Chapter 34 Sunflower Yellow
Sunflower Yellow
When Audrey publishes the article on Friday, she sends me a message.
I hope I did your story justice
She did.
It feels like I’m reading about someone who isn’t me but has all my features and characteristics.
Audrey acts as a mouthpiece for me, beginning the story with Mama, nothing specific—she could be anyone walking down the streets of New York, but distinct enough that you know this person is special.
She weaves poetry about the murals, linking them to moments in Mama’s life.
She makes a fictional character out of Mama where she represents every Muslim hijabi woman out there whose dreams and lives were violently taken.
Where she couldn’t live in her home country and sought a life elsewhere for herself and children.
Audrey writes about how the murals are an artistic resistance against a silent, slow, and deliberate genocide happening.
She writes about how this Muslim woman, as proud as she is of her identity, should be seen as a human being and not be boxed into neat little packages with her identity being the only way she’s recognized.
She intertwines that with rumors about the school whose students enjoy the privileges of their skin color, old money, and status to treat the world as their plaything.
How bullying there progressed from verbal to physical, with the help of apathetic eyes that only watched, and ultimately resulted in the indefinite suspension of two marginalized students.
She worries for the future of this nation if “rotten, spoiled bullies who never outgrew childish tantrums now become adults who bully the entire country.” She writes about dignity and the reason why the Statue of Liberty exists and her early origins as a Muslim woman who rallied the people in the cause of freedom for all.
She talks about me—the Artist, she calls me, although she’s been toying with different monikers.
She compares me to revolutionary artists like Banksy and Frida Kahlo in the weight of their art that makes people stand for hours on end just to see every brushstroke.
She ends it by saying that despite all the evil in this world, it’s people like me who rise above it and change it for the better.
By the end of it, I’m in tears and send Audrey a whole paragraph thanking her. Her reply is just one sentence: it was all you.
By Saturday, it’s gone viral online, linked on several other websites, all reporting on the murals and Braxton. I know Audrey is getting emails and phone calls, asking her about the article.
Jamie calls me in a daze.
“Hello, whistleblower,” he says, impressed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say with a smile. The anxiety at having this article published is still there, but Audrey assured me it was all right. Her aunt reviewed it. Nothing said in the article would lead to any legal action against me or Audrey.
“She’s been doing this a long time,” Audrey told me. “She’s written about so many CEOs, man.”
“Is that why you didn’t sound upset that you got suspended?” Jamie asks.
I swivel in my chair in my room. “Well, Braxton will need to bring us back immediately if they don’t want the world to figure out that those two students are us.”
“You’re terrifying,” Jamie says after an amazed silence.
“Thank you. Besides, we just need to sit for the exams and get our diplomas. It’s not like we have any classes left.”
“Thank God for that.”
And sure, enough an email arrives in my inbox Monday morning from Dr. Mérieux himself, lifting the suspensions and allowing me and Jamie to sit for our exams.
The board of directors has reviewed both your cases and found you innocent, he wrote. It doesn’t escape my notice how I had to go above and beyond with several people’s help to be able to go back to school, while Mason and Adrian just existed.
While some reporters stayed outside the school gate for a few days, they are all appeased with a statement from the school condemning any acts of bullying and soon leave.
My black eye fades with each day, but I never cover it up when I go back to school for my exams. Students and professors do double takes, most looking uneasy.
When I see Jamie again at school, it’s the morning of our AP chemistry exam.
I haven’t seen him since he was expelled.
He spent the week before AP exams at home studying with the tutors his parents got for him while I went to school every day, getting all the important notes I can squeeze out of the review classes.
Even though we talked every single day, quizzing each other, I feel some shyness, seeing him leaning against the wall in the hallway, going through his notes.
His hair is entirely black now and cut shorter; he’s gotten rid of the blond ends.
He looks like a different person. Sort of like me when I cut my hair.
Mine is growing faster than I anticipated, and I wonder if this is a blessing in itself.
I’m enjoying looking at myself from different angles seeing how I’m changing like a tree through the seasons.
“Hey,” I call out, and he looks up, smiling wildly when he sees me.
“Hey, Jihad.”
We take our exams and soon enough, they’re done.
