The F Team

by Rawah Arja

  ‘“Do something?” Like how you “did something” about your mate Hunter?’

  His face changed. ‘No one saw Hunter do anything to the boys. For all we know –’

  ‘Yeah, you’re not going to convince me, so save your breath. And don’t tell me to do something about Huss when you stay quiet for your so-called mates.’ I grabbed my bag and walked off. ‘Take care of your own house, Shire Boy. Don’t tell me how to run mine.’

  Chapter 18

  I spent Sunday at Sans Souci Beach, where we were showing Aunty Salma around. Feda walked with her along the long, winding path just below the hills that my brothers and I slid down on pieces of cardboard. She wasn’t not speaking to me since our argument last week, but she was curt, and I noticed her eyes slid across mine most of the time.

  On the drive back, Aunty Salma and Dad sang Um Kalthoom songs together. As soon as Dad parked the van, everyone rushed out to make it to the shower first. Dad called me into the living room.

  ‘You fix things with your sister,’ he said, without preamble. ‘She is very busy with her job, and I don’t want her to be stress at home. You fix it.’

  ‘Baba, I –’

  ‘No excuses. Since you were baby, Feda look after you. She is like your second mum. You don’t speak to her like that.’ He headed for the TV to get his daily news fix. The first story was mobile footage of some boys from our school punching each other, surrounded by other boys cheering them on.

  ‘Were you involved in this?’ Dad asked with his eyebrows raised. ‘Tell me truth and I won’t get upset. I call Mr Archie if you lie.’

  ‘That was last year, Baba,’ I said, walking closer to the TV. Their faces were blurred by the report, but I recognised a couple of the guys who were throwing punches. At least two of them had been expelled by Mr Archie weeks ago. ‘How did they even get this footage?’

  Tariq: Did you boys see that video about

  Eddie and Bill’s fight on the news?

  Ibby: Yeah man. Which snitch gave them that video?

  PJ: I was at church and my cousin Jerry told

  me about it. Archie and Ahmed are going to

  be pissed, man.

  Tariq: Huss, did you see it?

  Huss: Can’t talk now.

  ‘Forty thousand subscribers now,’ Lee said, proudly showing PJ his phone. ‘AsianInvasion001 is my YouTube channel. Wanna watch one of my videos?’

  ‘Nintendo, stop waving your phone in my face,’ PJ said. ‘Or I’ll launch it over the fence.’

  Ibby tried to jump on PJ’s back. ‘Bro, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nuffin, bro. Just get out of my space, man.’ PJ trudged away, breathing heavily into the cold air.

  We were back at Tuesday training with Mr Archie and Mr Ahmed, who weren’t in the mood to deal with any of our excuses, and were in foul moods because of the old leaked video.

  ‘Your game on Friday was a disaster,’ Mr Archie called out as we ran laps around the field. ‘You will have to work twice as hard to prove to myself and Mr Ahmed that you are a team.’

  Aaron slowed down when he reached Huss. ‘You going to explain why you tried to throw the game?’

  ‘Piss off, man,’ Huss said. ‘I don’t owe you shit.’

  ‘You hogged the ball. You didn’t pass. You didn’t even listen to Tariq when he called for the ball,’ Aaron continued.

  Huss turned to me. ‘He thinks I tried to throw the game?’

  Aaron now stopped and took a few breaths. ‘Yeah, he does.’ The rest of the boys were on the other side of the field with Mr Archie and Mr Ahmed.

  ‘What about you?’ Huss said to Aaron. ‘You saw that ranga smash Lee’s head in the ground but you didn’t do anything. Maybe you threw it for your Shire mates?’

  Aaron scowled. ‘I didn’t do shit for Hunter. We’re not mates and everyone saw how hard I was playing.’

  I stood near Huss. ‘Didn’t do anything to stop him creaming your team though, captain.’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  We heard Mr Archie call our names.

  Huss laughed out loud. ‘Complicated? The whole park heard that ranga give it to Riley, and you’re telling me your friendship with him is complicated?’

  I watched Aaron’s face turn a shade darker in anger.

