by Hoda Kotb
By fourth grade, Hala, Adel, and I had made a solid set of friends, living in West Virginia on a typical suburban street with the Renns, Rentons, Cignettis, and Khourys.
We were then informed that we were moving. To Nigeria.
What?!
My dad had a job opportunity that would take us first to Egypt for six months, then on to Nigeria. Looking back, I respect my parents’ approach: This is what we’re doing. It’s not going to kill you. See the world. Get on board. But back then it was challenging.
Here’s how my first day of fifth grade unfolded in Nigeria:
“Oooga waga . . . Oooga waga . . .” That’s what my ten-year-old ears heard anyway.
The class was having a tribal language lesson. All the boys had three tribal scars raked into their faces and the girls had their hair wrapped in thin wire that was then bent backward.
I thought, Where have I landed?!
Adel was just one grade below me, so he and I were in the same school—the one with all Nigerian kids and tough teachers. Adel had a particularly cranky instructor, so I would listen with all my might in case he cried out.
In my classroom, the teacher always wiped the chalkboard with his hand, so his palm was perpetually white with chalk dust. One day, a little boy raised his hand to ask a question. I was encouraged—Okay, kids here ask questions, too. Great! The little boy asked, “Why does the word ‘business’ look like it should be pronounced bus-ness?”
Big mistake. My teacher grabbed the kid’s T-shirt and whacked him with that white hand, puffs of chalk dust wafting with every whack. I was in shock. The teacher yelled, “Don’t say what you don’t understand!” Whack!
Wow. Adel and I would run home and say, “You can’t believe it! They’re hitting kids!”
But my parents would hear none of it. They’d tell us to hush. “Oh, stop being such a baby,” my mom would say. “You’re spoiled!” They were dismissive of our whining. After all, the Nigerian kids were well behaved and super smart. And you know what? That little stint abroad once again shrunk the world for us. Becka Ray and Alaywa Lee from weird Nigeria became just classmates to us. We didn’t even see the tribal scars after a while. We learned that not everybody looks and sounds the same. And now that the chalk dust has settled, I think that’s a terrific lesson for kids.
Summer in Egypt: Me, my mom, brother, grandfather, and sister, 1968
For sixth grade, we moved back to the United States, first to West Virginia briefly, and then to Alexandria, Virginia. Our street was like the United Nations. The neighbors across the street were Greek, next door Chinese. The Kotbs simply represented one more set of coordinates on the world map. Still, this was a hard transition for me. Eleven was an awkward age in the looks department (Who okayed those stop-sign glasses, Mom?!). At least we had a cool house. For the first time, we kids each had our own room. We’d never before seen a laundry chute and loved having a basement. We eventually got settled into our new school and looked forward to summer. That’s when our family traveled to Egypt. And that’s why, if you rummaged through the building blocks of our young lives, you’d find some pyramids. Once a year, we’d travel thousands of miles to visit relatives. (Y’know that “Over the river and through the woods” routine? Well, for me, that river was the Nile.) We’d stay with my mom’s parents in Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo. My cousins lived close by and so did my dad’s relatives, who all lived in the same family-owned building. I got a kick out of figuring out which balcony belonged to which family member. There, we were clearly the American kids, bopping around with our backpacks and high-top sneakers. My relatives could not believe we didn’t speak Arabic.
“Haram!” they’d gasp. “How is this? Harammmm!”
Haram has two meanings. One is sweet, like when you might say, “Oh, my goodness!” out of concern for a child who’s taken a tumble. The other is rooted in alarm—like when you’re worried for a soul.
“Harammmm!” they’d say.
There it was, the alarm. Something about “being against God” or “burning in the fiery depths of hell.” My response was to recite, out loud, the one Arabic prayer my parents taught us. For the most part, though, Egypt was a blast. Imagine, as a kid, having the exotic pyramids as your playground. We used to put our hands on the massive stones and imagine how old they were. We (scared to death and crying) rode camels and donkeys and played in our infinity sandbox. Since our parents brought us to Egypt regularly, the world seemed small. We hopped on a plane and were across the globe. Sampling a different culture wasn’t the chance of a lifetime, it was just summertime.
