I have a book from a dead classmate
I have a book from a dead classmate. I keep it for him.
The first time I ever said this aloud was during a creative nonfiction workshop in Beirut. The final exercise of the full-day workshop was to share a personal story with a partner. Then, we would write our partner’s story as best we could. As I sat on a couch in a living room in Achrafieh, I talked for a solid 15 minutes. Afterward, we all promised that we would finish the stories we heard and share them with the class. My partner never finished Sufyan’s story or shared it.
One of my biggest regrets is not recording myself telling this story for the first time to another human being. After 15 years, I am still the only keeper of this memory. I have a book that meant something to a young boy I barely knew. It sits in my library between Arabian Sands and Things Fall Apart.
My school in Abu Dhabi had around 5,000 students from KG1 to Grade 12, which was huge by my standards. Still, a surprising number of faces grew familiar, and certain students stood out from the crowd.
Sufyan was not in my class. He was a year older, chubby with a wide, white face, and taller than me, but shorter than most of the other boys. I knew him by his first name and by his reputation. He was excellent at school with near-perfect SAT scores and was expected to break school records in the IB exams and final grades. But I thought he was weird, and I noticed that he did not have a usual group to hang out with, the way the rest of us did.
That’s the only part I can talk about with confidence. Everything from this point on is hazy. I am not sure what’s real, what’s impression, and what’s my brain filling in the details. It has been 15 years, and I have not made the effort to remember more.
He approached me during recess. I was standing by the stage in the playground with my girlfriends. He struck up a conversation asking how I was liking the IB program, the program we’d both chosen for our last two years. He was calm, and smiley, and weird. My girlfriends drifted away to keep hanging out, and I was left talking with him. I did not want to shut him down and hurt his feelings, so we tried to find some common topics, but there wasn’t much.
He was planning to attend McGill University in Canada to study linguistics. I was going back home to Lebanon to study some engineering major. We tried to find common ground in the books we read, but that was a lost cause. He was not reading Vampire Academy or the Bridgerton Series, which I was into in 2011. He mentioned that he read a lot of Arabic books, and I mentioned that I didn’t, but that I kept trying to get into Arabic literature.
I told him I had not read an Arabic book that was just a story. All Arabic literature seemed to me to be too much about everything else. About being Arab, about the political situation of the Arab world, about the war between east and west. I lived this reality every single day. I wanted to read a story about two people in a fantasy world that had nothing to do with my own.
He understood and recommended a book, Thakirat el Jasad (Memory of the Flesh) by Ahlam Mosteghanemi.
A few days later, we met again during recess and he gave me the book.
Around that time, he also added me on Facebook and we started a light conversation there. From my perspective, he was weird, and I had nothing in common with him. But he did send me a piece he wrote for his Arabic class. I’ve lost that piece in the ether of the internet, but I do remember some parts of it.
It was a short piece around 1,500 Arabic words. The main character is a teenage boy with strict parents. Every day, he goes to the street market with his father and sees a proud beggar woman sitting silently on the side of the street. He admires the woman and her dark skin. He wants to talk to her, learn more about her. One day, the boy gathers his courage. While his father is distracted, he slips away and goes to the woman. He throws a coin at her feet, leans down and pecks her lips quickly, then runs. His father catches him and gives him a thrashing, but the boy still thinks his adventure was worth it.
It was a well-written piece, at least to my 15-year-old self. But at the time, I thought it was weird. Why would he share it with me? But now, I get it. He was not weird. He was normal. To write a piece, to pour parts of yourself into it, is normal. To share it and hope someone would read it and understand it is normal. After all, here I am writing and wishing someone would read and understand what I wrote.
What else did my teenage self not understand about this boy?
I kept Thakirat el Jasad with me, but I never got around to reading it.
A few weeks passed with the occasional brief conversation between us whenever we passed each other. Sometimes, I would spend days without seeing him.
Then, one morning, I got to school and everything was buzzing. Rumors were going around that Sufyan had died. I did not believe it. But during morning assembly, while we were lined up, no national anthem played. Instead, the high school principal stood on stage in the playground, the same stage where I first talked to him, and told us that a dear student had passed away, and that we would stand for a minute of silence for his soul.
Over the next few days, his classmates went in groups to visit his family and offer their condolences. I considered going, but could not find a reason to. No one knew that I even talked to him. If I went, what would I even say? His parents didn’t know me. So, I did not go, and listened to the rumors.
They said that Sufyan had committed suicide, but his parents were hushing it up. We all understood. If anyone admitted it was suicide, Sufyan would not be buried with religious rites. We all knew someone who killed themselves, but the story was changed or denied. It’s enough that they died. Why make the family suffer the humiliation and added grief of having a loved one who had betrayed God the Almighty?
There were also rumors that his parents were fanatically religious. They also said that they were harsh, and not particularly loving, toward their son. So I wondered if they hated him. I still wonder. Do they believe his death is a sin against God? Do they think him unworthy of peace and heaven? I wonder if anyone remembers him and prays for his soul?
Life moved on, and the book stayed with the few books I had at home. I actively avoided it all through high school.
After graduating high school, I moved permanently from Abu Dhabi to Jbeil in Lebanon to attend university. I had to leave so many childhood toys and trinkets behind. There was only so much I could take with me. But I did pack the book and unpacked it in a small university dorm. It lived there for four years with my three roommates and me. Whenever I came across it, I would look at the book, fiddle with it, and put it back. I’m pretty sure I did not read it, and never tried to.
When I moved back home after graduation to live with my parents and sister, I took the book with me and placed it in a small glass cabinet that was my first personal library. It stayed there for another six years. My eyes would drift toward it every time I passed by. I tried reading it multiple times, but I don’t remember how far I got or if I ever finished it.
Three years ago, I got married and moved into a beautiful apartment to live with my husband. I brought the book with me and placed it in my new library. It now sits in the game room, in a glass cupboard with my grown-up collection of books. For the first time, it seems comfortable within the world around it.
A year into my marriage, I finally told my husband the story. We had been together six years. But he is my life partner now. My partner should know what I hold, especially if it’s something I’ve held for 15 years and will keep holding for the rest of my life.
He is okay with keeping it. Like me, he thinks it would be rude to throw it away. That boy gave it to me. It must have meant something, even if I don’t know what.
And I worry. I worry. I worry. What if his parents hate him, and never mention him in their prayers? What if he has no siblings or cousins to remember him? What if all his classmates continue living their lives and he never crosses their mind?
What if I am the only one who remembers him? And this. this. this is all I know about him?
But I do remember him. I remember his face, vaguely. I remember that he wanted to study linguistics — a major I knew nothing about. I still don’t know anyone who actually studied it. I remember that he loved reading and writing, especially in Arabic. I remember that he was a boy who tried to talk to a girl on a school playground under the stifling Emirati sun. I remember that when the girl complained about wanting to like Arabic literature, he thought to give her a book that might change her opinion. I remember that he sent her a story he wrote on Facebook and hoped she would read it.
I still have not read the book he gave me, but now I think I could. Now, I think I should.