Sadia

by Colleen Nelson

  I explained to Mr. McMurchy, the gym teacher, that Amira was new and didn’t speak much English. “I think she just wants to sit out and watch,” I told him.

  “Okay, but only for today, since it’s her first day.” I translated for Amira, and the briefest of relieved smiles crossed her face. I didn’t translate the second half of his answer: “Next time, she joins in.”

  Grateful to have a break from being her translator and tour guide, I went to change into my gym clothes. When I came out, Josh had already started running laps so I joined him, our steps in rhythm as we talked about which kids had the best shot of making the team. I had to run faster than usual to keep up with him and could feel my heart pumping. As a few more of his friends started running, we got separated and I ran at the front of a clump of girls. I almost stumbled over my shoes when I looked at the change room doors and saw Mariam in shorts and a gym shirt. She must have borrowed them from Carmina. She stood there self-consciously, starting an awkward run-walk on the periphery of the track.

  I slowed my pace to join her, gaping at her bare legs. “Mariam!” I hissed. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s just gym clothes. We used to change all the time.” When we were kids! I thought. Her parents would be furious if they saw her. I didn’t know what to say to her, so I sprinted ahead, my hijab flapping behind me.

  Chapter 5

  “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” Mariam asked in Arabic as we walked back to class after gym.

  “No,” I answered, kind of mad that she even had to ask. “But you know it’s wrong,” I whispered.

  Mariam gave me a pleading look. “Please don’t say anything.”

  “I won’t,” I promised. I wasn’t her parent. It wasn’t up to me to force modesty on her, but I couldn’t help feeling that her decisions were putting more and more distance between us. I liked that we both wore hijab; it was our thing — it separated us from all the other girls in our class. If she kept changing (and I didn’t just mean her clothes), what would happen to us?

  And if I did tell on her, it would be a betrayal of our friendship, which would only drive her further away. She’d pushed me into an impossible corner.

  “Promise?” she asked again. I gave her a solemn nod. As soon as she was satisfied that I’d keep her secret, she drifted away from me and found Carmina. The two of them walked to their next class together. From the excited chatter, I guessed that Mariam was telling Carmina how good it had felt to wear shorts again. I watched them jealously for a minute and pulled my eyes away. It used to be Mariam and me who were close.

  Amira followed me like a shadow to my locker as I grabbed a snack, stuffed my gym bag in, and got my books for the rest of the morning.

  “Your friend Mariam,” Amira asked quietly. “Is she Muslim?”

  “Yeah. She’s from Egypt.”

  “But she doesn’t wear hijab.”

  “Usually she does.” I wished I could have explained more, but Mariam’s behaviour was becoming a mystery to me.

  “Okay, everyone. Sit down. Break’s over.” Mr. Letner stood at the front of the room with the suitcase of digit­­al cameras. “I’ve heard back from almost everyone’s parents, giving permission to let you take the cameras home. Those of you whose parents haven’t emailed the form back can take pictures today, you just can’t take the cameras home.” He held up his hands, as if quieting an unruly crowd. “I know, I know. You’re thinking, ‘Mr. Letner, I already know how to use a camera. I’ve been taking pictures on my iPad since I was little.’ But just snapping a photo and taking a picture of something that captures the imagination of the viewer are two different things.” He slowed his voice down, so we’d all pay attention. “For example, as a famous Russian writer once said, ‘Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.’”

  I looked over at Amira. The blank look on her face told me she had no idea what he was talking about.

  Mr. Letner turned off the front row of lights, and immediately a bunch of kids put their heads on their desks, ready to zone out. An image appeared on the Smartboard. “Even ordinary things can become powerful images. Look at this one.” A fingerprint: the black ink on the stark white page filled up the screen. Mr. Letner scanned the room. “What do you think about it? What’s your reaction?”

  “It’s a fingerprint,” Avery said, unimpressed. “We all have them.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah, I mean they’re not all the same, but —” And then she caught herself. “Oh, I get it. The photo is showing how we’re all different.”

  Mr. Letner touched his nose and pointed at Avery. “There you go! One image, but lots of meanings. Here, look at this one.” Another photo appeared, and at first, I didn’t know what it was. A round ball with bubbles suspended in its centre. The glass glowed like something from another world, the swirl inside of it like a tornado. It was a marble sitting on concrete. The pebbled surface was rough and pitted against the smoothness of the glass. “Pretty cool, eh?” I leaned forward in my seat, waiting for the next image.

  “Do you know what this is?” It was a photo of a snowbank half-melted into the shape of an elephant. We all laughed. Well, not Amira. She was probably like me before my first Canadian winter, when I’d never touched snow.

  “The next photo I’m going to show you is shocking,” he warned us. The image of a starving African child crouched on the ground appeared on the screen. She was skin and bones, every rib visible. In the background, a vulture waited. “Is that for real?” Zander asked.

  Mr. Letner nodded. “This photo was taken during the Sudanese famine. It made international news and won the Pulitzer Prize.”

  “I hope whoever took the photo helped her, gave her food or something,” Carmina muttered, and looked away.

