The Garden of My Imaan (10 page)

Ideas

W
innie and I decided to take the long route to the office to deliver some papers for Mrs. Doyle. When we walked past the bathrooms, we saw that the doors were propped open and there were orange cones at both entrances. Mr. Belotti was in the boys’ room, mopping the floor.

“Hey, Mr. Belotti, what’s up?” Winnie called.

“What’s up? I’ll tell you what’s up! Some punk stuffed wads of paper down the toilet. That’s what’s up!”

“Uh-oh!” Winnie said. “Is it bad?”

“It’s Niagara Falls! That bad enough for you?” The rest of Mr. Belotti’s words were lost under the slosh of his mop and the clank of his bucket.

“Mr. Belotti, what’s that?” Winnie asked, pointing to the girls’ room.

I poked my head in. Someone had scrawled words on the first stall:

And not far below it, in the same handwriting:

“
You
tell
me
, kiddo!” Mr. Belotti growled. “It’s defacing school property, that’s what it is!”

“That wasn’t there yesterday,” I said.

“No kidding!” Mr. Belotti said. “It’s here now, and guess who’s going to have to clean it all up?”

“It’s too bad that you have to do it, Mr. Belotti,” Winnie said.

“Yeah, Mr. Belotti,” I added. “Some kids have no respect.”

As we walked on toward the office, Winnie looked over at me. “That was about Marwa back there.”

I nodded. My eyes had focused on the words right below the scribble about Juliana and Josh. Anyone would know that the
M
on the stall wasn’t for Morgan or Marybeth or Madison.

“I’m sure glad Mr. Belotti will get rid of it before she sees it,” Winnie said.

“But what if she’s seen it already?” I asked. “She could have passed the open door just like we did.”

“Yeah, that would be so terrible!” Winnie nodded. “Some kids can be so mean.”

We delivered the papers to the office and waited for an
envelope to take back to Mrs. Doyle. As we neared our classroom we heard a familiar chime, followed closely by an announcement over the school intercom.

We heard groans from the classrooms.

“Uh-oh!” I turned to Winnie. “Mrs. Holmes knows! Now we’re in for it!”

A year ago, one of the school bathrooms had flooded. No one ever found out who did it or why, but it was a mess. It was closed for two days for repairs, and that meant the students on that hall had to go to the bathroom in the nurse’s office. But that was only one toilet. This year, it was worse and Mrs. Holmes was livid.

The thing is, when something like this happens, you can never be sure who’s responsible—but I had a pretty good idea.

“Hi,” I said.

Marwa looked up from her book with a surprised look on her face. “Oh, hi!”

“Are you fasting?” I asked.

“Al humdu lillah,” she answered. “And you?”

I nodded. “Are you planning to fast the rest of the month?”

“As much as I’m able to. And you?”

“I don’t know, same for me, I guess,” I said.

Marwa flipped the pages of her book with her thumb.

“Did Sarah come to your house for iftar on Saturday?”

Marwa shook her head. “Something came up and she couldn’t make it.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t come either. It was really nice of you to ask.”

“That’s okay,” Marwa said. “No big deal.”

I inhaled again. “That was pretty brave of you … the other day …,” I stammered. “With Austin, I mean.”

“Oh that! Well—”

“You really told him off.”

Marwa took off her glasses and polished them on her sleeve. “He
was
being an idiot,” she said.

“Weren’t you the tiniest bit afraid?” I asked.

“He had no right to talk about my hijab that way,” she said.

It was the first time that word had been mentioned between us. And now that she had brought it up, I cleared my throat. “I was wondering … um … are you being teased about it? By anyone besides Austin?”

Marwa shrugged.

I waited for her to admit that kids were being mean. If she had, I might have told her about being called a weirdo
by Austin or about Juliana rolling her eyes at me. But she didn’t say anything. Maybe she hadn’t seen the writing in the bathroom.

I looked straight into Marwa’s face, instead of avoiding her gaze like I usually did. She seemed different without her glasses.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, wiping at her cheeks. “Is there a smudge on my face?”

I shook my head. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to stare. You have pretty eyes.”

The next day, Marwa and I ran into each other on our way out to recess.

“Have you been helping Mr. Gallagher again?” I asked.

