I looked over at Amira. The blank look on her face told me she had no idea what he was talking about.
Mr. Letner turned off the front row of lights, and immediately a bunch of kids put their heads on their desks, ready to zone out. An image appeared on the Smartboard. “Even ordinary things can become powerful images. Look at this one.” A fingerprint: the black ink on the stark white page filled up the screen. Mr. Letner scanned the room. “What do you think about it? What’s your reaction?”
“It’s a fingerprint,” Avery said, unimpressed. “We all have them.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah, I mean they’re not all the same, but —” And then she caught herself. “Oh, I get it. The photo is showing how we’re all different.”
Mr. Letner touched his nose and pointed at Avery. “There you go! One image, but lots of meanings. Here, look at this one.” Another photo appeared, and at first, I didn’t know what it was. A round ball with bubbles suspended in its centre. The glass glowed like something from another world, the swirl inside of it like a tornado. It was a marble sitting on concrete. The pebbled surface was rough and pitted against the smoothness of the glass. “Pretty cool, eh?” I leaned forward in my seat, waiting for the next image.
“Do you know what this is?” It was a photo of a snowbank half-melted into the shape of an elephant. We all laughed. Well, not Amira. She was probably like me before my first Canadian winter, when I’d never touched snow.
“The next photo I’m going to show you is shocking,” he warned us. The image of a starving African child crouched on the ground appeared on the screen. She was skin and bones, every rib visible. In the background, a vulture waited. “Is that for real?” Zander asked.
Mr. Letner nodded. “This photo was taken during the Sudanese famine. It made international news and won the Pulitzer Prize.”
“I hope whoever took the photo helped her, gave her food or something,” Carmina muttered, and looked away.
“This photo showed the world what was going on in the Sudan. Up until then, no one had paid much attention to the famine. I want you to really think about what you photograph. Use your photos to show people how you see the world, or to help change it. It might mean looking at the world differently or seeing details in things you wouldn’t normally notice, like a marble, or a snowbank. Or making a social commentary on a problem that bothers you.”
I was relieved when the photo of the starving child disappeared. “Do you expect our photos to look like those ones?” Larissa asked. “They’re, like, professional.”
“It’s the idea behind the photo I want you to think about. The technique will come with practise. We’ll start today by playing around with the cameras and taking some pictures.”
Mr. Letner passed out the cameras and wrote down which number each of us had.
Amira fingered the camera in front of her like it was something suspicious. “This is a camera,” I said slowly in English.
“This is a camera,” she repeated quietly.
Beside me, Carmina and Mariam snapped pouty-lipped pictures of each other, the standard selfie pose. Even though Mr. Letner had said not to take selfies, they couldn’t help themselves. When I looked around the room, a lot of other people were doing the same thing. “Can you get one of both of us?” Carmina asked me, holding her camera out.
I hesitated. Did Mariam realize how excluded I felt watching the two of them? “And then take one of me and Sadia,” Mariam said to Carmina.
They turned their chins down and gave a coy look to the camera. Then I gave my camera to Carmina, and Mariam and I huddled together. But before she took the photo, I held up my hand. “Wait.” Amira was on my other side. “Come on, you should be in the picture, too. It’s your first day at a Canadian school,” I said to her in Arabic. I held out my arm for her to slide closer. She looked like she was about to shake her head, but then she relented and joined us. Carmina took the photo and passed the camera back to me. I looked at the image. Mariam and I were grinning, but Amira just stared into the camera, her eyes open, wide and wary.
Chapter 6
I walked Amira back to the office to meet her parents when the lunch bell rang. She held the camera in her hands like it was a treasure. She hadn’t taken any photos yet; it was almost like she was worried she’d break it. “How did it go?” Mrs. Mooney asked as we sat waiting for Amira’s parents in the office. I turned to Amira, who gave Mrs. Mooney a shy smile. “Sadia, can you translate this list of school supplies for Amira’s parents? And there’s the media release letter.” She rattled off all the other information I’d have to explain. So much for lunch. It was going to take me half an hour to go over all this with them.
There was a bustle in the office entrance as Mr. and Mrs. Nasser walked in. They greeted their daughter and me with anxious smiles. They had lots of questions for Amira, but she looked exhausted and waved them off. I remembered what those first weeks had been like. Trying to make sense of what everyone was saying was tiring! My brain hurt when I got home after school, new words and images swirling through my head. And when it was time to go to sleep, my brain was so jumbled with English and Arabic words that I couldn’t turn it off. “The school needs you to sign some things,” I told Amira’s parents. I showed them all the papers, doing my best to explain what they meant. There was also a paper copy of the permission form from Mr. Letner. He’d asked me to translate it for them and have them sign it for him. Mr. Nasser gave me a puzzled look as I’d explained the project, but scribbled his signature anyway. Dad used to question some of the activities the school planned when we first moved here, too. He’d gone along with them, though, just like Mr. Nasser did, but there was a big difference between how schools were run in Syria and in Canada.
Amira didn’t say goodbye as she left the office. She bowed her head and shuffled behind her parents, even when her mom took her hand and tried to pry some information out of her. I knew how she felt. It was like a tidal wave of information had just splashed over her, and she’d only been at school for a few hours. She could never explain it all to her mother. I glanced at the clock. Basketball tryouts started in five minutes. I’d have to run to the cafeteria, scarf down my lunch, and then head to the gym with food sloshing in my stomach.
I don’t think Mr. Letner knew what a stir he was going to cause when he gave us those cameras. Kids from other classes kept posing in the hallway, begging us to take their pictures. And before basketball club, no one wanted to practise. Instead, we asked Jillian to do jump shots so we could practise taking action shots.
“Will you take one of me?” I asked Josh, handing him my camera. I held the basketball against my hip and smiled. He held the camera up to his eye for a second but didn’t take the picture.
“Nah, it’s all wrong,” he said, shaking his head.
“What is?” I asked, confused.
He nodded to the wall behind me. “It would look better if you were at the top of the key with the hoop behind you.” Josh walked over to me and pulled me by my elbow into a better position. Then he took the basketball and bent my arm so it was balanced on my palm.
“I feel like one of those fake people in a store window,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“A mannequin,” he said. “Yeah, except mannequins don’t have killer crossovers.”
His compliment made me blush. My crossovers weren’t that good.
He took three giant steps backward. It was