Insaf.
It was a workday when Insaf asked me if we could go to downtown after class. She wanted to buy socks at H&M, located near Coplay station on Boston’s green line. After we got there, we couldn’t freely move around the city for almost a week and her house was searched by the FBI.
When we first met I wasn’t sure if I liked her. Insaf Boudiaf is extremely ironic and the only one in group of eight who didn’t smoke cigarettes and wasn’t a native Russian speaker. It was the beginning of the first trimester in international language school and she was three weeks late. We met as all internationals meet – inevitably by accident. One of my friends had a grammar class with her. Coming from Paris, where her grandmother had a fashion show, Insaf had troubles getting on a plane on her way to the USA. She said it’s always like this when you have an Algerian passport.
A few weeks in and we became friends. She spoke six languages and was about to learn English she also learned a good portion of Russian from us, which mostly consisted of slang and swear words. Every time we spoke Russian around her she would get annoyed and used her new vocabulary. When winter came to East Coast, she asked me if I could teach her how to walk on snow. She was trying really hard, watching every step. I often just held her elbow when we walked:
“I’m really afraid to fall on ice. I used to walk on send only,” she laughed.
There was something really powerful in her look and how she presented herself. There is always a certain hierarchy to any international community, especially with a bunch of European kids around. Her huge, nearly black eyes, doubled in size with Egyptian flick, had the ability to start a conversation before she even opened her mouth. Nobody wanted to see her angry. Insaf’s face was never really touched by fire, but anyone could easily see burns on her scalp, trough hear and on her arms. Her skin melted together in some places.
“The most painful thing is to burn the second time.” She described multiple accidents. She was 11 when it first happened. She felt into the barrel with gasoline and Sahara sun caught her on fire. “I mean, one day if you find yourself set on fire, try not to burn again.”
Insaf would always make fun of the “luck” she thought she had. Only a few years after the accidents with fire, her school was captured by terrorists and she was among the hostage victims.
“That day all our parents surrounded the school, trying to communicate with Talibs, but they spoke only to the police. They had them unarmed closer to the evening… It seemed like forever, really.”
It was St Valentine's day when she was followed by the guy from the bus she took every day to Watertown, Massachusetts. He never got off at the same station with her before, except that one night. Insaf became more and more intimidated as he was walking after her street after street. She thought it would be a good idea to sneak into the first house on a way and ironically, it was his. She said it was very awkward and they laughed as she was leaving.
Well, she had certain luck for sure, and I usually was the one to experience it. Together we were followed by a weird guy downtown on St. Patrick's day for few hours until we just set in a coffee shop for an hour and he finally left us alone. Scared to death, we were running to the subway, but fortunately enough, our wagon was shook by drunk Boston youth with Irish ancestry.
That day after science class we made it to the Boston Marathon. Boston downtown was on the way home for both of us and we took off on a green line almost every day, we did on April 15, 2013. To our astonishment, we faced a crowd and blocked streets. We decided to stay and watch the marathon for a while since we couldn’t cross the road.
When the first bomb went off, only a thousand feet away, Insaf looked just normal. We had no idea what was going on. When the second explosion happened she grabbed my hand and said: “Let’s go, see what happened!” Her eyes were huge. As we moved toward the Boston Public Library, the crowd rushed the opposite way. We could berely break through, until a policeman turned us around and said: “Go!”
A day later I found out that one of the houses down the street had a family with a fatality and a few injured members. The ugliest part was a dozen TV channels’ vans surrounding victims’ house. None of us made it to school that day, the city was occupied by military, the FBI and the police. All public transport was canceled. A day later, I received a call from Insaf she told me I won’t believe what just happened to her. The house of her hosting family was in Watertown, a few blocks away from Tsarnaev’s place. FBI and police were searching every house in the neighborhood after the brothers open a fire earlier that morning.
“Who else could make it to a marathon bombing just trying to get some socks?”
