He was excited for school. This cool building with the desks and the chairs, with its lights and multiple levels awed him. He wondered how things would be different here. It couldn’t be worse than the one he attended for a year in Pakistan. That school was a house converted into different classrooms. The hallway served as the science classroom. Most of the time at that school, they had to have class in the backyard of the house anyway.
And it definitely wouldn’t be as bad as Afghanistan. The building with no glass on its windows, no desks in the classrooms, and no books either. The worst part of the schools in Afghanistan was the bullet holes that added a scary edge to the school.
This was paradise compared to either of the schools he had previously attended. He only hoped that what waited inside would only be promise of a better life, for even his smile sometimes looked like a frown because of all the things he had lived through.
Salam Salehi was fourteen, and about to taste the eighth grade public school of America. His brown eyes glimmered with anticipation as he squirmed in his seat in the counseling office. His Aagha and Buboo were in one of the rooms with the eighth grade counselor. He was asked to stay out here. He was getting restless. The secretary had already given him a piece of paper to fill out, and then another blank sheet to do with as he pleased. He wrote a poem in Dari, his native tongue. After he was done, he tried to translate the poem into English, but he got frustrated when he didn’t have enough English know-how to translate.
He was always the quiet kid who never complained, but today his clothes looked strange to him. His T hung on him too loose, and his jeans felt too tight. The office felt cramped. His whole world felt as if it was closing in on him. What was taking them so long? How long would he have to wait here watching the secretary work?
The door of the little room in the office opened. The head counselor walked out followed by his dad and mom, both of whom were smiling. The counselor saw Salam, and smiled, saying, “Hope we didn’t take too long in there,” she nodded her head toward her office.
Salam just nodded no.
“Would you like me to give you a tour of the school?”
The gleam in his eyes that wasn’t lost on the counselor came back. He nodded again yes. He could have responded to these simple questions, but he thought that as soon as he did, there would be more questions. Salam wanted to play it safe and speak as little as possible.
The counselor said, “Let’s go see the areas of the school where your classes will be. I’ll also give you a locker.
He had never had a locker in all his life. He got up from the chair and folded the piece of paper in which he had written his poem. He placed the paper into his pocket.
II
First day of school could not have arrived soon enough. He was nervous. If you call sweating like you’re in the middle of a desert nervous. He thought about summers in the Northern region of Afghanistan, where Aagha, his dad, had made their family fortune selling big blocks of ice to businesses. Now, that he was thinking about it, a better business would be air conditioning units. But in a war zone, people barely had enough money to live off, let alone buy AC units.
He wore his best clothes he could find, another T-shirt and a pair of jeans. His parents were educated in this arena by their neighbor. They watched the neighbor’s kid, who seemed to be about his age, and they dressed him like he was a clone. They even wanted him to get his hair cut like the neighbor’s kid, but that’s when Salam put his foot down. In this barrage of change, Salam wanted to hold on to some of the old things that made him who he was. Change is a good thing, sometimes a great thing, but change shouldn’t be so drastic it makes you forget who you were before. We become who we are by doing what each of us deems right for us. Salam’s hair was one of those things. The jet-black color and curl of it combined with his brown eyes gave him the distinct look of a person from that region of the world. That region, according to most Americans would be Middle Eastern, but he was Asian. Afghanistan, the country of his birth, is a Central Asian country. The only reason it gets lumped into the Middle East is because they practice the religion of Islam.
