Two Old Fools on a Camel: From Spain to Bahrain and Back Again

by Victoria Twead

  “Come into my room,” she said, when we’d cleared up the mess and stopped laughing. “I’ve got things to tell you!”

  14. Basketball

  ‘Sambousek (Spinach Kisses)’

  “It’s Hali-Barry,” said Daryna, settling herself on the sofa.

  “What about him?”

  “I’m getting as many complaints from parents about him as I’m getting about crazy Brent.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Where shall I start?” She sighed and started counting the points on her fingers. “He shouts at the students. All his lessons sound like a slanging match and you can hear him several classrooms away. And the swearing! I’ve warned him, and my deputies have warned him, but he just carries on using bad language round the students.”

  “You can’t curse and swear round students! That’s really unprofessional...”

  “I know! And he makes inappropriate comments which upsets some of the girls. He’s had his first written warning about that. Then there’s his halitosis. I presented him with a big jar of mints. He said, ‘I don’t need those,’ and I said, ‘Believe me, Barry, you do!’ But he’s still blasting that awful breath over the kids.”

  “I think he needs to see a dentist.”

  “He sure does! But I can’t force him to go. But that’s not all...”

  “Oh my, what else?”

  “Well, he’s always there, if you know what I mean. After school he’s there, ready to take me home. If I go shopping, he’s there ready to carry my bags. He’s always in my office. He’s always a step behind me.”

  “He’s desperate for a ladyfriend, you know...”

  “Yuk! I know that now. I thought it was innocent, that he was just being helpful, but then he came up here earlier, and asked what I was planning for the Winter Break. I said I wasn’t sure, and he suggested I might like to book a double room and go on a Nile cruise with him. Can you imagine?”

  “What? Has the man got the hide of a rhinoceros?”

  “Ha! I think so! Anyway, how are things with you?”

  “Well, they would be fine, except for Fatima’s mother.”

  “What is she doing now?”

  “She’s always in the building, snooping on me, and I’m getting emails from her nearly every day. Do you know, I don’t think I’ve had a complaint from a parent before, ever, but this woman never stops. She questions every single thing I do with the class. I’m dreading the Parents’ Conference.”

  I recalled the latest email...

  “dear Ms. Vicky,

  The literary analysis for the story ‘Eleven’ is about symbolism, I am wondering if you will explain this concept to the students or not?

  Fatima’s mother”

  Huh! It was hard enough just to get the children to learn their vocabulary lists, or even string a sentence together correctly. And she wanted me to launch into an in-depth lesson on symbolism?

  ۺۺۺ

  Our memories of Spain were beginning to blur and become a little less painful as Joe and I immersed ourselves in the daily life of the school.

  Fatima’s mother continued to stalk me. Mr. Brewster continued to sing the praises of the wonderful Wayne. Joe’s students continued to waste his time, and their own. Brent never ceased to astound us, and Hali-Barry sniffed after Daryna, or any other female with a pulse. Hali-Barry had got so bad that Andrea and Saja refused to share an elevator with him.

  Joe was just managing to keep his head above water, teaching Physics and Maths. Two and a half months into the academic year and the High School schedule had still to be finalised. Keeping the students in his classroom, and without their friends from other classes, was another major obstacle. The Hall Monitors frequently brought escapees back, often students that Joe hadn’t even noticed were missing. He described how some of the High School Monitors actually carried sticks.

  “So there I was, writing this equation on the board, and my door flies open. In comes Mr. Hussein, the Hall Monitor, pushing Ali in front of him, poking him with his stick and bawling at him. I couldn’t believe it! Then Ali answers him back, and Mr. Hussein clips him round the ear and yells at him to sit down and behave. I called Mr. Hussein over and very quietly said, ‘Mr. Hussein, you cannot treat students that way you know,’ and he just grins at me. So I look at Ali, and he’s grinning, too. Then Mr. Hussein says, ‘It’s okay, Mr. Joe, Ali is my son.’ Well! This school is just crazy...”

