Yours, Noor: Neglect, Abuse and Evangelicals

A partial reflection on my distress growing up in a cult and parental neglect.

Journal Entry, Oct 21st 2024

The last memory of my mother genuinely loving me was when I said that Jesus was like a cookie cutter.

It was Christmas and we were making holiday cookies. I had a large cookie mold of a bear with the words “Jesus loves you” on its stomach. I was hitting its stomach with a butter knife to dislodge the dough from the mold. As I swung away I put together a story before turning to my mother.

“This is like Jesus, he protects us against attacks from the devil and temptation.”

She beams at me. It’s rare that she shows such genuine emotion. Not so rare that her smile doesn’t exist in my memory, but the vibrancy of her love for me in that moment was a high I chased every day as a child.

“Yes! That’s a great story, you should share it at church next time.”

Even at age 9 or 10, I had the feeling of being an imposter shimmy over my skin like a slick of oil. I didn’t mean those words, I just said them for the reaction, and she loved it.

Since October 7th of 2023, the start of this escalated genocide in Palestine, I have been in discussion with my mother about Palestine.

She’s a 58 year old white evangelical woman. My mother has experienced trauma although she’s never really shared much of it with me. In fact she rarely shared much of anything about herself with me. But I know she grew up middle class. She went to college. My grandparents are just as steeped in their faith as my mother is now, though I don’t think this was always the case for her. Exploring the abuse I’ve lived through with her meant years dedicated to reading in between the lines to figure out who my mother is, and it turns out I’ve been far too generous with my assumptions through out.

For a long time I saw my mother as a cold but dedicated woman. While I always “disagreed” with her beliefs I was always impressed by her thorough commitment to her values. I approached the conversation with the idea that, while we aren’t on the best or closest of terms, I’m still her child. We have had lots of conversations about transness and queerness, and though it feels like pulling teeth sometimes, she did seem to be making changes. I took that as a sign that maybe she could hear my perspective and we could move the needle on her Zionist perspectives.

I also felt like it was my duty to persuade her. After all, she was more or less the representation of Zionist America. If I could just change her mind.

Luca is my life partner, and also Jewish. Receiving this message got my heart beating so fast and made me feel so conflicted. This is one of the rare time she acknowledged I was Arab, but the question was insulting. Yet still, I thought the curiosity was a good sign so replied.

To the point, answered her questioned, allowed myself to be emotional but not too reactive. Eventually I sent her a short video of an orthodox Rabbi explaining why he’s anti-Zionist, and the next text message would be the one to start to unravel the subtle gaslighting and untrue beliefs I still had around my mother and what my childhood was.

This brought my rage to a boil, I responded how racist that statement was. The conversation continued to escalate until I ended the discussion by saying I am not interested in talking for a while. This was not received well, but I muted her and tried to reclaim some peace.

Journal Entry, October ?? 2024

I went looking for other parents and found dysfunctional families to become an invisible new child. It ended with most parents resenting me.

My mom only knew control so once she lost that, she just let me go. Independent unless a bigger rule had been crossed or the status quo disrupted.

Mom had experienced trauma and her number one goal, it seemed to me, was for me to never experience sexual trauma. Her way of doing that was by demonizing sex completely, making it a godly duty. Not only that but an obsessive control with how I formed relationships with boys as a child. Always having to be monitored, no closed doors, can’t stay for longer than 2 hours or I’ll become too attached. The irony is that many of my sexual abusers growing up would be girls.

Further more, anything perceived as overly emotional was ended. My phantom of the opera CD taken away because it made me cry. I can’t think of many other examples, but the only objects and media I was allowed was scrutinized so deeply nothing felt like mine. At a certain point I started hiding away things that weren’t allowed like books (HP) or music (Panic! at the disco) but when they were found there’d be anger, tears and eventually burning or destroying the object.

