An Infidel in Paradise (11 page)

“
Assalam Alekum
,” I call to them, if only to reassure them that I’m friendly.

The girl is still watching me like she’d like to run away, but she can’t leave the boy, and he’s single-minded in his work.

“
Wa Alekum Salam
,” she answers softly, glancing at me from under her lashes before she turns away,
blushing, as if mortified by her own boldness. The boy gives her a disapproving look before resuming his scavenging. She leans into the refuse and claws out a pop bottle, perhaps hoping to redeem herself.

“
Kya aap Angrezi?
” I ask. I don’t really expect they speak English, but I want to keep the conversation going.

She shakes her head, glancing at the boy to see if he’s noticed.

This time, he says something to her. It’s clear he’s telling her to ignore me, and she looks suitably chastened. I have a sudden insight that he’s her brother. He bullies her out of habit and affection. I’m not sure what to say next. I don’t want to get her into more trouble, but I’d like to know what they’re doing. Of course, what I want is irrelevant because I don’t have the words to ask, so I continue to watch them in silence.

The bag is bulging by the time the boy climbs down off the mound. He slings it over his shoulder and picks up a rusty bike that I only now notice is lying on the ground nearby. He waits while the girl hops onto the handlebars.

“
Khuda Hafiz
,” I say.

The boy mounts the bike and begins pedaling over the rough gravel out to the road. As they reach the corner of the French compound, the girl looks back and gives just the hint of a wave. I raise my own hand, but they’ve already disappeared from view.

Heading home, I contemplate lives so fragile they’re
built on the discarded remnants of my own. Suddenly my problems seem trivial, and although they don’t disappear, the burden is lightened – like grief is a single poisoned chalice, and as I share it with these children, my own portion is less.

I
’m halfway to the whiteboard before I realize I don’t have my assigned question completed in my notebook. I check again to make sure, and there it is, question nineteen, dutifully recorded, missing an answer. It’s so unfair. I completed the first eighteen questions.
Why do we have to do the same formula nineteen freaking times, anyway?
I read about this study once that said doing homework actually makes kids stupider. Apparently, they discovered repetition kills our creativity.
You think?
What kills me is that they had to pay some fancy PhD to discover what any half-witted kid could have told them for free.

If I had any guts, I would turn to Mr. Derry right now, in front of the entire math class, and tell him he killed half my brain cells with the first eighteen questions and I simply didn’t have enough left to complete question nineteen. And, given that I’m only in standard math, he really should not be messing with my limited mental resources. I bet if I did that, the
entire class would stand up and cheer, or maybe even organize a spontaneous parade in my honor. Of course, to be honest, the kids in this room would do pretty much anything to get out of eighty minutes of math. This class is where the mathematically challenged congregate to get a hard-won pass on their exam so they can go on to lives that will never include math again. Ever.

I glance over at Mr. Derry. He’s standing off to the side with that hopeful, excited look that teachers get when they see their budding prodigies spewing out the garbage they have methodically shoveled into them, step-by-boring-step.
Can I really burst his bubble and tell him I didn’t complete my homework? That solving
x
wasn’t sufficiently compelling last night to distract me from listening to Mom hiss into the phone to Dad that if he thought he could do a better job parenting me, she’d stick me on the next plane because it sure wasn’t what she’d signed on for?
Nor could quadratic equations, although admittedly complicated, distract me from puzzling over what exactly Mom meant by “not what she’d signed on for.” She didn’t say she’d put
all
of us on a plane. Sometime in the early hours of the morning, I concluded, with mathematical precision, that the solution to the equation of Mom, clearly, did not equal me.

“Emma,” says Mr. Derry, breaking into my thoughts. “Is there a problem?”

Oh yeah. There’s a problem.

“No, sir,” I say and begin copying the question onto the board. Maybe I can work it out on the spot.

Yeah, right, and maybe aliens will beam me up to their spacecraft and replace my brain with one that actually solves quadratic equations in under twenty minutes.

Sweat pops out on my forehead. If I expire right now from heatstroke and my life flashes before my eyes, my overwhelming memory of this country will be the place where I sweat. Constantly.

I start working on the next line. There’s only one kid left at the board. It’s Johan, the cute Swedish boy Jazzy had a thing for – and probably still does. He appears to be struggling as much as I am. He pushes back the platinum-blond lock that has fallen over his forehead as he steps back to review his work. Satisfied, he replaces the whiteboard marker on the ledge and walks past me to return to his seat, bumping into me in a move that is shockingly uncoordinated, unless he’s trying to feel me up. It takes me a minute to realize he’s slipped me his notebook. I look down at it, marveling at his neat penmanship. I should have had
him
writing the note to Mustapha.

I don’t have high hopes that his solution is correct, but chances are mine is wrong anyway, so I gratefully copy his answer onto the board. The teacher, bursting with the joy of a board full of numbers, doesn’t notice when I take a circuitous trip back to my desk that allows me to return Johan his book.

“Thanks,” I whisper.

He smiles in response, and I notice for the first time how truly gorgeous he is – perfect white teeth, chiseled features, sea-blue eyes. I totally see why Jazzy’s stuck on him, but beyond the casual admiration of this perfect specimen of burgeoning manhood, I feel nothing. Not a flutter of interest.
Strange
.

Mr. Derry begins talking through the work on the board while I slide into my seat and stare at the back of Johan’s head.
It would be really inconvenient to like the same guy as Jazzy, but shouldn’t I feel something for a guy this hot?
In Manila, I totally crushed on guys like this. Even for the thirty seconds I had my own boyfriend, I would still get a rush when a really cute boy smiled at me.