  “This photo showed the world what was going on in the Sudan. Up until then, no one had paid much attention to the famine. I want you to really think about what you photograph. Use your photos to show people how you see the world, or to help change it. It might mean looking at the world differently or seeing details in things you wouldn’t normally notice, like a marble, or a snowbank. Or making a social commentary on a problem that bothers you.”

  I was relieved when the photo of the starving child disappeared. “Do you expect our photos to look like those ones?” Larissa asked. “They’re, like, professional.”

  “It’s the idea behind the photo I want you to think about. The technique will come with practise. We’ll start today by playing around with the cameras and taking some pictures.”

  Mr. Letner passed out the cameras and wrote down which number each of us had.

  Amira fingered the camera in front of her like it was something suspicious. “This is a camera,” I said slowly in English.

  “This is a camera,” she repeated quietly.

  Beside me, Carmina and Mariam snapped pouty-lipped pictures of each other, the standard selfie pose. Even though Mr. Letner had said not to take selfies, they couldn’t help themselves. When I looked around the room, a lot of other people were doing the same thing. “Can you get one of both of us?” Carmina asked me, holding her camera out.

  I hesitated. Did Mariam realize how excluded I felt watching the two of them? “And then take one of me and Sadia,” Mariam said to Carmina.

  They turned their chins down and gave a coy look to the camera. Then I gave my camera to Carmina, and Mariam and I huddled together. But before she took the photo, I held up my hand. “Wait.” Amira was on my other side. “Come on, you should be in the picture, too. It’s your first day at a Canadian school,” I said to her in Arabic. I held out my arm for her to slide closer. She looked like she was about to shake her head, but then she relented and joined us. Carmina took the photo and passed the camera back to me. I looked at the image. Mariam and I were grinning, but Amira just stared into the camera, her eyes open, wide and
wary.

  Chapter 6

  I walked Amira back to the office to meet her parents when the lunch bell rang. She held the camera in her hands like it was a treasure. She hadn’t taken any photos yet; it was almost like she was worried she’d break it. “How did it go?” Mrs. Mooney asked as we sat waiting for Amira’s parents in the office. I turned to Amira, who gave Mrs. Mooney a shy smile. “Sadia, can you translate this list of school supplies for Amira’s parents? And there’s the media release letter.” She rattled off all the other information I’d have to explain. So much for lunch. It was going to take me half an hour to go over all this with them.

  There was a bustle in the office entrance as Mr. and Mrs. Nasser walked in. They greeted their daughter and me with anxious smiles. They had lots of questions for Amira, but she looked exhausted and waved them off. I remembered what those first weeks had been like. Trying to make sense of what everyone was saying was tiring! My brain hurt when I got home after school, new words and images swirling through my head. And when it was time to go to sleep, my brain was so jumbled with English and Arabic words that I couldn’t turn it off. “The school needs you to sign some things,” I told Amira’s parents. I showed them all the papers, doing my best to explain what they meant. There was also a paper copy of the permission form from Mr. Letner. He’d asked me to translate it for them and have them sign it for him. Mr. Nasser gave me a puzzled look as I’d explained the project, but scribbled his signature anyway. Dad used to question some of the activities the school planned when we first moved here, too. He’d gone along with them, though, just like Mr. Nasser did, but there was a big difference between how schools were run in Syria and in Canada.

  Amira didn’t say goodbye as she left the office. She bowed her head and shuffled behind her parents, even when her mom took her hand and tried to pry some information out of her. I knew how she felt. It was like a tidal wave of information had just splashed over her, and she’d only been at school for a few hours. She could never explain it all to her mother. I glanced at the clock. Basketball tryouts started in five minutes. I’d have to run to the cafeteria, scarf down my lunch, and then head to the gym with food sloshing in my stomach.

  I don’t think Mr. Letner knew what a stir he was going to cause when he gave us those cameras. Kids from other classes kept posing in the hallway, begging us to take their pictures. And before basketball club, no one wanted to practise. Instead, we asked Jillian to do jump shots so we could practise taking action shots.

  “Will you take one of me?” I asked Josh, handing him my camera. I held the basketball against my hip and smiled. He held the camera up to his eye for a second but didn’t take the picture.

  “Nah, it’s all wrong,” he said, shaking his head.

  “What is?” I asked, confused.

  He nodded to the wall behind me. “It would look better if you were at the top of the key with the hoop behind you.” Josh walked over to me and pulled me by my elbow into a better position. Then he took the basketball and bent my arm so it was balanced on my palm.

  “I feel like one of those fake people in a store window,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “A mannequin,” he said. “Yeah, except mannequins don’t have killer crossovers.”

  His compliment made me blush. My crossovers weren’t that good.

  He took three giant steps backward. It was only as I smiled into the camera that I saw Mariam staring at me from behind Josh, her eyes narrowed. I stood awkwardly as Josh played around with the settings and circled me, trying to get just the right angle and lighting. Mariam glared at me and went off in a huff.

  “Oh, great,” I muttered.

  “Cameras away!” Mr. Letner shouted. “They shouldn’t be out during basketball practice.” He picked up his clipboard. “Same deal as last time. Drills and then a scrimmage.” This time, I made sure my hijab was on securely so I wouldn’t get any more bloody noses. I held my own when we scrimmaged, and the bell for the end of lunch came too soon. There was a stampede for the change rooms, but I had an idea for a photo and hung back.

