My English teacher, Mr. Jamir Ahmed said, “So you want to go to America! Is that right? You don’t even know how to spell English! Go to the board and write English, in English.” I walked to the blackboard. Picked up the chalk. I turned towards the class. My fourth grade classmates were laughing, not loudly, but confidently. Then I turned back to the board. I raised my hand. I didn’t write anything. I waited. I put the chalk on the board. I waited. I wanted to write it, but I did not. 

     “Write!” 

     I did not write. I did not know how to spell English. 

    “Why are you not writing?” 

     I still did not write. 

     “You do not know how to write English, in English?” 

     I put the chalk back on the board. I wrote, “anglis.” 

     My classmates began to laugh. “Oh look what he wrote on the board!” They laughed and laughed and laughed. 

     Mr. Jamir came over to me, and said, “English for you is as far as America is from this classroom. Go back to your seat.” 

     “Is this not right?” 

     “No.” 

     “What is the right answer then?” 

     “You are asking me for the answer?” 

     “Yes. Because I do not know.” 

     “Go back to your seat.” 

     I went back to my seat. My friends were still laughing and teasing. 

     Then Mr. Jamir asked the class to be quiet. 

     “Who knows the correct spelling?” 

     We stayed silent. 

     “Anyone?” 

     No one said anything. 

     Then Mr. Jamir asked another student to write it on the board. 

     He went up and wrote: English. 

     “Is this the correct spelling?” 

     Some of us said, yes. Others said, no. 

     Mr. Jamir said, “This is correct! Remember to always spell it with the capital letter E. That’s important.” 

     That was exactly what my life had been like since the news about my future emigration to America broke. 

     Being naive is happiness. Being naive is tranquil. 

     People looked at me suspiciously whenever they found out that I would emigrate to America soon. First, they would squint their eyes, then ask me all sorts of questions, and then laugh. They listened. They heard. They pondered. Ultimately, no one believed it. 

     My eldest aunt, my mother’s eldest sister, Zanu, applied for us to go to America the year before. The news of that application put us in a different category of social status. People looked at us differently. They could not believe it. They could not completely deny it. They certainly thought about it more than we did. 

     “Where is America! It’s not easy to go there.” 

     “But the sister is there. If the sister is there, then the sister can bring them over.”

     “We will see. One cannot wish to go there and then be there just like that.” 

     “I think they will go.” 

     “Dreaming is free. Let them dream and keep the nightmares away.” 

      I committed a crime. My teachers caught me. They needed to talk to my parents. I sat at the headmaster’s office waiting for my Manoni to come over. 

     They could not find me after lunch. My backpack was on my desk, but I was not there. Some of my friends knew where I was and they told the teachers about my whereabouts. I was on the roof of the building, sitting in the shade under the giant mahogany tree branches that grew next to the building. When they found me, I had a few pages of printouts, a notebook, and a Bengali-English dictionary in front of me. 

     “What is all this?” 

     “I’m reading a story.” 

     “Lunchtime is over. We were worried about your whereabouts.” 

     “I am sorry.” 

     “You haven’t been paying attention to your studies these days.” That’s nothing new, I thought. 

     “I lost track of time.” 

     “Do you have a watch?” 

     “No.” 

     “Then how were you keeping track of time?” 

     “I did not hear the bell ringing.” 

     “Becauase you are not interested in school anymore.” 

     “I never miss school, sir!” 

     “What are you reading anyway?” 

     “A story by Ernest Hemingway. Big Two-Hearted River.” 

     “Why are you reading it?” 

     “I like Hemingway.” 

     “Who is that?” 

     “An American writer sir!” 

     “You should pay more attention to your textbooks.” 

     “Yes, sir!” 

     A few other teachers and students showed up. 

     “What is he doing here?” 

     “Reading some story.” 

      “We need to lock the access to the roof. It is not good. It is dangerous for children.”

     “We should.” 

     “Is that in English?” 

     “Yes, sir!” 

     “How are you reading it? Do you understand it?” 

     “Sir, I am translating every word. I have this dictionary here.” 

     “You are?” 

     “Yes, sir!” 

     “What is the story about?” 

     “I don’t know yet. I don’t completely understand it.” 

     “But you are reading it!” 

     “I am. But I do not understand it yet. I only read a page and a half so far.”

     “Who asked you to read this story?” 

     “No one. I wanted to.” 

