#aboutsama

[sama-not-sam]

SAMA ALI ( AIYSHA HART ) is a THIRTY-TWO year-old UN POLITICAL AFFAIRS OFFICER in GENEVA, SWITZERLAND. They were brought under Richard’s care when they were only THIRTEEN years old. They are known as THE AMBITIOUS because they are ASSERTIVE but also COMPETITIVE. Let’s see what choice they make regarding the fate of Woodrow House.

BASIC INFORMATION

Full Name: Sama Ali Nickname(s): n/a, call her Sam at your own risk Date of Birth: born 1972, exact date of birth unknown; birthday celebrated October 30 Age: 32 Occupation: Political Affairs Officer for the United Nations Current Residence: Sama has a small apartment in Geneva, that she usually rents out. Her job requires her to travel frequently and for extended periods of time, but Geneva is, technically, her home base.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Hair: black, straight, shoulder length Eyes: dark brown Height: 5’9” Notable Features: high cheekbones, heavy eyebrows

PERSONALITY & BEHAVIOR:

Strengths: assertive, determined, pragmatic, resilient Weaknesses: competitive, single-minded, reticent, show-off Quirks: Sama has a bad habit of checking her watch when she’s bored or frustrated, and she’s never without it, or her Blackberry. She walks very quickly, for no reason other than to get to where she’s going that much faster. She will also speak for others, especially people she knows well, if she feels like they’re not answering quickly enough, or if they pause and seem to be searching for words. Her default stance when standing is her feet in third position and her hands in front of her as in first position, muscle memory left over from her years of ballet. Vices: Card games; not for gambling, she generally dislikes games of chance, but more for the thrill of winning. Dance movies; they take her back, whether they feature ballet or not, and Dirty Dancing is actually the romantic ideal. Suppressing emotions; Sama would probably cease to function if she was ever forced to actually look at all the feelings she ignores.

INTEREST & HOBBIES:

Interests: Poetry, feminism, global politics, ballet, The West Wing (an American political drama that she still keeps up with). Hobbies: Sama doesn’t have much time for hobbies these days, she prefers to keep herself busy with work. One hobby, which is almost a habit, that she keeps up is journaling. As a child, she journaled religiously, making sure to keep a detailed account of her life so she could update her parents when they came back for her. While she’s long since let go of that childish dream, she still journals frequently. As a result, Sama is a pen snob. Special Skills/Talents: Sama is a polyglot; fluent in English, Arabic, French, and German, as well as having some conversational Persian and Italian; she is also currently learning Mandarin. She has an admirable talent for landing on her feet, for making the best of a bad situation or snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Some may call Sama lucky, but to do so would discount all the work she puts into getting what she wants.

BECOMING A WARD

Sama is Richard’s most famous ward, not that anyone outside of herself, Richard, and Mrs. Tristan ever knew that. In October of 1973, there was quite a stir over a baby found in Grand Central Station, initially assumed to be lost until it became clear she’d been abandoned on purpose. With no identifying information other than a name pinned to the back of her jacket, the authorities were unable to find her parents and Sama was ultimately shuffled into foster care. Think pieces and op eds will still occasionally surface about the Grand Central Girl, which Sama has a morbid fascination with. What is common knowledge in Woodrow House is this; in 1986, an essay about the foster system was submitted to Kingsbury College’s annual writing contest, and it caught Richard’s attention to the extent that he just had to meet its author. He loved telling the story of his shock and delight on discovering that the essay had been written by a 13 year old girl, despite the fact that Sama insisted she never forgave him for the discovery that disqualified her from the contest. Over the course of a summer the two kept in touch, and letters turned into phone calls and eventually became face to face meetings. It didn’t take long for Richard to decide to take Sama on as his ward, but convincing Sama to accept his offer was another matter.

LIFE AS A WARD

By the time Sama arrived at Woodrow House, she’d given up her girlish dream that her parents might come back for her and realized she would have to make them see their mistake. At 13 she was already the ambitious one, the one with big, big plans to become a household name, although she never told anyone why. She was always busy, always doing something, never making time to really build meaningful relationships. Which is not to say she was anti-social, she just preferred to socialize by crashing someone’s private tutoring, or trying out another ward’s latest extra-curricular. She loved learning new things and gaining new skills, and rarely quit before achieving a high level of competency. Woodrow was Sama’s seventh foster home, and she never really treated it as anything more than that, so by the time she got there, she knew how to carve out a space for herself, and how to defend it. She decided at an early age that she was never going to be anyone’s whipping girl, and she came on a little strong when she first arrived. Even when she realized that Woodrow House was not a typical foster home, she was still assertive, and sometimes too assertive, about her right to be there. It intimidated some of her fellow wards, but others weren’t phased by it. Regardless, she was never a warm and fuzzy person, and she never wanted to be a sister-figure. The roles Sama played in Woodrow House were simple. She firmly established herself as one of the older wards, usually holding herself above the younger ones. She was a favorite, both of Richard and Mrs. Tristan. She wasn’t afraid to use that to get what she wanted when the occasion called for it, but she also maintained that the reason she was a favorite was because she never asked for too much.