  ‘You of all people should know Hunter is a snake, because let’s face it, you were one too until very recently,’ I said.

  ‘Lads!’ we heard Mr Archie shout. ‘Move! Right now!’

  We sat beside the goalposts to listen to feedback from Friday’s game.

  Mr Archie looked me dead in the eye. ‘I’m not sure of some of your intentions, I’ll say this now. If any of you don’t want to be here, pack your things and leave. I don’t have time to deal with boys who pretend to care for their school and this team.’

  Mr Ahmed tucked the footy under his arm and stared at Huss and me. ‘Tariq’s not your captain. Aaron is. So we expect you to turn to him for guidance on the field.’

  Huss pulled out some grass from the ground and laughed to himself.

  ‘You think it’s funny, lad?’ Mr Archie turned on him. ‘You were away two days last week with no explanation. You showed up to the game and barely played. You really want to laugh right now?’

  Huss shrugged and focused on mangling the field grass. I could tell he was shutting down by the way he had drawn his body in. Finally, Mr Ahmed told him to pack his things and leave.

  ‘We’re not going to accept disrespect,’ he said. Mr Archie looked grim.

  Huss kicked a few pads and stormed off. Ibby and PJ looked at me, but I was just as confused as them. He hadn’t lost control like that in a while. Something had to be up.

  ‘Tonight,’ I whispered to the boys. We’d get to the bottom of things at movie night.

  We trained as normal, trying to find our rhythm as a team and waiting for Aaron to figure out how to drive the game forward. My jaw clenched as I watched Mr Archie give him advice and work with him one-on-one.

  Matt looked around to see if anyone was watching before sidling over to me. ‘Hunter isn’t going to stop, dude. Riley said a car followed him home last night before speeding off.’

  ‘If he’s been bullied for such a long time, why hasn’t he told the cops?’ I asked, still watching Aaron and Mr Archie.

  ‘That’ll make things worse.’ Lee now came to stand with us. ‘He doesn’t want to make it bigger.’

  ‘So why you telling me? What can I do?’

  Matt tried once more. ‘Dude, we told you because back at camp, it was the first time Hunter had been confronted about anything and we think you could help Riley out. I mean, we can help him out. We’re teammates now, right?’

  Ya illahi, this team came with a mountain of baggage.

  ‘He came, got money, then left.’ I heard Huss’s voice in the living room when I got home. ‘I don’t know why I thought he wanted to stay. How dumb am I?’

  ‘You’re not dumb,’ Feda replied. ‘Your dad has been doing this to you for a long time and because you’re a good person, you always give him the benefit of the doubt.’

  Since we were little kids, Huss had always been around my place, like another brother. I had seen things about his dad that Huss didn’t like to talk about, like the time his dad beat him almost unconscious, or made him ask people for money, and then disappeared.

  I had come home late in the afternoon because I was at Amira’s parent-teacher interviews. Mum had taken Aunty Salma to Cabramatta to buy fabrics while Dad finished work in the evening. If Feda was too busy, I usually did Amira’s parent-teacher chats instead of Mum, especially because Amira always liberally ‘interpreted’ the truth to Mum when she didn’t understand what the teachers were saying.

  I stood by the living room door now and listened to a little more of their conversation. Huss had told me stuff about his dad, but I hadn’t known that he had made contact so recently.

  ‘I was away from school because Dad said he wanted to hang out and he wanted to
change and start fresh. But he lied again.’

  ‘You know it’s nothing to do with you,’ Feda said. ‘Your dad leaving and being absent from your life is on him. Not you.’

  ‘Does it make me a bad person that I still care about him?’ he said.

  ‘Of course not! You can feel however you want to feel. No one can take that away from you.’

  ‘Don’t tell Tariq,’ I heard him say. ‘I don’t want him to know.’

  I took a few deep breaths and tried to process what I’d just heard. I felt bad for Huss, but I was also cut that he wouldn’t trust me enough to tell me about his dad.

  ‘Okay, well, that’s your choice,’ Feda said. ‘But alienating yourself from your friends when you need them most might not be the best idea, Huss.’