  In our little mountain village in Spain, children rule. They run wild in the streets, get up to all sorts of mischief and are regarded as little angels by their doting parents. And they are. Joe and I have always found Spanish kids to be delightful, polite and charming.

  Now we had the opportunity of comparing Arabic kids with their Spanish counterparts. To begin with, their life-styles were massively different. In Spain, kids’ lives are governed by the seasons and their huge families. Fiestas, football, grape-pressing, endless summer weeks romping in the village, days on the beach, Christmas...all important times for Spanish children.

  In Bahrain, however, the children we taught came mostly from very wealthy families. They enjoyed the latest material possessions, were waited on by maids and chauffeured to school in luxury cars. Unlike Spanish kids, they lived indoors most of the time. For the majority of the year, Bahrain is simply too hot for kids to play outside. There are no nice beaches and certainly no countryside. So for Bahraini kids, leisure time is usually spent in the city malls, meeting friends, eating fast food and spending money.

  My class

  Most of our Spanish neighbours have never been out of Andalucía or left Spain. They have never been on a plane and have no desire to. Bahraini families, however, spend the long summer-break travelling, and many of the kids in my class had regularly visited Europe and America.

  In spite of their dreadful behaviour, both Joe and I became very fond of our pupils. My Mohammeds were the bane of my life. Joe had Talal, and a bunch of lads bigger, stronger, taller and hairier than he was, who tormented him on a daily basis. But basically, they were nice kids, just very spoiled.

  Just how badly behaved these kids could be was illustrated at the basketball championship. ASS was hosting the championship final that year. There was a crowd of thirty or forty ASS students on the sidelines, mostly senior boys, bellowing for their team. ASS was up against a team from a neighbouring school. The aged gymnasium rang with the cheers, boos and screams of the spectating boys and it was clear that the visiting team’s spectators were already intimidated.

  “Talk about a scary tribe!” said Jake, telling us about it later at a BWMDC meeting. He shook his head at the memory. “Anyway, across the gym sat the awful Miss Jane, the Athletics Director.”

  Joe and I nodded. The same Miss Jane who organised the after-school football club.

  “The awful Miss Jane was perched up on the score box, and it turned out that she had as little idea about sportsmanship as the kids did. She was yelling and heckling with the best of ’em.”

  “Another Stella, Sir Jake, Sir John?” asked the Filipino barmaid, interrupting Jake’s juicy tale. “Coors Light for you, Sir Colton?”

  “Hey, funny isn’t it?” said Colton, when our glasses were refreshed. “Funny how the kids can barely understand basic classroom instructions, like ‘get your books out’, but...”

  “But know everything about the rules of basketball,” finished Jake, “a hundred times better than the poor, underpaid Indian referee who was calling for a fair game.”

  “What happened next?” I asked.

  “Well, our kids played real dirty. They threw elbows, charged, grabbed, everything you hate about an unfair athlete.”

  “Some of the other school’s team just had enough,” Colton added. “They started to throw elbows back.”

  “Hey, I didn’t blame them!” Jake cut in.

  Colton agreed. “It was a really filthy game. Finally, the ref called a technical on our star player, Talal. As soon as that happened, a boy from the other team sho
ved Talal, ’n’ that cleared the stands.”

  “All the ASS kids jumped up and surged onto the court, yelling and pushing,” said Jake. “One minute we were just observing the incredibly awful basketball and worse crowd behaviour, and then, teacher mode kinda kicked in. I didn’t know I could run hurdles, or jump anything as high as a chair,” he said. “I’m telling you, I have never jumped so fast over anything higher than my waist, trying to put myself between our students and the other school’s team.”

  “Hey, we just didn’t think,” said Colton. “We just went for it!”

  “Anyway,” said Jake, “the other teachers followed us, and it was just one almighty brawl. Punches, foul language, and the worst cowardice I’ve ever seen. I personally shoved five students to the ground only to have them pop right back up and give me a look as though I just told them Jesus was better than Mohammed.”

  “Course, the students didn’t listen to us. Do they ever? It sure took a while to clear the gym.” Colton grinned over his beer glass.

