Home Is Beyond the Mountains (12 page)

Samira joined the other
girls on a bench and looked around the yard. She knew every single child.
They had been together in Baqubah and Baghdad and Kermanshah, and they had
all worked to make the Hamadan Orphanage a good place to live.

“This yard feels like our
yard,” she thought. “Pretty soon dozens of children we don't know will be
playing here, too. It will change everything.”

The next day Mr. Althius
counted the children lined up beside the orphanage gate. There were
forty-five girls and thirty-nine boys.

“When the other children
arrive there will be twice as many,” he said. “I'm counting on you to walk
in an orderly fashion today and every day. We want the city of Hamadan to be
glad we're here. So, no trouble. Is that understood?”

When they reached the city
Samira decided that Hamadan didn't give much possibility for trouble. The
street took them between mud brick houses with no windows in the outer
walls. If there was a marketplace she didn't see it. Mr. Althius led them
straight to a building that was strange because it was not all on one floor.
There were two rows of windows, one above the other.

“This is the school,” said
Mr. Althius. “The boys will be on the second floor and the girls on the first.
You girls who are thirteen or older go to the room on the right and the rest
go to the one on the left.”

Samira went with Anna. In
the classroom, Miss Shuman greeted them.

“Please sit around these
tables and tell me your names. I want to be sure that each of you is in the
right class.”

They spent the day reading
paragraphs and answering questions about what they had read. Miss Shuman
dictated a piece from a story and everyone wrote it down. Samira knew that
she had done as well as most of the girls and better than some.

Then Miss Shulman put some
arithmetic problems on the blackboard.

“I'd like you to copy these
into your notebooks and solve them,” she said.

Adding up numbers was not
hard for Samira, and she could figure out subtraction, but there were
multiplication problems on the board. The only way she could solve them was
by counting on her fingers.

Miss Shulman called her up
to her desk. “I see that you have not studied multiplication, Samira. You'll
have to spend extra time memorizing the times tables. Are you willing to do
that? In every other subject you fit into this class.”

“I'll work hard on
multiplication,” Samira promised.

“Very well, then. I'll see
you tomorrow.”

After the evening meal Miss
Shedd gathered a few of the children and said, “That piece of paper I put up
yesterday has no writing on it. You've had a day to think about rules and
I'd like to see some ideas up here before you go out to play.”

The boys and girls stared at
the piece of paper. They had lived with many rules in the camps. No talking
once the lamps were out. Divide food equally. Stay in line when going
between tents. No running except when playing games.

The list was long. But no
one had ever asked them to think up even one rule themselves.

Finally Ashur said what they
were all thinking. “We know what we're supposed to do. The other kids will
know, too. What good will it do to write rules down?”

“It's only fair to let the
new children know what is expected in this orphanage,” said Miss Shedd. “But
I agree that rules saying ‘do this' and ‘don't do that' are not very
inspiring. So think about what would make your life here happy. Or what
would make it unhappy so that you would like it never to happen. Turn those
thoughts into rules.” She looked around at all of them. “I have things to
do. I'm going to leave you to it.”

When she was gone Anna said,
“Since we have to do this, I'll say that it would make my life happier if
the boys would not try to get out of kitchen duty. I'm always having to find
a boy who's sneaking away hoping someone else will wash the dishes.”

“So each person should be
responsible for checking the job schedule and showing up for their job,”
said Benyamin, and he picked up a pencil and wrote down rule number
one.

Ashur said, “I want a rule
that says the north end of the yard is for games with balls. Right now the
little kids get under our feet as soon as we start kicking the ball around.”
He wrote his rule down.

Farah, who never said
anything in a group, stepped forward and picked up the pencil. She wrote,
No calling people mean names.
Samira knew why. Farah was a round girl and sometimes people
called after her, “Fatty fatty Farah.”

“That's Farah's rule,”
thought Samira. “What rule do I want?” But she couldn't think of even one.

Anna whispered in her ear,
“Your turn. Think of a rule, Samira.”

Suddenly Samira remembered
that Anna had been the first girl to speak to her in Baqubah. She remembered
Anna's voice and Anna's hand reaching out to her when she hadn't been able
to speak to anyone for days.

She took the pencil and
wrote,
Be friendly to strangers who come to our
orphanage. Don't let them be alone.

When the children came
through the orphanage gate after school the next day, Samira heard the sound
of many voices. The yard was crowded with children of all sizes. They were
standing in clumps, some near the wall and others over by the eating room.
In one group every child was dressed in dark blue. Another group wore khaki.
Some children were barefoot and others wore patched shoes tied on with bits
of string.

“Look,” she said to Anna.
“You can see that they come from different camps. And Miss Shedd was right
about their shoes.”

Miss Shedd was going from
group to group. After she had spoken with a group for a few minutes they
picked up their bundles and went to one of the dormitories.

“They're going to get
settled,” said Anna. “Next time we see them they'll be wearing the shoes our
boys made.”

As soon as all the newcomers
had gone off with their bundles, Miss Shedd came over and joined the
children waiting by the gate.

“This has happened a few
days earlier than I expected,” she said. “I wanted to plan a good welcome
for these children but I haven't even worked out the meal schedule yet.
There's no way everyone can eat at once, so tonight you'll be eating first
and the new children will have their turn after they get their rooms
settled.” She shook her head and went off quickly.

