Wrapping It Up

I learned how to make stuffed cabbage rolls in Miami, in the kitchenette of a woman called Ruth. Ruth was in her sixties, recently widowed, and a little lonely, as I was. She showed me how to steam the cabbage first, then peel off the leaves, being careful not to tear. We stuffed them with a mixture of beef, rice, onions, and seasonings. Each cabbage roll was then placed seam-side down in a heavy-bottomed skillet, then topped with tomato sauce simmered with brown sugar, carrots, parsley and raisins. We sat in Ruth's kitchenette and ate the steaming cabbage rolls on a rainy November day. They were the first thing besides Kraft macaroni-and-cheese dinners I learned how to cook, and I couldn't believe how easy they were to make.

I rolled my first sushi in a Victorian flat in San Francisco. My friend Atsuko showed me how to season the boiled rice with vinegar and sugar, how to scoop it into a flat, shallow wooden dish and fan it until it cooled, then spread it over a sheet of nori, add a variety of condiments -- egg pancake cut into ribbons, shiitake mushrooms and carrots cooked in soy sauce, broth and sugar, and finely chopped strips of salted cucumber. We rolled it all up and sliced each roll into savory circles which we ate with soy sauce, pickled ginger, and cups of green tea.

A Chinese engineering student called Li taught me how to make jiǎozi in Japan. My friend Wendy and I peered over Li's shoulder as he mixed flour and water and kneaded it into a ball of dough. We scrubbed the surface of my table and rolled out a hundred little circles, patting each one with flour. Then we watched as Li chopped hakusai (Chinese cabbage) and salted it. I couldn't believe how much we needed: the mound of chopped cabbage was massive, but Li assured me we would use it all. We chopped spring onions and ginger, adding them to chopped pork, then took turns squeezing the moisture out of the salted cabbage -- which had miraculously been reduced to 1/5 of its bulk -- and added that too. We put a mound of the pork mixture onto the middle of each circle of dough and crimped the edges, then steamed the jiǎozi and ate them with a dipping sauce of soy sauce, vinegar and finely chopped garlic.

My daughter and I learned how to make dolmasi (stuffed grape leaves) from Güzin's mother, a woman called Fatma. Güzin didn't have a pot big enough to cook them in, so I'd brought one of ours, a nasty-looking Teflon-coated casserole with a fitted lid. Fatma took one look at this, noted the fact that the Teflon coating is scarred (I tell my family not to use metal spoons with Teflon-coated pots, but I might as well save my breath), and sent Güzin over to the neighbors to find a better one. We watched Fatma mix rice, chopped tomatoes, currants, pine nuts, and olive oil into a fragrant-smelling mixture. Then we all sat down to roll the grape leaves. You put a little bit of stuffing on each leaf and start rolling from the base, tucking the sides in as you roll. My daughter and I struggled to get just the right amount of filling on each leaf. We each had our respective rolling sins: I put too much on first, then not enough; my daughter didn't roll tightly enough, and even Güzin couldn't compete with Fatma for speed. But gradually the pile of cigar-shaped rolls rose higher and higher until all the filling had been used up and the they were ready to be sprinkled with lemon juice and more olive oil and steamed until tender. We ate them hot from the pot, and later cold, and they were marvelous both ways.

There is something wonderful about food that is stuffed or wrapped. The contrast of the wrapping and the stuffing is a delight, as is the surprise of biting into a savory filling concocted from a number of ingredients. The salty tang of seaweed works beautifully with sweetened vinegar rice; the melt-in-your mouth succulence of cooked cabbage perfectly complements the savory center, piping hot and tender; the gingery, garlicky goodness of jiǎozi is a nice surprise to find in a dumpling; each dolmasi is a juicy little parcel with a bouquet of flavors to make your mouth water.

"Well then," said Scottish friends of mine when I waxed lyrical about all of these stuffed or wrapped taste treats, "you're bound to love haggis."

