Ahmed Aziz's Epic Year

Book

One

Chapter

One

Three years ago, we moved for the first time in my life. In fact, apart from the two nights at a neighbor’s house when half the town was looking for my dad, I had spent every night of my twelve years in the same house, sleeping in the same room, in the same bed.

Three years ago, I learned that sometimes you have choices without having a choice. Like getting to eat out, as long as it’s an Indian restaurant. Or buying a new video game, as long as it’s parent approved. Or choosing something new to wear for Eid, as long as it’s fancy.

Three years ago, we had to leave Hawaii. We had no choice. We could have moved to California, or Japan, or Minnesota. We had choices.

My parents chose Minnesota.

Story of my life.

Chapter

Two

I was mad at Mom for making us move our lives while Dad was still sick. Seething. No conversations, no discussions.

I pulled a guava off the tree before getting in the car. The tree Dad had planted the day I was born, with a line scratched and a date carved on the trunk marking my height on every birthday. I slouched down, arms crossed, and baseball hat pulled low. I waited for Mom to notice how angry I was. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, tapping on the steering wheel, bobbing her head from side to side, and singing all the wrong words to a Prince song. Gimme a red Corvette. Baby, you’re much too bad. The guava was hard and still sour. Sara joined in from the back, clapping and snapping out of tune and out of sync. I was surrounded by weirdos.

Come on, Ahmed! Mom yelled over the music, either oblivious or unaffected by my anger. I looked out the window instead.

I hated visiting hours. Don’t get me wrong, I love my dad. I especially love my memories of Dad before he got sick. What I didn’t love was the unpredictability. If his hair was unbrushed and the blinds were closed, it was going to be a rough visit. Sometimes he barely recognized me. If he was showered and sunshine flooded the room, he would be ready to come home.

Sara climbed between the front seats to get out of the car, stepping on my fingers, adding injury to insult. Maybe a move to Minnesota would mean a car with back doors that opened.

I made my guesses as we waited for the elevator. The family with the balloons was obviously a sixth-floor family. They were laughing, and the little girl wore a pink I’m a big sister now T-shirt. They were going to the labor and delivery floor. The man with the gray beard and bald head who didn’t look up when the girl started to sing must have been an eighth-floor family. That was the cancer floor.

The seventh floor was ours. Squeezed between the joy of new babies and the sadness of cancer, the seventh floor was where my father had spent too many months of the past year.

Cirrhosis, the doctor called it, his lisp stinging my ears like static on the radio. A year ago, Dad’s doctor drew pictures on the whiteboard explaining how a backed-up liver let toxins build up until Dad became confused and goofy. He called it a blocked drain, like bad plumbing. Bad plumbing makes your toilets overflow; it doesn’t make your dad forget who you are. I asked the doctor why Dad’s liver was cirrhotic. Was it something we brought home from school like lice or strep throat? The doctor smiled so wide, his eyes turned to tiny slits. No, he assured us, that’s not how cirrhosis works. Dad had a rare genotype of hepatitis C, the doctor explained, but I didn’t understand what he meant. Sometimes you can have all the right words but not know how to use them. What they meant to say was that Dad had an infection, a type of hepatitis C, a type he inherited from his mom, a type that was hard to cure. The only solution, they all agreed, was a liver transplant, but rare genotype apparently also meant they couldn’t give him one.

The seventh floor was also the transplant floor, but my father was an impostor, because he needed a transplant and couldn’t get one. So even when the whiteboard cheerfully spelled Happy Birthday, Bilal! in multicolored balloon letters, I hated it.

I pushed the door open with my back, my hands gripping the still warm plate of pakodas. The room was bright, and Dad was smiling. It was going to be a good visit.

What’s going on, guys? he asked. I’m looking forward to some company today. Missed all of you. The white of his eyes was a lighter yellow than two days ago.

Sara started, not taking a moment to breathe. She filled him in on her latest dance recital and the book she was writing and how she was going to learn to knit scarves and sell them at the fair and how she was going to donate all the money she would make to research for liver disease. She had a hundred plans brewing. Most of them were created on the spot, and none of them would leave the room with her.

Dad focused on scratching his arm, not meeting my eyes. What about you, Ahmed? Do you hate me?

Hate him?

Umm . . . for what? I asked.

Well, I’m sure you’re not thrilled about moving to Minnesota, but the doctors say that’s the place to be. There’s an experimental treatment for my hepatitis and an experienced surgeon that may be the perfect combination for me.

What? I was confused.

