Ten Things I Hate About Me (6 page)
WHEN I COME
home from school today Dad has a bundle of investment brochures he needs me to read to him.
Ever since I was little, Shereen, Bilal, and I have been my parents’ interpreters. If there were letters to read, bills to decipher, or forms to sign, our parents would rely on us to translate.
Now that Bilal spends as little time at home as he can and Shereen’s busy changing the world, Dad seems to rely on me more and more. Last week it was insurance renewal papers. The other day it was a parking fine. It’s child labor exploitation whenever his friends visit. Uncle Kamil brings me his immigration documents. Uncle Yusuf needs me to explain whether his daughter’s report card is
really
recording an A + average. (It is. She’s a genius, that girl.)
Sometimes I feel frustrated and embarrassed that my dad’s English is still so broken after all the years he has been here. He can get by, of course. He drives a cab, so he can obviously communicate. But sometimes I feel that people would take him
more seriously if he were fluent. They hear his heavy accent and he’s suddenly less Aussie.
My father talks to us in Arabic all the time, watching Arabic satellite channels, reading Arabic newspapers. Sure, he watches mainstream TV too. He insists on watching every single news program and bulletin, even if they’re back-to-back. But his writing and reading skills are still poor.
“Can’t you get Shereen to do it?” I moan. I’m feeling too lazy for a translation exercise.
“She’s not home from college yet. Please read them to me. It says here ann-an-re-re-port. That is important.”
“Annual report,” I say in a huff. I sit down next to him and go through the pamphlet. Half an hour later Shereen arrives home, crashing down on the couch.
“I’m so tired!” she exclaims, rubbing her eyes. “But guess what I got you, Jamilah?”
“What?”
“A friend of mine just got back from Egypt. She brought along a whole stack of new CDs. Ihab Towfeek, Amr Diab, Nancy Agram. All their new albums.”
My eyes light up in excitement. “Wow!”
“I borrowed them from her. Do you have a burner at school? You can take them with you tomorrow. Just make sure you bring them back.”
“Don’t you have a burner at the university? I’d rather not take them to school.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d never hear the end of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s woggy music.”
“Jamilah!” my dad cries. “You are not to use that racist word in this house. Do you understand?”
I look at him in surprise. “All I meant was that in my school you only announce your background if you’re prepared to deal with people calling you a wog.”
“The word
wog
might not necessarily carry with it the negative connotations we traditionally associate with it,” Shereen says in a tone that would put Lisa Simpson to shame.
“There is no excuse to use such a word. It is an insult, even as a joke.”
“Seriously, Dad,” Shereen argues. “In America the n-word in rap and hip-hop culture has metamorphosed.” Shereen is oblivious to my dad’s fallen jaw. “Contrary to the traditional derogatory meaning of the word, rappers and hip-hoppers use the word as a term of endearment.
Wog
has undergone the same transformation. I’m not saying I justify its use—I abhor typecasting individuals and creating social cleavages based on ethnicity, religion, or race—but I can understand how—”
“Shereen,” my dad interrupts in an impatient tone, spit flying off the tongue as the Arabic words shoot out of his mouth, “I haven’t understood one word you are saying. Do you try to make me feel embarrassed that I don’t understand all this university language you keep using?”
I resist a grin as I watch Dad’s radar move from me to Shereen.
“Of course not, Dad,” Shereen says, looking wounded. “I would never try to embarrass you. I’m just trying to explain—”
“Then go invest in an English to Arabic dictionary, spend two weeks in your room translating that speech you just subjected me to, and come back and we’ll talk about it. Although I have no idea what this
rip
and
hippy-hoppy
music has to do with my youngest daughter using the word
wog
so casually!”
“But, Dad, you can’t deny it. We are wogs,” I say.
“No, we are not! When I came to this country people would call you a wog and spit at you! It is offensive. You are an Australian, not a
wog.”
