Meeting with a transgender woman - the cost of identity

I wrote the two stories about a transgender woman and her struggle with her identity while I was a journalism student at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. I met Frances a few times and everytime I talked with her, it was a fascinating experience. She seemed like a strong person, someone who wasn't intimidated, someone who was not doubting about who she was. But then, something in her eyes gave it away. Yes, she was hurt and she questioned why she was in the middle of the two sexes ...


I meet frances again...and i write a final piece

For 53 years Frances Mary Fischer wore the wrong shoe in her feet. That’s what she refers to as being a man for almost five decades. It was like living in agony.
“When you wear the wrong shoe, you get blisters. It pains. It has been like that for me. Every morning I would look in the mirror and it would make me want to cry. You don’t like the skin you are in, you hate the image that you see,” she said. “Nobody understands.”
For Fischer, a transgender woman, taking a decision to transition was tough. She waited for her two children to grow up. “I waited till my kids were out. Now is the time for me to blossom,” she said. “The pain of remaining in the bud is more than the pain of blossoming. I feel better now. I don’t hate what I see in the mirror.”
For years Fischer had her own wardrobe, hidden away. She would dress as a woman once in a while and go out. But except for those stolen moments, she lived in the disguise of a father, a husband and a man.
But expression came at a cost. Fischer started her official transition from male to female in August, 2001, when she applied for a name change at the Supreme Court for the County of Onondaga, according to the affidavit filed by her in June, 2003. It took her two-and-a-half years to change her name from Frank Mark Fischer to Frances Mary Fischer. When the judge refused, she approached Lambda Legal for help and then sued New York State. She finally won the case but the victory is just a beginning of many battles, legal and otherwise that she has to wage every moment in her life. She lost her job at Alliance Relocation Services in Oct. 2004. She blames it on discrimination against transgender people. She cleaned tables, ate onion soup for days but did not give up. Nor did she ever lose her faith.
“It is good that I have not shot myself in the head. May be this is because of my background as a priest. It is so difficult. It just pushes you to the extreme,” she said when I met her last year. At the time she had no job and no money to pay her rent.
Born into a Catholic family in Iowa Falls in 1952, Fischer was the fourth child of Esther Mae Polles. Polles had seven children. Fischer was right in the middle, the fourth child. And so was his sex. It lied somewhere between the male and the female. “I always had a nurturing instinct. It was like having a maternal instinct,” she said.
Even as a child, then known as Francis Mark Fischer, she loved to play with dolls and once traded her bicycle for a neighbor’s doll. But her family never suspected anything except for perhaps her mother, who she said, pushed her toward priesthood because she thought it was the best way out.
“Maybe my mother knew. Maybe she pushed me toward priesthood because she knew I did not feel like a man,” she said. “My birth was fraught with little miracles. The umbilical chord was around my neck. I could have died. At 3 I had been run over by a car. It literally crushed my mid-section. It made me a eunuch. My mother considered it a sign,” she said.
By 1955 she had been indoctrinated that she was chosen to be a priest. Fischer and her younger brother Jerry both became altar boys when they were young. Their father, a military personnel, imposed religion on the family. All children were to attend services at the church, volunteer for any help that the church needed and religiously pray.
As a young child Francis was deeply attracted to religion. As an altar boy, he loved wearing cassocks. She said it was because it resembled woman’s clothing. “I did not identify with the soldier, the football player and wrestler…not with the man in charge,” she said.
Little Francis did not know what being transgender meant. But he wondered why he did not have a vagina or why he was not like his sisters. “I was desperately seeking why I am not like my sisters. I wanted to play with the girls,” she said. After the accident, young Fischer asked the doctor why he did not have a vagina. “I was questioning my very nature since I first came into my being,” she said.
At home, he was tormented. The siblings used to sing ‘Franky’s going crazy…’. Franky, as they called him, stomped, kicked and cried but they would not stop.