AESTHETIC

Sama’s style icon is CJ Cregg, from the American political drama The West Wing. She’s a big fan of power suits and loose blouses, and prioritizes high quality, classic styles over seasonal trends. She eschews many of the moment Y2K styles in favor of the designs from her twenties, maintaining a sleek and minimalist wardrobe. A businesswoman to her core, her version of dressing down is a sweater set and slacks. She favors neutrals and darker colors, and generally avoids prints. She likes headbands and still wears scrunchies when she’s having a rare casual moment. She has a modest collection of subtle stud earrings that she rotates in her single lobe piercings, and are the only jewelry she regularly wears.

EDUCATION

As soon as it was permitted, Sama chose to attend a prestigious, and private, girls’ school, where she made rather more enemies than friends. She was quickly identified as a teacher’s pet and know-it-all, because the purpose of school for Sama was to learn and climb to the top of her class. When she graduated, her valedictorian speech brought many of the parents in the crowd to tears, but most of their daughters rolled their eyes. For college, Sama set her sights on Columbia University from a young age, and not even Richard’s fondness for his own alma mater could dissuade her. At Columbia, she double majored in Human Rights and Women’s Studies, but more importantly, she learned how to network with her peers, instead of alienating them. Sama welcomed Richard’s offer to pay for her undergraduate work, but when she was ready for grad school, she insisted on taking care of it herself, with a combination of grants, scholarships, and some student loans. Her last step in formal education was a JD degree in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown.

EXTRACURRICULARS

Ballet, tennis, debate, school newspaper. Sama dabbled in all sorts of extra-curriculars during her years at Woodrow House, but only a few were truly hers. Ballet was an interest that started before Richard came into Sama’s life, but her multiplicity of foster homes before Woodrow House made it difficult for her to truly commit to it, so Richard arranged for her to take private lessons in order to catch up with other dancers her age. The precision and structure of ballet appealed to Sama, as well as the fact that it was a challenge. Tennis was something she did because Alison did it, which is to say that she liked having an opponent who was as competitive as she was, and that she liked being around Alison. Debate and school newspaper were both things that looked good on her college resume, but she enjoyed them, as well, especially when she was made editor of the newspaper her senior year.

THEIR LIFE NOW

After graduating from Georgetown, Sama got a job at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, where she began steadily working her way up through the ranks. Through it all, she never went back to Woodrow House, despite it being relatively close. There was always some sort of excuse, and it always boiled down to she was just too busy. She refused to admit that there could be anything else keeping her away. She never went out of her way to keep in touch with her fellow wards, but if any of them were willing to put in most of the work, she wouldn’t ice them out, with one obvious exception. Following 9/11, it became clear that her skin color would be a detriment to Sama’s plans, and in 2002, she transferred to Geneva, wanting some distance from the rising Islamophobia in the US. She’s settled into Geneva admirably, even preferring it to New York in some ways. She remains married to her work, pursuing her goals with the same single-minded fervor that prevented her from getting more attached to her fellow wards. Work-life balance is not a concept that Sama has any interest in and, after one situationship with a coworker that ended very messily, the only thing Sama keeps separate from work is her romantic life. Not that there’s much romance in her life, Sama doesn’t really date so much as she has habitual hookups, always strictly feelings-free until someone, usually the other person, drops the ball. Whenever feelings start to get involved, Sama’s mandate is to leave before she gets left. You’d have to have her at gunpoint to get her to admit that she’s lonely, or that all of her achievements are starting to feel empty, but she’s been fighting for the approval of the parents who didn’t want her for so long, she doesn’t know how to do anything else.

TIMELINE

1972: Sama is born, probably sometime in the spring.

1973: Sama is found abandoned in Grand Central Station in New York City on October 30th. She is placed in her first foster home in early November.

1974: Sama is officially made a ward of the state when the case to find her parents is closed.

1986: Sama anonymously submits an essay about the foster system to the Kingsbury College writing contest, of which Richard is a faculty judge, in the spring. Sama and Richard meet and get to know each other over the summer. She moves into Woodrow House as Richard’s ward in late August.

1987: Sama begins her freshman year at a private girls’ school in the fall.

1991: Sama graduates from high school in the spring. She begins her first year at Columbia University in the fall, never returning to Woodrow House.

1995: Sama graduates from Columbia in the spring. She begins her first year at Georgetown Law in the fall.

1998: Sama graduates from Georgetown Law in the spring. She begins working at the UN headquarters in New York City over the summer.

2002: Sama takes a job at the Geneva branch of the UN.

2005: Sama receives the news of Richard’s passing and returns to Woodrow House.