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This is a story based on an amalgamation of real life events. I’m posting installments on DeviantArt as well. The story is here, and runs a few chapters ahead. Comments are super welcome! Huge thanks to @swahilimonkfish for the months-long encouragement to finish and share this with you. On the off-chance you like this story, the thanks should go to him. If not, blame me lol. ——— F*ck America. 1 Fuck Jordan. When I first came to America I was thin. I didn’t feel thin then, but I now realize that I was. I had been a stewardess for Royal Jordanian Airlines—and as you know, they don’t just hire anyone. I swear the amount of silky fabric used to make my red custom-sewn uniform must have been the same amount it takes to sew the Queen’s gloves. It sure fit like it. The place in Jordan I grew up was small—but not far from the capital, Amman. I remember thinking Amman was where all the action was, really. I loved the big city lights, the air of modernity, the fashion, and the exotic foods. Growing up, I felt like downtown Amman was a museum tour of the rest of the world. My cousin Hedda and I would sneak out at dusk, trek up the hill behind my house, and stare off at the glowing lights of Amman. We’d hold each other’s hands and speculate what each of those worldly, sophisticated people in the city were doing. When I went to University in my hometown, I chose to study engineering. Somehow it seemed that engineering would take you places—important places—far beyond middle-class life in small town Jordan. And it did, just not quite like I expected. I graduated with good grades. But it was a women’s college, so nobody seemed to think the grades mattered for much. Everyone knew the best woman engineer would never be hired any faster than the worst male one. Even in the “modern” Kingdom of Jordan. But hey, any Jordanian who lets their daughter study at University must know that going in. My cousin Hedda had just interviewed with Royal Jordanian in Amman and invited me to do the same. I was perfect: I was young, smart, had good English, and in retrospect—I was very very beautiful. I got the job and flew all over the world. Istanbul, Cairo, Dubai, Riyadh, Tehran, Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Ankara—everywhere. I felt so independent, so international, so modern. I was 22 and queen of my own destiny it seemed. I had no idea then what things would try to control me, what things would hold me down. Instead I had this feeling that I could be whomever I wanted, regardless of being a woman, regardless of being young, regardless of being from a small town in a small country. It would be that feeling that I would chase, even if only in my mind, for the rest of my life. I would chase it, though one day it would chase me. The funny thing about being a stewardess is that you work long hours and eat out all the time, yet at 22 years old, it never caught up with me. I had amazing varieties of food from across the Middle East. I never even worked out (Arab women don’t work out), though I’m sure the hustle of my job burned plenty of calories. The most difficult part of being a stewardess to me wasn’t the hours, or the clean up, or the pay that doesn’t go as far as you’d think. The hardest part was the men. Even though I came from an old Arab Christian family, most of the men around me were Muslim. And Muslim men are notorious for how they see women. They see you as property—and specifically sexual property when you’re young. You may not be their property at the moment, but that doesn’t mean you’re not “property”. And a 22 year old unmarried woman apparently is “obviously asking” for their attention simply by wearing a red uniform and working her way down the aisle. I had quite a share of unwarranted advances to say the least. It’s hard to sleep at night when you have ** pilots pounding on your hotel room door threatening you. Two at a time sometimes, demanding entry. What do you do? If you call security, the pilots may later see to it that you get fired. Or worse, security simply may let them in—after all if you are in a conservative country, they are men, and you are only a woman. Your only option is to deadbolt the door, lie as silently as possible, pray, and hope the pilots are so ** they won’t remember in the morning. When my parents pushed me to consider marrying Yousef, I honestly thought it would be useful. Just the ring would be useful; particularly with my job. And, it was. Plus, his family had more money than mine; that could also be useful too. Plus, if I were married, I wouldn’t have to be worried about being an “old maid”—surely the greatest humiliation for a Jordanian woman. Yousef sometimes even travelled to the US for business, and that sounded wonderful. Marrying him could be “useful” for me in so many ways. I was a fool, of course. Not because women are fools, or because love is foolish, but because 23-year-olds are foolish. I didn’t “love” Yousef, and I don’t know if he ever really did love me. But at first at least we tried. About a year later, Yousef had the opportunity to move to the US for his job. If I could have known how things would play out, I’d never have agreed. But I had a wanderlust then, and was excited beyond belief at the time. It meant that I would have to quit my job with the airline, which was a huge disappointment, but