The Story of our Lives It’s her first day of Montessori, and Amina is happily and furiously coloring an apple blue. To her it hardly matters that her scrawls are supposed to be contained inside the curved outline of the apple. Or indeed, the fact that apples are red! Amina gets her first dose of reality when her teacher, Miss Asma comes up behind her and says, “Oh my, you’ve made such an awful mess. Dear, you must remember to keep your strokes inside the lines. And next time do keep in mind that apples are red!” “But miss,” protests Amina innocently, “This is MY apple and I want it blue and besides apples can be blue too if you paint them over!” “Be that as it may Amina,” her teacher responds firmly. “You will be appearing in the entrance test for Grade I in three years and your examiner will not take too kindly to a blue apple. Remember dear, apples are red.” Miss Asma has added the first brick to Amina’s wall. Rest assured she will never colour an apple blue again. She will still color outside the lines, once or twice more, though, but don’t worry, she is in good hands. Miss Asma will see to it that by the time she is eligible for appearing in her entrance examination, all her strokes remain inside the lines. Like I said, she is in good hands.

Amina is six. I would ask her to introduce herself but at the moment she is extremely busy. She is in Miss Sanar’s Grade I class and is at the moment staring at her teacher with absolute concentration. Mouth hanging slightly open and eyes round. She is taking in every single word as Miss Sana reads out aloud a storybook titled THE THREE BILLY GOATS GRUFF to her class. “Sweaters you know,” Miss Sana tells the class, “are made from goats’ hair” “Miss,” Amina demands “if sweaters are made from goats then are goats colored blue, orange and pink too? Since sweater’s come in many colours.” “Don’t be silly Amina,” Miss Spencer replied firmly, “we dye the sweaters. Goats are only black, white, grey or brown.” Another brick added to the first. The walls around Anna are building. Rest assured that she will never envision, write about or paint an orange goat for the simple yet undeniable reason that “goats are only black, white, grey or brown.” At eight, Amina is in third grade and having trouble in English. Sir Javed has just returned her composition paper with red ink scrawled all over it. Apparently Amina has made the grave mistake of writing an introduction too long, not adding the third paragraph to her essay and ending with a

conclusion too short. An unforgivable mistake, no? Well, it is in Mr. Javed’s book. Not to worry though. Amina has learned her lesson. She wants to pass third-grade English so she will be careful next time. Before Amina, now stands a solid brick wall and she is unable to see beyond it. Every time she tries, someone tells her she is wrong. Someone who is either older or wiser or who has a title attached to his/her name. Aged fifteen, Amina is busily completing her Eighth Grade Geometry homework when her two year old cousin comes running into the room frantically waving his latest work of art drawing above his head. It’s a drawing of an apple and Amina is appalled by its condition. “My Word!” she exclaims, ‘‘Your teacher will be furious.” She watches her cousin’s face fall as she continues, “You’ve coloured outside the lines! And apples aren’t supposed to be blue!” “Why not!” her cousin demands. “Because Adam,” she says, placing a hand firmly on his shoulder “apples ARE red”