Leila Seif

Name: Leila Seif (Leila supposedly means "dark" or "night")

Age: 37 years.

Gender/pronouns: Female, she/her

Occupation: Works at a flower shop. (Open to change, but I think it's perfect, since abusers can be the least expected people, much like flowers. Maybe just a beginning job while she looks for a better one in the area, depending on what I decide for her.)

Appearance: Dark-skinned woman wish an oval, kind-looking face and large, intense eyes. She straightens her naturally kinky hair, but covers it with a hijab in public.

Personality:

Leila is someone who thrives in a social environment, but doesn't really change herself to be what others might want.

She is always doing something with her hands, and craves adventure and excitement. She loves being around people, but all people-jobs get old quickly, and she can't stay in one place for long.

She was neglected by her own parents as a kid, and made some very regrettable decisions, so now she tries to always be there for her kids, and keep them out of trouble and on the road to success, like she wasn't able to. (Living through them, pressuring them to be "perfect.")

Leila can be very controlling over others, and has a difficult time acknowledging and accepting constructive criticism, or seeing things from another person's point of view. She is very focused on herself, and seems to believe that her own perspective is the only one that matters.

Her kids, for example, have to get good grades, and she's “setting them up for success in a cruel and challenging world.” She's strict, but it's “for their best interests.”

(It's emotionally abusive, especially when she doesn't recognize that they \*are\* trying, but they still can't be perfect.)

History:

Leila was born in Egypt to a single, hardworking mother, after her father’s untimely death. She was too young to remember him; his absence from her own life made her fear for her kids when her own husband left for a job in Long Island, even though she knew it would be for the best if things worked out.

She was her mother’s only surviving child, but her mother was rarely there for her when she was growing up, always busy with work. She told Leila that it was to give her a good life, full of things she wanted but Leila felt forgotten. She only wanted someone to be there for her.

Leila spent a lot of her younger years at the nextdoor neighbor’s house, playing with their middle child, Ashja (which is a boy’s name, but I think it’s cool; maybe her parents convinced themselves that she would be a boy. Or maybe she/he is trans or non-binary in this AU, and that was just their given or secretly-chosen name.. Hm. Interesting thing to consider even for the cats, because we love diversity).

Ashja and her brothers were pranksters, and Leila was a self-proclaimed leader, so they got in a lot of trouble, especially once they could be trusted to go outside on their own.

Those were the fun days.

When they got even older, Leila’s anger at her mother and life as a whole grew more prominent. Ashja’s family were loving, but Leila couldn’t stay with them forever, and she doubted that they cared about her as they did their actual kids, anyway.

Her own mental health spiralled, though she tried to hide it. She found the wrong crowd to hang out with, who boosted her confidence in all the wrong ways, and fuelled her desire to escape the life she didn’t want to be stuck in, and to take more risks.

Leila invited Ashja to go thrill-seeking with her, and got defensive when Ashja tried to ask what was wrong.

She got Ashja to go with her and her friends a few times, to do whatever it was they did, and eventually got in a fight about it. Ashja didn’t want a part of whatever Leila was doing, and Leila got angry. Ashja said that she could be there for Leila still, but that’s exactly what Leila’s mother said.

\*“I AM here for you, Leila! I can’t just quit!”\*

“I am not going out with you, Leila. I can be there for you at \*home.”\* or “I’ll be there for you once you get yourself together more. This isn’t how you heal.”

Leila so desperately wanted to cling to Ashja and never let her go. (Ashja pulled away from her grip.)

Ashja left.

.

Around seventeen or so– two or more years past– Leila had time to think things over and mature. She regretted a lot of things, but Ashja’s family had moved away, where Leila couldn’t follow.

She was more quiet, and realized her fault there. She was trying to get herself together to make her own way in the world, still with her own sense of how it should be done. Most women just married and had their husbands work, but Leila knew she wouldn’t be content working about the house.

Her mother was respectful of this, since she had gone the same route, and realized by now that she probably wasn’t in Leila’s life enough to have much say, but it was difficult for Leila to find a job when the vast majority of the working class were men, which did not help her mental health.

I don’t know Blue’s past, because I need to reread it, but she eventually met him, and he was one of the only people she found that respected her for who she was.

The two of them were good friends for a while, and Leila found herself calming down around him, though she still had her moments of intense anger, or depressive moods.

The two were good, though, for a while. Leila found a job she enjoyed, and it was surprisingly good.

She kept working after she found out that she was pregnant, but hid it from other people until she came to terms with the idea of taking care of an entire miniature human. She couldn’t be a parent; she had a job, and she couldn’t repeat history. She couldn’t give up her job, either.

When the baby was born, she strapped baby Samma to her chest and continued working for as long as she could.

When Samma got sick and couldn’t breathe, she took days off to watch over her baby, afraid it would be her last. She wanted to be there for her daughter, in the end, if she could. She didn’t want to repeat history. (She refused to leave Samma’s side, even if Blue would there for her in her stead.)

When Samma recovered, miraculously, Leila fussed over her for a few days more, before bringing her kid back to work.