The blood drained from my face. I am sorry to say that I do not love haggis, that I don't even like it. Yes, I ought to be ashamed of myself. What's not to like about haggis? It is wholesome, it uses up ingredients that might otherwise be discarded, it has onions and oatmeal in it, two of my favorite foodstuffs, and it is so Scottish that Robert Burns actually immortalized it in a poem. But I made the mistake of looking at the recipe first, and I really wish I hadn't: (1) sheep's stomach or ox secum, cleaned and thoroughly, scalded, turned inside out and soaked overnight in cold salted water, and (2) the heart and lungs of one lamb, and (3) stock from lungs and trimmings.

I'll just stick with the teachings of Ruth, Atsuko, Li, and Fatma.

Fanatics

The lady at the bakery takes a steaming loaf from a pile and gives me a shy smile. She doesn't see the cloth bag I'm holding out to her. She whips open a clear plastic bag and pops the loaf into it. "Here you go," she says in Turkish.

My husband cringes: he's been through this with me any number of times. He knows what's coming. So do my kids. If they were with us, they'd be blushing and edging away from me.

I pluck the bread from the plastic bag and transfer it carefully to my own bag. The woman frowns and her mouth drops open. You can see it in her eyes: What's wrong with my bag? My bag is cleaner than your bag! Which it is. Yesterday, I bought lemons and coriander and there are a few leaves still sticking to the sides. I shake my head and smile: I don't want the bakery lady to think that I'm just being contrary. But even if I knew the Turkish for "I'm saying no to your bag because the world is filling up with plastic," I'm not sure she'd be convinced. Only a handful of the shoppers here recycle plastic bags or bring their own cloth ones.

But I persist, and sometimes I know I'm getting my point across. The man at our local supermarket had no idea why I kept bringing my own bags to his store. To my delight, he spoke English, so I told him that the world was filling up with toxic plastic and I was concerned. He might still think I'm nuts, but he heard me out.

I'm not naturally contrary. I really don't enjoy embarrassing my husband and kids. But the world really is filling up with toxic plastic. On the off chance that you haven't read about this yet, please click on the link above. I had a rough idea about how bad the problem was, but after I read Bish Denham's blog post in April this year, I became fanatical about carrying cloth bags with me.

If we had to live next door to a vast plastic rubbish heap, I think many of us would start to notice. As it is, this is happening in our oceans where most of us can't see it. Thousands of feet of plastic trash are now drifting about in the North and South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.

This is a huge problem. It isn't going to go away unless we all start to do something. Like rejecting plastic bags in favor of cloth bags. "Come on," an acquaintance scoffed, "a couple of plastic bags aren't going to ruin the earth." And of course they aren't. But it isn't a couple, is it? What's the world population now -- over six billion eight hundred million, right? If only a modest fraction of that number used only one plastic bag per month, that would still be a phenomenal number of plastic bags to dispose of. And if I insist on plastic for my own convenience, why shouldn't the whole world?

"But everybody uses plastic!" people protest. They complain that the problem is too widespread, that there are too many people who depend on the plastic industry, that individuals can't make a significant difference. Moreover, people who insist on cloth bags and recyclable materials are often depicted as tree-hugging neo-hippie fanatics.

But consider this: fanatics get things done. By the end of the 19th century, slavery had been abolished almost everywhere, and yet this would never have happened if it hadn't been for a handful of people who were seen at the time as real nutters, fanatics who got so worked up about slavery they would virtually tremble whenever they spoke in public. When these crazy men and women first started their efforts, many people laughed in their faces. Slavery was a huge business, but a handful of fanatics brought it down, and without the aid of the internet, computers, or modern transportation. (If you want to be inspired and uplifted by the power of human goodness, just read Against All Odds, from Mother Jones January, 2004 issue.) After you read it, please remember that the fanatics of the 1780s worked their miracles without Facebook, Twitter or blogging.

