World Issues, Nursery Schools, Same Difference.

So the kids have been going to these school interviews.  Because Sushi is about to outgrow the nursery that she and Screamer presently attend, and I would like to keep them together if possible.  But where to send them?  There are a kajillion schools around here, but most of them boast long waitlists and competitive assessment processes.  Also, there's a whole bevy of international flavors to choose from-- do you want your kids to go to a British school?  French school?  International school?  American school?

When we first contemplated the move to the UAE, I took it as a foregone conclusion that the girls would attend an American school.  My instinct was to keep them as insulated as possible and to surround them with only familiar things and people.  Then we got in with The German, and PopPop became best friends with a Muslim from Pakistan, and I began to think that we had spoken too soon.  Maybe the international school was a better choice for us-- even putting aside the fact that it is located a very convenient 15 minutes away (as opposed to many of the other schools, which require at least 30-45 minutes in the car each way).  Perhaps we should embrace this opportunity, I reasoned with myself, and set an early precedent with the kids that all people are created equal.  'Cuz lord knows, if I've learned one thing from being here, it's that prejudices are learned early and then, once situated, they are awfully hard to rid oneself of.  On both sides of the fence, so to speak.

With this logic in mind, I launched an aggressive campaign to get the girls into the international school where The German sends her kids.  It was going to take a little bit of romancing, because Screamer's birthday falls just short of the age cutoff and the vast majority of schools wouldn't even entertain the conversation.  But fortunately, the principal of the international school agreed to meet with us (I'm sure it had *nothing* to do with the obnoxious number of times I dropped the name of an Ivy League alma matter into the letter that I wrote her in advance.)

To my immense relief, during their interviews both kids performed like the well-rehearsed show ponies that they are, and the principal was visibly impressed.  Yay!!!  I was just about to kick off my high heels (that morning my feet had kinda looked at me, after about 4 straight years in sneakers, like, Dude.) and skip wildly out onto the playground in celebration... when.

Passing through the corridor, I ignored the colorful artwork that would usually preoccupy me so that I could focus on the children's names adorning one of the classroom doors.  Gone were the "Billy" and "Jane" of yesteryear (or, more accurately, "Moishe" and "Rebecca"-- we had sent the girls to a Newish nursery back in the States), and in their places were the following (see photo above):

Wedad

Hessa

Shayan

Sam

Ali

Jomana

Nour

Syeda

Malak

Shaliz

Mazen

Saqr

Khalil

Nasser

Elaia

Hazem

Fatima

Stuart (!!  Stuart!  Stuart Goldstein, is that you??)  (no.  but I'll take it.)

Suddenly the school didn't seem so much "international" as it did "middle eastern."  And it *certainly* didn't help that, as I happened to be standing there taking these unauthorized pictures, the teacher behind the door was loudly conducting an apparent lesson in Arabic.  Now, Daddy had advised me that most of the schools here taught a little bit of Arabic, as is certainly their right (this news had initially reduced me to instantaneous tears-- if you're not Newish I don't think you could fully understand my visceral reaction-- my children had just gotten to the point where some Hebrew words were becoming second nature to them, and now not only would their burgeoning Hebrew vocabulary fall heavily into disuse, but it would be replaced by a language that I had previously only known as the language of my ancestral enemies), but even with the warning I don't think I was prepared for what I was hearing.  It wasn't, "Ok, class, the word for 'dog' in Arabic is ___.  Can you repeat ___?"  No, it was an entire fluid conversation in Arabic, the likes of which I had honestly only heard before from passersby in the malls and when flipping through the Arabic channels on tv.  My heart leapt into my throat.  How could I preserve my daughters' fledgling Newish identities when they would be learning Arabic in school, there is nary a single synagogue in the entire country, and even in our own home I felt stifled in doing Newish things, lest we be discovered by the driver or the housemaid?

It was a long drive home (no, wait, I just told you that it was only a 15 minute drive.  but it felt much longer).  I felt a tug of war taking place between my heart-- which warned me that being Newish is a delicate gift, especially in a world in which so many, many hateful people would be more than happy to stomp all over it-- and my head-- which reprimanded me for being so closed-minded as to assume that the children's Arab classmates might wish them harm, or that a few words learned in Arabic would have any lasting effect. (Hell, I only remember about 6 words in French, and I took 4 years of it in high school.)  It was the exact inner collision that I experienced when The German asked me, a few months ago, if I had any baby clothes to donate to the school's Gaza relief effort.  On the one hand, yes!  goodness!  of *course* I wanted to help out all the innocent children who were affected by the Israeli military operation!  And I really did!  I found the whole saga to be utterly heartbreaking!  But on the other hand, it gave me a momentary feeling of ick to imagine one of my daughters' sweet little miniature pink teddy bear onesies being worn by a kid who could possibly grow up actively hating the News just as her parents did and maybe their parents before them.  I wondered, would those Gazans even *want* to put their baby in the hand-me-down clothes of a Newish kid?  I honestly wasn't sure.  

(Side note: I never did make the donation, despite my sincere intentions to do so.  The German had only given me one day's notice, and I had not had the time to open up the boxes and dig for the clothes that the baby had outgrown.  Now certainly one could ask, might I have *made* the time, had the relief effort been for Israeli children??  I truly, *truly* don't know the answer to that question.  Or maybe I just don't want to know.)

Which brings me to today: I am waiting to hear if the girls were accepted to the international school.  And you know what?  If they get in, I believe we're going to send them there.  At least to try it.  I think it would be good for us-- all of us, Daddy and PopPop and me included-- to experience it.  If the kids feel uncomfortable or we feel uncomfortable (or if we make others feel uncomfortable!) then we can always change course.  Nothing is forever.  Hopefully not even the centuries-old stalemate between the Arabs and the News.  Hey, it's gotta start somewhere.  Man in the mirror, people!  ahaha that guy on American Idol sucked.  ahaha  a little levity to wrap this up.  Ok, gotta go.  Wish us luck.  More soon.  xo.