And then there was my dad. He’d send me items from Kuwait; things with the evil eye or prayer beads. I never had much of a connection because he wasn’t around, and probably for the best that he wasn’t, but it left me with a deep hole in my heritage I was eager to fill with whatever scraps of the Middle East I could find.

But because they were Islamic in nature or even “witchcraft” they were taken away from me. Dad would invite me to visit in Kuwait and I would beg my mother, “Please can I go?”

Her answer was to have me watch Not Without My Daughter. The synopsis reads, “An American woman trapped in Islamic Iran by her brutal husband must find a way for her and her daughter to escape.”

I don’t remember the movie but I remember crying. And then my mom’s face, close - too close. she was trying to be comforting maybe but to me I felt like a dying animal eyed by a vulture - asking, “Why are you crying? Can you tell me?”

“I don’t know.”

I don’t think we finished the movie. I vaguely remember crying in the dark in my bedroom.

I rebelled in small ways, and then big. It became apparent that my mother ultimately couldn’t control my behavior and actions, and she let go. It happened in small and big ways, just like my rebellion, that eventually resulted in a fragile symbiosis. In all honesty, she felt kind of like a camp counselor looking back.

My mother’s only goal was to teach me religion.

I actually rewatched Not Without My Daughter just a few days ago. I wanted to see just how bad it was, and honestly because my memory is so fragmented, I was hoping it’d bring back memories.

While it didn’t help me remember more about my childhood it really solidified a lot for me in regards to my mother’s beliefs.

1.) The mother in the movie frequently argues with the father, “Mahtob is American, not Iranian! She can’t live here.”

This has frequently been an item of contention between us. My mom never has been able to really accept that I’m Arab much less brown. I remember the day of my wedding explaining to her that growing up brown was the reason school was so difficult. The bullying when we first moved back to the United States was very intense for me. Her response?

“I always thought it was because I was divorced.”

2.) All Arab men are abusers, and the only ones willing to help the mother and daughter in the film are Americanized.

In my mother’s mind Arabs are dangerous, not just because of propaganda but because she’s experienced the cruelty of abuse via my Kuwaiti father. There is no nuance.

3.) In the movie the mother and daughter are abused and subjected to violence under the Islamic Regime. It’s made clear that it’s an Iranian flaw, that they desperately need to be more western aka find the true god.

For a long time I made my mother excuses for her isolation of me from SWANA culture. She’s Christian so she’ll naturally stray away from anything related to Islam, but she made grape leaves using our own homegrown grapes. She would find the Arabic music station in Dearborn using a boombox and antenna and play it for me.

But unfortunately it’s just not enough to make up for the damage done. My mother spent years ignoring the fact I was Arab, and then years not only keeping me from my own heritage but actively teaching me that being SWANA was inherently bad and evil - effectively telling me I was bad and evil.

Combine that with evangelical judgement? I was doomed. I was going to hell. As a young child I was obsessive about praying, scared that the end of times would begin and I would be left behind. And why should I have believed otherwise?

I was being raised in a cult. I don’t say that lightly. People will push back against the idea of evangelicals being a cult - fine. But my mother was the cult leader in our home then. There was no pastor at home telling her what rules there were and weren’t. He didn’t come up with every ridiculous controlling measure that took away my agency as a child and teenager. He didn’t make me fast to show dedication to God so “we” can live a better life. And he wasn’t the one who was supposed to love me. My mother was.

October 2021, My Wedding

The day had been a shitshow to be completely honest; both of our mothers did an amazing job of making the day about them and ruining the vibe of the dinner party. But they had finally left, and I sat with Luca and some friends in the master bedroom and opened up my mother’s wedding gift card.

It was generic, about as generic as my mother’s wedding speech where she decided to use my legal name before finally using my chosen name. I had been pleased she had called me Noor at all.

A folded letter fell out of the card, and I opened it. My stomach dropped through the floor. I had always had a vague memory of my mother suggesting I was destined to be a prophet; but reason came in and I assured myself, surely she wasn’t that.. well, I don’t know, like that.

