To Kill a Mockingbird

I've never been able to tell exactly how much I'm lying when I say that I've read To Kill a Mockingbird before. In one sense, I absolutely did. My whole class read it back in eighth grade and I honest and truly looked at every page with my own eyes. I read every word. I turned every page. I knew the names of characters and the order of events. But I didn't really read it.

You could tell because I hated the book. I thought it was dull, slow paced, and had little to no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Maybe I wasn't ready for it at that young age, I don't really know. All I know is that I managed to miss everything that makes this novel good.

This novel is good.

I didn't know this until I read it this past week. Influenced by my middle school predjudices, I allowed myself to put off what I figured would be a frustratingly long and boring read until Friday night. When I finally opened the cover, I was prepared with earbuds and exciting music. I figured I'd need something to help escape the duldrums Harper Lee had in store for me. Honestly, that's all that kept me going through Part 1. I wasn't altogether interested in the childlike fascination with Boo Radley nor did I give a hoot about Jem reading to an old lady.

It was in Part 2 that the novel took off. All of a sudden I was entraced by the trial of a black man in the deep south where the hatred for his race was wild and uncontained. I knew Tom would be found guilty. I knew it. Harper Lee didn't write a fantasy novel. Tom would be found guilty. But knowing doesn't stop it from stinging.

Even as it stung, though, I was proud of how the trio - Jem, Scout, and Dill - reacted. Too young to know that this was the expected outcome, they were shocked. There were tears. It was a beautiful moment and powerfully written.

I couldn't wait to see where the story would go next and read hurriedly. I can't explain exactly what I thought would happen, but it didn't. Jem was struggling with the outcome and fighting an internal battle but then he just gave up. He didn't want to talk about it because he couldn't come to terms with it. And overnight he became totally disenchanted with the world.

Had the trial happened again with the same outcome, I don't know that Jem's face would have been "streaked with angry tears" like the first time. He would have taken it in stride, bitterly proclaimed that it was simply the way the world was, and gone on his way. And that makes me sad.

After the trial, Jem asked, "How could they do it, how could they?" to which Atticus replied, "I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it-seems only that the children weep."

I never want to grow up to the point that I'm not among the weeping, but I fear Jem did.

The Third Conversation - Because

There has been a recurring theme in my conversations with Bandar: English. And I don't mean that because all of our conversations have been in English (though they have), but rather that we tend to talk a lot about how little sense this langauge actually makes. It began today with the word Wednesday, a very strangely spelled word.

As the story goes, Bandar was reading in class this morning when he came to this word that he thought he didn't know. He summoned the teacher to his side and asked the meaning of this "Whed-nes-day" only to discover he already knew the word. At least, he knew how the word sounds and what it feels like to say it and that it means the middle day of the week. Initially, he didn't believe that this "Whens-day" could ever be spelled "Whed-nes-day", but the teacher insisted. Bandar pressed for an explanation but was greated only by a "Because."

Uh...because?

According to Bandar, it's a magic "because". It's the response to every English question he's ever had!

Why isn't enough spelled "enuff"? Because.
Why do "know" and "no" get spelled differently? Because.
Why do we spell "cul-chur" as culture? Because.

It became a joke between us. Bandar or I would look at the other and respond to a question with a shrug and a magic "Because." And then we'd laugh.


We were having a grand old time in fact, and in between laughs Bandar told me the three questions he had since coming to the United States to study:

1. Why is there a "k" in the word know?
2. How is that Asians can differentiate between Japenese, Chinese, and South Korean just from looks?
3. Who is this man that created English? Because I want to find him and kill him.

We laughed at that.

And in between all these laughs about the dumbest language to ever form on this grand planet, we talked about movies. In Saudi Arabia, they don't have movie theaters ("cinemas") and so the experience we all take for granted is still thrilling and novel to Bandar. It's the food, the seats, the atmosphere, everything. You can buy the DVD in Saudi Arabia as soon as the film premieres in theaters across the world, but it's not the same.

What is the same, though, is the movies. Apparently films transcend cultural bounds and can easily provide a common ground. We talked about Tom Cruise and the newest Mission Impossible movie, about movies soon to come out, and movies I never saw because I was too young to see them when they first came out. Notable among the last catagory is The Godfather. When Bandar found this out, he jokingly insisted that I leave right then and go watch it. We laughed and then I think I committed myself to watching it over spring break. I'm looking forward to being able to come back and tell him I saw it.

Today for the first time, I think Bandar and I started really being friends. It took weeks and three conversations, but it happened. How? Why? I don't know. Because.

