Just before Saadani 11 th birthday, she was selected for deportation to Cuba, without her parents’ consent. Though she, like thousands of other Saharaoui youth, was promised that she would be educated, have contact with her family and be able to return to the camps during the summers, this was not the case. In fact, the “short” trip turned in 15 year long struggle to return to the camps to be reunited with her family. When Saadani was finally able leave Cuba in 2002, she learned that her father had died in the hands of his torturers, the Polisario, in prison. Saadani’s mother had fled the camps 8 years prior to her return, so her struggle continued as she maneuvered her way out of the heavily controlled Polisario Camps, through Mauritania and finally back to Morocco where she reunited with her mother and siblings, some of whom she met for the first time.