by John Corr
“Hey, dude,” I said, stretching as I opened the door for him.
“Rise and shine,” he said. “It’s suppertime!” He came in and sat down. “I just came from the cottage. Sensei Rick wasn’t kidding. They’ve got it made up there!”
“You mean Ricky wasn’t kidding,” I said, using my fingers to make sarcastic air quotes. Dion busted up laughing.
“Yeah, Kondo Sensei and Little Ricky! They’ve got steaks sizzling on a barbecue up there. Plus corn on the cob, a big bowl of potato salad, some kind of grilled vegetables, which is gross but looks kind of awesome…”
“What about us?” I asked.
“Hot dogs!” he sang, swinging and pumping his arms in a happy dance. “So let’s get our butts out there. Everybody else is at the fire.”
We walked over to the fire pit. It was in between the trailers, just a few feet from the edge of the cliff. It wasn’t fancy. Just a big charred area surrounded by stacked bricks. Lawn chairs were set up in a circle around it, but only Joe was sitting. Zack and Wafaa were standing beside Sensei Rick, helping him get the fire going. There was an ax and a stack of logs off to one side. Sensei Rick had set up little sticks in the shape of a perfect little tent. Now he was reaching in with a match, trying to light something tucked inside the tent. It took, and flames licked up the sides of the sticks. He added a few more, then signaled Zack and Wafaa. They stepped up with scraps of cardboard and fanned at the flames.
In no time the wood caught fire, crackling as it burned. Smoke rose like a ghost but quickly blew off into nothing. Sensei Rick studied the fire. Then, with the same attention to technique that he showed in aikido, he placed a couple of fat logs exactly where he thought they should go. He stood back and brushed off his hands on his jeans. “I just earned my steak!” he said. “I’ll go grab your hot dogs.” He headed off toward the cottage.
A fire and a cliff. It definitely wasn’t the safest place for a pack of kids to be on their own, but that’s where the fire pit was set up. I guessed Kondo Sensei wasn’t about to burn a new hole in the middle of the camp just because it was our first time here.
We had just settled in our folding chairs when Sensei Rick came back with a fistful of long sticks, a couple of packs of hot dogs and a big cooler on wheels. He put it all down, then reached for a black iron rod that was stuck in the ground beside the fire. He used it to break up the arrangement of wood he had made so carefully earlier.
The way he knocked the logs down, though, turned out to be just as careful as the way he had set them up. The flames died down and walls of embers opened up for us to roast the food over.
“There’s your kitchen!” he said. “Enjoy!” He stuck the rod back in the ground and left us to figure out the rest.
Zack passed around the sticks and we got cooking.
I speared a wiener and found what I figured was a good spot over the coals. I looked up at the sky. The sun was still bright, but it was on its way down.
A long day.
I stood up for a better view. The sun’s bright light reflected on row after row of waves. Their long edges danced with sparkles. We could still see everything we were doing with the hot dogs, but before too long, I guessed, the sun was going to sink behind the lake.
Burning meat.
The smell broke through my daydreaming. Too late I pulled my wiener off the coals, where I had accidentally let it rest.
Joe laughed.
I lifted the stick to inspect the damage. I brushed off the wiener and puffed at it, clearing away the white ash. Underneath was one very charred dog.
“That’s one way to cook it,” Joe said.
“Whatever,” I said. I opened up the cooler and pulled out a bag of buns with one hand. “I like them better burned.”
Everyone else was too busy with their own food to pay much attention.
There was ketchup and mustard in the cooler, but as soon as I’d assembled my hot dog I shoved it in my mouth without putting anything on it. It was burned, and it was plain, and it was the best dinner I had eaten all year.
Zack and Dion hadn’t started cooking yet because they were arguing about the best way to do it.
“You have to poke the stick through the whole thing, the long way,” Zack said. “Like a souvlaki!”
“You make everything so complicated,” Dion said. He waved off his brother. He held the wiener up in one hand, then stabbed it through the middle. The ends flopped to each side.
