Something In Between

I don't want my blog to die, but all I want to do is whine. I mean, I expect an explosion in the future - the very near future in fact - so you can all hear me whine then. But until then, to pass the time, I thought I'd post that speech I did last year, for the Youth of the Year thingamabob. Some stuff is censored, for Security Purposes *dun dun dunnnn*.

(Also note, the speech was cut down and edited a lot, partially to fit the timing, and partially to avoid 'religious dogma' *echhem* The guy behind it that it would be safer to tie the topic back to multiculturalism... so I did.) 

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is [Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore Laila N Mysis], and I’m a student from [Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry some high school]. To be honest, I was a little freaked out when I found out I had to make a speech, and I had no idea what to say. After much pondering – and more freaking out – I realise I do have one interesting thing that has always given me pride to speak about, and that’s this thing on my head – this headscarf.

I started wearing it in grade four. Some adults get a bit starry eyed when they hear this, but the truth is, I made the move out of jealousy. My sister, in grade six at the time, was told by parents to put it on, and when she did, I was to endure much praise showered on her by my own teacher. In a time when it was cool to be the teacher’s pet, I thought that it was high time my sister get kicked out of the spotlight, so a few days after, I announced to my family that I too was going to wear the hijab, and that was that.

This may sound a little cute, but you can see that it has very little meaning. I had no idea why I was wearing it, I just knew it was something that we did, and it never really bothered me. I was asked a few times by others, and I said that we’re just supposed to hide our hair from boys, but you know, that’s not really an answer.

In year 7, my mother insisted I go to Islamic studies classes. I wasn’t really that interested, but I went along anyway, and I’m glad I did. My teacher gave me the best explanation, and that is what I’m about to share with you.

There was a time in Saudi Arabia where society was solely based on tribal law and male egotism. Women were objects, property much like camels, and survival was based on how much men you could attract, and how fertile you were. If you checked both those boxes, the tribal leader could tell all the tough blokes to sleep with you, because theoretically, that would mean you’d provide more tough guys for the tribe. The sons, therefore, wouldn’t be yours to raise, but the tribe’s. If you had a daughter, more often than not, she would be buried alive. Awful, right?

Then Islam was introduced to the world, and skipping some details, the verse for women to cover up was revealed. People assume many things about this, that we put the onus on women, that we try to hide them, but this is not the case. In fact, hiding them is a pretty ridiculous notion, if you imagine a fully covered female strolling down an Aussie beach on a hot summer’s day. Modesty is only a part of it.

The fact is, the hijab meant more than that. It was liberation. Putting it on meant they were no longer burdened by the awful conventions of the time. It meant they had rights. Rights to be protected and respected, educated and married, financially, physically and emotionally provided for. They had the right to own property, and the right to raise our own kids. Baby girls would no longer be buried alive. In the words of Dr Muhammad Ansari: Islam has raised the status of women from below the Earth to so high that Paradise lies at her feet.

This is exactly what the headscarf means to me - that we women no longer belong to man, but to something much higher. We are not hiding from society – we’re shouting it out, loud and proud.

Grand story, if I may say so myself. That being said, in today’s world, the hijab seems to have lost that meaning, having been used and abused, exploited as a tool of oppression, rather than a symbol of freedom. France has even taken the step to ban it, as I’m sure you would have heard. It seems to me that they think that eliminating this ‘thing’ that stands out is the best way to create a peaceful society.

I think they’re wrong, and I think that [Oompa Loompa Land where we live] is a case in point. I’m proud to be a part of this community. I’m proud to be in a class that holds a dozen or so members of different ethnicities and religions. I’m proud to walk through town, to see different coloured faces, differently dressed people, walking side by side as seamlessly as a river flows. I’m proud to see mosques, churches and temples standing strong in complete serenity. I’m proud to know that a Lions’ Club barbeque will provide halal meat, that the [local] Library provides books in multiple languages, that there’s a whole street dedicated to Little India and the Afghan Bazaar, that on Christmas there’s always a special Carols by Candlelight event, and every year, on the 26^th of January, peoples’ whose origins extend to places from so far away can still all gather together at the same park and celebrate the existence of this beautiful country.

