Good Muslim Boy (13 page)

I grinned over at Lara. It was hard to gauge whether she loved my work or absolutely
loved it. Just as she went to pass the paper back to me, Ninos pinched it from her
hand and began to read it out loud. ‘Being Picasso with the ladies, huh?’

‘Picasso was painter, idiot.’ I hit back, but seeing Ninos’s nose widen like a dragon,
I immediately regretted my words. ‘You know what, Ninos…’ I whimpered, as I braced
for an incoming punch. ‘I think Picasso occasionally wrote poetry.’

‘I wanted to say to you this is good shit. It is shit still, but good shit.’ Ninos
handed back the poem. Seeing him half-impressed by my work was impressive in itself.

‘Thank you, Ninos. It meaning a lot to me for you to say this. I spent many hours
and many dictionary pages to write it.’

‘Okay, relax, I didn’t say you Einstein. Just Picasso.’

‘Ninos, in Iran, they have Persian saying: “real praise come from your enemy”. So
I thank you a lot.’

‘You mention Iran again you better be my enemy.’ He replied, agitated. ‘My father
he fight against Iran in war…But he died.’

‘Sorry, Ninos. I had uncle who died in war too.’

‘No, no. My father died in a car accident, delivering chickens to Mosul. His truck
tip over edge.’

I looked at Ninos. He was pretending not to care about his loss, but there was a
whole house of pain visible behind the windows of his soul. Lara and I paused for
a brief moment to ponder Ninos’s words.

‘Okay, everyone…’ Lara broke the minute’s silence. ‘I see you all after the weekend.’

‘Lara, wait, you not tell me what you thinked of my poem.’

‘Your tuna poem?’ she responded.

Lara grabbed my poem, quickly wrote a few digits down and, rushing out, she delivered
a blow to my head: ‘Give me a ring on the weekend.’

I tried to: a) digest her words and b) tell her goodbye. So I shouted back: ‘Drive
safely and don’t die in a car accident like Ninos’s father.’

He punched me flush on the shoulderblade. His knuckles bore the brunt. ‘Dude! She
told you to give her a ring.’

‘Yes. But I am too young for marriage.’

Ninos went to say something but stopped himself. He assembled one of his impish smiles.
‘Yeahhhhs. Exactly. She wants you to give her a
wedding
ring.’

‘I already know, Ninos. But I am fourteen. And she is not Muslim. And I don’t have
money for ring.’

‘Chill pill! First, she not teasing you. She is sooooo into you. She always looking
at you when you not looking. You can not see because you are not looking. It is like
when you want to see yourself blink in front of mirror. Impossible. She is like your
blink. Always looking when you not looking. Two, yes, you are young but in your culture,
men marry young all the times. Thirdly, she is not Muslim but she love you, and that
is what is important. Was Juliet Muslim? No. Did Romeo care she that was not Muslim?
No. But don’t tell anyone about this, they will not believe you,’ Ninos carefully
deliberated.

‘But you are my witness.’

‘No. People will think we are fooling them.’

I had been shocked a lot in my life, but this moment tasered me comatose. Had my
poem affected Lara this much? Perhaps the poem was the straw that broke the camel’s
back? It was the final gust that tipped her over towards marriage.

At home, I reached for my charity box, which contained about $40. Donating money
as a Muslim is as natural as drinking tap water. It’s a part of life, a
source
of
life. We are constantly reminded that a donation will wipe away seventy-two inflictions,
or ordeals, from the day. Who wouldn’t donate knowing there are
seventy-two curses
awaiting them? It is insurance against evil. My left-shoulder angel was telling me
I was
technically
poor in the eye of God and I should break the piggy bank. My right
angel was taking a snooze. Just when I needed him.

I relented and grabbed a knife and pierced my charity tin.

On Monday, I was edgy and excited. Before long, Lara arrived, smelling like a meadow.

‘Osamah, you were supposed to give me a ring on the weekend!’

‘On the weekend?’ My eyes twitched like a madman. ‘Is it too late now?’

‘That’s okay, we’ll talk at lunchtime.’

But I couldn’t take it any longer. Somewhat sweaty, I winked over at Ninos and flashed
a small jewellery box to him. Now I saw
his
eyes twitch. I felt he wanted to tell
me something but the cat had his tongue. Just as Ms Hunter walked in class, I stood
up and asked everyone to be quiet. The chitchat stopped. I turned to Lara smiling,
genuinely happy and genuinely nervous. I got on one knee, raising the cubical container,
revealing a polished second-hand silver ring, still with the Cash Converters price
tag attached.

In class the next week, Ninos was bragging about his dad. ‘He was martyred in the
war,’ he said casually—the highest form of honour in a classroom like ours.

But for all Ninos’s strange powers, his memory wasn’t great. Just last week, he’d
told us his father had perished in his chicken truck, which had tipped into a ravine
en route to their farm.

