The Pukur by D K Powell

Author:D K Powell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Histria Books
Published: 2022-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen – A Surprise for Sophie

Some things might be very different in Bangladesh, but other things were universal. For some reason, Christmas seemed to be one of the latter – with schools at any rate. Despite Islam being the majority religion in the country, with Hinduism as the next largest and Christians well in the minority, the Christian festival was acknowledged anyway and technically a public holiday. That meant schools broke up for term break, and for English Medium schools like Sophie’s, some kind of seasonal celebration was needed.

The Christmas concert was obligatory even here, much to Sophie’s disgust. She had hated them as a child and she still hated them now she was a teenager. It wasn’t the religious side of things – state schools in England rarely paid much more than lip service to that – but the effort needed to develop a performance in front of the school and parents that wouldn’t make you want to curl up and die from cringing.

Sophie had managed to persuade her class teacher to let her and Adhora do something together as a pair while most of the rest of the class worked on a group play in Bangla. Unfortunately, although her proficiency in the language had come on pretty well, Sophie still didn’t have the fluency to be able to memorise huge streams of Bangla needed for a play. She did, however, have a trick up her sleeve.

“We don’t tell anyone about this,” she said when telling Adhora the plan. If there was one person on this earth she trusted to keep a secret, it was her best friend. “Not even any of the teachers. We just assure them we have it under control and will have a performance to show when it comes to our turn on the night.”

This plan turned out to work, in part because when telling the teachers organising the end-of-term concert, they also asked for lots of fabric, thread and needles from the art cupboard to ‘create’ their act. During break times, the girls stayed inside working on their creation and that satisfied the teachers that they really were coming up with something.

During the weeks leading up to the concert, the girls increasingly kept their work hidden, using the locked store cupboard of one of the nicer female teachers to keep it safe from prying eyes. Most people semi-respected their privacy though they had come to learn that Mahfuza (who kept her distance from both of them but never stopped scowling and sneering when in sight) had been asking around both staff and students to try and find out what they were doing. This didn’t surprise them, nor did it worry either girl. Mahfuza had lost her crown in the school since Sophie had put her in a headlock, and no one gave her too much attention now.

One break time, though, a teaching assistant wandered into the classroom where they were sewing and practising Bangla to collect some books from a back shelf. The

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