Brownies and Kalashnikovs Page 3
My mother was delighted with the kitchen and its large white oven, large white refrigerator, large white washing machine, and large white cupboards filled with pots, pans, glassware, and cutlery. I knelt to touch the strange floor tiles (linoleum) that muffled the sound of our running feet, having only experienced echoing ceramic and terrazzo tiles in Beirut. We reveled in the marked coolness of our new home, meeting central air conditioning for the first time in our young lives. In Beirut, an open window was all that had been needed to cool a room.
We adjusted to our new home easily (age was a helpful factor) while Mama took longer to fully appreciate the hassle-free conveniences of an American home. Damascene kitchens smelled of babboor gaz (Bunsen burners) used for cooking that needed to be pumped and lit at the same time. Dry goods stored in burlap bags in the mezzanine attic above the kitchen needed to be hauled down. Vegetables were bought from roving vendors who advertised their wares in catchy throaty cries such as “Assabee’ al bubboo ya khiar” (cucumbers like a baby’s fingers) as they trundled past on colorful heavily laden wooden carts. The fresh vegetables then needed to be sorted and cleaned preferably in gossip sessions with the next door neighbor and any visiting friend or relative, before being placed in a copper pot on the noisy Bunsen burner for a labor-intensive slow-cooked meal. Meat came daily from the butcher around the corner who strung freshly killed and skinned sheep and cows at the entrance to his shop. Chicken came from another nearby vendor who killed the daily quota on a large marble slab with a single swipe of the curved blade of his knife. For seasoning, herbs were clipped from terracotta pots that stood in a row outside the kitchen window. And after the meal was eaten and fully digested, water was boiled in large aluminum vats for washing the dishes, the kitchen floor was scrubbed clean with a straw broom and soap and water and then mopped dry by a handheld cloth.
There would be none of that in my mother’s new modern, efficient suburban life.
***
On the morning of my first day of school, I jumped out of bed eagerly and ran to the clothes I had laid out on the chair from the night before. I was the kind of child who loved school. I carefully slipped the crisp white cotton pique dress over my head, and tied the sash loosely behind my back. Then I sat on the bed and pulled on a brand new pair of lightly woven white cotton socks that folded twice at the ankle. I was told that they were called ‘bobby socks’ by Mrs. James, the wife of the school principal, a kindly lady who had helped my mother find my ‘first day of school’ clothes. She had called the black and white shoes that I was now slipping my feet into ‘saddle shoes.’ I painstakingly knotted the shoelaces into a ‘rabbit ears’ bow while I repeated the names of the American socks and shoes to myself, ‘bpaah-pbee sux,’ ‘saa-dell shoo.’ Finally I pulled on a light pink sweater and fussed with the sleeves until they stopped just below my elbow.
Ready.
Now I was dressed like every other girl I had seen in Dhahran. After a quick breakfast, I clambered onto a chair in front of the bathroom mirror to observe closely how my mother fashioned my bangs with a wet fine toothed comb into a small crescent at the side of my forehead, a hairstyle I never left the house without. Satisfied with my image, I ran out and hopped into the car with my father for the short ride to school. He had already prepared me for what I should expect: “Lots and lots of Americans, who spoke no Arabic,” a concept difficult to absorb. How could they not speak Arabic? Everyone in my world up till now spoke Arabic. The children lived in Saudi Arabia, therefore they must speak Arabic. “Now tell me what you know in English,” he asked me as we drove to school. “Hell-lloo, koot-pye, bpaah-pbee sux, saa-dell shoo, wan-tooo-sree-forrr-fife,” I recited breathlessly, quickly exhausting my American vocabulary.
We parked the car and climbed a short flight of steps to the school, a sprawling modern building with glass facades and brick walls in the midst of well-tended squares of green grass and palm trees. We walked into a large airy reception area straight on through to the office of the principal, Mr. Vincent James, a good-humored, grey-haired bear of a man with a laughing smile. Mr. James stood up and clasping my hand playfully, boomed cheerfully in fluent Arabic, “Ahlan wa sahlan, Fadia!” (Welcome). Then placing my hand in the crook of his elbow with a grand flourish, he turned to my father while winking at me, “You stay here Fahmi; Fadia’s too big to have her father take her to class,” and we walked off arm in arm, our heels clicking softly on the polished linoleum tiles of a long hallway with walls painted a soft vanilla color and smelling vaguely of the same disinfectant my mother used in our bathroom.
