Sameer Mohammad

"This damned computer," thought Sameer furiously. When will it work?"

"It won't," said another voice in his head.

"The internet will continue to disconnect, the computer will continue to crash and my head splitting headaches will continue to take place."

He shut off the computer with a bang and went to his room. "What a shabby room," he thought. But what was the use of crying over all this. It is like this, had always been.

"We live like a beggars," he thought furiously but then corrected himself. "No, we don't live like beggars anymore, but we used to."

Sameer was all alone in the house. His mother and father both worked throughout the day. It was his summer vacations, but he was having dull time. No one to talk to, nobody to play with, nobody to share his thoughts with and absolutely nothing to do.

Sameer was a Pakistani, and his father had migrated to Canada. "I graduated from Karachi University," his father had told him.

Sameer was not very close to his parents. They hardly spent time with him. His taste in food is exactly opposite to theirs. His parents were vegetarians, and Sameer hated veggies. He was fond of fish and chicken. He was enthusiastic about football. That was his ambition, to be a professional football player and play in the English Premier League. He didn't tell his parents about his dream. Once when his parents had been discussing his future. Sameer had said, "I want to be a football player."

His father had said, "Don't be silly, you will be an engineer."

Sameer had replied, "And let my children be in the same misery as I am!"

He had been slapped for that, and ordered to be grateful for whatever he got. Sameer's primary school had finished, and he was going to secondary school. He had given the test for Cornwall admission a month ago and had got admitted as well. He had wondered how they could afford to send him there, but his father revealed that he had inherited a large sum of money from his deceased father and that Sameer would be going there. His father had been excited about it. Cornwall was a very exclusive and the best boarding school in the country. He was to go for his interview on the 22nd July. He wasn't excited about Cornwall because he knew that very rich students would be there and he feared that he would be out of the place.

Sameer's favorite companion were his thoughts and books came second. He would always be alone, shut in a two roomed apartment and lived in a fantasy. Reading too many books that he had spectacles on his eyes and the result of reading too much was that he often talked philosophy. To some regular guest, he was a terror, leaving them insulted with a single statement if they boasted a little, he would cross-examine them so much that they would be left crying. But to the people who came occasionally, he was a pleasant, interesting and polite teenager, very different to those noisy brats who spend all their time while playing PS, his friends (very few) and his parents knew him better. He actually was very moody and a bit emotional.

This was Sameer Mohammad.

"Darling.." came a voice, his mother's voice.

She must have come home, thought Sameer

"I have got a treat for you."

"What?" Sameer asked excitedly.

"I stopped at McDonalds," she told him, "and I have got egg and fillet sandwich for you."

"I hate egg and fillet sandwich," Sameer murmured.