Mischief Diary E-Book

Nada Faris

• Herausgeber: Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Mischief Diary is a collection of 15 short stories “based” on real events. But what does it mean to be based on one’s memory of the past? It means, simply put, that no matter how accurate they feel, they work only as fictions. Funny, powerful, intense and frivolous all at the same time, Mischief Diary steps outside of the market’s expectations for the Young Adult genre to take readers on a journey that addresses different issues with humor and laughter as guides.

Leseprobe

Preface

Call me Master.

Master of the universe. Master of your soul. Master of disaster. But not plain old Nada. Na-da. I’ve always hated the name. It means “dew” in Arabic, that flimsy drop of water on an equally flimsy blade of grass in the wee hours of the morning. That’s Nada. It also means “nothing” in Spanish. Just nothing. So if you tell foreigners you’re called Nada, they look at you funny. They think you’re pulling their leg. “Oh, ha ha!” When they realize that you’re serious, they soften. Their eyes say, “You poor girl.” Their mouths say, “Well, you’re not Spanish … and the morning dew is such a beautiful thing.”

Except it’s not. My uncle once told me that my name is another way of saying “nature’s sweat.” So do you blame me for wanting a different name?

No offense if it’s yours, by the way. I’m just honestly telling you how I feel about it. Because, believe me, growing up with a name like this gives you delusions of grandeur. Sometimes, when retaliating against the meaning of the name you tell yourself, “I am not nothing. I am the exact opposite.” It’s great to feel so grand. Too bad it doesn’t last. When the name wins, you really do feel as small as a fragile drop of water on a forgettable blade of grass. You simply oscillate between two mental states.

O-see-late. It means to swing from one thing to another. I love the sound of the word. O-see-late. Pur-me-ate. Ow-du-neyt. Oops. I think I forgot myself there for a moment. If you didn’t catch the other words, they were permeate and odonate. The first means to spread or pass through something, like water permeating sand. The other is the family name of a group of insects, which includes dragonflies. Really, these words have nothing to do with the stories up ahead. I simply got carried away. You see, I am a writer. I know it’s a stupid decision to make. Writing doesn’t pay bills, and barely anybody cares about writing anymore. Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube. These, people care about. But who pays attention to words?

Well, I’m hoping you would. Just don’t sound out terms in the middle of class. Teachers can get finicky when you disrupt their precious lessons. Fi-nee-kee: Fussy about their rules and regulations.

So if you see a long and scary word, look it up, but not while you’re reading the story. After. Make a note of all the new and wonderful words and add them to your vocabulary. Vo-kab-you-lay-ree. I could cry right now. So pretty! Maybe I should rename myself Vocabulary Al-Faris.

What do you think?

1

Four-Year-Old Maverick

I was innocent.

My kindergarten teacher didn’t think so. She called my mother at work and asked her to come to the school immediately. I was only four years old. And I repeat: I was innocent.

My teacher was a slim, veiled Egyptian woman in her forties. She wore a loose brown shirt and a beige skirt that she must have stolen off a desert tent. No offense to your tents. I’m sure they’re lovely.

My mother, a young engineer in her late twenties, sat in front of my teacher. She kept rolling her car keys around her fingers. Mother wasn’t pleased, but then again, who would be in her shoes?

It was just after first break. I was supposed to be standing outside, thinking very deeply about my behavior. The truth is, I had no clue what my teacher was mad about. I was innocent, though. Or, rather, I hoped I was, as I eavesdropped on their conversation.

My ear was pressed against the warm wooden door. I heard my mother complain that she had left a pile of work on her office desk unattended. I peeped through the keyhole. From the way she sat absentmindedly flicking her car keys, I assumed she was thinking about her coffee and how it must have gone cold. After a few inattentive moments, my mother sighed painfully.

Rays from the morning sun penetrated the windows. They refracted against the keys in my mother’s hands. They danced against the walls and the ceiling of my teacher’s office, like rainbow waves shooting from a disco ball. Outside the office, it was business as usual. Teachers whiled away the time as children shouted in high octaves.

