Nightmarish remembrences

that's a picture of my school, or part of it at least.

I would lay on the lower bunk, my small feet high in the air barely touching the bars of the bed above. The amount of bars my feet would reach would be the amount of years i'de live in the US i told myself. I had just moved back from living in Virginia to living in Egypt and the culture shock, the school system, plus everything else was just too overwhelming for me. On my first day of school the teacher bust a ruler on my hand because my Arabic writing wasn't good enough, if that was just the first day how were the rest of my days going to be like. It would only be later that i would prefect being rebellious and refusing to open my hands to receive the stick but maintain an angelic face as well. It was a world of eat or be eaten. Elementary school drama that ruined your school career, and not to mention the connections you had to have in order to survive. Our neighbor, Mr. Ahmad worked in my school as a teacher and i can't say how much i took advantage of that. He became known as my uncle in the school and he never objected. whenever it was that any of my friends or I were going to get in trouble for being late to class, skipping class or any other thing involving getting into trouble, i would smile at them confidently and we would head to the teachers lounge for one of "3amo Ahmad's" notes.