“Hena (here), Fadia,” Mr. James and I were standing, still arm in arm, before a colorful, light-filled room with large windows shaded by venetian blinds across one wall. Drawings, pictures, and a large green blackboard filled the remaining walls. Big and small lines (the English alphabet) were printed on a banner that circled the classroom near the ceiling, stopping before what I would learn was the flag of the United States of America. Children seated at small wooden desks in tidy rows turned in unison to stare unblinkingly at me. Hopping up from behind her desk, my teacher came forward and kneeled smilingly at me, eye level. Tall and willowy with short auburn hair and wispy bangs that emphasized her big green eyes, I found her even prettier than my mother.
“Marhaba (hello), Fadia,” she told me, “Ana ismi (my name is) Miss Thornton.” Then turning to the class she announced, “Children, Fadia Basrawi is from Saudi Arabia.” Fifteen children-who-spoke-onlyAmerican chimed “Hell-lloo, Faaadiiiaaa” in one breath. Mr. James laughed, stroked my head affectionately and with a “Ma’a al Salamah” (Goodbye) left the room. I turned to Miss Thornton and told her in Arabic that I spoke no English but she just kept on smiling. I tugged at her skirt urgently and repeated my words, fighting a rising wave of alarm. This time she shook her head slowly. I realized with a sinking heart that she did not speak Arabic; those Arabic words she had greeted me with were all that she knew. Suddenly I felt bereft of Mr. James’ comforting presence. A petrifying sense of alienation crept over me and my heart began to beat so hard, I was afraid it was going to jump out of my chest. Unaware of the panic rising within me, Miss Thornton gently took my hand and led me to a desk in the front row, pulled out a chair, and motioned for me to sit down. Looking around at the silent wideeyed children in my class, I made another frightening discovery. Not a single child in the classroom had black hair! They were a sea of blondehaired heads with delicate features and no visible eyebrows. Although I had inherited my mother’s fair skin, I was still so different from everyone else. Saddle shoes and bobby socks did not make me one of them.
My panic stricken eyes lit on one very, very skinny girl with a wild mop of bright orange hair, tiny eyes, bright red thin lips, a long neck and chalk white skin covered by so many freckles, they touched one another. I had never seen any one so skinny or so freckled in my life. The unsuspecting orange-haired girl became the trigger for my meltdown. I burst into loud terrified sobs. All fifteen children jumped up from their chairs to comfort me as first graders tend to do when faced with the degree of unhappiness I was suffering. Unfortunately, the first to reach me was the carrot top and this had the effect of making me react like a trapped cat. Miss Thornton stepped in swiftly and hauled me and my wildly flailing arms and legs onto her lap and held me closely to her with my back to the class while she rocked me gently back and forth, soothingly patting my back .When my tears and sobs finally subsided, I slid down slowly from the safety of Miss Thornton’s lap but kept my fingers tightly entwined around the edge of her skirt for the rest of the day.
The classroom was a treasure-trove of fascinating new things I had neither seen nor touched before. Fat brightly colored wax crayons that smelled good enough to bite, thick white paste that I was so tempted to taste and small scissors with blunted edges that fit perfectly in my hand, all of which I was unable to explore fully as I needed to both keep a tight grip on Miss Thornton’s skirt and a close lookout for the orange-haired girl. By day’s end, un
der the gentle persuasion of my teacher, I was ready to approach the carrot top and give her a very tentative hug.
Several weeks into first grade, I broke the code of the English language when I deciphered my first three words in the first grade reader about Dick, Jane, and Sally and their dog Spot, Oh! Oh! Oh! And what joy that gave to Miss Thornton. She applauded happily and asked me to stand in front of the class where I proudly read out my Oh! Oh! Oh! They all clapped gamely following Miss Thornton’s cue. I left school that day with my reader and waited impatiently for my father to come home to read it to him. “Bravo, Fadia” he smiled, “We’ll have to start you on Arabic.” He arranged for a good friend of his, Mr. Suleiman Rubayi’, to come in daily to give me Arabic lessons across the hall from my classroom.
