Browsing through Facebook, I came upon pictures of those pink hallways taken by the sister of a friend from highschool. Ahh… Manarat. It has not changed a bit.
The same exact books we studied.
The same white board, the same markers, the same uniform, the same scribbles.
The same desks, the same chairs, the same way we used to sit and sleep. The same freaking window in the door that we all hated.
The same senior classroom, the same senior excitement, the same handwriting.
The same binders (we never used notebooks), the same doodles in the desk, the same highlighters, the same TIs.
The same patterns, the same flashcards, the same gum wrappers.
It’s been five years since I graduated from Manarat Al-Riyadh, the school I spent most of my life at, and I still can’t get myself to level my feelings towards that place.
You see, I hate Manarat with all my heart and all my soul. It was a twisted place, in all sense of the word. Yet, I really owe Manarat a very big part of who I am today, because Manarat taught me the most important thing in the world: Manarat taught me how to learn.
The teachers tried to turn us into well-rounded, strong women, who would benefit the “ummah” (in their own words). They gave us classes of creative writing, they taught us what to do at job interviews, and showed us how to write excellent research papers. I never appreciated all the little things I knew until I came to Jordan, where I discovered that I was one of 3 students to raise my hand when asked about whether anyone had heard of “MLA style” before.
But that’s not really why I’m grateful to that place. I’m grateful because it taught me a much more important thing. Manarat taught me how to learn. It taught me to associate, make flash cards, and get out-of-curricula books to really understand. It taught me to not care if people had power, that it’s not really very important to listen, that being creative is always a good thing. It taught me to doubt, to question, to debate. It taught me to depend on myself to get my own answers, that only kick-ass essays will get A’s, and that if you don’t want to stomach that ugly B, then you must work harder.
At this point in time, I can easily say that there isn’t any other place in the world that I’ve spent as much time at. I spent a very solid portion of my life sitting in those pink classrooms, sitting on that pink floor or on those red plastic chairs. I spent many years studying those books, walking around those hallways, and ditching in those corners.
My disdain for Manarat stems from the unbelievably orderly way that things were run. No hair was ever out of place, no uniform ever had a stain, no skirt was longer than the other. It was a universe of perfect, meticulous order, of complete and utter obedience.
But I guess things have changed, because in my day, no one would have ever been caught dead with a camera.
Looking at those pictures makes me feel weird. I can see myself in them, in that uniform, in that boredom, in that concentration, in that room, on that same desk, with that same binder. But I was a different person then.
