Chapter FIFTEEN

Chapter 15: Counseling

Over the next year and a half, Rafee went through four different counselors, but his favorite was a Saudi female psychotherapist in Jeddah. The first session with her went so amazingly well that Rafee was actually feeling better about himself. If only there were such options available to him earlier.

While I won’t go into the what happened in the sessions, I will give you a brief idea of some of the things talked about that helped Rafee deal with his situation.

---> The key thing Rafee had to realize was that he was a 10-year-old boy, who had no knowledge about right and wrong. So it was wrong of Rafee to blame himself for his being abused. Rafee had to see his life story as an outsider, and once he started doing that, the blame began to shift away from Rafee to the perpetrators. Rafee had to tell his story over and over again, but he had to detach himself emotionally from the 10-year-old boy. This way, he was able to see his story from a different angle and understand it better.

---> As much hurtful as it was, Rafee had to absolutetly try to remember as much as he could, and share it with his psycho-therapist, because he needed to bring everything that bugged him out on the table. This way, he could tackel every little issue, deal with it, and then package that issue in a box and seal it. If he only dealt with issues partially, they would have re-surfaced at a later time.

--->The key emotions Rafee had at the beginning was: Guilt, Fear, Pleasure and Anger. These emotions were inter-connected with one another. He honestly felt pleasure of sorts, which led him to feel extremely guilty because he thinks he took part in the act consensually. Because he felt guilty, he felt anger, and fear. At the beginning, he gave a level of percentage to each of these four emotions. Guilt: 90%; Fear: 90%; Pleasure: 80%, Anger: 30%. As he worked through his issues, he began seeing things from a different perspective. His level of guilt towards himself decreased, as well as his fear and pleasure. His level of anger towards the perpetrators rose, as understood that he was a victim. His emotions were initially directed towards himself, but later, through a transformation of his mind, these emotions were re-directed towards his perpetrators.

However, the most revealing thing Rafee learned from his counselor was that there were loads of other cases here in Jeddah of young boys and girls being abused in all forms, sexually, physical, emotional and mental. I won’t give out the figures, but Rafee told me that there are high cases of sexual abuses in the city, according to the psychotherapist, who said almost all of her cases are regarding abuses in all forms. She saw about 70 such cases per week, and almost all of them were kids who were abused, and now dealing with their past as adults. When Rafee told this to me, I knew the problem definitely existed on a larger scale. It certainly wasn’t a small-scale problem. It’s bad enough the country doesn’t have any outlet for abused kids. Rafee himself made friends with another Saudi, a teenager, who was suffering from the same ordeal. They met in the waiting room at the hospital.

As much as I wanted to deny this, I began wondering why such a thing would happen here. Sexual abuse is a worldwide problem and is not something restricted to the Western world or to the Middle East. It is a universal issue, and most often, the victims suppress their ordeal. Rafee would share with me his sessions with the counselor, and it was simply amazing to see his transformation of his mind and will. If I had more time and space here, I would have gone into the some of the more revealing facts about typical cases in Jeddah.

One day, he came in and told me something.

"Mansur, I took a major step today."

"What is it?" I asked.

"I have forgiven Abdul and Mr. Khalid in my heart. I know they did something horrible, but I have forgiven them in my heart."

"So like, wow....I can't believe you just said that." I said.

"Well, honestly, if I were to see them face to face today, instead of trying to kill them, I would tell them that I forgive them. I am sure they had some issues in their lives. I am sure something must have happened to them to behave this way. Of course, that doesn't justify their actions, but yeah, I have forgiven them....."

My jaw could not have dropped any lower.