COVER STORY
Illustrations by Abdul Rahim Ashraf
“Aimen is a boy from my tuition centre,” Inaya said. “He got my number from a girl of my tuition section because he heard I was helping students with their work and he wanted help too.”
“Why didn’t he just come up to you in the classroom, then?” Leena asked.
“He’s in a different section,” Inaya explained. “Plus, he’s really struggling. He’s always texting me textbook questions to answer for him.”
“At what time does he send you these questions?” Leena asked.
“All times of the day,” Inaya said. “Sometimes even during school hours, when he’s at his school.”
Leena smacked her own forehead. “Inaya, you do know that when he’s texting you during school hours, he’s probably asking you questions from a class test?”
“Oh,” Inaya said. “I didn’t think of that. I thought it was just schoolwork....”
“So this is the reason you keep running out of your text message bundle and have to re-subscribe,” Leena said. “It’s because you’re texting back and forth, day and night.”
“Well, he does need a lot of help,” Inaya said.
“What are you, the student helper fairy?” Leena asked. “I can’t believe you waste your time like that. Show me your phone.”
“What?” Inaya gasped.
“You heard me, little sister,” Leena said, holding out her hand for Inaya’s phone. Inaya stared back at Leena for a few moments before finally surrendering her most prized possession.
“Unlock the phone, smartypants,” Leena said. “What do you think I am, stupid?”
“No, clueless,” Inaya said.
“What do you mean?” Leena asked loudly.
“The password,” Inaya said. “The password is ‘clueless’.”
Leena glared at Inaya for a few moments before turning to the phone and entering the lockscreen password. A minute passed before she turned back to Inaya and said, “Scrolling through this chat log is going to take forever. It seems like this Aimen guy uses you as a free pass for help with homework, cheating in tests and emotional support as well.”
“He’s delicate,” Inaya said. “If I don’t text him back he sends me a dozen texts demanding that I reply, with just as many missed calls.”
“Have you spoken with him on the phone?” Leena asked.
“No...” Inaya said.
“Considering all the texting you do between the two of you, there’s hardly anything left to talk about on call phone,” Leena said. She put the phone down on the table and turned to face Inaya. “You do know you are wasting your precious time on this person, right?”
“Um...” Inaya said.
“And it’s highly unethical, not to mention unhealthy, for him to be so heavily dependent on someone else to do his schoolwork,” Leena said. “What are you going to do, text him his reports when he gets a job?”
“Uh-” Inaya said.
“And what is it with you being an emotional bank where he can deposit all his woes?” Leena asked. “That’s wrong on so many levels.”
“But,” Inaya said, “he needs me!”
Leena stared at Inaya. “You don’t realise that he’s using you,” she said firmly. “This is a very unhealthy attachment and I can’t believe you’ve let it go this far. Now the next thing you’re going to say is that he’s going to commit suicide if you stop texting him back.”
“How did you know?” Inaya stared at Leena in astonishment.
“Oh, please,” Leena said, waving a hand at her sister. “I wasn’t born yesterday. I’ll be keeping an eye on your messages from now on. See that you keep this leech in check. By which I mean that you cut it off and stop replying.”
“But, but,” Inaya faltered. “What if he really...?”
“Nonsense,” Leena said dismissively. “There are hundreds of Aimens at every street corner, waiting to suck the life force out of you. Now don’t let me hear you mention this again.”
Leena walked away from that conversation patting herself on the back for a case well managed. However, when she found out the following week that Inaya had added Aimen on Facebook, she gave herself a mental kick in the shin.
“Show me his profile,” Leena said. “I can’t believe you disobeyed me!”
“You said to stop texting him back,” Inaya said. “So I added him on Facebook, instead.”
“Let me take a look,” Leena said. Inaya sighed and pushed the laptop in the direction of her elder sister.
Leena went through the profile top to bottom, which took a good fifteen minutes, then she finally closed the laptop and took a good look at Inaya.
“Have you been sending him money?” Leena asked.
“Uh, no,” Inaya said.
“Scratch cards? Message bundle subscriptions?” Leena asked.
“Um...” Inaya paused.
