Does My Head Look Big in This?

by Randa Abdel-Fattah

  “Well, Amal. Let’s discuss this later, shall we? You’ve got class to attend.”

  She scribbles out a late note and hands it to me.

  “Here you go. Now have a wonderful first day and I will speak to you soon.”

  She gives me a fake smile and resumes writing, an invitation for me to leave pronto. I nod back, careful not to slam the door behind me as I leave.

  I end up entering English with everybody already comfortably seated. I close the door behind me and am confronted by an instantly silent classroom, lines of faces staring up at me from their desks.

  Mr Pearse is standing at the front of the class. I can tell my hijab has taken him by surprise. I wait, holding my breath, for his response.

  Tell me off for being late. Give me detention. Scream, yell, be normal.

  “Ahem! First day of school, Amal. I hope you have a note.” His eyebrows are raised and his hands folded across his chest; he taps his fingers against his arms impatiently.

  He is inaugurated into my hall of fame of all-time favourite teachers.

  “Here you go, Mr Pearse.”

  He scans it and then smiles at me, nodding at me to take a seat. My friends, Simone and Eileen, are grinning proudly at me. Everybody else is staring like I’ve dyed my hair green or showed up to school wrapped in toilet paper. Tia Tamos, Claire Foster and Rita Mason look at me and then snigger amongst themselves. Predictable. After all, they were top of the right-hand columners in my To Wear or Not To Wear List. As I walk past the desks my eyes meet Adam’s and he looks taken aback. He wriggles in his seat and is suddenly fascinated by the corner of his desk. I feel like somebody has got a stapler and started punching holes all over my guts.

  I met Adam Keane in Chemistry a couple of weeks into my first semester. We were paired up as lab partners, and we were assigned together many more times throughout the term. As this is high school, it’s important to understand what type he is. He’s not the loner type. Not the ostracized-nerd type or stuck-up brainiac type. He’s not the pot-head type, just-wants-to-bonk-girls type, teacher’s-pet type, personally-unhygienic type. He’s pretty popular, as any guy who’s good at sport usually is. In that sense, he’s a sporty type. Plus, everybody knows he wants to be a doctor and needs to pretty much ace every subject to become one. So he’s also an ambitious-but-retains-coolness type. He’s just one of those guys who seems to have it all. Back then I wasn’t really that impressed with him. We hung out in Chem, did the hi/bye thing in the hall, and that was pretty much it. We had the “classroom relationship”. The kind that ends when the bell rings. There’s no recess or lunch time thing happening.

  Then at approximately 11.45 a.m. on Friday, 24 May, we’re in Chemistry and Adam’s passing me a gauze mat and bunsen burner when I suddenly notice his sleeves are pulled up and I get a glimpse of his forearms.

  I’m telling you, I’m usually a 1) smile, 2) eyes, 3) skin, and 4) six-pack kind of girl. But the sight of Adam’s forearms, with his veins bulging against his muscles and his shirt sleeves begging for oxygen just about made me dizzy. I started to notice his eyes – a deep navy-blue. His hair – a dishevelled mess of brown and sandy blond. OK there’s a bit of dot-to-dot acne and he almost has a monobrow dilemma, but his imperfections are what kept me up all that Friday and Saturday night as I fantasized about cuddling up to his forearms, stroking his hair and listening to him tell me I’m the most beautiful girl in the world.

  So I’ve been in official crush mode since May 24.

  Hence the absolute gastro-inducing experience of being snubbed by him.

  I take a seat next to Simone and Eileen and wait for a comment during class. But nobody approaches me and nobody says anything. So I wait for people to say something in-between classes. But nobody does.

  In English, Simone and Eileen furiously write notes to me.

  You look great!

  Boy have you got guts!

  Fill us in at recess.

