Sadia by Colleen Nelson

Author:Colleen Nelson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2018-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Mariam had been texting me all weekend with updates on the uniform. She’d worked on it all day Sunday and said it would be done for Monday morning. I’d have to try it on at school so she could see what areas needed to be fixed.

I was also anxious to find out if anything else had changed. Would she be wearing her hijab? Or would the pressure to look like other girls win out?

“Marhaba,” I greeted Amira as she walked past me in the hallway. Her backpack dangled from her arm like a dead thing. “Amira?” She ignored me and kept walking to her locker, a few down from mine. I followed her, confused. “What’s the matter?”

She kept her mouth in a firm line and stuffed her backpack inside her locker, letting it clang shut. “I want to go home.”

Homesickness. A reasonable emotion, I thought to myself. To be honest, I was surprised she hadn’t reacted this way earlier. She’d arrived during a cold snap. News reports lamented the frigid temperatures. Dad had let the car run for ten minutes to warm it up this morning before he drove me to school.

“I. Want. To. Go. Home!” This time the words came out angrier. She glared at me and I took a step back. The timid girl from last week had disappeared over the weekend.

“Amira —” I kept my voice hushed. I didn’t want her to draw attention to herself, or me. “This is your home now.”

“This is not my home,” she spat. “We had nowhere else to go!”

No one around us understood Arabic, but they’d know she was mad about something. I grabbed her elbow to lead her to the washroom, but she shook me off, wrenching her sleeve from my grip. “Don’t touch me. I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”

“Fine,” I whispered back at her. “I was just trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help!” Amira pushed past me and bolted for the classroom.

“What was that about?” Mariam asked. She had the bag with the uniform in her hands.

“She’s homesick,” I said shaking my head.

“I thought you said she’d lived in a refugee camp before coming here.”

“She did.”

Mariam snorted in disbelief. “How could she miss that?” Mariam had left Egypt, but not as a refugee either. Her family had chosen to leave after the Arab Spring movement began. With family spread out around the world, they’d have been willing to go anywhere, but Canada had accepted them first. Mariam used to Facetime her friends sometimes, which was tricky with the time change. Over the years, her connection to them had dwindled. I wondered what they would think if they knew she was de-jabbing every morning at school.

“Must be hard, coming with nothing,” I said. “It was sad about her friends, how she doesn’t know where they are. And her family is scattered all over. Some of them are still in Lebanon.” I felt a twinge of annoyance that I had to explain all this to her. “I think she needs some friends,” I gave Mariam a meaningful look.

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