When Zainab Dudayev moved to the City of Miami, Florida, from her hometown of Gudermes, Nation of Chechnya, she definitely expected a culture clash. After all, she was moving to a completely different country, one whose cultures and ways contrasted sharply with her own. The young woman braced herself for these changes, but wasn't one hundred percent sure what to expect.
To most people hailing from Russia, and that includes the former Soviet republics and the little nation-states that Russia bullied into servitude once upon a time, the United States of America seemed like a forbidden place. To them, America seemed like a decadent place where everyone had sex with anything that moves, and had a fetish for guns, movies, alcohol, and sports. Definitely not what a Chechen-born Russian citizen would gravitate towards...
To the rest of Russia, Zainab's homeland, the beautiful, storied and eternally embattled nation of Chechnya was a forbidden and dangerous place. The Chechen people numbered a little over a million, and as far as most Russians were concerned, this was way too much. The Chechen people have been staunchly Muslim since the sixteenth century, and nothing that other European powers, especially Russia, have done across the ages has managed to change that.
To be Chechen is to be Muslim, so it has been in that part of the world for untold centuries. The few Chechens who didn't follow Islam adhered to ancient religious traditions that were around long before Orthodox Christianity made its way into Russia proper. If anything, Chechen Muslims had a bigger future than Russian Christians, because their birthrate was second to none in Eastern Europe, while Russia was declining across the board.
In the City of Gudermes, Zainab's parents, Tamerlan and Adara lived a simple life. Tamerlan worked as a tailor, and Adara taught mathematics at a local school. The Dudayev family weren't rich, but they had enough, and they were happy. They were a loving family, trying their best in a tough environment. One day, the Second Chechen War came to their doorstep, and tragedy struck. Zainab's parents perished during a pitched battle between Russian soldiers and Chechen rebels, and from that moment on, her world was shattered.
The United Nations tried its best to help Chechen refugees resettle in other parts of the world. Many of them went to Canada and the United Kingdom, while others were to France. Russia has proved itself inhospitable to the Chechen people, whom it regards with suspicion no matter how peaceful or friendly they might seem. For the Chechen Diaspora, the choice had been made. Russia was definitely not the kind of place any true Chechen could call home, but there was hope for the rest of the world...
"Hey, Miss Uni-Brow, where are you from?" Stanley Bilodeau asked, with a smirk on his face. The person whom Stanley just addressed, a young woman named Zainab Dudayev, turned and looked at him, absolutely not believing her ears. This fool did not just say those words to me, Zainab thought, caught somewhere between being irate, and being shocked at such impertinence.
"Us pokoysya ( be calm )," Zainab told herself, and the young woman took a deep breath, then closed her eyes, hard. Stanley, the young man sitting beside her then had the temerity to snap his fingers, dangerously close to her face. As far as she was concerned, the dude had crossed the invisible line and definitely reached the point of no return...
"Miss Thing," Stanley managed to get out, before Zainab whirled around and lashed out at him like a tigress brought to bay by a pack of hunting dogs. The young woman's brown eyes blazed with anger, and her open palm struck his face, twice, and Stanley winced, stunned by her reaction. Zainab glared at him, breathing heavily, and Stanley rubbed his face, and shook his head.
"Oh snap, I see kitty has claws," Stanley said, actually laughing, and he looked at Zainab, grinning fearless. This one bounces back quickly, Zainab thought, amazed. Indeed, Stanley's temporary shock replaced by that egotistical half-smirk that she and so many others at Miami-Dade College longed to wipe off his face. In this small, rather friendly school, Stanley Bilodeau somehow managed to offend...everyone.
"Shush," Zainab said at last, and when she turned around, she noticed that the other twenty or so students in the computer lab were smiling at her. The professor, Stephen Jackson, a tall, bald-head, dark-skinned African American man of about forty came back into the room after the ten-minute break ended, and stroked his beard thoughtfully before he resumed the lecture. Teaching English as a second-language to newcomers wasn't the fast-track to academic superstardom, but one had to start somewhere...
Professor Jackson looked at the classroom, and noticed that his students, most of whom hailed from Latin American countries, with a few Africans and Asians here and there, seemed to be focusing on two of their classmates. They were looking at Stanley Bilodeau, and Professor Jackson wasn't surprised, since the fair-skinned, Afro-sporting young man, originally from the City of Montreal, Quebec, was the stereotypical class clown.
Stanley Bilodeau is a pain in the ass, Professor Jackson thought, annoyed. Compared to him, the other students were a joy. The dude was almost twenty years old and ought to know better but he insisted on his class clown antics, bugging everyone and acting like he was all that. Still, the other students were also looking at Zainab the Hijab-wearing Chechen gal, which was unusual, since she was usually quiet as a church mouse...
"Alright, class, for today's English conversation exercise, I will need you to pair up in groups of two," Professor Jackson said, his rich baritone voice filling the lecture hall. He watched as the students paired up quite nicely, until the only two left were...Stanley Bilodeau and Zainad Dudayev. The two of them sat at the front of the class, looking at everything except each other...
"Miss Zainab, Mister Bilodeau, care to join us in this in-class exercise? I will remind you that participation is fifteen percent of your final grade," Professor Jackson said, making his voice grave. Stanley smiled like he'd just won the lottery and Zainab frowned, and shifted uncomfortably in her seat, like she had to go to the bathroom or something.
"Miss Zainab, you heard the man, I mean, the prof," Stanley said, smiling, and Zainab shot him a look. Professor Jackson watched their interactions, and noticed that although Stanley was his usual annoying self, he didn't do his usual trick of getting too close to a person's face while talking to them. Wonder what that's all about, Professor Jackson mused, puzzled.
