“Layla,” she said, touching her own chest, and realizing for the first time that giving a name was its own kind of intimacy.
“Your son might be my favorite of them. I know that isn’t something I should say. He’s in here at lunch sometimes, I give him books to read, we discuss.”
“Very kind of you. He has a hard time—he, he doesn’t like school very much.”
Oliver nodded. Then said, “Certain kids you have to learn how to teach. Amar is like that. You have to know how to approach him. What to say that will ignite his curiosity, his wonderment. He doesn’t really respond to criticism. And he doesn’t try at all if he doesn’t want to. But if he thinks he can do something well, or if he wants to, he does. You just have to be patient, a little delicate.”
Layla wished she had brought a notebook that she could write in to help her remember what he was saying, to show Rafiq later. She glanced around the room, at the whiteboard with a chore chart corner, at Amar’s name written in uppercase, beside “Paper passer,” and the wall covered with sloppy paintings of faces under SELF-PORTRAITS, the rows of empty desks.
“That one is his,” Oliver said, pointing to the desk in the second row. It was not as messy as some of the ones around it, with bent papers sticking out of the built-in shelves.
To be patient with him, to be delicate, to know how to approach him. To be patient, to know how to make him curious, to criticize less, to be delicate.
She asked Oliver if Amar was caught up with the other children in math, history, sciences.
“He is very good at writing. Look. Here is an assignment we did on heroes.”
He passed her a sheet of paper with a photograph attached with a paper clip. She was startled to see the photograph was of her, holding an open envelope, young. She was not wearing a scarf. Rafiq had taken it when they were first married. She stared at a version of herself with dark eyeliner rimming her eyes, and dangling, golden earrings, and her ink-black wavy hair, and her fitted pink shalwar kameez. She remembered how she did not know Rafiq was standing in the doorway with his camera until he called her name, and when she looked up he had clicked. There was an expression of surprise on her face, her mouth a little open, barely a smile but the hint of one. That was the year his camera was always pointed at her if he brought it down from the high shelf where he kept it, a year before Hadia was born and the only photographs of her became ones where she was holding their children. She did not know what album this photo was in, or how Amar had found it, or what had possessed him to bring it to class without asking her first.
“I didn’t know he had taken it,” was all she could think to say, and she looked up at Oliver, watching her, his face full of pride that confused her, as though he were the one proud of Amar and not she. She was suddenly embarrassed he had seen her without her scarf, or a younger version of herself, and then wondered if the woman who entered his classroom with her face aged and hair covered disappointed him somehow.
“You can take the project with you, it may not seem like much,” he said. “But if you read all of the other kids’ work, you would know a lot of them wrote about imaginary superheroes, and you would see how good his writing is. The details he chooses. I told him it was excellent. I gave him an A.”
Layla thanked him and held the paper and photograph in her lap.
“You’re the last one,” he told her. “You can stay as long as you’d like.”
So she asked some questions she remembered she wanted to, like what they were learning next, and if he could sense Amar’s progress, if he was disruptive in class, and what Oliver meant exactly about being patient with him, if that meant that he was slower to understand or just that he needed kindness when being asked to understand something. Then she asked about Oliver. It was his first and perhaps only year teaching, this was a one-year assignment. And she told him that was too bad, that he seemed like the kind of teacher more students needed.
Layla did not read the project until she was home. She tucked it into her purse so Amar would not see that she had it. Amar asked her a hundred times to repeat everything Mr. Hansen said, then asked her if she thought Mr. Hansen liked him or not. He got a scoop of pistachio and Layla got vanilla, and Amar teased her for being so boring but she just smiled. She said she was very proud of him and Amar kicked his legs back and forth and said tell me why, exactly, and she thought no criticism, never again. They looked out the window at the cars leaving the parking lot, the storefronts on the other side of the complex with the bright red awning flapping away. When she was alone in her bedroom she pulled out his project gently, unfolded it and read Oliver’s handwriting first. Green ink and all uppercase it said, “Wonderful Job, Amar. Great details, great observations.” She smiled. Then began to read sentences from Amar’s writing:
“Once there was a splinter in Huda’s thumb. She knew what to do. She made Huda speak what she prayed for so it wouldn’t hurt. She never says I am sad! Or I am angry! Or I am sleepy and you are being so loud and annoying! She likes windows. When she puts seeds into the earth the earth grows. She is good at cooking and good at telling stories. Some she makes up herself so she has a good imagination but some she repeats from other people so she has a good memory too. She knows how much we need to eat like a proportion and we never run out of food and feel hungry. She cares about us eating more than her fingers. She cooked even when her thumb was burned. She gives me food first.”
She stopped reading, holding back tears and unable to continue without having to bite her knuckle—was it because of his words or because of this stranger, this young man, who was kind enough to look closely at her son, and see what she had seen?
* * *
THEIR DISAGREEMENT HAS escalated into a fight and Hadia has reached the threshold she knows she should not cross, should instead do as Mumma says: bite her tongue and abandon her protest. But it is Dani’s sixteenth birthday so she yells, “Everyone else is allowed to go.”
Baba stands from the couch so abruptly she steps back. Amar and Huda watch from the spaces between the banister. Mumma stands in the hallway but she might as well not be there at all, the way she pretends that nothing is happening.
“You are not everyone,” he yells back. “You are my daughter. My daughter does not go to parties.”
She refuses to show him any weakness—only wants him to know that she is angry, that he is wronging her, and if there are hot tears welling up she will not let them fall, she will blink furiously. She holds on to her wrist so tightly and pictures the marks her nails will leave when she lets go. She repeats in her mind what she wishes she could utter out loud, but maybe it is the secret of it that gives it power: I hate being your daughter.
All she asked for was permission to go to her best friend’s home on Saturday night. When Baba pressed her for a reason she was careful to say it was to celebrate her birthday. She did not even use the word party. She had not divulged the detail about Dani’s mom leaving the house, or Dani’s older sister “supervising,” or the other attendees.
“Baba, please.” She hopes a change of tone might soften his stance. Inspire sympathy for his daughter. But Baba knows the words that will shame her, make her wonder how she could dare to even want this.