Belated Intro

Firstly, thank you all for your support. Your amazing words of encouragement drive mine. Without them I think my rants would have just remained rants.

When I was in third grade I was being bullied by two other students. We started having “paper message fights” where you write something demeaning of the other person on a piece of paper and throw it at them. This went back and forth until –for some reason- I decided to get creative and wrote this message:

If I am poo, you are an old latrine in a third world country-worse than this one-

If I am a donkey, you are an ugly animal zoo that goes on tours daily, -can I get discounted tickets?-

And finally you called me retarded. How does it feel to be shot down and owned verbally by the retarded kid?-excuse the drool on the paper-

I never got a reply back from them. In fact, they took my note and handed it straight to the teacher, which is a clear breach of the Convention Pertaining to the Use of Paper Messages in Urban Conflict, which they both must have signed and ratified since they got to third grade. But then again, getting to third grade back then just meant not wetting your pants and being able use clay without ingesting too much of it.

The teacher took one look at the note and –I assume- thought to herself: “They don’t pay me enough to deal with this level of dissent. This is of epic proportions!”, and sent me straight to the principal’s office. I have to say here that, any other principal would have given me ten smacks with the cane on each hand and made me stand in the sun until I saw God. Mrs. K. however, was not any principal. Sudanese by birth, but a graduate of the University Of Boston, Massachusetts. In the eighties, she came back from her studies and was immediately labeled a heretic. Apparently she went on about “going beyond the curriculum as part of the education process” and “girls can be anything they want. Not just wives, teachers, and nurses”. Wow, with a mouth like that, she made Galileo seems like quite the conformist. Mrs. K. read my note carefully, tried very hard to hide the grin on her face, but failed miserably. She then looked up at me and said: “It’s a shame that you waste your gift on words like this.” And “With great power comes great responsibility”. Actually she didn’t say the latter. It’s a line from a Spiderman comic which I thought was very fitting here!

It was the first time anyone said anything positive about my writing. I felt like most teachers looked at my writing the same way sweatshop workers looked at cans of soybeans. They saw that there were more than four different words in an essay, ticked the paper and moved on to the next one. She made me promise her that I will improve my English and ignore my enemies –I wish she was George Bush’s vice president too-

After telling me this, Mrs. K. made me stand in the sun until I saw God. That was the last time I engaged in paper message battle in primary school. High school however, is a place where you often find yourself challenged to a verbal or physical duel every day, whether you wanted to or not. By that time I was a level 3 wordsmith. Quicker and deadlier, yet very shy. For some reason, I irked someone, another thing I had a natural gift for, apparently. This boy wrote what he considered an insulting poem about me using rhyme. In my opinion, I was sure that I had met goldfish that could write better rhymes –but that’s my opinion-. In my rebuttal, I wrote a poem in Arabic of one line which roughly translated to “I would kick your behind but your behind looks rather rotund and possibly pregnant, and I don’t want to cause a miscarriage”. At fifteen and a half, it was like a left hook from Mohammed Ali in the first round. “Don’t bother counting to ten; he ain’t getting up…” (Richard Pryor)

That poem became his theme song for the next three years. I felt like a song writer for Britney Spears, Shakira, Lady Gaga, Miley Cirus, Fergie, Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, MIMS, and Soldier Boy. I had put a few words on a piece of paper as a joke, and came out with a number one single. I’d like to thank God.

He proceeded to beat the life out of me until I saw God. It’s ok. I got beaten up in high school for many interesting reasons which often gave solace. One kid beat me up because during the summer break I hit puberty and became much taller than him! One person was mad that I exchanged meaningless conversation in assembly with his ex-girlfriend two girlfriends ago and never consulted him, sitting in the front of the bus –RIP Rosa Parks, the struggle continues! - And the list went on and on. All good, that was in the past, and a yellow belt in karate or steel-toed Timberland shoes does mean you can formulate a sentence in English. This little fact was also often a balsam for my hurt pride and bruised ribs, abdomen and lips.

Year 11, I got a “promotion” if you can call it that. I got promoted from “the guy no one likes but speaks English good” to “the guy who can write nonsense in English that seems to impress girls”. Within one school semester, I went from being a level 3 wordsmith prodigy to a common street level verbal pimp. A job is a job, right? There was literally a line in front of my desk at recess of athletes, break dancers, footballers and everyone in between. I had never heard of Cyrano De Bergerac but, he only had one person to write for, I had a flipping classroom! I have to say that even though I didn’t like my new “promotion”, but it was a healthy change from “I am punching you because you are taller than I am”. Hey, with working conditions like that, who could complain? I could be sewing soccer balls in Karachi for less than a dollar a day.

Yet again however, my apparent gift, which I had no choice in –I would have preferred athlete, break dancer or footballer- came back to bite me. We had to write a fictional essay for year 11 English class. I wrote an essay about an assassin, who is hired to kill a celebrity starlet using a laser-guided sniper rifle from the roof of an opposing building during the Grammy’s –ha ha!, I know, people who assassinate Grammy artists should be given medals! - He was foiled by someone spotting the reflection of his rifle lens and arresting him after a dramatic chase scene.

For some reason, the English teacher could not believe that a 16 year old hormonal adolescent can have such a vivid imagination –there was not satellite TV back then- She wanted to know where I had copied the story from. I honestly didn’t know whether that was silent compliment or that there were words in the essay she couldn’t understand –vernacular, vantage point, .38 millimeter high caliber, hollow point slug (before the days of school shootings. This kind of discourse was normal…-. Anyways, I was suspended for a day and had to hand in 2 essays instead of one for the rest of the semester. I wasn’t mad; I was kind of amused to be honest. I had heard of the “accidental hero”, but this was getting silly. Ten years later, I really don’t know if any of the above experiences were “educational” but can’t say that there were no benefits in them somewhere amongst the punches, kicks to the shin and sun strokes.

It is a very strange introduction that I have chosen for this blog. I guess I needed you to know who I am, in an indirect way. I am a product of people who found me occasionally gifted, but most of the time, people who found their armor of ignorance highly vulnerable to my logic, and a witty poem here and there about their pregnant behinds and beat the crap out of me. My best friend Saif, a six foot, 210 pound gentle giant would have been a great help had I met him when I had so many enemies –one Saif equals one really fast getaway car or 6 guys getting a pounding-. Things happen for a reason however, and because of that I learnt that blows to solar plexus should be avoided.

I will keep writing.

Jah Bless always.

Mrs. K., wherever you are, thank you. I think standing in the sun for that long at nine years of age must have triggered some dormant gene which lead to all this. Two lifetimes will not be enough to say thank you. I sort of see “it” now.