My brothers think if I go to school I'm going to do bad things that are against my religion," said Sakibah (not her real name), a student at Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day School. "They say: 'You'll end up with a boyfriend or a drug addict.'" Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day, a public high school for older, nontraditional students, offers refuge to girls like Sakibah -- new immigrants whose families are wary of education for women and the dangers they see in allowing girls to go out of their homes unchaperoned. The school not only helps these girls find jobs and tutors for homework help, it even offers social workers to negotiate with families about staying in school.
But she estimated that 30 or 40 percent of the immigrant girls face the same problem as Sakibah: parents or other male family members who are ambivalent about their finishing school.

The school offers classes from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday and on Sundays, so students can hold jobs or raise a family and still continue their studies. Flexible hours, combined with a wide array of social services -- from medical care to help getting immigration papers -- make it possible for students with complicated lives to finish high school.

"If you tell me you can't come at 5 p.m., we'll make your schedule so you can come at 6 p.m.," said principal Howard A. Friedman, who founded the school in 1989. "We give .employment help, tutors, housing help, legal .assistance."

But the school is discovering that even more is needed for the girls whose families believe that college or even secondary education is unnecessary for women whose lives are expected to revolve around their roles as wife and mother.

"The girls come here and they start adjusting to American ways, and they start thinking about college," Hannat said. "The script that was assigned to them, to cook and clean and get ready to get married, becomes a second choice for them. That causes friction with their families."

The paradox is that families are simultaneously dependent on the education that the girls receive and frightened by the independence it gives them. The girls in school have the luxury of learning English well, while their fathers or older male relatives, struggling to earn a living, may learn only a few words.

There is a role reversal in which the .English-speaking children become the fam.ily representatives to the outside world -- dealing with the landlord or the telephone company or the credit card companies. That role reversal creates tension.

Further, the fathers or older male relatives often suffer a decline in status when they come to this country, while the girls find their status improves -- an additional source of friction.

Sakibah's family, for example, was rich enough to have 10 servants in Bangladesh, where her parents still live. In Queens, her brothers support her with their earnings as taxi drivers.

"Back in their country, the men had dominant status," Hannat said. "They had better jobs than they have here. Here, they are uprooted. They have an identity loss. They may be highly educated, but they are not edu.cated in the American way. They are seen as ignorant.

"The girls are the silent voice at home. When they come to America, they begin to have a voice. It's really adaptation. In class, they will cast down their eyes. The teacher says, 'You have to look me in the eye. Here, we look people in the eye.' It's the only way to get a piece of the American dream."

The school deals with the friction by delicately balancing a respect for the traditions of students' countries of origin with a firm belief that a degree of assimilation is necessary and desirable.

The school sets aside a place for students, particularly Muslims, to pray and permits girls to wear black veils, for example. But social workers also make clear that practices that may be acceptable in other countries -- such as beating a girl to discipline her -- constitute a crime here.

"We listen a lot. That's the most important thing we do," Hannat said. "We work with them to see what their options are. We negotiate with their families." Teachers, volunteer tutors, social workers and even the school security guard work as a team to find the best solutions for students' problems.

Hannat, a Morrocan-born Muslim, sometimes uses passages from the Koran to encourage families to treat girls with respect. "I say: 'The Prophet said honor the woman. The Prophet says you have to take care of her.'"

Many of the girls served by the Family Life Center, like Sakibah, are Muslims from the South Asian countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. But there are Christians as well. The center has helped girls from places as diverse as Kenya, Kosovo, Egypt, Syria, Russia, Hungary and the Dominican Republic cope with overbearing and sometimes violent family members. >

In Sakibah's case, the school dealt with the friction by inviting her brothers to visit, so they could see how safe and well-supervised the building was. They pointed out that girls may dress modestly in black veils if they wish, and that special areas are set aside for prayer. The school has no classes on Fridays -- another plus for Muslims whose Sabbath is Friday.

"We told them to come any time without an appointment," Hannat said. "That gave them the confidence that things were all right."

Still, it's an ongoing struggle to keep Sakibah in school. Last summer, the brothers threatened to withdraw her because she was becoming "too Americanized." This fall, they wanted her to stay home to take care of household chores. "The bottom line is, they don't want me to go to school," Sakibah said. But with careful negotiation, school staff members persuaded them to let her stay.

Like a lot of immigrants, Sakibah em.braces both the traditions of her homeland and the customs of her new country. Her long, black hair is tied in a bun, and she wears earrings and a jeweled stud in her nose. Sometimes she dons a long, traditional robe. Other days, she wears jeans and a .turtleneck.

She works part-time outside the home -- without her family's knowledge or permission -- but she fully expects her fam.ily to choose her husband and to arrange her marriage before she's 21 or 22.

She continues to attend school -- even though it causes friction with her family. But she also accepts her elder brother's .authority, even when he refuses to let her go to the

library or do her homework. "My .brother makes the rules," she said. "If the house is not clean or the rice is not OK, he yells at me. He hits me sometimes, but I get used to it.

"I come to school because I want to get an education. I'm not interested in getting a good job because I know I'm not going to work. But school opens new worlds for me and teaches me to question things.
If I learn something, it's just for me. .

"If tomorrow my family decides for me to get married, there is nothing I could do, I would have to do it," she said. "I don't want to forget my past, where I came from."

Clara Hemphill is the editor of publicschoolreports.org,
an online guide to New York City public schools
published by the nonprofit Advocates for Children.
Her book on New York City high schools will be published in September.

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