They think I have a decent chance of getting ready for a liver transplant, and—

"We’re moving to Minnesota because you want to?" I asked.

I looked at Mom, but she was helping Sara get gum out of her hair, her back turned to me.

"Want is a strong word, Ahmed. This treatment is only available in a few places. Japan, California, and Minnesota."

And you chose Minnesota?

Dad worked on undoing a knot on the tie of his gown, still not meeting my eyes. Sometimes, in the hospital, it was like he was the child and I was the grown-up. Don’t scratch your arm, I wanted to tell him. Don’t play with that knot.

Yeah, I didn’t think I’d be ready either. I loved Minnesota when I was a child. He pulled at the knot, making it tighter, not looser. I didn’t think I’d ever want to move back, you know, because . . .

Because your brother died? I finished his sentence for him.

Yes. It’s been a long time, but maybe this is the push I need to go back.

And that was our only conversation about the move, but it was the only one we needed.

Chapter

Three

With zero packing experience, I squeezed twelve years of life into cardboard cartons. Things I couldn’t have lived without a month ago—the leftover pieces from the gaming PC I built and the tennis shoes with the frayed laces—had to be given away, and all my belongings with their irregular shapes and curves were squared into eighteen-inch boxes.

It felt like the minute Dad was strong enough to leave the hospital, we were elbowing each other for armrests, eating pretzels, and flying over the Pacific Ocean. Like we couldn’t wait to get to Minnesota.

The low battery alert blinked in the corner of my screen, and I searched every pocket of my backpack for my charger.

Mom, you didn’t remind me to pack my charger for the plane.

She ignored my accusation and put a book in my lap instead. For Mom, every situation was an opportunity to shove a book in my lap. She didn’t give up easily.

The title was printed across the cover in big red letters. Holes. An envelope stuck out in the middle like a thick bookmark. As if I’d ever get halfway through a book. The return address was Cedar Valley Middle School, Farthing, Minnesota. My new school. The envelope had already been opened, and I unfolded the letter inside.

Dear Ahmed,

I hope you had another wonderful school year. I am excited to have you join us for the sixth-grade accelerated Language Arts class.

We have a lot to get through this year.

I do have a favor to ask. Could you please read the following books before the first day of school? There’s a good chance you’ve read one, if not all of them, when you were younger. I’d like you to read them again. We are going to study the stories in these books and learn how they are still relevant to our lives. We will study what we like in them and discuss what we don’t. My hope is we will learn to find commonality in what first seems distant from our day-to-day existence.

At the end of the year I’m always thrilled to hear how much everyone has learned when we hold the Are you smarter than Mrs. Gaarder? contest, where one group of students uses their knowledge of the books to try to win the huge, shiny, Stanley Cup–sized trophy that has been on my desk for six years. I am yet to be defeated. But there will be brownies.

Happy reading!

Holes by Louis Sachar

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg

Can’t wait to meet you!

Mrs. Gaarder

P.S. Ahmed, we’re so excited to have you join us in Minnesota. We can’t wait to hear all about life in Hawaii and what it’s like to catch a wave.

Geez. Was it possible to hate a place before you’d seen it?

I’m not dumb. In fact, quite the opposite. I knew it well before I sat through eight hours of testing in third grade, and before my mom, school counselor, and teachers knew to use phrases like achieve his potential and find his motivation. I think everyone was surprised to discover I’m smart, because I don’t read. I mean I know how to do it; I just didn’t like to. If you don’t like to read, people assume you’re dumb. Even more irritating is the idea that if you like to read, you must be smart. I don’t like reading, but I like words. I realize that sounds contradictory, but I like how one perfect word can replace a whole sentence. Efficient.

I had a better idea for an assignment. I could spend the entire flight studying everything wrong with the letter. For starters, it’s wrong to call an assignment a favor. You’re not fooling anyone when you do. I hate assumptions. I know what people assume when they think of Hawaii. They assume everyone would be surfing, eating pineapples, or stocking up on Spam. Stereotypes. I have never surfed in my life, pineapple makes my mouth itch, and I have never tasted any version of pork, let alone the canned variety.

I already missed the familiarity of what I had, where everyone had known me my entire life, as I had known them. They knew I was a different shade of brown because my parents came from India. They knew we sent biryani to the neighbors on Eid because we were Muslim. They knew Sara would wear tutus every day if Mom let her. And they knew if the blinds were down in our front window, someone was sick. They knew without needing an explanation.

I had a feeling there would be a lot of explaining in my future.