“Well, Dad, most people don’t think that way. At my school if you speak two languages or have dark skin or don’t celebrate Christmas, you’re never really accepted as an equal. That’s why keeping a low profile is the best option.”
My dad almost falls off his chair. “You should be proud of who you are, Jamilah! You can be Australian and still have your heritage and religion. They are not at war with each other. Why is this life always like a battlefield for you? You are Australian and Lebanese and Muslim. They go together, Jamilah.”
“Sure thing, Dad,” I say halfheartedly.
“You were born here. You were raised here. I am the immigrant. And yet I feel more comfortable with my identity than
you do!” He shakes his head in disbelief. “My struggles should not be endured by my children. That means we have not progressed. We have gone nowhere and learned nothing. There’s something very wrong with that.”
It’s one of the rare occasions in my life that I can see that my dad has a point.
WE’RE AT AUNT
Sowsan’s house for dinner tonight. Aunt Sowsan is older than my dad by six minutes. She acts as though this gives her a license to boss him around. She tortures him with lectures about watching what he eats, keeping up with his exercises for the arthritis in his knee, quitting smoking, and cutting back on his intake of
makhalil
(spicy pickled cucumber, radish, onion, and carrot) because of his blood pressure.
Aunt Sowsan is married to
Amo
(Uncle) Ameen. They don’t have any children. Maybe that’s why she pours such lavish affection on Shereen, Bilal, and me. She’s always coming over and cooking us surprise meals. She remembers each of our birthdays, spoils us with presents at
Eid,
and stopped us from fading away after Mom died.
As for Amo Ameen, he doesn’t say much about anything at all. In the face of Aunt Sowsan’s loud, bossy, and controlling personality, he doesn’t stand a chance. Amo Ameen is placid
and inconspicuous and is content to smoke his
argeela
—his water pipe—read his newspaper, and eat a bag of pumpkin seeds after dinner.
I’m sprawled on the couch, the top button of my jeans undone, as I try to draw in oxygen after savoring the delights of stuffed cabbage leaves, roast chicken, and creamy potato bake (Aunt Sowsan apologetically claims that she was too tired to cook up a
real
feast tonight).
Amo Ameen and Dad are sipping mint tea, chewing on pumpkin seeds, and discussing New South Wales politics. Boring.
Shereen is sitting at the dinner table poring over a pile of photo albums.
Bilal has decided to grace us with his presence for a change. He doesn’t really like family get-togethers, but the prospect of so much delicious food is sometimes too strong a temptation to resist. Plus, he has a soft spot for Aunt Sowsan. She can be pretty cool and easy to talk to—the complete opposite of my dad.
“So how many hearts have you broken since I last saw you?” she teases Bilal as she hands him a cup of tea and takes a seat next to me on the sofa.
He grins at her cheekily. “Oh, only about ten, and there’s one in the lifeline.”
“Pipeline, you intellectual vacuum,” I scoff.
“Boofhead,” he says, and I throw a cushion at him and stick out my tongue.
Aunt Sowsan laughs and draws me to her chest, engulfing me in a hug.
“I can’t see why you should be asking him about his girlfriends as though it’s the most acceptable thing in the world,” I say, pouting. “If I so much as received an innocent, friendly telephone call from a guy, Dad would ground me for life!”
“It’s called a double standard, Jamilah,” Shereen says without looking up from the photo album.
My dad, who hears me use the words “telephone call” and “guy” in the same sentence, has suddenly lost the urge to talk about Labor backbenchers. “Huh? What’s this I hear? Who’s calling who?”
“Nothing, Hakim,” Aunt Sowsan scolds. “Nobody invited you into this conversation.”
“Did you hear that, Ameen?” my dad says. “My sister is telling me to be quiet in front of my own children.”
“You’re right, Shereen,” Aunt Sowsan says. “We’re taught to apply the same rules to men and women, but unfortunately that’s not how the world works.”
