The best way, I've learnt to hide is with a book. Both metaphorically and literally. Here as I sit beneath a bench at my new school, I know that whilst hiding physically, I am hiding mentally. No one can see my face, and no one can know my thoughts. As they pass through, a tangled mess between fantasy and reality.
A book is a true escape.
A way to hide in plain sight.
But the sad thing is, I shouldn't have to hide, my thoughts, myself, everything that I should be able to display and not be judged for.
So why am I so worried, why am I hiding away? Is it crazy that on my first day, I am sitting on the rather wet ground, getting my skirt in a bunch, when I should be out there? Communicating, making friends like any other 15-year-old?
Well, there is a simple answer to all these questions. A single word in fact.
Muslim.
That's it, my religion is what made me feel shunned. Made me feel I needed to hide and I don't just mean the stereotypical nonsense that I'm forced to cover. I feel the freest with this fabric on my head, smooth and soft, the colour of the night sky and as comforting as the dark has always been for me.
So why am I so scared?
Well, I wouldn't define it as scared per se, I think a more fitting definition would be that I was paranoid. You may think, Amina, those are exactly the same thing. Well, I'm here to tell you they are not.
Being scared is knowing what's coming and fearing it, paranoia is fearing the unknown.
And this new environment, this new school, this new everything was completely unpredictable.
I shake my head, a nervous habit I've adopted after the culmination of name-calling both from my own mind and others. I shake my head because sometimes I convince myself that by doing so I can manifest the power in me to expel all the terrible thoughts that weave their way into my brain.
I do it so much that my glasses fall free from my face, inelegantly tumbling onto a grass patch just outside the hidden zone beneath the bench.
I heave a sigh, convincing myself that maybe this is the moment when I realise I have powers, that I can use my mind to pick the glasses up. That I could be Matilda, or Harry, waking one day and realising that I am so much more than I ever thought.
Of course, reality comes crashing down, dispelling any sort of hope I may have had. I can barely see what's in front of me, I guess anyone would be able to tell from the thickness of the lenses encased in the traditional black frame.
Out of nowhere, I see a pair of hands, the sort of colour that isn't too far off my brown skin but still much lighter, a pale undertone, and they are clearly strong fingers that curl around my glasses pulling them up and out of my reach.
"How do you even fit under a bench, Freak?" And there it goes, a full five minutes without being ridiculed.
It had to be a new record.
I crawl out from m hiding spot, exposed and with a book hanging closely from my fingers, nipped and red from the cold.
I hold my other hand out and in the politest way possible I ask, "Can I please have my glasses back?"
"Oh look, she's one of those girls," the bitter tone struck me to my core, as I spun to meet the disembodied voice that had thought of the oh-so-original taunt about my headscarf.
If you don't get the sarcasm, I don't know what to tell you.
"One of those girls?" my voice was incredulous, "Are you one of those guys? Who lacks original thought to the point where you have to pick on someone else's religion to feel good about yourself?"
The words slither from my mouth, a snake ready to inject venom because a snake could only cure through its own poison. And these words would only cure this bully if he accepted them.
I remembered that my ever-so-prepared self this morning had foreseen, something like this happened. I guess it was a good idea to carry around a second pair of glasses, I always did after...
It's a sad reality that I knew something like this would happen, but what could I expect? We lived in a brutal world.
Judge or be judged, I guess I had always fallen on the judged side of things.
After a few awkward moments of me struggling to find my blazer pocket, with my blurry vision and just the receptors on my fingers to tell me if I was close enough, I pulled out a second pair of glasses. I placed them on, holding them by the bridge afraid that they would fall again, leaving me without the necessary vision to confront my new set of tormentors.
I guess I was an easy target. I just screamed, insult me. Small, spindly frame,e completely covered, with a foreign name and a religion that it was now all the rage to hate.
I was everything that the vicious hate cycle needed to maintain itself.
"You don't scare me you know," whether it was a lie or not at that very moment I cannot tell you. I was drifting through the planes of fear and boredom. I didn't want this, and if I was going to be bullied the least they could do was be a little original. I had very much seen it all.
The words seem to work, the poison seeping in as they stilled and regarded me with a sort of morbid curiosity.
"You're not even a little scared?" the one who held my glasses between his fingers spoke, a slight inclination in his voice that meant that he was probably highly offended at my lack of terror.
I stared them straight into their eyes, maybe if they got lost in the darkness of them, so the abyss and void staring back at them, a dark sort of brown that only glowed when I commanded them to, by which I mean when I decided to lower a book, stare into the sun and watch as my God-given eyes, became pure gold. Maybe they would see just how little I cared.
"No, I'm not scared," there was an air of nonchalance, just to rub salt in the wound. I guess this was a bully's nightmare, not being able to instil unwavering fear in their victim.
I refused to be a victim anymore.
"Trust me," I continued, keenly aware of the new eyes laid on our interaction. The curiosity of the student body, magnified by this strange girl who had the audacity to fight back, "I've been through worse. You don't know me. You don't know what I've been through and compared to that," I grinned, I must have looked insane. With pinched red cheeks, and blurry glasses from the fog and cold. With baring teeth that were glossed in a retainer, I had forgotten to remove them. The picture of weird, that was me, "This is child's play."
Hit them where it hurts, their enormous egos.
"Child's play?" the tallest of them finally spoke. He was tall, well built, clearly a head taller than the rest of the year. With piercing green eyes that flecked with the slightest yellowish tinge, that made them a paradoxical mix of colour. Unique in every way, tragically beautiful I would say. Tragic because they belonged to someone who had no other purpose in life than to berate.
The sort of kid that had undoubtedly been told he would make a great leader, a leader of a group. He had it ingrained in his I could see it, he believed that he was meant to lead. And he believed I was less than him.
Well, he and his eyes could go screw themselves.
"You think this is child's play, freak," there it was again, a papery thin insult that would melt in the rain that was soon to come. The flame in me however would need more than a little rain to wane and wither, "Are you serious, right now?"
I laughed, it was humourless and hollow, somehow echoing in the open space, "Are you serious?"
Allah save me from my own stupid mouth.
"Why would I lie? About what I have or haven't been through. This is child's play because you're acting like insolent children. Got nothing better to do than pick on the new kid? At least give me something original. Freak, one of those girls?" I sighed with all the vigour of a disappointed teacher, "That's all you have. I've seen better,"
I decided with that ending sentence I had had enough of this sub-par interaction, nothing memorable I'd give them a 2 out of 5 stars and even that was being generous. I went to move but as it was three against one, I was cornered, trapped and very much towered over.
Curse my less-than-5-foot height.
"We're not done with you," the guy that spoke was the one that had said 'one of those girls.'
And for that comment, I wasn't going to gift them any more of my incredibly precious time.
"Well, I am." with that, I saw my opportunity to escape. I was flanked on all sides, front, left and right, but they clearly hadn't read any of Sun Tzu's work, they weren't guarding me, from the back. Only the bench was, and the nice thing about benches was that they could give you a leg up, no questions asked.
I turned and jumped over the bench, stepping on the table portion and then down the other side in a matter of seconds, and before I knew it I was sprinting and never turning back. My heart was racing as the adrenaline subsided I felt the familiar prick of tears in my eyes. The constriction of my throat as I begged myself not to break, not to shatter so easily as I had done before.
So I sat in a corner, alone with my book pressed up over my face, so that even if the tears did inevitably fall. They would be hidden.
As I said, a good way to hide is with a book.