He turned to her, “What do you mean?”
“Arabs. You make Arabs look like lunatics. You make us all look crazed with, like, Korans and bombs and, God, I mean wake up!”
Abdul’s eyes were wide.
“O.K., that’s enough. Hala, surely you’ll grant Abdul the right to believe anything he wants to believe, right?”
“I guess. Maybe.”
“Good. All of this began with Colin, so let’s end it there. I’m giving you the choice, Colin. You can leave or you can stay. If you stop coming to class it will influence your class participation grade. However, I will not report your absences to the administration. A student shouldn’t come to class if he or she doesn’t want to. Frankly, arriving here without having read the material your class participation grade suffers anyway. You may as well leave. You seem to be sure you have better things to do. As I’ve said several times already, it’s your choice.”
Everyone stared at Colin. He stared at me. After a few moments he stood, took his backpack from the floor and left the room.
Lily let out a loud breath. “Oh my God.”
The door closed quietly behind him.
It was the first time a student had ever called my bluff.
Abdul shifted in his seat. Ariel’s expression suggested genuine surprise. Rick studied me. Jane smiled her shy smile. Aldo looked at Ariel for a cue. Cara tried to contain a rising laugh. Lily shook her head and said, “Dude,” in disbelief. Hala watched me and chewed on her pen.
I took the photocopies from my desk and began handing them out.
“Each of you has the same right,” I said. “I offer you all the same deal. If you feel that this class is somehow being imposed upon you, please don’t come. My feelings won’t be hurt. There are enough of you here who are interested in what we’re doing, who have demonstrated real enthusiasm for the material. Those of you who feel that your time would be better spent doing something else, go do it.”
When I’d finished handing out the article I sat on the edge of my desk and looked directly at Ariel.
“You’re all free to do as you like.”
She smiled at me as if I’d invited her for a drink.
I looked away. “Well, that’s what I believe. What you have in front of you is an article from today’s Libération. Hala, will you translate?”
“Sure.” She took a breath and read the headline, “Man Killed: Pushed onto the Tracks of the métro.” She looked up at me.
“Go on.”
“Thirty-two-year-old Christophe Jolivet died Monday morning at the Odéon métro station after he was pushed in front of an arriving train. The attacker, twenty-nine years old, was psychologically . . . I don’t know, I guess it would be, unstable. He’s being held at the Sainte-Anne psychiatric hospital. He didn’t seem to know the victim. The police say that he wasn’t under the influence of drugs or alcohol but that he was in an excited state when he was arrested. According to the Police, he’d acted on a ‘sudden impulse.’ The attacker had a long history of violence. He was stopped and held by several morning commuters. Anne-Marie Idrac, speaking for the RATP, complimented the commuters for their courage and their composure. That’s it. More or less.”
“Thanks, Hala. Does anyone know why I’ve given this to you?”
“Because it sort of proves the point.”
“What do you mean Cara?”
She was looking down at her desk making a wide circle with her finger around the article.
“It’s just another example of how random the world is, how nothing makes sense, how you can’t make sense of anything. Everything’s just, I don’t know, a mess.”
“How do you get that from this one story?” Ariel asked. “I mean, maybe the guy deserved it, maybe he was a horrible guy. I don’t know maybe he was a drug addict or something.”
Jane, who had barely spoken since the beginning of the year, jerked her head up and glared at Ariel, “That’s just, that’s, I’m sorry, but that’s just the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. You can’t be serious.”
“Excuse me?” Ariel snapped.
“Jane, perhaps there’s a better way to disagree? Try to explain yourself.”
“Sorry,” she said to the desk, tapping her finger on her notebook.
“Go on, Jane.”
“Well, I just, I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”
“Try anyway,” I said.
She sat there looking at the whiteboard behind me. Her round face was bright red and a rash was descending from her chin down her neck. She took a long breath, “I just think the idea that this guy somehow deserved to die like that because he might have been a . . . a . . . what? What did you say? A drug addict? That’s just, it’s just like something, it just makes no sense to me. I just don’t believe that everything that happens can be, I don’t know. Like you can explain it.”
“But wasn’t that the point of what you read for class? That you can’t explain it but God has his reasons and that we must simply trust in God?” I asked.
“I’m sorry but that’s just . . . ”
“Bullshit, man.” This was Lily.
Aldo laughed and Lily turned to him, “Dude, do you ever say anything intelligent or do you just grunt and follow Ariel around like a puppy?”
“O.K., O.K., O.K. Enough. Everyone calm down.”
The door opened and Gilad walked in. He handed me a note. I read it, gestured for him to sit down and gave him a copy of the article.
“We were just discussing this.”
He glanced at the headline and looked up at me and nodded. “I saw it.”
Abdul raised his hand.
“You don’t need to raise your hand, Abdul.”
“O.K., the thing I wanted to say is that we don’t, it’s that, I agree. I agree with her.”
He said this looking at his hands.
“With whom?”