So if you haven't already, go on and get worked up about plastic pollution. At the very least, go out and get yourself a couple of cloth bags, if you haven't already. Keep them everywhere: in your bag, in the glove compartment of your car, near your front door. Carry them with you, and if your local stores still use non-recyclable plastic bags, be a fanatic and tell them why they should change. Embarrass your children, make your spouse's toes curl up. Be a fanatic. You'll be following in some great footsteps.

Finest Hour

The other day, my daughter and I watched a group of children perform a comedy skit at my husband's school. Four children stepped onto the stage, clutching their scripts. We smiled as a redheaded boy, a blond girl, and a tall brown-haired girl raced through their lines in English that ranged from breathless Cockney to heavily accented near-Turkish.

The first one held the microphone like it was a poisonous snake. The second one yelled her lines into the microphone, making us all jump and grab our ears. The third one tripped up on his pronunciation and had an attack of the giggles. Then we saw there was a fourth boy. He was dark, tiny, and not typically British-looking. He stepped forward with pride and confidence, holding the microphone a few inches away from his mouth. Everyone smiled. But when he delivered his lines in perfect received British English, there was a collective gasp from the crowd. Not only was the kid's pronunciation too good to compliment, he had considerable charisma. As far as stage presence, oratory, diction, and projection were concerned, Winston Churchill could not have done better.

And it took me back...

Over a decade ago, I found myself sitting in a crowd of Japanese parents, impatiently and reluctantly waiting for my eight-year-old to appear in the after-hours group's New Years play.

In Japan, parents are expected to attend every single one of their children's class plays, athletic meets, school festivals, graduation and entrance ceremonies (for every single year of school, including nursery), and school parties. Working parents with children in two schools have it especially hard: not only do you have to go to two sets of events, unless your job finishes before five o'clock, you have to go to the after-hours events as well.

We were working parents with children in two schools that year. We'd already been to the nursery school Christmas party and only got out of the elementary school Christmas party because it had been scheduled for Christmas Day (and don't think they didn't try to change our minds about attending). We'd gritted our teeth through two sports' days, two dramatic performances, two Culture Day festivals, and two jugyo sankans, or class observation days. Going to our oldest daughter's after-hours New Years Party just seemed like punishment. My husband begged off with a cold, but we already felt like we'd won the Crappy Parents of the Year award after refusing to attend the elementary school Christmas party, so I bit the bullet and went.

As I sat on my metal folding chair, waiting, I looked in vain for any familiar faces. The after-hours group included, for some reason, all five schools in the area. Other than a handful of the teachers, I didn't know anyone there and no one knew me. Which meant that none of the people sitting around me realized that I could understand them when they speculated as to why I was there. When my very blonde daughter trotted out on the stage and stood with her friends, waiting for her turn to speak, I felt like laughing when someone behind me hissed, "I'll bet that blonde girl will be the foreigner's kid." Duh.

We watched as a child took the microphone from a teacher and licked her lips nervously. She took a deep breath and raced through her lines, ducking her head. When she'd finished, she passed the microphone to the next boy as though it were a hot potato. The boy took it, blinked, and garbled his lines, staring at his feet. We all smiled.

"What's the foreign kid going to do?" a woman in front of me wondered. "She's not going to be in this, is she?" "Poor thing," her male companion said. "She sure stands out." She really did, too. Not only was she blonde, but our oldest daughter was a head taller than every single child there. "Maybe she'll say her lines in English," someone else said.

The next child grabbed the microphone, grinned at us, and screamed his lines at such a volume that we all winced. He handed the microphone to my daughter. I took a deep breath and chewed my lower lip.

My daughter shook her hair back, flashed us a dazzling smile, and looked the audience straight in the eye. She read out her lines in a voice that was loud and clear. With feeling. And she didn't make one single mistake.

A man in front of me said, in awed tones: That kid was the very best one. That foreign kid! To this day, I will never forget it. In all my time of being a parent, it was truly my finest hour.

