It turns out I AM cool. Now I just have to convince myself.
Unfinished letter #23
When I first arrived at Canterbury Arts high school for the creative writing program, I met Katherine, who is still one of my dearest friends today.
Katherine will laugh when she reads this, but you need to understand that she’s impossibly cool. In 9th grade, she had this girl-next-door hippy vibe: wavy brown hair and freckles, flared pants that hung loose, a faint smell of patchouli. In Katherine’s bedroom, I listened to Sarah McLachlan, the melancholy chords from arms of an angel floating over me like a very sad blanket.
She called her parents by their first names, John and Deb. John had an earring and played guitar. When I would call on the landline, before he passed the phone to Katherine, John would chat with me about hockey, about the poor fortunes and lackadaisical play of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and when they would get real support for Mats Sundin.
Katherine played competitive soccer and trained at a karate dojo. One year, for my birthday, she got me a signed picture of Damien Rhodes, our hometown team’s goalie, who was friends with her sensei.
Getting into the writing program at Canterbury was my first opportunity to find my fit in the wider world. I could be more than the little Muslim girl here. I could be a writer, among other writers.
Even so, there is a part of me that does not compute when I make a cool friend.
Nevertheless, my differences did not disappear. There was still gaping holes in my pop culture knowledge and early internet search methods were not helpful. Katherine was shocked the day she discovered I’d never seen Star Wars.
You’ll have to come over for a marathon, she told me in our first year of high school, and we finally got it in under the wire in 12th grade, with the clock ticking to graduation. (My verdict? I was underwhelmed with episodes 4-6 and falling asleep for episodes 1-3 but so grateful to finally be in on it!)
In university, where I studied software engineering while surrounded by international students, I was suddenly Western. This was mind-bending, after having been distinctly Arab and Muslim in the white spaces I had inhabited for much of my life. For the first time, I saw Arabs in 3 dimensions. Not only at the mosque. Not only at home. Not only on three-week visits to Egypt to see extended family.
I could have learned a thing or two about the culture, but I mostly recoiled. ‘They’ were loud and animated, and standing next to any of them, I was most definitely ‘one of the good ones.’ And this was a win for me.
I’ve always been a proud Muslim, but it took me well into my 30s before I was proud of being Arab. Well into my 30s before I could see the beauty in our jokes and love and our history.