841: My Senior Year
Note: This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Prologue: Prologue
Chana Joffe-Walt
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Chana Joffe-Walt, sitting in for Ira Glass. It's the first day of high school, Salt Lake City. A bunch of students are standing around outside in clusters, and the seniors are wearing little kid backpacks-- Ninja Turtles, Hello Kitty, Spider-man. Big 17-, 18-year-old kids in Winnie-the-Pooh backpacks. My colleague Miki Meek talked to seniors Estrella and Angie.
Miki Meek
So, you guys, what is the deal with-- what's up with the backpacks? Why is this a senior thing?
Estrella
'Cause we enter school, kindergarten, with kids' backpacks, you know? 'Cause we're little kids. And then we're leaving school with these on as well.
Miki Meek
Do you guys have any specific plans you've already made for this year that you want to do together because it is your senior year?
Estrella
Actually, on Thursday or tomorrow, we're going to go change our classes so we can be together more and make sure we have the same lunches and stuff.
Angie
Yeah.
Miki Meek
You guys are in how many classes together?
Estrella
Zero.
Angie
[LAUGHS] Yeah, we have none.
Miki Meek
So what's your plan for trying to get the same classes?
Estrella
We're going to beg our counselor. We're going to be like, we have separation anxiety. We have to be together. I'm going to be like, Mark-- that's his name, Mark. I'll be like, Mark, please let us be together. We want to enjoy our senior year, you know? It's our last year together because we're both going different ways.
Chana Joffe-Walt
They are really feeling the last timeness of this year ahead of them, the last year in these classes, in these halls, in backpacks, the last year of these friendships in this place, with these people. After this, their lives will be different.
All the seniors we talked to had a list of things you have to do senior year, stuff they'd seen other kids do before them, and also all the iconic experiences they'd seen in a million movies and TV shows. This school, in fact, is actually the school from High School Musical. It was filmed here.
Anyway, they all have lists that include the classics-- prom, football games, homecoming, senior sunrise, senior sunset, senior parties, senior memory boxes-- that's a thing that was new to me, along with--
Student
There's this thing called trash bagging.
Miki Meek
What is that?
Student
It's like when it's raining, you put on a trash bag and slide down hills.
Miki Meek
So do you step into the trash bag?
Student
Yeah, make holes for your legs and arms probably, like over you on a swimsuit, kind of. I've never done it.
Chana Joffe-Walt
So she has to. Looming over each rite of passage, no matter how stupid, is the fear that if you don't go for it, you could miss something really special, something fleeting. You have one chance at senior year. You have to grab it. You have to go big.
Vasey
Ferris Bueller's Day Off is my number one inspiration.
Chana Joffe-Walt
This is Vasey.
Vasey
I want to be him. I don't know if I'm well-known enough to become East High's Ferris Bueller, but that's my goal, is to take an extraordinary crazy day off that will be talked about for generations.
Chana Joffe-Walt
She's still working on a plan for that. But in the meantime, Vasey's got many other plans. Vasey says she spent most of high school going back home to her hole to study. Not this year. So when she got an invite to a pink party for senior girls, something Vasey never would have gone to before, she went for it.
Vasey
I wore a pink babydoll dress. I have knee-high go-go boots that I wore. And I stole my mom's pearls to wear because it was kind of a formal event. And it's a tradition that the girls all jump in the pool. So me and my friends jumped in the pool.
I was talking with my friends the other day, and we said that it's kind of fun to-- we complain about it a lot, but it's kind of fun to just be a girl going to an American public high school because you get that kind of Americana high school thing, you know? Being a senior is this hyped-up event. So it's kind of like I get to do all of the cheesy things that they do in the coming of age movies that make me feel like I really am just an American teenage girl. [LAUGHS]
I feel like I've got to be happy with what I've done and feel satisfied with what I've done.
Miki Meek
Like doing everything?
Vasey
Doing everything until it's worn out, and so I feel like I have no unfinished business at East High.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Senior year-- just the idea of it, with all its rituals and big feelings and corsages, it's so powerful, people across the world know about the American high school experience. It's an American export.
I've been following one kid who came to America as an exchange student and committed herself to the senior year experience in a way I have never seen before. She and a group of kids from all over the world showed up with Ferris Bueller and High School Musical in their heads, with their own ambitions of having the best year ever and going home with great memories, no experience or opportunity missed. Today's show, "It's Senior Year." Stay with us.
Act One: Yes 2024
Chana Joffe-Walt
It's This American Life. Act One, "YES 2024." One of the many programs that brings international high school students to the United States is the YES Program-- the Youth Exchange and Study Program. The program is run by the State Department. It was created after 9/11 for students from places with a significant Muslim population. The kids come to the US, spend a year at an American high school, live with an American family, and, quote, "engage in activities to learn about the US society and values."
YES is a really hard program to get into. Kids spend years preparing to apply. They need excellent grades, excellent English skills, written and verbal. There's an interview, a vetting process. About 30,000 students apply every year, and around 3% get in. In 2023, 500 kids from Gaza applied to the YES program. 13 got in, and one of those was Majd.
Majd
OK, so when I first heard about it, it's like, oh, my god. Like, that seems like the perfect life for me, and I want to go there.
Chana Joffe-Walt
The YES program was Majd's idea, not her parents'. Majd is a kid who has plans for herself. You can feel the propulsion forward when you sit with Majd. It's exhilarating, sometimes terrifying, like riding shotgun with a highly competent, yet speeding, driver.
