant that my dad would get a notification. She has never gotten a D before. When I heard my dad’s footsteps going down the stairs, towards our room, I immediately started to record. I knew he only ever came to talk to us about school work, and I knew that he was angry by the way he was moving in a kind of hurried fashion. I got the recording and my dad never even suspected it. Everything came to a head when covid hit almost immediately afterwards. We were all forced to stay home from school. My mom, a school bus driver, also had to stay home. We kept trying to convince her to leave him. Flights into and out of the country closed down. My mom finally asked him for a divorce and full custody. He refused, of course, and then he started being nice to the twins. He would buy them gifts and play games with them, and then he would record their reactions. I think he believed my mom was going to take him to court, and he wanted to try to look favourable. In the end, when he went shopping one day, we took everything we could fit into my mom’s car, then my mom took us all to a shelter.

He called the police and tried to force us to come back home. He failed. Everything we didn’t take to the shelter, he ruined when he flooded the house. Everything he didn’t ruin in the flood, we found getting sold on craigslist.

We filed for a protective order earlier, before we went to the shelter, and it was denied. My mom wasn’t good with English, and she wasn’t good with legal affairs, either. The woman working at the shelter helped her file for protective orders again, and this time we got a court date. In the hearing, the only evidence we had was our own testimonies and the audio I recorded. The judge believed us, and he called the audio harrowing. Not only did we get protective orders, my mom also got full custody of all six of us. The women in the shelter helped my mom with all the legal proceedings, helped her divorce him through court and get criminal charges against him. He ended up getting 5 years of Probation.

Now

I haven’t seen my dad in three years, other than in court hearings. He has been trying to force visitation, and slowly transition into partial custody. Fortunately for us, he has been unsuccessful. He won’t be able to even talk to any of us until his probation is over, much less get custody. Since my big sister is 19, and I’m 18, he’ll never be able to force us to do anything ever again. Because of those women in the shelter, my family can start on a completely new slate. My little brother will turn 18 next year, and the twins have completely forgotten what he looks like. My mom applied the twins to many different programs to help them catch up with the rest of their peers, like tutoring, physical therapy, and sports. My mom used to get asthma attacks that would put her in the hospital, but she hasn’t gotten any at all since we left him. After covid, I graduated high school through home schooling. Going to UAF this year, will make this the first time I’m actually going to school since I left him. I found that I actually kind of like school when my dad isn’t hovering over my shoulder. I feel that feeling of dread only a little bit now, only right before tests and when I get a grade notification. I used to feel it when I just thought about school or if I just saw the school building. I used to lose sleep over it. I get feelings of calm now, I get free time without having to justify it, and I don’t have to live in trepidation anymore. I used to live in fear of him constantly, and now I find that I barely think of him at all.

None of this would have been possible if It weren’t for those women who worked at the shelter. I keep learning new things about him, and what could have been if we didn’t leave, if they hadn’t helped us leave. The person I am now is shaped by what happened, I’m not good at communicating with others, I am still a nervous wreck a lot of the time, and I’m still rebuilding relationships with my siblings. In spite of that, the person I will become is still in my control. I want to be able to communicate with others, to socialise properly, to make meaningful relationships. I want to be someone that is strong and someone that is reliable. I want be the type of person that can help others in the ways that I have been helped. That’s what drew me towards social work.

Pictures: (1) I am with my big sister, I’m wearing the grey shirt. (2) All my siblings, I am the one on the far left in purple. (3) Everyone in my family. I’m the one in grey, in the middle.

(I won’t go into detail about how he hurt us because I’m not sure it’s appropriate in a blog for school.)