When Samma got bigger, Blue tried to convince her to leave the baby with a sitter, who would have more time for her, and who wouldn’t have to juggle her and work, both. Leila refused, for a while.

Eventually, when Samma became too much to bring to work without the risk of losing whatever job she had, Leila finally left her with a babysitter. Unfortunately, when she came home, she found that Samma had been screaming her head off the entire time, and her voice was barely there anymore.

Instead of trying to slowly get her baby used to being away from her, and continuing working, she decided to quit. It was difficult, but she didn’t want to be absent like her own mother was, and there weren’t many resources available for separation anxiety in children.

Leaving her job was also not the best idea, for her or for Samma. If Blue offered to quit so that he could watch her while Leila kept working, she refused.

She walked Baby Samma around the city frequently while Blue was at work, but it didn’t keep her mind as busy as she needed, and she didn’t know as many people as she did before she had a job. On a worse day, she’d see someone who looked too much like one of her old “friends,” or who looked at her slightly wrong, and she’d get angry and protective. People weren’t going to get her baby to smoke, or vandalize property, or say vulgar words if she had any say in it. They couldn’t even think about it.

.

When Samma was a little older, Blue had managed to get her used to being away from Leila for a little longer, probably by distracting her with new things, like toys and playmates.

Samma was a curious little creature, so she learned quickly that being away from Mom was okay. There were new things to be distracted by, and Mom was out of mind until she got overwhelmed or bored. (Thankfully, it curbed considerably when she was a toddler. Leila was skeptical from the start, and still didn’t like being away from Samma, but she had to admit that it was nice to be able to leave for a few minutes without the kid crying. Did she ever mention how much she loved Blue?)

.

WIth rising political tension, Leila and Blue both feared for their little family, especially with another child on the way. Combined with several other factors, they eventually considered moving. Through all the gossip and news articles, they started researching other countries they heard of here and there. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates…

They didn’t want to be so close to home, especially since there was no guarantee that tensions wouldn’t spread. They read about the US– supposedly a land of equal opportunity, and uninvolved with the current Egyptian politics– and considered moving. They didn’t expect to actually be able to do it, but they did.

They moved all around the Northern US, trying to find those equal opportunities, and places where they were treated as humans, before Blue found Long Island and managed to secure a good job, which would hopefully guarantee them a place to stay, with good education opportunities.

While they moved around, Leila built up the courage to actually search for her own job, leaving her kids with babysitters. She knew, now, that it would cause problems if Bahadar never left her, though she was still reluctant.

When her kids were in school, Leila always focused on emphasizing the importance of education, which was something Leila didn’t have access to when she was little. She wished that she had, because it seemed impossible to find a good job in the states without it.

When Samma struggled with reading and fell behind the other students, she was worried, and it only grew as her kid aged and still wasn’t reading like the other kids were.

Dyslexia, teachers started suggesting when she was around third grade and was still struggling with reading English, despite speaking it fine in class. (It made Leila angry; there was nothing wrong with her perfect daughter. She could do math, and loved to repeat stories she heard, and repeat the names of people and the dates of events she learned about in class, so she could read, too. She just had to work harder.)

In one grade, Samma’s reading comprehension grades \*did\* go up. Leila didn’t know why, but she was elated regardless. All the teachers that told her otherwise could shove it.

(Samma learned that, to get Mom’s approval, she had to do well in English, specifically, and might have let her other grades fall to focus on that one, since she didn’t ever get praised for those ones.

When she left the teacher that had been helping her, behind Leila’s back, her grades dropped again.

Thankfully, Blue exists, and I’m going to assume that he was smarter about all of this, and asked the teacher what they did to help. Good Dad Blue helping his daughter with English, when Leila ignored her needs. And probably helped her get an official diagnosis at some point, so future teachers would know that she needed extra help, too.)

Leila continued having problems like this with her kids, even after Ayana was born.

If they weren’t her idea of perfect, she’d prod them closer to that ideal. Do well in school, be neurotypical and able-bodied, behave like the other kids, be someone who is going to succeed in life.

She was also still a helicopter parent, even if it was less obvious. They could do after-school sports, but couldn’t go over to other kids’ houses to play or spend the night. She had to know what they were doing at all times, and was always trying to find new ways to hang out with them: family movie or game night, mandatory, or a day at the mall to window shop and have fun as a family.

If they wanted to spend time alone, they must be sneaking out their windows to party or meet up with their gang friends.

Her problematic behavior isn’t something her kids would recognize as abnormal, but her husband certainly would, which has definitely been causing a rift between them in recent years. Blue keeps telling her to let them have some freedom, and to let them make mistakes, and to give them some time alone, but it’s been mostly ineffective unless her behavior caused an issue that couldn’t be ignored for long.

Other: Human Nightshade. Need to figure out what her favorite bouquet might be… something toxic, so her intense eyes aren't the only symbolism.

Face: It's the eyes. This person looks like some middle-aged woman everyone would see as kind, but I just see her staring into my soul. This be Leila.

[Image to be put in the wiki page later]