her back to the office at lunchtime? Her parents will come to pick her up.” I nodded, relieved I wouldn’t have to miss basketball tryouts to play tour guide. I waved goodbye to the Nassers as Amira and I walked into the hallway.
The halls were quiet, and so was Amira. I led her toward the gym, the first place I’d wanted to see when I arrived in Canada. In Syria, we’d had gym classes outside on the cracked pavement of the school courtyard. I hadn’t understood why gym class was held indoors until my first winter. Then it all made sense! “Where are you from?” I asked in Arabic. She looked at me like I’d asked a trick question. “I grew up in Damascus,” I told her, “in Mezzah.” It was a neighbourhood with cafés and stores and an outdoor shopping centre. Lots of doctors and lawyers lived in our building.
“We are from Homs.” Her voice was quiet, a little raspy.
I knew of Homs. I’d seen it on the news. There was almost nothing left of it. My insides churned for her. I wanted to ask how long she’d been away from Syria. Her journey to Canada wouldn’t have been like mine. Staying with family in Yorkshire had been like a reunion while we waited for our immigration papers to Canada. We’d arrived in Toronto and come straight to Winnipeg so Dad could start his job. The university found us temporary housing while we looked for a house to buy; containers with our things waited in storage for us. We’d left before the refugee crisis, not like Amira, who had been forced to flee. There had been no choice for her family. If we’d stayed longer, we might have been like them.
“This is the gym,” I said, pausing at the door. Kids ran past, doing laps for warm-up. Amira hung back, reluctant to get closer. She took in the size of the gym, with its shiny wooden floors and huge Thunder logo painted on the cinder-block walls. I got an anxious twinge thinking about what tomorrow would be like for her: showing up for a full day of school with no idea what awaited. She’d need to stick close to me or she wouldn’t find her way around. For the next few weeks, Amira was going to be attached to me. I hoped it was just first-day jitters that kept her so quiet, otherwise it was going to be a long term.
“Come on, I’ll show you the cafeteria.” We went downstairs to the row of picnic-style tables. I walked through the space quickly, trying to get the tour over with so we could get to class. “This is where you’ll eat lunch, when you stay for lunch. Microwaves are over there.” I pointed to the far wall. “And the canteen. They sell fries, burgers, hot dogs, Pizza Pops, stuff like that.”
“Pizza Pops?”
“Like a pizza sandwich,” I explained.
She furrowed her brow. Without any students, the cafeteria felt cavernous. Our voices echoed.
“Do you pray?” she asked. In Syria, prayers were a normal part of the day; classes were scheduled around prayer times. In Canada, fitting in midday prayers at school was a little trickier.
“There’s a room we use. I can show it to you now, if you want.”
Amira nodded, so we went back upstairs. “It’s here,” I said, pointing to a room with desks and a few computers in it. There was construction paper over the small window on the door to give us privacy and a movable screen to separate the male and female sides of the room.
The truth was, Mariam and I had barely used the room set aside for our prayers this year. Now that I was in high school, I was self-conscious about disappearing at lunchtime. And since basketball tryouts had started, I knew it was even more unlikely that I’d pray at midday like I was supposed to.
“Are there lots of Muslim students?” Amira asked.
“Not that many. In our homeroom there’s me, Mariam, and Mohammed, and now you.”
I pointed out the washrooms she would use as we walked back to Mr. Letner’s room. “Everyone here is really nice. You’ll like it here.”
“How long have you been here? In Canada?” she asked.
“About three years — almost four. We were in the U.K. for a while before we got here.”
“Is your English good?”
It was now. “My dad spoke it at home sometimes in Syria to get us ready, but mostly I just learned by living here.”
“You knew you were leaving.”
“Sort of. We knew we were going somewhere.”
“Some of our family is in Germany, but they’d closed the borders by the time we left. This was the only country that would take us.”
“My family is in England. Aunts, cousins, my sitta. We all left before things got bad.”
She snorted. “You don’t know bad.”
I gave her a sideways look and wondered what she meant. What had she seen in Syria or the camps they’d lived in? For someone who was the same age as me, she seemed so much older. I could only imagine that what she’d lived through had aged her. I felt a flash of gratitude that I wasn’t like her. Making the co-ed team was my biggest worry. “This is our class.” I pointed to Mr. Letner’s nameplate above the door and the room number, 9B. “I’ll quickly introduce you and you can sit down. Don’t worry if you can’t understand anything.”
I hadn’t known what was going on for the first few weeks, either. I’d just followed the other kids, watching what they were doing, too scared to ask any questions. At recess, things felt more normal. I learned the kids’ names on the soccer field, and when we played games in class, I could figure out the rules and participate. But as soon as the teacher started talking, or we had to get a book to read, I drifted off and missed my school in Syria where everything made sense and where asking a simple question like “Can I go to the washroom?” wasn’t a stressful situation. I’d been a good student in Syria, but in Canada the language barrier had made it hard to prove. Dad had warned us it would be like trying to ride a bicycle with your feet tied together: you knew how, but couldn’t make it happen. And it was very frustrating.
“Okay, ready?” I asked her, but I’d already opened the door to the class. Mr. Letner turned to me.
“Is this our new student?”
I nodded. “Her name is Amira. She doesn’t speak English,” I blurted out for her.
“Thanks, Sadia,” Mr. Letner said. “Amira, you can sit there.” He spoke slowly and pointed to a chair he’d already moved to my table. There wasn’t really space for her, so Carmina and Mariam squished together. I led the way and tried to give her an encouraging smile, even though inside, I groaned. I’d have to spend the morning translating instead of doing my own work, which would mean more homework tonight.
Amira sat down at the desk and stared at her hands. I dug through my backpack for a pen and took a piece of loose-leaf out of my binder and put it in front of her. I had no idea what she would write on it.
“Where’s she from?” Mariam scribbled on my page.
“Syria,” I wrote back.
She leaned forward and tried to catch Amira’s eye. “Hi!” she whispered. Either Amira didn’t hear, or she ignored her, but either way, Mariam shrugged and sat back in her chair, as if she’d done all she could.
When the bell rang for second period, I jumped up and packed my binder into my backpack. “What about the new girl?”
