I’m hiding in the sewing machine cabinet – in that little “room” you get when its top panel folds open sideways – like the cover of a giant book – to form a work surface, resting on the cabinet door opened at 180 degrees.
Through the gap at the top edge of my little chamber, I see him enter the sewing-room now for the third time. This time I see tell-tale signs that he’s worried, and that he stopped having fun playing hide-n-seek a while ago. I have come by now to recognize these signs since I’ve paired with him on our two-seater desks this academic year; his usual stutter intensifies into an endless struggle to articulate, and he grasps the back of one hand with the other to crack his knuckles in a state of fidgety anxiety, his shoulders hitched up just a wee bit. He’s stuttering out my name, careful not to be too loud to disturb my family who are vaguely going about their business in the background.
I’m congratulating myself at the spot I’ve chosen. I’ve used it before of course, and always knew it would work like a charm with my new best friend in this new class – Junior 3B.
The memory file’s corrupted after that – I probably take him out of his misery and we fool around until he gets picked up by his father. It’s autumn 1980.
Not long after the day of the visit described here, he didn’t come to school one day. It was middle of the week, so I thought he might be ill and that I’d probably call him in the afternoon to check. There was no answer. I never saw him again.
There was talk about his family having packed up and left over-night because of his father’s financial problems. It was probably some bounced checks, with the threat of imminent arrest, and the prospect of a cosy and respectable middle-class lifestyle being chewed up in scandal and left in shambles – as much the bane of Dubai 30 years ago as it is today.
Over the years, I doubt if I’ve exerted more effort in tracking anyone down through the net as I have done for Avinash…if I only remembered his surname!
He used to teasingly call people “banya” (loosely meaning a stingy merchant), had beautiful handwriting, and used a peculiar type of fountain pen that had an elongated nib with flared shoulders, and a transparent stem. He used to stick this pen – cigarette-fashion – between the ring and middle fingers of his clenched right fist, which he theatrically put to his mouth for mock inhalation, his elbow sticking outwards like an uncouth, lovable rogue. His dark brown hair made you think of a porcupine – so discrete, so erect, you saw right through to the scalp whichever way you looked….I remember thinking how his comb probably glided through his hair without any effect. And he was very pale. He was the type that are timid in class but irrepressibly sprightly with mates – extroverts trapped in the bodies of introverts – who love social interaction, but feel painfully inhibited in public.
I wonder how his life turned out.
Notes to Self 
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