The other kids concentrated on their sticks. I took another bite of my hot dog and listened to the crackle of the fire.
Dion’s savage approach looked like it was paying off. Everybody else’s hot dogs were getting burned at one end, while his was cooking evenly.
Then it started to break in the middle.
“No-no-no-no-no!” he said. He pulled his stick out of the fire and waved his hand back and forth underneath the wiener, unsure which part of it was going to fall off first.
I pulled out a bun and tossed it at him. It bounced off his chest and landed in his lap. He grabbed it and just got it under the wiener as both halves fell free of the stick. They both landed in the bun. Dinner was saved!
I got up to dig out another wiener from the package. There were frosty cans of pop at the bottom of the cooler. A weird mix of flavors in brightly colored cans. Root beer, cream soda, orange soda…I picked them up and started to hand them around. I didn’t bother to ask what kind people wanted.
I looked back at the cottage. No doubt the senseis’ meal was going to be spectacular, but I wouldn’t have changed places with the adults for anything. This was where it was at.
Wafaa must have been thinking the same thing. “This is awesome,” she said around a full mouthful of food.
Joe had grape soda in a bright-purple can. He tapped his fingernail on the top a few times to make it sure it didn’t explode when he opened it. He cracked it open, and purple foam erupted anyway. He slurped at it. Then he spoke.
“You know how you’re a Muslim?” he said to Wafaa. He knew he hadn’t said it right and kind of stuttered. “I mean, I know you know you’re a Muslim. But, I mean, since you’re a Muslim, like… don’t you not eat, like…”. He frowned and took a long drink.
After my own ignorance about Wafaa’s hijab, I held my breath while I waited to hear what was going to come out of his mouth next.
We all waited.
He looked up and saw everyone staring.
He frowned again and had another sip.
His stalling made it so much worse. I didn’t even know what he was building up to, but I had a lump in my throat that I couldn’t swallow.
On the other side of the fire, Wafaa giggled.
That broke the tension enough for Joe. He finally got his question out. “I’m just trying to say, aren’t you only supposed to eat special foods? Like, not hot dogs?”
The heat of the fire was practically burning my legs, but I sat totally still.
“Well, I don’t know about you,” she said, “but hot dogs cooked on a fire are pretty special to me. At home my mom just boils them. What does your family do? Do you sit around like cavemen cooking over a fire?”
I knew that wasn’t what Joe was getting at. But Wafaa had taken his awkward question and flipped it. I also knew she wasn’t really picking on Joe’s family. She was just working with what he’d given her. And she’d done it with style.
Like aikido, but with words!
“Don’t be a dummy, Joe,” said Zack.
“No, what I meant was…” Joe held his can up to his lips, but he didn’t drink. He was stalling again. “I meant, like, religious food,” he said, turning to Zack. “I meant doesn’t she only eat certain kinds of foods because of the whole…” He hesitated, then quickly passed his hand over his head a couple of times.
I put my hands over my eyes.
But Wafaa laughed so hard she snorted and then started to choke on a piece of hot dog. She waved her hand and then pounded her chest and swallowed it down.
> “Okay.” She gulped again. “First of all, I’m not exactly sure what this is.” She put a goofy look on her face and waved her hand around her head like Joe had done.
“Burn!” Dion said. He pointed at Joe with his roasting stick. “Burned beside the fire!”
Joe crushed his empty pop can and threw it at Dion. He looked embarrassed.
“But if you’re trying to ask if Muslims have dietary restrictions, then yes, there’s some stuff my family doesn’t eat. Like pork. But on the trip form that Sensei Rick sent out to everybody, it asked about dietary restrictions. My parents put down that I don’t eat pork, so he made sure to pick up a brand of wieners that I can eat. They’re halal. Made the right way, and out of beef.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure what else to tell you about the eating habits of ‘the Wild Wafaa in her natural habitat.’”