  “And that Jane, our wondrous Athletics Director, she never left the safety of her three-foot-tall box, and her yelling was more abusive than the kids’! A couple of the other team’s boys were punched in the face and had to be treated with ice. Anyway, we finally managed to clear the gym of our students and the other team packed up their things.”

  “And we thought that was the end of it,” laughed Colton.

  “But being ASS...”

  “Where ALL STUDENTS SUCCEED!” Joe and I chanted.

  “Yep, being our school, that wasn’t the end of it.”

  “It was like a really bad teen drama,” said Colton.

  “Yep, our students were waiting outside. I felt like a song-and-dance number should break out any minute. Unfortunately, it did not. We had to escort the other team down the street. We were followed by our students all the way. And where was our Athletics Director? Nowhere to be seen!”

  It wasn’t really funny, but Jake acting out the scene, blow by blow and hurdling over bar stools, had us convulsed with laughter. And it wasn’t funny that ASS was banned from taking part in the basketball championship for the next two years, either. But it was a great night at Bennigan’s.

  Unfortunately, the evening was spoiled by yet another email from Fatima’s mother:

  “dear Ms. Vicky,

  are you going to give the students a spelling and vocabulary test tomorrow? Also I notice that Mr. Wayne’s class are up to page 103 in shiloh and they done the evaluating exercise in the big yellow book already. when will you be doing it? I looking forward to the parents conference.

  Fatimas mother”

  Aaaargh!

  On the day of the Parents’ Conference, the kids were allowed home early, and the parents queued outside our classrooms. The mothers were black-robed, wearing hijabs, the men in white robes with red-and-white chequered head-gear. I couldn’t help feeling a little intimidated. I ran my eye down the line, looking for Fatima’s mother, but didn’t see her. I guessed she was bullying the Music teacher, who was the only teacher brave enough not to award Fatima an ‘A’. Fatima, one of the brightest in my class, certainly deserved her ‘A’ grade from me, but perhaps she was not so gifted in other subjects.

  Then I heard Hawa’s familiar voice floating out of her classroom.

  15. Parents’ Conference

  ‘The Gin Twins’ Chuck-It-All-In Curry’

  I paused in the corridor, pretending to fiddle with some papers, and listened. Hawa was annoyed, that was evident, and it wasn’t difficult to work out who she was talking to.

  “Wha’ you want? You wan’ your daughter be robot? Fatima good girl, but she must no’ work all day and all night!”

  “Fatima likes to work.”

  “But she little girl! She mus’ have time for hersel’ sometime! Why you no go easy on her? Time enough later for her to work, work, work!”

  I slid into my classroom, dreading my turn with Fatima’s mother. I was also worried about how exactly I was going to tell the mother of Abdul and Abdulaziz that her twins shared a brain cell.

  However, the majority of parents were charming and supportive. I often forgot not to shake hands with the fathers, but my loose Western behaviour seemed to be forgiven.

  However, I encountered another problem. A mother would smile, bow her head and ask the question that I found hard to answer.

  “How is my little Mohammed doing?”

  Oh dear, which Mohammed? I peered into the mother’s face, searching in vain for a resemblance to any of my pupils. Her face, however, was too covered to be of any help.

  “Which class is your Mohammed in?” I asked.

  “Your class, Mees.”

  “Yes...but I teach five classes.”

  “Your English class, Mees.”

  “All my classes are English.” I smiled helpfully.

  “My Mohammed has black hair and brown eyes.”

  That would describe them all.

  “What is his middle name?” My eyes desperately scanned the columns of names in my grade-book.

  “This one, Mees.” A soft hand emerges from the loose robe and a manicured fingernail points at a Mohammed on the page.

  Of course that doesn’t really help either. I knew all my Mohammeds when they were in front of me, but I couldn’t remember all their second names. Their surnames weren’t any help either, as some shared the same surname and could only be identified through their middle names. It was all too bewildering.

  This scenario played itself out a few times before I solved the problem. Now the conversation went more along these lines:

  “How is my little Mohammed doing?”