‘He took three bullets to the chest,’ he insisted now, ‘but a month later, there
he was, fighting just as hard. When they finally shot him dead, he took down a full
platoon.’

The lie was obvious, and so was the cause. Bojan the Serb had kicked off the round
of conversation by proclaiming his grandfather’s indisputable heroism, and Ninos
couldn’t risk his own lineage looking comparatively weak. Death by chicken truck
was a liability.

But Bojan just one-upped him. ‘My grandfather,’ he said confidently, ‘fought without
any of his limbs. And he took down a whole
brigade
before they captured him.’

‘They had to shoot my father at point-blank range,’ countered Ninos. ‘They shot him
from afar, to no effect.’

When these kinds of volleys happened, as they often did, Ms Hunter just sat there
behind her desk, going pale. She couldn’t handle these tales of tremendous slaughter—but
we were talking about our forebears, so what could you do? Was she really going to
be the one to douse these conversations with cold water? We sounded nonchalant about
them, but who knew how we felt? We’d come to her classroom from all kinds of places.

For my part, I was a fourteen-year-old boy, and totally incapable of staying quiet
while other kids tried to show each other the size of their balls. I made the heat
hotter with the story of my uncle Adnan and his elite tank-defusing regiment. The
fact that it involved a schoolteacher—the enemy commander—made Ms Hunter’s face all
the paler, which meant that I’d won. Or was close to winning, when Lara jumped in.

‘The bald woman boasts of her niece’s hair,’ she proclaimed. ‘You three are bald
women. Quit it.’

This was enough to embarrass us—and enough to mortify me, being called out on my
transparency by Lara. I excused myself from the classroom, feeling flushed and stupid.

I came back in bearing a glass of ice water and offered it to Ms Hunter, who accepted
it with understated gratitude. I didn’t dare look at Lara, but my heart thumped,
somersaulted, pounded.
I may not have impressed her with my borrowed war stories,
but maybe I’d won the day by doing something quieter.

The paradise of Ms Hunter’s class was not the kind that could last. I felt increasingly
hangdog. Lara hadn’t shown up all week.

‘Ninos,’ I eventually whispered. ‘Do you know where Lara is?’

He leaned across to me when Ms Hunter’s back was turned.

‘Recovering from the pumping I gave her last night.’ He winked.

‘No, idiot. She was too good for us. They sent her to high school.’ I raised my hand
and interrupted the lesson. ‘Mzzz Hunter!’ I howled. She whipped around. ‘Is it true
that Lara’s in high school?’

‘I believe so, Osamah,’ she said. ‘When someone’s on fire like that, you can’t keep
them in this kind of class!’

My eyes went googly with horror. I wanted to cry, but Ninos seemed to be cool about
it.

I excused myself to the toilet. This was my favourite new trick; I couldn’t believe
that Ms Hunter granted permission, every time. Back home in Iran, you’d have been
flogged just for asking.

This time, I rushed straight to the payphone just outside the Language Centre, dialling
information and requesting the hospital.

‘Which hospital?’ asked the operator.

‘Any,’ I gasped.

They connected me to the Royal Melbourne.

They had no record of Lara.

I frantically dialled two more hospitals. No record of her there, either.

A businesswoman was waiting in line for the payphone, tapping her foot. She did this
hard enough for me to hear it behind the glass doors. I glanced over my shoulder.
She made a
point of exhaling—‘
ooooofffff
’—and checking her watch. I was getting nowhere.

‘Sex-cuse me, miss,’ I said, opening the door. ‘I am trying to locate a friend who
catched fire in class but she isn’t in any hospital. I am worried her beautiful hair
is burned.’

The businesswoman stopped tapping her foot. Her hand clapped over her mouth.

‘She caught fire in class?’ the woman said. ‘Oh, you poor little boy.’

‘Yes,’ I nodded sombrely. ‘My teacher said she’s on fire so they moved her up to
high school.’

The businesswoman went from distraught to angry in a hundredth of a second. ‘That’s
a very bad joke,’ she grumbled. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

She pushed past me. I copped a feel, but never saw the burning girl again.

My grief over Lara was briefly forestalled by the publication of my article. It was
just the school newsletter but, for a language student, this was a very big deal.
I couldn’t believe it was happening, but there it was: splashed across pages three
and four, sandwiched between the canteen menu and an ad for netball practice.

Precocious, no? As if I couldn’t have been prouder, it somehow caught the attention
of a white girl.

the email read.

I stared at my screen. A girl had emailed me? I was meant to be concentrating on
a polynomial exercise sheet for maths class, but clearly I had bigger fish to fry.

I carefully began.

That same day, Nadia wrote back to say I sounded like a lovely guy, too! She was
lovely; I was lovely; we were both lovely. I was in.

I grandly replied.

By the following evening, Nadia still hadn’t written back. So I opened a new message
and carefully started again.

An excruciating week went by, refreshing and refreshing my browser. When Nadia finally
wrote back, I couldn’t believe my eyes.