Majd heard about YES from kids who had already done it, YES alumni in Gaza, young adults who told Majd about their year going to high school in America.
Majd
And they told me about the application process and everything. So I started preparing really early.
Chana Joffe-Walt
What did they say about it?
Majd
Some of them described it to me as if it was like absolute heaven. You're partying every day. You're getting five Domino pizza boxes every day. [LAUGHS] Yeah, no, for me, honestly, all my life, I haven't been the fun, going out kid. I was really focused on academics. And I like the idea of the 4.0 scale GPA. Like--
Chana Joffe-Walt
I love that other people were excited about Domino's pizza, and you were excited about the 4.0 grade scale.
Majd
Yes. I mean, yeah. I mean, I kind of have a reasonable explanation for that. But--
Chana Joffe-Walt
Her explanation goes like this. Majd wanted a perfect transcript. She wants to be eligible for the best scholarships to study astrophysics at the best university, maybe in Gaza or maybe in the US. Princeton looks interesting to her. Majd doesn't want a stray 99% grade to get in the way of where she's going.
Majd
Literally, point to point really makes a difference. Like, if you get 99.6%, you get a scholarship. But if you get 99.5%, which is a 4.0, you don't get the scholarship.
Chana Joffe-Walt
How old were you when you figured all of this out?
Majd
Pretty young, I'd say, sixth grade?
Chana Joffe-Walt
She applied along with her friend, Abdulrahman. He goes by Aboud. And on February 16, 2023, they both got in. Majd was 15 years old.
Majd
And we both started screaming on the phone. And all the neighbors heard me. And, oh, my god, it was truly sensational.
Chana Joffe-Walt
In Gaza, YES alumni are sort of like influencers. They're a little famous, at least to the kids trying to get into the program. They post on Instagram from their year in America. And when they get back, they'd hold assemblies and run programs and seemed like the best of friends. The YES groups had a real bond.
Majd and her group of 13 would be their own crew. They'd be YES '24 for 2024. Some of them knew each other, and some met for the first time on a bus trip to Jerusalem to get their visas, a day they all talk about as incredible. One of them told me best day of his life, a day they really got close as a group.
There was Majd and Aboud. There was Fatima, an exuberant 15-year-old, an extrovert from a family of introverts who could picture the whole year ahead of her.
Fatima
You know like in the movies, like locker room. You go on a school bus. You have a lot of friends that play sports. You play sports by yourself. And then they would always mention, in every single American high school movie, basketball or football.
Chana Joffe-Walt
What movies are you thinking of?
Fatima
Like, oh, I remember "Mean Girls."
Chana Joffe-Walt
Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. And that made you want to go to an American high school?
Fatima
Yeah, actually. Yeah. [LAUGHS]
Farah
I got placed in Oklahoma, in a small town.
Aboud
I barely ever heard of Minnesota before. Of course I know of Prince. I knew Bob Dylan.
Fatima
I was like, oh, I love Maine. But I was scared because nobody's there. I don't know anybody there. And it's in the end of the map.
Ali
Oh, my gosh. I waited for so long, and I got somewhere that's worth it. California is probably like a cool place, you know? I pictured Los Angeles, but then, ooh, Northern California, Redding. I mean, so country.
Shahd
I mean, yes, I wanted New York City or California, but I mean, I was like, oh, OK, Ohio. Well, let's discover Ohio.
Chana Joffe-Walt
In August 2023, Majd leaves Gaza. She says goodbye to her mom, dad, and younger sister. The YES '24 kids arrive in Washington, DC and take a group photo.
Student
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
All
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
Chana Joffe-Walt
And then they all scatter. It's the last time they'll be together before the end of the program. September 2023, Majd heads to Washington State, a city called Bremerton, a Navy town about an hour and a half drive from Seattle.
In her first few weeks in Bremerton, Majd studied her new school like she studied for exams. She took mental notes. The ROTC kids are higher status. Being in a relationship-- highly valued. Academics-- less so. The thing Majd noticed American teenagers seemed to value above all else, though, was fun. Majd did not think of herself as fun.
She didn't exactly think of herself as a teenager either. Majd is always more comfortable talking with adults. But no matter. She was here to succeed as an American high schooler. So she became a student of fun. She told me incredulously, when they finished a unit in class, the teacher had a raffle with prizes. She took a video and showed it to me. Just look, she said, pointing at all the kids cheering.
[CHEERING, LAUGHTER]
Majd
Typical American high school.
Chana Joffe-Walt
What makes that typical American high school?
Majd
I don't know. I've noticed that they're very loud. I'm just not-- one time, I remember I tried to cheer like they do. It didn't work out. It just-- yeah, I can't scream.
Chana Joffe-Walt
When did you try it?
Majd
Like for a basketball game. And all the vibes were great, and we were having fun. But I said, OK, let me try. But then, yeah, I just felt so kind of out of place. Like, what am I doing? Why am I screaming? [LAUGHS] So, yeah.
Chana Joffe-Walt
What does it sound like when you try to cheer like an American?
Majd
For me, it sounds like a rat trying-- like I mean [LAUGHS] a rat dying.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Majd was aware of all the ways she didn't fit in. Still, she wasn't miserable. She says she was the only Muslim in school, but she was kind of expecting that. Her host family, an older couple, was not a great match, but she moved in with a new host family-- better fit. She ate lunch in the nurse's office every day, but she liked the nurse. They talked.
