Strings - Capstone Amal Al Shamsi (1)

It occurred to Hamza a couple of times that he could just sit down at the front of the
room and leave them be. It wouldn’t be too bad to be ignored, but then what was the point of
even being there? What was he getting out of it?
Shifting sideways past the miniature desks, his eyes scoured the room. One of the
children had laid their open sandwich on the table, across the peanut butter was a thin layer of
light blue dust.
Hamza knocked his knuckles against the corner of the table to get the child’s attention.
“Careful when you eat that,” he said.
The boy next to him smiled up at Hamza. It was his first real interaction since noon. The
boy leaned over and swiped a finger against the blueish peanut butter, studying it for a while
before spinning around to join the girl with the blue cheeks.
Hamza’s stomach growled. He continued on in his search for the original piece. Towards
the end of the row, furthest from the window was a girl with tired eyes. When the children
around her tried to show her their tiniest slivers of chalk, she nodded her head as if it were a
boulder on a leash and smiled. The sleeves of her sweater hung loosely, and the bulge at her
tummy moved about.
“Are we the only ones not playing?” Hamza asked her, leaning his head forward to get
her attention. He walked over and felt a crunch beneath his shoe. They shared a grimace.
“I think you just broke the game,” she said quietly.
“I think so,” Hamza admitted, a little embarrassed. He lifted his foot up, scrunched up
his toes inside his shoe.
“It’ll go on forever, I guess,” the girl said. She had long, unruly hair that branched out
from her braid. It was pressed down at the edges of her face, from the pair of hands that had
tried to stamp it down. Her mother’s hands, Hamza would imagine.
Hamza bent down to sit on his knees on the rubbery floor. His elbow clinked against the
legs of her table, he felt the pain ring dully up to his shoulder. “Do you not want to play with
them?” He asked, maybe to distract himself.
“Where even are you?” the girl asked.
When he stretched his chin to answer, she was gone. Across the room, she flitted
between the clusters of students, her sleeves floating behind her.
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