School portraits / One first term, Sunday nights to Friday afternoons
Weekly Boarding, Ninety Minutes Away
An Abu Dhabi mother, a Year 7 son, and a boarding deposit that would come back when he did.
Nadia Haddad lived in Abu Dhabi and her son Karim was going to school in Dubai, which is the sort of sentence that only makes sense to people who have driven the E11 at seven in the morning. The plan had been a day place and a long commute, until her husband Fadi read that Repton Dubai takes boarders from Year 7, weekly or full, and said the words “he could just stay there in the week” in the tone of a man suggesting a restaurant. Nadia did not speak to him for the length of a dinner.
She came round, as mothers do, by way of a spreadsheet. Weekly boarding, meals included, tuition separate. A fifty-thousand-dirham boarding deposit, refundable. “Refundable when?” she asked the admissions officer, a brisk Scotswoman called Mrs Lindsay. “When he leaves,” said Mrs Lindsay. Nadia wrote this down and underlined it, and then underlined the underline. The deposit would come back when he did, and she had started to wonder which of them she was waiting for.
Sunday night, first week. Nadia drove him to Nad Al Sheba herself, with a bag containing more socks than a boy of eleven can wear in five days and a laminated card with the family’s phone numbers on it, in case the boy who could reprogram the television forgot his mother’s mobile. The boarding house smelled of new carpet. A houseparent took the bag. Karim said “bye, Mama” in the doorway with the brevity of a man catching a train, and Nadia drove ninety minutes home in the dark composing a complaint about nothing.
Monday he did not call. Tuesday he called to ask whether he had packed his calculator, which he had, because she had packed it. Wednesday he called at nine at night to say that the food was “actually fine,” which from Karim is a five-star review, and that a boy from Nigeria called Tobi had taught him a card game that Nadia suspected was poker. Thursday there was silence, and Nadia rang the house phone, where a different houseparent said that Karim was at football and would be told she had called. He was not told, or he was told and forgot, which Nadia decided was the same thing and also the whole point.
Friday afternoon she was in the car park forty minutes early, which Fadi said was a personality and not a plan. Karim came out with the bag, now lighter by four socks that would never be seen again, and got in and talked for the entire ninety minutes. About Tobi. About the sports village, which he described as “like, enormous.” About a Year 9 boy who could do a backflip. About the laminated card, which he produced from his pocket and handed back to her, saying he had not needed it, in a way that was meant kindly and landed like a brick.
Saturday he slept until eleven. Sunday morning, at breakfast, he asked what time they were leaving. Nadia said she had thought they would go after lunch. Karim said Tobi’s family were dropping him at four and could they do four. Nadia said yes, because what else do you say. Fadi, behind the newspaper, did not look up, which she counted as kindness.
She drove him back at four. The fifty thousand dirhams, she reflected on the E11, was now the only thing in that building that was waiting to come home to her.