Inner Voice - Short Story - Chapter 6

    The teacher immersed himself in the lesson while the students repeated the answers after him, and I barely noticed that today we were studying a chapter from the story of Gulliver's Travels. My vision trembled slightly, wrapped in a faint haze. Those were the side effects of stammering. Whenever I went through a confrontation like the one I had just endured, I would feel a heaviness in my head, as if the world around me had begun moving to a different rhythm. I could not tell whether it was faster or slower, only that it was different, out of sync with mine, as though I did not exist within it, or was incapable of living in it at all. I imagined that no one could see me, and that if I left the classroom now, nobody would notice. I even thought of doing it for real, just to make sure that I truly existed, or at least to move something around me, the pen for example, to see whether it would move or not.

    Habiba sat near us on the girls’ side of the classroom; the hall was divided into two halves. The teacher’s voice reached me muffled, as though it drifted from beneath a heavy cloud:

- He found himself in a room full of giants

The teacher heard one of the students mispronounce the last word and mocked him:

- Giantsss, don’t sound like a peasant

I noticed Habiba gathering her things and leaving her seat. She moved slowly, toward us!! Then she sat directly behind me. Her friend Mai sat behind Ali, who looked at me and smiled, and I forced myself to return a faint smile before pretending to focus on the teacher again, while inwardly cursing the day I had tried to get close to her. 

    That had been a year ago, back when I had just come from Upper Egypt and still wasn’t used to boys and girls attending lessons together. Of course, I chose to attend with the top students. I thought I was someone worthy. I thought I was a normal human being. Habiba caught my attention with both her beauty and her manners. Her hijab was proper, and her clothes were modest.

- She suits you, Alaa.. calm and respectable. Congratulations.

That was what Ali had told me after I confessed my feelings to him. He said he knew her friend Mai and would ask for her help. I smiled shyly, overwhelmed with happiness, before reality struck me. Ali later sent me screenshots from Mai’s phone of the conversation between her and Habiba.

- He looks so tiny, like he’s younger than us

I read those words with tangled emotions: shame, joy, shock, confusion. But what hurt most was reading:

- I know Ali’s the real man here. I literally call him Uncle Ali because he’s such a man

That was her opinion of my friend.

    People mocking my appearance was nothing new. It had happened again and again. Once, back in Upper Egypt, some boys from school followed me after classes ended, chanting:

- Little boy, little boy

My family found out about that incident. But the thing with Habiba, there was no way I could ever tell them about trying to pursue a girl. What hurt was that I had more or less made peace with the first incident. But I had never imagined that my appearance diminished my worth as a man, or made me undesirable to girls. What hurt even more was realizing that all girls saw me that way. Before Habiba, I used to think they stared at me because they liked me. What happened with her made me realize they were laughing at me instead. And I tried to soothe my wound by sending Habiba anonymous messages on the Sarahah app *(Frankness), which allowed people to send messages without revealing their identity. I used to feel so happy whenever she posted my messages on her  Facebook page. But she only posted the striking ones, so I would deliberately exaggerate my admiration just to provoke her into posting them, until it filled her with arrogance and unbearable self-confidence.

    Habiba brushed against Ali while moving to her seat, so she apologized to him with genuine concern, as though she had collided with a deep fracture inside me, a wound that had never healed. Why did I come to this session? Hadn’t I expected this suffering? I always expect the best. I always expect the worst thing not to happen. And it never does. Instead, something even worse happens.

- Stand up

The teacher said it to me!! My eyes widened, but I stood up quickly. Ali and Habiba laughed. Too small one amidst such a large crowd.

- What did the king say when he saw Gulliver for the first time?

He asked me, and I knew the answer. So many eyes stared at me. A terrifying silence waited for me to speak. I remained staring at him blankly. I could not force myself to speak, not even if it meant enduring the spasms twisting my face and the bewilderment of everyone around me. Then I remembered something: I could answer in Arabic. If the words I said were not the words I was supposed to say, maybe I could say them. But even that, I could not do. Whatever was happening inside me had weighed down my chest beyond endurance and frozen my tongue completely. I kept staring at him in absolute silence. 

    Finally, he snapped angrily:

- You with us in class, or did you just come to check on my health?

He left me standing and pointed at Ali:

- You, while sitting

My face flushed dark red as Ali answered simply and confidently:

- He said: "I can't understand how such a small man can stay alive in our country"

I looked at Ali with jealousy. I always felt that someone else was better than me, always one step ahead. Anything I wanted, there would always be someone closer to it than I was, someone already in control of it through ways I neither understood nor could imitate. 

    The teacher looked back at me and said:

- We literally just said it

He kept staring at me thoughtfully for a few moments before finally allowing me to sit down. I sat, coldness surrounding my face that burned with humiliation, staring at the teacher while pretending not to notice Habiba’s laughter rising behind me.

- Again then… What did the king say when he saw Gulliver for the first time?

The students repeated after him:

- He said: "I can't understand how such a small man can stay alive in our country"

Habiba repeated the last sentence in a mocking tone, loudly enough to make sure I heard it:

- How such a small man can even exist?

And I pretended I hadn’t heard her.