Sadia

by Colleen Nelson

  I doubted kids at school would be interested in that, but instead of disagreeing with her, I gave a noncommittal shrug.

  “Did you get your sociology exam back?” Dad asked Aazim.

  Aazim shook his head. He attended the same university where Dad taught, but they rarely bumped into each other. Dad was an economics professor and spent his time in the Arts building, while Aazim was pre-med, according to my parents, or first year science, according to him. The one arts course Aazim had to take was Sociology, but he’d scheduled it to avoid bumping into Dad. “I saw you going into the Isbister Building today. I didn’t think you had any courses there.”

  And that was the reason Aazim had carefully planned the location of his classes. Dad’s interest in his life was well meaning, but I knew it wore on Aazim.

  “I don’t,” Aazim said with a frown. “Why were you there?” he added.

  “I had a department meeting. We use the boardroom in that building.” I still wasn’t totally clear on what economics was. Dad said he sat around all day in his office, writing research papers. Sometimes, he’d teach a course if they let him. He was joking. I’d seen the letters and emails from students thanking him for being a great teacher. Dad loved to tell stories, and I had no doubt that he was able to entertain his students the same way he entertained Aazim and me. When we were kids, he didn’t read us bedtime stories, he told us tales that he’d been told by his father. A great actor, he had a different voice for each character and would play out the most exciting scenes, leaping from the bed to the floor until he had Aazim and me gripping the covers and barely breathing.

  “I was just meeting some friends,” Aazim said, wiping his fingers again and leaving more greasy streaks behind. “Did you do anything today?” he asked Mom.

  “Went to the grocery store, cooked, cleaned. The usual.” Mom sighed. “Although, I did see something interesting in the newspaper. The Millennium Library downtown is starting an Arabic section. There are a lot more Arabic speakers in the city now.”

  “Maybe they’ll need a librarian?” I suggested.

  “Maybe,” she said, although she sounded doubtful.

  “Did you get any marks back?” Dad asked turning to me. Most of our dinner conversation centred around school: upcoming tests, studying for tests, and marks from tests. “No, but the tryouts for the tournament team started today.”

  “Back to basketball,” Aazim mumbled.

  “How did they go?” Mom asked. I saw tension flash on her face. Playing on a co-ed team was a bit of a tricky thing for us now that I was older. I knew they’d feel better once I was playing for an all-girls team, but making the tournament team was a big deal and I’d been excited when they’d agreed to let me try out.

  “Fine, until I was hit in the face.” Everyone looked at me. I’d actually forgotten about it by the time I came home from school. The pain was gone, but my nose still felt swollen when I scrunched it up.

  “What happened?” Mom peered at me. She wore wire-rimmed glasses that made her look even more like a librarian. Thin and tall, she had light brown eyes and wore a serious expression, like she was always thinking about something.

  “A girl elbowed me in the nose. It was an accident. We were both going for the ball. It was bleeding, though, and I had to sit in the office for a while until it stopped.”

  “Hmm. Maybe the game is too rough.”

  I shook my head quickly. “It was my fault. I wasn’t paying attention. My scarf got in my face.”

  My parents glanced at each other across the table. I held my breath. The last thing I needed was for them to decide basketball was too dangerous and tell me I couldn’t try out.

  “Her nose wasn’t that great, anyway,” Aazim said. I gave him another kick to the shins as Mom and Dad laughed. Thanks to Aazim’s hilarious sense of humour, the matter of basketball being too dangerous was dropped.

  Chapter 4

  I had just sat down in homeroom when I heard my name over the school PA system.

  “Sadia Ahmadi, please come to the office. Sadia Ahmadi.” The secretary’s voice cut through the morning chatter in the classroom. Mr. Letner nodded for me to go. “O Canada” hadn’t been played yet and, once again, Mariam was with Carmina switching outfits in the washroom.

  “Are you Sadia?” Mrs. Mooney, the secretary, asked as she looked up from her computer. I nodded. “Have a seat.” I sat down in a chair opposite her desk. “Mrs. Marino will be with you in a minute.”