does that matter when you could live full time in America? Who knew what lay ahead for me in America. ______ 2 Fuck Yousef. We first settled in Maryland, but it was only a few months before we moved to Orange County. I had never heard of Orange County, but I always loved oranges. Turns out Orange County was simply a place near LA, and the only orange you see is in the sea of beige, and even then only if you squint. In retrospect, we weren’t living an extraordinary lifestyle, but to me we felt like the King and Queen of Jordan. Everything seemed so clean, so wonderful, so easy. I got a driver’s license so that I wouldn’t be staying home all day. I had to drive in California, I convinced Yousef, because everything is so far apart and otherwise things would never get done. In truth, I may have been a housewife for the moment, but I was still fiercely independent and full of wanderlust to explore. At first, I think I started to eat simply because I wanted to “consume.” I was in a brand new world, and wanted to personally “consume” everything this place had to offer, I wanted to know it all. Over, and over, and over again. Also, eating was a way I could discreetly own my own space; while Yousef was out of sight I could have my own little adventures. I figured we might only be in the US a short time, and this was my chance to take it all in. Of course, at 25 years old, I started to feel the impact of what I was doing. It started with my stomach—a thickening of what used to be this taught middle. But my Arab hips and rear soon followed. I could feel them spreading. I could feel how they moved differently. I knew it was happening; I knew I was getting a little bit fat. But it wasn’t really that bad at first. The weight was a new look for me, but not a bad one. I looked “full” and “womanly”. My thighs had proper angles, my rear was noticeable, and my breasts drew attention for the first time. I was soft, but sort of ‘wifely.’ I look back now and think I really did look like the plus-size models in US magazines. And Yousef didn’t seem to mind at all. Yet. I ate a lot, but I always had a big appetite. Maybe it was age, but at the time I blamed American food for doing me in. It was easy and cheap. Almost like breathing. Drive thrus. Frozen foods. Delivery. It tasted like freedom, and it tasted like the high life. It was addicting, to be honest. Yousef was not a catch. I had felt like I had used him, but I quickly found out that he was using me. I knew he was stepping out. Sometimes with his friends. Sometimes with more than friends. So I needed mine. I wasn’t going to cheat on him with someone. I’m not that kind. But I needed out. So I got a job driving Uber just to get out. I hated every minute at home with Yousef at that point. It was clear we both found it agonizing. Somewhere in the dead space Yousef started to bitch to me about my weight. I’d order dinner and he would refuse to join, saying things in Arabic like “no, its okay, I care about myself so I’d like to have something healthy.” Fuck. You. “This is a great relationship, a successful Arab guy and a fat Arab wife who loves food more than her husband.” You know what? He was fucking right. Food never fucked me over. But Yousef did. One day he came home to the house **. It didn’t happen often, but it was never good when it did. He started going on about how he wasn’t a ‘real man’ because he had a fat wife. So somehow if your wife gets fat, your penis gets smaller? I slapped him. I slapped him so fucking hard. A full 185lbs of slap, landing perfectly on his smug face. He may have been ** but he smacked me back so hard against the kitchen counter. My body flew back against the granite and I could feel the cold stone bruise me as it hit my lower back. That fucker, to this day it doesn’t feel the same. I came back at him and smacked him with the full force only a fat girl can manage, even better than the first time. Left to right, like a boxer landing a hook. Yousef, **, went flying on the floor. The bastard was out cold. He woke up the next morning in a grog. In the most American sense of self I had to date, I was not going to let the man who punched me and smashed me into the countertop rule my life anymore. He meandered into the kitchen. “It’s over,” I told him in Arabic. And in Arabic it has even more bite than in English. “This chance you had with me, it’s over.” Maybe he also had been Americanized, but he just nodded. Normally, in Jordan, a man doesn’t cower to his wife like that. But here we were in California. In America. You don’t punch your wife in America. Within the month, he was gone. I obviously wanted to stay, so he sheepishly figured he should go back to Jordan. He was sort of this broken, emasculated man after that. I would come to find out that he had cheated on me with little strip club women while on business—he betrayed me long before hitting me. He had let me down, and embarrassed himself as well. The only silver lining to this was that we worked out a way that I could keep my visa so I could stay. I wasn’t ready to leave—America was perhaps the only happy thing I had from this whole Yousef experience. I was more than happy to lose 175 pounds of angry sad Jordanian man, and gain a new life in the space he would leave behind. America was to be amazing and terrible to me at the same time. In time, I would learn that America will ruin you.