Ten Things I Hate About Me (11 page)
From: [email protected]
Here are the latest developments in my life.
I’m not allowed to go to the formal.
The band I play in at madrasa has been hired to perform.
My dad says I can play in the band but I’ll have to leave early.
Here’s the thing, John.
If I leave early I’ll be a loser.
If I play in the band I’ll be exposing myself. Off comes the disguise. In comes the girl who hid her identity behind a web of lies and deceit.
I have now seriously developed catagelophobia (fear of being ridiculed) and allodoxaphobia (fear of opinions). I need professional help. Alternatively, I could do with some catastrophic weather conditions on the date of the formal, leading to its cancellation.
From: [email protected]
Jamilah/She Who Holds Two Names: I learned something on Google today. It is impossible to lick your elbow, and 23% of all photocopier faults worldwide are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their butts.
Why am I telling you this?
Because you should be exerting your efforts and energy into surfing the Net to arm yourself with useless but interesting information, NOT spending your time nurturing your catagelophobia. You need an antidote. I’ve been in the lab and boiled one up for you.
Also works for allodoxaphobia and other fear-of-whatpeople-might-say/think related conditions
You need to stop worrying about how other people judge you.
You need to trust that your friends will respect you for who you are.
But they’ll never do that if you don’t respect yourself first.
It’s clear that you don’t respect yourself and that is disturbing because you are poetry + music + funny + caring = worth it (and that’s not only in the L’Oreal hair-dye commercial kind of way).
You need to know that there are more than ten things you should LOVE (or at least like—small steps) about yourself.
If you take one thing out of our e-mails, take that.
From: [email protected]
I wish friends like you came in person.
I’ve been working at McDonald’s for several weeks now, Mondays and Wednesdays, and loving every minute of it. I know it’s just a part-time job. That it’s no big deal in the wider scheme of things. I’m basically serving fries and bur gers, scrubbing disgusting grease stains out of appliances, mopping floors, and stacking napkins.
But it’s a small taste of independence and I’m happy to scrape solidified lard out of a fry machine if it means extending my curfew, earning my own money, and having some time outside the house.
I’m on my half-hour break. I’m sitting outside with a drink and burger when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around and am startled to see Timothy grinning down at me.
“Great uniform,” he says, looking me up and down.
“Attractive, isn’t it…What are you doing here?”
He props himself up on the table so that his legs are dangling beside mine, looks at me, and shrugs his shoulders. “My grandma’s cooking dinner tonight. Chops and mashed potatoes. She undercooks the chops. I can’t stand that. I like my meat to make a thud if it were to hit the ground. So I thought I’d go for the healthier alternative. I only live a couple of blocks away.”
I laugh. “Why don’t you just get off your butt and cook the chops yourself? That way you can overcook them the way you want.”
“That would take effort. I’m not into effort.”
“My sympathies.”
“Thanks.”
“To your
grandma.”
He chuckles. “Clever jerk.”
“Very polite.”
“Politeness is just a fake front for people who don’t have the guts to speak their mind.”
I laugh. “Oh, Timothy, that’s just so contrived. Are you trying to be philosophical or something?”
“I figure if I say something profound, I’ll earn myself a free order of nuggets.” He smiles. “So you live around here too?”
“Yeah, about ten minutes away. You live with your grandma, right?”
“Yeah. And my mom.”
“So why’d you move from the North Shore to Guildford? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“My parents divorced.” He suddenly seems distracted and jumps off the table. “Well, I’m off to get some food,” he says, taking out his wallet. “Enjoy your break. I’ll catch you at school tomorrow.”
When I get home tonight, I e-mail John.
From: [email protected]
The strangest thing happened today. One of the guys in my class came to my work. And I have no idea why. Have I ever told you about Timothy?
I receive an e-mail back. Only it tells me that John has blocked me from his e-mail account. Yes. That’s right. Blocked me. He has officially told me to piss off in cyber language. Why? What on earth have I done to deserve being equated to spam mail? Maybe I bored him to death. All that identity talk and
baklava
background made him crazy. Whatever the reason, all I want to know is one thing: Just who can I count as a friend now?
“WHAT DO YOU
mean you don’t want to play?”
Mustafa is pacing up and down in front of me, hands flying, trying to come to terms with my announcement that I don’t want to play at my formal. Samira and Hasan are sitting on their desks, staring at me in disbelief.
“My dad won’t let me go. If I play in the band, I can’t stay. I have to leave with you guys. It’s just too humiliating.”
“If admitting that you have to leave early is freaking you out so much, make something up!” Samira says. “Tell your friends that you’ve got to get home early because there’s a gas leak!”