  The door to the vice-principal’s office opened and I could hear her speaking slowly and clearly, annunciating every word. A girl in a hijab, head down, emerged first, followed by her parents. They were smiling and nodding vigorously, nudging their daughter to show more enthusiasm for what Mrs. Marino was saying. The girl looked at me, and for a second, a wave of relief washed over her, but then she turned away and took a step closer to her parents.

  Mrs. Marino had voluminous, curly hair. It looked like it weighed the same as she did and I wondered how she didn’t topple over from it. “Sadia, this is Amira Nasser. A new student. She’s starting today.” I smiled at Amira when she glanced up, but she didn’t return it. I took in her clothes and what her parents were wearing. On my first day of school, Mom had made me wear my best outfit: a dress and party shoes. I’d felt ridiculous when everyone else was in jeans or leggings. The next day, I’d worn jeans and runners, like I would have at home. Amira’s clothes weren’t fancy. I turned my gaze to her parents. Her mom kept nodding, even though no one was saying anything, and she gave me an enthusiastic smile, which didn’t match the dark circles under her eyes. It was like she was trying so hard to be happy, it was exhausting her.

  “The Nassers are from Syria,” Mrs. Marino said. A brief, knowing glance passed between her and Mrs. Mooney. I caught the look of pity on their faces, but wasn’t sure if the Nassers saw it, too.

  Mom and Dad hadn’t shielded me from the news. I knew what was happening in Syria. I’d seen the footage of buildings being blown up and refugees walking across Europe, hoping to find a safe place for their family. There was a war in my home country. Mom and Dad had been glued to the internet since the first reports started to surface a few years ago. They muttered and shook their heads as places they knew, places we’d visited, were reduced to rubble. And then the reports started showing refugees leaving. Desperate to escape the country, they’d cross the Mediterranean Sea in rowboats or inflatable dinghies.

  The footage on the screen wasn’t the Syria I remembered. It looked like another planet. The eyes of the children were haunted, their clothes and bodies dirty and unwashed because there was no water. Some towns were cut off from food supplies, and the children were starving. Then, one day, I’d turned away from the news, not wanting to have my happy memories of Syria replaced with these ugly ones. I’d grabbed my jacket to go outside and play basketball, comforted by the rhythmic bounce of the ball on concrete. But Mom had forced me to sit it out. “Watch,” she’d said, “and be thankful. That could be you.”

  Before we left Damascus, I’d seen people beaten on the street, twice. The first time, I was in our house and heard an uproar outside. I went to the balcony overlooking the street and saw our neighbour, Mr. Habib, being yelled at by two officers with machine guns slung over their shoulders. He held up his hands, shrinking away from them, but they pulled out batons and began hitting him. Even when he was on the ground, they kept kicking him, and then they dragged him into a van. Mom pulled me away from our balcony, scolding me for risking my safety. “Don’t draw attention to yourself!” she’d hissed at me. All my life, she’d told me to stick up for myself, not to let anyone put me down, and now she was saying I should hide? I stared at her in confusion.

  The second time, I was returning from a shopping trip with Teta, my grandmother. A ruckus broke out on the street. I moved through the crowd to see what was happening. A group of men were shouting at a man and his teenage son
, accusing them of being traitors. The onlookers jeered, tossing rocks at them. One hit the boy and made him bleed. He clung to his father, crying with fear. Sitta dragged me away, shouting at me the whole way home that I had to be more careful. When we got home and Sitta told my parents what had happened, Dad said he’d had it. I didn’t know what he meant, but he stayed up late for weeks, talking on the phone and making arrangements. His friends thought he was crazy for leaving; he had arguments with them and sometimes they’d storm out of our house, furious. But Mom and Dad thought it was going to get worse before it got better. Luckily for us, we already had family in the U.K., so it made leaving easier. I wondered sometimes about the people who thought Dad was crazy. Were they still there? Had they left, too? Or were some of them the haunted faces we saw on the news?

  Amira’s parents pushed her toward me, smiling encouragement. “Hi,” I said in English.