Franky did get crazy after all, as her brother Jerry Fischer called it. She became the woman she had always wanted to be. Years after Fischer’s family came to know about her being transgender, her brother is still struggling with the idea of his big brother becoming a woman. Jerry still falters between ‘he’ and ‘she’, while referring to his brother, who is now a woman. He has to remind himself that the brother who was an altar boy like him and who gave him his first condom is no longer a man. He instantly corrects himself if he calls Frances a he. But he does it again.
“To me it is very strange. I did not see Frank as being transgender,” he said. “He was a brother, a wrestler, the guy who had helmets and grenades…”
When Jerry met Fischer at his father’s funeral last year, he said he did not feel any difference. But the change in the physical appearance was difficult to take in.
“I am trying to figure out what the heck. She is my brother. I just ask why,” he said.
In 1993 Fischer’s mother died. At her funeral, he did not give any indication. But later on everyone started noticing things about Fischer. At family reunions relatives noticed Fischer had painted nails or no hair on her arms. Some even suspected she wore a bra inside her shirt. But no one ever thought Fischer would transition so completely.
Her brother finally realized he had one more sister when Fischer’s ex-wife Diane Fischer sent the newspaper cutting of an article that was published in Syracuse Post-Standard about Fischer’s struggle as a transgender woman.
“He used to have a big Afro in those days. But everyone had. My big question is why,” said Jerry, who lives in Iowa Falls. “Probably he hung around with the wrong crowd. We don’t have anything that flaming here.”
All the rejection and the shock in people’s eyes have only strengthened Fischer’s faith in god. A Born Again Christian, Fischer gave up her brotherhood vows when she thought the Roman Catholic Church was exclusive in its vision.
“I have had a communication early on in life. I was born again early,” she said.
Doubts about the Roman Catholic Church began to disturb Fischer just before she became a priest. She read the scriptures, generic parchments and compared the teachings of the Church and God. At the time she had been following the church’s teachings blindly, she said.
“Christ is the high priest between men and God, not the priests,” she said. “At the point when I realized this I said I can no longer be a Roman Catholic priest because this is not what God said,” she said.
Fischer became disenchanted. With a doctorate in religion, Fischer’s questioning of the Roman Catholic belief also made her write her thesis on fallacies of the Catholic Church. “Here people put a checklist. If I go to the church once a week, I will be a good person,” she said. “The dichotomy was there. A man with man was banned. Deuteronomy 23 of the Bible says a man should not put on what pertains to a woman.”
She went to the archbishop of Dubuque and asked him what to do. “I didn’t know what I wanted,” she said. That’s the time Fischer met Diane. She used to sing in the choir. She proposed and they got married. When their first child David died, both moved to Syracuse to be with Diane’s family. They got divorced in 2001 and now Fischer lives with Franky, a cross-dresser.
The cross hung from a gold chain in her neck. It was difficult to miss. Except for her voice that is still deep and sounds like that of a male’s voice, Fischer looked like a woman. Dressed in a light pink shirt and beige pants she did not attract much attention at the Onondaga Library compared to the time last fall when I met her at the Carousel Center. People stared at her confused by her voice and her persona.
Fischer’s eyes had a dreamy look when she spoke about religion. The voice was distant. But the cross remained intact in her hands. She kept touching it as if in reassurance, while she talked about herself. “I believe I am the product of Satanic influence. God would not want to put somebody in this torment,” she said. “God allowed Satan to mess with me. But that made me strong. I would not have become the person I am. All the evil is in the world. It is allowed by God. My adapting my body from male to female to match my identity is my change. I am evil.”
She attends Believers’ Chapel in Cicero that welcomes members of LGBT community but not without condition. Frank Porter, assistant pastor, said these people are welcome only if they are willing to give up their lifestyle. He did not know Fischer personally but said that Christ did not approve of LGBT lifestyles.