“You’re telling me,” I mutter.
“We live in a patriarchal community,” Shereen says, “which finds it convenient to manipulate the sacred text to satisfy the male ego.”
For once, I’m on Shereen’s side. Bilal, of course, isn’t batting for our team.
“Another simple thought flash from our lovely sister,” he says,
rolling his eyes at her. He looks to me for support but it doesn’t take him a second to figure out I’m not impressed either.
“I’m only joking, Bilal,” Aunt Sowsan says. “If I knew you were serious, I would personally show each and every one of your girlfriends the photo I have of you as a toddler running around the house with nothing but a plastic bowl on your head!”
He grins. “So what? I was as sexy then as I am now.”
I groan.
“Shereen has a point, though,” Aunt Sowsan says. “If you look around the world there are so many societies in which Muslim women are oppressed. The Koran has been manipulated and abused to exploit women.”
“Do not blame the Koran, Sowsan,” my father says.
“I’m not blaming the Koran, Hakim,” Aunt Sowsan says. “I’m blaming men. If they were faithful to the Koran we wouldn’t see such oppression. But there are men who find it useful to misread, misquote, and take things out of context to deny women their God-given rights.”
“Do you want to know what the problem is?” I ask.
My dad smiles. “Tell us, Professor Jamilah.”
“Our community always focuses on
female
behavior. Guys get away with defying the rules and they’re always forgiven. You pretend not to know that Bilal has girlfriends and that he drinks and parties.”
“Hey, don’t pick on me!” Bilal says.
“Well, it’s true. You’re openly proud of it. It’s hypocritical.”
“Don’t be rude, Jamilah,” my dad says.
“But Dad! You can’t even accept me having friends who are guys, and yet Bilal has girls calling him all the time. And you can bet your life they’re not talking about human rights or social welfare policies.”
“In every society, eastern or western, a man’s fall from grace is different from a woman’s. That’s just a fact of life. I’m trying to protect you because you’re more precious.”
“You’re equating friendship with the opposite sex to
falling from grace?”
“No. But our community can be harsh, Jamilah. People talk, and they talk cruelly. We have to live with that.”
“Who cares what people say? If I’m not doing anything wrong, why should I care?”
My dad sits up higher in his chair, his face reddening as he gets more agitated. “Because, like it or not, gossip can ruin people. Look at Bilal here. Already people are talking about his hopeless future and how no girl will want to marry him.”
“My future is not hopeless!” Bilal says, angry now. “I’ve told you a million times, I want to be a mechanic.”
My dad waves his hand dismissively. “Son, that is not a career! That is a teenage pastime. People see that I have a PhD but my son plays with cars.”
“He’s good at what he does, Dad,” Shereen says.
“You are in no position to defend him, Shereen,” my father says. “Where is your future? You scored the highest in your senior year examinations of all our friends’ children. And yet
you choose to do an arts degree. You could have done law or medicine. People ask me if you want to be a painter!”
“Dad! They’re hopeless! An arts degree is a
humanities
degree.”
“But where will it lead you? All you are interested in doing is organizing protests. There is no future in that.” My dad tugs at his mustache, clearly tense. “People think you are a radical! An extremist! That is not a light sentence in today’s climate, Shereen!”
“Calm down, Hakim,” Aunt Sowsan says gently. “Do not worry yourself over what Joseph and Yunus and Amina say. They will always talk. They are bored and stupid.”
My father isn’t convinced. “None of you understand that our family is under the microscope. Ever since Najah died people have been watching to see if I will do a good job, what will become of my children. I have every right to care!”
Shereen, Bilal, and I don’t respond. We stare at the floor, taken aback by our father’s outburst.
Aunt Sowsan clears her throat and then says: “Hakim, you know that Najah would be proud of the job you have done in raising her children.”
