Just as there are people who just...well...disappear (Ali, Omer, Rahmatullah) there are those who just as suddenly appear.
Niggle just arrives. I imagine him wandering along the service lane outside the school and then wandering into the main school office. This is practically what he tells me later. He has some sort of interview and is hired. He stays for a year (1988 - 89 school year) and then just as promptly disappears.
Just like a character in the film "Americana." (1981) Played by David Carradine. (It's Niggle's own analogy.)
Niggle is an English "revert." This is not a term I particularly like, being too much like "pervert" and "retard." (I prefer the word "convert.") He is a Shia Muslim and a member of a sort of group-cum-commune run by a Shaykh, whom I will have to call Shaykh Lahdeedah to protect the innocent. Shaykh here meaning a spiritual leader.
His story is a bit complex. He came for the group and basically was shunned, or ousted. Then he had some problems with his wife which ended in divorce while he was teaching with me. The Shaykh ran off with his wife...
Term begins in 1988 and he is given Class VIII while I have Class IX. There are still two years before the first O level batch to appear. I ask Mrs Smythe if she has any other accommodation - and she has. Just round the corner from the Spiderweb is another empty little ground floor apartment. It's Maya (Mrs Smythe's daughter) who gives him the name "Niggle." Actually, he has a Muslim name and a (proper) English name.
Niggle just arrives. I imagine him wandering along the service lane outside the school and then wandering into the main school office. This is practically what he tells me later. He has some sort of interview and is hired. He stays for a year (1988 - 89 school year) and then just as promptly disappears.
Just like a character in the film "Americana." (1981) Played by David Carradine. (It's Niggle's own analogy.)
Niggle is an English "revert." This is not a term I particularly like, being too much like "pervert" and "retard." (I prefer the word "convert.") He is a Shia Muslim and a member of a sort of group-cum-commune run by a Shaykh, whom I will have to call Shaykh Lahdeedah to protect the innocent. Shaykh here meaning a spiritual leader.
His story is a bit complex. He came for the group and basically was shunned, or ousted. Then he had some problems with his wife which ended in divorce while he was teaching with me. The Shaykh ran off with his wife...
Term begins in 1988 and he is given Class VIII while I have Class IX. There are still two years before the first O level batch to appear. I ask Mrs Smythe if she has any other accommodation - and she has. Just round the corner from the Spiderweb is another empty little ground floor apartment. It's Maya (Mrs Smythe's daughter) who gives him the name "Niggle." Actually, he has a Muslim name and a (proper) English name.
Being a Shia Muslim he carries around a little flat piece of clay which rests his head on when he prostrates in prayer.
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