January
24, 2003
Dalal
writes in her notebook, “Miss, you are so angry.”
My eyes slowly scan to the words I have written in red
on yellow cardboard and taped to the classroom wall, ‘Anger
is just hot sorrow.’ Sitting at my desk in Salmiya
in the villa where I teach, I write, “Thanks, Dalal,
for noticing how sad I am.” I get up from my desk,
place a few books into my bag, put the computer to sleep,
sign 3:30 p.m. by my name and amble towards the van that
brings me to and from work each day. Sign-in time is 6:45
a.m.
No
matter where I teach, I have learned that I have to
burrow right inside my students’ hearts to be able to
teach them anything. As almost everything in the Middle
East runs counter to my deepest beliefs and pleasures,
getting to feel tender towards my students and this
place has been among my greatest challenges.
Without tenderness – that liquid feel that moves past
my heart into my throat and then swims in my eyes,
and stills me for a second with its power, connecting
my heart with theirs – I cannot impress lines of tenderness
in the desert sand.
Common
ground was hard to
find in a place where culture and climate shook my
Canadian roots terribly on arrival in August, where
my students are both second language Arabic and learning-challenged
teenagers, mostly boys. Gender is an issue here, as
is religion, as are child-rearing practices where the
rod is not spared. There is much conflict between the
pillars of Islam and the temptation of money, conflict
that creates inconsistency for my students, a hotbed
for Islamic fundamentalists, and zero eye contact amongst
strangers.
Arrival, August 22, 2002
On
leaving the airport, a blast of 50 degrees Celsius hit me
as I was ushered
by three Arab men into the back seat of a Mercedes.
Speeding into the unknown, I was driven
to the “green building,” a sixth floor
apartment in a brand new complex furnished with brand
new furniture, linens and dishes all still wrapped
in plastic. Inside my white plastic world, I tore at
a plastic bag with my teeth, pulled out
a too-small sheet and draped it
loosely over the mattress in my master bedroom.
As
the days pass, I
have learned
how to tell when I have reached
the sixth floor in my apartment building by cigarette
ash ground into a corner of the brand-new stairway,
and a blackened banana peel curled on the window
ledge. I scratched an "x" with my key beside the light switch
as a third marker in case the harris goes on a cleaning binge. The sea of concrete
buildings, and satellite dishes from every window
and at every turn, as far as the eye can see, look the
same.
Within
the heat and loneliness and unfamiliarity of living
in a place where beige and pink are the predominant
colors, line upon line of buildings and honking horns,
cars rushing too and fro along the King Abdulaziz Bin
Abdulrahma Al Saud Expressway, Fahaheel and Ring Roads,
I feel caught in what I have come to see as the underbelly
of change. The political situation in Kuwait is also
very hot, evacuation plans and war a routine part of
conversation.
The
day I walked into my classroom on September 1st, my
lips pursed into a frown; shock was a part of my daily
life.
Trapped
in my own desolation, I began my
life in Kuwait one minute at a time, hanging on my
wall that old serenity prayer about accepting the things
I cannot change, unable to see past my nose into the
bigger picture. At my first glimpse of completely covered
women on Kuwaiti Airlines, eyes cast down and somewhat
dispassionate, children's faces burrowed into black
polyester instead of soft skin, I felt cloak-and-dagger
fear.
How
much power, I wondered, must a scripture have to
force women to cover their beauty, and men to expect
it!
In
a book with short articles about life in the Middle
East, I read about the power of a creed to stifle women
in Saudi Arabia.
Under full cover except for the whites of their
eyes, a group of professional women, doctors and lawyers,
struggled in their long black abayas,
meters of black cloth like huge cocoons, into cars
assembled in the desert, and drove a few miles to protest
the ban on their driving. All the protestors were effectively muted
by fellow Muslims, by women as outraged as men. They
lost jobs and personal freedoms.
In
Kuwait, which is becoming increasingly conservative,
I have met several strong and intelligent women who
have recently begun to pull and twist unfamiliar hijab to cover hair that is
perceived to tempt men, in a show of solidarity with
Muslim values.
My
one female Kuwaiti student has long flowing hair
with blond streaks, and I worry.
September,
2002
Dr. Anders explained to us during orientation week, “Kuwait
is a shame-based society, not guilt-based like the
west. Learning difficulties are a huge stigma. Our
parents shelter their kids and do not expect much.
Money is not an issue.” She told us the metaphor
of the butterfly who frees himself from his cocoon
by beating his wings against it, building muscles so
he can fly. If we slit the cocoon and free him, he
will die.
