CHAPTER 2

“COME ON. GET UP,” YOUSSEF SAID LOUDLY, poking Adele in the ribs. With the covers pulled up close to her chin, she lay in her bed. She yawned, rubbed her eyes, and looked into her father’s eyes; they were wide with frustration. “You have to get ready for Arabic school. Christ, you should be used to this by now. How many times do I have to remind you to get up?” he said, throwing the covers off Adele’s body. She reluctantly got out of bed and straightened her pajamas. She was now twelve. It turned out that she was not only expected to learn to cook Lebanese food, but she was also meant to speak Arabic fluently like her older sisters.

“I don’t want to go,” she said firmly. She hated that school, despised waking early on Saturday for that purpose. “I don’t want to go anymore,” she insisted, digging her bare feet into the plush brown carpet.

“Why?” Youssef asked, controlling the anger rising to his throat.

She wanted to answer because I can’t stand the mean looks and comments from the other students, all of whom spoke Arabic fluently. She was an outsider even though she was Lebanese. But rather than tell the truth, she said, “I don’t feel good.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“My stomach. It hurts.” She wrapped her skinny arms around her belly and moaned in exaggerated pain, glancing across at her father, hoping she’d convince him of her illness. But his expression didn’t soften, and instead, his thick eyebrows knitted together.

“I don’t believe you. Get dressed and hurry up.”

“I’m not going!” she said suddenly, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“That’s enough!” With one quick movement, Youssef yanked Adele up by the arms and pushed her towards the closet. She fell to the floor. He then pulled out a shirt and trousers, and threw them at her. “Now get dressed! You’re going to school whether you like it or not, understand? Who knows, maybe you’ll learn to speak Arabic without sounding like a complete idiot.” He looked hard at his daughter. A few seconds later, he stomped across the bedroom and down the stairs.

Sullen, Adele slipped into her clothes, turning when she felt someone’s hand on her shoulder. It was Katrina. “Are you all right, Adele?”

“What difference does it make? This is the way things are for us. Babba tells us what to do and we do it, isn’t that right?” Angrily, she added, “Why didn’t you come in earlier when Babba was yelling?” She stared up at her sister, Adele’s face straining for composure.

There was silence. Katrina shook her head, looking down at her feet, “You can’t beat him. There’s no point in arguing with him.”

“Whatever.”

Katrina suddenly grabbed a pillow from the bed and playfully threw it at Adele’s back.

“That’s not funny.”

“You have to laugh, Monkey.”

Adele turned around and gave her sister a wide forced grin, then ducked as Katrina swung another pillow at her. Adele laughed, running down the stairs and out the front door to her father’s awaiting car.

She did not smile, though, during the drive to the school. The big, green Chevy moved from the downtown core to the east end of the city. The streets were quiet. With her head turned toward the passenger side window, Adele stared at the houses that lined the streets her father took as he drove. Blinds were shut tight and outdoor lamps were still turned on from the previous evening, shining dully in the sunlight. Her father shook his fist at the car in front of them and cursed, “Son of a bitch, where the hell did you learn to drive? You wouldn’t survive one minute on the streets of Beirut. Stupid people. They don’t know how to drive.” Adele looked blankly out the window once more. This twenty-minute drive was always the same. Silence punctuated with Youssef’s intermittent cursing. They didn’t speak with each other often and when they did, it was in angry grunts and rushed hand gestures. Adele’s birthday was a day before her father’s and she had often joked with her sisters that they clashed because they were born under the same astrological sign—Aries, the sign ruled by passion and sometimes aggressive action.

Within a few minutes, Youssef turned the car into the parking lot of the high school where the Arabic lessons were conducted. He dropped Adele off at the front door. She slid out of the car and said, “Thanks, Babba.”

“I’ll be back around noon to pick you up,” he said.

“Okay. Bye,” Adele mumbled, slamming the door shut. She made her way slowly up the steps to the school and walked past a crowd of dark-haired students speaking a language that was never hers.

By the time she reached the classroom, the other students were already seated. They chatted loudly. With her head bowed, Adele took her seat at the back and quietly opened her notebook. A few minutes later, the teacher hurriedly entered the room. She was tall and her shoulders stooped while she pulled out her chair and sat behind her large desk. Her black hair was swept up in a loose bun; a few strands fell around her oval face. She wore a bright fuchsia blouse under a navy jacket. Her large eyes were serious and unkind. She didn’t smile while greeting the children with a quick Marhaba. The instructors of the classes were Lebanese-born people who had immigrated to Canada only a few years ago, and Madame Yasmine El-Sawaya fit this profile. Yet there was something endearing about her. Perhaps it was her dark, almond eyes or the way she spoke with a lyrical Arabic accent when she reminisced about the beauty and chaos of her homeland. Getting up from her seat, the teacher stood in front of the blackboard, and scribbled down some sentences. She spoke with longing and determination to get her students to appreciate their ancestry. How could a strong and beautiful voice belong to such a strict teacher? And like the other instructors, she lacked patience when explaining things that seemed simple to her but weren’t so easy to some of her students. They sat before her, gripping their pencils, scribbling the Arabic words onto the lined paper of their notebooks from the back-to-the front, right-to-left. “Yallah, follow me. We only have a few hours together and you must learn these sentences if you’re to read and write in Arabic.”