And nothing deterred her. Her goal was being the very best YES student. YES kids are all encouraged to post on social media. Majd was excited by the possibility of her posts being reposted by the official YES account. So Majd went to everything-- football games--
[BAND PLAYING]
--pep rallies--
Woman
(SINGING) O say does that star spang--
Chana Joffe-Walt
--Homecoming.
DJ Casper
(SINGING) Left foot, let's stomp
Charlie Brown
Chana Joffe-Walt
It all went into her YES '24 highlight on Instagram. October, Majd must have been an American high schooler for less than six weeks when Hamas attacked Southern Israel, killed over 1,000 Israelis and took 251 people hostage.
Majd
Yeah, it was the weekend coming up, and it was about 9:00 or 10:00 PM. And I was just scrolling on Instagram on my phone. And then I saw some weird news videos. And I'm like, oh, my god, is that really happening?
Chana Joffe-Walt
The next day, Majd couldn't reach her parents or younger sister. By Monday morning, she got news they were alive and at home, nothing more. By the end of that first week, it sounded dire.
Majd
Hey, things are really bad. We don't have electricity. We don't have anything. And at that time, they were running low on food, too. And they were like-- everything was closed. And, yeah, I was very worried about them. And, yeah, I just started having a lot of nightmares.
Yeah, and they were trying not to tell me a lot of things for me not to worry here, but I already know a lot of things. They can't just hide it from me. And it was just very sad for me to see that they care about my safety and happiness and not about them. I was like, oh, my god, no. [SIGHS]
Chana Joffe-Walt
Did they explicitly tell you, don't worry about us?
Majd
Yes, they always-- and their messages, they said, "Oh, hi. Good morning. How are you? How's school? Have a great day. And don't worry about us. We're fine."
Chana Joffe-Walt
In those first few weeks, the 13 students from Gaza were all taking in a constant stream of news. Every day they were seeing explosions and rubble and bodies, one horrifying image after another.
But when they called their parents, who were in the place where those images were from, they got the same alarming positivity Majd was hearing-- "Hi, honey. How are you? We're fine. How was school? Have a great day." Fatima in Maine calling her parents.
Fatima
They don't ever tell me if they're doing OK or not. They're just like, "Oh, we're OK. Don't worry."
Chana Joffe-Walt
Shahd in Ohio.
Shahd
They were trying to make me feel like all is good, but I know that my parents wouldn't tell me if something bad is actually happening with them. And that point was making me even more scared. It was making me way much more worried because I know that even if actually something terrible is happening, I wouldn't even know.
Chana Joffe-Walt
The kids couldn't go back to Gaza. Their parents wanted to protect them, protect their year. So the YES students watched as some of their homes were destroyed and then their neighborhoods disappeared. They were part of the war, but they were not part of the war.
They were in Ohio, and Redding, California, and Snyder, Oklahoma. They were at soccer practice when their family packed up and fled their home. They were in class when they learned their school in Gaza had been flattened. They were eating at Red Lobster when they worried they'd lost touch with their parents.
Shahd was in the bathroom at school when she saw a message on a group chat. Her friend back in Gaza was dead, killed with his mom and his sister. She went back to her photography class. They were in the midst of a group project.
Shahd
We were kind of making a magazine cover, and we had to take pictures of our classmates. I took a picture of a guy named Caden. He was very friendly. I used him to make a rock star magazine.
Chana Joffe-Walt
He'd be the rock star on the cover.
Shahd
He had some curly and frizzy hair, so I thought he would be cool for the scene. And I had him wear a leather jacket, and we got an electric guitar from the band. And I took a picture of him, and then I just continued working on the magazine.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Did you tell him your friend had died?
Shahd
No, I just didn't want anything to seem like, she's playing victim, or-- you know. I just don't like the hype of pretending to always be sad and always have a negative mood.
Chana Joffe-Walt
But you wouldn't have been pretending.
Shahd
I mean, yeah, I guess it's just me. Because maybe none of them were close to me and none of them were really interested in knowing anything. So I was like, oh, it's fine. I can just go back to class. And that way, I can just forget. And maybe that would help me if I just practice my life normally.
Chana Joffe-Walt
This became the new imperative for all of them-- practice life normally. When Ali's friend was killed, he was in the middle of preparing a biology presentation. He went to biology class and did his presentation. It was on elephants.
Aboud saw a video of his best friend pulled from a pile of rubble. There was a news clip. He watched his friend on a stretcher. Aboud went to school, learned his friend's whole family had been killed-- dad, mother, grandparents, sisters. His friend and his youngest brother were the sole survivors. After school that day, Aboud went to a birthday party for his host sister. She was eight years old. He ate cake.
Practice life normally. Keep going. Present on elephants. Go to class. Ride the bus. Eat cake. Try to reach your parents on the phone. Try again. The cell service in Gaza kept going out. Majd kept trying.
Majd
I was just very worried about my family, especially, I remember, when Halloween came. I didn't talk to them for two weeks straight. And then it was Halloween, and I'm like, oh, my god, I'm dying to talk to them. And--
Chana Joffe-Walt
You hadn't heard from them for two weeks?
Majd
Yeah, no. But I still had to kind of put a mask on and be happy in front of people. For me, as an exchange student here, I still have to be participating in American cultural activities and stuff like that. So one of the activities was dressing up for Halloween and going trick or treating. But at the same time, people were dying in Gaza. And I'm like, OK, I want to make this quick, but just to still participate and make the family feel that, hey, I would love to participate in something that you do.