But Fischer is unshaken. Fischer considers herself asexual. Her transition has nothing to do with sex or the desire for it. “It has to do with identification. Christ healed- that’s my nature too. It is an awkward feeling to not fit. Even after 1,000 surgeries, I will still not fit in. God is pro-choice. He wants you to live.”
Her faith is also what strikes her friends. Faye Brooks, Fischer’s friend, met Fischer at the Expressing Our Nature, a support group’s meeting. He has known her for around 3 years. “She is very religious…now more than ever. Her state is more of an amplifier for her,” he said.
He said her faith also makes her trust people easily. “She is very honest. A giving and caring person…almost to the point of putting herself at risk.”
Brooks related how once when Fischer had gone overseas, she had let one of the tenants live in her house. The tenant had been having some problem with finances and nowhere to live. “She stole her things and even damaged the house,” he said.
Friends have kept her company and have provided her with shelter when she needed it. Her boyfriend Franky took over the lease of her apartment at 110 2nd North St. in April because Fischer was not in a position to pay her rent. Also, Franky underwent an operation and had difficulty in climbing the stairs to his third floor apartment. Franky is on permanent disability security and gets around $7,000 a year from the government. The money is not enough for both but they manage. Sometimes they get food from Rescue Mission or Peace Corps, at other times friends bring over food to share.
The one-bedroom apartment had boxes and clothes lying everywhere. The small kitchen table had been pushed against the wall to make space for Franky’s stuff. He recently moved all his things here. Both had been cooking a dinner of split pea soup and patties when I arrived.
Fischer and Franky met last year at EON’s meeting. “We have a strong relationship. Our faith in the lord is a big thing.”
Fischer had been waiting for a bus when Franky first talked to her. “I asked her if she could teach me computers,” he said. It was around August last year that Franky brought her computer over to Fischer’s house and stayed on.
“She did not know if I stayed for the computer or her,” she said. “We just stuck together after we met. It developed over the months.”
Franky underwent surgeries for back and neck and these rendered him helpless. This is when Fischer took over. She nursed him. “After Thanksgiving he literally became a cripple. He had trouble,” she said.
“She has been a tremendous help in getting my body back together. I think the lord brought together to take care of each other. It is not a legal connection but a familiar connection,” he said. He called Fischer to ask what she thought their relationship was. Words like co-dependence, couple and friendship were thrown in.
“We just have fun. If we both had jobs, we would do more stuff,” he said.
In a denim skirt and a powder blue top, Fischer looked the woman she aspired all her life to be. Franky’s lip stretched into a smile when he described Fischer. “I think she is pretty. I don’t think of her as any other way than a woman. I give her that respect,” he said. “I don’t know what to do without her. If I had stayed there I would have been dead.”
Besides Franky, Julia Dunn is a friend Fischer knows understands her. Dunn and Fischer grew up together in Iowa Falls, where Dunn still lives. Fischer had been preparing for priesthood and Dunn saw nothing that indicated Fischer felt like a woman.
“She wrestled in high school. She was no macho guy, just a regular guy. She would have made a good priest,” she said.
For 34 years they had not met. But when Dunn received a voice mail from her brother that Fischer was coming for her father’s funeral, she decided to go. She had been looking for her childhood friend.
“We were buddies. I could say anything to her. Franky was a real good person,” she said.
When Dunn saw her, she said found the same friend I could laugh with. “The only thing that had changed was her sex,” she said. “I found my friend.” When Fischer went to Iowa Falls last year, she stayed with Dunn. And then the conversations flowed and the obvious questions followed.
“I asked her why she did it,” she said. “I have no problem with it. I wish people could give these people a break. Franky is a beautiful woman. I love my Franky.”
Such people have made life a little easier for Fischer, who is still trying to get a job. She has sent out at least 1,100 applications so far, she said.
“My voice gives me away. They don’t want me to use the same restroom,” she said talking about the difficulties in getting a job.
For now both Franky and Fischer are surviving on food stamps and security money. They pray together before every meal.
“We would get where we want to. The lord will carry us through this,” said Franky, while Fischer put another tray of patties in the oven.