Some of my students are waiting for the moment they are freed,
lying in their protected worlds dreaming about motorcycles
and sleep. “Miss, I don't need to work,” said
Abdul, already bored with his motorcycle that goes
110 kilometers an hour, and not interested in homework.
In
the beginning, I felt like I was caught in a cocoon
so strong that I would die trying to break through.
I do not remember the particulars of that hot uncertain autumn except
that I was angry a lot. I wrote and displayed the phrase
that I always hang in my classroom, Anger is just hot sorrow. This phrase helps me remember that
a child who is acting out is actually deeply hurt.
And
I knew that I was deeply hurt but that did not excuse
me. It was my job to find the key to the
tenderness that floats freely inside me. Luckily, I
was raised in a large family who always spoke loudly
and all at once like Arab students do. And I had many
years of teaching experience to help me through the
minutes. I could trust those instincts and structures
for reading and writing and math and homework that
may be carried into any teaching situation.
How
could I get inside my students' hearts when mine was
broken?
Slowly,
very slowly.
The key to a child’s heart comes through reading, that moment in
a story or poem when a choked throat almost prevents
the words from coming, and I have to read slowly to
dilute the pain of it. Or absorb the beauty.
One
of my first tender moments in the villa was when six-year-old
Ramo was killed by wild dogs in Island of the
Blue Dolphins, our first novel. And,
like in Genesis, there was a beginning, and there was
silence! And it was good.
Aziz, usually fiddling with something or fighting sleep
sat up, “What happened, Miss?” And Mohamed whined, “Whhyyyy, Miss?” That moment was fleeting
and shallow but real, death and violence an easy pull
for most students.
To
deepen their involvement now that they felt sorry for
twelve-year-old Karana who had returned alone to the
island to save Ramo, I had to keep the story moving
despite
settings and vocabulary unfamiliar to them. I learned
to pull whole phrases out of the book ahead of reading,
snatches of meaning I could relate to their lives or
teach them about or do research on or draw: otters,
dolphins, islands, effect of climate on land and people,
grief, the hunt. When the phrase or idea came up in
the reading their faces lit up with recognition and
they felt less helpless to understand.
October,
2002
When
I told them there was a film version of Island of
the Blue Dolphins, they moaned, “Miss, why don't
you just show the movie instead of wasting time reading
this boring book?” Though they later insisted
the film was better, they kept pointing out parts that
were missing, “But, Miss, they left out the part
about the devilfish. Where is the tsunamis? I really
wanted to see the little sea elephant beat up the big
one.”
I
smiled as they played into my reader's hands, “See,
I told you books are better.”
None
of this process was ever smooth. “Miss, can we
just see the movie?” still piqued my frustration
as I struggled to keep the kids in place in the tiny
reading corner. “Dalal, you are too close to
Mohamed; you are not even supposed to be in the same
room! Aziz, five minutes out! Aziz, wake up! Huff!
Puff!” They were seldom riveted to their seats,
except when there was death or violence, but we finished
the book.
 |
In
Kuwait, a city that has mushroomed from a fishing
village to a rich, modern city in a very short
time due to its rich reserves of oil, the culture
has been an oral one and reading is not natural
yet, not an ingrained activity. So, I explained
to the children about neurological impress and
drew diagrams of the recipe box mind and how a
person has to see words many times before they
become filed there, automatic like driving a car.
And I added, “When that happens you
are a reader and the world opens up to you.”
And,
like good writing, I know I have to show them that,
give them a taste for it. |
“What to do,” accompanied by a shrug
is a common Kuwaiti expression when something is beyond
control. “What to do? What books
to read?” I stewed. Muslims are
afraid of Western ideas corrupting their children.
Our librarian was directed by the censors to slash
silver marker over the upper thigh of a female diver
in my math book. I had to erase Israel from my unit
on Southwest Asia, delete kissing from movies. One
of my students looked towards the wall each time Scheherazade
got close to the sultan in Arabian Nights. Charlotte’s Web is banned.
Their
experience is deserts and heat, not mountains and seasons
and snow, Ramadan not Christmas, giving up food and
water for up to fifteen hours a day for thirty days
and praying five times a day, not giving up chocolate
for lent, abundance not poverty, intact families and
multiple moms, not divorce. Cats are haram (bad), not cute little
furballs that they love. Honour can be threatened by
losing a taekwondo match or getting a C+ instead of
a B- in writing. Mohamed asks every day, “Miss, do I have any C’s? My father doesn’t like C’s.” Few flowers and trees
grow in Kuwait.