     “How did you come about this story?” 

     “I asked my Abbu to find me Hemingway’s works and one of his friends made this photocopy for us.” 

     “Why Hemingway?” 

     “He is a good writer. He wrote The Old Man and The Sea. I have watched the film on TV. It was great.” 

     “Have you read it?” 

     “No. I want to.” 

     Mr. Jamir kicked up the copy of the story and read the first page, skimmed through the rest of the pages, and then read the last page. 

     “Nothing good here. Not age appropriate.” 

     “You mean?” 

     “No. Not that! Just rubbish.” 

     “We need to talk to his parents.” 

 

     “We must.” 

     My Abbu found a black and white photo of Hemingway in an old magazine in a used bookstore. He brought me a photocopy of that image. Hemingway smiling and holding onto the antlers of some kind of deer. 

     “This is in Africa. He enjoyed hunting.” 

     “What kind of deer are these?” 

     “Kudu.” 

     “Kudu! I never heard of it.” 

     “We don’t know so many things. We can never know everything.” 

     “Someday I will go to Africa and see a Kudu.” 

     “Anything is possible. One of your great grandfathers walked all the way to Mecca for the pilgrimage. He was on the road for three to four years. Anything is possible.” “I know.” 

     “You can do it too.” 

    “Hemingway looks very happy here.” 

     “He was like my age at that time, maybe a little older.” 

     “He looks a lot older than you.” 

     “People were like that back then. Looked older than their age. He was maybe like thirty-five.” 

     “That young?” 

     “Must be. I have something else for you.” 

     “What is it? 

     “A friend of mine found a story by Hemingway.” 

     “Really! Where is it?” 

     Abbu took the photocopied story out of a plastic bag and handed it to me. The pages were stapled together and crisp. I never read any photocopied stories before. I was excited anyway. “But this is in English!” 

     “You can use the dictionary to read it.” 

     “I can?” 

     “Of course you can.” 

     My Mamoni walked into the headmaster’s office. I sat on the chair next to the headmaster. The headmaster stood up to welcome Mamoni. There were a few other teachers in that office room, including, Mr. Jamir. 

     “Please come in. Have a seat.” 

     “What did he do?” 

     “Nothing very serious. But we need to discuss the matter.” 

     “What is it?” 

     “Does he read a lot at home?” 

     “He reads all the time.” 

     “What does he read?” 

     “All kinds of stuff. We have a big library at home. I don’t exactly know what he reads.” “That’s good. Reading is good. He skipped his classes today and was reading this on the roof of the school.” He handed the copy of the Big Two-Hearted River to Mamoni. “What is this?” 

     “You tell us.” 

     “I don’t know what this is. Maybe his Abbu gave it to him.” 

     “Where is his Abbu?” 

     “He was not at home so I came alone.” 

     “Perhaps we need to talk to him. This material is beyond his age. While reading is good, perhaps he should be focusing on his textbooks more.” 

     Mr. Jamir said, “His academic performance is very poor.” 

     “I know. I try my best to make him study every evening.” 

     “How about his Abbu?” 

     “He doesn’t spend time with him regarding his school stuff.” 

     “That’s a problem. He needs to encourage the boy to study textbooks first. Would you please kindly request your husband to come and see us?” 

     “Yes. Certainly.” 

     The headmaster said, “If the boy is spending time and energy trying to read something, that is good. What we need to do is shift his focus to textbooks. He is failing most of his classes.” “We will do our best.” 

     The headmaster looked at me, and said, “First the textbooks, then everything else. Understood?” 

     “Understood.” 

     Mamoni said to me, “Did you hear him? That’s what I have been telling you too. Do you really understand it? 

     “Yes.” 

     The headmaster said to Mamoni, “Thank you for coming over urgently. Please don’t forget to let your husband know.” 

     “I will.” 

     “Thank you.” 

     Abbu never went to see the headmaster. He said, “Don’t worry about it. Read what you want. Just pass your classes. When we go to America none of it would matter. The only thing that will matter are the things that are not in your textbooks.” 

     “You think so?” 

     “America is an advanced country. Once we pass through the American gate, we will enter the kind of world you and I like.” 

     “Are you sure?” 

     “Yes.” 

     “We need to be in America as soon as possible.” 

     “On this side of that America gate – fear, persecution, and darkness. On the other side of that gate – logic, science, and freedom.” 

     “I hope you are right.”