She stuffed the last handful of hot dog into her mouth. We were all laughing so hard that Dion almost fell out of his chair.
My belly was starting to ache, but in a good way.
Wafaa got up and threw a piece of wood on the fire. She picked up her square of cardboard and waved at the coals until one part of the log burst into flame.
“Since we’re asking rude questions,” Dion said suddenly, “why did you leave judo? Is it true that some new girl joined and start kicking your butt?”
Zack frowned and smacked him on the arm with his roasting stick. He had just loaded it with a fresh wiener, though, which flew off and landed in the grass.
“Ow! Quit it!” Dion said. He rubbed his arm. “That’s what I heard at school!”
Zack stood up and looked at Dion. I worried for a second that he was going to pound on his little brother, but as he started to step around him, I realized he was just looking for the wiener. It was getting dark, so it took him a second to find it. He spiked his stick back into it.
“You should mind your own business,” he said. He sat back down, wiped the dirt from the wiener and stuck it over the fire.
“Yeah, Dion,” I said. “Mind your own business.”
Secretly, though, I was dying to hear the answer to his question. Wafaa was being a lot more friendly here than she had been in the dojo. When she pranked the brothers with the spider, I’d felt like I caught a glimpse of a whole other side of her.
But that picture on the bulletin board told me there was a judo story we hadn’t heard.
Wafaa had turned Joe’s question into kind of a joke and still tried to answer it.
But Dion’s question had wiped the smile right off her face. She sat back down and started rolling her stick between her hands, making it spin.
Finally she spoke.
“No lie, guys, I was good. I mean really good. And I loved it.” She paused for a few seconds. “I probably still love it.” She used her roasting stick to poke at a piece of wood.
“So what happened?” asked Joe. He had barely waved a second hot dog over the coals before putting it in a bun. He squirted so much ketchup on it that it was dripping off both ends.
“I was a green belt. And in case all you rookie white belts don’t know, that’s, like, the fourth belt up.” She laughed a little as she teased us. “I was a green belt who was even taking out brown belts. Every class. And it’s not like aikido, where you and your partner work together all the time to make things work. These kids were trying to stay up, and I was putting them down! In that exact same dojo room where I do aikido now.”
I could see in the evening light that she was blinking hard. She saw me looking and made a big show of waving her arm in front of her face. “Stupid smoke’s in my eyes,” she said.
She went on with the story. “I was so good that I wasn’t really being challenged. So my sensei—my judo sensei—convinced me to go for my first big tournament.
“Around that time a new girl joined our club. A mean girl. And I beat her. Very easily.” She pointed at Dion. “So whatever you heard at school, no ‘new girl’ was ‘kicking my butt.’
“I trained for months. I was so excited. Sensei was so excited. My parents were so excited.” She didn’t even sound like she was bragging when she added, “And I was going to win.”
Then Wafaa stopped talking.
The only sounds were the waves crashing on the shore far below us and the crackles from the fire at our feet.
Wafaa stuck a new wiener on her stick and put it over the coals.
She sipped her pop and stared at the fire.
SEVENTEEN
After what seemed like forever, Wafaa took a deep breath and started speaking again.
“Around that time I started wearing my hijab. Off the mats and on. It wasn’t an easy decision, but the time just seemed right.
“Next thing I know, my judo sensei gets this anonymous letter.” Wafaa sounded angry now. But her voice was shaky, like mine gets when I’m trying not to cry. “Probably from one of the other parents. They had included a copy of Judo Canada’s competition rules. One rule had been highlighted.” Wafaa swallowed. She took a deep breath, and her voice wasn’t shaky anymore.
“Turns out, there are rules about competing in a hijab.” She reached up and ran her hand along the one she was wearing. She patted it. “As in, you’re not allowed to. So I made my choice. That was it. No more judo.” She shrugged and stared at the flames. I could tell she had stopped paying attention to her hot dog. It had gone crispy black all on one side, but she wasn’t even turning it.