Back in the present, I watched as Young Winston Churchill's parents joined him after the show, grinning proudly. I know exactly how they feel.

School's Out

When I was a little kid, I generally enjoyed school. I liked the smell of classrooms, the scratch of chalk on the blackboard, the dozens of Scholastic paperbacks our teachers almost begged us to read. But by the time summer rolled around, I was more than ready for it. On the morning of the very last day, I used to whoop and holler and jump around the house like a wild, demented creature. Never mind that a blazing hot summer lay ahead; never mind that the temperature would quickly climb to 100 degrees and higher, that our house was not air-conditioned and the only place I could go to escape the heat was the local swimming pool. Who cared about any of that when the dispiriting routine of getting up, getting ready, and going to school had been replaced by lazing around the house, reading whatever I pleased, and splashing around in the local pool with my friends?

For some reason, my friends and I always pictured that the teachers were sorry to see us go. We figured that teaching was their vocation, that without us to instruct and educate, their lives would be diminished. God knows where we got this idea, but as we left school, singing our silly No more teachers, no more books song, we had the idea that they were watching us go with regret, wishing that September would hurry up and come. And having those three blissful months of freedom was such a heady thrill.

But however a great a thrill that last day of school might have been all those dreamy years ago, it was as nothing compared to the unmitigated joy of my last day of school as teacher this semester. Especially because my husband and I have turned in our resignations and are contemplating another move -- and our next expatriate adventure.

No more students coming to class ten minutes late and asking for toilet breaks! No more risking wrist injury wresting cell phones from the meaty fists of teenage boys! No more students showing up late without textbooks, notebooks, or writing implements! No more students whining Teacher, break time, fifteen minutes before class is up! And -- with apologies to the handful of hardworking students I've been fortunate enough to teach -- no more students! No more Can, Murat, Tanol, Sevge, Fikret, Aycan, Cedyda, Uzay, Aziz, or Hamit.

It's getting very hot here. Our house isn't air-conditioned and the only place I can get cool is the local swimming pool -- and I hate heat. Who cares? Not me. Not one single bit.

Today instead of waking up at six and getting dressed, I woke up at six and went for a swim. Instead of bolting breakfast and heading out the door, I did yoga. Instead of rushing through my lesson plans and getting my teaching materials ready, I lay down on the sofa and read half a book.

Summertime isn't quite as carefree and easy as it was in the halcyon days of my youth. My husband still has a couple of weeks left of teaching. There are chores to be done and meals to prepare. I've got a 15-year-old who's taking her international General Certificate of Secondary Education exams this month and needs the occasional nagging session to get motivated. We've got another moving day looming ahead and moving is never much fun. But cooking, cleaning, nagging and packing up have never been as fun as they have this past week. I've got a stack of books I know I'll have time to put a dent in, two manuscripts to revise, and the glittering pool awaits. And sometimes just for the sheer heck of it, I whoop and holler and jump around the house.

School's out for the summer, folks. And it isn't just the kids who are thrilled.

Say What?

The other day, my friend Güzin and I got on the dolmuş downtown after an afternoon of shopping. Almost as soon as we sat down, a group of sixty-ish women piled in, one after the other, talking a mile a minute.

Güzin was delighted. "They're from Istanbul too!" she whispered. "I can tell from their accents; they sound like they're from my old neighborhood."

I was intrigued. "How can you tell?"

"It's just the way they sound." Her eyes widened and she frowned. "In fact, I can't really tell what language they're speaking," she whispered. "It's mainly Turkish, but it's something else too; I just can't tell what. Spanish maybe...?"

I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on the women's voices. Whatever they were speaking sounded just like Turkish to me, though some words seemed more guttural and the sentences had a rhythm that was slightly exotic. "Well, it's not Spanish."

We were both silent for a while, then there was a lull in the women's conversation so Güzin and I started talking about something else: a colleague of ours who recently got engaged. She brought her photo album to work and I was fascinated by the Turkish custom of the bride-to-be preparing her husband-to-be salty coffee. "Does he really have to drink it?"