Everything about Mr. Rubayi’ was dark and serious. He was short, with thick black eye brows, a bushy black mustache and deep shadows that circled his mournful dark eyes. He sat on a swivel chair, I on a child chair in a room little larger than a broom closet. While I stared fixedly at him as he methodically picked at every hair of his mustache from one end to the other, he intoned each Arabic letter with its vowel accent followed by a word beginning with that letter which I repeated after him in a sing song voice, committing the words and letters to memory. This was the traditional rote method of teaching the Arabic language.
I internalized this rote method of ‘memorize and repeat’ and an idea came to my head that maybe I would understand Americans better by mirroring their movements and repeating their words. I loved Miss Thornton very much and I was desperate that she remained as proud of me as she had been the day that I had read my first words. So I focused on the sweetest and smartest girl in class, Nayna Lee Rees, a plump, smiling, round-faced girl with honest brown eyes, rosy cheeks, straight brown hair and short bangs as my role model. Nayna was fun, always had the right answer to the teacher’s question and all the other children in the classroom wanted to be her best friend. Whatever Nayna did, I did. If she sharpened her pencil, I did too. If she put one foot across the other under the desk, I did too. If she took out her crayons to draw, I did too. What I grasped from her words, I repeated softly to myself.
One morning, Miss Thornton called me to her and asked me to move my desk next to Nayna’s. She had caught on to the childish reasoning behind my obsessive copying act and had secretly designated Nayna as “Teacher’s-little-helper-to-Fadia-because-she’s-new.” Being the thoughtful girl she was, Nayna kept her secret with Miss Thornton. I only found out how my cover was blown many years later during a summer job at Dhahran School from Miss Kant, my second grade teacher when she reminisced about my early days there. “Fadia,” she had greeted me affectionately, “Now that you’re grown, I can tell you that Miss Thornton and I worked together with that sweet little girl Nayna to help you adjust to your new world!” I never forgot Miss Thornton’s humane approach to education and when it was time to choose a major for my university degree, I decided on Child Development and Sociology to better understand what a child needs to face the world on the right footing. What could have been a permanently scarring experience in the tender years of my early childhood was turned into an empowering one by Miss Thornton’s intuitive grasp of a frightened child’s world.
I wish I could say the same about all the teachers in Dhahran School. Unfortunately, my sister Fatin had a horrific kindergarten experience after she too went through the same copying-what-others-are-doing act. Indeed, she almost flunked kindergarten due to her teacher, Miss Waldish, who misconstrued her inability to speak American or act like one as a learning disability. Fatin was saved from permanent impairment of her self image by an enthusiastic ex-Green Berets science and gymnastics teacher, Mr. Goellnor, who spoke Arabic as well as the Arabs. Well-built with a grey-haired buzz cut and a long tattoo of an anchor on his forearm, Mr. Goellnor was beloved by everyone both young and old … beloved enough to endure listening to his WWII stories of battle in the Pacific theater many times over. He noted Fatin’s gymnastic talents and turned her into Dhahran School’s star gymnast. Unluckily for Fatin, her training stopped after she graduated from Dhahran School as physical education for girls in Saudi Arabia is forbidden by royal decree to this day.
Of Arabs and Americans As Aramcon-bred Saudi Arabians functioning in the world at large, my siblings and I often found ourselves between a rock and a hard place as we tried hard to fit in both the Saudi Arabian and American circles. During fourth grade I gave up trying to look like my blonde-haired, blue-eyed American classmates particularly after an unfortunate experience with the fashionable hoop crinoline petticoat craze that pushed the circle skirts of our frilly dresses almost straight out and with me straight up when I sat down one morning in class, exposing my frilly pink underwear. I decided to adopt the more infallible persona of an avowed tomboy, climbing trees, chasing boys in the playground and hitting them, racing bikes with them and winning … in short anything a boy boasted he could do, I learned to do better.