“With her,” he said shooting a glance over at Ariel who was glaring at him.
“O.K.,” I said. “Go on.”
“Well, God does everything for a reason. Everything that happens on earth happens because, because God has a plan.”
Ariel, obviously sharing none of Abdul’s conviction, looked out the window. Hala dramatically dropped her head into her hands. And Gilad, quiet Gilad, turned to Abdul and asked very simply, “What?”
Abdul looked so meek and frightened. It took such energy for him to make his proclamations, yet he couldn’t seem to help himself, as if he were afraid he’d be punished for being silent.
“Yeah,” he said, nearly whispering. “Everything happens for a reason. It’s, just, it’s, um, it’s what I said. God’s plan.” He scratched the back of his hand.
“I was there.” Gilad looked up at me. “We were both there. Yesterday, we were on that platform. I was there with Mr. Silver. We saw the guy get pushed. I watched him die. I watched him get smashed by that train. I saw that man push him. I saw it. And you’re saying that God was punishing him for, for what? For something he’d done? That there was some reason? That God has a plan? That this was part of his plan? Abdul, it could have been Mr. Silver. Do you understand that?”
Abdul looked at the ceiling and took a deep breath, “Yes. It wasn’t. You saw it. It was part of his plan.”
Gilad shook his head.
“Dude, Mr. Silver,” Lily said, “you guys saw that yesterday? That’s fucked up. Sorry.”
Aldo snorted, caught Lily’s glare, and went immediately silent.
“Yes, that’s why Gilad and I weren’t in school yesterday. And that’s why, in part, I brought in the article. Everything we’ve discussed so far, even the question of choice, is relevant to the text you read over the weekend. If you’ll take a look at the board, you’ll see God’s first question to Job and his subsequent command, ‘Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.’ Everything that’s happened to Job—God’s seemingly cruel and random acts—simply can’t be understood by any man, not Job’
s friends, not his wife and not Job. What’s God’s point, Abdul, when he asks ‘Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?’”
Abdul looked up at me, concerned. “That we can’t really understand God?”
“Good. And? Ariel?”
She let out a breath—this was the second time she’d been brought into the same world as Abdul. “And he’s saying that if you weren’t around when he made the world, then, like, you can’t possibly understand what God does now. So, just give up trying and accept God. And that’s totally what we should do. God has his reasons. We can’t understand them. We just have to trust him no matter what. I mean I’m sorry that Job had all those shitty things happen to him but God had his reasons. And in the end he’s better off than he started. So what’s the big deal?”
“And all the children starving to death in the world? And the girls who are raped on their way to school? And the ten year old who is hit by a drunk driver? That’s all God’s plan?” Jane was trembling.
Abdul was nodding. Ariel turned coolly to Jane, smiled and said, “That’s right,” as if it were her plan not God’s.
“O.K.,” I said. “O.K.”
After the bell rang and everyone else had left Gilad was still sitting at his desk.
“You O.K.?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he nodded.
“Well come by if you want to talk, all right? I have a meeting now but I’m free later so . . . ”
“You?” He interrupted me.
“Are you O.K.?” His face flushed. “I mean I’m sure you are,” he said collecting his things and stuffing them quickly into his backpack.
“Yes. But thank you. Thank you for asking. It was hard to sleep last night. I woke up very early. But I’m fine. I’m fine.”
He smiled at me, hoisted his pack over his shoulder and ducked out of the room.
* * *
I had an appointment to see the head of the school, Laetitia Moore, at ten-thirty and as I arrived she was walking the chairman of the board of trustees into the hallway.
“Always a pleasure to spend an hour together, Laetitia,” he said smiling at her. Turning to leave he saw me, paused for a moment while his face fell from warm flatterer to cold businessman, and left.
She ushered me in and I sat down.
“So, Will. I understand that you didn’t come to work yesterday. Is that right?”
I nodded.
“Can you explain why?” She wrinkled her forehead.
“They didn’t tell you?”
“Something with the métro?”
“Something with the métro? Yes, I saw a man murdered. He was pushed in front of the train.”
“Awful.” She shook her head and spun a heavy silver pen on her desktop.
“I understand there was a student there?”
“Gilad Fisher.”
“And he didn’t come to school either?”
“That’s correct.”
“Did you tell him that would be O.K., Will?”
“We didn’t discuss it. It wasn’t really an option.”
“Why was that?”
I looked at her for a moment and then said slowly, “Because there was a dead man under our train.”
“And so the métro wasn’t running,” she said. She picked up a piece of paper and studied it. “The trains began running again at 11:45. So you decided you’d take Gilad to a café rather than return to school?”
“I didn’t decide anything. It was a disturbing thing to see. To say the least. Gilad saw more of it than I did. He was upset. The métro station, as, perhaps you can imagine, was in chaos. I thought it best for both of us to leave there.”
“I understand, but don’t you think, Will, it would have made more sense to have brought him to school where he could have spoken to a trained psychologist?”
“What psychologist?”
