Over my desk in the children’s room, they still have the framed picture from our class trip. I remember how I did everything I could to get Bassel to agree to have his picture taken with me. My God, what an idiot I was. By seventh grade, all the kids knew everything. They’d huddle together in groups during recess, whispering to one another, blushing. I was never accepted. I never managed to become one of the gang. Bassel was the leader. He talked more than anyone, and he was always the one who managed to get the other boys to listen. He had them in his grip. He could fascinate them and he could make them laugh. We’d have long lessons together in carpentry shop, and the teacher almost always gave us something to do, planing or woodcutting, and then he’d leave us alone. In the carpentry shop there were only boys. The girls took home economics in a kitchen. They cooked and baked cakes all year round. In the carpentry shop the boys allowed themselves to talk freely. Sometimes I’d hear words like erection, hair, mustache, pain in the chest. They’d raise their arms and compare armpits, some of them already had black hair growing there. Sometimes they’d pull down their pants and break out in laughter or shouts, which they quickly muffled before any of the teachers heard them. They’d pinch one another’s chest and cringe.
In seventh grade there were three boys who were already shaving their mustache. Bassel was the first, and the other two imitated him. Everyone waited eagerly for the day they’d find black hair growing beneath their nose, and I was horrified at the thought that I would have to shave someday too. I don’t want to do it, I told myself, I wish I never had any hair at all.
When I’d get home and find myself alone in my room or in the bathroom, I’d pinch myself in the nipples and convince myself that I couldn’t feel a thing. Hair started growing in all sorts of places on my body, but it was still sparse. It scared me to death. What the hell does it mean? What are they talking about in class? And what is it about this change that they enjoy so much? Why do I find the new ache in my throat so disturbing? And what about the strange, broken voice I hear whenever I talk? It’s as though I’m not me, as though it’s the voice of some other guy I don’t want to be, not yet. I don’t want to be like everyone else, I’m not like everyone else, and things like that must never happen to me. Things like that happen to boys who get into trouble.
It wasn’t only the boys that I hated because of the changes they were going through, but the girls too. There were already a few in our class whose breasts had swelled up, and when they raised their arms to answer a question you could see they were wearing bras, like my mother’s. How could it be damn it? I hated every girl who wore a bra. I could spot them easily, I hated them, I was scared of them and I hoped they’d die.
Toward the end of seventh grade, almost all of the boys shaved their mustache, and even though I had black hairs that were longer than those of the other boys who were shaving already, I decided to keep pretending it wasn’t happening. When the time came for final exams, I spent all my time studying and tried not to be distracted by anything. Except that one day, just before dawn, I woke up in a panic and knew I was peeing in my sleep. I couldn’t help myself, no matter how hard I tried, and I felt my whole pajamas getting wet. What was happening to me? Very slowly I got out of bed without waking my two brothers, who were sleeping next to me. I went into the bathroom and discovered a large stain and didn’t know what to do about it. I cried in silence, wiping myself off with toilet paper. The paper stuck to my skin and only made things worse. I went back into the room and pulled out a new pair of shorts and some clean pajamas. My wet clothes I put straight into the washing machine, not on the top but underneath, as far down as possible, under all the clothes. If my mother finds out, she’ll kill me, I thought. The stickiness stayed with me even when I got back into bed.
When I discovered that the mattress was wet, I started sobbing in silence, lost and confused. I couldn’t fall back asleep. I couldn’t stop thinking feverishly about ways of concealing the terrible thing that had happened to me. I stayed in bed with my eyes open until morning, waiting for my brothers to leave the room, and only then got up. I could see the stain, and there was nothing I could do to erase it. I turned the mattress over, but that didn’t solve the problem of the sheet. I had to get it into the washing machine too somehow. But what would my mother think if she discovered me taking a sheet to the wash for the first time in my life, and how was I going to explain what I was doing? I stuck my finger up my nose and scratched the inside till it started bleeding. I had hurt myself more than I’d intended to, and let the blood drip onto the sheet. I walked out of my room with the sheet carefully folded. You could see the blood, but not the stain. The blood covered my face. With one hand I held the sheet and with the other I tried to stanch the blood. My mother had a fright, and I explained that it happened sometimes. I hurried into the bathroom, shoved the sheet into the washing machine and rinsed my nose. Mother brought me some cotton and told me to hold my head back. She said it must be because of the heat, and she gave me a packet of cotton in case the bleeding started again while I was in school.
I was shaking all the way to school, holding my legs together more than usual so they rubbed against one another as I walked. I felt that the other kids making their way to school like me were laughing at me, figuring out the truth. I tried to get rid of those thoughts and to understand what the hell it was. I knew for sure that the answer had nothing to do with regular pee.
The following nights were especially tough. I tried not to fall asleep but it was no use. What I did do was remove the sheet before going to sleep and hide it under the blanket. If it happened again, at least I’d have a dry sheet so I could hide the stain on the mattress.
I did fine on the exams and got the highest grades in my class again. When they were giving out the report cards, the teacher made the whole class applaud me, which I didn’t like at all.
He had dreamed up a new program where the stronger students would help the weaker ones over the summer vacation. How I hated the idea and how I hated the teacher at that moment. And even more than that, how I hated being teamed up with Bassel. That was all I needed, teaching English, Hebrew and math to the one student I hated the most in the whole class. The teacher knew we were neighbors with nothing but a fence between my home and his but I’d never visited Bassel and he’d never visited me. Even on days when we happened to leave for school at the same time, I’d stay some distance away from him, on the other side of the street, stepping up my pace to avoid him and the gang that followed him to school. Bassel didn’t seem too happy at the idea either. He hated studying, and he certainly hated me too. But I’d always done whatever my teachers told me to do. I’d never dream of opposing anything they suggested.
We met twice a week at first, exactly as the teacher had ordered. He’d also made sure that Bassel’s parents knew about the plan. They treated me with great respect, and his mother kept saying things like, “These are the young men you should be spending your time with. Why aren’t all your friends like him, good students and respectful?” She always brought in a tray of cookies and something to drink, and made sure to keep Bassel’s brothers and sisters out of the room so nobody disturbed him while he was doing his homework. Bassel didn’t cooperate at all. I sat next to him and read to him from our schoolbooks and solved the math exercises, but he didn’t seem the least bit interested. He was just waiting for the hour to be over so he could be rid of me. He sat there, shaking his head in disgust at whatever I said, and never asked any questions even though I knew he hadn’t understood a word of my explanations.