the class casper

I thought I was seeing things.

‘Ammu (Uncle) Rajai, the elderly school handyman who shares my grandfather’s name and green eyes, had ushered this new student into my classroom without explanation.

Is this– Ahmad? But Ahmad is right here.

Then, I remembered. When I saw Ahmad a couple months back, I thought he was Abdelrahman. This boy here, then, this one was Abdelrahman. Yes, these were the serious, narrowing eyes of Abdelrahman. Wow. He has the beginnings of a mustache.

Over a year ago, I met Abdelrahman as a boy of thirteen whose body and mind couldn’t for a moment sit still.

He was the class jester. Throughout that three-day workshop, he had footnoted my every sentence with a witticism and, as my brother does with my mom, he kept me so busy smiling that it was impossible to get upset with him.

Abdelrahman was also one heck of an orator. He performed a poem by Mahmoud Darwish in which a mother bewails her son’s loss. By the end of the poem, Abdelrahman was a-wailing and we swore to one another that he cried real tears. Add a few dozen pounds, a fellahi gown and scarf and he could’ve easily passed for a bereaved Palestinian mother.

And now, over a year later, he was back.

I had asked after him when classes first started, and an administrator informed me that the boy had moved out of town. He now attended a public school.

I didn’t inquire after the details then, but it saddened me. He was one of the students I best remembered. He was the one who, after hearing that I was part-Libyan, drew himself as a soccer player in green uniform and wrote, “Kirmal Leebya. For Libya’s sake.”

I thought I’d never see him again.

But yesterday, one of my boys ran into him on the street, and so here he was.

It was like seeing a ghost, really, a dead man who grew a little taller instead of more rotten with time.

And I’m glad he came, because I used to think my students a rowdy bunch, but no. Abdelrahman really helps to put things in perspective.

The boy is a one-man show. Every two minutes, he’s in a different seat, with his arm around a different boy. It’s like teaching an Animaniac. Next to him, the rest of the boys seemed subdued, the girls nonexistent. Today, my students were all — and I included — a sort of audience for this boy’s remorseless humor.

In fact, his peers made him out to be the very embodiment of vice. I suggested moving him to another seat and, to my surprise, those boys arm-wavingly protested.

“No, please! He’ll talk to us. We’ll talk to him. We won’t focus. We won’t. We won’t.” They were like believers who underestimate their own faith and beg not to be tested.

“If you  bring him over,” Ahmad raised his hands in surrender, “then it’s ‘amas’ooliytik (at your risk). Don’t ask us about the consequences.” He clapped his hands, as if clearing himself of blame.

After class, Abdelrahman apologized for the stir he’d caused.

“Miss, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Wallahi (by God), I’m sorry. I apologize. I’m sorry–”

There’s something ridiculous, even mocking about apologizing this profusely. It was my turn to narrow my eyes at him. If humor is a defense mechanism, this boy must have mountains to hide, and a herculean wit to man the gates.

Still, I didn’t know why he felt the need to fire so many sorries at me. It’s not like I was dodging his apologies and bolting away.

“I believe you. I believed you the first time you said it.” He quieted down, like a ghost who, mid-shout, realized that a bustling crowd could hear him, that he didn’t have to shout anymore.

“So, we have class this Wednesday?” He asked, almost embarrassed.

“Yes. 1 pm.”

“Alright. I’ll be there.”

“Hey,” I called after him. “Welcome back.”

missed calls i don’t miss

I kept getting missed calls from the same number. The phone would ring once and then it’d be  ’1 missed call.’ That or my phone battery would instantly die. What kind of cursed number was this, anyway?

I considered returning the call, but thought better of it. If it were a flirter at an inopportune time, I’d have a lot more calls to miss, intentionally. That is, until my aunt’s husband came from doctoring to his second job (as phone warden).

I’d just wait for it to come then answer, I decided. It had rang a thousand times; it would ring again.

It did. This morning, at 6 am. I missed it. Then again at 8:30 am. I pounced on it, got it on the first ring.

“‘Alo? Hello? Who’s with me?”

“Z, your student.”

“Hi Z. Are you the number that keeps calling me at odd hours?”

“Why don’t you answer your phone?” He sounded offended as hell.

“I– My phone battery dies — I couldn’t answer in time.” I couldn’t believe I was justifying myself to a student. Why did he feel so entitled to my time and credit?

Then it occurred to me that there might be an emergency.

“Is something the matter? Is everything alright with you?”

“Yeah. No, there’s nothing. What did you want?” As if I’d called him at 6 in the godforsaken morning.

“Nothing. No, nothing.”

“Okay. Goodbye, then.” He hung up, still sounding hurt.

To tell the truth, I don’t know what to make of it.

The only semi-decent explanation I have is that, perhaps  he wanted to add me to his contacts but needed to ensure that the number was correct. And I had made that simple task an arduous two-day chase.

None of my students have thus far abused this privilege, and I shan’t count this as an infarction. But, by golly, I’m going to have a chat with that little punk. (Judging by that phone conversation, I wouldn’t be surprised with myself if all this bullishness translated into an apology.)

Yes, I need to talk to him and, no, I will not call.

united under the tree of knowledge, divided over wikipedia

My favorite high school English teacher once said that friendship is never telling each other “‘I told you so.”

But saying “I told you so” — between friends or not — has always seemed more redundant than mean-spirited, because all the air particles around me seem to be chanting it. Toldjaso-toldjaso-toldjaso. Among that flurry of toldjasos, the last is only the straw that breaks the camel’s eardrum.

Now, I’m generally on the receiving end of an “I told you so” or, worse, a “You’ll say your mother never told you so.” But the other day, the sun set in the east.

