Amal Sageer was a plain faced, quiet little boy. At first I thought he was just being shy because I was new to him. As the weeks progressed, he never changed his attitude to the other students or me.
One day whiles all the other students were playing he sat all alone on a bench looking down at his feet.
“Don’t you want to go and play with the other children?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer. He just kept looking down at his feet. I wondered what was so important about his feet. I held my hands out and he accepted it and we walked back into the class room. I had brought a game of scrabble to school. He was the perfect person to play with he loved words even though he didn’t speak much. It was not an issue of shyness or a speech deficiency, only god in heaven knew what it was.
“Amal, who gave you that name?”
“I don’t know.” He answered shyly.
“Did you know your name was an Arabic name?” He didn’t reply, he just looked at me aimlessly. This went on for a while and then he spoke.
“Do you know Arabic?”
“Yes I do.”

“So what does my name mean?”
“Well Amal, means hope”

“And what does Sageer means?”
“Well, ugh, it means small.”

“So I’m small hope.”

“Amal what’s your fathers’ name?”
“I aint got no dad.”

“That’s not true, every one has one.”
“Not me.”

He gazed aimlessly at me and then held out his hand, pointing to me chain.
“Can I have this?”

I thought for a while then answered.
“This was a gift from a former students in Arabia. I tell you what I’ll make one for you just like this. So then we both can have one and we’ll become better friends.”
That conversation lingered in my head for a while and I wondered more about his name. Who had given him such a name, it certainly wasn’t his father.
Ms. Miller my supervisor was a general super pain in the part I’d rather sit upon.
“Ms. De kindern your job is to teach these children to read and write not to ask them about there biological happenings. Mr. Segeer’s mother contacted me blah, blah, blah…. do you understand me.”
I wasn’t even listening to her like usual. I just was thinking about my god how much more of this I have to listen to.
“The name is Sawgeer it is Arabic. It is pronounced as if your are Saying the words “Saw” and “”Geer. Thanks for the conversation.”
I left Ms. Millers office and went back to my class room. It was the Friday before Fathers Day.
“Now class today were are going to make a card. You can give it to your Father or any other important males in your life.”
This task was even more difficult than I thought. There were a couple of students who came from not so conventional families.
Marcy had two moms and no dad. Her mother was a lesbian Rene had two male relative and no mom. Her father was a rich tycoon who could have afforded the best lawyers to win custody. She couldn’t figure out whom to give the card to. Lisa knew her father but her mother was a Lesbian also so she didn’t have contact with her father.
I squeezed my head as I thought how life had changed since I was that age it was either you had a father or he was dead.
Amal went missing from school some weeks ago. I asked Ms. Miller about him. She said he was ill. I got the chain made and decided to pay a visit.
I rang the door bell of his apartment, thinking how his little face would look when he sees me. A tall matted head woman opened the door. I introduced myself and asked to see Amal.
She went into a room and returned with a folded paper.
It was the paper from the day we made cards. He didn’t make a card instead he made a drawing.
He drew a beautiful combination of landscape and seascape. A beautiful river flowed besides a forest, with a cottage hidden beneath the trees. A stood mountain in the back ground with clouds looming over it.
At first glance it looked like a calm day out in the woods. But when you examine it with greater details you realize the mountain is actually a volcanic mountain.
Amal had died, he knew he was ill and I saw himself as the mountain awaiting to erupt.

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