November,
2003
I
have some success with poetry, especially a poem called “Moon” by
Jean Gay, as we could all remember the moon broken
into pieces over the Arabian Gulf. As we read, I recalled
that same moon over the China Sea, and over Selby Lake
in my backyard in Quebec, how the same light reflected
back into the same water refracts into shimmering pieces
and dances everywhere. I showed them these places on
a map, how far apart and how similar. Jean Gay and
they and I connected inside the moon, timeless and
round.
In
my effort to understand the culture, I came across
an adult short story that touched me and I thought, “My
students will love this!” It was about a wizened
Arab who prods his donkey right past the barriers at
the airport in Morocco, anxious to meet his son who
has been studying in France for five years, “Ooohoo! Bouchaib. Ooohoo,
my son!” He has sold all his land
and goods to educate Bouchaib, spent his last money
to prepare a huge feast to welcome him back home, proudly
invites the policeman who is trying to restrain him.
Embarrassed
by all the commotion, Bouchaib tells his golden-haired
wife to wait a moment, scurries over to his father
and whispers fiercely, “I will come to see you
in a few days, once I get my wife settled.”
My
students listened to the story but did not feel the
deep sorrow of the father, the shame of the son, nor
see the connection between Bouchaib and why their parents
resist western culture, as I did. But they loved to
call, “Ooohoo! Bouchaib. Ooohoo,
my son!” Similarly, they often
repeated the pronunciation of cricket by the Chinese
storyteller
from Cricket in Times Square.
One of them said, “clicket,” and everybody laughed.
I knew I had to figure out how to use this oral pleasure
of theirs to encourage their reading and guide my selections.
November,
2002
To
get closer to my students, now that I have my
foot in the door, I fast with them during Ramadan,
no water nor food from the moment the “white
thread separates itself from the black” at
4:30AM until dusk at 5:00PM for thirty days. Instead
of lunch, we have a 25 minute rest break except for
my one American student who hides in
a backroom to eat and keeps her
water in the washroom as it is against the law, and
cruel, to eat or drink in public during Ramadan.
Sometimes I allow one
or several students whose heads keep nodding, eyes
closing, to sleep in the reading corner for an hour
or more during the day. Their lips are chapped and their breaths stink, and they often cannot
focus.
Fasting
with them increases the tenderness.
Sometimes
when my mouth was puckered from thirst they said, “Drink, Miss, you do not
have to do this.” We played Scrabble and
Monopoly together instead of eating, and we shared
the dizziness that sometimes happens. I was surprised
that they did not know how to place the letters, nor
count the score in Scrabble. They winked at each other
thinking they were distracting me from reading, and
I let them think that, satisfied that they were making
words.
Ramadan
fatigue encouraged a bit of film, and as we watched The
Arabian Nights, the movie about Scheherazade
telling stories to save her life, I smiled, “See how important it is
to read. There are so many great stories waiting for
you, your culture is so ancient and so rich and so
intelligent.”
They
grinned, “Yes, Miss, we know.”
Their
writing was stiff and dry like their reading, something
they seldom did but knew they should, like brushing
their teeth which many of them avoid, “How many lines, Miss?
How many words? What do you want us to write about?” On the first day, I showed
them my writer’s notebook and told them
they were required to write every day like me, about
something they remembered. And every day I responded
to their ideas:
“Wow, Aziz, you drive your
motorcycle one hundred kilometers an hour down the
highway! What does it feel like? What if you get caught?” And he explained how the patrolman is either a relative or
family friend or just chucks him on the head and says
to be careful, or how a friend with a mobile alerts
him to make a detour.
I
asked about the wedding ceremony Mohamed was all excited
to attend, when he described the disdasha and the kutra he would wear and how handsome he imagined looking, “Please tell me exactly
what happens. What is the disdasha made from? Do you wear pants under it? Are you
serious that the men never sit with the women?”
“Do you put the corpse
right in the ground?”
“You mean only men can
go to the cemetery during a funeral? Will your mother
be able to attend your burial?”
I
was fascinated by their experiences and often said, “Gosh, I wish you would
write a book. Kids in Canada would be so interested
in your ideas.”
November,
2003
As
a group, we write class poems about the desert and
sleep and Ramadan. They write about their experiences
of camping in the desert, funeral ceremonies where
they bury the corpse facing Mecca and weight him down
with stones, soccer in 50 degrees Celsius heat, going
to the chalet for the weekend, the pillars of Islam,
their fidelity. So curious about their fasting and
their iftars (first meal at dusk during Ramadan, called
breakfast) and their families, I encourage them to
write their experiences as to an alien. And that is
how I feel at times.
