Chapter 6: The Snake King - My Name Is Samim

I am in the busy school corridor, trying to remember how to breathe.

Boys and girls around my age and older walk past me, talking, laughing and staring at their phones. No one is looking at me, so I keep telling myself I’m safe and no one here will hurt me, but the worry demons are back and their whispers numb me again:

You are not one of them. You will never be one of them. You are alone. No one cares about you. And the thought I fear the most: You don’t know what’s going to happen.

We have a saying in Dari: “Once bitten by a snake, one fears a long-stretched rope.” When my worry demons are awake, I think everyone around me is a snake. My chest tightens, and I struggle to breathe.

“You are safe here. This is all we ever wanted, remember?” Zayn tells me. “So, snap out of it, you melon-head!”

3.141592653589793…

Rita and Ayan have been assigned to show me around. I’ve been following them for the past hour, but I’m so lost in my worries that I miss most of what they tell me. I just nod and say “yes” to everything they ask.

We walk into the lunch hall, and Rita explains how a vending machine works. I put a coin in the slot, pick a treat and watch it drop into the machine pocket.

“Nice!” Rita pats my shoulder.

“Darn it! I want a shot too!” Zayn rubs his hands in excitement.

I grab my chocolate bar from the vending machine and turn back to Rita, but instead I see a group of boys. One of them is a step ahead of the bunch. He’s got curly yellow hair and grey eyes that scan me up and down.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“Samim.” I stretch out my arm for a handshake.

The guy stares at my hand for a few seconds and then bursts into laughter. His friends join him, their shoulders shaking.

I peer at Ayan and Rita, and they give each other sidelong glances.

“I don’t think the sheep-head wants to be friends,” Zayn says, and I lower my hand.

I kind of guessed that myself.

“Where did you come from?” the boy asks.

“Afghanistan.”

“Oh great! Another poor little boy from Africa who wants to be like us.” He rolls his eyes, turning back to his friends.

“Afghanistan is not in Africa,” I say.

The boy’s smugness drops, and he steps forward, pushing his flushed face so close to mine that I think our noses are about to touch.

“You see, Samim,” he hisses in my face, “no one cares where Afghanistan is.”

My heart races as I look into his squinting, angry eyes.

“Ignore him,” Zayn says. “He’s just marking his territory. As my sweet grandmother, whose snore could wake Egyptian mummies, used to say, ‘The barking dog doesn’t bite.’”

Ayan pulls me back by my arm, and we start walking away.

“Not look back,” he says.

The demons start hissing in my head: We told you so – you’re never safe!

“Who was that?” I ask.

“Max,” Ayan says. “His friends are snakes, and he is snake king.”

I gape at Ayan, waiting to learn more, but he’s just stuffing his face with crisps. He notices my stares and stretches the crisp packet to me. “Want?”

I shake my head.

Rita snatches a crisp from Ayan’s packet. “Max is the most popular kid at school and a chess champion,” she says. “He won so many competitions, he was even on TV once! Kind of a school celebrity. The teachers adore him, only they have no idea how horrible he really is.” She rolls her eyes.

“He popular and bad,” Ayan adds, shaking the empty crisp bag over his mouth. “Popular and bad makes very bad.”

“It’s true, Max is a bully,” Rita says, “and the guys he hangs out with will do anything he says. So best stay away from him.”

Gladly, I think to myself.

“Can I do a chess competition?” I ask after a pause, and Rita and Ayan stop to stare at me for a second.

I’ve surprised myself, too, by asking the question. I only just started school. I can hardly breathe, I’m so anxious all the time. Why did I even say that?

“Do you play chess?” Rita asks.

“I do.”

“Nice!”

“You good?” Ayan asks.

“I think so.”

“Then you should sign yourself up for the chess club,” Rita says. “Mr Adams runs it. But watch out, because Max is the club’s star and he won’t share the spotlight with you.”

A sudden loud ringing noise makes me flinch. “What is that?”

“It’s not danger,” Ayan says quickly. “It’s school bell.”

He puts his giant hand on my shoulder and holds my gaze, trying to make sure I am okay, and I can see he gets it. Of course he does. The scar on his face is from a bombing. Ayan also comes from a land where loud noise is often followed by death.

3.141592653589… I count and breathe, count and breathe…

“Time for our maths class. Remember what room it is?” Rita points at the piece of paper they printed out for me.