  Chapter 19

  All the boys were hanging around the basketball courts on Wednesday morning, giving us shit about our loss against the A Team. Some seniors were taking bets on how long we’d last in the comp, and by the looks of it, after the first round of games, we were on the bottom of the ladder.

  ‘Wooden spoon! Wooden spoon!’ they chanted.

  Ibby was upset that they had already given up on us. ‘Put twenty dollars on us winning the comp,’ he said, waving his money. ‘Wallah watch and see. We’re gonna smash everyone.’

  PJ sat on the silver seats and rested his head on his bag. He had kept to himself since training yesterday, and even though he kept saying everything was alright, his bloodshot eyes told a different story. I was about to head over and check on him, when I was halted in my tracks.

  ‘Tariq Nader to the principal’s office now’, the PA system blared. I heard the boys hollering that I was in big shit all the way up the ramp and into the building. I racked my brains the whole way about what I’d done wrong this time.

  I sat in Mr Archie’s office, which seemed to be drowning in boxes more than ever. He closed the door calmly – a good sign – and he also smiled at me as he moved around his desk to sit down. I felt the tension in my shoulders ease a little. He got to the point.

  ‘I’ve thought about kicking you and Huss off the team, but I believe in giving people second chances.’ He leaned on his desk. ‘Do you know how disappointed I was when I heard Huss say that all your efforts had been insincere?’

  ‘Sir, that was at the beginning. You came in like a tornado and dumped all these new rules on us without any warning. I didn’t know anything about you or why you were here. You never gave us a choice about the comp, you just told us it was happening.’

  He stared at me. ‘So you thought everything I said about your school closing was a joke? I get it, you don’t know me, but don’t you know your school? Mr Ahmed? Miss Kyriacou? They were also warning you lads.’ He sighed. ‘As for a choice…well. What do you think is the biggest difference between you lads and the boys from Cronulla?’

  I shrugged helplessly. ‘You want me to pick just one?’

  ‘Choices, Tariq. If you win the lottery of where and when you’re born, you have the luxury of countless choices in front of you. Now, I’m not saying any of those boys have had an easy life or that they don’t each have their own crosses to bear. I’m definitely not suggesting that they don’t make hundreds of mistakes. But the main difference between you and them is that they have so many options and choices in front of them, and they have the scope to learn from their mistakes. But for you lads – for anyone born poor, or black, or even female – you are limited to only a few options. And if you make a mistake? It will define you and cut off all your already limited options.’ He looked a bit sad. ‘If it were up to me, you’d all have every possibility, every choice laid out in front of you to do with as you want. It’s not up to me, though, or your parents, or even you. But you did have one choice, whether you realised it or not. You still have one now. You can keep on going as you have been, change nothing, and the school will close, you’ll be redistributed to new schools, and maybe a couple of you lads will rise above the limitations that others have put on you, while the rest of you confirm every prejudice outsiders have about who you are and what you’re capable of.’

  I felt like vomiting at the thought. ‘Or?’

  ‘Or you change what you’re doing and see if that changes the outcome.’

  I searched his face, trying to find the right words. ‘I do care about the school. Yeah, I might have faked caring about the comp and the team, but everything I said back at camp was true. I don’t want this place to close.’

  ‘Then the comp is your best chance.’ He shuffled through a few papers on his desk. ‘Term 3, Week 4 is the official review for our school. We have just under a term to make some major changes.’ He then looked me dead in the eye, the most serious I had ever seen him. ‘Tariq, if you’re going to jeopardise any opportunity the lads have in the footy comp, I need to know now. Man to man.’

  ‘I’m not, sir. Wallah. I wanna play, even in a team as bad as ours.’

  ‘The team isn’t that bad. You have potential. But to really make the team connect, you’ll have to take me up on the offer I made earlier. You and Aaron are the core of the team. You need to find a way to push your differences aside and make things work, even if it means you have to make decisions that could affect your friendships. Being a leader is about doing what’s best for everyone involved.’

  ‘I’m not the leader, though, am I?’ I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice, but I know he caught it.

  ‘I stripped you of being captain, but that doesn’t mean you can’t earn it back, lad.’