Hills Like White Elephants

I certainly hope I'm not the only one who looks at how long an assignment is before I read it. It helps me to know how much time I'm going to have to spend on it, whether I can get it done in just five minutes or if it's going to take me fifty. Well, when Ernest Hemingway writes a short story, he puts an emphasis on the short part (ever read his shortest one? It reads: "For Sale. Baby shoes. Never worn."). Hills Like White Elephants is a paltry 3 pages. I figured it would take me somewhere between four and seven minutes, ten minutes tops, before I could have the story down and move on with my life.

It turned out to take much longer than that.

I mean, sure, I read it in the expected four minutes but that wasn't really enough time to wrap my head fully around what I just devoured. It took two more readings, much slower and more contemplative, before I felt I was really getting a handle on what Hemingway was writing about. This wasn't just some idle conversation between a couple waiting for a train. It's not even really a conversation about getting an abortion. No, instead Hemingway is treating his readers to a tiny glimpse of the struggle between a man and a woman trying to balance a relationship thrown entirely off kilter by an unexpected pregnancy.

And that is exactly what I love about Hemingway's writing. It's not so much that he's telling a story as he's introducting characters. These people have depth and histories, but not names. Their lives come to life in only three pages and that's enough. Certainly, that was enough for me to become attached enough to the characters that the ending found me muttering angrily at a long dead Hemingway about how I felt gypped to not know what happened to the couple.

I suspect I know, though. The woman is going to have the operation, pressured by the domineering man and the societal pressure to forego her own feelings so she can cater to the man's desires. She doesn't want to, of course not; everyone involves knows that at some level or another. The American knows it and asks her about it, but she refuses to admit and so he feels justified it not admitting it to himself. The woman, on the other hand, knows full well how much she doesn't want it. She can hear just how flat all her words fall, how lifeless the promises the man makes are. Things won't go back to how they were before. They can't have the whole world, not now and not afterwards.

But she'll let the operation happen anyway and it will probably be wholly successful. They'll try to go back to how things were before but it won't be the same. The white elephant might be gone physically but its presence will remain in the relationship, straining things between the man and the woman. Both will insist that they "feel fine", but really, that's a lie.

Somewhere along the way they'll split the relationship, aknowledging how far they've grown apart as a couple. And that's where I see the story ending. I don't think Hemingway ended the story after three pages, that's just when he stopped supplying the words.

Space Camp (Coming of Age)

I never really grew out of wanting to be an astronaut.

Really, I'm pretty sure that's supposed to stop being a serious career path at about the same time you're too old to have Buzz Lightyear bedsheets. As soon as you tack that second digit onto your age it's suddenly socially unacceptable to aspire for interstellar travel; it's uncool.

But I didn't really care, rebel that I was. Astronauts get to ride on the tips of rockets, float in the emptiness of space, speak over crackly radios, and spend their days in total serenity, peering down on the most beautiful planet this solar system has to offer. There could be nothing better than this and only one thing could ever come close: Space Camp.

You have to capitalize both words when you write it - Space Camp - and you have say it like both words are capitalized. It's not just some term to be tossed about in normal conversation but requires you instead to speak it with a sense of awe and wonder. This isn't any old camp. This is Space Camp, the premiere and ultimate of all camps in existence and the greatest experience a boy could ever have.

So you can imagine that it was no small deal when I hugged my father goodbye at terminal A15 to spend a week at Space Camp. I didn't know what to feel. There was a battle of emotions happening inside of me, a fight between terror and excitement. At a single moment I was on the verge of both shouting for joy and bursting out in wet, salty tears.

I felt out of place as I was handed off to a flight attendant. She seemed so confident and put together, every blond hair positioned as perfectly as she had positioned the smile on her face. She walked straight and tall and the click of her heels echoed slightly as we walked through the Jetway to the plane.

And next to her I was hardly even half her height. My backpack felt childish and I resented the gaudy "Unaccompanied Minor" nametag I was forced to wear. It hung from an American Airlines lanyard and swung awkwardly about my neck, as if trying to draw as much attention as possible. "This boy is too young to travel alone!" the tag cried to everyone who would listen.

This was not the message I wanted people to hear. And yet, the message remained. First, I sat in the wrong seat on the airplane. Then when the flight attendants brought drinks, I promptly spilled orange juice on my book. The bored businessman whose seat I had accidentally taken earlier silently offered me a napkin, but I refused out of shame. Today of all days, I wanted to feel older, but I was reminded of my youth at every turn.

I only had to look down to be reminded of it. "Unaccompanied Minor" the tag said. Almost tauntingly. Repetitively. "Unaccompanied Minor".

I'm the fourth from the left, in a semi-authentic flight suit.
I told you this camp was legit!

When the plane landed, I didn't know where to go but was quickly spotted by a 20-something wearing a space camp shirt. He strode over to me with long steps, shook my hand and welcomed me by name. I was excited now. The worries I had on the plane dissipated with the arrival of this man who spoke to me like I was as old as I wanted to be. I took off that dumb lanyard and left it at the airport before I was accompanied to Space Camp.