Adele’s own hands trembled. Madame El-Sawaya’s chalk moved quickly across the blackboard; a fine white spray of dust circled her hands as she wrote. Once done, the teacher clapped her hands together and grabbed the long wooden ruler resting on the metal edge of the blackboard and hit the tip of it against the board, guiding the students through the daily drill.

“Hal tatakallam al-’arabiya?” she repeated, tapping the ruler. “Come on, say it louder,” she insisted in Arabic. When the students failed to make the sounds correctly, Madame El-Sawaya abruptly stopped and, holding her hands up, one still clutching the ruler, cried, “Stop! That’s wrong, wrong, wrong. Start over. This sentence is asking, ‘Do you speak Arabic?’ Do you? Obviously not if you can’t even pronounce these words. Yallah, try again.” She slapped the stick on the board again, as if the intensity of its pressure on the letters would force proper enunciation of each word. When some of the students still mispronounced the words, she shouted, “Again! Say it again until you get it right, okay?” The children shouted into the air until their voices began to crack, including Adele’s. The sounds weren’t found in English so Adele had a difficult time grasping Arabic. She couldn’t get the back of her throat to articulate right. When she tried to pronounce the sentences, everything sounded like nonsense. She cleared her throat and tried to say the words correctly while at the same time scribbling them down again in her notebook, but she forgot to write from right-to-left and had to erase her attempts. She rubbed her forehead in frustration. Adele’s tone was not as loud as the others; she was embarrassed because she didn’t sound like them. To her, they all seemed to speak Arabic well.

Finally, out of frustration, Madame El-Sawaya placed the ruler on her desk. She slid into the seat behind her desk and cupped her head in her hands as if nursing a bad headache. “That’s enough for today. Open your books and read.”

But instead of reading, the students began to chat amongst themselves, their voices no longer cracking but laughing and joking. Adele looked at the clock on the wall. Fifteen minutes to go before the break. Turning her head, she studied her teacher. Lines were beginning to form around her dark eyes and Adele guessed she was about thirty-five. With furrows on her face and strands of grey hair sprouting between dark locks, Madame El-Sawaya had the appearance of someone not in the prime of adulthood. She pressed fingers against her cheeks and sighed, her chest expanding with weariness before she mumbled to her students to take an early recess. “Don’t run, walk. Remember, you’re not a herd of sheep but young people.” The students rose from their seats and, ignoring the teacher’s instructions, they rushed out of the classroom, heading towards the cafeteria. Madame El-Sawaya shook her head before placing it down on her desk. Adele looked sadly at her teacher then walked out of the room behind everyone else, forming her own single file line.

The cafeteria was crowded. Everyone was talking and laughing at once. Adele slowly chewed on the cookie in her hands and swallowed it down with a gulp of apple juice. Some of her classmates sat across from her at one of the long tables.

“Madame El-Sawaya is one crazy teacher and bitch too!” Zeina said in a thick Arabic accent. “I know how to speak Arabic. I was born in Lebanon. I’m a pure Leb. She doesn’t have to drill it into my head.”

Adele twirled the plastic cup in her hand, the remainder of the drink swirling at the bottom. “She’s not a bitch. Maybe she has a lot on her mind.”

“Why are you defending her, Adele? You see how she gets all mad over nothing. If you can’t handle teaching, then don’t teach. It’s as simple as that. Anyway, what she’s teaching us is for beginners like yourself, Adele,” Zeina said. “How come you never learned to speak Arabic well? Do you think it’s beneath you or something?”

“No, I don’t think…” Adele began.

Zeina interrupted, “Just cause you were born here doesn’t make you white, you know.”

“I totally agree,” another girl said. The others nodded their heads. In this group, Adele was the only one who was born in Canada, the only one without an accent in English. Her accent only revealed itself when she tried to speak Arabic.

“It doesn’t make you better than us,” Zeina continued, sitting back in her chair and staring pointedly at Adele.

“I don’t think I’m better than anyone,” Adele finally said.

“You’re not white.”

“I never said I was.”

“Then learn the language. Are you a real Leb or not?” Zeina asked, her large eyes boring into Adele’s own.