Chana Joffe-Walt
What did you wear?
Majd
Oh, I was Hermione Granger.
Chana Joffe-Walt
You were Hermione?
Majd
[LAUGHS] I'm a huge Harry Potter fan.
Chana Joffe-Walt
She was practicing life normally. Majd shared a video of herself trick-or-treating in costume, running into another Potter fan.
Majd
Oh!
Trick-or-Treater
What?
Majd
What?
Trick-or-Treater
Come on!
Majd
Oh, my god!
Trick-or-Treater
I love it!
Majd
Another Harry Potter!
Trick-or-Treater
Yes!
Majd
Yeah.
Trick-or-Treater
Gryffindor!
Chana Joffe-Walt
From the moment Majd shared her Halloween post late that night, she could tell things had suddenly changed. The messages on Instagram came in a rush. A good friend of hers in Gaza--
Majd
How dare you? People are dying, and you're just living your life. Like, fighting me. Like, how dare you post something like that when your people are dying?
Chana Joffe-Walt
And another.
Majd
Oh, my god, I can't believe that I chose you as one of my friends. Don't post any stories as if nothing is happening. Why would we blame the people in the West or abroad if our people are doing stuff like this?
Chana Joffe-Walt
There were more, many more. Where's your loyalty? You've betrayed us. You don't belong to Gaza. Why aren't you posting more about Palestine? Majd read every single one.
Here they were, 13 Palestinian teenagers trying to have their big, exciting year in America in the midst of the most immense tragedy imaginable. What would they do? What should they do? The weight of the war was landing on Majd, a teenager-- the exact moment in time when you were asked to make choices about who you are and who you are not, and when you are the most judged. And the judgment that was hardest for her to take were the comments from people in Gaza.
Majd
Yeah, they just said that you're not one of us anymore, stuff like that. And I'm like, why are you guys attacking me? I'm doing an exchange here. I'm talking about Gaza every chance I can.
And people here, they are living in their own bubble, at least high school teenagers. They don't really look at the news. They don't know a lot about what's going on. So most of their cares would be like, oh, did you watch the newest movie that came out? And I'm like, I can't really engage with you right now. It was very hard. You might notice me smiling a lot, but that's my trauma mechanism working.
Chana Joffe-Walt
I had noticed how Majd would smile when talking about her tremendous loss, her fear for her parents and sister, smiling, when she told me her friend was killed, smiling. It was a little eerie how much you could see the effort to be OK on her face. She'd say, everyone hates me-- smile. More than 200 friends blocked me-- smile.
Majd
I lost a lot of friends. It was crazy. I mean, I lost some friends physically. They're not on Earth anymore. I lost some really close people that, oh, my god, they were a huge part of my life. And it was very hard.
Chana Joffe-Walt
I completely understood why people were upset that Majd was posting. And having spent time with Majd, I completely understood why she was posting. Majd came here to achieve something. She saw posting about her experiences as part of that.
The program encourages kids to share stuff on social media. She liked sharing things for all the normal reasons. It's fun to show off what you're doing. But also for Majd, she saw it as an expectation that she wanted to meet. So she was especially confused when some of the YES students also seemed upset with her, stopped responding to her messages.
Majd
It was very hard. I don't have support from Americans. I don't have support from Arabs, too, the students. I'm like, oh, my god, where do I go? What do I do?
Chana Joffe-Walt
November 2023. Majd didn't post anything for almost a month, and she focused all her attention on one thing-- her family. She went to school, she did her work, but mostly, she pleaded with her parents, when she could reach them, to please get out of Gaza, try to evacuate. But her dad didn't want to abandon their home, and they didn't have the money.
Then she lost touch with them for almost three weeks. She waited to hear from them. And she wondered when she'd hear from the other YES students. She figured this was just a little blip. They'd get back in touch. But mostly, it was silence.
She'd see one of them posting something from their daily life on Instagram and think, so they are posting. Did that mean they weren't actually mad at her for posting? But if they weren't mad at her for posting, what happened, then? Why weren't they in touch with her? She never reached out to ask. She just wondered.
December 2023. Majd was living with a nurse named Tana Rode. Tana would watch Majd come and go from her room, always clutching her phone, sometimes her eyes puffy and red. Tana tried to keep the fridge stocked with parmesan cheese bagels from Costco. Majd seemed to like them, and it got her out of her room in the morning. Tana has a teenage daughter of her own. She was careful with Majd, stayed close, available, but gave Majd her space.
Tana Rode
She's not one who will come down here and cry. I can just sense this heaviness in her, understandably. 'Cause she's happy. She's chatty. That girl loves to talk. So I can feel it when she's down.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Before October 7, Tana Rode knew next to nothing about Israel or Palestine. She told me maybe she'd seen a bumper sticker one time. Now she was responsible for this Palestinian kid. She read everything she could, tracked the news. She followed the numbers. November, more than 10,000 Palestinians dead. By Christmas, 20,000. Tana had a brand new awareness, an alarming awareness, of just how vulnerable Majd's family was. She worried.
Tana Rode
Every single day thinking about, am I going to get the call at work? Is today the day that her family's gone? Like every single day. And, oh, my god, I don't want to have to tell her.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Tana, were you imagining this kid is my responsibility if she loses her family?
Tana Rode
Yes. Absolutely.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Tana wasn't the only host mom who told me this. Farah's host mom in Oklahoma told me she and her husband sat down together and walked through the different scenarios so they'd know what they were OK offering if they needed to offer. Fatima overheard her host mother call a friend who had hosted a Ukrainian student to ask for advice, just in case.