My thoughts are interrupted by a knock at the door. Mr. Derry motions for a student to open it, and one of the local staff, wearing the blue shalwar kameez uniform, walks in with a note. That’s one thing about schools in developing countries, there’s no shortage of workers for every job you can think of. But this school seems to have more staff than students. It’s positively bristling with guards, groundskeepers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, cleaners, cooks, and – apparently – messengers. I guess with the security issues, they can’t risk bringing in an outsider every time they want to pass messages not suitable to announce over the PA. I wonder what kind of information cannot be publicly announced.
A plane waiting at the airport to whisk me out of my mother’s life?

While Mr. Derry has a quiet word with the messenger, the class takes the opportunity to have a few quiet words of their own, and pretty soon, several kids are out of their desks, including Jazzy, who’s made her way over to Johan. Jazzy’s the only person I know in this class, the other girls having made it into higher math. I’m a little disappointed she doesn’t come over to me.

Mr. Derry finishes with the messenger and spends several minutes trying to restore order. This is no easy task. It’s not that everyone in here is an airhead, though if there were airheads, this is definitely where they’d be, but even kids who are generally good students (like me, for example) turn into the worst sort of miscreant when you put a math book in front of them. It’s like the mental energy required for even minimal attention to numbers saps whatever intelligence we have.

Finally, the class settles, and Mr. Derry, with a deep sigh, tells us the rest of the class is canceled and we all have to proceed directly to the theater.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” he says, “but there are some demonstrations in town.” He doesn’t say what kind of demonstrations. But we all know that if they weren’t anti-Western demonstrations, he would tell us more, because that would be unusual.

“We’re going to get you all home safely,” he continues. “A few mullahs are stirring things up at the Friday prayers. Nothing to worry about, but we need to make our way to the theater in an orderly fashion.”
He looks pointedly at several boys, and Jazzy. “Wait there for further instructions. It’s really no cause for concern.”

Is that the third or fourth time he’s told us not to worry?
I look around at my classmates and wonder how many are also thinking of a desolate pile of stones in an unforgotten corner of the school.

The playful energy of moments before has dissipated as students quietly shuffle out of their seats and head for the door. I try to make my way over to Jazzy, but she’s made a beeline for Johan again, so I end up leaving the classroom on my own. I look for Angie in the courtyard, but with every class emptying at the same time, I can’t see her in the crowd.

“What did you get out of?” Mustapha materializes at my side like I’m harboring some internal tracking device.

“Math,” I say, noticing that my pulse has just sped up and my heart’s doing little backflips against my rib cage.

“Oh, bad luck,” he says. I can’t tell if he’s serious. I look up at his face, and a sudden rush of heat explodes somewhere south of my forty-ninth parallel. He grins. I’m doomed.

“Musa!”

We both look back to see the ice princess gliding toward us in a shimmering ensemble, gold accenting every extremity and woven into the fabric of her clothes.
How much does she spend on those dresses?

“Aisha,” Mustapha says. And in that single word, I hear a hint of something that surprises me.
Annoyance? Disappointment?

“This is so tedious,” she says. “Just because there are a few demonstrations, we all have to waste our time in the theater. Why can’t they let us go home and just keep the foreigners? It’s not like we have anything to do with this. They’re only making
us
a target by putting us together with
them
.” She wrinkles her nose in my direction.

“It’s not their fault either, Aisha,” Mustapha says.

“Well, it sort of is, darling,” Aisha purrs. “After all, no one asked them to come here.”

“No one asked you to come to an international school either,” I say, admiring my restraint in not totally going off on her.

“Mustapha,” she pouts, turning her back to me. “I thought you said she wasn’t that bad.”

“Well, I heard rumors you weren’t a total ice bitch,” I say sweetly, relinquishing the moral high ground. “I guess we’re both victims of inaccurate intel.”

She whips round to give me a toxic glare, and Mustapha steps between us.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” says Mustapha firmly, though at this point, I’m not sure if he’s referring to the demonstrations or the fact that Aisha and I are heading for a throwdown.

“I need to find my friends,” I say directly to Aisha. I wonder if she remembers dismissing me with that very
directive only four days ago. I’m glad that this time I’m the one who says it and there are people I can actually go find, even if it’s too early to call them friends.

“Emma –” Mustapha begins.

“Don’t let us keep you,” Aisha interrupts, giving me a fake smile and little finger wave.

“When you didn’t come back to class on Wednesday,” Mustapha continues, “the guys and I wrote a script.” He slings his book bag off his shoulder and pulls out a stapled sheaf of papers, which he hands to me.

I take it and skim down the first page.

“Your country is a primitive, vermin-infested police state,” I read aloud. I glare at him. “I’m not saying that.”

“Actually, I believe you already did,” says Aisha with a smirk.

“We also decided we need an extra practice,” says Mustapha, like he didn’t hear my objection. “So we’re meeting at my house tomorrow.”

“Have fun with that,” I say.

“We need you there too.” Mustapha gives Aisha an uncomfortable look, and I suddenly realize why he wasn’t happy when she came up to us. “You’re in our group,” he says, as much to her as to me.

“What?” snaps Aisha.

“We have to practice,” Mustapha repeats.

“Mustapha –” Aisha begins.

“Sorry,” I cut her off. I don’t bother to sound sincere. “I’m grounded. There’s no way my mom will let me out on a Saturday.”

“Could you call her and ask?” Mustapha persists.

“You know, I would try,” I lie, pleased with my quick thinking, “but she’s out of town.”

Mustapha looks like he’s going to say more, but I don’t give him the chance. I hustle away in search of Angie.