“Cherry Carver, the school’s psychologist.”
“Cherry Carver? She’s a math teacher. Why would I want Gilad talking to her of all people?”
“Cherry Carver is the school psychologist, Will.”
“Since when?”
“Since the beginning of the school year.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I am serious. She did a course over the summer. I’m sure an announcement was made.”
“I didn’t know.”
“That’s not what is at issue here. What is at issue is that you kept one of our students out of school because you felt that you were qualified to counsel him. You refused to provide a sub plan and you neglected all of your day’s classes. It was bad enough that you didn’t come to school. That you kept a student with you opens us up to a lawsuit. I’m sorry, Will, but what you’ve done is difficult to excuse. You have a responsibility to this school. You didn’t fulfill that responsibility.”
My hands were sweating. I could feel the rush of adrenaline. I stared at her. She stared back until eventually she spoke.
“I understand that you were trying to do the best you could for Gilad. I have to trust that you made the decisions you did with Gilad’s best interests at heart but you have to remember that your job is to teach literature, not to counsel our students. Will? Do you have anything to say?”
I shook my head.
“Well,” she said, “if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
“Is there anything else?”
“In fact there is, yes. The reason that Omar was here earlier is that he’s concerned by one of your classes.”
“Omar?”
“Al Mady. Mr. Al Mady tells me that Abdul feels very uncomfortable in your class. What is it?” She looked down at her notes. “Senior Seminar, is that right?”
“Abdul Al Mady is in that class, yes.”
“Apparently, Abdul feels uncomfortable.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Is it true you’ve told the students that,” she looked down at her notes, “that God doesn’t exist?”
I laughed. “No, it is not. While I am confident that I’m a good teacher I don’t feel that I’m in a position to comment on the existence of God.”
“Do you believe God exists?” She gave me a stern look.
“You don’t, honestly, expect me to answer that question.”
She waved her hand as if swatting at a fly. “The point is that Abdul feels isolated, he feels that he’s under attack, that his religion is under attack.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s important, Will, that our students feel at ease in their classes.”
I smiled.
“That’s something that I feel very strongly about. We are here for our students, to provide a supportive environment, to make sure that they feel good about themselves, so that they leave here with high self-esteem. I want each of our students to leave our school with the sense that they are, in their own ways, special.”
“And Abdul doesn’t feel special? Is that Mr. Al Mady’s concern?”
“Omar’s concern, Will, is that Abdul is under attack in your classroom. That simply can’t go on. Not with any student and certainly not with Abdul Al Mady. Particularly not with Abdul. In general, you need to be very careful when dealing with religion in the classroom. And above all, you can’t challenge the faith of our students. Your role is to teach literature, not to question the existence of God.”
“I disagree. I believe it is my role to challenge the faith of my students. In fact, I take it as my primary role—to question their faith in all things. It’s impossible to teach literature, at least to teach it well, without questioning that faith. It also seems impossible that we should be having this discussion and yet here we are.”
“Will, please. I’ve been an educator for more than twenty years. I hardly need a lesson from you. Clearly, a teacher should challenge his students. It is, however, one thing to challenge them and quite another to question their faith in God. You don’t honestly believe that it should be you who questions their religio
n?”
“Within the context of a piece of literature? Of course I do. Those very questions exist already in the work I teach. Have you not seen my syllabus? The reading list?”
“I glanced at it this morning, yes. I saw that you’re teaching The Book of Job. You have to understand that there’s an important distinction, Will, between the questions posed in a text and those you pose directly to your students. You also teach Macbeth, Will. Would you have your students consider suicide or murder? These questions need to remain in the texts.”
I shook my head. “I disagree entirely. Literature is irrelevant unless its questions have some bearing on the lives of the readers. You think a student who reads Hamlet shouldn’t herself consider the idea of suicide? That when reading The Book of Job we shouldn’t consider the existence of God? Or his logic? Or his nature?”
She stiffened. “Will,” she said. “I will not permit you to use our classrooms to question God’s existence, logic, or nature. It is one thing to discuss a character in a work of literature, it is quite another to treat the God of the Old Testament as a fictional character. This is dangerous territory. You have a moral responsibility to protect your students, to steer them through works of literature, to help them see clearly. That’s it, Will. That’s your job. No more.”
“Laetitia, I disagree.”
She drew a deep breath. “I’m afraid neither of us has time for an academic argument. Perhaps another time, but for now, you need to understand my position, which is to say the school’s position. Simply put, you may not question your students’ religious faith. For that matter, you may not suggest that they consider suicide or murder.”
I laughed.
“Do we understand each other, Will?”
“I think so,” I said, and left her office.
* * *
Mia and I sat together on the grass eating our lunch, the sun turning the poplars gold. A wind blew across the field and, for the first time that autumn, there was a sharpness in the air.
“Cherry Carver is the psychologist. She’s the official school psychologist?”
“Apparently so. She claimed that there’d been an announcement.”
You Deserve Nothing Page 10
