Chapter 1
‘THE full moon rose over us,’ Layla sang, while she carefully joined two pieces of metal together in the broiling, cramped welding bay. The air was hot and humid, not even the whisper of a breeze disturbing the still summer afternoon.
‘Min thaniiiii yatil Wadaaaaa,’ she continued the famous nasheed in Arabic, the poem filling the silence of the workshop. She loved metalwork, and welding while singing was icing on the cake, even if she was totally out of tune. Layla placed the finishing touches on the aluminium bracket, beaming under her welding mask. Perfecto!
‘And we owe it to show thankfulness,’ Layla warbled as she burst out of the welding bay, a hijabi Ned Kelly. She dramatically flung her hands up to the ceiling and started skipping around the work benches, the space transformed into her very own private mosh pit. Soon, the skips became a twirl. Round and around and around we go! Layla hummed as she spun, the thick burgundy skirt of her school uniform billowing out around her. For a moment, the fourteen-year-old Australian student was a Sufi whirling dervish from Sudan, the country of her birth. ‘Where the –’
A gruff voice interrupted her. ‘Layla? Is that you?’
Layla stopped. Uh oh.
‘Layla, what are you doing?’
It was Mr Gilvarry, her tech teacher. His balding head shone with sweat, his bushy red beard pointing every which way. Mr G was usually quite a jolly man, but right now his face did not look jolly at all.
‘Layla, why are you still here? You should really be on your way home.’
‘Oh, opps! Sorry, sir.’ Layla looked at the clock, which read 3.10pm. Janey Mack! She had completely lost track of time. ‘I was just working on the aluminium bracket for our entry in to the global Grand Designs Tourismo,’ she explained.
My Gilvarry raised his eyebrows, sighed, then nodded. ‘I figured as much. It’s great to see you putting so much effort into the international GDT competition, Layla, but –’
Leave a Reply