Shifting Sands

How to describe the school in Sharjah? A long, two-storey concrete building, the first floor containing all the elementary classrooms, the gym and the administrative offices. Half of the second floor housed junior boys, the other half all the girls from grade 7 to grade 12. A floor-to-ceiling wall divided the two halves because, for many parents, girls aged 10 and older should not be sharing classes with – or even seen by – boys. Two rather barren playgrounds – one for boys and one for girls – separated by a 15-foot cement wall, covered a sizable area at the back of the school. A smaller two-storey building for senior boys (grades 7 to 12) stood at the rear of the boys’ playground, thus providing further insurance against boys inadvertently glimpsing girls.

During the first semester, I taught two classes of Grade 12 boys and two girls’ classes (Grade 10 and Grade 12). There were three of us in the English Department – John from Vancouver, me, and Osama from Palestine. In a display of craven Canadian ignorance, John and I speculated about the location of Palestine and just exactly where Osama ended up when he went “home.” I cringe to admit we shared a chuckle at our “cleverness.”

But maybe it wasn’t a reflection of total ignorance after all – even though we knew nothing, we were at least hazily aware that Palestine was a tenuous concept and didn’t exist in any concrete sense. In people’s hearts and minds, yes, but not as a free and independent nation like the other 150-odd that fill their appointed places on our spinning planet. Our ignorance lay in not comprehending the true meaning of that absence.

The boys’ and girls’ groups were radically different but I learned from both of them – so much. On the first day, I always share a bit about myself then ask the students to introduce themselves and, at the end, assign a paragraph for homework (tell me some things you’d like me to know about you as we set off on our journey between here and June). This gives me a feel for the class as well as an initial take on their verbal and written English skills.

After my autobiographical blurb, the boys stared at me, agate-eyed. I’d never taught a single-sex class before, but I had taught North American teenagers for 14 years, so I waited. And waited.

Finally, Ahmed spoke. “We’re terrorists, miss. All of us. We attach bombs to our bodies and blow up people like you.”

Now, I had dealt with cool young men before, repeatedly. I was familiar with Mr. I’m So Cool I Can Ride My Skateboard Right Up To Your Desk, with Mr. I’m so Cool I Only Use Four Words to Communicate and One of Them is Fuck, with Mr. I’m So Cool You’ll Never Interest Me in Your Stupid Class, with Mr. I’m So Cool and So Stoned That I Won’t Understand a Word You Say and Plan to Sleep At My Desk, with Mr. I’m the Coolest Clown in Town and My Jokes Will Keep Everyone in Stitches. This was something different, but my first instinctive reaction was the same as it’d been to all the Mr. Cools of my past. Impatience and the conviction – this is not the real you. Ahmed’s use of the word ‘Miss’ seemed to confirm my reaction.

I stared them down “Yeah, right,” I said. “Am I supposed to be scared?”

We carried on. Among the paragraphs I read that night, two nearly identical comments stood out: I’m Palestinian and I can’t go home because my country is occupied. By Canadians.

I wrote “I don’t think so” in the margin but, shrewd and perceptive person that I am, I realized an extremely important issue confronted me. I knew I had to open my mind and try to discover the origin of these comments and feelings. I didn’t think it was personal – more of a general resentment against the West, and I wanted to figure out why. My real Middle Eastern education started here.

I felt lost in more ways than one. The boys presented a type of challenge I’d never faced before and it merged with a general geographical confusion. I’m not much good, from the ground, at differentiating north, south, east and west, or reading maps. I have an excellent sense of direction, however, and if I’ve been somewhere once, can inevitably find my way back.

In Sharjah, I couldn’t. The desert wind, forever blowing, forever shifts the sand into new shapes. I’d go by a corner or up a street, memorizing the lay of the land, only to find it completely altered the next time I passed by. Many roads aren’t named and many houses don’t have numbers.

I didn’t know where I was or how to find my way back to the comforting place I came from. Like the shifting sand sculptures, it was an illusion.