Hala and me, playing at the pyramids, 1981
Back in the states, my dark eyes, skin, and hair weren’t ever going to change or assimilate. They have always created, and probably always will, a cultural conundrum now and then. As a result, I sometimes offend people by accidentally betraying “our” ethnic group. One that I didn’t even realize I was in—huh?
My all-white basketball team in high school played an all-black team twice a season. I was No. 24. At the end of the game, every player walked through opposing lines to shake hands. But no one on the other team would shake mine. I didn’t get it. What was going on? Some of the black players said, “Oh, really? You’re with them?” I had accidentally betrayed them. To this day, I’ll sometimes get the “Which team are you on?” confusion. One afternoon, riding the subway in New York City, I was standing next to a black guy, and a white guy came on board shaking a can. Passengers were digging into their pockets for change and the black guy next to me said, “Yeah, do you think if that was ‘us’ (there it is), they’d be givin’ ‘us’ any money?” I dunno. I just wanted to play basketball and get to my subway stop.
One of the biggest challenges of looking different is dating. In junior high, I remember being just fine with the two-dimensional male. I tacked a poster on the back of my bedroom door featuring hunky Erik Estrada from the television hit CHiPs. (I loved Barry Manilow, too.) But I had no confidence with living, breathing boys. One time in seventh grade, I was playing Spin the Bottle in a friend’s basement. The bottle landed on Todd Oakes, who I thought was so hot! But he wouldn’t kiss me. Hot Todd said, “Look, I think this is going too far.” I was crushed and confused. Too far, like too intimate? Or, too far, as in thousands of miles away to Egypt too far? He may as well have broken that bottle over my head.
I just had no confidence with boys. And no experience, either. My parents—curses!—decided to go Old World with that segment of our upbringing. Dating? No way. In Egypt, marriages weren’t arranged, but they were certainly well researched. My parents weren’t comfortable with the American “girl-meets-boy-meets-four-more-boys” routine. Even if we did go out, you may as well have turned the car around the minute it left the driveway. Our curfews were ridiculously tight. The Kotbs were always the first to have to leave any place. Crimes common in the United States (like kidnapping and random shootings) were unheard of in Egypt and made my mom and dad very nervous. If my dad answered the phone and heard a boy’s voice on the other end, he’d snap, “No calling here!” Click. My parents’ plan was to find a nice family with a kid they could “research.” Sounds smart to me now, but then? Cruel!
Occasionally, I took matters of the heart into my own hands. Like in junior high, when I made out with Jon Zachman in our basement while my parents were at work. Or so I thought. We were interrupted by the sound upstairs of the front door opening. Yikes! Downstairs, I saw one Jon Zachman spinning out the back door like a whirling dervish. Close one!
The first formal high school dance I went to was not like yours, with the cozy photos in the living room and the special dress. My parents would hear nothing of me going to a dance, so arrangements for my junior prom were undercover. Someone sneaked me a dress, I lied about being with someone else, and I met up with my date, John Langanke, at someone’s house. And that would be the house of the Slurpee. Yep. We rendezvoused at 7-Eleven and snapped our photos right there in front of the building. Norma
n Rockwell and my parents would not have approved, but John and I had a ball.
Fort Hunt High School graduation, 1982
I’d find out in later years that dating in Egypt—where I looked the part—was just as challenging. When I visited Cairo the summer after college, my relatives tried to set me up with a nice Middle Eastern boy. (Not that I’d asked.) I’m surprised they even felt I’d “work” over there, based on my lackluster performance at a family gathering when I first arrived. I was sitting in my grandmother’s living room with a large group of relatives—cousins, aunts, and uncles on each side of me. My legs were crossed, one at a sharp right angle, foot resting on the other, heel pointing out. I noticed the people to my left grew quiet. Hmm. After a few minutes, I recrossed my legs the same way in the opposite direction. The people to my right became hushed. What was going on? Finally, one of my relatives shouted, “Eee! Look at what you are doing! Pointing the bottom of the foot at the people! And then to the other!”
