The very architecture of the city of Valencia was an invitation to wildlife. Our immediate surroundings were framed by rivers, bushes, forests and farms. So it would come to no surprise that frogs gathered in our yard when rain fell and bats flew through the house via the open space under the roof. I found this environment eerie and unsettling, and on many occasions, a household panic would ensue when a small frog was found hopping in the living room or the bathroom. I have three younger sisters and I am the oldest as well as the only boy. I’m short, fairly built (a side effect of athletic training over the years) and I was also the only other male in the house aside from our father. As a result of this gender dynamic, combined with the toxic and ridiculous expectation that I (the boy) should be devoid of emotion, it was expected that I not be afraid of a frog, something so small and unimposing. When my mother and sisters yelled for my father—who was sometimes outside—to remove a frog from inside the house, he would sometimes say “so why can’t Akhim just move it?” knowing that I’m also afraid of it. These perverse and deliberate attacks on my fear which was an unconscious attack on my fragility were expected, because what is the purpose of a brother if not to save the day by removing frogs and fixing cars? On one occasion, when a frog parked itself in the corner of our shower, my father called my little sister to help him move it, an obvious gesture to credit her for bravery and discredit me for a lack of it. He boasted afterwards “you see how simple that was, look how easy she did that. Y’all behaving like clowns.” The courage to cover the frog with newspaper, trapping it in the darkness of printed news, then wrapping it up and throwing into the street was something I lacked. What I didn’t lack was thick skin, so my fear didn’t budge, and neither did my open-minded perspective on what a man should or should not be afraid of. So I ignored any side comments in relation to my reluctance to tamper with toads and steered clear of any if I spotted them. As the years progressed, it was clear that my sister never actually helped remove the frog that day, as she still lunges towards the nearest chair when she spots one.
Fast-forward and I’m a graduate student studying Literatures in English, leaving class with some colleagues at night, walking towards a dimly lit concrete pathway adorned with pools of water which gathered after heavy rains. I am the only male student in a small Postcolonial Literature class, and from a distance I spot a sea of palm sized frogs loitering around the pathway. A sea of frogs sounds like hyperbole, the rhetoric of a fearful anti-frogger, but I couldn’t count how many there were, they just gathered around wet puddles and moist dirt, their doomful singing a reckoning on my ear. My colleagues knew about my disdain for the leaping amphibian and they immediately noticed my widening eyes and buckling knees. “Just look straight ahead, don’t look down and don’t step off the concrete,” my friend said. Luckily, none of the frogs sat on the concrete, so I walked as quickly as possible with my friend holding my elbow, laughing, but nevertheless ensuring that my panic did not consume me. All the other girls walked by with ease. In fact, looking back now the entire scenario was quite funny. We went from a rather serious, and quite tedious discussion about morality in the play Toussaint Louverture, to hollering over frogs at night. It was a rollercoaster of emotions, but my fear was as intense as the girls’ laughter that night.