When you're smiling

Fairly accurate recreation of a conversation that took place a couple of weeks ago, starting in the living room. Out of the blue, as these types of conversations do.

"You know, I am like a clown."

A minute passes.

"Well?"
"What?"
"Well, aren't you going to guess why?"
"Why what?"
"Why I am like a clown?"
"I didn't think it was a question."
"It wasn't."
"Okay."

Two minutes pass.

"WELL?"
"Well, what?"
"Seriously, you are not wondering why I said that?"
"You said it wasn't a question."
"So?"
"So, no I'm not wondering. Should I?"
"No, hey, whatever, don't do me any favors thinking about it."

Some time passes. Years of living together has made it quite clear this is a conversation that just is not going to happen.

Years of living together is tossed to the side, as usual.

"Why aren't you curious? I'd be curious if you said something like that."
Silence.
"Oh my god, are you ignoring me?"
"No."
"Then why don't you answer?"
"Answer what?"
"You are IMPOSSIBLE."

More time passes. Movement in and out of room. Resettling in room.

"You know, forget it, words are wasted on you. Forget what I said. I am fine, really. Not that you care. That was a statement by the way, and not a question. A fact. Solid fact."
"Okay...."
"No, NOT okay."
"I was going to say, okay, why are you like a clown? Do you feel clumsy? Are you wearing funny shoes? Do your clothes not match? Is your hair out of control? Do you have a big shiny red nose..."
"SHUT UP. That is not even a little funny."
"Okay."

Tears of a Clown - Smoky Robinson and the Miracles



*
Several hours later, at a restaurant, in the middle of choosing appetizers.

"How about mini stuffed mushrooms?"
"It's because I am always smiling on the outside, no matter what, even when I am terribly sad inside."
Small pause.
"Your hair was kind of out of control, too. "
Small pause.
"It was a little funny."
"I know. You were smiling when you were yelling at me."

You Caught Me Smilin' - Sly and the Family Stone



***

I'm much better at describing what it was like going to school, back home, in person than in writing. Mostly because there are so many tangential aspects to the overall experience (perfect, of course, for my talking style) that I can never give the full picture writing about it, without losing most people along the way.

Actually, to be perfectly honest, I can't give a full picture even in person because, at the end of day, describing the whole controlling aspect of it, what with the war and rationing and air raids on top, and the added factor of my mom's religious background; I can't give an accurate sense of what it actually meant to experience it. Usually people think it sounded like a tough time, somewhat weird and definitely limiting, but it was also easy and ordinary,and freeing on some level which no one but me, as the person going through it, can understand. Living there was like living out an oxymoron or a contradiction and how can you ever fully explain that?

(Also, while I realize this is going to sound like the old "uphill, barefoot both ways, in the snow" kind of remark, the years that I--and my cousin H--went to high school were the worst years in many aspects. We went at the height of everything--the height of war, the height of embargoes and limited resources for communication outside of the country, the height of the effort to curb and control the teenage population, the height of the purges and arrests. It is still bad, in a lot of ways, but it will never be quite as bad, I don't think. I hope not.)

In order to tell this particular story, though, I don't need to give a lot of background information, and I think it will carry over as well in written words as it will in spoken ones.

Sunday Smile - Beirut

*
I think I've alluded to the fact that I had a tight-knit set of friends in high school, where we were considered somewhat of a clique. The Seven Samurai, to be exact, because there were seven of us and because that is how loyal we were to each other in school. We were smart students in class and smartasses outside of it, and did whatever we could to test the boundaries imposed on us.

As in any high school back home, classes for each year were assigned a 'nazem', the person whose job it was to monitor your behavior inside school (and outside, in the nearby perimeter, if they came across you) and make sure you adhered to the principles of 'virtuous behavior.' (Nazem comes from the Arabic root of nazem, meaning order, and literally means the person who brings about order. Or an orderly, as we liked to joke amongst ourselves.) Really, the nazem was someone who was there to make sure we had as little fun as possible during our school hours. The best person to do so? Why someone who was barely four or five years older than us, with a high school diploma at best, who would take the inflated sense of power and be tougher on us than any older and professionally educated counselor would be.

I'll leave examples of the ridiculous things I and my friends used to get dinged on or pulled out of the morning assembly line for a little later on (example pertinent to this story: I was once pulled out and given a demerit mark because my newly purchased manteau had outside pockets--i.e. pockets that were visible--which was a terrible offense on my part because didn't I know that those pockets was lascivious and invited lewd thoughts? Lascivious and lewd--along with sinful and immoral--were the most bandied around words on a daily basis, by the nazems. I had to memorize several souras each recess, for the next 6 days, and recite them as penance at the end of each one for that particular demerit.) What you need to know is that, along with all our academic grades, we also received a behavior grade each trimester that figured into our overall GPA. Guess who had final say in that particular grade?

Smile Happy - War



*
It always took a few weeks for us to figure out what made a particular nazem tick--we had to be wary of the ones from the other years, as well, even though they weren't directly responsible for us, so to speak. Two things we did know for a fact was that the younger and prettier the nazem, the worse time we were in for.