You’d think I’d pointed a gun!
But to Egyptians, that heel bottom is like double flipping the bird. I was basically double flipping off relatives to the left and then rotating the birds to the other side of the family. Nice touch, Hoda.
Still, my relatives thought they needed to set me up. During my visit, I’d be sitting on the couch and there’d come a knock-knock at the door.
“Hoda, someone’s at the door for yooooouuuu . . .”
Oh, Lord.
“This is Mohammed. He’s from Cairo. He’s studying engineering . . . and he has a Mercedes.”
Really? He also has on a long white man dress.
Okay, call it a dishdash.
Still, am I supposed to be turned on by that?
A river of respectable guys with good educations and backgrounds flowed through the door, but I wanted nothing to do with any of them. Even if Prince Charming himself had walked in, he was not the cool, progressive guy I wanted. Plus, never tell me what to do. Bad approach. Worse than the man dress.
So, there you have it. I struggled for years to fit in as a kid. Hardly a rare tale—it would probably be a chapter in everyone’s book about their life. It’s easy for me now at forty-six. New York City is a melting pot, plus I’ve ditched the stop-sign glasses for contacts. I will always be asked “What is you?” And while I’ll proudly explain I’m Egyptian . . . again, the answer in my head will always be: I’m just me.
2
MY FAMILY
I have pictures of my family everywhere. In my apartment, stacks of photos sit on each table and shelf. My refrigerator door looks like a bulletin board. In my office at work, frames of all shapes and sizes are filled with photos of my mom, Hala, Adel, and me. Always huge smiles.
I don’t have many frames that include photos of my dad. Odd, but I guess it’s too painful to look into the eyes of someone who’s not a phone call away.
My Dad
When I was a junior in college, my dad died. To write those words is still such a shock, even after twenty-four years. Like most girls growing up, I put my dad on a pedestal. Each year I built the platform a little higher. As the middle child, I had the prized firstborn on one side and the coveted only son on the other. That left me always eager to win my dad’s approval; and he was one tough cookie. He was old school and intimidating to me. He was very accomplished and very busy at his job, and he kept the bar of expectations raised high for his kids. I remember one day in grade school I brought home a C– in math, and it nearly broke me. I couldn’t muster up the nerve to go downstairs and show my dad the report card. “Just go tell him,” my mom insisted.
With my dad and Hala in Morgantown, West Virginia, 1974
I slunk down the stairs, handed him the poison paper, and turned my back, hugging my sides. “Why did you get this grade?” he asked. I turned back around and came up with some mumbo jumbo. I cringed. He simply said, “Go upstairs and study some more.”
• • •
So much of my emotion for my dad stayed tucked inside my heart and my head.
One rare night when it was just he and I sitting at the kitchen table, he asked me a harmless question: “What’s on your mind?” What?! His question took me off guard—struck me as so unexpectedly personal. In a display of complete emotional insanity, I shot up from the table and exploded into tears. There was so much bottled up inside me that the cap just blew. I was simply out of practice with that tone of conversation with my dad. Emotions were just not something he and I shared. The one and only time I saw my dad cry was when his mom died. I had stepped into my parents’ bedroom and caught him sitting on the edge of his bed with his face in his hands. He didn’t hear me enter, so I slipped out, my stomach in knots. Seeing my dad vulnerable was extraordinarily unsettling to me. I just never thought of him as someone’s son. I felt a jarring mix of sadness for him and fear for me—my dad was human, not superhuman.
Because he’d achieved so much in his life through hard work, my dad wanted us to follow the same path and reap the rewards of living in a free and limitless country. Learning, to him, was the key to everything. Even our dinner table was a classroom. “How do you say ‘fork’ in Arabic?” he’d ask through bites of supper. There was always chicken, rice, vegetables, and current events. “What is going on overseas right now?” he’d ask. “What are you reading?”