“If I play in the band there will be consequences for me.”
“Like what, man?” Hasan asks.
“Yeah, like what?” Mustafa echoes.
“It’s long and complicated and moronic. It’s gotten completely out of hand. Even if I wanted to change things, I couldn’t do it without messing things up between me and my friends. Let alone the rest of my class.”
Mustafa stands in front of me and stares at me closely. “What are you talking about? You’re not making any sense.”
I sigh. “Look, don’t worry about the details. I’m not in. You can still play without me.”
I don’t let them argue with me.
“Can I persuade you to change your mind?”
“Nope. Sorry, Miss Sajda.”
She cups her chin in her hand and leans on the desk. “What are you afraid of?”
I take a slow breath. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Do you think I came to this country wrapping myself in the Lebanese flag and proudly walking down the street?”
“Well, yeah. You always seem so comfortable with being Lebanese.”
“It’s been a long struggle to accept myself, Jamilah. I’ll tell you something. I immigrated to Sydney with my ex- husband when I was twenty-seven years old. Saed would come home from work depressed. People called him names, teased his accent, put down his religion. He was desperate to fit in as an Australian. So he disconnected us from family and community. He insisted that we imitate, not integrate. I was cut off from a support network. Every night Saed would go to the local pub with his co-workers. Having a beer with them made him Aussie, he thought. We no longer ate dinner together. That used to be a sacred ritual for us back home. He came home tipsy, sometimes drunk. He lost the respect of Lebanese-Australians
and
Anglo-Australians, the people he tried so hard to impress. He thought he had made true friends. But I know they ridiculed him behind his back. So he gained nothing.”
She stops and her face is suddenly animated. She rubs her hands together, grinning wildly at me. “Big family dinners and a million conversations around the dinner table! Thick Arabic
ahwa
boiled on a coal barbecue and drunk with syrupy baklava and
konefa.
Drinking it over stories about back home when we played on snowcapped mountains after school and spent our weekends swimming in the Mediterranean. Picking
warak ayneb
from the pot while nobody’s looking and scooping hummus into fresh loaves of bread and letting it melt in your mouth! The darabuka and
oud
and
tabla
hypnotizing your hips into dancing around the living room with your cousins and aunts. A community of aunts and uncles and cousins, even when they’re not blood relations.”
I giggle. “Sounds familiar.”
“But wait, Jamilah. Look closer. The family dinner is in the backyard of your suburban Sydney home. The Arabic coffee is being boiled over a barbecue you bought from Bunnings. The warak ayneb is homegrown and the hummus is from the local supermarket. The boys and girls experiment with their parents’ instruments while Aussie TV shows play in the background. That’s
your
Australian landscape, Jamilah.”
“Even so, I can’t let it spill beyond my driveway. Because no matter how much I love it, what does it have to do with reality?”
“It’s
your
reality!”
“But out there, in the real world, at train stations and on the radio and on the streets and in the stores, I’ve only ever felt that my heritage is something to be ashamed of.”
“How can you say that, Jamilah?”
“How can I not? You remember, don’t you? When those teenage boys gang-raped girls in Sydney, it was the boys’ Lebanese-Muslim background that was put on trial. I went to school and I watched Peter Clarkson cross-examine Ahmed for a crime he did not commit. I read headlines describing the crimes as ‘Middle Eastern rape.’ I’ve never heard of Anglo burglary or Caucasian murder. If an Anglo-Australian commits a crime, the only descriptions we get are the color of his clothes and hair.”
“I know, Jamilah. And it angers me too. But I won’t give in.”
She doesn’t realize that I already have. I remember too well the way kids would tease me in elementary school when my mom packed me Lebanese bread and
labne
for lunch. I see how people respond to Shereen when she walks around wearing her hijab. Like she might have a bomb hitched under her skirt.
I remember my mom trying to fit in with the other mothers at my elementary school. It was the fifth-grade food fair and my mom came along to the mothers’ meeting and made arrangements to cook something for me to contribute. My mom slaved in the kitchen for a day, making trays of tra ditional Lebanese food. I brought it along to share with the class and
the kids just laughed at me. They had their Vegemite and cheese sandwiches and chocolate wafers and white bread. I had kebabs and kofta and tabouli and pastries. Some of the other mothers laughed. I could smell their condescension. It smacked my nose like milk gone sour.
When there’s so much fear and misunderstanding and ridicule, why would anybody want to stand out? As well-meaning as Miss Sajda’s efforts may be, I’m not interested in being a hybrid identity. I’ve learned that the safest thing is to leave the kebabs at home and stick to white bread and Vegemite.