“Yeah,” Adele answered in Arabic. “I’m Lebanese, not Canadian.”

Zeina laughed. “You don’t sound like a Leb. You sound like a white person trying to be ethnic.”

Adele felt tears prick her eyes. She didn’t know what to say next.

“Leave her alone,” another girl suddenly snapped. It was Myriam, the daughter of Youssef’s old friend. Her long, brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she wore a second-hand shirt that had once belonged to Rima, given to her when she had first arrived in Canada, which was a few months ago. But Adele had never mentioned this shirt to her or to the others in the school. She knew it would be unkind to brag about this sort of thing or to bring it to Myriam’s attention. She understood it was one thing for her to wear her sister’s hand-me-downs but another thing for a stranger to wear them. Myriam spoke in a soft voice and smiled sympathetically at Adele. “She sounds all right. At least she’s trying.”

“She still sounds like an idiot,” Zeina snickered.

Adele pushed back her chair and got up.

“Where are you going?” Myriam asked.

“Going back to the classroom. Do you want to come?”

Myriam shook her head, stared at the cookie in her hands, the crumbs falling on the table. Adele looked down at the table, too, before pushing the chair in.

“Are you going to hang out with Madame El-Sawaya? I saw the way you were staring at her today. You got the hots for her or what?” Zeina said mockingly.

“That’s enough, Zeina,” Myriam said, staring at the loud-mouthed girl.

But Zeina ignored her. “Go run to the teacher,” she said. Then added, “Freaks should stick together.” Adele quickly walked away and turned back once to glance at the group of girls still sitting at the table. Before leaving the cafeteria, she heard Zeina’s piercing voice add, “She’s not like us.”

Adele ran into the washroom and pressed her hands on the white sink while she stared at the mirror and studied her face. She looked like the other girls with her dark hair and brown eyes. Tracing her cheeks, she left a faint mark on her olive skin. Wasn’t she like them? Wasn’t she Lebanese even though she was born here? Didn’t she struggle with the Arabic language? Leaning closer into the mirror, she carefully examined her green-flecked eyes; they weren’t as dark as her sisters’.

Other girls suddenly entered the bathroom, chatting loudly. She whirled around and quickly headed back to the classroom.

When she pulled open the door to the classroom, Madame El-Sawaya jumped. “Oh, you scared me, Adele,” she said, smiling weakly.

“I’m sorry,” Adele said, quickly taking her seat at the back. She opened her notebook and began to doodle on a clean page.

“Why aren’t you with the other students?” Madame El-Sawaya asked, lifting a glass of water to her lips.

“I’d rather be here if that’s okay.”

“Sure.”

Adele coloured in the three-dimensional box she had drawn on the sheet.

“I’m sorry about the way I acted earlier—getting all frustrated with the class,” Madame El-Sawaya said suddenly, taking another sip from the glass before placing it down on the desk. She stared across at Adele.

“That’s okay,” Adele said, moving uncomfortably in her seat. She kept her eyes on the sketch in front of her.

“It’s just … it’s just that things can be so difficult sometimes.”

Adele stopped drawing and looked up at her teacher. Her eyes were red. “Are you all right, Madame El-Sawaya?”

“Yes. No … I don’t know. God, I’m sorry for acting like a blubbering idiot.”

Adele had never seen this side of her confident teacher.

“I’m returning to Lebanon,” Madame El-Sawaya said abruptly.

“When?”

“Next week.”

“Oh, you’ll be missed,” Adele said.

“You’re too nice, Adele. I know my students don’t like me.”

But Adele did. “I’ll miss you.”

“Thank you, Adele. That’s really sweet.”

“Why are you returning home?”

The teacher hesitated then cleared her throat. “My father’s dying.”

“I’m sorry,” Adele said in a low voice.

“Cherish your parents, Adele. Because one day you’ll turn around and they won’t be there.”

She looked down again. She thought about her father and his words; they were synonymous. Cherish Youssef? And his words? Where would they go? Adele wondered to herself. A few minutes later, she asked, “Will you be coming back to Ottawa?”

“No,” she answered. “I’m going back home for good.”

The other students began returning to the classroom, taking their respective seats. Adele’s eyes were still locked onto the teacher’s gaze. When she finally turned away, she noticed Zeina squeezing Myriam’s shoulder. She whispered, “I told you she was weird.”

Youssef touched his daughter’s shoulder after she slid into the car. “School isn’t that bad, is it? You survived another week,” he said with satisfaction.

“Yeah,” Adele mumbled, slamming the door shut.

“I won’t have to pull you out of bed next Saturday because you’ll be excited to come back, right?”

Adele didn’t reply but stared out the window, watching a tearful Madame El-Sawaya standing in a group with some of the other teachers.

“Well, what did you learn?” Youssef asked in Arabic.

