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severity and harshness. One of those memories is of the way we used to buy donut-shaped loaves of bread with sesame seeds on top during recess and, if we had no salt to put on them, we would use in its place the lime that came leaching out of the courtyard walls. Our aged teacher used to like to drink a glass of licorice tea during the first period. As he drank it, he would command us to stand up and turn our backs to him for fear that some harm might come to him from our voracious eyes. He came to class one day with a sour look on his face. He said that he’d had a stomachache the night before and that he had no doubt but that one of us had stolen a glance at him as he drank his licorice. He warned us that unless we revealed the culprit’s identity, we’d all get a smack on the hand. And since we were ignorant of who the culprit was, we all got the promised smack. Our other teacher was also an elderly man. However, being a gentle soul, he never struck any of us unless he was at his wits’ end. His favorite method of getting us to be quiet and maintaining order was to frighten us with talk of the goblin that had lived since ancient times under the room’s floorboards. He would tell us that the goblin didn’t like loud ruckuses, and if things got out of control, he would crouch down and tap on the floor. Then, in a tone of meekness and dread, he would say, “Pardon them, master! They don’t realize what they’re doing! Don’t ride their backs, please, and forgive them this time!”
    On the academic plane, I learned nothing whatsoever. I suppose the only thing I mastered at Roda National Primary School was the art of measuring time by watching the sunlight move down the classroom walls as I counted the seconds before the bell rang. If the teacher addressed aquestion to me, all it meant was that I would get so many smacks with a ruler on the back of my hand, and in the course of an entire academic year, all I memorized were a few short suras from the Qur’an that I used to hear my mother recite during her prayers. When it came time for the final exam, I earned a set of zeros that, if it had come in some context other than that scandalous report card, would have sufficed to make me a millionaire.
    When my grandfather saw the report card he was furious.
    “This is the result of your pampering,” he told my mother sharply. “You’ve spoiled him, Madame!”
    Then, threatening to make the school principal pay the consequences, he went to meet him at the school. An hour later he returned, saying with satisfaction, “Well, sir, you’ve passed by force! And don’t you dare fail next year!”
    I’d entertained the hope that in view of my failure, they might decide not to send me back to school again. So when my grandfather announced the glad tidings of this “success” of mine that he’d wrested by force from the powers that be, I felt disappointed. When the second year rolled around, it was no better than the first. In fact, my misery was intensified by a slip of the tongue that made the remainder of my days at the Roda National Primary School even more loathsome than the ones that had preceded them. One day I raised my hand to request the teacher’s permission to leave the classroom. However, instead of saying, “sir,” I called him, “Mama” by mistake!
    The whole class roared with laughter. The teacher himself laughed, replying sarcastically, “Yes, mama’s boy?”
    And with that, the class broke into loud guffaws all over again. Speechless and mortified, I sat there in a stuporwhile my eyes filled with tears. I didn’t have a single friend or companion among them, and in fact, it was during that time so long ago that I began suffering the inability to make friends. Not one of them had the least compassion for me. From that time onward they called me “Mama” until they even stopped calling me by my real name. Defeated and helpless, I avoided them, though a fury raged within me.
    At the end of the year,