11

Kurdî

When I swung into our form room on Monday morning I was looking forward to seeing Nadima. I was expecting to find her sitting calmly in her seat next to mine. She wasn’t. She was busy hauling Liam out of the waste bin. For some strange reason, best known to himself, Liam had tried to sit in it – and now he couldn’t get out. Obviously everyone else in the class was too busy laughing at him to be any help – especially Ryan. So Nadima was the only one to come to his rescue.

‘Liam! You complete wally!’ I laughed, as she pulled on his hands, and I hung onto the bin.

‘Thanks, Nadima,’ he gushed.

‘Oi!’ I said.

‘Oh, you too, Jaz,’ he added.

Boys, Huh! I thought.

Just then, Chloe came rushing into the room and immediately started handing out invitations.

‘I’m having a movie party for my birthday,’ she squealed.

‘Oooh!’ cried Kara, ripping open her envelope. Lily and the others tore theirs open too. Pink sparkly glitter scattered everywhere.

‘Oops!’ giggled Chloe. ‘I forgot to warn you!’

Honestly, that girl should come with a permanent glitter warning.

‘You muppet!’ laughed Lily, brushing a shower of the stuff off her polo shirt.

I deliberately didn’t open mine because Nadima hadn’t got one and I didn’t want to make her feel left out. I could see she was trying to put a brave face on it.

Kara read hers and suddenly wailed, ‘Oh NO! I can’t go!’

‘Why not?’ Chloe’s face fell.

‘I’ll be at my dad’s!’

‘Can’t he bring you?’ asked Lily. Which seemed a fair question, since Kara’s dad only lives a few miles away.

‘I can’t possibly ask him! I only get to see him every other weekend,’ cried Kara. Then turning to Chloe she said (with spectacular selfishness), ‘Can’t you make it the next weekend?’

‘Um … I’m not sure,’ said Chloe. ‘Mum works weekends and she had to book the time off.’

‘Oh, pleeese!’ begged Kara. ‘Pleeeeese!’ and she did this silly pleading gesture. ‘I don’t want to be the only one who can’t come! Please!’

Chloe looked gutted. Honestly, Kara expects the entire world to fit around her. She’s always going on about how dreadful her life is because her parents are divorced, and how she only gets to see her dad every other weekend, and how much she misses him. I don’t even have a dad. Mine went off just after I was born so I don’t actually remember him at all. But I don’t go round making a big thing of it.

So I said, ‘Seriously, Kara?! You can’t expect Chloe’s mum to change her weekend off. Surely your dad won’t mind you going to the movies for a couple of hours. It’s not like you won’t see him at all that weekend. What’s the problem?’

She whirled round at me. ‘I can’t believe you just said that to me! You can’t even begin to imagine how much I miss my dad – and if you did you wouldn’t be so horrible.’ And she made her eyes well up like she was going to cry. Honestly, she’s such a drama queen.

So naturally, Lil felt she had to put her arm round her.

And poor Chloe felt she had to say, ‘Of course I’ll ask Mum if we can change the date. I want everyone to be able to come.’

‘Thank you!’ said Kara, giving her a hug.

‘Chloe? Talking about missing people out …’ I said quietly, ‘I wondered if Nadima could come too?’

‘It’s a movie party!’ said Elly. ‘She won’t understand the film.’

‘So? I just think it would be nice to include her.’

‘You can’t go round inviting people to someone else’s party,’ said Kara. ‘It’s rude.’

‘I’m not,’ I said coolly. ‘I’m asking Chloe to invite her.’

Chloe looked at Kara, like she wasn’t sure what to do.

But then Lil said, ‘Go on, Chloe. Nadima can probably follow the story from the action.

As usual, at the mention of her name, Nadima looked up and everyone felt very uncomfortable, even me.

So Chloe said, ‘Sure! I’ll make another invitation and bring it in tomorrow.’

‘Why don’t you just put “and Nadima” on mine?’ I suggested.

‘Doh, why I didn’t think of that?!’ Chloe laughed.

(Probably because you’re not dyslexic, so you’re not as good at solving problems as I am, I thought. But I didn’t say that, obviously.)

She took my envelope back from me, tore it open (Cue pink glitter flying everywhere), wrote ‘+ Nadima’, with a little heart over the ‘i’, and handed it to Nadima.

Nadima looked at the invitation and then at me. Obviously she could read her own name, and mine too. She’d have had to be an idiot not to realise she’d been invited to something – but she didn’t know what.

She got out her phone and typed into it quickly, and then her whole face lit up and she said, ‘Ah! Is birthday. Yes?’

‘Yes!’ we all cried.

‘Wait! Wait! Give me your phone!’ I grabbed it. She was using Google Translate so I’d be able to see which language she spoke!

The only flaw in the plan was that I couldn’t actually read the name of her language. Mostly because it was a completely new word to me. I can usually make a good guess at a word if it’s one I know, but I’d never seen this word before.

It said:

I stood looking at it blankly.

Then Kara snatched the phone out of my hand.

‘Hey! I was looking at that!’

She ignored me. ‘Kurdî?’ she read.

‘Kurdy? I’ve never even heard of it!’ said Chloe.

‘Me neither,’ said Elly. ‘Where do they speak Kurdy?’

‘I’ve heard of Kurdish but not Kurdy,’ said Lily. ‘Hang on! Maybe “Kurdy” is Kurdish for “Kurdish”!’

‘What, like “English” is English for “English”?’ said Chloe.

We all snorted with laughter – including Chloe when she realised what she’d said.

‘Honestly, Chloe!’ Lily giggled.

Then Kara turned to Nadima and, I’m not joking, actually said, ‘Is “Kurdy” Kurdish for “Kurdish”?’

‘How’s she supposed to understand that?’ I cried.

‘I’m only trying to help!’ Kara snapped.

‘How is that helping?! Asking her rubbish questions like that?’

She turned on me furiously. ‘It’s not a rubbish question! You just don’t want other people making friends with her.’

‘That’s not true!’ I gasped, but Kara flounced off, and the others followed her. I stood there speechless with fury. Kara’s the one who doesn’t like people being friends with anyone else except her. Especially Lily.