Thursday was a day of modest celebration and considerable
relief. A small number of students showed up, wearing their choice of either
traditional clothing or the colors of the Kuwaiti flag. Arabic music blasted
from the loud speakers in every classroom and I continually adjusted the
attendance, as students trickled in at a slower pace than usual. One student
brought a tin of chocolates, which I opened and shared with everyone. I love
fruit and chocolate combos, especially chocolate and orange, and I wondered if
the one I popped in my mouth was some kind of truth elixir, because when a boy
asked me, “Are you coming back next year?” I couldn’t answer with an ambiguous
“Inshallah.” I looked straight at him and said, “No, I’m not.” I was worried by
how students would take the news, but they showed poise and maturity, saying,
“If it makes you happy, then we’re happy for you.” I had been fretting over making
an announcement, but it came about in an organic way, and to my relief, only
two people’s eyes teared up: mine and those of a female student who had been
counting on me being her English teacher next year.
One student’s initial reaction was particularly heart-wrenching.
She asked, “Are you leaving because of us?” I said, “No, of course not. I would
bring you with me if I could.” When I told them I may be moving to
Philadelphia, one student agreed to come with me because, “They have good cream
cheese there.”
Later that day, I was on the rooftop, chatting with a friend
who teaches in the middle school. All the students were corralled into sections
and given colorful sheets of paper to hold over their heads, so when a drone took
a picture, it would look like a Kuwaiti flag. Another teacher warned us, “We’re
not sure if this is even structurally viable. The roof has never held this many
people before, so if you feel the ground wobbling, run.” That made me a little
nervous, even though I knew this teacher was half-joking, so when my friend and
I were asked to participate in the human flag, I considered the possibility of
the roof caving in and the colorful sheets of paper fluttering down on all the
bodies and wreckage.
We weren’t as uniform as the North Koreans making their
giant human mosaics; some students were tired of holding the paper over their
heads. Some could not resist the urge to make paper airplanes. Organizers made
commands into the speakerphone, like, “White students, get closer to green
students.” Apparently, the Kuwaiti flag in the pictures looked unacceptably
patchy and we needed to bunch together. My friend found my fear of the roof
collapsing very funny and bounced up and down to make the roof wobble even
more. Needless to say, we all survived, and more importantly, no one died in a display of nationalism, taking part in a human flag formation.
When I told another teacher that students took the news of
me leaving surprisingly well, she said, “They’re used to it. Teachers leave all
the time.” But here I must contest that I am not just any ordinary teacher who
comes for two years and leaves again. I am not just one red square in a giant
flag formation. I am a unique individual who recognizes students as unique
individuals with limitless potential. I can’t imagine the hurt students must go
through having to say goodbye to teachers every year. Sometimes they don’t even
have the chance to say goodbye. I thought I had built a resilience to having
transitory friendships as an international teacher, but I think it’s something
you never quite get used to.
Because I’ve maintained some level of independence, buying
and carrying my own groceries rather than having them delivered to my door, and
cleaning my own apartment rather than hiring someone, one of my friends tells
me that I’ll have an easier time transitioning to living back in the states.
One aspect of living in the states that I have not forgotten is that people are
recognized more for their individual qualities, even when political factions
are quick to judge people with opposing views.
Yesterday, I was reflecting on the fact that so many people
living in Kuwait express the same grievances. People complain of being horribly disrespected. They say the people in their home countries are friendly, but as
soon as they come here and see the tactics some use to assert their power, they
become . . . mean. There’s no other word
for it. Just that simple word that denotes senseless playground taunting, but
this kind of meanness shouldn’t be associated with children, because these are
adults taking part in this kind of behavior.
Recently, I went into Jo Malone, just to sample some of the
luxurious perfumes. The saleslady treated me to a complementary hand massage
and a lesson about pairing scents. The art to pairing scents, she said, is to
choose two that will complement each other perfectly. They must bring out the
unique qualities in the other. Both scents, even if one is warm and the other
is intense, can create a lovely new fragrance. Wouldn’t that be nice if people
could work together the same way? Nobody likes it when domineering
personalities take over like a cloying perfume, and yet this is what so many mild-mannered people, the warmer perfumes, experience every day.