I stood alone in the corridor, a scruffy four-year-old trying to blink away the rainbow-colored rays. Then I peered through the hole again.

My mother rested her head on the palm of her hand, her Rolex glimmering in the morning rays. She perched her elbow on the teacher’s desk. Mother’s round face, usually florid and warm, was now grey and stiff. Her eyes drooped. She took in a long breath and cried:

“What has she done now? I locked everything away. She can’t get to my perfumes, my makeup or my sewing equipment anymore. Besides, I thoroughly check her bag now to make sure she doesn’t bring anything weird to school. I took away all her Batman figurines, her father’s playing cards and her brother’s marbles! And the last time you informed me that she was rude to another teacher, I said you could use any measure of discipline you saw fit. ‘Break a cane over her tiny back if it’d teach her some respect.’ Remember that? I said it, I’m sure I did, because then you laughed and told me that you’d take care of her from now on.”

She drew another deep breath, and finally asked, “So why am I here today?”

I scrunched my face when I heard my mother’s complaints and then poked my tongue out, emboldened by the knowledge that neither my mother nor my teacher could see me through the keyhole. I crossed my arms indignantly.

Pah! Who cared about their endless rules? I certainly didn’t. In fact, I’d been tenaciously unwilling to obey authority ever since I was born. I put every command up for examination. I needed to be certain that it served a purpose other than conforming. To outdated norms, might I add. Basically, I hated being told what to do. I needed convincing. What’s so terrible about that?

Teachers and children gradually left their classrooms. They crossed the pale pink corridors, some in the direction of the auditorium where an older class was performing the story of the tortoise and the hare. I had played the hare once. It taught me a valuable lesson: gradual progress, slow and steady, is the best way to go. For everything. Cramming the night before for an exam is a major no-no, because it takes a while for the lessons you’ve learned to seep into your memory. You don’t want to rush your memory. You want it to be relaxed, like people sun-tanning on the beach, drinking a cold glass of lemonade. And that level of comfort takes time and effort to achieve. I wish the learning process were easier, or faster. I wish we did not have to go through so much trouble to learn important lessons. I’m twenty-nine years old now and it seems like I am still adjusting my behavior to life lessons that I should have nailed already. Remember, better the tortoise than the hare. Fewer disappointments over the years.

My stomach rumbled and I exhaled, inflating my cheeks in the process, yet no one paid me any attention. Teachers and students went on their merry way. They left me standing against the door of my teacher’s office, hungry, bored and, most of all, disappointed.

I began to reflect upon recent events. Nothing struck me as potentially noteworthy. I hadn’t yelled at anyone, hit, bitten or kicked. I hadn’t mocked my teacher, even though she had been asking for it. I hadn’t forgotten my homework or my backpack for that matter. Lost in thought, I craned my neck to peer at the last teacher and child who turned the corner, and accidentally slipped backwards, knocking my teacher’s door wide open and stumbling into her office.

“Ouch!” I cried when my head banged against the floor.

Mother and my teacher trudged over. They stood in front of me: two large pillars of human flesh. Did they ask about my health? Did they say, “Oh my innocent little girl, how badly did you hurt your head?”

Don’t get me started.

I tilted my head back to analyze their expressions, then slid my hands inside my dress pockets and raised my left eyebrow.

My teacher pointed at my feet.

“This,” she said more dramatically than was necessary, “is why I asked you to come here.”

Oops.

My mother’s jaw dropped. She fell to her knees and shook my shoulders. “Why are you wearing those?” she screamed hysterically.

“What’s the big deal?” I retorted.

“Those are your father’s bathroom slippers! Where are your shoes?”

I shrugged.

I was wearing a pale blue, sleeveless dress that barely covered my knees. I had on a white shirt underneath. The left sleeve, which had been rolled up like its sister on the right, had broken loose. It flapped against my small arm when my mother shook my shoulders. My thick black hair swooshed out of a loose ponytail. Stubborn strands of hair mimicked my own insolence by sticking out at awkward angles – something that infuriated my mother even further. What? I can’t control my hair’s behavior.