My dad cuts her off. “Enough!” he says, raising his palm in the air. “I think we have talked about this topic enough. Let us talk about something else.” Then suddenly he loses steam and seems to deflate in his chair. He sighs heavily, picks up his cup of tea, and asks Amo Ameen to raise the volume on the eight o’clock news.
From: [email protected]
Have you ever been to Lebanon? What’s it like?
From: [email protected]
I was only seven so I don’t remember much. I can remember that my grandma had a huge pile of Mars bars in her refrigerator and boxes of Kellogg’s cornflakes, which she had bought at a ridiculously expensive price just so we’d feel at home.
So what are you like at school? Are you popular? An introvert or an extrovert? Are you a teacher’s pet?
From: [email protected]
Popularity is relative. I’m not trying to be pretentious, but that’s the way I see it. You can be popular among a group of computer nerds
but unpopular among the jocks. Last year a chubby kid, Daniel, was getting picked on by this jerk in my class during a volleyball match. Daniel’s pretty overweight and he can’t reach the ball to save his life. It pissed me off, though, because he’s a really decent guy. Wicked sense of humor, smart as anything. The jerk—his name was Bobby—made Jessica Simpson look like Einstein. So I tripped Bobby and he fell flat on his face. Sealed my unpopularity with Bobby, cemented my popularity with Daniel.
Moral of the story: If you’re going to trip somebody, make sure you can outrun them when they manage to get up again. I earned myself a pretty good punch in the gut for that!
From: [email protected]
Ohhh, I’ve got myself a hero for an e-mail buddy. So you’re sweet as pie and can’t run. Where have you been all my life, John?!
From: [email protected]
So how about you? Do people lay the red carpet out for you at school, or do you spend each night agonizing over who you’ll sit next to in class tomorrow?
From: [email protected]
Seeing as you’re totally anonymous to me, it can’t hurt to tell you that nobody at my school knows about my background. That’s why
I’m not known as Jamilah at school. I anglicize my name. And dye my hair.
From: [email protected]
I don’t understand the anglicizing the name/dyeing hair thing. Explain.
From: [email protected]
What if I told you I want to be a pilot when I grow up?
From: [email protected]
I’d call the Intelligence services.
From: [email protected]
You’re just playing along with me. What would you really think?
From: [email protected]
Female pilots are sexy.
From: [email protected]
Oh, shut up.
From: [email protected]
So you live two lives?
From: [email protected]
Pretty much. To everybody at school I have no cultural or religious baggage. I wish I could be me but I’m too scared.
I’ve learned to adapt, like a chameleon changing its color to blend with its environment. That chameleon’s got the right attitude. Stick out and you’ve got no chance of survival.
From: [email protected]
Doesn’t pretending to be half an identity irritate you?
From: [email protected]
OK, I’m ready to share my list with you now.
- I was born and raised in Oz but people still assume I was born under a camel in a cave in a desert in the Middle East to parents who belong to a tribe with Osama bin Laden’s genealogy.
- As a Lebanese Muslim, we’re only always
randomly
held up at airports (it’s
randomly
happened to my dad and me every single time we’ve flown to Perth to visit my uncle). - The only introduction most people have to my LM culture is through headlines about terrorists under pictures of men with unibrows, missing teeth, back hair, and guns.
- I want the right to apply for a pilot’s license or own fertilizer or have a non-mainstream opinion without being blacklisted. (This is all theoretical. I actually want to be a dentist or elementary school teacher when I grow up.)
- I’m one person at school and another person at home (the kind of split personality that would make a Gemini look stable).
- I’m pathetic enough to be embarrassed to be seen with my sister at school because she wears the hijab.
- A charter of curfew rights is stuck on our fridge door.
- I’m treated differently from my brother.
- I’m attracted to a jerk at school because I want to be popular.
- I have brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin, and curly hair. Totally boring.
So to answer your question: Yes, pretending to be half an identity irritates me A LOT.
From: [email protected]
This is what I have to say about your Ten Things.
