CHANGE

There’s a reason I’ve been hiding this little tidbit about myself. I’ll explain why later…

This is a true story— as are all the others. A strange mix of delusion, destruction, and dementedness that was my life for a long time:

His name was Shafiq

His name was Shafiq. His title was “Resident Butt of Joke.” I never laughed in his face. But I laughed AT him often. There was the way he smelled of unknown spices- no Eternity or Drakkar, but an offensive melange of scents that stung the nose. There was the way he used olive oil in his hair. There was the mere presence of his accent, pronounced and unmitigated. I avoided contact with him and entered into memory, “Beware of Eccentric Foreigner.”

He was a foreign exchange student at the Naval Academy. From Sri Lanka if memory serves me correctly. After having survived the degradation and debasement of your first year, you are switched to a whole new set of leaders. Shafiq was a junior in the company I was moved to. A junior at the Academy is called a “flamer.” That’s because their job is to abuse the first years (plebes), make them do push-ups while stuttering out the menu of the day, or a newspaper article from the Washington Post. They are supposed to “flame” out at every plebe’s incongruity or iniquity. The more ruthless, the better.

Sophomores were called “skates.” Their job was ancillary to the flamer, but rarely defined. Most sophomores “skated” through the hallways barely noticing plebes, just thankful that they weren’t them anymore. Others, like my androgynous roommate (the singular person in this world that I openly hate without remorse), woke up extra early, to demand that plebes answer her trivia questions or be punished. She would wait for them in the dimmed lights of the pre-dawn hallways, so that the first plebe that sheepishly exited their room would be met with the clamor of her voice.

I would happily skate out of our room, towards the women’s bathroom (head in military speak), ignoring her pathetic ploy for power. I passed Shafiq, who already had two plebes against the wall, eyes not daring to meet his. He was making a feeble attempt to be rude. Looking back on it now, I don’t think he had it in him. His voice was deep, quiet, and pock-marked by his mother tongue. The worst these plebes could expect from him was a scathing look from his sad, black eyes. Only once, did I see him drop them for push-ups. He was incensed by their inadequacies, and maybe, just maybe, by his own in that world of crew-cut, American boys.

I grew up in a small town in the Midwest (in case this is the first post you’ve read here). There were two minority students in my high school of 1500- Bobby, African-American, and myself, Asian. I went from the tightly knit fabric of midwestern homogeny, to an even more tightly wound society at the Naval Academy. There were a few more Asians (3 in my class of 1200), and many more African-Americans, but we were woven into the quilt of patriotism and elitism. I don’t know how many times we were told we were the “cream of the crop,” the “best and the brightest,” the “few and the brave.” We become indelibly wrapped up in our inculcated sense of self-worth.

Shafiq probably didn’t understand this. He was the only foreign exchange student in the entire school that was Muslim. I didn’t know that then. I didn’t know that the strange cut-out carpet that I spied in his room was a prayer rug. I didn’t know that the strange book in a foreign script that I threw aside while searching for something to write with was the Quran. I didn’t know that all of those times I joined in the raucous laughter involving him, would be a door of regret to be opened years later.

One night a roar of laughter erupted from the hallways attracting a crowd. Never one to miss the action, I zoomed in on its center. Shafiq was in the arms of three upperclassmen. They had taken him out and boozed him up. Safe from his unconsciousness, they spun tales of the ridiculousness of his actions. The inexperience that deemed him a fool. He vomited in the bar. He vomited in the street. He passed out on the sidewalk. “What an idiot!” they would say amidst the laughter of the would-be-fools, myself included.

That is my last memory of Shafiq. I know he graduated, and was immediately returned to his country for duty. I wonder what he would tell his compatriots of his time amongst America’s “cream of the crop.” I wonder what he would think of the girl who would one day love that book she tossed aside irreverently, one day, long ago.