Literature class at UJ. The professor gives discussion points to those who share information about an author. So all the over-achievers come prepared. Safaa, one of my classmates and a petite mother of two, is among them.

As she reviewed her papers before class in anticipation of the professor’s question, I peered over. Even though the font was illegibly small and I couldn’t make out a thing, the format looked familiar.

“Where do you get your information?” I wasn’t trying to compare notes; this was straight cheating. I didn’t have any sources for obscure Arab authors’ biographies. I needed this.

“Wikibedia,” she said with a smile.

“Oh, Wikipedia!” I exclaimed, just as I had when I found a Subway franchise on Medina Street. “You know what’s funny? I love Wikipedia and, in college, I used it all the time to prepare for classes, but my professors would always remark that they wanted us to use more sophisticated sources, peer-edited journals and the like. But Wikipedia is just so reliable and accessible. It’s so hard to resist.”

She listened wide-eyed, then shook her head, “Our professors don’t mind.”

Class began, hands shot up and the professor pointed at a girl in the far back. The girl gave more biographical information than even the author’s mother cared to know.

“Get to the relevant material. Tell us about his work, its characteristics, his style.”

When the girl fumbled, hands shot up, but before the professor could pick someone else, the girl started up again. She was like a sputtering faucet at first, producing rusty water. But now clean water gushed out and washed away the dirt and grime. Now she was talking. The professor nodded and made positive interruptions.

Then, the student misspoke. Or misread. Or misled. (I’m getting carried away.)

“What is your source for this information?”

“Wikipedia,” came the confident reply.

“That is unacceptable,” the professor retorted, rearranging her papers in dismay. “You need to be able to trace the information to specific sources.  How else can we discuss its integrity?”

I saw Safaa turn self-conscious, as if her papers were glowing fluorescent green under the teacher’s UV vision.

I avoided her eye. I didn’t want to rub it in, to effectively rub salt into my own wounds. This was war. The sea of ignorance was before us and the armies of professors approached from behind. They’ll try to divide and conquer, but not us, not now. We shall raise the (please-donate) banner of Wikipedia and march forever onwards.

Back to reality.

The professor wasn’t done dragging the student in the mud. “Why didn’t you look the author up in the library?” she asked.

“I did, ductora, but there wasn’t anything there.” This wasn’t a first. The UJ library had failed many a student before.

“You’re right,” came the reply, “They did burn down the library.”

The student made no comeback. I’m sure she realized that the library isn’t the only one with the power to fail a student.

a magic trick

Today, I made one of my eighth-grade boys cry.

He was listening to the radio in class. I asked him to turn it off several times but, I’d turn my back a moment and it’d be on again. Arabic pop music on a cell phone, with the boys of that table crowded around. When I saw that they had fewer than three lines of writing on each of their journal pages, I snapped. (They were supposed to have had a page done by then.)

“Please step outside, Abdelrahman.”

The straight- and brown-haired boy took a few steps towards the door, then stopped hesitantly and raised his eyebrows at me as if to say, “Do I have to? Like really really?”

Yes, really really, I thought. “Wait outside ’til I call you back. Two minutes.”

Class went on. We started a collective story-writing activity. The story we came up with was about a boy who ventures out into the forest with his friend Akram on a moonlit night, only to be transformed upon being bitten by a wolf into a wolf, bearing a silver pendant. The friend-turned-wolf defends Akram against the rest of the pack and is dangerously wounded. Akram then searches for the flower embossed on the silver pendant and uses it to nurse his friend to health (and, magically, to humanity).

As this whole midsummer night’s dream unfolded, Abdelrahman stood outside, like a model on a magazine cover, with legs loosely crossed, arms folded against his chest, leaning proudly and a little indignantly against the wall. That’s what I saw anyway when one of his friends reminded me of him. My two-minute sentence had turned into a fifteen-minute purgatory. I don’t know which hurt him more, the humiliation of being out there for so long or the sense of being utterly and inconsolably forgotten.

Not surprisingly, when I invited him back in, he shook his head ever so slightly and shrugged his eyebrows as if to say “there’s no use.” Although I knew that I owed him a few minutes of persuasion-time, so that he could come back to class with a few shards of dignity, I couldn’t leave the class to be with him, so I didn’t press him further.

One of the boys offered to cajole him but returned, to my distress, without Abdelrahman. Another boy said he’d give it a try. He was successful.

Moments later, there was a ruckus on that table again. The boys were crowded around Abdelrahman. This time, it wasn’t to listen to music, but to comfort him.

“Miss! Miss! He’s crying.”

But Miss! Miss! didn’t know what to do.

I grew up believing that there are two ways to reconcile yourself to a crying child. The first is called the Mama Method. This one involves physical, verbal and psychological expressions of compassion. The second is called the Baba Method. It’s a silent but powerful hug that magically makes you feel safe and right again.

I did neither. I stood anxiously by as his friends teased him, patted his back and squeezed their heads together as if in a huddle. One boy sarcastically quoted a famous Arabic poem of praise, “Rajulun warrijalu qaleelu. A man, and men are few.”

Although Abdulrahman’s head was buried in his arms, I could see that he was now laughing. I was relieved.

As he left for break, I waved him over, but he either didn’t see me or pretended not to. I think he expected me to chastise him further because, when I spoke to him at the start of class, he seemed startled that I apologized.

“Do you forgive me?”

His hand froze in the bag of potato chips. He smiled a toothy smile, looked bashfully down, nodded like a happy puppy and went on munching.

My professors at UJ often joke that their students are present in body but not in mind. Today, I became the teacher whose absentmindedness literally made her student disappear. Lucky for me, that magic trick was not irreversible.