  “Mohammed? Oh, he’s doing fine. Can be a little chatty at times, but when he applies himself, he does really well.” The problem only reared its ugly head again when parents asked to see their Mohammed’s grades.

  Later I heard that Joe had experienced the same Mohammed problem. One parent waited patiently while Joe scrutinised his grade-book. Finally the parent pointed to one Mohammed with a row of straight ‘A’s.

  “I’ll take that one,” he said, which had them both laughing.

  A few parents were shocked that I hadn’t awarded their little darlings an ‘A’ grade.

  “Mees! I think you make a mistake. Why you give Ahmed ‘F’?”

  “I’m sorry, it’s no mistake. Ahmed never does any work in class, in fact he doesn’t even bring any books, or paper or anything to write with.”

  Ahmed’s mother takes off her Gucci shades, leans forward and stares at me. “But Ahmed is very smart boy!”

  “Yes, I’m sure he is, but he refuses to do any work. He never does his homework, and doesn’t even write down the weekly vocabulary. That’s why he always scores zero in our Thursday quizzes.”

  “But, Mees! When he see his mid-term grade, he cry!”

  “I’m sorry, but you must explain to Ahmed that he needs to make an effort in class. I can’t give him a better grade until he produces some work.”

  “But, Mees! His father be angry! And we having new baby in family.” She coyly pats the folds of her robes, in the stomach area. “Perhaps he need extra help?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sure Ahmed is a smart boy. He just doesn’t do any work...”

  Her eyes narrow as she tries another tactic. “All other teachers, they give my son ‘A’.”

  “Really?”

  Later on, between parents, I popped across to Hawa’s classroom.

  “Hawa, did you give Ahmed an ‘A’ for Maths?”

  “Ahmed?” she snorted. “Tha’ boy lazy, very lazy! I give him ‘F’. His mother tell me you give him ‘A’!”

  “Did she really? Well, I didn’t. He got an ‘F’ from me too.”

  “You see Fatima’s mother yet?” Hawa rolled her beautiful oriental eyes. “Tha’ woman!”

  “No, I still have that treat in store.”

  Slowly the line of parents waiting to see me depleted, until only a couple were left. To m
y huge relief, Fatima’s mother was not there.

  Mr. Brewster stuck his head into my classroom, his eyebrows raised in enquiry. “Ah, Miss Vicky, would you mind popping into my office briefly before you leave?”

  Yes, I would mind. “No problem, Mr. Brewster.”

  The last parent departed, and I was disappointed that Huda’s parents hadn’t attended. I wanted to know why she never spoke and perhaps find clues to start her talking. I also wanted to know why their daughter always handed me an empty homework book. I’d asked her many times but, of course, she never answered. I gathered my bags and tapped on Mr. Brewster’s door.

  “Ah, Miss Vicky, come in. Here’s the problem. Fatima’s mother has requested that Fatima should be moved to Mr. Wayne’s class.”

  “Has she? Well, good! I think that’s an excellent idea.” Brilliant! No more being stalked by Fatima’s mother. No more daily emails of interrogation and complaint. Perfect!

  Mr. Brewster shook his head. “No, I told her that Fatima can’t move classes. We can’t pander to parents or they’ll be asking to change classes all the time.”

  I sighed. No reprieve for me then.

  A bell signalled the end of the Parents’ Conference and my mobile shrilled. Three messages had been sent simultaneously. Joe, Colton and Jake, all calling for an Extraordinary BWMDC Meeting. It seemed we all needed to discuss our first Parents’ Conference and share our stories.

  The meeting opened with Joe, Colton and Jake comparing notes about the parents of students they shared, followed by my ranting about Fatima’s mother. However, soon the discussion deteriorated into another of Colton’s Boise River tales.

  “Hey, so me ’n’ my buddy Tucker were floatin’ down the Boise River in a tractor inner-tube, and the current had gotten mighty strong. We get swept along, ’n’ next thing we know, we get caught in these overhanging branches. Before we know it, our case of beer tips into the water. Well, we all jump in to rescue it, ’n’ so does everyone else, folks we don’t even know...”