My finger traced the title, each letter raised so I could follow the word with my eyes closed. Holes. Only one word. Which made me like this author better than the others already.

I wondered what kind of holes he was talking about. How many? And what was in them? I’d read enough to find out. But not a page more.

I made it halfway through after all, like the letter wedged in the middle had predicted, and I have to admit it wasn’t terrible. Mainly because this Stanley Yelnats was an okay guy. I could see myself hanging out with him. All he wanted was to make a few friends, not worry his parents, and get through being away from home.

I pushed Sara’s shoulders back to look out the window as we landed. There was lake after lake, and field after field.

That’s corn and soy, Dad said.

As if I cared. More obvious was what I didn’t see. There were no palm trees. There was no beach. And I’ll tell you what, for a kid who could count on one hand how many times he’d been to the beach in the last year, I was surprised by how much I missed it.

I thought of that part in Holes where Stanley left his home and family. He was on his way to a camp that was more jail and less camp. Looking out the window of the bus, there was nothing but hay and cotton, and he felt like he was on a ride to nowhere.

That’s when I recognized it. I liked Stanley so much because he was me. Or maybe I was him.

Chapter

Four

It was raining when we landed in Minneapolis–St. Paul (Twin Cities, Dad said, to uncaring ears), and our bags took enough time at the conveyor belt to give strangers the chance to be friendly. Where’re you kids from? the old lady holding the carrier with her dog’s head peeking out asked. I hated that question. I hated having to explain myself with an adjective. I didn’t feel like an Indian American, and it didn’t matter that I had never been to India, because the color of my skin meant I needed to explain.

Well, my mom’s from India. My dad’s parents are from India, but he’s from here. And I’m American. No adjective, thank you very much.

That’s nice, honey. But I meant where are you flying from. We’re coming in from Seattle. It was raining there too.

I hate assumptions, even when they’re mine. Oh. We’re from Hawaii.

We got drenched waiting for a taxi with our four overstuffed suitcases, which we shoved and repositioned but couldn’t fit in one car. It didn’t feel right to get there in two separate cars. Dad and Sara took the first taxi, and Sara spent the ride looking out the back, writing notes to me in big letters pressed against the window, allowing me to ignore my new scenery.

We’re in Minnesota! Umm, I noticed.

So exciting! No way.

Looks pretty cool. Don’t think so.

Our tiny and partially unwilling caravan made its way to our new home. Just like that, we had a new home. Boxes waited patiently for us in a house Mom had picked, in a neighborhood Dad had chosen. We hadn’t unlocked the front door before Sara declared it sweet and Mom called it lovely. I thought it was fine. We were in a cul-de-sac; we had a red door; we had a basement. I had never been in a basement, but like every movie, the steps creaked on the way down, and there were corners where no light reached, even with my flashlight. Mom’s promise from years ago was finally fulfilled; Sara and I had our own rooms. It was strange to see boxes with my handwriting in a room I had never been. Computer. Ahmed’s room, I had written in what seemed like a different lifetime, on a different planet. The first time I heard my voice in a video, I was surprised that the words coming out of my mouth sounded nothing like me. This felt the same. I may have written the words, but seeing them in this house made no sense.

I looked around my room. There would never be princesses on the wall or safety pins from half-finished friendship bracelets threatening to poke me on my bed. Instead, there were three dead flies on the floor.

Chapter

Five

Mom told us stories about her childhood in India any chance she got. When we talked about how the hot dogs at school bounced when you dropped them, she told us about her delicious tiffin box of fried fish and rice. When we complained about no legroom in the backseat, she told us about squeezing fifteen people into an Ambassador car. She’d go on and on. Ad nauseam. Unlike Dad, who said nothing.

Leave him alone, Mom would say when we pressed him for details. He’s not a sharer.

And he usually wasn’t. But every year for his birthday, Dad’s friend Janet sent a package from Minnesota, and every Eid aunties and uncles sent cards. The arrival of these pried loose a story or two. Sara and I loved the opening of the box. We sat on the floor, and Dad ceremoniously sliced through the tape, leaving the top open, colored tissue peeking out. There was always a bag of candy. The red-and-green cover of Nut Goodies, Peppermint Patties, caramels, and taffy. Minnesota candy, Dad called it. Also known as candy available at the gas station around the corner from our house. There was always a brown plastic jug with the label Maple Syrup Tapped and Packed from Janet’s Backyard Just for You that would make an appearance at our table every Sunday morning for pancakes. A small Ziploc bag stuffed with pressed leaves in red and yellow and gold was Dad’s favorite part