  She stared at me.

  “Marhaba,” I tried again in Arabic. She nodded, her hands fidgeting at her sides. She’d brought no backpack or binders.

  “Can you show Amira around, Sadia? She’ll have the same timetable as you, except she’s taking art instead of band. Mr. Letner will be her homeroom teacher as well,” Mrs. Marino said. It was horrible but my first thought was no. I didn’t want this sad, haunted girl with me. She’d follow me around like a lost puppy. I hated myself for thinking that way and pushed those thoughts away.

  “Sure,” I answered. Mrs. Marino held out her hand to shake Amira’s parents’ hands. I opened my mouth to warn her, but what could I say? Only Mrs. Nasser took her outstretched hand. Mr. Nasser smiled and bowed his head, avoiding Mrs. Marino’s eyes. Mrs. Marino realized, too late, her error and let her hand fall to her side; it wasn’t proper for a Muslim man to shake hands with a woman.

  “Amira will be here for half a day, just to get acquainted with the school. Will you bring her back to the office at lunchtime? Her parents will come to pick her up.” I nodded, relieved I wouldn’t have to miss basketball tryouts to play tour guide. I waved goodbye to the Nassers as Amira and I walked into the hallway.

  The halls were quiet, and so was Amira. I led her toward the gym, the first place I’d wanted to see when I arrived in Canada. In Syria, we’d had gym classes outside on the cracked pavement of the school courtyard. I hadn’t understood why gym class was held indoors until my first winter. Then it all made sense! “Where are you from?” I asked in Arabic. She looked at me like I’d asked a trick question. “I grew up in Damascus,” I told her, “in Mezzah.” It was a neighbourhood with cafés and stores and an outdoor shopping centre. Lots of doctors and lawyers lived in our building.

  “We are from Homs.” Her voice was quiet, a little raspy.

  I knew of Homs. I’d seen it on the news. There was almost nothing left of it. My insides churned for her. I wanted to ask how long she’d been away from Syria. Her journey to Canada wouldn’t have been like mine. Staying with family in Yorkshire had been like a reunion while we waited for our immigration papers to Canada. We’d arrived in Toronto and come straight to Winnipeg so Dad could start his job. The university found us temporary housing while we looked for a house to buy; containers with our things waited in storage for us. We’d left before the refugee crisis, not like Amira, who had been forced to flee. There had been no choice for her family. If we’d stayed longer, we might have been like them.

  “This is the gym,” I said, pausing at the door. Kids ran past, doing laps for warm-up. Amira hung back, reluctant to get closer. She took in the size of the gym, with its shiny wooden floors and huge Thunder logo painted on the cinder-block walls. I got an anxious twinge thinking about what tomorrow would be like for her: showing up for a full day of school with no idea what awaited. She’d need to stick close to me or she wouldn’t find her way around. For the next few weeks, Amira was going to be attached to me. I hoped it was just first-day jitters that kept her so quiet, otherwise it was going to be a long term.

  “Come on, I’ll show you the cafeteria.” We went downstairs to the row of picnic-style tables. I walked through the space quickly, trying to get the tour over with so we could get to class. “This is where you’ll eat lunch, when you stay for lunch. Microwaves are over there.” I pointed to the far wall. “And the canteen. They sell fries, burgers, hot dogs, Pizza Pops, stuff like that.”

  “Pizza Pops?”

  “Like a pizza sandwich,” I explained.

  She furrowed her brow. Without any students, the cafeteria felt cavernous. Our voices echoed.

  “Do you pray?” she asked. In Syria, prayers were a normal part of the day; classes were scheduled around prayer times. In Canada, fitting in midday prayers at school was a little trickier.

  “There’s a room we use. I can show it to you now, if you want.”

  Amira nodded, so we went back upstairs. “It’s here,” I said, pointing to a room with desks and a few computers in it. There was construction paper over the small window on the door to give us privacy and a movable screen to separate the male and female sides of the room.