I’m proud to know that I don’t really feel excluded here – I never have, even, so long ago, being the only one in my primary school besides my sister wearing a headscarf. That teacher that I wanted to impress, who first encouraged me to wear it? Your average, run of the mill primary school teacher – not even a Muslim. People have approached me with curiosity, but never with hate. I’ve heard of people who have been racially harassed somewhere sometime, but I myself have not experienced this. 

Some say that in order to live in harmony, we have to put aside our differences. This community has shown that that isn’t necessary – we can keep our differences, showcase them even, it’s just about acceptance and understanding. Rather than trying to bury multiculturalism, or eliminate it as the problem, [where we live] celebrates it, embraces it, and respects it.

As Maya Angelou, a prominent figure in the American Civil Rights Movement, once said: “We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their colour.”

Thank you for listening, and I hope you have a wonderful evening.

Hm. I've been thinking of some positive thoughts, and I came up with this:
1. I've pretty much aced all my SACs so far this year.
2. I have the cutest cat in the world.
3. I got to say 'I told you so' to someone today.
4. I'm reading Quintana of Charyn, which is superdy awesome.
5. I ate two chocolatey things today. 

Peace in,
Laila

Aliens and ghosts, and a prince with a golden palace

This is a tale about sheer stupidity. Okay, maybe that's harsh. This is a tale about someone who truly cannot appreciate - no, understand or comprehend creativity. It left me sort of speechless, in a gobsmacked kind of way. Kind of like this:

See? She doesn't look too happy, huh? Flabbergasted.

But this speechlessness tends to follow after the many, many ... minutes ... of arguing and talking in circles, which I will now explain.

(Agh, the 'minutes' totally took the drama out of it, didn't it? *sigh* )

You see, I have a bone to pick, with my French teacher. In fact, I've actually already picked this bone with him, a million times over, and still I cannot decrease the annoyance I have for him. First, just before I begin, I feel like I need to tell you that when I first started high school, in my first French class, he told us he was a prince.

...

...

I mean, seriously. Yes, you  read the title. He even claims he has a golden palace. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, to some extent, but in the sense that I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it. But you just don't tell high schoolers this in general, not unless you can definitely prove it, because they will take the mickey out of you, big time. For a guy who's been teaching for ages, you'd think he'd know that. And come on, our school is considered to be in the slums - what prince would teach here? But no, he says he's still awaiting the day of his grand return. No joke.

And because it's been what, six years? and not one shred of evidence has turned up, I just... can't... take... him... seriously. That is why, when you read about our 'debates', you'll notice that I can talk to him in a sort'veaggressive, straightforward manner, whereas usually I'd just be awkward and submissive and die.

So basically, it started with a story. For all the LOTE exams, you see, one of the requirements is to produce a written piece, in whatever language. They give you a range of prompts to choose from, and these can vary from informal/formal letters to articles to journal entries. And short stories. Usually, the teacher encourages us to stick to letters, because it's relatively easy and you get a lot of marks just for mastering the structure. But our teacher, this year, decided that we ought to practise some other styles, just in case the prompt for a letter doesn't show up. He had all the prompts from the previous years, and he told us to pick one of the story ones and write it up as practise.

Here's my prompt, word for word, quoted off VCAA:

2003 French Exam:

Question 30

You have decided to enter a story writing competition run by a daily newspaper. You are to write an imaginative story entitled ‘Lost in a big city’.

Is that absolutely clear? Okay. Right. Lettuce continue.

So my teacher tells us to write around about 250 - 300 words. Note that's hardly enough for a complex story, and note that we're learning French second hand, and we've had a history of dreadful teachers, so complexity in this foreign language may just be a little bit hard to master. 

My story was mainly descriptive, but the essence was that there was a little girl, she was lost in the city (ta daaaa!), she was scared, she was awaiting her parents but no one showed, and at the end, the next morning, she's dead. The end.

It's not supposed to win an award or anything, okay? So anyway, it was like, even before he started reading, he'd made his decision that he wanted to hate it. 

Il pleut à torrents, the story starts. "Why is it raining?" he asks sceptically..

"Umm... why can't it be raining?" I counter.

"You are right," he nods. "Let's continue." I'm sort of like:

 So we continue. He makes some general corrections, and then we get to the part where I 'introduce' the character, like this: Elle s'assoit sur le bord.

"Who's this?" my teacher asks.