Zack reached over with his stick and gently lifted hers away from the coals. He cleared his throat. “Burning,” he said. He got up and dropped a few more logs onto the coals. He pulled Sensei Rick’s iron rod out of the ground to shove the logs around till it looked like a real fire would get going again.
Wafaa sighed. She brought her hot dog close to her face for inspection.
“Wait a minute!” Joe said. We all looked at him. “So you’re saying you quit? Just like that?”
I think I knew what he really meant.
I think he meant it couldn’t be that simple.
It couldn’t be that…unfair.
“She didn’t quit!” I said. “Weren’t you listening?” I kept an eye on Wafaa to make sure I had it right. “Her sensei quit on her when someone pointed out the rules.”
I looked across the grassy field to the back deck of the cottage. Kondo Sensei and Sensei Rick were just hanging out, taking it all in.
Sensei Rick could be kind of a bully, and I had only just met Kondo Sensei. But I couldn’t imagine either one of them ever quitting on us.
At least Wafaa has real senseis now.
I turned back in my chair and smiled at her.
She looked at me.
Uh-oh. She did not look happy with me.
In fact, she looked like she was going to stand up and stab me with with her roasting stick, burnt wiener and all.
I shrunk in my chair.
I should have known better than to try to defend her.
“No,” she said. “My judo sensei did not quit on me! He called up Judo Canada and screamed his head off at them. He screamed so much they threatened to take away his accreditation.
“Then he threatened to sue them. They said the rule was there for a reason and that some other countries had the same rule, and they weren’t going to change it for just one girl.”
I knew I was taking a chance, but I had to ask. “Could it have all been just a big misunderstanding?” I said. “I mean, how could that even be allowed?”
Wafaa closed her eyes. She turned her face away from the smoky fire and took a deep breath in. She turned back to us and began to recite from memory:
“In some sports, accommodation for religious beliefs is easier than in others. By its very nature, Judo is a combative sport which involves throwing, grappling and choking. The head area is aggressively attacked and must be controlled…”
Another deep breath. She must have memorized pages and pages!
“There is a potential injury to the hands or fingers of the attacker due to
entanglement in the head covering and potential injury to the wearer if the attacker uses the head covering to choke the wearer or control the wearer’s head.”
The closer Wafaa got to the end, the faster she spoke.
When she was done she stood up and pretended to do an old-fashioned curtsey. She then flopped back into her chair.
The rest of us sat in silence.
“How did you memorize all of that?” I finally asked.
Wafaa shrugged. “Do you know how many hours I spent reading the rules, looking for a way around? Over? Through? And that’s not even all of it. There’s more, but it all comes down to the same thing.”
“Hold up!” Dion said. He looked furious. “So you can’t wear a hijab in case you hurt a FINGER when you’re trying to STRANGLE someone!” He got louder the longer he spoke. “The rules ACTUALLY SAY that you might hurt your FINGER when you’re AGGRESSIVELY ATTACKING the head?”
“Or in case you’re accidentally choked with your hoodie when they’re choking you?” Joe asked. “But…what would that even look like?”
Wafaa looked tired. She nodded. She must have heard it all before. She must have said it all before too. Probably louder than Dion even.
I shook my head. “I still feel like I’m missing something,” I said. “You can get a finger caught in a uniform as easily as in a hijab. It’s happened to me at aikido. But I’ve never once got caught in your headgear. It’s tight. It’s our uniforms that are all floppy.”
“Yeah!” Dion said. “And those judo guys have their fingers all taped up anyway! I’m always finding dirty scraps of finger tape they leave behind. Your sensei is a real jerk for going along with that crap.”
“He’s not a jerk!” Wafaa’s voice rose. “You think he didn’t say everything you said and more? He wanted to hire a lawyer and go to the papers. But I decided that enough was enough. I didn’t want to be some, some…” She waved her stick around. She was shouting now. “…some poster girl! I just wanted to compete! But if judo didn’t want me, I didn’t want it! And that’s it!”