And I had the time of my life.

The Second Conversation

My most recent conversation with Bandar was on Wednesday, one of those strangely warm days after a spree of cold weather. It was as though the sun decided that it had enough of this silly winter weather and was going to warm things up for at least a day. I started to perspire a bit just wandering over to Union Grounds to find Bandar but was nothing compared to the walk Bandar made from his place off campus. We chatted about the weather for a while and both agreed that it came from nowhere and was wholly unexpected. I moved here from a cold state and he from a warm country and it seems neither of us really understand the erratic Texas weather yet.

I asked about the weather in Saudi Arabia and learned that it was as I guessed: very hot. I've never actually stuck around in Texas for the summer and I'm frankly quite scared of the obscene temperatures I'd encounter if I did. Apparently it's no better in Saudi Arabia. Bandar didn't seem too partial to the heat of his home country. In fact, as we began discussing the differences between Saudi Arabia and the United States, Bandar was always straightforward and never seemed idealize or misrepresent his homeland.

He spoke of the influence of Islam on the laws and rules in Saudi Arabia. Islamic persons aren't allowed to either drink alcohol or eat ham and it's illegal to sell either as a result. Bandar seemed wholly unconcerned about the absence of ham but the alcohol was a different matter. The way around the rule, it seems, is to know people from other countries who had come to work in Saudi Arabia (there's good money for European and American workers there!). These workers bring alcoholic beverages into the country with them and might be convinced to share.

These Europeans and Americans also tend to bring their religions with them too and I wondered aloud how it was living as a Christian in an Islamic country. I half expected to hear that it was a big issue and it was rare to find a practicing Christian in the country. Bandar quickly banished my hasty assumption and told me that there were plenty of Christians in the country, and he knows quite a few himself. Plenty of Christians, but no churches. It was okay to be a Christian, but you have to keep it mostly to yourself, worshipping in your own home. There's no requirement to participate in the multiple prayer times during the day, but there's a stringent social code to adhere to in that regard. You can't keep a shop open during prayer time, even if you're not Islamic and not praying. That said, when you close your shop, you can't wander around the streets (because then you're rubbbing in the fact that you're not praying) and you can't just stay in your shop (because you could be helping a customer). It was an intruiging look at the state of religious freedom in a different country.

We moved on in topics, and talked for a while about what it was like getting out of the country. Bandar spent some time lamenting the difficulty of getting a visa to the United States, though it's fortunately much easier than it was after the September of 2001. He laughed and said it was very fortunate he wasn't named Osama or Muhammad, and though I hoped he was kidding, he wasn't - it's apparently very hard for persons with that name to be granted a visa to the US. I knew from our last conversation that Bandar had been to most every tourist location in the states, but I hadn't thought to ask him what other countries he had been to. I did this time and was treated to a bit of a shock. I was sitting across from a world traveler!

And when I say world traveler, I mean it. Bandar recently spent seven or eight months traveling across the world, staying for 20 or 25 days at each place he visited. I asked for descriptions of the places and he leaned back in his chair and looked off to the side and into the distance, clearly at ease and happy to reminisce about his months of travelling. I got to hear stories about the places - oh so many places! - that Bandar had been to and to say I was jealous doesn't do the feeling justice. Even the stories of muggings in other countries held a sort of allure. Bandar told a story about seeing a man get clubbed by a group of men, and that failed to dampen my excitement about the foreign countries. Besides, he said the police in Rio de Janiero were quick and were on the scene in a moment. To then have to admit that I had only been to three countries outside the United States (two of which are Canada and Mexico, and not even a warm sunny beach in Mexico, much to Bandar's dissappoinment) made me feel uncultured. Bandar treated me to a list of recommendations and insisted that if I ever go to the carnival in Rio that I would have to take him along. I don't know that I can ever take him up on that offer, but I sure want to now!

As we began wrapping up the conversation, the topic turned to schoolwork in the upcoming days and Bandar mentioned his frustrations with the English language. For him, reading, listening, and speaking came easily and all he has left to do is just expand his vocabulary. The issue arises with writing. In arabic, words are spelled just as the sound and that certainly isn't the case in English. He recounted the conversations he would have often with his teacher, going something like this:

Bandar: Why is there a k in the word "know"?
Teacher: Because there is.
Bandar: No, really, why?
Teacher: Just because.

And I had no answer for him either. What torture we inflict on those attempting to learn the English language! Why is it that so many words have silent letters, that t's often make the sound of d's (Bandar is baffled that we pronounce the word water as "wah-der"), and that so little in spelling actually makes sense?

It almost makes me wish that another language were the world-wide standar, but then I'd have to learn another language. Isle stik with Inglish, thank yew very much.

Er, I mean: "I'll stick with English, thank you very much."