"Yes, he does."

"Why?"

"Because if he can drink his wife's salty coffee without complaining, her family will know he's patient enough to endure marriage."

One of the women shoppers with the fascinating language leaned forward and tapped Güzin on the shoulder. She said something to her, but all I could understand was İngilizce -- the Turkish for English. Güzin answered her.

"What did she say?" I whispered.

"She wanted to know where I'd learned my English."

The ladies were speaking to each other again and Güzin shook her head. "Do you think it's Catalan?"

I shook my head. "I've heard Catalan and that's definitely not it." We both frowned. "Hey," I said, "Do you think it could be Ladino?"

I've never heard anyone speak Ladino, but I've always wanted to. When Sephardic Jewish exiles settled throughout the Ottoman Empire, they took their language with them and it evolved, depending on what area they settled in.

Güzin perked right up at that. "Ladino? Maybe that's it!"

We listened to the women a little more. I could barely stand it: if the women were really speaking Ladino, I was dying to know. "Could you maybe ask them what language they're speaking?"

Güzin bit her lip and glanced quickly behind her, then shook her head. "I can't."

"But they asked you about your English!" I whispered.

"I know, but that's different."

And for the next ten minutes, we sat there simmering with curiosity as we listened to the women speaking their mystery language. If I thought they could speak English, I swear I'd have asked them myself.

Before Güzin got to her stop, she kindly let me practice my Turkish on her again: fırın n'ın orda, or Near the bakery. When I want to get off at the local bakery instead of the mosque, this line is an absolute must. I've never yet met a dolmuş driver who speaks English, so having this useful bit of Turkish has saved me many a long, dusty walk.

Just after I waved goodbye to Güzin, my mobile went off and I spoke to my daughter in Japanese. As we talked, I became aware of a sudden hush: all the other passengers seemed to have stopped talking. My Japanese suddenly sounded very loud and foreign to my ears. The ladies who might be Ladino speakers were watching me, open-mouthed, as was the driver.

Almost on cue, the driver wheeled around and asked me where I was going. I took a deep breath: I was ready for this! "Fırın n'ın orda," I said loudly and clearly.

The driver knitted his brow and repeated fırın and my heart sank. Because unfortunately, a useful phrase like near the bakery only works when the driver knows where the bakery is. It has been my experience that one out of five drivers don't know where our local bakery is, so this was just my lucky day.

"Where going?" a loud man in front of me asked in English. I stifled a sigh. This happens a lot. I speak my little piece in Turkish, nobody knows where the bakery is, and I end up having to entertain everybody in English. As it happens, the bakery is just down the road from our local cattery, but imagine having to explain that in Turkish. "You England?" the man in front of me shouted, looking me up and down. "You want Turkish bakery? Where you go?"

I had a sudden inspiration. "Pan-ya e," I answered in Japanese. "Karşıyaka ni arimasu ga, dare mo wakaranai mitai. Anata mo wakaranai dessho?"

The man's jaw dropped and I smiled. Russian, I heard somebody behind me say. I smiled all the more broadly.

When the mystery language ladies got off, they gave me a quizzical look. I hope we'll meet again. If they tell me theirs, I'll tell them mine.

Cheating Arts

This is it: D-Day. The final examination. I'm in a room full of students who are radiating fear and misery as they chew on the ends of their pencils and ply their eraser stubs over their answer sheets. This is the day when we separate the studious from the screw-ups, the hardworking from the lazy. The students grimace and gaze heavenwards as they wrack their brains for the right answers.

"You!" I whisper, tapping one boy's desk. "Stop cheating!" He shoots me an aggrieved Who me? look and spreads his hands.