Consistent
and persistent, one minute at a time moved now to one
hour and one day at a time; slowly they explain and
slowly I learn about their culture, about their God,
about their habits. And they learn how interesting
they are, and their writing gets richer, and they sometimes
ask, “Miss, can we write longer?”
And
I always say, “Yes, how much time do
you need?”
Recently,
when I went to pick up my students from PE, I was met
by a hubbub of voices, “Miss, Khaled is sitting
out by the road. Captain is going to take him to the
hospital.”
Seven
kids in tow, the first time they were all present in
almost the whole month of Ramadan, I ran to the sidewalk
where six-foot Khaled was sitting on a chair grimacing
in pain. He swallowed and said, “Hi, Miss.”
“Oh, no, Khaled, what happened?” In the midst of chaos, the coach arrived with the car.
Mohamed asked if he could go with Khaled and, noticing
his eagerness to help his friend, I said, “Of course.” We walked back in the
hot sun to our classroom. Again, I asked, “What happened?” Well, everyone was talking at once and throwing themselves
on the floor and picking up their pant legs to show
me what happened. I laughed out loud, “Never mind, we’ll call the hospital at lunchtime.”
On
the way to the hospital, Khaled told Mohamed, “Pack my books and my driver will pick them up.
Don’t forget to write down
the homework.” Later, Mohamed, usually
active and innocent like a puppy, soberly packed Khaled’s homework with Dalal's help.
He
phoned his dad to ask if he could go to his friend.
When he hung up he mused, “That’s the first time my father
was not mad when I asked to go visit a friend.” It was almost as if he
grew up that day.
February
2003
When
I visited Khaled in hospital two days later, he was
surrounded by his whole extended family the whole time,
many relatives coming in and out during the few minutes
I was there. His sisters served cardamom coffee from
tiny gold-rimmed cups, and Belgian chocolate. The room
was inundated with the scent of huge bouquets and bahour,
a type of bark that is burned over charcoal and wafted
under clothing, an exotic scent I will always associate
with Arabia. I sat in that large room and learned first-hand
the importance of family as I watched Khaled’s
shy grin and listened to his father’s explanation
about the pin in his leg and Khaled’s healing.
His father was in dishdasha, his mom and sisters in
western dress and all the other women in abayas and
hijab.
The
dress of Kuwaitis varies, but graciousness and decorum
are standard.
As
I sat there I thought, "This story has to be written."
My
students mostly believe that I want to understand,
to help, despite the days the whole thing falls apart.
My two girls are often absent or say they are sick,
loll on their desks with headaches and stomach problems.
One very active boy sucks my energy, three often come
late, three do not do much homework, two often fall
asleep by fifth period since their families are often
up very late, and one lashes out with his thin fingers
to touch things like me.
One
day
I went to watch my students play in a soccer game in
the desert sand. They were losing desperately, playing
without heart. “Captain,
can I take off my shoes?” my Bedouin student asked
over and over. Seeing their predicament, Captain shrugged
his shoulders and nodded. Aziz came alive. His brand
new blue soccer socks flashing, he helped his team
score four goals in ten minutes.
“Aziz, it was amazing how
much more focused you were with your shoes off! You
guys would have won if you'd had ten more minutes to
play.”
“I’m Bedouin, Miss.”
I
wondered if Aziz' shoe trick would work in the classroom.
Aziz is one of the sleepers. Often he stays up past
one or two o’clock in the morning; either because he is in
the desert camping, or at the chalet on the Arabian
Gulf; or because it is Ramadan; or he is just being
Arab in Kuwait, where it is too hot to be awake in
the daytime
half the year.
Mohammed also played in the soccer game. I remembered how angry
he had been when his brother had lost at taekwondo,
smashing his fist into his hand and muttering angrily, “…I told people
he was good, and he embarrassed me.” I
told Mohamed, “That soccer game got really
exciting. You guys played well. I am very proud of
you.” Leaning down to tie his
shoe, he did not say anything, just a fleeting smile.
February
2003
I
watch their taekwondo fights. I change a mark from
a C+ to a B- knowing the difference saves huge shame,
and sometimes I protect them from each other's prejudice, “What
is the thing with Bedouin being an insult?” I
ask the whole class. “I don't understand when
you hurt him by saying he is Iranian.”
I
do not say much, just that none of it make sense
to me. And when there is tenderness and
shared experience and positive regard, it means a little
when I say that.
