Son! There is always another way!

Son! There is always another way!

When Sammy found out who was sitting near him in the National High School Graduation Exams, he thought that he was the luckiest man on earth! A dream come true! Opportunity seldom knocks twice!

“Finally, getting a high school diploma is now guaranteed!” Sammy thought to himself. He had failed miserably in two previous attempts to pass the graduation test required to get his diploma.

In Syria, high school graduation exams are held for the whole country at the same time of the year; usually the first week of June. In every school district, each student who is a candidate for graduation is randomly assigned a seat and an examination center – a large meeting room such as a cafeteria or gym. Students from one building in the district are distributed into other buildings. In this way, teachers are not supervising their own students during the exams and students are generally in unfamiliar surroundings with unfamiliar people.

It was the first Saturday of June 1973 and that day was for the math section of the test.  Sammy arrived early in the morning to his center, Ibn Khaldoon High School. The exam’s room had 20 rows of desks. Each row consisted of 15 desks, each desk serving two students, for a total of 600 possible students.  Each desk had two labels attached, one for each student, indicating which side of the desk was assigned to which student.

It was 7:30 am; Sammy easily found his seat, D6, without the help of any proctor – after all he was an old customer. Sammy always liked to come early, to size up the proctors, possibly befriend some of them, and to study the environment. This strategy had not helped him in the past, but it did not hurt to try it again. Sammy was a famous basketball player in his district, 6 feet one tall, 240 pounds. He was chatting with one of the proctors to his right when he suddenly froze. His heart skipped a beat and he became adrenaline-charged.

“Here is your seat Ayman, it is D5!”  a proctor said, while showing Ayman his seat to the left of Sammy’s. “Please sit down and get ready for the test.”  

Ayman said “Thank you Teacher,” and sat down without noticing who was to his right.

When no proctors were around, Sammy turned to Ayman and greeted him, “Wassup dude?” Ayman stuttered in surprise, “Hey ha ow are you Sa sa sa mmmy?  What a su su surprise.”

Though Ayman stuttered, he was an excellent student. He was number one at his school building. Straight As in all subjects. He was a small boy; only 5 feet two inches tall, 120 pounds. He wore very thick glasses. For an 18 year old, his cheeks were still smooth and he wasn’t shaving much.  All of this made him a soft target for bullies. Sammy, who was the father of all bullies at their school, provided protection for Ayman from other bullies. In return Ayman had to help Sammy with his homework and projects. Sometimes he paid for Sammy’s lunches. Ayman thought his nightmare with school bullies was over until he saw Sammy sitting near him. He realized that his nightmare would continue for a while longer. He was a serious student and he detested cheating. He did not want to get in trouble, but if he did not cooperate with Sammy, he would be in danger of being beat-up. 

At 8:00 am, the doors to the exam’s room were closed and no late students were allowed in.  Proctors went around and gave each student the answer booklet to the test.  On the top left corner of the first sheet of the booklet there was a small square. Under the diagonal of the square, there was a place for the student’s name. The top half of the square, above the diagonal was all black.  The proctor made sure the student wrote his name on the square, then he folded the upper part of the square and glued it, along the edges, over the lower part. This would conceal the identity of the student from the people who would grade the exams.  

The first day went all right for Sammy. He managed to cheat a little bit off Ayman without being caught. Sammy was not too bad in math. Actually he was good in math. He thought that he just needed to double check his answers.  The next day would be the language arts test - the killer test, as Sammy called it. Sammy had always flunked language arts in past years.

The next day, Sammy arrived at 7:40 am. Ayman was already there. “Hi Shorty Aymano.” Sammy greeted Ayman with the name bullies used to call him. This was to remind him of his misery and of the fact that he was still under his control. “Go.. go.. good morning Sa.. sa.. sam” Ayman replied.

After distributing the answer booklets, the proctors passed around and made sure all the names were properly written and sealed the names and then the test questions were distributed to the students.

Mr. Malik was a new teacher at Ibn Khaldoon High. That year was his first year as a teacher and his first time as a proctor. He was in charge of about sixty students in columns C and D and he wanted to do a good job at this exam. A few minutes after the start of the exam, he noticed Sammy was close, too close, to Ayman. He went to him and politely whispered to him to get back to his side of the desk. “Oh! Sorry teacher! I wasn’t paying attention, I was concentrating on my work” Sammy replied. Minutes later, Mr. Malik heard some hissing, turned around and saw Sammy trying to talk to Ayman. When confronted, Sammy said he was asking for the time. Mr. Malik pointed out a huge clock on the wall and reminded him that talking was not allowed. This happened a second time, so Mr. Malik decided to stand near Sammy’s desk for as long as he could. “I cannot concentrate, teacher, while you are looking over my shoulder,” Sammy snapped. So Mr. Malik warned him again not to talk and walked away.

One hour passed. The room was very quiet, and you could hear a pin drop. Students were working hard. Students would gripe afterward when they left the room that it was a “killer test”. Suddenly, Sammy stood up and started barking at Mr. Malik, who had just taken Sammy’s answer booklet: “No Sir, you cannot remove me from my seat!”

Mr. Malik told Sammy to chill out and to follow him to another location in the room. “No Sir! I ain’t followin’ you. You have no right to change my place. This is a government assigned seat (the Promised Land for Sammy!) and you cannot mess with it. I ain’t goin’ nowhere,” Sammy shouted louder.

Everybody in the room stopped working, eyes on Sammy and Mr. Malik. The tall student glowered with menace at the proctor.  Other proctors rushed to the scene to protect their colleague against possible punches coming from Sammy. The superintendent in charge of the whole examination center, a career educator with over forty years of experience, a man in his mid sixties with hair turning white, noticed the commotion, and strolled towards it.

 “Make space, make space for the superintendent,” a proctor barked.

“What is going on here? What is all this noise about?” asked the superintendent calmly. 

Nervously Mr. Malik explained, “Sammy tried to look at Ayman’s work and tried to talk to him. I warned him three times before I decided to change his seat. He became very belligerent and started shouting. He claimed that his seat is given to him by the government and no one else can change it.”

“Sammy is right,” the superintendent addressed Mr. Malik, “If he is not voluntarily willing to change his seat you cannot force him.”

Mr. Malik was stunned by the superintendent’s remark. He felt humiliated. He had expected the superintendent to back him.

Then the superintendent ordered the teachers to get back to work and ordered the students to continue their test. He took Sammy’s paperwork from Mr. Malik, handed it to Sammy and told him, “Sammy! Son! Sit down and finish your test.” (The superintendent used ‘son’ to call his students and sometimes young teachers.) 

Sammy was extremely happy with the outcome of the intervention of the superintendent and smiled broadly. He was proud that he had stood up for his rights (as he saw them). But his happiness was not to last long. The superintendent turned to Ayman, took all his work from the desk and ordered him “Ayman! Son! Please follow me!”

The superintendent showed Ayman to a seat by himself far away from Sammy. This ended Ayman’s nightmare for good, as it ended Sammy’s ‘dream come true’ for good. In fact, a few minutes later, Sammy turned in his half empty test booklet, frowned at the superintendent, muttered a few cusses and left defeated.

After Sammy left, Mr. Malik went to the superintendent and thanked him for his help in diffusing a major incident. The superintendent looked at Mr. Malik and said, “Son! There is always another way!”