Around the time I was a junior at Virginia Tech, my dad was working harder than ever. He had just left his government job to start his own business: International Petroleum Consulting Service. How perfect, I thought. My dad was the president of his business, with an office on Pennsylvania Avenue, right down the way from the other president. (I told you, the pedestal was always growing.) Hala was already out of college, but Adel and I were still students at Tech. He was a sophomore and a proud member of the TKE fraternity. He always joked that he planned to crash one of my Tri Delt sorority formal dances.
And one night he did. I was all dressed up, but Adel walked in wearing street clothes. What was going on?
Adel and me in Puerto Rico, 2010
He pulled me aside and told me to come outside. I was getting scared and I refused to leave.
“No. Tell me now. What’s going on?”
“Dad had a heart attack.”
“Is he okay?” Please say yes, Adel.
“No.”
My parents were at the gym when it happened. Exercise was a big part of our family life. We rode bikes together, my parents played tennis on weekends, and we all had a membership at the local spa. My dad always waited outside the spa workout room for my mom to come out, but on this day, he wasn’t there when she was finished.
Curious, she asked a spa worker to please call out his name in the men’s locker room. The worker came back out to tell her that no one had responded. She figured he’d had a hard time pronouncing Abdel Kotb and assumed my dad was simply delayed. Then, she saw medics running down the hall and into the men’s gym. That’s when she began to panic. “What color is the shirt of the person you’re helping?” she frantically asked a medic. He ran into the gym without answering, but on his way back out for more supplies told her “blue.” My mom’s heart sank. Her world shattered. The same spa worker came out of the gym holding my dad’s wallet. He gave it to my mom. How could this be? My fifty-one-year-old father had just undergone a physical and was told he had the heart of a thirty-year-old.
When that no came out of Adel’s mouth, I began screaming. My Tri Delt sisters tried to hug and comfort me, but I wanted none of it. I pushed them away and ran outside. Adel’s friend dropped us off at his dorm and we just sat in my brother’s room. We played the James Taylor Greatest Hits album for what seemed like the whole night. I must have picked up the needle and plopped it back down a thousand times. We flew home the next day to a house full of people and to what is now simply a blur in my mind. The only image I can remember is my mother. She was a complete mess in her bedroom, saying over and over through tears, “When the husband dies, the wife goes shortly after.” We we
re terrified we’d lose her, too. In my fear, I wrote my mom a letter that night:
I love you. I love you more than I love anyone on the face of this earth. You’re the one who makes me smile, the one who brightens my day. You’re my inspiration and your inspiration is a wonderful man who gave to you and all of us unselfishly. I watched how Dad could brighten your day with just a few kind words. He gave you strength and gave the same to us. Dad gave so much of himself and will always live. Do you understand? Just because he’s not physically here doesn’t mean he’s not here. I carry a part of Dad wherever I go. You must know that all Dad gave to you can never die.
I’m struck now by the desperation in that letter. It was my attempt at a life preserver for my mom. I was petrified I’d lost both my parents.
For quite a while, I lived in a daze. Back at school, I refused to wear my contact lenses or my glasses (and I’m basically legally blind). I silenced my world with a steady stream of music playing in both ears. I walked around like a zombie. It was just easier. In class, nothing mattered. In the middle of a test one day, I just checked out. I started packing up my backpack, and the professor said, “You can’t leave. If you don’t pass this test, it’s going to hurt your average.” I didn’t care. I didn’t say one word. I started to walk out with all my stuff, and out of the corner of one blind eye, I saw my friend, Peggy, get up. She left her test behind, picked up her bag, and followed me out of the classroom. I walked straight to the duck pond, where it was quiet and soothing. I plopped down on a picnic table and Peggy sat down next to me. She didn’t say one word. We just sat. You can probably name people like that in your life, too—someone who, at one of the worst moments in your life, sacrificed their own time, their own tears, just for you. Those are the angels in our lives.