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OMAR RISING

Page history last edited by RichiesPicks 1 year, 12 months ago

2 April 2022 OMAR RISING by Aisha Saeed, Penguin Random House/Nancy Paulsen, February 2022, 224p., ISBN: 978-0-593-10868-1

 

“When you get so down that you can’t get up

And you want so much, but you’re all out of luck

When you’re so downhearted and misunderstood

Just over and over and over you go

Yeah, hold on tight to your dreams”

– Jeff Lynne (1981)

 

“‘How bad?’ I ask him.

‘Seventy-two. I can’t believe it,’ he says shakily. It’s almost a D.’

‘You did better than me,’ I say. ‘I actually did get a D.’

‘I didn’t even think the test was that hard,’ Naveed says in a tight voice. ‘How could we have done this badly? And Motz says we need to study harder. That’s not humanly possible.’

‘That’s the point,’ Faisal says.

‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

Faisal fixes his gaze down at the damp rag in his hand. ‘You haven’t figured it out yet?’ His easygoing demeanor is gone.

‘Figured what out?’ Naveed asks. He takes in Faisal’s somber expression and then the cook’s. He shrinks back. ‘You’re–you’re scaring me.’

Faisal hesitates, but then–

‘This is your weed-out year.’

‘Weed-out year?’ I repeat. What do you mean?’

 

Omar Ali, a twelve-year-old Pakistani schoolboy, becomes the pride of his rural village when he earns a scholarship to attend Chalib Academy, a prestigious boarding school. But after arriving there, he comes to understand that the scholarships are little more than a strategy employed in order to make the school look good. 

 

The reality is that the scholarship students, like Omar, are treated unfairly. They are forbidden to participate in the rich variety of extracurriculars offered to the rest of the students. They must each spend an hour a day providing free labor, such as working in the kitchen or folding laundry. And then, an upper-grade scholarship student clues Omar into the fact  that the administration expects scholarship students to maintain a near-impossible A+ average in order to avoid being “weeded out.”

 

Omar is a great student, but his Achilles heel is his English class. It is being taught by the school’s sullen headmaster/executioner, who had me recalling John Houseman in The Paper Chase. 

 

The heavy-handed classism fostered by the school’s policies seems so backward and unfair, but what can be done about it? Omar and a couple of friends form a study group, and forgo most diversions, in order to do as well as they possibly can. But will these efforts be enough to meet the ridiculous grade requirement that only applies to the scholarship kids? Can anything be done to change the system? 

 

As a long-ago student activist, this one definitely made me smile.

 

Richie Partington, MLIS

Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.pbworks.com

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