"It's the character," I say. "Keep reading." He looks doubtful, but he does so anyway. He gets to the end, and then he sort of sighs, and places his hands on the table.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I just don't feel it."

I'm like, "Sorry?"

"You just didn't answer the question," he explains. I raise my eyebrows.

"There's no question, sir," I reply.  "It just says write a story entitled 'Lost in a big city.'"

"Yeah, but you must answer the question," he says. "You must say who is lost in the city, why they are lost in the city, how they came to be lost in the city, and how they get out of the city."

"No, they don't ask for that," I say firmly. "It says write a story entitled 'Lost in a big city'. How I choose to interpret that title is my choice."

"Yes, but a story needs to have a problem-"

"Mine does."

"- and it needs to have characters-"

"I do have a character."

"Where?" he asks. I point to the part where my little girl is.

"You are right." Pause. "But you say she is wet and cold but she is not lost."

"Yes she is," I say, then point out the line where it says 'Solitaire dans le monde, perdue dans une grande ville.' He looks at it, nods, and sighs.

"You are right," he says. He pauses, and sighs again. "But I don't feel it."

In fact, I ought to add that this expression turned up a million times during this conversation.

"What don't you feel, sir?" And I'm clearly exasperated at this point. There are no niceties.

"You didn't answer the question," he says.

"There is no question!" I all but snap, gritting my teeth. And then we're talking in a circle, again, as he goes over all the nonexistent questions I didn't answer and all the things he didn't feel, and we come to another impasse. I try for some perspective.

"Look," I say, as patiently as I possibly can. "I think I know what you want. You want the standard story formula, with the beginning-middle/conflict-end layout, right? And you want everything to be clear as crystal, with no questions left at the end. This is just a different style."

"I know what you are trying to do, Laila," trying for his some perspective himself. "You want to create some tension, some suspense, but I just don't feel it." (Teeth grinding) "You see how she dies at the end? It's like you just want to shut it there. So there's no questions."

"Okay, look, whether or not there are questions or whatever, the point is, it's my story," I say. "I have a creative licence and I'm entitled to use it. I'm writing for this imaginary contest, and however I respond to the prompt is my choice, and they put very few limits on it, so I took advantage of that. Your problem is that it doesn't suit your taste. But sir, if you liked a good romance and I didn't write one, is that my problem? The examiners are going to grade this based on spelling and grammar and structure, as well as relevance. Their feelings don't come into it. I'm not obliged to cater to anyone's tastes. So basically, whether or not you 'feel' it is irrelevant."

**I'm taking a moment to stress that I don't always talk to my teachers like this. In fact, I never do. It's just this one guy gets on my nerves, and also - and I do respect him for this - he allows me to speak to him so. If he ever said LAILA YOU'RE BEING RUDE SHUT UP DETENTION!, trust me, I'd never go this far.**

So after that, he basically said he still doesn't feel it, but I am right, and that is the end of that. NOT. That's the end of my little episode with him, and I learnt from there that I ought not to be adventurous. We had another practise after this one, and the whole class was to write on the same prompt. That is:

Write a short imaginative story for the newspaper France Soir about what happened during the night of a power failure.

I wrote my story in a relatively boring fashion (which earned his full approval), but this other guy decided to make a ghost story out of it. My French teacher's response was: "That's bull****."

At first, I decided to stay quiet. I push his buttons a lot, you see, on a range of other topics, (agh, he's just so freaking arrogant I want to slap him with the Punishment Salmon), so I thought I'd best keep my nose out of this one. But he was just such a meanie bo to this guy, and he decided to bring up the perpetual stupidity of this story the next day as well, and then, I just couldn't stand it.

So I'm like, "Sir, what's wrong with a ghost story?"

"It's not realistic, and it's not relevant," he said. "Ghosts don't come for power shortages."

"But it's an imaginative story, so they could," I said. 

"No, they can't," he said abruptly. "It's bull****. Ghosts aren't real."

"According to you," I said. "Some people do believe in them, and it's not for you to make the final decision. Besides, that's not the point. The point is it's an imaginative story, and he can write what he wants, even if it includes ghosts."

"But it's not relevant," he said. 

"He can make it relevant," I replied. Then he smiled in that 'look at you, you poor confused girl' way.

"You just want to say everyone can write about anything," he said.