January 2024. Majd told her dad if he wasn't going to leave Gaza for himself, he should at least do it for her younger sister. The argument Majd made, it was very her. Majd told him, she's 12 years old. She needs to be in school. Without an education, what kind of future will she have? Her dad relented.
Tana, her host mom, helped Majd to raise money to get her parents out of Gaza. February, her family made it out of Gaza. Majd got a message.
Majd
I was about to lose hope. But then one day, he just called me and said, oh, hey, we're traveling tomorrow.
Chana Joffe-Walt
What did it feel like when you were like, they are there?
Majd
I literally have no words to describe this. It feels like you were just burning in flames, and then somebody put water all over you. And now, yeah, you're not burning anymore. And I just went to school so happy that week. It was crazy. Everybody was noticing, even the teachers. And they said, oh, somebody's got good news here. What's going on? [LAUGHS] And, yeah, they were all so happy for me.
Chana Joffe-Walt
The first half of Majd's year had been dominated by terrifying news from home and nightmares about her family and social isolation. She'd been under so much pressure. When this worry for her family lifted, Majd experienced a surge of energy. She was giddy. She wanted to do everything. She wanted to be a kid on the YES program, not just a kid in the midst of a war. She wanted to be like all the other YES students from all the other countries that she was seeing in her Instagram feed having a normal American year.
Majd
I started to do golf a few days after my parents got out. Everything in life started to be better.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Why golf?
Majd
I don't want to do a conventional sport. And I'm really bad at running. So, yeah, I didn't want to be too tired doing a sport, but I still wanted to enjoy it.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Golf was posted to Instagram.
Man
Hey, Robin. She's never ridden in a golf cart before. Don't you have golf carts where you're from?
Majd
No, we don't have golf. We don't have bowling. Nothing.
[LAUGHTER]
Man
How would I get along over there? I don't know what I'd do.
Chana Joffe-Walt
It wasn't just golf. She joined bowling. She tried tennis. She went to a Valentine's Day party-- posted.
Man
(SINGING) We say ooh-wee-oh
Wee-oh-wee-oh
Chana Joffe-Walt
A Super Bowl party.
Usher
(SINGING) Up in the club with my homies
Tryna get a little V-I
Chana Joffe-Walt
Messed around with helium balloons at a different party.
Majd
I don't know what to say.
[LAUGHTER]
Girl
It makes your voice higher.
Majd
Hello.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Majd was all in. She was saying yes to the life that was in front of her. Sometimes Majd got messages from people who were upset about her posts, but not nearly as many. And they didn't get under her skin in the same way as before. Majd showed me endless pictures and videos she took of kids having fun. And she's in these videos. She's not just documenting the fun. She's having fun.
Majd
Something I love about Americans is that they love to be very silly. Like, this is one of my friends. He put the pom-pom on his head.
Chana Joffe-Walt
I did not really understand what she was showing me in this picture, but what I got from it was Majd has friends.
Majd
And this is my other friend, Emily.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Oh.
Majd
My weekends are pretty full now. It's crazy.
Chana Joffe-Walt
It was stunning to watch Majd rebound like this-- her stamina, grit. Just stunning. Stunning or concerning? Sometimes I wasn't sure.
All that stuff she just lived through was still living through. People were still getting bombed. Her parents were in an unstable situation. Their future-- and hers-- still very unclear. Was she just putting all that aside for now? Was that going to work? Maybe? At least it seemed like a really nice reprieve.
March. Sometimes Majd would open Snapchat, and the app would send her a This Time Last Year with a picture of her and the other YES students in Gaza. Back then, they'd all just gotten accepted and were meeting and texting each other, becoming a group.
She'd get a pang of longing and anxiety. She missed them. She'd not heard from them in five months. Were they all still chatting all the time, just without her? Late at night, she'd stare at their profiles in bed, scrolling. And then finally, one night--
Majd
I reached out to one of the girls in the exchange program. And I told her, oh, my god, hi. How are you? She started talking to me a little bit in a cold way. So, yeah, I started being very friendly with her, like, oh, my god, I miss you so much. How's your year going? And I hope your family is safe and everything.
And, yeah, she started talking normally. And then after two days, she stopped responding. And I'm like, what did I say? Well, what did I do? It got me feeling like all the exchange students are kind of against me, which they probably are, but.
Chana Joffe-Walt
They might not be.
Majd
I mean, maybe not all of them. There are two students that are really amazing, but now they don't really talk. But yeah, it's very confusing. There's going to be something going on. And I'm going to discover that when I see them again in June, so.
Chana Joffe-Walt
In June, when they'd all fly to DC, spend a few days at the State Department for the end of the year program, and then fly home. They couldn't fly home, right?
All of the YES students from Gaza started the year planning to go back to Gaza. They were slowly realizing that was not going to happen. The war was not ending. What was going to happen at the end of the school year? That's coming up from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.
Act 2
Chana Joffe-Walt
It's This American Life. I'm Chana Joffe-Walt, sitting in for Ira Glass. We're telling the story of a group of 13 students who came to the United States from Gaza last September to do a year of high school in America. They're on a program run by the State Department called YES.
We're in April 2024, two months before the end of the YES program. And then what? The YES kids were pinning their hopes on this. The year before, the State Department had extended the program for some Ukrainian YES students, gave them another year in the US. That's what Majd was hoping for.