  At recess I sit with Simone and Eileen in the northern courtyard overlooking one of the ovals. Simone and I hit it off from my first day at school. I’d walked into home room and approached the closest free seat, next to a gorgeous girl with jet-black hair and cat-green eyes. She was all haughtiness and glamour and took one look at me and told me she was saving the seat for a friend. She’s a scanner. You know the type, the kind who looks you up and down, head to toe, and makes it so obvious. Never mind the fact that you’re wearing the same uniform every day, she’ll still do her scan, as though she’s trying to detect if you’ve put on a gram of fat or something. She’s also into the sexy hair tossing thing. Every time she speaks her hair gets tossed from one side to the other. It’s a wonder her neck doesn’t crack. Anyway, Simone was sitting in the back and waved me over. I sat next to her and she told me I’d had my first encounter with Tia Tamos, aka hair-spinning bitch, and asked me if I watched Friends. We’ve hung out ever since.

  I met Eileen Tanaka after the “living off the dole” incident with Tia. Eileen’s parents are Japanese. Not Chinese. Or Asian. Japanese. She doesn’t have much patience for people who are too lazy to make the distinction.

  “So let me get this right,” Eileen says. “You don’t have to wear it in front of family, kids and females?”

  “Basically that’s it.”

  “So it’s not like you wear it all the time,” Simone says.

  “That’s right. Of course . . . I wear it in the shower.”

  Eileen and Simone roll their eyes at me. “Like we’re that naïve, Amal.”

  “Seriously, I do. Helps with the conditioning treatment.”

  “Please do us a favour and audition for the Melbourne Comedy Festival.”

  “Anyway, what did Ms Walsh say about it?” Simone asks, offering me a celery stick.

  “What’s with the celery?” I ask her.

  “New diet,” she groans. Simone’s incredibly self-conscious about her body. She doesn’t understand that it’s all in her mind. OK, so she’s not a size eight, can’t feel her ribcage and doesn’t have toothpicks for legs. She’s about a size fourteen and really voluptuous and curvy and gorgeous with big blue eyes, creamy, radiant skin and lips that look like she has permanent red lipstick on. When she smiles, her cheeks squash up and her eyes twinkle. But tell that to her and you’re up for a fight given that when she looks in the mirror she’s seeing one big lipid molecule. She’s on a new diet almost every week, but they never last, and then she goes through a binge/purge cycle and comes back on Monday morning with a new celebrity diet that she got from Women’s Weekly.

  “No-carb?” Eileen asks.

  “Who knows.” She takes another reluctant bite of her celery stick. “So tell us, Amal. Did she crack it?”

  “She nearly had an aneurism. She was raving on about breaking tradition and this institution’s proud history. Why do all principals do that? Make you feel like you’re in a mental asylum?”

  “Did Adam say anything?”

  “. . .No. . .”

  “Just forget about it. He’ll come round.”

  “Yeah . . . I guess. . .”

  I need a place to pray, so at lunch time I go to see Mr Pearse. All through the year I’ve been carrying out my two afternoon prayers at home after school but I’d go through them at supersonic speed so that I could make it in time to watch Home and Away. It never felt right and now I really want to try to pray at the set times, the way it’s supposed to be.

  “Now let’s see.” Mr Pearse leans back in his chair and stares at his desk, deep in thought. “Will an empty classroom do? I can arrange one for you if that’s suitable.”

  “Well, have you ever seen news reports where the camera zooms in on a group of Muslims praying? The ‘bums up’ shot? Forget every other move in the prayers, it’s the bums up that really sets the cameras off. So I’d hate to be in a classroom with my rear end in the air and people walk p
ast and start thinking I’m into solo yoga.”

  He chuckles. “I see what you mean. You can use the storage room adjoining my office. You’ll have your privacy as it’s nicely tucked away, and it can be accessed through my office so just walk right in when you need to. How long will the prayer take?”

  “About ten minutes.”

  “Oh, is that all? It’s nice and simple then.”

  Yep, he’s my favourite, favourite, favourite.

  5

  The first thing I do when I get home from school is jump on my bed and call Leila.

  “Oh my God! I wore it! To school! To McCleans! And everybody was staring and kind of freaked out and avoiding me and Mr Pearse was so cool and Ms Walsh, well, yeah, she spun out but that was to be expected, and Simone and Eileen were so supportive and Tia obviously scrunched up her face at me like I’d walked in covered in cow dung but, hey, I’d be insulted if she ignored me, and Leila, it felt so amazing and scary and—”

  “Amal! Chill pill please!”