"Well, not exactly, but I guess that's true," I said. "It said to write about the night of a power shortage. Literally anything could happen, they didn't put restrictions on it." So my French teacher decided to try another tactic, which kind of contradicted his point about ghosts not existing, now that I think about it.

"But ghosts don't come when there are power shortages," he said. "They're in haunted houses and scary stories like that."

"Well, in thisguy's story, maybe they do show up in the power shortage," I said. "Or maybe they caused it. It's a story. If thisguy wants to make the ghost show up around a power shortage, then he can. They never said you couldn't."

"But he's in year 12," he protested. "He shouldn't be writing stupid ghost stories in year 12. That's for children."

And I'm like, "You realise there are fully grown adults who have written ghost stories and have them published. You know that, right?"

So more talking in circles occurred, me getting increasingly frustrated by his annoyingly narrow mind when it comes to the possibilities that stories can open up. Then he decided that he would go around the class, asking each and everyone what they had written, just to highlight how foolishly outlandish thisguy's idea was. At that moment, I wished I had written about pirates or something - and in fact, that's what my French teacher assumed I had done. He couldn't understand why else I'd be so defensive if I hadn't written a ridiculous story myself. I proved him wrong, in that sense, as my story was incredibly dull, but in wanting another crazy story in my class, I wasn't let down.

A year 11 boy, who was doing year 12 French because it's his mother tongue, said he was writing a story about the end of the world. In my head, I was like yessssss, take that, sir. You love this kid, whatchu gonna say to that one, huh? HUH?!

"See?" my French teacher said enthusiastically. "See what a good idea that is? Why couldn't you do something like that?"

Are you noticing a theme with these gifs?

"So," I said. "Let me get this straight. Thatguy is allowed to write about the end of the [FREAKING] world, and thisguy can't write about ghosts?"

"Yeah, why not?" the prince of the freaking golden palace said. "If the end of the world comes, the power will go out, no?"

Mind you, this is for the newspaper, presumably for the next day, or the day after. Pretty sure if it's the end of the world, no one will be writing stories about it. Because, you know, the world would have ended. I didn't say that to him at the time, because I was too busy looking like Selena Gomez in that gif above (expression wise, just in case you needed that cleared up ^_^ Let's not get started on looks).

Okay, now, my mind is a little blank here, as to how the next point came up exactly, but basically, thisguy was saying something that came to the lines of: "So if I decided to write a story about aliens invading Earth-"

"That's an excellent idea!" my French teacher beamed. "Yes, see, you should write that story. That's a good idea."

"Hold up," I said, after gawking for a moment. And in fact, the whole class was gawking. "Did you just say it's okay to write a story about aliens but not ghosts?...Um... what?"

"Yeah," my French teacher said, in a kind of duh manner. "If aliens come and invade the Earth, what do you think they will do first? They'll cut the power, right? It makes sense."

Yeah, okay, I can't even go on. He was dead serious, to the point that the next day, he brought in a criteria and made us look explicitly at the 'relevance' section, before lecturing us that ghosts aren't relevant, but somehow aliens are. Mind you, later criticism on my SAC story was that I had the structure of the story all wrong because you're supposed to have a introduction, body, and conclusion paragraph. I tried to say that it wasn't an essay, but he didn't believe me. He also took a mark off because apparently you're not allowed to have little individual lines, the kind of standalone sentence one puts to dramatise a specific point. I tried explaining that I had been doing this for years in school, and no teacher has ever told me off for it, but then he made a snarky comment that perhaps I ought to have a 'chat' with my teachers, adding some implication that perhaps they were teaching us all wrong.

Truthfully, I know I must sound angry, but I'm not really. I just... it's like... well, I can't believe he can be so absolutely thick. And then, I just feel sorry for him, because sadly, here is a person who will never appreciate the beauty of creative writing.

There are times I remind myself of 'the children in Africa', when I'm being ungrateful about say, food or something. Other times, I remind myself of those who don't have limbs or something, when I'm not appreciating my health, or I'm being too focused on the superficial aspects of my appearance, or my lack of skill in an area.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, I think of the prince [in exile?] and his golden palace, who teaches at my school, and cannot fathom imagination, and doesn't seem to have a shred of logic either, for that matter, to remind myself that I'm really blessed.

Peace in,
Laila