You’re setting yourself up for disaster. Sooner or later the curfew rules and taxi license and hijab and bleached hair and bilingualism are going to reveal themselves. They’re going to crumple up at your feet and your friends will demand an explanation.
You’re going to have to make a decision.
Will Jamilah finally get a chance to say something?
I feel like I have finally made a true friend.
Keeping your distance from your friends is exhausting. It means you’re constantly acting, constantly choosing your words, and thinking about ways to avoid exposing yourself. I can’t afford to show them the real me. They wouldn’t understand my culture or my religion. I’ve done everything I can to disassociate myself from being identified as a wog. Amy likes me as Jamie. She doesn’t know about Jamilah who speaks Arabic and goes to madrasa and celebrates Ramadan and plays the darabuka and can cook Lebanese food and has a strict dad.
I wish I could talk in capital letters at school. Use exclamation marks and highlighter pens on all my sentences. Stand out bold, italicized, and underlined. At the moment I’m a rarely used font in microscopic size with no shading or emphasis.
But at least I’ve started on a new page with John. The honesty of our friendship is so raw and real that sometimes I can’t
wait to open my in-box and step into a world where being Jamilah comes naturally.
Miss Sajda pulls me aside after class. I’m prepared for a lecture about the poor quality of my translation into Arabic of an article in the
Sydney Morning Herald.
To my surprise, however, she gives me a warm smile.
“He agreed,” she tells me.
“No way!”
She grins back. “There was a fifteen-minute interrogation session, but I passed with flying colors. Of course, whenever we get an offer to play you will have to get his permission. That goes for Mustafa, Samira, and Hasan, too. Parental consent is imperative.”
I jump up and down in delight. “I can’t believe it! You’re a miracle worker! He’s the strictest parent on the planet!”
Miss Sajda shakes her head. “My mother, God rest her soul, would have taken that title. She was a very religious Catholic. My collars always had to be high, my skirts down to my ankles, my sleeves long. I had to come home directly from school. She even wanted me to marry as soon as I turned eighteen.”
“Wow, that’s young!”
“We lived in a very affluent suburb in Lebanon and my mother was quite snobby. She was determined that I should marry into a wealthy family. One day a man named George Chaouk came to our home and proposed. He imported cars, so he was very well off. I refused him, though, and my mother
was furious. I was determined to go to college. I didn’t want to be a trophy wife.”
“Did your mom forgive you?”
“It took a while. You see, George’s family was very active in my mother’s church; rejecting George was a tremendous insult to them, particularly given the fact that I was only eighteen. They thought I was arrogant and too strong-willed!”
“My dad has always insisted that we’re not to mention marriage until we have university degrees. I’m grateful to him for that.”
“Well, that’s why I’m telling you my story. My mother restricted my freedom even when I was a university student. She was overly concerned about what people would say if I was seen at cafés or with male friends. But, Jamilah, I learned not to argue over the small things. I could handle restrictions on my clothes and the time I was expected home. I saved my energy for what mattered most to me—which was to gain an education.”
“Education isn’t the issue for me,” I explain. “I just want more freedom. I can’t even talk to a boy without him going off the deep end. He’s completely caught up in how his friends will talk.”
“I know it’s hard for you. You see your friends with practically no limitations to what they can do, and you feel deprived.”
“Sometimes I feel suffocated. I’d love to invite my friends home or go out to see a movie at night.”
“Your father would have no problem opening his house to your friends. I’m sure he would love it.”
“Ha! There is no way I would.”
“Why not?”
I give her an uneasy look. “It’s…embarrassing.”
“What is?”
How can I tell her that I’m embarrassed to reveal myself to my friends? That as much as I love my identity at home and at madrasa, my relationship with my school friends is a constant struggle of deception?
I jump up from my seat and avoid her gaze. “I better get going or I’ll be late.”
She gives me a knowing look but I rush out of the classroom before she has a chance to say something.