All that’s left is the summer. Amal booked me a flight out in June, returning in the middle of August, so I have enough time to move to San Francisco if I get in.
I drew my last three drawings the end of May and sent the sketchbook to Opus.
I ended it with Mama back with the jellyfish.
She’s older now, the same age she was when she left us, the marks of time, pain, happiness, and life on her face.
Somehow, a lot of people knew it was the last mural. I cried drawing it and cried when I saw the emotional reactions online.
“We’ve been on this journey since the beginning,” one girl with faded purple hair says, wiping a tear from her eye. “It feels like saying goodbye to a friend. Whoever you are, Artist, thank you for making us feel like this.”
My anxiety spikes each day June gets closer to end, and I don’t hear back.
Jamie tries to distract me. He takes me out every chance he gets.
Although now with the summer giving me more time, I’ve been spending it with Baba.
Either helping tidy up at the gas station or sitting with him at home while he tells me about our history in Syria and talks to me about Mama, stories I never knew.
He decides to move to Qatar when Amal video-calls us from the hospital, crying and holding her newborn son in her arms.
“Baba, this is Hisham.” Her eyes shine; she looks tired but more alive that she’s ever been. Her hair is stuck to her forehead as she raises my nephew into view while her husband holds the phone.
Baba’s eyes flood with tears, and I gasp. She named him after Baba.
“You have to come, okay?” Her voice is frantic now. Poor thing is delirious with sleeplessness. “You guys will be here in three weeks, right? Oh my God, that’s so soon. Marwan, remember we have to get extra pillows. The nice ones. Also, I think we need to make reservations at the Shami restaurant.”
“Amal, relax,” I shout so she can hear me. Our voices always seem to rise whenever we talk to each other through video. “Just take care of the baby, okay? Is there anything you want us to get from here?”
“Yes. Get me onion bagels,” she says instantly. “The ones here are good, but it’s nothing like home.”
I’m excited to visit her. It’ll be my first time on a plane. My first time in an Arab, Muslim country.
I don’t hear from Alexis ever again. The last time I saw her was during our final exams, and she didn’t even look at me. I’m not sure if she got off the Yale wait-list, and I don’t even care. But Audrey got accepted to Oxford, as she told me when she invited me out for coffee.
A few days into the summer break, Jamie takes me to a Syrian dessert shop for booza—stretchy, creamy ice cream. When we walk inside the café, the door opens again right behind us, and Jenny stands there, catching her breath.
Jamie and I look at each other in confusion. She wipes her hair from her face, looking summer ready with her flowery pink shorts-suit and tanned legs.
“Hey,” she says, sounding nervous.
I don’t reply.
She shakes her head, scratching absently at her shoulder. “I—I want to apologize for… for everything.”
I stare at her. Her face is red, but it’s more from shame than the heat.
“I’m sorry for being a part of what they did. I’m sorry I didn’t call the teachers when Mason and Adrian hurt you. I—I was scared I’d get in trouble with the boys. It’s no excuse. You don’t have to forgive me, but I’m still sorry.”
The cafe’s air-conditioning beats down on me, and I don’t know what to reply, so all I say is “Okay.”
She nods, gives a half-awkward wave before putting her hand down. “Hope you two have a great summer.”
Then she leaves, and I glance back at Jamie, who just says, “Huh?”
Jamie and I don’t talk about how summer for us together is barely a month.
He told his parents he’s going back to his grandmother and the farm and that he’s been accepted to the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
They were upset because he also has acceptances to Yale and Stanford, but that isn’t where his heart is.
He’s going to Wisconsin, and if I don’t get an acceptance to Opus, I’m staying longer in Qatar seeing as Baba is moving there permanently in September. He already handed over the gas station to someone else. There, if necessary, I can apply to other colleges and see what happens.
It’s five days before my flight to Qatar that I get the Envelope. It’s wedged into our mailbox and slips from my hands several times as I run up the stairs.
“Baba!” I scream when I rush into the apartment. “Baba!”
He emerges from his bedroom in fear, clearly expecting me to be hurt. But he just sees me holding up the Envelope in my trembling hands.
“Open it!” he says. “InshAllah khair, just open it!”