At supper Samira found
herself eating very fast, thinking that the new children would be hungry
after their journey. She wasn't the only one. The dishes were cleared away
and washed in record time and everyone hurried out. They stood around the
yard trying not to stare as the newcomers went in to eat.

Samira wondered what would
happen when they came out. But nothing happened. The new children came out
of the eating room and walked straight to their dormitories. There was no
chance to speak to even one of them.

At breakfast the next day
all of the children who went into town for school ate at the same time, but
the newcomers came in as a group and sat at one end of the eating hall. On
the way down the hill Samira tried to talk to two girls wearing green, but
they turned away and went on with their own conversation.

She said to Anna, “I thought
my rule was a good one but how can I be friendly to people who won't even
look at me?”

Anna, as always, was
practical. “We all live together in the orphanage. Eventually they'll have
to talk to us.”

Miss Shuman welcomed the new
girls to her classroom. “Today I'll be working with you to see where you fit
in. You other girls can go over yesterday's lessons.”

One of the new girls in Miss
Shuman's class was named Maryam. Samira thought she looked younger than
thirteen and she was sitting by herself, not with the other new
girls.

When they all went out into
the schoolyard for their morning break, Maryam sat on a bench in the sun.
Samira sat beside her and offered her some dried apricots she had saved from
breakfast.

“Thank you,” said
Maryam.

They were both silent for a
minute. Then Samira said, “This is the first school I've been to. Of course
we had lessons in the camp at Baqubah but before that I didn't go to school
at all. Did you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Maryam. “Our
village is quite close to the city so my mother got a teacher to come to our
house for me and my sister, so we could learn to read. Later my father
walked with us twice a week to a girls' school in a bigger village. We were
going to go to the school in the city, but then…”

Samira knew that Maryam
didn't want to talk about what had happened when the war came, so she asked
the first question that came into her head. “How old are you now?”

“I'm just about to turn
thirteen. I know I'm a little young for the senior class but I wouldn't fit
in the junior class. That's what Miss Shuman said.”

Samira smiled at her. “I'm
one of the youngest in the class and there are things I have to catch up on.
We'll be the junior members of the senior class, all right?”

“All right,” said Maryam,
and Samira felt that this girl was no longer a stranger.

On the way back to the
orphanage Maryam walked with Samira and Anna, but most of the newcomers were
still walking together, avoiding the Baqubah children.

Mr. Althius moved along the
line, but when he was out of sight some of the boys stumbled on purpose into
boys walking near them. One swung his arm and hit Ashur across the back. The
teacher came just in time to stop a fight from breaking out.

Maryam was asking Samira
what jobs she had around the orphanage when she suddenly fell silent. Samira
looked around and saw that some of the new girls behind them were whispering
together and looking at Maryam and rolling their eyes.

Suddenly Anna said, “Look!”
She pulled Samira around to see a boy, a newcomer, running down the road
toward the end of the line. Some boys tried to trip him as he went past, but
he dodged them and ran on.

Maryam watched him go and
shook her head.

“That's Malik,” she said.
“He was in the Mosul camp with us but he goes off by himself whenever he
can. He always comes back, so most of us just let him go.”

“Why does he run?” asked
Anna.

“I don't know, but he wants
to be away from everyone else. He doesn't talk much and he can run really
fast. That's all I know.”

By now they had reached the
orphanage gate. Miss Shedd was waiting for them and, as usual, she seemed to
see everything. She was going over to some boys who had been pushing and
jostling the boys ahead of them, when Malik came running through the
gate.

“It's the wild one,” shouted
a voice. Two boys broke away from the group and began chasing Malik, who
dodged behind one of the dormitory buildings.

Miss Shedd walked to the
middle of the yard and stood perfectly still. She motioned to the other
children to stay where they were, in a group, blocking the gate.

Samira knew that Malik had
no way to get out of the orphanage compound. He was surrounded by walls and
she suddenly felt sad for him. She was sure that walls didn't make him feel
safe. They made him feel trapped.

The boys who had run after
Malik came back panting. The taller one said defiantly, “We couldn't find
him.”

“I didn't ask you to find
him,” said Miss Shedd calmly. “He'll show up when he's ready. As for you, I
want both of you to come with me right now.”

She cast her eyes over the
motionless group of children and saw Samira and Anna standing with Maryam.

“You three come as well. And
you, Ashur, and the boy behind you, come along.”

Samira saw that the boy who
followed Ashur was the one who had hit him on the way up the hill. He came
and stood a distance from Miss Shedd with his arms tight by his sides and
his shoulders very square.

“Tell me your name,” she
said.

“Avram,” said the boy.

“I'll be meeting with these
boys and girls,” Miss Shedd said to the whole group. “You'll hear about our
discussion later. Now you are free to play or go to your rooms and do school
work.”

She turned and led the seven
baffled children toward her office. Samira could hear a hum of talk beginning
behind her. She, too, wondered what Miss Shedd was going to do.

They all filed into the office
and Miss Shedd shut the door. Samira could see a desk with a hard wooden
chair behind it, shelves crowded with books, and a soft chair covered with a
brightly colored shawl.

On the desk were many pieces
of paper, some in piles and some scattered. There was an inkwell with a pen
sticking out of it.