Love from A to Z(2)

I tilted my head and blinked at her sweater-set self. “Okay.”

“Shit. Bitch.” She pretended it was because she couldn’t find her seat-belt slot.

“Okay,” I said again, popping headphones on and scrolling on my phone to find the right selection. I turned up the volume and drew the left earphone away from my ear a bit as if adjusting it.

A bit of Arabic, a traveling dua, filled the space between Hateful Woman and me.

She stared. I smiled.

? ? ?

*I know, I know. I hate hateful people was so ironic.

But I was born this way. Angry.

When my siblings and I were young, my parents had this thing where they liked to sum each of us three kids up by the way we had entered the world.

“Sadia had an actual smile on her face. Such a happy baby! Mansoor was calm, serene. And our youngest, Zayneb? She screamed nonstop for hours. A ball of anger!” Dad/Mom would say, laughing when they got to the punch line: me. When I was way younger, I’d get angry at this, their one-dimensional descriptions of us, their reducing us to these simple caricatures, their using me as a punch line. My face would redden, and I’d leave the room, puffing. They’d follow, trying to douse me with excuses for their thoughtlessness.

After a while they learned to follow up the punch line with descriptions of my positive qualities. “But Zayneb is the most generous of our kids! Did you know she’s been sponsoring an orphan abroad with her allowance since she was six? He’s two years older than her, and she’s been taking care of him!” They’d beam at preteen me, at my newly developed guarded expression.

Then, two years ago, when Mom and Dad had stopped this rudeness, I began not to care that they’d called me an angry baby.

Because by then I’d discovered this about myself: I get angry for the right reasons.

So I embraced my anger. I was the angry one.

Though, Marvels and Oddities, the right reasons got me suspended from school yesterday.

? ? ?

Exhibit B: The prime villain of the hater squad, Mr. Fencer.

I’ve written a lot about Mr. Fencer in here. But I’ve never given him a whole section in my oddities entries. I guess it’s because oddities are like the nagging parts of life, things that you can sort of escape.

Fencer is inescapable. Every senior has to take at least one of his classes at our small school.

And he is evil personified.

Yesterday, in social science, he rubbed his hands together before passing out his carefully chosen handout:

GIRL BURIED ALIVE IN HONOR KILLING

Police in Gazra have discovered the body of a sixteen-year-old girl apparently buried alive for talking to boys. Her father and grandfather have been charged with the crime, having admitted that they had been upset at the girl for being friendly with several boys in the village. Her lungs and stomach were filled with soil, indicating that, at the time of burial, she was still alive.

I stopped reading. I knew what Fencer was doing. He was adding fuel to the fire he’d kindled since the semester started in February.

“You’re going to use this article to do an analysis with the graphic organizer I modeled last class. Assignment due Wednesday, before break, no extensions. Questions?”

He stared right at me, the only Muslim in class.

He had parked himself in a corner of the room, on top of an empty desk, in order to get the best view of the class, a look of perverse satisfaction on his face. Like he was tun-tun-da-ing us.

From glancing around at the other students, I saw that it was working pretty well. Mouths hanging open, sighs, frowns, shifting in seats.

I turned the handout over to begin a note to Kavi.

Mike’s hand shot up, already homing in to ace this one. “Sir, do we compare American culture and this particular culture?”

His laptop was open, an iPad beside it. My bet was that Mike was going to start the analysis as soon as Fencer answered him.

“Well, technically you can do any culture you’re familiar with. But you must do this culture, Turkish—or actually Islamic—as the comparing culture.”

I raised my hand. “Islam isn’t a culture. It’s a religion.”

“A religion that permeates every aspect of one’s living, right?” His legs began swinging. Excited. “Like art and architecture, for example.”

“Well . . . yeah, some people call it a way of life.”

“I define that as culture. A mode of living.”

“But in this case, this buried girl is not an example of Islamic culture. You’re stretching again.” I made sure not to add “sir.” Ever.

Never.

“Anyone else want to answer that? People keeping up with notes can look back a couple of classes. When we did that extensive chart comparing women’s rights around the world.”

Mike’s hand shot up. He had his iPad up in the other hand for everyone to see. Its brain held his brain, so no one else bothered to flip through their own notes. “Sir, we came to the conclusion, with the chart, that certain countries were weaker at upholding women’s rights.”

“And was there something that these countries had in common? Come on, people. Someone other than Mike?”

“They were all Muslim?” said Noemi, a girl with long blond bangs covering her eyes. She was staring at Fencer with an expression at the intersection of Practiced Boredom and Mild Curiosity, Freshly Piqued. “Is that what you’re saying?”