The first piece was written for a reporting class. I don't remember exactly how I met Frances. But I recall the day I went to the mall to meet her. She was sitting in a corner. I think I was hoping or expecting her to be dressed in loud clothes, rather skimpy, with a ton of grease on her face and ultra pink lipstick and loads of mascara. I guess I was going by the stereotypes. But then she came over to me and introduced herself. She didn't look any different from any other woman who happened to be in the mall at that hour.
Then we started talking ...
Over the few months, we developed a unique friendship. I attended a basement meeting once where many transgender woman came. I brought her a lenhenga from India and we always kept in touch. Last I met Frances was when I was leaving for India for a long break. I went to her apartment and she showed me Victoria Secret underwear she had bought with her savings and coupons combined. She seemed happy but worried about the future. She still didn't have a job. All I could do was carry some food. And all she could say was "anything helps".

The first draft. Frances was so interesting I went back to her to write my final assignment, which I have copied above.

It took Frances Mary Fischer 53 years to express herself and it cost her job, family and money. And it is still not complete. A transgender woman, Fischer now does odd jobs and lives on public assistance. But she has not lost hope.
“It has always been a struggle. It is a continuing fight,” she said as she opened the letter from New York State Human Rights Commission. And even as she sliced the envelope open, she said she knew it was not in her favor.
Fischer lost her job at Alliance Relocation Services in Oct. 2004. She complained to the HRC against the company for discriminating against her on the basis of her gender identity.
The letter, dated Oct. 26 and signed by Julia Day, Interim Regional Director, state division of human rights, dismissed her complaint and closed the case as they found no evidence against the respondent that it discriminated against her. According to the letter, Fischer has 60 days to appeal against the decision to the New York State Supreme Court, but in case of an adverse decision there, the complainant may lose his right to proceed subsequently in a federal court.
“They have cited Kremer vs. Chemical Construction Co. (1982). I am going to appeal against it,” she said. “It is good that I have not shot myself in the head. May be this is because of my background as a priest. Many transgender people do that. It is so difficult. It just pushes you to the extreme.”
Fischer’s parents prepared her for the church when they suspected he was not like other boys. But she gave up priesthood when she started questioning the Catholic beliefs.
She said he always felt like a woman, even as a child.
“I was scolded for playing with dolls. Once I traded my bicycle for a neighbor’s Barbie doll,” said Fischer, adding that in those days it was difficult to express one’s gender identity because the society was not very receptive.
“Gender identity refers to a person’s internal, deeply felt sense of being either male or female. Because it is internal and personally defined, it is not visible to others,” wrote Jaminson Green in Introduction to Transgender Issues in Gay Pride directory of 2005-2006.
Fischer was born in Iowa Falls, Iowa in 1952. She said she always felt she should express herself as a woman and wanted to wear a dress to her high school prom but ended up wearing a female tuxedo. She said she has been undergoing counseling since 1983 and has been on feminizing hormones since then.
“When I was 3 years old I had an accident and I asked my doctor why I did not have a vagina,” she said.
But coming out has not been easy for her. She has faced discrimination.
“The work environment became hostile when I started my transition. People would call me Fran and FM,” she said. Most people associate transgender people with drag queens, gays, lesbians and cross dressers.
“They think we are prostitutes and have diseases,” she said.
Besides discrimination, it also costs money to look like a woman. Surgeries are not covered by insurance and Fischer has already spent $18,000 on various treatments including augmentation mammaplasty. She said she went to Bangkok to get her surgery because it is cheaper there.
“It costs so much here,” she said. Fischer is transitioning in stages. “It is coming out well. I am excited. I would like to get a tummy tuck and other small things like that. I will keep doing them. It will take years,” she said pointing to her teeth that have just been shaped.
“They are working on the lower set. And when I can afford it, I would like to go for electrolysis. There is stubble,” she said feeling her chin with her hands that appear well-groomed with neutral polish to make her nails shine.
“My gynecologist said I could have boyfriends now,” she said. “It gets so lonely at times. It is depressing. Sometimes, I want to cuddle with someone on the couch and just watch television.”
Fischer’s voice is deep and she still sounds like a male. “It got messed up. But I will get it right,” she said.
Dressed in a powder blue turtle neck sweater and black pants, Fischer said she loves the woman’s body and regrets that she did not transition before. “It was for my children. My wife and I decided to keep it under cover till our children had grown up,” she said.
For Fischer it was like wearing the wrong shoe in the feet all these years. “When you wear the wrong shoe, you get blisters. It pains. It has been like that for me. Every morning I would look in the mirror and it would make me want to cry. You don’t like the skin you are in, you hate the image that you see,” she said. “Nobody understands.”