Scrawled across the back of the printed letter was my mother’s handwriting, “For whenever you return to God’s path”. The printed letter was in fact an email from the early 2000s she had likely saved in multiple places since to keep it safe. It was a letter written from another church member stating that I was destined to be a prophet. Thousands would visit me - and honestly it made me sound like a psychic.

I’m not crazy after all; that did happen.

October 1st, 2024 I finally broke the silence between my mother and I by sending a lengthy letter via text, begging her to care about the fact that I am SWANA and that her racist beliefs hurt me. Asking her to learn more about Arab culture so she can learn more about me AND Palestine. I acknowledged that for her this is the fruition of God’s plans, and for me God is protecting Palestine despite it all. I asked her how we move forward, because I’m just too hurt to see a path. Twelve days later she sends this:

This would be the message where so many pieces shifted into place for me. In the memory she’s sharing above, I would’ve been 18. An adult child telling their parent they no longer are part of the faith. Even though it’s still fucked up to 1.) withhold love from your child and 2.) never disclose that information - the realty was I wasn’t an adult when that conversation happened.

I was 13 years old, and we were standing in the breeze way. I wanted to tell her before she got in the house because I didn’t want to be stuck in that energy after the massive fight I knew was about to happen. I told her I didn’t believe in God anymore and she wept. Not just wept, she wailed.

“You’ve experienced the Holy Spirit! You’ve had prophetic dreams, you know God is real! If you say God isn’t real after that you will never go to Heaven!”

And then? Well I guess she “redefined” our relationship. I guess we weren’t as close anymore. At 13 years old. I was a child. I was hurt and lost from years of gaslighting, abuse and other trauma I never shared with her because I knew it would’ve been my fault. I needed her to just love me for me.

So I kept trying. And trying. I started partying. I did drugs. I ended up addicted and meeting up with older men just to get a plug among other things. This all happened before I was 18. I just needed my mother to care about me, just for one fucking minute. It’d be a lie though to say the drugs weren’t also helping me care less about the hurt I had building in my bones.

Instead she just left me to survive alone. And I did. I kicked my addiction alone. I went back to school alone. I moved to Seattle alone. I’m healing my trauma alone. But all this time, until October 12th 2024, I thought we could have a better relationship someday. We could talk more and more and eventually have some kind of relationship that actually mirrors a parent and child. It turns out I was pursuing a solution that never existed. Or rather, hasn’t existed since I was 13.

I was neglected by my mother my whole life and abused because she only lived for her faith and her faith alone. The irony of saying unconditional love while giving it conditions is not lost on me.

The part about this whole saga that is the most heartbreaking isn’t even her cruel words and beliefs, or realizing so many moments of hurt were intentional, it’s that she’s been letting me pretend to have a relationship with her when a deep connection was never on the table. I felt and still feel taken advantage of.

I have done so much emotional labor over these 33 years to try and understand or empathize with my mother when she has not only not done the same for me, but actively is harming me.

After that message I knew I was done. I had no forgiveness for her left, no understanding for why she might act this way or that, and no patience or grace left.

It was clear my only worth to her was as a Christian and potential prophet. Nothing else would do.

She sends another text. She’s reread my letter and saw that I said, “I believe God is protecting Palestine”. The last sentence of the short text reads: Have you been rethinking whether God exists?

In one last desperate attempt to see if she can scrape together any empathy for me, I respond after a week: I would like to know if you have other thoughts before responding.

I won’t bother showing you the screenshot of the letter she sent. Just know she not only doubled down but acknowledged that she has voted for and might vote again for Trump. Another point where I found myself dumbfounded because of the irony of her control over me as a child. So fixated on sexual violence and yet voting for a rapist? Pathetic. Guess it wasn’t really about that then, was it?

She ended it with, can you accept having a relationship with me knowing this?

I haven’t responded yet. I don’t know if want to saying anything besides “No.”