Fatma

I started ninth grade a few days ago and although I was expecting a horrible day, it actually turned out OK. I was happy was because they made a new rule to allow the students to use their phones at break, so now I won’t have to hide in the toilet to listen to my music, anymore. However, the thing that got on my nerves was that the teachers kept repeating how important these next two years are and how everyone has to buckle down and concentrate. It felt like a lot of pressure and that I’ll have no room to get anything wrong. It made made me feel slightly closed in and frightened. The new principal and teachers remind me of villains in Jackie Chan films (the kind who are really sinister but who always hire other people to carry out their crimes).

I’m feeling good about my classes, so far, however an incident occurred that was quite embarrassing. In one of my classes, a boy sitting opposite to me said to his friends, “Fatma has big cheeks but she’s not fat.”

In return, I gave him and the people sitting around him a speech about how I’m confident in my own body and how there is nothing wrong with being fat, as long as your health is not at risk. When I had finished my lecture, everyone sat back in their seats, stunned, not expecting me to have responded. Some of them hadn’t even heard me speak until then. Then the boy said, “I can’t even understand what you’re saying,” to which I replied, “Can’t you understand English?”

“No, I mean are you Shakespeare or something?”

And I know he meant to say that so that people would laugh at me, which they did, but that’s actually a compliment in my book. It’s funny how people make fun of me at school but they don’t realize that they’re only making me stronger. ♦