Fischer who has a son and a daughter, both married, is divorced now. She said she is very fond of her grand children but seldom gets to meet them. A picture showed her holding both her grandchildren in her arms.
“It felt so good. I always wanted to be a mother,” she said. “But it is difficult to explain how they have two grandmothers.”
Fischer was employed at Alliance Relocation Services in 2000. She said she was the MIS director at the company and in charge of billing and drafting job descriptions. Fischer started her official transition from male to female in August, 2001, when she applied for a name change at the Supreme Court for the County of Onondaga, according to the affidavit filed by her in June, 2003. It took her two-and-a-half years to change her name from Frank Mark Fischer to Frances Mary Fischer. When the judge refused, she approached Lambda Legal for help and then sued New York State. She finally won the case but the victory is just a beginning of many battles, legal and otherwise that she has to wage every moment in her life.
The latest in her trials is the loss of her job.
Erin Keenan, an employee in the accounts and the billing section in her company, said Fischer is very capable but the company did not have work for him.
“He was removed because there was lack of job. He never had a formal title and we have also removed the position that he had,” said Keenan.
She said the employees are very friendly and respected Fischer but when she got graphic about her transition, it became uncomfortable for people in the office. She said there were no bathroom issues at all. And everybody is shocked to see that Fischer decided to complain against the company.
“He started explaining the process. We were not very comfortable with it. His removal had nothing to do with his sex-change. People here are very open,” she said.
An article on Fischer in the Post-Standard on March 25, 2004, quoted her employer, Jim Walsh, saying that Fischer is a star employee, that she “carried the company single-handedly”. He also said he would not forget what Fischer has done for the company.
Under Title VII, it is forbidden to discriminate against an employee for failure to conform to gender stereotypes. (www.transgenderlaw.org)
The New York law provides a cause of action for gender identity-motivated discrimination, although there is no explicit mention of gender identity under the New York human rights law. (Maffei v. Kolaeton, 626 N.Y.S.2d 391 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. 1995) and Rentos v. OCE-Office Systems, 1996 U.S. Dist.)
Professor Janice McDonald, College of Law, Syracuse University, said, “She has a better chance in a federal court.” Fischer has already appealed in the state court and can’t go to federal court (Kremer V. Chemical Construction Co.).
Fischer said she told her employer about her transition and though he allowed earrings and rings, he did not allow dresses.
“He said what I was I trying to do. Win a beauty contest? And I said I was trying to be myself,” she said.
Now Fischer is without a job. She said she has sent around 1,100 applications for various jobs but has failed to get one.
The New York State Human Rights Law under Section 291 says right to “obtain employment without discrimination based on age, race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, military status, sex or marital status is hereby recognized as and declared to be a civil right.”
“A couple of interviewers said though I was qualified, other employees might have problems like bathroom issues or religious beliefs and so I could not get the job. I can’t get a job because I am transgender and I am open about it,” said Fischer who has two doctorates and has been an adjunct professor at Onondaga Community College.
“Your qualifications go away in snap. They would not even give me a job of greeting people or cleaning tables. It is a hard life,” she said.
Fischer said she was suffering from gender dysphoria, and transition and use of drugs have led to anxiety and insomnia and therefore she is disabled, in her complaint to the HRC. She is blind in her left eye and wears lens in the right eye, she said.
The New York State Human Rights law says any diagnosable condition or impairment demonstrable by medically accepted techniques, is a disability. But Fischer’s claim to medical coverage has been denied by Social Security Administration.
She gets $170 every two weeks toward her expenses and food stamps in lieu of community service for 18 hours a week in addition to six hours that she has to devote to job-hunting. But that’s far from enough, she said.
Her rent is $400 for a small two-bedroom apartment on North Street.
“I have to look for a job everyday to pay my rent. I clean other people’s homes, and jobs like those,” she said.
“It has not got to the stage where I have to sell my body for money,” she said.
Green in his article on transgender issues said that often transgender people are driven to do things that are not socially acceptable.
“Antitrans discrimination forces many trans people into a deadly cycle of poverty and unemployment. It…often forces them into illegal activities in order to survive,” he said.
Fischer has around $4,000 in hospital bills from St’ Joseph’s Hospital Health Care Centre for food poisoning this August which her Medicaid has refused to cover. It is many battles on many fronts for Fischer, but she said she would continue.
“I may have to go to a shelter next year when I can’t pay my rent anymore or government may throw me in prison for unpaid bills and taxes. I have no money. But I will continue to fight”