Our neighborhood had the proverbial neighborhood bully, Bobby, who was, as is usually the case with bullies, bigger, older and less furnished in the brain department than the rest of us. What he had was bulk, a gruff harsh voice and an ability to throw rocks with deadly precision. Fed up with his swagger and checkpoints that interrupted our roller skate swoops down a smooth cement alley in our block, my friends and I decided to take Bobby up on this much bragged about talent. We prepared our barracks and waited in ambush for him when he passed by on his prized Schwinn bike – as he did every afternoon after school. Whoooosh! Pingggg! The first stone flicked off of his handlebars. With a roar of anger, he looked behind him and saw us clapping and cheering and taunting him. He threw his bike aside, ran to the side of the road, picked up a sizeable stone and threatened to bash our brains in. Our answer was a lot of loud laughter. In the heat of the moment, I unwisely jumped out from behind our protective barracks, threw another stone and yelled that he wouldn’t dare hit girls. My last words were “You can’t hit me, you can’t hit me,” and he did, with that huge stone on the back of my head leaving a lasting memory of him both physically and mentally.
“Take that you dirty Arab!” he yelled as the stone hit its target. Head wounds are often a lot more spectacular than serious with all the blood that gushes out. Bobby froze at the sight of my bloodied head, terrified at what he had just done. He began to cry and apologize but we were not in the mood to let him off so easily. My friends took me bleeding and howling to my house. My father grimly wrapped a huge towel around my head and rushed me to the emergency ward. I exited from the hospital with a satisfyingly large white bandage encircling my head which I wore martyr-like to school the next morning. What was to come was far more dramatic than what typically should have ended as a standard rite of passage of tangling with the school bully.
I was the daughter of one of ten Saudi Arab senior staff employees out of three thousand American senior staff employees. Bobby was the son of the Head of Security of Dhahran who was responsible for peace and harmony within the community. My father was not going to let this incident pass unnoticed and immediately filed a complaint through a Palestinian lawyer friend with red lines underscoring the ‘dirty Arab’ slur. Suddenly the company was faced with a very awkward public relations debacle. A flurry of damage control swirled dizzyingly around me, embarrassing me to no end. In another world, I would have been just another elementary schooler clearing out a space in the school’s hierarchy. But in the Aramco world, I became as fragile as a porcelain doll that must remain untouched for the continuity of the peaceful mask of Aramco’s Saudi-American ‘partnership.’
On my first day of injury, my teacher, Miss Danforth, walked into class, and looking sympathetically at me pointed out to the class how important it was to be fair and polite with people like me who were ‘different.’ This heaped more discomfort on me than my stitches. I looked down at my desk bright red with embarrassment, refusing to look up or answer any questions. I truly wished the earth would open up
and swallow me. The whole idea behind my scuffle with Bobby had been to become a toughie and fit in with the popular crowd. What was I to do with all of this patronizing pity pouring all over me, separating me from everything I wanted so desperately to belong to? The boy’s father showed up at our house the following evening with his son in tow. Bobby, red faced and dressed in formal clothing which included a bow tie, solemnly apologized to me while looking at his feet almost in tears, his swagger vanished. All of you have been nine years old at one time and you can imagine the intense awkwardness that both Bobby and I suffered as we faced one another under the daunting pressure of both of our fathers.
The incident passed and we ended up becoming fast friends. But I was left with the niggling unease of always wondering if I was being treated nicely because I deserved it or because I was the Saudi Arabian token in Aramco’s school. In my childish attempt to be one of the crowd I had come up against the invisible line of demarcation that defined who I was to everyone in Aramco: not American.
***
Aramcon Mama … Syrian Style It was no easy task to live in such an all-American community for my mother either. Until she came to Dhahran, she had never met a foreigner. She took the easy way by choosing to do what every Syrian does when they leave Syria … remain Syrian to the core: unbending, unchanging, and unyielding. My mother, Muzzayyan Kotob, was a Damascene beauty with amber eyes, a rosy complexion, glossy black hair and skin so soft and translucent that the slightest pressure left glaring marks.