But then the State Department sent letters to the kids saying they would not be extending the program for the 13 students from Gaza. The program would end June 6.
Majd
You've got to figure everything out by yourself. And I'm like, we're 16-year-olds. We can't just come up with something from thin air. We need some sort of help.
Chana Joffe-Walt
The State Department says it did provide support to students, that the health, safety, and security of all students was their top priority. Their goal was to reunite students with their families. And they say they worked closely with them on their post-program plans. They also say they provided an equally rigorous process for exchange students from both Ukraine and Gaza.
But what Majd and the other students from Gaza describe is feeling like they were on their own to come up with a plan. Even for Majd, a master planner of her own life, this was a lot. She looked at her options.
Her parents didn't think it made sense for her to come to Egypt. Their situation wasn't stable. Like all Palestinians who fled Gaza, they weren't allowed to work in Egypt. Everything was incredibly expensive. As of April, her sister wasn't even able to go to school. If Majd joined them, it wasn't clear how she'd continue her education in Egypt, if the family could even continue staying there.
So Majd frantically searched for boarding schools in the US with scholarships that might be able to extend a student visa in America. But the deadlines to apply had passed. She learned everything she could about immigration law. She had relatives in Michigan. She could maybe move in with them. But what were the schools like? And how would she get a lawyer and study and live? She ran it over and over in her head.
Majd
OK, just say I move in with my relatives in the US and, OK, what next? I don't have the right documents to even get a job. We're not allowed to drive here. And I don't have health insurance. My insurance from the State Department ends soon. And then what am I going to do?
I talked to my financial literacy teacher. She teaches us about insurance and stuff. She said, oh, you can buy it from Marketplace or something, but I don't work. I don't have an income to even pay for an insurance. So I don't know.
Chana Joffe-Walt
This was all of them. All 13 teenagers were scrambling to figure out what to do and where to go, calling their parents, talking with the State Department, and casting around randomly for advice, like Fatima.
Fatima
My friends were trying to help out. Some of them are like, do you have any people you know in the States? I'm like, I have relatives, but I don't know if it's going to be the right move to move with them.
Chana Joffe-Walt
This is you talking to other 15-year-olds, 16-year-olds?
Fatima
Yeah. They just were asking me questions. And then after that, I was like, oh, that might be an option.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Majd met with a lawyer who advised her pro bono. She says the lawyer told her to apply for asylum, move in with her relatives in Michigan, enroll in public school. There, she could do a senior year again, find scholarships to go to college in the US. Majd told me, I will not be going back to Gaza. She sounded a little stunned.
Majd and I talked about a lot of devastating things, but this was really the only time I could tell she was taking in the meaning of what she was saying. It would be nearly impossible for her to leave the US while she waited for asylum. She had a new plan that she laid out for me. And at first, she had that eerie smile. But then it disappeared.
Majd
It just breaks my heart that a place where I grew up in, I just-- I just can't see that again. And the lawyer said that it's going to take from 7 to 10 years, at least, to get to an asylum interview because of the lack of asylum officers here in Washington.
And I'm like, are you telling me I have to wait 7 to 10 years? I'm going to be graduating and having my whole career and life here until I get to an interview? And then I have to wait again to get the result? Yeah.
And imagine not seeing my family all of that time. It's crazy. I'm 16 now. I'm imagining, like, OK, let's calculate just 10 years. I'm going to be at least 26 when I see them again. And, yeah, for me, I'm just telling you this.
But, yeah, I still don't process that because both of my parents, they have chronic-- oh, my god. I don't want to go into that aspect. But they have chronic illnesses, and who knows in 10 years if they're still going to be around or not? Oh, my god, this is hard. [SIGHS]
Chana Joffe-Walt
Yeah, that's super hard.
Majd
[SIGHS] Yeah, so I'm going to see my sister when she's at least 23 years old. That's crazy. [SNIFFLING]
Chana Joffe-Walt
Majd puts her head down and starts sort of laughing.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Tell me if you need a break or if it's too much. OK?
Majd
Do you want to order food?
Chana Joffe-Walt
Sure. Are you hungry?
Yes, she is. And yes, she does need a break. Majd would not be going back to Gaza. This year in America was not a year. It was her life.
[CAR DOOR SHUTTING]
May. Tana, Majd's host mom, is driving her to Seattle. Majd is going for an overnight with friends. When she was back home in Gaza, Majd would come home after school and find her mom. She'd sit down wherever her mom was-- in the living room or the kitchen-- and talk. She'd talk about her day, her thoughts, her problems. She could go on and on until her mom usually kicked her out, telling her, OK, that's enough already. I've been listening to you talk for three hours.
In Bremerton, when Majd talks like this, it's either to the school nurse, Ms. Caroline, or Tana. She's in the front seat, texting and also talking at rapid speed. She's jumping from topic to topic, telling Tana, "One of my teachers has been out for two weeks. There's like an intern teaching us or something. Ugh, I should have had breakfast this morning. Did I tell you I'm running for prom court?"
Majd
I don't know why I came up with that idea. Oh, my god. I don't know. It's so embarrassing for me to just ask people, oh, vote for me. Yeah, that's something I don't do. Yeah.
Tana Rode
That's how you get what you want in life. Just ask for it.
Majd
[SIGHS] I don't want to be queen or anything, but at least on the court, you know?
Chana Joffe-Walt
She tells Tana, "I probably won't get it. I'm not exactly your typical pick." But, Majd says, recently, people seem so interested in her. She thinks it might be because college students are protesting the war in Gaza. It's all over the news. Kids in her high school suddenly know about Gaza.