On
the last day of Ramadan, I had some time alone with
my difficult student as only two out of six came to
school. “Asmi, you chose the values of aspiration, virtue and realization
as described in Voices of the Heart, to represent you in your
collage. You wrote these are kind things and you like
them. You wrote that a thing that is bothering you
is homework. Do you think a fairy is going to fly in
the
window
and tap you with her wand, Poof! Now you can read and
do math, now you can join the police academy?”
Asmi
smiled at this, “No, Miss.”
“Do you think that even
if you work hard you will not be able to pass? Is that
the problem?”
A
half nod, a tiny boy who gives himself injections of
growth hormone each morning, probably too late, and
has a blackbelt in taekwondo, Asmi stared at me with huge eyes with long black lashes,
liquid eyes that he has learned to use. “Maybe.”
I
am reminded that anger is just hot sorrow.
“Asmi, there is no fairy.
You made a neat collage with your ideas from Voices
of the Heart. I’m glad you came today
so we had a chance to talk alone.”
Last
week during a math test Dalal remarked, “I’m starting to get the
hang of these problems, Miss!” Other
students nodded, and I remembered how in the beginning
they had always left word problems blank. And it
felt tender, as I paced between their
desks while they scratched away so seriously on their
tests, drawing pictures, underlining words and taking
chances.
Yesterday,
Asmi called me like he usually does after getting down
one line of work, one math example, “Miss, miss!” and then, sotto voce, “Oh yes, I have to get
it all down first.” And he sat back down
and concentrated for ten minutes.
As
I finally finish off this piece, we are on the brink
of war in February, over halfway through the year.
Today I watched Aziz and Asmi get defeated in a taekwondo
tournament, the same day I discussed with my director
the possibility that I might leave for home at the
end of this week because I jump at each loud sound,
and my daughter wrote, "COME HOME!!!"
As
I ponder my time here I think of how much I have learned;
how another valve has been opened inside me that channels
a difficult and gracious experience in the Middle East
into my reckoning of the world; how disdasha and kutra have become familiar;
how I accept that the husbands will sit separate from
their wives at the clinic as I wait to get my plantar
warts operated; how I feel more empathy for Palestine,
and how I am stilled by the piety, feel some concern
at its power and some wonder at its certainty.
Departure,
March, 2003
Today
at work, Miss Ameena, the librarian, gave me a plastic
bottle with water from Makkah and some shiny black
prayer beads. She told me the water was a miracle sent
to quench the thirst of Abraham's second wife, Hagar,
banished to Makkah by God when his first wife, Sarah,
became jealous. I looked at the water and up to Ameena’s
hijab and careful smile, “You made my day, Ameena.
I will keep this water in a special bottle.”
“No,
drink some, drink all of it if you want, it will help
you.”
I
carefully taped a piece of paper around the water bottle
and labeled it Holy Water and Zam Zam, thinking, “Carpe
diem.” But I was already imagining the delicate
Egyptian blown glass perfume bottle sitting on my mantle
in Canada, “Oh, and this is Zam Zam, holy water
from the Hajj my friend's family made to Makkah when
I was in Kuwait.” And how I would feel like a
world traveler with my trophy case.
 |
As
I sit here writing, I think, “I better drink
that water. It is not meant to be hoarded in a pretty
jar. Drink it with Ameena and tell people how it was
to be Christian in Kuwait and how holy the water felt – Muslim
holiness evoking the same tenderness as the words written
for me by the Buddhist monk near the sky burial fields
in Sichuan; or the thin wafer and grape juice I shyly
shared with the congregation in my small church in
Dunham; Shabat dinner with Marion; or the toothless
smile of the wrinkled old Chinese woman in Yangshuo
who looked at me with sparkling eyes and said, ‘Go
carefully.’”
Pedagogy
of the heart and unfamiliar landscapes slowly intermingle
and change. My heart ever opens and shuts in response
to the difference that shocks, then warms and slowly
insinuates itself inside me, broadens my longing and
deepens my compassion. Then real learning happens,
mine and my students.
Editor's Note
|
|
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Photo by Massimo, March
28, Kuwait City. |
About the Author –Gay
Grannary
Known as Gay Girl Gabby Gut Grannary
when I was a girl, I have never stopped asking questions,
curious to understand everything. “Thanks, Kurt,” I
said when my teenage brother handed me a little red diary
with a lock on it when I was twelve years old.
I did not know that he would die almost exactly a year
later, and I stroked over and over again the words scrawled
there about him. I dedicate to him Lines in the desert
sand and that first diary that I have carried into
each class I have had in Quebec, China and now Kuwait.
I show
my students the childish writing and share some of the
memories that flash fresh each time I read them. I tell
them about the words that describe all the forty years
between then and now, some of it found between the lines
in the desert sand.
