Just like that—on the most pedestrian of Monday afternoon 6th periods—school was shut down until at least December 6th. Moments before I caught wind of the news, I asked my department head to approve the Unit Test I had in store for the end of the week. She told me she’d be back in five minutes, and I haven’t seen her since. One of my colleagues, a man I’ve actually never had a conversation with despite sharing a staff room, came in to deliver the news. As his hasty decree concluded, he unsheathed a tube of hand sanitizer and dumped probably a 5 ounce glob on my hands. Shukran, I said, trying to reel in my grin. If you’ve read this column before, you’d find the closure no surprise. Due to swine flu, a shutdown has been rumored since school started—albeit late—in the beginning of October. But our closure is not the result of sweeping government action. It is believed among the faculty that a government ministry – Health but possibly also Education – was alerted by a parent that several students in our school had been infected. So far, the government is dealing with the problem in a case-by-case manner, my school being the latest in a cluster of schools to close their doors over the last couple of weeks. The only nation-wide policy has been to extend the length of the Eid holiday, from November 26th – 30th, to November 26th – December 6th. In fact, this is the tentative date for which my school’s re-opening has been penciled in. I can see the merits of this interim solution: it allows sick students to heal and rest. There’s no doubt that in December, and then in January, the problem will only be accentuated by colder temperatures. However, there are holidays already built in to the calendar for Christmas and then at the end of January, both of which could stem the tide of the disease. The stop-and-start method, I think, might cause a meaningful reduction on the flu’s damage. But as a teacher, I don’t think I could cover much more in 2- and 3-week chunks than with a lengthy layoff. In any case, the reaction to the news was quite hysterical, from the students to my gel-dispensing colleagues. After I spent about 2 whole minutes rubbing in my hand sanitizer, I went up to my homeroom classroom to supervise my students. Regular classes had disbanded when the news broke, and each classroom became a lawless holding pen until the final bell rang. I entered to a student standing on a chair spraying wood finish from an aerosol can, his pose resembling the Statue of Liberty. After my students had all told me ‘nice to know you’ and spilled into the halls like it was that favorite day in June, I met up with one of my American colleagues to discuss happy hysteria. He said that his students, in absence of hand sanitizer and forbidden from bathroom trips, had found a can of Glade air freshener and were washing their hands this way. Later on the bus home, the students chanted the name of the bus matron, the lady entrusted with supervising their behavior and hand-delivering them to their homes. “Ms., Ms., Ms., Ms….!!!!†At first, she hadn’t gotten the memo about the closure and seemed cautiously amused by her newfound popularity. But when she finally figured things out, she gave her most heroic, industrious performance of the semester. She hustled up to the front of the vehicle and from a compartment removed a Windex-style spray bottle filled with a maroon liquid—the moonshine of surface cleaners. She sprayed and scrubbed that bus from top to bottom as the kids continued to chant her name. The scenes on this first of what will likely be several ‘last’ days were hysterical. The atmosphere was of electric fun. For me, it wasn’t the joy of ending school, but of witnessing these cursory attempts to vanquish this suddenly real menace. We had known for weeks that the virus was in the air, and who could not have noticed that the attendance numbers were dwindling? BM The beliefs and statements of all Bikya Masr blogumnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect our editorial views.