  The truth was, Mariam and I had barely used the room set aside for our prayers this year. Now that I was in high school, I was self-conscious about disappearing at lunchtime. And since basketball tryouts had started, I knew it was even more unlikely that I’d pray at midday like I was supposed to.

  “Are there lots of Muslim students?” Amira asked.

  “Not that many. In our homeroom there’s me, Mariam, and Mohammed, and now you.”

  I pointed out the washrooms she would use as we walked back to Mr. Letner’s room. “Everyone here is really nice. You’ll like it here.”

  “How long have you been here? In Canada?” she asked.

  “About three years — almost four. We were in the U.K. for a while before we got here.”

  “Is your English good?”

  It was now. “My dad spoke it at home sometimes in Syria to get us ready, but mostly I just learned by living here.”

  “You knew you were leaving.”

  “Sort of. We knew we were going somewhere.”

  “Some of our family is in Germany, but they’d closed the borders by the time we left. This was the only country that would take us.”

  “My family is in England. Aunts, cousins, my sitta. We all left before things got bad.”

  She snorted. “You don’t know bad.”

  I gave her a sideways look and wondered what she meant. What had she seen in Syria or the camps they’d lived in? For someone who was the same age as me, she seemed so much older. I could only imagine that what she’d lived through had aged her. I felt a flash of gratitude that I wasn’t like her. Making the co-ed team was my biggest worry. “This is our class.” I pointed to Mr. Letner’s nameplate above the door and the room number, 9B. “I’ll quickly introduce you and you can sit down. Don’t worry if you can’t understand anything.”

  I hadn’t known what was going on for the first few weeks, either. I’d just followed the other kids, watching what they were doing, too scared to ask any questions. At recess, things felt more normal. I learned the kids’ names on the soccer field, and when we played games in class, I could figure out the rules and participate. But as soon as the teacher started talking, or we had to get a book to read, I drifted off and missed my school in Syria where everything made sense and where asking a simple question like “Can I go to the washroom?” wasn’t a stressful situation. I’d been a good student in Syria, but in Canada the language barrier had made it hard to prove. Dad had warned us it would be like trying to ride a bicycle with your feet tied together: you knew how, but couldn’t make it happen. And it was very frustrating.

  “Okay, ready?” I asked her, but I’d already opened the door to the class. Mr. Letner turned to me.

  “Is this our new student?”

  I nodded. “Her name is Amira. She doesn’t speak English,” I blurted out for her.
/>   “Thanks, Sadia,” Mr. Letner said. “Amira, you can sit there.” He spoke slowly and pointed to a chair he’d already moved to my table. There wasn’t really space for her, so Carmina and Mariam squished together. I led the way and tried to give her an encouraging smile, even though inside, I groaned. I’d have to spend the morning translating instead of doing my own work, which would mean more homework tonight.

  Amira sat down at the desk and stared at her hands. I dug through my backpack for a pen and took a piece of loose-leaf out of my binder and put it in front of her. I had no idea what she would write on it.

  “Where’s she from?” Mariam scribbled on my page.

  “Syria,” I wrote back.

  She leaned forward and tried to catch Amira’s eye. “Hi!” she whispered. Either Amira didn’t hear, or she ignored her, but either way, Mariam shrugged and sat back in her chair, as if she’d done all she could.

  When the bell rang for second period, I jumped up and packed my binder into my backpack. “What about the new girl?” Carmina reminded me as we filed out with the rest of the class. I looked back. Amira was standing beside the desk, looking lost.

  “Right,” I mumbled under my breath. I forgot I was babysitting today. And then I felt bad for thinking like that. I’d had to rely on the kindness of others when we’d first moved here, just like Amira was relying on me now.

  “It’s gym,” I told her in Arabic. She looked at me with panicked eyes. “Don’t worry, you can probably just sit and watch the class on your first day.”

  “Boys and girls have gym together?” she asked in a rushed whisper.

  “Yes.” I’d forgotten how different things would be for her here. I’d been eleven when we’d moved, still a kid compared to Amira. Things like co-ed gym classes hadn’t been any different from home.