Majd
It's just that a lot of people come up to me and saying, oh, god. Yeah, I understand what you're going through, or, I feel for you. And if you need to talk to someone, I'm here. People are starting to be really nice about it. Yeah, actually, some girl, a while ago, she came up to me and gave me a teddy bear for, like, oh, my god. Hey, I feel for you. I sent you that picture.
Tana Rode
Yes, you did.
Majd
And yeah, I was like, oh, my god, thank you so much, you know?
Chana Joffe-Walt
Majd tells Tana she was up late last night worrying about seeing the other YES students from Gaza in DC. She just realized how soon it is. "I'm going to find out why they all stopped talking to me," she says. "Ugh, who's my roommate going to be?" There's a pause. Majd stares out the window. And then--
Majd
The other day, I was talking to my mom. And I don't know why I said something so randomly. But I just started crying out of nowhere because I didn't remember how the inside of our fridge looked like.
Tana Rode
You don't?
Majd
No, I don't remember anything from our house now. It's crazy. I remember how it looks like, yeah, but the details of it, they're so blurry now.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Another pause.
Majd
How long is this going to go for, you know? I don't know.
Chana Joffe-Walt
They pull into Seattle. Majd hops out, throws her backpack on. Her attention swings from Gaza back to America. And maybe this is just how she's going to keep dealing with all this-- dipping into the sadness for a minute and then flipping back. She goes to her sleepover. They visit the Space Needle. She watches Star Wars for the first time.
Majd
It was very fun. Yeah, we did like a Star Wars marathon.
Chana Joffe-Walt
[LAUGHS] It's like 10 hours or something, isn't it? How many hours is that?
Majd
12, something like that. Yeah, it was amazing. We stayed up all night, eating.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Well, you sound really happy.
Majd
Yeah.
Chana Joffe-Walt
That same week, Majd went to prom. And she won prom court. June. Majd is leaving Washington State, heading to DC. She's thinking about her year and about seeing the other students, just thinking. And she has a new theory about why they're not in touch. She thinks it goes back to when they first met, back in Gaza, when they all got into the YES Program.
Majd
Before I came to the US, I was just very academic-oriented. Yeah, I only focused on my studies. I mean, I still do here. But, yeah, that can be a factor of why they didn't really like me that much.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Like they thought you were too obsessed with school?
Majd
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I kind of talked about it a little too much. Yeah. Like scholarships and academics in general.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Wow, Majd, that's a huge realization.
Majd
Yeah, I know. It's hard to see yourself from other people's point of views.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Yeah. But you had that realization without anyone telling you that?
Majd
Yeah, nobody ever told me that. I mean, it would have helped so much if somebody actually pointed that out so I could notice.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Yeah, how did you get there?
Majd
All this last month, when my friends were just saying goodbye to me, and we're hanging out a lot, they're saying, oh, my god, you're such a fun person.
Or, like, one of my friends signed my yearbook. And he said, "Everybody's lucky to have you as a friend in their life." And I'm like, oh my god, this feels so weird. But then I realized that, hey, I actually am a fun person here in the US. Yeah, I'm not the same as I was in Gaza.
Chana Joffe-Walt
I'm even remembering when you said to me that you were trying to yell like Americans do, but you couldn't make yourself do it. You remember that?
Majd
Yeah. Yeah, I could not bring myself to be silly at any time, but now it's just like, yeah, I'm chilling. Yesterday, I was just chilling and watching cartoons.
Chana Joffe-Walt
I went down to Washington, DC, to talk to the other YES kids. This terrible year was ending here, strangely.
[CHATTER]
Hundreds of teenagers from all over the world fill an auditorium at the State Department. Lots of lanyards and hugs. All the different countries are vying for any open space to take a group photo. The Ghanaians are really going to have to sort out which camera everyone is supposed to look at. The staff is trying to get everyone seated.
Woman
Good morning, and welcome, YES students. And congratulations on a successful year. Let's give you all round of applause, just to get started. Woo-hoo!
[APPLAUSE]
Chana Joffe-Walt
But the 13 kids from Gaza are not here. They're in a separate building by themselves with a counselor. And I'm not allowed there. They have a different program because unlike the other kids, they are not going home. The hundreds of other YES students are celebrating their achievements. They're standing up one by one.
A kid from Pakistan says his favorite part of the year was Christmas. He got to go caroling with his host family in California. It was amazing. A girl from Kosovo says she played basketball for the first time.
Student
I actually got to be in the senior night also with all of the varsity girls.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Latoya from Liberia won an award for debate. Danielle from Indonesia got awarded the most spirited cheerleader ever. Zan from the Philippines was cast as the lead in two school plays.
Zan
Now, before I came to America, I didn't really know what theater was. I didn't know that I was going to fall in love with it. But my host dad was a theater teacher, and he introduced me to many musicals and many plays. And I was lovestruck. Lovestruck, basically. And--
Chana Joffe-Walt
Finally--
Woman
I wish you all safe travel home, big hugs with your family, and we hope you come back again on another program in the future. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE, CHEERING]
Chana Joffe-Walt
I did manage to talk to many of the 13 students from Gaza over the next several weeks, and I got an answer to the question Majd had obsessed over all year-- what happened? Why did they all go quiet? It's true, some of them did find her focus on achievement annoying. Some of them had issues with some of her posts. But that is not what happened.