But I've sat in on too many exams here and I know all too well what he's up to: while pretending to stare into space, he has in fact been copying what the girl next to him is writing. She's already managed four paragraphs and he has barely come up with three sentences, but what he has written is amazingly like her composition. My name Gamze, she has written. Thank you for email I am festival's very enjoyed Especially rockband. my family go Istanbul favorite holiday. Cheater Boy's first sentence reads as follows: My name Onur Thank you for email I am party's very enjoyed Especially music. my family go Ankara favorite holiday. Part of me is infuriated by his need to cheat; part of me respects the fact that at least he had the presence of mind to change the pertinent bits.

Because as much as it pains me to admit this, not everybody here has the smarts to know how to cheat. Last semester, a girl turned in an assignment about Turkish tourism, but had neglected to change Nigeria and Nigerian to Turkey and Turkish. And this group in particular has a couple of real boneheads in it. I recognize half a dozen from last semester: kids who never paid attention in class, never did a lick of homework, never once came up with the right answer. The worst one, a tall, pimply boy called Cemal, is sitting in the second row, his head bent over his test paper. I don't have the heart to see how he is doing. During his months in my class, Cemal was never anything but spectacularly dense.

In the fifth row, there is a boy who looks exactly like someone I went to school with, Nathaniel Tannenbaum. So far, I've taught half a dozen kids here who looked eerily like old friends or acquaintances of mine, but this kid is so similar to Nathaniel it's truly freaky: the same beaky nose, the same golden skin, unibrow, and long, shapely hands. Even the way this kid slumps in his seat is the same. Every time I have to walk by his desk, I try not to gape. Then I happen to look over Nathaniel's shoulder and see what he has written about his favorite holiday: my went enjoye istanbul september with fammily Three brothers, sister. my very had fun, too much Interesting, istanbul Very fantastik City.

I can't get over my disappointment. Nathaniel Tannebaum was a straight A student with a keen wit. He was in the Gifted English class and cocky enough to mock people who failed to distinguish between your and you're. How could this idiot be his doppelganger?

Cemal writes, never once looking up from his answer sheet. He frowns, he scratches his neck, he chews the end of his pencil and erases hard enough to make a hole in the paper, then writes again.

"What is that? Show me that paper!" I hear my colleague hiss. I wheel around and see him bending over a boy in the second row whose head is lowered in shame. My colleague holds up the crib sheet he has confiscated. I am dispatched to the office to fetch the head teacher to deal with the cheater. As I turn back briefly, I see Nathaniel trying to copy off his neighbor's paper. I feel like crying: Nathaniel cheating? Nooooo! Nathaniel was the guy everybody else cheated off!

I come back to the classroom with the headteacher. As soon as the blushing cheater is ushered out in shame, three of my former students leave, one after the other. I take a look at their papers and feel like crying: they haven't even bothered to attempt the composition. There is no way they're going to pass.

"You--sit--over--here," I hear my colleague tell Nathaniel through clenched teeth. Dark eyes flashing, Nathaniel gets up with great dignity and relocates to a seat in the back row.

Thirty long minutes pass. Two more of my ex-students get up and leave, their test sheets only half completed. My colleague doesn't say anything about it, but I know he feels as bad about the boy with the crib sheet as I do. Because we caught him cheating, that boy will receive a zero for his efforts. Instead of spending the summer relaxing with his pals, he will have to stay here and go to summer school. God knows what he will tell his parents.

Nathaniel and Cemal are the very last students to hand in their exams. A quick glance at Nathaniel's paper shows me that he has almost certainly failed. I don't even bother to look at Cemal's; his failure is a given. At least Cemal didn't cheat, I tell myself. But I still leave the classroom feeling jaded and a little depressed.

Later in the afternoon, I find Cemal's paper in my stack of tests to mark. I am astonished and delighted to find that he passed. If he did cheat, he did a great job of it.