  “OK, OK,” I say breathlessly. “Adam ignored me, Leila!”

  “He did not!”

  “It was brutal.”

  “So confront him. You’re not the type to sit and cry in a corner.”

  “How long did it take you to feel, you know, confident?”

  “Sometimes I still get nervous; depends where I am. But I’m used to it now. The hijab’s part of me. Hey, got to go! Mum’s calling me. She’s having a tantrum because I can’t be stuffed watching her cook tonight. See ya!”

  I hang up the phone and call Yasmeen. Her reaction is to give me a long lecture about the urgency of me applying make-up.

  “Tell me you had eyeliner on today.”

  “Are you scrunching your face up in tension waiting for my answer?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m happy to disappoint. It’s a big fat NOPE.”

  “You are beyond pathetic, Amal. Do you not understand that if you wear eyeliner and eyeshadow your eyes will be devastating with the scarf? Trust me. You’ve seen my mum. Her eyes are similar to yours, although yours are probably a little more greeny-blue, and only God knows why you got the coloured eyes when I’m the one who knows how to apply cosmetics. When Mum does her eyes up under her hijab she looks hot.”

  “Yasmeen, my principal would probably put me in front of a school assembly and wash my make-up off with steel wool if I went to school all dolled up.”

  “Go figure. You’re at nerdville. Anyway, back to your attempt to wear the hijab without the assistance of Revlon. I hate to disappoint you, but there are only a few women in this world who can get away with the natural look. Don’t you read New Weekly? “Stars without their make-up”, etc.? Hello? Do you have a big modelling contract you haven’t told me about? Are you co-starring in Brad Pitt’s next movie? If your answer to either of these questions is no, then go out and buy some cosmetic products this instant.”

  We talk for ages. I tell Yasmeen about Adam and Ms Walsh and Simone and Eileen and Tia Tamos and Mr Pearse and Adam, Adam, Adam. She fills me in on the goss from her school and all the people from Hidaya who moved on there who say hi to me. We talk and talk and I miss her and Leila so much it aches.

  At dinner my parents tell me Ms Walsh called them and wants to see them tomorrow. They’ve arranged to meet at five. I’m livid. My mum wants me to calm down and my dad wants me to stop with the conspiracy theories.

  “I don’t want to take it off,” I plead. “If she thinks she’s going to make me take it off I’ll take her to court!”

  My dad snorts. “Stop being so dramatic.”

  “Well, I will!”

  “No one’s taking anybody to court,” my mum scoffs, giving me an amused look. “Or making any such threats either.”

  “OK, fine. I’ll ring the tabloids. I’m sure they’ll be interested. I can just see the cover story now: ‘Innocent Muslim girl – victim of snobby grammar school prejudice’.”

  My parents laugh. I don’t see anything funny.

  “Look,” my dad says, calmly placing his fork and knife down at a proper angle to his plate and adjusting the napkin on his lap in his usual I-am-such-a-nerd-and-eat-as-though-I’m-at-a-five-star-restaurant fashion. “It’s really very simple, Amal. All your mum and I need to know is one thing. Are you convinced?”

  “I think I am . . . I mean, yeah sure, it was really hard at school and everybody was staring at me and I just know they’re all wondering if I’ve flipped. I know it kind of looks like I’m asking for it. Do you know what I’m saying? You don’t put the hijab on and walk into McCleans expecting people not to wonder what the hell is going on.”

  “Exactly our point,” my dad says. “Why are you doing it if you know what you’re up for? Are you mentally prepared for the staring and small-minded stereotyping and mis­conceptions?”

  Before I answer, my mum interrupts: “You see how people react and look at me, at my age! You’re still young and starting out. You’ve got university and then looking for a job. Have you thought all of it through?”