Our 9th grade nazem? Was a pink cheeked, very cute 20 year old. We knew we were in for a hellish time. We weren't wrong.

I think it is fair to say she took an immediate dislike to my friends and me, and even more accurate to say she really disliked me the most. I am not sure why; I didn't go out of my way to annoy her any more that I did anyone else, but I think that, had she been able to articulate it (and knew the word, hah!) she probably would have said it was my air of insouciance that got under her skin so. And, I suppose, in her way, she did actually say just that when she had the chance. When I got my report card for the first trimester, I had straight 20s (i.e. A+ or 100), with one exception: my behavior grade was a 16. (She pulled the same thing on my friends, as well.)

We probably wouldn't have care so much, but it so happened that we wanted to participate in an extra curricular activity (definitely a story for another time) and in order to do so we had to carry a certain GPA which we no longer did. Long and short of it, appointments were made for our parents to come and meet with the nazem and the principal to argue the grade.

Usually, my dad was the one who would handle all the school meetings (registration, parent-teacher conferences, etc.), because, as a man, there would be less likelihood of anyone becoming belligerent (too immoral). For some reason, my mom decided to take this one meeting, and she made sure she talked the other parents in letting our meeting be the first one. "Trust me," she told them, and they did, because my mom is just that kind of person who others instinctively trust to have a game plan and a good one at that.

So it happened that one afternoon, not long after the report cards had been handed out, I was pulled out of class to go to the meeting (initially, I was not supposed to be there but my mom insisted I be brought into the meeting. My mom usually gets her way, even when dealing with bitchy women.) I walked in, and sat down face to face with the nazem and principal, while my mom sat a little to the back of the room, almost as if she was observing us all for her own amusement. I think the preliminary discussion had already take place, because the big book of behavior demerits (I kid you not, that is exactly what they called it) was already open to my name.

There was a lot of writing on the page.

They started off going down my list of transgressions ("talking during assembly"; "running during break"; "running down the stairs"; "singing the hymns too loudly"; "socks not black enough" "hair showing from behind the maghnaeh"--back then I had waist length hair and I hated stuffing my single plait down my manteau;"hair showing from front of maghnaeh" and on and on and on--including, of course, the terrible sin of having had lascivious outside pockets). When they paused at the end of the list, my mom looked at them for a good minute and then said, "I'm not exactly hearing anything that would warrant that much of a deduction, if any, though."

You could tell our nazem had been waiting for one such open invitation to share her opinion, because barely were the words out of my mom's mouth when she jumped in and said:

"She smiles. All the time. I don't think I ever see her not smiling. There is something indecent about her..."

Here my mother interrupted and said with a voice that could cut through battery acid:

"She smiles?"
"Yes, as I said, all the time...."
"And you feel her smile is indecent?"
"She always has this twinkle [I swear she said twinkle] in her eyes, and the smile, it's always there. As if she has the very devil in her. It's almost immoral, all that smiling."

(If I had a copy, this would be a good place for Juliet Turner's The Girl with a Smile)

At this point my mom asked me to step outside, because she wanted to speak in private to the principal (I forgot to say, my mom had pointedly ignored the nazem throughout, and only directed her comments to the principal, who was about my mom's age). I stepped outside, but I could hear everything my mom said, and what she said were things that I am fairly sure the two women in that room never forgot. She did deign to make her parting comment to the nazem, which I heard as clear as anything, because she just so happened to open the door as she was making it.

"I have only this to say to you. When a teenage girl smiles, that is a sign of healthy normalcy, something you are apparently not familiar with. If my daughter did not smile at her age, I would be seriously considering sending her to a psychiatrist. As it is, I think you need to do something of the sort if you see the devil in my child's smile and can think of nothing else but 'lewdness' and 'lasciviousness' when you are looking the pockets on the manteau of a fourteen year girl."

I don't need to really mention that none of the parents were required to come to the school, since our grades were reviewed by the principal directly and changed? My mom ruled that day, as she always has.

(The nazem still made life difficult for us and definitely tried her best to find anything she could to pin on us, but it never was quite as bad as it was that first trimester. Plus, we got to do our extra curricular activity, which was worth all the harassment.)

Feel Good Inc. - Gorillaz



***

This I will also always remember.

I had a coworker once stop by my office a few years ago, because when I had said hello to him in the hallway a few minutes earlier, I hadn't smiled. It wasn't so much that I hadn't smiled at him as the fact that I hadn't smiled that worried him, because I always smiled, even when he knew I was tired and stressed, and he came over to make sure I was okay. (I wasn't; it was probably one of the worst days in possibly the worst year of my entire life up to that point and I was starting to think serious thoughts about doing things that you never really want to get started on, because they're not the kind you come back from easily. I know.) I wanted nothing more than to just sit down and have an out and out cry to relieve the frustration. But even as I was getting ready to say something, finally--I'll never forget this, I don't think--he started smiling at me and said, "Oh, good, you are okay."

Apparently, when I'd started to say something, the first thing I'd done was smile. And that was the end of that.

Smile Like You Mean It - The Killers