Troubled child,
Breaking like the waves at Malibu.
Breaking like the waves at Malibu.
(“Troubled Child”, Joni Mitchell)
Today, I met with Akeem’s mother.
I’ve known Akeem for over a year. Sandra referred his family to me because she thought that I might be able to help them in some way, through the research work that I’ve been doing with other kids.
Akeem’s father is a professor of Biochemistry and his mother has a Master’s Degree in Anthropology. They’re devout Palestinian Christians who’ve embraced their new country and still cherish all the hopes they had for their son when they first came here. Akeem is a bright fifteen year old who can’t / won’t read.
His parents told me his story the first time we met. When he was five years old, Akeem was standing on the sidewalk of a busy city street in their country, holding his grandmother’s hand as they waited for his mother to come out of a shop. Impatient and curious, he wriggled from her grasp and ran ahead to the street vendor that he could see about a block away. His mother, who had witnessed his escape through the shop window stepped onto the sidewalk and saw Akeem turn to make eye contact with his grandmother, so confident was he that she would be right behind him. But what he saw as he looked through the turbulent maze of pedestrians, was his grandmother’s body being tossed into the street by the force of an exploding car bomb. They found Akeem hours later, wandering the streets of the city, clutching a string of beads he had taken from the vendor’s stall.
His parents’ strong belief in the importance and power of training the mind to overcome adversity, lead them to enroll him in a Pensionat where they hoped the Jesuits could transform his broken spirit into a precision tool that would help him excise the pain he lived with. He was taught French, English, Arabic, Mathematics and Science and learned nothing of any of them. Yet at an age when most kids are still being shown how to tie their shoes, Akeem was able to lay out intricate plans of escape from his school, and survival on the streets.
Over the years, Akeem seems to have built upon the wall of pain that life put before him, reinforcing it, assuring at all cost that it remains unbreachable. He uses this wall to separate himself from symbols: he has locked out letters, words, numbers, equations and can’t, or won’t, allow them to associate with their meaning. It’s as if by recognizing a connection and ascribing meaning to these abstracts, Akeem feels that he would be forced to give meaning to all the senseless and abstract events that have happened to him in his life. His therapist has explained to his parents that by maintaining an undying belief in chaos, Akeem also believes that he’ll never be responsible for meaning and order.
Akeem’s mother brought me something extraordinary today: a small pocket recorder that she took from her purse and placed, almost reverently, on the table between us.
“I have brought this to you so that you might better know and understand my son,” she said, pausing to remove a tissue from her purse. She pressed the play button and the mechanical hiss gave way to the first notes from the right hand of a piano piece I’d never heard before. The music grew, layer upon layer of sound pouring from the tiny two-inch speaker that still couldn’t muffle the beauty of the dynamics. These weren’t notes played on a piano, but music flowing from a soul through the fingers of a young man whose terror is masked by bravado and defiant indifference.
When the piece was over, Akeem’s mother took the recorder and replaced it in her bag. She wiped her nose with the tissue and looked at me with the dignity of a proud but defeated gambler, playing one of her last cards: “That also is my son,” she said.
I was speechless. Everything I’d come to know and believe about Akeem seemed to fall apart, like the pieces of an intricate puzzle that now must be rearranged to make room for another piece.
“But how? How was he able to learn this music? How can he read the notes?” I stammered.
“He hears the music and his fingers follow what he hears. He is gifted, but bound,” she said slowly shaking her head, perhaps in shame that such a gift still seemed so worthless because it didn’t involve cognitive learning.
We sat quietly for a few moments, the last notes of the music fading in our ears. I thanked her for sharing Akeem’s gift with me.
Copyright 2003
Today, I met with Akeem’s mother.
I’ve known Akeem for over a year. Sandra referred his family to me because she thought that I might be able to help them in some way, through the research work that I’ve been doing with other kids.
Akeem’s father is a professor of Biochemistry and his mother has a Master’s Degree in Anthropology. They’re devout Palestinian Christians who’ve embraced their new country and still cherish all the hopes they had for their son when they first came here. Akeem is a bright fifteen year old who can’t / won’t read.
His parents told me his story the first time we met. When he was five years old, Akeem was standing on the sidewalk of a busy city street in their country, holding his grandmother’s hand as they waited for his mother to come out of a shop. Impatient and curious, he wriggled from her grasp and ran ahead to the street vendor that he could see about a block away. His mother, who had witnessed his escape through the shop window stepped onto the sidewalk and saw Akeem turn to make eye contact with his grandmother, so confident was he that she would be right behind him. But what he saw as he looked through the turbulent maze of pedestrians, was his grandmother’s body being tossed into the street by the force of an exploding car bomb. They found Akeem hours later, wandering the streets of the city, clutching a string of beads he had taken from the vendor’s stall.
His parents’ strong belief in the importance and power of training the mind to overcome adversity, lead them to enroll him in a Pensionat where they hoped the Jesuits could transform his broken spirit into a precision tool that would help him excise the pain he lived with. He was taught French, English, Arabic, Mathematics and Science and learned nothing of any of them. Yet at an age when most kids are still being shown how to tie their shoes, Akeem was able to lay out intricate plans of escape from his school, and survival on the streets.
Over the years, Akeem seems to have built upon the wall of pain that life put before him, reinforcing it, assuring at all cost that it remains unbreachable. He uses this wall to separate himself from symbols: he has locked out letters, words, numbers, equations and can’t, or won’t, allow them to associate with their meaning. It’s as if by recognizing a connection and ascribing meaning to these abstracts, Akeem feels that he would be forced to give meaning to all the senseless and abstract events that have happened to him in his life. His therapist has explained to his parents that by maintaining an undying belief in chaos, Akeem also believes that he’ll never be responsible for meaning and order.
Akeem’s mother brought me something extraordinary today: a small pocket recorder that she took from her purse and placed, almost reverently, on the table between us.
“I have brought this to you so that you might better know and understand my son,” she said, pausing to remove a tissue from her purse. She pressed the play button and the mechanical hiss gave way to the first notes from the right hand of a piano piece I’d never heard before. The music grew, layer upon layer of sound pouring from the tiny two-inch speaker that still couldn’t muffle the beauty of the dynamics. These weren’t notes played on a piano, but music flowing from a soul through the fingers of a young man whose terror is masked by bravado and defiant indifference.
When the piece was over, Akeem’s mother took the recorder and replaced it in her bag. She wiped her nose with the tissue and looked at me with the dignity of a proud but defeated gambler, playing one of her last cards: “That also is my son,” she said.
I was speechless. Everything I’d come to know and believe about Akeem seemed to fall apart, like the pieces of an intricate puzzle that now must be rearranged to make room for another piece.
“But how? How was he able to learn this music? How can he read the notes?” I stammered.
“He hears the music and his fingers follow what he hears. He is gifted, but bound,” she said slowly shaking her head, perhaps in shame that such a gift still seemed so worthless because it didn’t involve cognitive learning.
We sat quietly for a few moments, the last notes of the music fading in our ears. I thanked her for sharing Akeem’s gift with me.