The Pursuit of Happiness

The auditorium is cool and dark and I almost sigh with relief as I sink into my seat. It’s hot and bright outside and my classroom on the third floor has been hellish. The heat is bad enough given our non-functioning air-conditioning, but what really drives me crazy is my students' varying temperature requirements. Coscun, who is tall and skinny, cannot bear having the window open. Aycan too is cold-blooded: she wears a sweater on even the hottest days. Sevgi, on the other hand, is always burning up, and Haluk, Kemal, and Nazli slide up and down the scale. No sooner have I started teaching than someone jumps up to see whether the air-conditioner happens to be working again. Five minutes later, someone else is tugging on a window, trying to open or close it. This goes on all morning until I could scream. Here in the auditorium the temperature is perfect for me. If my students don’t like it, they’ll just have to sweat—or shiver—it out until the movie’s over.

“Teacher, what movie?” Coscun whispers, tapping me on the shoulder.

“The Pursuit of Happiness,” I tell him for the third time in five minutes, through clenched jaws.

“Teacher, I am present,” Kemal cries breathlessly in the row behind me, making Nazli squeal in protest as he trips over her feet.

“Kemal. Got you,” I mutter, ticking his name on my roll sheet.

“Teacher, cold,” Aycan mutters. She snuffles. “Do you have—?”

But Kemal interrupts. “Teacher, I am here?” His breath is hot on my neck.

“Yes,” I mutter, rooting in my bag for Kleenex, which I’m guessing is what Aycan wants. From my over-stuffed handbag I pull dark glasses, my wallet, and a tube of hand cream. But where in the world is my Kleenex?

“You mark me present?” Kemal persists. Because God forbid he should spend a whole two hours watching a movie in a cool auditorium on a hot day and not be given credit for it.

“Yes, I have marked you here!” I tell Kemal a little too loudly, pulling a package of Kleenex out of my bag and handing it to Aycan. She frowns at it. “No, I have.” She leans closer to me. “Do you have pen?”

“Teacher, we have quiz after movie?” Nazli wants to know as I try unsuccessfully to stuff the Kleenex back into my bag.

“Teacher, what quiz about?” Aycan wails a little frantically.

By the time the lights go out and the movie begins, I am no longer cool.

And yet, in no time, I am caught up in the wonderful story of Christopher Gardner and his trials. Suddenly I am no longer a hassled, stressed-out teacher in an auditorium with a roll sheet on my lap, I am back in San Francisco watching Christopher and his son coping with life on the street. I marvel at how a father sleeping rough manages to turn himself out every morning, smartly dressed in a business suit and freshly ironed shirt; how he gets his son to his nursery school and back day after day; how he puts in a full day at work under the most difficult of circumstances. I feel his misery and anxiety when he is forced to give his rich, oblivious boss his last five dollars, when he has to pay the parking fines he has incurred through no fault of his own. When Christopher and his little boy are spending the night at Glide Memorial’s homeless shelter and his little boy says You’re a good papa, I find myself snuffling back tears. The movie could end right here and I’d be perfectly happy: if you’re living on the streets, doing your best to make ends meet, and your little boy thinks you’re a good dad, you’re a success.

“Teacher, you okay?” Nazli whispers, her voice anxious. I nod. A soft, cool hand pats mine in the darkness. Some of my students consult the clocks on their mobile phones, obviously bored, but they are the ones who would yawn their way through a hurricane. Most are on the edge of their seats, their mouths hanging open.

As I watch, I can’t help but find parallels between Christopher’s life and my own. Although I’m not homeless, I too am pursuing a dream, my own vision of happiness that always seems tantalizingly, provokingly out of reach. I too have children I am determined to do well by; I too am doing a job that is hellishly difficult and feel lost in a world that is indifferent to whether I succeed or fail. At the end of the movie when Chris is offered the job he has worked so hard to get, I burst into tears. And this time there is no stopping me.

“Don’t cry, teacher!” Kemal whispers as I fumble for my Kleenex with one hand and blot my tears with the back of the other.

“ArrrCHOO!” Aycan sneezes behind me. She’s shivering again; the auditorium air-conditioning is definitely a little too efficient and even I am a little too cool.

But inside, I’m warmed right through.