Aboud, the friend Majd applied with, the very first person she called when she got into the YES Program, he went to Minnesota. And he told me after he learned his friend's family had been killed, after watching a video of his friend pulled out of the rubble, he kept going through the motions for a little while, but then--
Aboud
I just couldn't. It was in my eyes. The tears were in my eyes. I remember I cried. I cried at night. And I did the day after and the day after. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I didn't want to see anybody. I didn't want to get out of bed. Didn't want to interact with anybody. I just wanted to not be.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Eventually, Aboud says emotional numbness kicked in and never really went away.
Aboud
It's like a black hole. It's sometimes just sucking all of your organs in, and sometimes it's just looming. Yeah, this is kind of how I feel it.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Were you in touch with the other Gazan exchange students during that time?
Aboud
At least I tried to contact them a few times to tell them like, hey, how are you? If you need anything, I'm here for you. But deep down, I knew I was just saying this to say this because I couldn't tolerate.
Chana Joffe-Walt
You couldn't actually be there for them.
Aboud
Yeah. And that's something I'm not very proud of. Sometimes I would ghost people because I didn't have the capacity to deal with people.
Chana Joffe-Walt
The whole year, Majd had wondered the most natural 16-year-old question-- what is everyone thinking about me? The answer is they weren't thinking of her. Here's Shahd. She was in Ohio.
Shahd
I don't know. I believe everyone was just too much focused on their own drama. I mean, I was focused on my host family. If they see me talking to someone in Arabic, they would make a huge deal. So I was like, no, I'm going to limit that.
And then I was focused too much about knowing if my parents were alive or dead, and then focusing about how I'm going to manage to make friends in high school with people who don't even like my identity, and then fighting with my US history teacher so he could make me present about my country.
It was mainly just everyone so much focusing on their drama that no one actually had the time or even thought about just talking to each other. I was even scared to ask them what their situation of their family was because I didn't want to hear someone saying that, oh, my brother died, or, oh, my cousin was shot, or something like that. Because I always felt like-- I mean, in my mind, I'm going to go and tell him or talk to them about what's going on with my family, but they could be going through something worse.
Chana Joffe-Walt
This, I heard again and again. Things were bad for me, but I didn't want to tell anyone about it because it could have been worse for someone else. So they didn't talk. Majd was alone in her experience, and so were all of them. They all went through a terrible thing separately. And then they continued on alone.
Farah and Fatima went to Egypt to be with their parents. They are both right now trying to figure out how to enroll in school there, which involves finding money and being sent from one government office to another, asked to provide paperwork from educational institutions that no longer exist.
Ali is applying for asylum, like Majd. Aboud and Shahd both got into boarding school in the United States, Aboud in rural New Mexico. When I asked what he knew about what it was like there, he said, have you seen The Shining, you know, the castle? That's what it looks like.
They were supposed to be a crew, the YES '24 group. They were supposed to take a group picture and add it to the end of their Instagram highlights and then travel home and hug their parents and present about their experiences in classrooms-- mini celebrities in a place most of them expected to live the rest of their lives. They were supposed to be the group of alumni on stage in high school auditoriums in Gaza, telling the younger kids, you got to go. It'll change your life.
Majd is in Michigan now. She's moved in with her relatives.
Chana Joffe-Walt
How is it?
Majd
It's been a little weird. The culture definitely is different here.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Like, what kind of thing?
Majd
I mean, family gatherings and the kinds of foods that they make and going to the mosques, seeing the community and everyone. And, yeah, it all reminds me of home. I find myself very sad and even crying sometimes because I want to be doing these things with my own family.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Majd sounds so much older to me ever since she arrived in Michigan. There's less of the urgent, hyper kid. She's sad sometimes, but she sounds solid. She's talking about what happened last year, in Arabic, talking about her family with people who actually know her family. It's enough like home at her aunt's house that it's not really possible for her to set everything aside. She has to find a place for it.
She's noticing when she smiles as she's saying sad things, trying not to do that. She started therapy. And she started school again. She needs more credits to graduate. Majd is doing another senior year, a senior year she never planned on. This time, she's not trying to make it perfect.
["THIS MUST BE THE PLACE" BY KISHI BASHI]
Credits
Chana Joffe-Walt
Today's program was produced by Miki Meek and edited by Nancy Updike. The people who put together today's show include Jendayi Bonds, Sean Cole, Dana Chivvis, Michael Comite, Aviva DeKornfeld, Emmanuel Dzotsi, Henry Larson, Tobin Low, Katherine Rae Mondo, Stowe Nelson, Nadia Reiman, Marisa Robertson-Textor, Ryan Rumery, Amelia Schonbek, Frances Swanson, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu.
Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emanuele Berry. Special thanks today to Hany Hawasly, Eli Saslow, Michelle Navarro, Safiyah Riddle, Milca De Paz, Amalia Campbell, Reba Myall-Martin, Racceb Arikew, Chris Page, Jennie Hester, and the Snyder Methodist Church, and all the parents of all the YES students and their host families in America who spoke with us.
Our website, thisamericanlife.org. You can stream our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our boss, Ira Glass. He's actually visiting Torey Malatia this week.
Majd
We have separation anxiety. We have to be together.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Weirdly, Ira said someone named Mark has been keeping them apart.
Majd
I'm like, Mark, please let us be together.
Chana Joffe-Walt
I'm Chana Joffe-Walt. Join us next week for more stories of This American Life.
["THIS MUST BE THE PLACE" BY KISHI BASHI]