But as much as she was frustrated with my hair, my mother’s anger rose tenfold every time she looked at my father’s bathroom slippers. They were bright green and rubbery. The hair she was willing to overlook. There was something much more out of place, much more embarrassing, in my footwear, wedged under white socks that sported tiny pink bows on each ankle.

“Where are your shoes?” she yelled.

My teacher left her office, disappearing into the hallways and giving my mother the privacy required to commit homicide, that is, to kill me. She even closed the door behind her.

“Just tell me what the big deal is?” I asked, unperturbed.

My mother rose and looked around. I took a step backward, knocking against the wall behind me. Nowhere to hide.

“Would you really kill your only daughter over bathroom slippers?”

My mother’s gaze tore through me like laser rays from an alien spaceship. Someone was overreacting. And it wasn’t me.

“Think about it,” I said, sliding sideways, hoping to escape as soon as she blinked.

She didn’t. Even the red squiggly veins on her eyeballs emanated fury.

“Who will take care of you when you get old, huh? You think my brothers will? It will be me. Someday, you will thank goodness for sparing my life. And you’ll laugh at this moment. After all, they’re just bathroom slippers.”

Before I could flee, my mother grabbed the back of my shirt and lifted me off the ground. My slippers – correction, my father’s bathroom slippers – dangled from my tiny toes, almost touching the floor.

“Nada, don’t make me repeat myself.”

“They’re at home! At home!” I yelled. “Now release me!”

My mother let me go. She crossed the corridors majestically, her back straight, her head held high. I waited a few seconds before I dusted myself off. I looked down at the poor slippers and asked them why everyone seemed to hate them. They didn’t respond. I’m glad they didn’t. I would have freaked out.

I went out to my mother’s car and sat in the passenger’s seat. My mother drove off without a single word.

But once we got home, she grounded me. Then she told my father I had stolen his slippers. His laughter fueled her anger.

“You don’t know how hard it is!” she hissed.

He nodded in agreement. Yes, he didn’t, of course he didn’t. Raising daughters in the Gulf was much more troublesome than raising sons. My father kept sipping his Lipton tea and nodding. Mother raised her palms to the ceiling, beseeching the lord to make me more like my brothers: pliant, obedient, polite. Did you see what I did there? Oh, language. Language, language.

I waited for the storm to pass and then snuck out of my bedroom. I tiptoed to the nearest bathroom and noticed that the slippers were all missing. At first, I thought it was a mistake, that maybe my older brother had used the bathroom and misplaced the slippers. I looked in the guest bathroom, and the one by the kitchen, and my parents’, and still couldn’t find a single piece.

Oh. This was war.

I went back to my bedroom, which I shared with my brother Khaled, who was two years old at the time. He slept in my parents’ bedroom at night and used my bedroom with his nanny during the day.

Had my mother told me that she did not want me to wear the slippers because they would harm me, or because they would make me trip and hurt myself, I would have understood and surrendered. What I did not appreciate, at the age of four, was being treated like a four-year-old. That was just wrong.

Lying on my bed, I tried to come up with a strategy: Operation Bathroom Slippers. I figured that my mother had removed all the slippers from our bathrooms, leaving just one pair that she had no control over.

She came to wish me good night. I sat cross-legged on the bed, grinning.

“I don’t want you to think that I don’t love you,” she began fondly. “I know you’ve been looking for the slippers. Your older brother told me. Honey, I just want you to learn that some things don’t need explanation. You can’t wear your father’s bathroom slippers to school. You just can’t. This is why I take time out of my busy schedule to find the prettiest things for you to wear, like this new pair of shoes. Look. Aren’t they gorgeous?”

She showed me a pair of shoes made of shiny black leather with a white strap and a Hello Kitty face on the side. There were dozens of kindergarteners who had similar ones. Maybe three in my class alone. So my mother could call them pretty because they were new, but for me they were presentable and boring. Not everything new is “gorgeous.” But try teaching adults this philosophy.