“It’s room 26,” I say without looking. I don’t forget numbers.

“Nice.” Rita smiles at me, and we walk to room 26 together.

* * *

Mr Adams is our maths teacher. He is tall and wears a red checked shirt, jeans and glasses. He talks to me outside the classroom first, asking my age and how long I’ve been in the UK, and then introduces me to the class.

“This is Samim,” he says, but I can’t hear anything after that.

The room is full of mostly fair-skinned children in clean white shirts and red ties, and they all stare at me. This school, this class, is nothing like the one I used to go to back home. My school was a one-storey mud-brick house with four rooms. We sat on the rugged floor and had two teachers for all subjects.

This is their class. This is their country. They have families and homes, and I don’t. I have nothing. I am nobody.

My ears start burning, and I squeeze my fingers under my bracelet, wriggling it back and forth.

“Not again.” Zayn slaps his forehead. “You are not very different from them! You too had a home and parents and friends. You are just unluckier than they are, that’s all.”

Zayn is right. I know Zayn is right, but I can’t help how I feel. It’s like a bat is trapped inside my chest, its wings stirring up a storm of panic.

3.141592653…

“Have a seat, Samim.” Mr Adams points at the only free seat in the room. It’s next to a girl. Darn it!

As I slump on the chair, my face reddens.

Zayn chuckles. “Hello, pomegranate!”

Mr Adams gives everyone a piece of paper with many questions.

“It’s a maths test,” he explains, seeing my eyes widen. “Don’t worry about the result. It’s just for me to see what level you’re at.”

I don’t understand the questions in the test very well, but I can guess what I need to do from the numbers I see.

A few minutes later, I return the test to Mr Adams.

“Do you have a question?” he asks.

I shake my head.

He takes the paper, checks the answers and raises his eyebrows. “Very good.”

He hands me another test, and five minutes later, I bring it back to him. Mr Adams looks through my answers and stares at me for a few seconds.

“Oh, how I love these moments!” Zayn clenches his fist in excitement. “When they figure out you’re a genius. Ha! Just give him something really hard to solve!” he tells Mr Adams.

I try to ignore Zayn. He has always been more excited about the things I can do than I am. He would boast to our classmates about how good I was at maths, challenge the neighbourhood boys to a chess game with me, and find every opportunity to show off our pi powers. Zayn loved attention, and I hate it.

Of course, Mr Adams doesn’t see or hear Zayn, but he does exactly what Zayn asks anyway. He gives me a third test, which is much more difficult. This one has twenty-two questions, and according to the classroom clock, I take around fourteen minutes and twenty-nine seconds to complete it.

Once I hand the test back to him, Mr Adams examines it and finds one mistake.

“Did you understand the task in this one?” He points at my wrong answer.

“Not really, I just guessed. I don’t understand English maths words very well.”

“That explains why you got this one wrong,” he mutters while scanning my paper.

Everyone else is doing a test, too, which is good because their heads are down and no one is staring at me any more.

“This is impressive, Samim,” Mr Adams says. “You’re thirteen, but I gave you a test for much older students.”

“Ha! You should see him counting pi!” Zayn beams. “Count, Samim! Show him!”

I roll my eyes at Zayn while Mr Adams rereads my answers.

“Do you play chess by any…?”

“I love chess!” I shout, interrupting Mr Adams and raising everyone’s heads.

Curses! Now it’s Zayn who is rolling his eyes at me. Blood rushes to my face.

“Excellent,” Mr Adams says. “We have an after-school chess club on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You are welcome to join, if you like.”

I nod.

“Well, that’s settled then. I’ll talk to your…” – Mr Adams pauses – “guardian about it, and we’ll see you at the club on Thursday. I’ll print the details for you. Well done, Samim!”

I nod again and rush back to my seat.

“What’s ‘guardian’?” Zayn asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Guardian sounds cool. Like a gladiator!”

“I don’t think I need a gladiator to go to a chess club,” I whisper through my teeth, and the girl beside me gives me a weird look.

“True,” Zayn says, sitting on my desk. “I bet a gladiator would rather lose his arm to a lion than watch a bunch of nerds play chess,” he chuckles, and I give him an eyeroll.

If Zayn was alive, I’d slap him on the head, and then he’d push me on the ground and we’d roll around, wrestling and laughing. But now, all I can do is roll my eyes at him. And it’s nowhere near as satisfying as slapping him on the head.