Marwa nodded. “He gave me a stack of math papers to look over.”

“He’s making you correct other kids’ papers?” I asked. “Isn’t that his job?”

“I don’t mind,” she said. “But I wish he’d give me something more interesting to do.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, some sort of project, something I could do some research on.”

I told her then about Mrs. Doyle’s independent study project and explained how it was supposed to celebrate differences by showing respect for things like cultures, traditions, and abilities.

“That’s exactly what I mean!” she said. “I hope Mr. Gallagher will assign a project like that. I’d love to do something where I could hop on the internet and
zoom
… take off!”

“Not me. I get stuck before I can take off,” I said. “And right now, my head is empty. I can’t seem to get going with my Sunday school project either. It’s pretty complicated.” I told her briefly about Sister Khan’s Steps to Success but I
didn’t breathe a word about my letters.

We walked out into the nippy air.

Marwa blew on her hands. Her breath made cloud puffs in the air. “You could do something on Islam,” she suggested.

“On Islam?”

“That’s right.”

“Er … I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said.

“Why not?”

It wasn’t a rude question. It didn’t sound like a challenge either. But she just seemed surprised. But how could she even ask? Didn’t she already know from the newspapers and the TV and everywhere else? Didn’t she know people around here were angry at us? They didn’t want to learn about our religion.

“Muslims aren’t very popular these days,” I said.

“You mean because of 9/11?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s why you need to do it. Don’t you see?”

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked. “I don’t want to call attention to myself.”

“My dad says it helps when people talk things out. He’s always going to interfaith meetings where they do that.”

“I don’t know …”

But Marwa went on. “My dad says it makes things clearer in people’s minds when they have the right information and that can only happen when there is a conversation.”

Like the conversation we were having right now? But
my mind was still cluttered with questions. What if kids hated it? What if they asked hard questions? What if I didn’t know the answers?

“Just think about it,” Marwa said

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll talk to Winnie,” I said. “She’s my partner. She has a big say in this too.”

“It’s about time,” Winnie called. “I thought you’d passed out from hunger and were in the nurse’s office lying down.”

“I was hurrying, honest,” I said, dropping into the empty swing next to hers. The metal was icy under my hands and the cold breeze ruffled the collar of my jacket and made the tip of my nose numb.

“You were talking forever to Marwa,” Winnie said, pronouncing it Mar-way. “I thought you’d never get here.”

“It’s Mar-wuh,” I corrected her. “With an
uh
sound. And you’ve got to work on Badi Amma’s name too.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the way I say Buddy Ma’s name,” Winnie protested. She practiced Marwa’s name as she pumped the swing.
“Mar-wuh, Mar-wuh, Mar-wuh.”

“Was my name hard to remember at first?” I asked.

Winnie looked at me like I was crazy.

“Well?”

“What’s gotten into you?” she asked.

“Tell me, Winnie.”

“I don’t remember. I never thought about it. Okay?”

“Okay.” I smiled. I was happy with her answer.

We swung back and forth in perfect timing, the creaks of our chains perfectly synchronized. Our jackets billowed out on every forward swing.

“You’ll never guess what Marwa just told me,” I said, pumping with my legs. The cold air lashed my face and made me catch my breath.

“No, but I bet you fifty dollars you’re going to tell me.”

“You know the project we’re working on for Mrs. Doyle? Marwa thinks I should do something about Islam. Can you believe that?”

Winnie let her swinging slow down a beat. She seemed to be turning this idea over in her mind. “You know, that might not be such a bad idea,” she said, excited now. “You could do that because that’s the Muslim part of you and you could also do something on India because that’s the Indian part of you and I’ll do something about the Korean and the Jewish parts of me and Buddy Ma will help you with your part and I’ll write to my Halmunee to help me with mine.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m completely serious,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I love the idea! And you can tell that brilliant Mar-wuh girl that I said so!”

“What about the lefty project?”

“This one’s a lot better,” Winnie said. “Trust me.”

I told Amma about Marwa’s idea when I got home from school. She thought it was a wonderful plan.

“You could do a whole display,” she said.

“Of what?”

“Of all the things that make you who you are,” she replied.

“And what’s that?”

“A tasty concoction of American and Muslim and Indian and sugar and spice and everything that is very nice.”