  My heart quickened. ‘You serious, sir?’

  ‘As I said, everyone deserves second chances.’ He pointed a finger at me. ‘But blow this, and we’re going to have a problem, Tariq. Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. I have no intention of being insane.’

  I laughed for what felt like the first time in weeks. ‘You’d fit right in at Punchbowl if you were, sir.’

  After the intense chat with Mr Archie, it was almost a relief to remember it was also poetry workshop day – or, as I had started to call it in my mind, Jamila Day.

  I made my way over to Miss K’s classroom, but the door was locked and the lights were off.

  ‘School assembly in the main hall,’ a note read on the door.

  In the hall, the teachers were going around trying to get the boys to settle down. I saw Huss wave from beside an empty seat.

  ‘I snuck you a V,’ he said, opening his bag. ‘We’ll smash a couple after assembly.’

  I had been stewing about his overheard conversation with Feda and the fact that he didn’t trust me, so my words came out sharper than usual. ‘What don’t you get about them being banned, bro? Archie’s said it like a million times.’

  ‘Relax, man,’ he said, his jaw taking on its usual aggressive tightness. ‘It’s not alcohol.’ He then sneaked a few cans to the boys sitting in the rows behind us as if daring me to dob him in.

  Ibby tapped me on the shoulder and tilted his head towards PJ, who sat hunched over staring blankly at the ground. ‘He won’t say anything,’ Ibby whispered. ‘Maybe he’ll talk to you.’

  I nodded. ‘Give him some space for now.’

  A man dressed in a blue abaya and a green cap just like Ibby’s came out and sat on one of the empty chairs onstage, followed by a man in a grey suit and another in a polo shirt.

  A man we all recognised. A man we all cheered for until we were told to sit down and chill out by Mr Archie.

  ‘I’d like to welcome Sheikh Wessam, our local MP Tony Burke, and Hazem El Masri to our school, and trust that you lads can keep calm,’ he said. ‘I know you’re all excited, but there is a purpose to why we have these great guests at our school. They’d like to share a few words as part of our many community programs.’ He welcomed Sheikh Wessam to the mic.

  ‘Salaam, boys. How are we?’ he said, smiling. ‘I want to start off by saying thank you to Mr Archie and Mr Ahmed for invit
ing me to speak to you boys. We, the community, have heard about your school situation and I’d just like to say that we’re here for you and will do our part to help.’ Sheikh Wessam settled into the classic pose of Arab men – his body leaned forward and his index finger was on standby to point every now and then. ‘I want to share a story about a young man and the consequences his decisions had on his life,’ he began.

  ‘This boy wanted the fancy things in life. The boy wanted money, cars and an extravagant house but never wanted to work for them. He disrespected and used women and turned a blind eye when his male friends did shady things like sell drugs on the street or stealing.’ The Sheikh’s voice got louder and louder and more aggressive.

  Ibby clutched my arm. ‘Why is he angry?’ he whispered, completely freaked out. All the boys in the hall were tense, looking around to see what the hell was going on. The Sheikh’s face was red and the veins in his neck stood out.

  Suddenly he stopped and began to smile. ‘Angry Arab? Raise your hand if that term sounds familiar to you.’

  My mind scattered to all the times I remembered the news referring to us in that way. All the boys raised their hands.

  ‘Wallah, you gave me a heart attack, Sheikh,’ one boy called out.

  He laughed. ‘Who can tell me what the story was about?’

  We all could tell him the first part of the story, but as soon as he started to shout, we lost track of the point.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, we have this term Angry Arab stitched onto us because – and I hate to break it to you – we are partly to blame as well. We have to hold ourselves to account for part of the bad media coverage of this school. Some of it has been exaggerated – of course it has – but some of it is true. The news reporters didn’t make up the footage of the fights, right? You owe it to yourselves to be part of changing the story.’

  Next, Tony Burke told us something similar about having his support, before presenting our school captain, Mohamed, with a medal for his efforts volunteering at the local nursing home.

  The loudest roar came when Hazem held the mic.

  ‘I have something special to announce,’ he said. ‘Stand up if you’re in the new buddy footy comp.’