“So that’s why you’ve been burning through the text message bundles,” Leena said. “It’s not because it takes that many messages to text him back, but because you’ve been supplying him - or her - with subscription codes.”
“He told me his parents don’t give him much money, and...” Inaya stopped and looked at Leena. “What do you mean, ‘him or her’?”
“Has it even occurred to you if this Aimen is a real person at all?” Leena asked. “Or is it just a fake identity by which someone is freeloading off impressionable youths like you?”
“Oh, but he knows what I look like,” Inaya said. “He knows my tuition section, and my schoolbag. He told me at the very beginning when I didn’t believe that he was my fellow tuition centre student. He identified me perfectly.”
Leena raised a hand to her chest. “This is much more serious than I thought,” she finally muttered. She got up and left the room without another word.
“Leena! Leena!” Inaya called after her. “Please come back. Don’t tell...”
“Inaya is too soft for her own good,” Leena said to herself as she went to look for her parents.
The result of Leena’s investigation into Inaya’s text message escapades and the subsequent divulgence of said information to their parents was that Papa had Inaya taken out of tuition centre and placed under the instruction of Leena herself. This came as a blow to Leena, as it meant that several hours of her free time would go into teaching Inaya, but Papa had a lot to say about it.
“I didn’t realise we were putting Inaya under so much stress that she would be open to an exploit of this nature,” Papa said to the family at the meeting called to discuss the issue. “I contacted the tuition centre about it and they said that our daughter was our responsibility, and that they couldn’t possibly ensure what their students did once they were off campus. The most they could do was ensure their presence in their seat from clock in to clock out, and a safe handover to the designated person who came to pick them up after studies were over. They placed a lot of emphasis on this point, on the time and energy it took to keep the students from running off to goodness knows where after teaching time was over. I thought they had doubled the barbed wire on the walls to keep troublemakers out, but it seems that the addition was to keep the students in...”
“My Inaya, wasting herself on activities like that! If you put your abilities to your study the way you do to side-adventures like these, you would be top of the class,” Mama said to Inaya, who had been withdrawn and quiet since the beginning of the meeting.
Jasir, who had been left out of the meeting so that he wouldn’t get any ideas for mischief of his own, was burning with curiosity and pounced on his sisters as soon as they were free.
“What’s happening? Why didn’t you let me listen too? Is Inaya in trouble?” Jasir jumped around nervously.
“Nothing, for your own good, and yes, in that order,” Leena said in a calculated tone which put every last excited twitch and tremor of Jasir to rest.
“What’s she in trouble for? Is she going to lose her phone?” Jasir asked.
“Listening in on other people’s conversations will only make you more ill-informed,” Leena said. “But yes, Inaya isn’t going to have a phone for some time.”
“Yes!” Jasir did a little dance on the spot. “Now someone else in the house will be as technologically deprived as me.”
Inaya glared at him.
“She still has the laptop,” Leena said. “Which reminds me...” Beckoning Inaya into the room and shutting Jasir out at the last minute, she opened the laptop and pulled up a familiar-looking Facebook account.
“Is that...is that Aimen’s...?” Inaya said slowly.
“Yes, that’s your ‘Aimen’,” Leena said. The profile name was no longer a normal name but had changed to “Princess of Facebook A-man”.
“I don’t believe it,” Inaya whispered.
“Take your time,” Leena said, “but not too much. Now that I have to teach you after school, the sooner we start the better.” She closed the Facebook profile.
Inaya nodded silently. “Give me...a minute.”
“Two minutes,” Leena said. “You’re not the only one I’ll be teaching...”
With that mysterious comment, she opened the laptop and began to type. Inaya looked at her and wondered.
Another episode, another escapade for the Moin children. What do you think the next episode will bring?
caption
With Jasir’s latest adventure, Leena’s misfortunes and whatever Inaya is getting into next, it seems the Moin children just can’t stay out of trouble. Jasir is participating in a reality TV show, which somehow got halfheartedly approved by the parents. Leena, after being dropped from the college roster to accommodate someone with better connections, has been spending her college hours in the library while she racks her brains on how to tell this to her parents. Inaya’s day is divided between school and tuition centre, and one day Leena corners her to ask her regarding someone from tuition she is in contact with via text message...