“Some sentences.”

“Recite them to me.”

“Hal tata … kalleem al-’arabeeya?”

“You’re not saying it right, Adele,” her father said. “Say it again. Try harder.”

She repeated the words again while gazing in the car’s side view mirror and watching her teacher hug her colleagues goodbye. The butchered Arabic words rolled off Adele’s tongue.

When the next Saturday arrived, Adele knew she wasn’t going to Arabic school or, more precisely, she knew she didn’t want to ever go again. She didn’t know for certain how she was going to get out of it, but she knew she couldn’t go anymore. Adele got out of bed, resolving to be steady as she explained to her father why it was time for her to stop her Arabic studies.

Dressing quietly, she looked out the window. The sun had begun its ascent into the world once more, colouring the clear, pale sky a milky pink. No sounds could be heard except the soft breathing coming from Mona’s mouth. Adele glanced across at her sister, cocooned under her blankets, sleeping peacefully. As soon as she was fully dressed, Adele slowly crept out of the room and made her way down the stairs. She knew her father was waiting for her in the store, ready to drive her to her lessons. Taking a deep breath, she entered the grocery store and stood across from her mother who was standing behind the counter beside Youssef.

“Remember to count the change correctly, Samira. Can you do that?”

Samira nodded her head, cupping her hands together.

Adele hated it when her father talked to her mother as if she were a child. This wasn’t the first time Samira had worked in the store and in spite of her poor English language skills, she knew how to count and return change. Adele clenched her teeth.

Youssef quickly glanced at Adele. “Look who decided to get up all by herself for Arabic school. This is a miracle! For once in my life, I don’t have to drag you out of bed for your studies. Allah has blessed me today with an obedient, loyal daughter!” he said, smiling. Then he stood in front of Adele, placing his hands on her shoulders.

She looked down at the floor and shifted her feet.

“Let’s go,” Youssef said, guiding her to the door.

“Um … Babba,” Adele stammered. “I don’t think I need to go to Arabic school anymore. I can learn to speak it from you and Mama. I’m not learning much at that school anyway. Too many students and only one teacher. You and Mama can teach me. This way I’ll have two teachers rather than one.”

“What?” Youssef said, the smile on his face disappearing. “Listen. We’re not going through this again. You’re going to school whether you like it or not. The teachers are good. I can’t teach you to read or write.”

Adele looked up at her father’s face. He looked humble and very old as he admitted his illiteracy. “I know, but you can teach me to speak Arabic. That’s more important to me than writing and reading Arabic. When am I going to use those skills? I only need to learn how to speak it. You can teach me that,” she changed from English to Arabic, searching her limited vocabulary. “Please, Babba. I don’t want to go to that school anymore.”

“That’s what this is all about. You don’t like the people there?”

Adele nodded. She wanted to tell him about Zeina and her bullying and was about to when Youssef barked.

“Those people are your people, Adele! Most come from Kfarmichki, our village.”

“I’m not from a village. I was born here, not some village,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Those people aren’t my people. They’re yours, not mine. You’re the one from a village, not me.”

Youssef raised his hand. “I should slap you.”

“Go ahead.” Adele stood her ground. “Slap me and I’ll call the cops!” She faced her mother and said, “Mama, I can’t go to that school anymore. Please tell Babba. You know how hard it is to learn another language. Look at yourself; you can’t speak English well.” Samira’s eyes suddenly filled with tears and Adele immediately regretted uttering those words.

Youssef stomped across the store and pushed Samira to the side as he took his spot behind the counter. He lifted his hands in the air. “Forget it! You don’t want to go to school, then don’t go. I don’t care anymore. But one day you’ll regret it. You think you’re better than those kids but you’re not.”

“I don’t think that,” she mumbled, tightening her arms on her chest. “They tease me,” she finally confessed.

“Well, I’d tease you too. You’re nothing but a stupid girl who can’t even speak her own language.”

Biting her lower lip, she fought back the tears. “I know how to speak my language. I know how to speak English. Better than you!”

“Get out! Get out of my store. I can’t stand the sight of you!” Youssef said, banging his fists on the counter, which made Samira jump.

Adele glanced at her mother, waiting for her to say something, but she remained silent. She simply tucked her hands in her pockets, then turned and stood at the threshold that led back to the house. Adele imagined her going into the sanctuary of her kitchen where she’d lose herself in the warm spices. With her lips pressed together and her eyes still wet, Samira frowned at Adele. “You should go to school,” she whispered. Adele’s eyes burned with tears now too. She suddenly hated her mother then. She knew Adele was suffering but she didn’t speak up for her, nor help Youssef understand the reason behind her decision to stop school. Samira just dug her hands deeper into her pockets. Turning away from her mother, Adele ran out of the store.