Sit

by Deborah Ellis

  Forward is why he is running to school.

  Jafar’s school is deep in a maze. Outsiders would never find it, but what outsider would even try? A tangle of freeway flyovers gives shelter to a city within a city, beneath the freeway. What started as for-the-moment has now been around since his grandparents were children.

  There are many ways into this city. Many narrow alleys that turn and end without warning. It is a city that changes shape daily, when someone new moves in and claims a section of the alley for their own. A wall of tarp and cardboard goes up, and another family has a home.

  Jafar’s family has a home here, one small room like all the others. Electricity comes sometimes. The lucky families have a fan. Jafar’s family doesn’t.

  “A piece of folded-up paper will give you just as much breeze, and it won’t stop working unless you stop working,” his mother often says.

  On especially hot nights, Jafar falls asleep with her waving a paper over him and his baby brother. It makes him feel like a king.

  The lucky, lucky families have a small television set that fetches in kickboxing matches, singing competitions and yacky politicians, all grainy and sometimes green if the color doesn’t hold.

  Mothers and grandmothers cook in the alleys on small fires placed along the cement walls of the flyover, away from the cardboard walls of their homes.

  Children play tag and cat’s cradle and other games where the rules are made up as they go along. Men play cards and gossip in groups, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and drinking homemade booze out of small plastic bags.

  Jafar’s school is in the middle of the gambling dens and the places girls are taken when they are young and then kicked out two years later when they have turned very, very old.

  People know Jafar and he knows them. He knows who will greet him and who will cheat him, who will ignore him and who, if given the chance, will hit him.

  He runs through the sights, smells and sounds.

  And then he gets to his school.

  Where the world is gray, the school is green. A piece of old green artificial grass cleanly covers the floor.

  Where the world is noisy and full of dashing, the school is calm. Books sit straight on shelves, chalk sits in tidy rows by the blackboard and footwear is put in a line against the wall as soon as children walk through the door.

  The teacher, Miss Lily, is always neat as a pin. And she wears a pin! She has a different brooch on every day, pinned to her bright white blouse. She makes the brooches and sells them to earn money for the school.

  This is a school for working children. The teacher works, too, in a clothing factory, sewing dresses for ladies in other countries. Her boss lets her bring scraps of cloth to the school. Mothers take them home and make quilts to sell so the school can buy more books and pens.

  Jafar runs into the school room. Then he stops running. He has no shoes to take off, but he wipes his feet vigorously on the rough mat at the door. He greets Miss Lily with a bow of his head and a smile. He washes his hands and face in the basin, then loads up a banana leaf with rice, fish and vegetables. He takes his place on the green grass carpet and looks up at his teacher.

  “Last week we talked about poetry,” she says. “Today we are talking about stories. We humans have been telling each other stories as far back as we can remember. Stories about families, stories about children, stories about work and danger, about love and funny animals. We are these stories, and these stories are us.”

  Jafar wolfs down his meal, clears away his banana leaf and gets his notebook out from his little cubby. He keeps listening while the teacher talks about some of the famous storytellers of history. He sits back down, his pen ready.

  “Stories can come from many places,” the teacher says. “They come from every country, from every group of people. From people who are very, very rich and from people who work very hard for everything they get.”

  “Like us,” says one of the students.

  “Stories can also be sparked by anything — any day, any moment, any person, any thought, any object. Who can give us some things that might spark a story for you?”

  “Taking tickets on a bus,” says a boy who had a job doing just that until he got pushed into traffic and hurt his foot. Now he sells chewing gum.

  That starts a flood of ideas.

  “Bananas,” says a child.

  “Gold,” says another.

  “Teachers!” says another child, and everyone laughs.

  Jafar’s brain is on fire. He knows, knows, knows his idea is good.

  He raises his hand and waves it in the air.

  “What about chairs?” he asks.

  “Everybody sits,” the teacher says. “Everybody has sat. Chairs are a good spark for a story. Jafar, can you come up with some story ideas that involve sitting?”

  Jafar bends over his notebook, his pen moving faster than he can breathe.

  With this chair

  I am there.

  Jafar sings stories out to the world, and the world, in turn, sings back to him.

  DEBORAH ELLIS is the author of more than two dozen books, including The Breadwinner, which has been published in twenty-five languages and has recently been released as a film. She has won the Governor General’s Award, the Middle East Book Award, the Peter Pan Prize, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award and the Vicky Metcalf Award for a Body of Work. She has received the Ontario Library Association’s President’s Award for Exceptional Achievement, and she has been named to the Order of Canada. Deb has donated more than $1 million in royalties to organizations such as Women for Women in Afghanistan, UNICEF and Street Kids International. She lives in Simcoe, Ontario.

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