  “Josh,” I said. “Can you help me with something? I want to take a photo of a ball being tossed into the bin.”

  He gave me a funny look but agreed. “Yeah, sure.”

  He stood a few metres back, far enough that he wasn’t in the shot, and tossed the ball in an arc toward the bin. It landed, jostling the others so they bounced. I snapped a few shots in a row of the ball moving through the air and then landing in the bin, jostling the others. “Cool,” I said, reviewing them. “Thanks!”

  “No problem.”

  Allan came out of the boys’ change room just as I was about to go into the girls’. “Hey, man, what are you doing?” I heard him ask Josh.

  “Taking some pictures with Sadia,” Josh answered.

  “Sadia?” Allan mocked. “Why are you wasting your time with her? Dude, Jillian Triggs was here. That’s who I’d be taking pictures of.” I could imagine him moving his eyebrows up and down suggestively.

  Josh snorted and didn’t say anything for a minute. “Yeah, I know, right?”

  I froze for a second, my throat tightening at their words. I let the door shut silently behind me, grateful that the other girls were too intent on getting changed to question the scowl on my face. Allan’s scornful tone echoed in my head. A waste of time? Was that what Josh really thought of me?

  “How was basketball?” Mariam asked when I sat down beside her for English. I wasn’t in the mood for her snarky tone. Did she really want to know, or did she just want to accuse me of flirting with Josh? The same Josh who had just “wasted his time” with me. I tried to ignore her, but she asked again.

  “It was fine,” I said curtly and hoped she’d drop it.

  “Are you hiding something?” She grabbed my camera out of my hands and started going through my photos.

  “Hey!” I said and reached for it, but she twisted further away.

  “What? Something on here you don’t want me to see?”

  “No,” I said, indignant. I refused to sink to the level of fighting her for my camera, so I let her click through the photos. She wasn’t going to find anything incriminating, anyway. Josh walked into the class, his hair spiked with sweat, and her demeanour instantly changed.

  “Great shot of Sadia,” Mariam said to him.

  Josh looked confused until she held up the camera to show him. He glanced at me, but I looked away. Jerk.

  “Thanks,” Josh said and made a hasty retreat to the back of the room.

  “Why are you being like this?” I hissed at her. “Fighting with me over a guy? He’s not worth it, by the way. ”

  Mariam glared at me and looked like she wanted to say something else, but didn’t.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Mariam and I sat in a prickly silence, both of us too stubborn to talk. And at the end of the day, when Josh walked past my locker and said, “See you,” I ignored him. I didn’t bother to wait for Mariam at the end of the day either. I knew she wouldn’t take the bus with me, and I’d taken as much rejection for one day as I could handle.

  Chapter 7

  I flashed my bus pass to the driver and walked down the aisle to find a seat. A large woman, propping up her top half with a cane, flicked a glance at my hijab, her wrinkly jowls dangling at her chin. Her small eyes folded into her flesh as her offhand glance turned into a suspicious stare. A little voice told me to stare back at her, but I knew that would be rude. She’s being rude, the voice responded. I tried to silence the voice, like Mom would do. She’d hold her head high and walk past, classy and aloof, passing off the woman’s stare as curiosity, when we both knew it was more than that.

  I glanced once at the lady as I sat down, my own curiosity getting the best of me. Maybe it would be better to stand right in front of her, let her stare all she wanted, and talk to her. Maybe if she got to know me, she’d see I’m normal … we
ll, as normal as anyone else. Including her.

  Wearing hijab set me apart from other people on the bus; it announced who I was before anything else. People see my hijab and know I’m Muslim. And I’m cool with that, but it was obvious from the way this lady was staring at me that she wasn’t. It made a scream rise up in my throat. You don’t even know me! I wanted to yell at her. Stop staring! I looked out the window beside me as buildings slipped by, praying that the woman would get off at the next stop. But it was me who got off before her. I felt my cheeks get hot as I walked past her, angry that I had to deal with her looks, on top of everything else.

  Mom knew something was wrong as soon as I walked into the kitchen after school. Telling her about the lady on the bus was pointless; there was nothing she could do about it. Part of me wanted to tell her about my argument with Mariam, but I’d sworn I wouldn’t tell anyone about her now daily de-jabbing. So instead, I dumped my backpack on the floor and groaned.

  “Sadia?” Mom looked at me, puzzled. She was getting dinner started in the kitchen, chopping vegetables on the wooden cutting board. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just have a lot of homework.” I sighed. There was a new stack of library books on the counter, which was normal; Mom went to the library all the time, but something about these ones caught my eye.

  “Are those books in Arabic?”

  Mom nodded. “Remember, I told you about the new Arabic section at the library? I took the bus downtown to check it out.”

  “Cool.”

  “I had a long talk with the head librarian.” Mom raised an eyebrow secretively.

  I turned to her, giving her my full attention. “Really?”

  “I’m going to start volunteering there.” She looked up from the cutting board. “They don’t have anyone on site who speaks Arabic.”