Tony and I were supposed to be here together now. But Tony's grades did not allow him to secure a place in the exchange program.
I tried my best to help him out throughout the last semester, but Tony simply does not care about doing good in college. He regrets it now, I am sure. Only because I am here and he is back home. And we could have been starting this new experience together. But we are not.
Tony and I have been best friends since high school. There are many things about him that irritate me, like in any friendship. His carelessness, for example. His laziness, too. I admit; I am afraid to go through this experience alone and would have loved it if he cared enough to get good grades and be here now.
But I should not be thinking about this.
I should look around. Watch everything. I should seize this opportunity.
The weather is nice, a little breezy. Probably because of the closeness to the sea. The beautiful sea. The sun is up and shining.
I manage to get to the correct area with the help of the map. I stand confused for a few seconds before I notice the name of the building I am standing next to. "The Raymond Ghosn Building". That is not it. I walk a little more.
"The Irani Oxy Engineering Complex". I look at my schedule; IOEC. This should be the one.
I look up the building. It is like it was engineered in a way that yells Tech. So modern, a lot of glass, so unique. No wonder this is part of the engineering faculty.
I enter. There is a lounge right in front of the door. A beautiful lounge. The couches look so comfortable. I directly think about napping here someday. I definitely should. The front wall is all glass and overlooks the sea. What kind of a place is this?
You missed on so much already, Tony.
I go to the left and read the numbers on the room doors. 210, 212, 214. That is it. 214. My semester, along with this whole experience, starts right here, in this class.
I go in, choose a seat at the back end of the room, put my backpack next to me and take out my notebook and pen.
Everyone is talking to each other. I have my earphones in, but I can still hear them. Their voices quite loud. I catch a few English words here and there. The rest is a completely alien language. It is not even the Arabic I had started to learn before I came here.
A month before my travel, I had started learning Arabic on Duolingo -the phone application. I wanted to be ready for anything. But a few days afterwards, I decided it was simply too hard. And I convinced myself I will not need it. Now that I am listening to the students speak, I feel like I made the right choice. There is no way I would be understanding now what they are saying no matter how hard I studied Arabic before.
It is 7:50am. The class will start in ten minutes. I do not know how to spend these ten minutes. I feel a little out of place. I want to look at everyone around me. I want to see how different they look. What they are wearing. How they are talking. What kind of energy there is in the room. But I am afraid to look like the weirdo who stares at everyone.
Not that anyone would have noticed. They all seem too busy with themselves. Except for me and another guy sitting at the front row, all the others are in groups of three or more, chatting a little too loud and laughing. Every minute or two, a person leaves a group and joins another, like switching partners while doing a dance.
It is 8:00am, for God's sake. I would not talk to someone at this hour even if I had to.
"Good morning."
The professor comes in. All the students start taking their seats. Some of them continue hissing and whispering.
"I believe most of you already know me. But just in case, my name is Farid Hashem." His accent is good. Not natively good, but good. Completely understandable. He clears his throat and starts the LCD.
"Everything else you need to know about me will be in the slides here. I won't be using the LCD throughout the course. I will be mostly writing on the board. You will have your lectures as PowerPoint slides on Moodle. So no need to take notes. I would simply like you to focus. Anyway, as I was saying." he clears his throat again. "Today exceptionally, because it is an introductory lesson, I will be presenting the slides here." he points to the board.
The professor starts introducing us to the course. Almost everyone is focused. I watch the back of the students' heads and sometimes their sides. Every now and then, one of them looks at their phone, at their watch, whispers something to the person next to them and the other smiles back.
Even going through only this makes me feel like I travelled to another world, another time. A place that is in no way connected to mine. Like there is no return to where I was from here.
A girl comes in late and snaps me out of my thoughts. The professor does not even look at her. She comes in casually, takes a seat, sips from her coffee before she opens her bag to take out a notebook. Only a notebook. No pen. She looks like she put it on simply for the show. "I am interested." she is trying to say.
At 8:50am, the professor notices the time and stops the lecture.
"Okay guys. I will turn this off now, we'll start next week with the heavy stuff. Please do try not to be late to class, it will be hard for you to catch up."
I notice the girl smiling.
"Thank you."
"Thank you, Professor."
"Bye, Doctor."
Almost everyone in the class says something like that. I watch them pack and leave.
People resemble each other much more than they do back home. You can see that they have similar looks. Most of the people around me are either blondies or light brown skinned with dark hair. The clothing styles, not so much alike. In fact, maybe even less alike than back home. There is a woman who is wearing a black long skirt and black long sleeve shirt, with a white veil that covers her head and a good part of her face. Almost all her face, except for the eyes and her left cheek. A couple of other girls have a more famous veil on. A veil I have seen before. Not much, but I have. The rest of the girls look extremely casual. Many of them in shorts and comfortable sports leggings. Others dressed up as though for an event, with quite classy tops and pants. The boys, they look much less diverse. Except for the eyes and hair colours, they pretty much all look the same.
I get out of the class and out of the building. Most people passing me by, as well as those that were in my class, look pretty good. Most have nice clothes on. Nothing too funky. No slippers or scandals. No untraditional or strange clothing styles.
I try to find a cafeteria to have breakfast. I have a two hours break and am not sure what else to do in the meantime.
I stop a guy passing me by.
"Hello."
He nods and smiles.
"Do you mind telling me where the nearest cafeteria is?"
"Oh, sure. It is in this building actually." he points at IOEC, the building I just came out of.
"There is another one right down there." he points at some stairs. "Right next to the sea. You'd love the view."
I'm sure I would.
"Thank you so much." I tell him.
I go down the stairs and find the cafeteria he told me about. The view. The air. The whole atmosphere. I think I will love it here.
———
Author's note:
Hello everyone,
Thank you for starting to read this story. Please let me know what you thought of the prologue.
Due to the fact that there are places I will be mentioning that exist in reality, I will be adding in the note at the end of the page a picture or more of the places you will read about. Let me know what you think of them!
The American University of Beirut:
The IOEC Building:
The Cafeteria overlooking the sea (the OSB cafeteria):