A refugee's story

For Khaing Ray Lin Aung, adjustment to a new way of life is not just a lifetime thing.
Even in his death, he will have to make compromises. For the 70-year-old refugee who very proudly refers to his Arkanis heritage, it's the thought of dying in a strange land that's most unnerving. And he isn't sure if he will be cremeted as his Buddhist religion demands.
Already it is difficult making ends meet. The family survives on food stamps and meagre public assistance that helps pay part of the rent in a two-bedroom apartment in a crumbling house that he shares with his married daughter's family.
And then, in this country you have to prepare for your death, you have to make arrangments and that costs money, he said.
Being displaced is not easy. Aung is a lonely man here. All day he listens to the radio, jotting down notes about Myanmar and the struggle for an independent Arakan state, or any other international events.
Sometimes, he stares intently into the computer screen at large letters in his native Burmese language. He is writing a history of Arkanis culture and their struggle for their identity. He doesn't want it to be lost, he said.

The state of our media

"A lot of media has forgotten that journalism is for people, not shareholders. A few publications would like to entirely drop some sections or readers becase it spoils their purchasing power profile. There are no labour correspondents, no agriculture correspondents ... But most papers have 12 business correspondents, even if it's a general interest paper. They've decided that 70 per cent of people don't make news, and this is a gigantic reflection of the character of the industry."

"Plus, diversity has a way of evening things up a little. I think kindly of the Indian press whenever i am in the US. These two countries - India and America - are the most diverse societies in the world. There are apparently 115 languages spoken in Queens, in New York, a fifth of them might be Indian, even! But look at your American newspaper, and it's essentially a white Anglo-Saxon thing. Diversity is tokenist. In India, thanks to language and culture, there's a much broader sweep of the culture being taken in by the media.

But 'people diversity' is still a problem in India, the Americans have a lot more of this kind of representation. There's not one dalit editor in a major newspaper, and media remains the most exclusionist institution in the country. Our political spectrum is much wider than what you'd think, from looking at the media."

"The other thing is to remember that I can't be speaking in the voice of the masses, the people have their own voice. What I can do is talk to peasants and workers and let you know what those conversations are like, and ask if you want to listen. I'm looking at the human condition in this society and telling it the way I see it. I don't want o characterise readers by class or other homogeneity. I think we can all try to touch the differences."


Excerpts from an interview for India Together P. Sainath talks to Ashwin Mahesh about his work and his views on trade, politics, society, and the media.

The comment is so reflective of our times where ratings dictate any coverage. Because crime sells, it's on the front page. And because poor people are not in the "right" target audience, there stories don't make it to the newspapers.And diversity, both in viewpoint and in representaion is fast becoming extinct.
A professor once said to me that media can't just give readers what it wants, referring to the fluff stuff.
A child will always ask for chocolates and fast food, which is not healthy. You can't give in to the demand. You need to feed them vegetables, too. Because that's healthy and maybe in time, they will like it. We only feed the readers nonsense and they don't know what we are capable of. That's why many readers don't take us seriously.
He didn't necessarily mean to say readers are ignorant but implied that we only go by statistics and not by the desire to serve the public.
Of course the people have a voice but we fail them by not hearing it or making it heard.

A refugee life

It's in the little closet that she hides
a whole lifetime of memories and abandoned dreams
In it she keeps it safe, uncorrupted
In between the skirts, the shirts and the scarves
The story unfolds
A rare one of who she was, who she could have been
Yes, she was in love
But that was long ago
Before the war, before the destruction, and before the soldiers came marching in
She had a childhood then
And a father
But they came marching in one night
She crawled under the bed, holding her breath
The thud of their heavy boots trampling her spirit, crushing her soul
They shot her father
She could only watch
Then the soldiers went marching out to crush yet another soul
While she remained in the shadows

But that was years ago
When she was in love
yes, in love
But one day he was gone, too
No, the soldiers didn't come marching this time
He left her

Then, picking together the pieces of her life
she too left
In the camps she became yet another refugee
With a number and card
and with rationed food
No, it wasn't a good life
Yes, she had escaped
yes, she was alive
But had nothing to wait for, to strive for
She sat in her corner, looking at the horizon
seeking reasons, justifications, anything
But nothing came forth

Many years went by
Then one day when it rained so hard it blurred the skies
She walked to the little office
She would go to America
Yes, she would start afresh
Yes, she would love again

America.
A place where everyone wanted to go
Where they would all get a second chance
Where nothing would hold you back
Where you can make it
That's what everyone said
In the long line outside the little office
They talked about America
And she listened
And she hoped

Then one day, she got on the plane
On its large wings it would carry her to the distant land
where she can begin to live again
Or so she thought
But how could she let go of it all
In a little bag, she carried her all her years
A little bag she clutched tightly
After all that was what she was
Some old pictures, a few pieces of broken, twisted jewelry
An old shawl, its colors still bright
And a Koran, carefully wrapped in layers
Yes, she still believed in Allah

Finally, she was here
A refugee seeking to rebuild her life
But without language she was lost
Her color made it worse
Refugees weren't welcome here
Go back, return to where you came from
It was everywhere
She could see it
No, she wanted to tell them
I am not here to take away your jobs
I am here to find myself, to work the jobs you don't want
And to live and love
Don't hate me