“Will you wear them tomorrow?” I bit my lower lip. “Will you wear them for your mother who went out to buy them for you even though she was angry?”

I sighed, then nodded. “Yes. OK. I will.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah.” Before my mother left the room, I hopped out of bed. “Mom? Does this mean you’re not mad at me anymore?” She said of course she wasn’t and I gave her the sweetest smile. “So can I help my dad clean his car before bedtime?” Since my dad had to drop us off at school early in the morning, he did the cleaning at night.

She looked at her wristwatch. It was getting late already, but she had just told me that she wasn’t mad at me and I had just promised to wear the shoes for her, so she took a deep breath and said, “OK. But I expect to see you in bed in ten minutes.”

In the morning, I put on my school uniform and slipped on my new shoes. My mother was in the living room rummaging through my backpack, making sure it was devoid of anything embarrassing.

I smiled.

“Morning,” I said.

“Oh, morning.” She looked at me from head to toe before giving me the bag. “They’re so pretty on you.”

I pretended to tap dance with the new leather shoes and probably woke the neighbors.

My father then took my hand. He walked me and my older brother to his grey Chevy to drive us to school. After dropping off my older brother, my father asked me why I liked to wear his bathroom slippers.

“I just don’t understand why it’s normal to wear them in the bathroom but not in public. I mean, if we wear them where it’s the dirtiest then we should be able to protect our feet elsewhere as well. And besides, no one wears them at school but me. I like that.”

My father’s lips curved up at the corners. He turned on the radio and we sang songs until we reached my school, bathroom slippers forgotten. The only time I really jam to Arabic songs is in the car with my father.

When my father got out of the car to open the door for me and to walk me to the gate, I jumped in the back, stuck my tiny arm below the back seat, and searched for the yellow bathroom slippers I had hid there the night before. After finding them, I hopped back to the front seat, pulled off my new shoes, stuffed them into my backpack and slipped on the bathroom slippers instead.

My father stood still with the door wide open.

“How in the world did you get these? Your mom …” he said, his voice trailing off.

“They’re the nanny’s,” I said gleefully.

“You stole the nanny’s slippers?”

I nodded.

“When I realized that my mother had hidden all the other slippers, I went into the nanny’s room and carried off her slippers under my blouse. I hid them in the backseat of your car when you were cleaning it last night. That’s why I asked you if you needed any help.” I grinned.

I jumped out of the car and landed wobbly on the stolen slippers.

My dad held my hand, his grin mimicking my own. “Didn’t you promise your mother that you were going to wear the shoes she bought yesterday?”

“Yes. I promised to wear them today. And I did. You saw me tap dance like a genius,” I said. My giant slippers clomped along on the sidewalk. “But I didn’t promise to wear them at school.”

2

That Time I Drowned

I was drowning.

Not the best feeling in the world. I was swallowing large gulps of chlorinated water amidst attempts to call for help: “Herrrrp me!”

I flapped my seven-year-old arms around me helplessly, wondering why I didn’t float.

People always knew how to swim on TV. What was their secret? Scenes from Hollywood movies blended together in my mind as my stomach filled with torrents of water – torrents of toxic water, might I add. The more liquid I swallowed, the heavier my body became. My head felt light, woozy.

I almost gave up.

The water was a warm blanket swallowing my body. My mind told me to make a will. What would I leave and to whom? I remembered my possessions. Should I give Khaled my Game Gear? My mother had purchased it for me. She bought the boys the Game Boy. She got me the Game Gear because she thought it said “Game Girl.” Even though I hated being treated differently than the boys, it worked out well in the end. The Game Gear had a colored screen. The Game Boy’s screen showed games in greyscale, that is, only in black and white.

I thought about passing it on to Khaled for a moment before shrieking “Norrrr!” and sinking deeper into the pool. Of course I wouldn’t give up my Game Gear. I had a high score on Sonic the Hedgehog that I intended to maintain forever. And ever. And ever.

“Better dead than beaten,” I yelled at the universe. “You hear that?” I flapped my arms around, gurgling the last phrase under water, fighting for dear life.