  “Maa! I’m not a kid! I’ve spent every last minute in these past four days thinking through every single potential obstacle. I’ve predicted all the smart-arse comments people can throw at me. Nappy-head, tea-towel head, camel jockey, and all the rest. Yeah, I’m scared. OK, there, happy? I’m petrified. I walked into my classroom and I wanted to throw up from how nervous I was. But this decision, it’s coming from my heart. I can’t explain or rationalize it. OK, I’m doing it because I believe it’s my duty and defines me as a Muslim female but it’s not as . . . I don’t know how to put it . . . it’s more than just that.”

  I take a big sip of water because there’s a lump starting a roadblock in my throat and the last thing I want is for my parents to see me cry. So I swallow my glass of water in seconds and manage to extend the corners of my mouth enough to flash a tiny smile at them. After all, everybody knows that when you’re sixteen you don’t cry in front of your parents. Not if you’re ever planning on bringing up the whole “stop treating me like a kid” argument again.

  My parents glance at each other and then smile warmly at me. My mum reaches over and squeezes my hand tightly. “We’re proud of you, darling.”

  My dad says: “OK, ya Amal, we understand. That’s all we needed to know, habibti. Leave the rest to your mum and me.”

  “Now pass me the salad,” my mum says, “and tell us everything we need to know about this Ms Walsh.”

  My dad and I toss between taking the garbage out after dinner or wiping the table. I go garbage.

  As I walk up to the side of the house and put the rubbish in the bin, I almost don’t notice Mrs Vaselli, our next-door neighbour. She’s sitting out on her front porch and I suddenly hear a harsh cough and an “In ze name of ze Father, ze Son and ze Holy Ghost”.

  She’s a grump. If you smile at her she scowls. If you nod at her she curses you. If you attempt conversation she pretends that she can’t hear you. If you ignore her she yells out Greek swear words. I dread being outside at the same time she is.

  I don’t know what her constitution is like, but I’m struggling to get the lid off the bin with my fingers all numb from the cold. It’s a typical winter evening in Melbourne where you take in a breath of the air and your body goes into a spasm, like when you take a quick sip from a 7-Eleven Slurpie and your head is frozen into agony.

  I look over her way and wave a reluctant hello because if I don’t she’ll probably tell my parents and then I’ll get the “she’s an old lady, show some manners” lecture.

  “Hi, Mrs Vaselli,” I call out.

  “Why you keeping leave za cigarette pack on my grass?” She has a thick accent and a voice that seems like it’s bottling up years of anger.

  “I don’t smoke, Mrs Vaselli.” The cold has obviously reached her head.

  “Huh! You sure?
Maybe you acting innocent to your parent. But you no tricking me!”

  “I said I don’t smoke,” I say firmly. “Maybe somebody was walking down the street and threw it. Maybe it got blown here by the wind. There’s a million ways it could have ended up on your grass but me smoking isn’t one of them!”

  “Huh!” She turns her face away abruptly, indicating to me that the conversation has ended.

  *

  The next morning at fajr I pray that Ms Walsh lets me wear the hijab and that Leila’s parents grow some brain cells and quit pressuring Leila about marriage. That Simone’s next diet works, Adam and I become the best of friends, and Ms Walsh lets me wear my hijab. I pray that Palestinians are granted the same rights and freedom and dignity that the Israelis enjoy and that the streets fill with Israelis and Palestinians walking side by side in peace. And that Ms Walsh lets me wear my hijab. That Tia loses her hair – I mean gets over her power trip – and that my class stops their silent treatment.

  And that Ms Walsh lets me wear my hijab.

  6

  I’m on edge in home room. Then English, then Maths, then recess. By three o’clock Simone and Eileen are as nervous as I am and we’ve managed to get through a whole packet of doughnuts in between the last two periods, waiting for five o’clock to come.

  They wish me luck as they get on the bus. I’ve told my parents I’m staying after school to go home with them. There’s no way I’m waiting at home while they’re in there with Ms Walsh discussing the most important thing I’ve done in my life. I wait out the rest of the afternoon in the library. I try to do some homework but I see Ms Walsh’s name in every line I read. So I go into the music section, put on a set of headphones and listen to an album. But her name is popping up in all the lyrics too. So I just sit and stare at a huge oak tree outside the window.