Arrival VR: Ihssane Shares Her Immigration Story

Brookline Interactive Group (BIG) and its project, the Public VR Lab, are proud to present the latest interview from Arrival VR. This co-created immersive storytelling project is the first national virtual reality (VR) filmmaking collaborative project curating immigration stories of Americans from pre-1620 through 2018 and incorporating them into a visual XR/VR timeline. The Brookline Community Foundation has awarded a generous grant to BIG to support their efforts to record immigration stories from the Brookline community to contribute to this project.

Members of the public are invited to participate in this project and share their family's immigration stories at BIG's studio in Brookline. We'll be holding the next interviews on January 22. To learn more, please visit http://immigrationvr.com.
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Can you introduce yourself and tell us where you moved from, and what were your hopes for a new life here?

“My name is Ihssane Leckey. I moved from Meknes, Morocco - this was in 2005. For me, coming to America was a dream since I was in middle school. I remember one day I was with a friend of mine, and there was this guy who sells candy outside of middle school. He called me, I went to him and he said, 'Show me your hand, I can show you what your future is going to be like'. I thought it was a complete joke. I showed him my hand and he said, ‘You’re going to go to America’ and I started laughing. He got seriously offended. He said, ‘I don't do this with anyone and your palm tells me you're going to America’.

"So one day, my brother who had come here in 1998 I believe, through the diversity visa, he was getting married and I received an invitation to the wedding. So I told my mom... you know, let's just try it out. I speak English, I've been going to the American Language Center since I was 13. So I'm just going to try it out.

“So we went up to Casablanca and I went to the embassy. I told them I would like a visa to go to my brother's wedding and the first question was, are you going to go there and stay for school and not come back? I said, well I just had my internship, so I have to go back to school and finish my program. So they said okay, if you go and get a two-way plane ticket to New York City, then you come back and we will give you the visa. So I went ahead and I borrowed money… came back the next morning and they gave me the visa to go to America. And on that visa it said, ‘Traveling with sick mother’. My mom was not sick, but I guess they had to come up with some kind of reason so that I would come here.

“I remember I was 19 and when the day came that I hop on that plane and come here by myself... I was engaged at the time. The marriage was not my choice. The person that I was with was my boyfriend for six years, from the day my father died when I was 13 until the day I left. My family, they pushed me into getting engaged, they threatened that I would leave school to marry him if they found about anything from my past...

“So when I came here, I felt so free on that on that airplane. I felt that although I have so much uncertainty about what's going to happen, when I get here, I just felt that I was so happy that I am being given a second chance of my life to do what I really want to do. To go to university, to help the world in the way I think is right, and to have freedom for myself as a young adult who's figuring out life and who wants to get to know other people and eventually decide for myself who I want to marry...

“I got off the airplane and there was my brother and his wife who he’s going to have the wedding with, and there was her brother, who I didn't know at the time was going to be my future husband...

“So here I am in the US, with an American boyfriend, who proposed to me on the top of the Empire State Building, and who married me in the mosque, and then his family threw a little wedding for us, very intimate on Staten Island, and the next step for me was school. When I got married I had already received my F-1 visa. I went to Community College, Borough of Manhattan Community College… So my journey to the future me started then. I studied business at BMCC and then my husband got a job offer up here in Boston, so I applied to Boston University and got in on a scholarship of Women in Math, which which was amazing. Back in Morocco, you either had this special bone of math in you or you did not, and I was believed to not have the special bone because nobody in my family is a scientist or mathematician... It was that social pressure, that there was this disbelief in you that you can't do it, you're not built for it. Here in America my husband believed that I can do it, my Community College believed that I can do it, and Boston University believed that I can do it. And yes I did.”

What family did you leave behind in Morocco, and did any family follow you after you arrived in the US?

“I left behind my mom, my brother who suffers schizophrenia, and my other brother who is married and now has three children. When I left he had his first little newborn. So I feel that I missed a lot. My mother's side of the family is very very large and I have cousins that I grew up with like sisters and brothers, and I missed a lot of their events, their weddings, naming parties, a lot of Eids… So yes, I did miss a lot when it comes to my family in Morocco. My mom was granted a 10-year visa so she comes and goes which has been also really great.

“But one of the times that really broke my heart was when I graduated college at Boston University. I wanted my brothers to join me on that day, I was the first in my family to graduate college, and it meant so much to me and I wanted them to witness that time. [But] they denied them the visa. And that really broke my heart. I think that there are so many immigrants out here who have come and have done well by this community and by this country and have continued to give... But not to have their families come visit them during times that are so important to their lives, it's just heartbreaking. Because they're left with no choice, the choice to go back is not truly a choice, they're going to stay here because… they have the passion for being here.”

Did you ever feel unwelcome, or experience any struggles during your early years in the U.S.?

“When I lived in Jersey City with my husband, we had no heat and we had mice that would come up every day.... I would think to myself, it's such a metaphor. We never had mice back home, our house was squeaky clean and my mom kept everything organized. And I would look at those mice and I would think to myself, “Jeez, where I came to?” But is it worth it? Oh yeah. A billion percent. I knew where my future was going to be. I knew the confidence I had, and the energy I had, and the people that I was with who believed in me, my husband who believed in me, that I will get to where I need to get, to stand for people like me and give them a better chance when they get started.

“There was one time when I felt particularly unwelcome. I was at a job right after I graduated. There was a person in the office who said to me, ‘I'm just curious, why are you here, why did you come from your country to here and take this job?’ And I said... this is a better opportunity here, there's really good colleges here, and this is the American dream. To me, it was like, what kind of question is this? This is what my whole life I have dreamed of and worked hard for. And she said to me, ‘You should go back to your country, you left your family and everybody just to come here,’ and she didn't get it. Why not say, ‘That's amazing, we really love having people like you here who come and work from the heart and care about our people and care about the world; we really need more to come here to enrich our lives.’ But that’s the only incident. I've met so many great people who have been very welcoming and who have acknowledged that we all come from somewhere.”

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About Arrival VR
Led by Brookline Interactive Group, and its project the Public VR Lab, Arrival VR is a nationwide collaborative curating immigration stories of Americans from pre-1620 through 2018 in a visual XR timeline. The project has fifteen partners across the United States, and will be shared online, in virtual reality, at film festivals and at arts and cultural organizations nationwide with a curriculum for engaging community dialogue about immigration. The project ponders a shared experience and visual timeline of the commonalities and complexities of American immigration throughout history using XR as a platform for a field-building strategy for emerging media.
About the Public VR Lab
The Public VR Lab is growing a field for Community XR that promotes accessibility, digital inclusion, and diversity. The Lab is disrupting traditional media communications in community-based civic media, journalism and arts, cultural and educational organizations by providing XR Toolkits, equipment, training, cohorts, artists residencies, fellowships and content in the public interest. The Lab is a project of Brookline Interactive Group, a next generation public access community media arts center. www.publicvrlab.com