By most measures, we were nondescript. Ryan was from Bon Air, Arouca, Matthew lived farther east in Sangre Grande and I grew up in Tunapuna. Three shortish boys from the east, we got into QRC the same year.

We hadn't yet explored all of QRC, but we were itching to sign up for Cadets. We hadn't yet taken the time to read the words inscribed on the marble-topped monument near that well-manicured football field no human foot could touch if there wasn't a game; we didn't know why it was there in the first place and couldn't care less. Drill and adventure and uniforms were on the brain.

Perhaps it was the thrill that we could be young soldiers in an organisation that commanded respect. Scratch that. We later admitted we just thought it would be cool to train with a real gun, even though the firing pins had been removed.

At the end of our first year in big school, we were looking forward to the August vacation, to playing three-hole in the yard, making a river lime or just chilling on the block where we each lived, where the older fellas told good stories. And we did just that. Barely.

Friday, July 27, 1990, changed our lives for good. The Jamaat-al-Muslimeen, a Muslim outfit with its mosque on still-disputed lands in Mucurapo, was simply not known to teenage boys at that time; they were preoccupied with trying to get inside Palladium or Windsor cinema to take in "Die Hard 2," starring Bruce Willis.

That Friday evening, Jamaat leader Imam Yasin Abu-Bakr led a coup against the then-National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) government, storming the Red House and the offices of what was then the only national TV station, TTT. Prime Minister Arthur N.R. Robinson was taken hostage along with staff and several members of Parliament.

Bakr's right-hand man was Bilal Abdullah, a tough, tough guy. He led men to the Red House — real soldiers — armed with guns. With firing pins intact. He took control of the Red House while Bakr was at TTT.

Six days later, 114 insurgents surrendered and were taken into custody. Thirty-one people were dead, 693 wounded.

I cautiously made my way back to school on that fateful September morning, making the trek to the Maraval maxi-stand from Independence Square to Duke and Henry, stopping intermittently to stare, in amazement, at burned-out corporate skeletons on the streets of Port-of-Spain and forgetting for a second that QRC was the only school in the hemisphere which rang the bell to start school at 7:25.

When I got to school, every boy was talking about the coup, giving his own exaggerated story of a man running through his yard with a stove and a washing machine on his back.

There was a new guy at school, too, Ackeem, and it took all of one day for the story to come together. A fella named David who was in another class had lost his father in the coup, shot and killed during the melee at the Red House, and the man who led the charge there was Ackeem's father.

Whatever separated our worlds before didn't matter now. That day, all of us were wearing the same blue shirt and khaki pants, none of us man enough to know what really happened, or how to begin talking about it.

Of course, we did eventually start talking to Ackeem. He was just a cool fella we loved to tease about his big head. We found out that first day back that he also had a big heart when, at the behest of the Ministry of Education, all schools were encouraged to hold a prayer assembly.

In typical QRC style, the administration insisted everything was to be done with everyone in mind, and they began carelessly searching for someone to represent the Muslim faith.

The job fell to 13-year-old Ackeem. As 700 stares zoomed closer to where he stood atop the stairs of the main building, he began:

"Bismillah ir-rahman ir-rahim alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen..."

I didn't understand a word, but everything was clearer after that. QRC Principal Lennard Hinkson, then the dean, agrees:

"He had the courage as a second-former. Added to that, with what had happened with his father, of which he must have been aware, he promptly came up and prayed in front the whole school. He prayed in Arabic. I will never forget that."

The boy might well have shouted into the microphone.

"My name is Ackeem Malik and I'm running for President..."

He was not ashamed about making his presence felt. Even with teachers there in the courtyard looking on helplessly.

At the top of the stairs to the back of the main building, he prayed. Almost mocking the interfaith assembly because neither Ryan nor Matthew nor I remember the other prayers.

Ackeem Malik had arrived from an obscure background about which I knew nothing, other than he was the son of Bakr's right-hand man.

I didn't know if he had brothers or sisters. Or if he knew how to make a cheeky-chung or which primary school he came from.

Except for newspaper clippings and TV footage, I had never seen his father.

He was not in my class, so I couldn't even say if he was as good at Le Francais.

After that, he became my first Muslim friend. He joined Cadets, and the bonds of friendship grew stronger.

Camps were especially dear to us. Each of us took up basketball as a second religion.

Ackeem and I tried out for the team and got our share of games under Coach Ferris.

At home, I had three brothers, none close enough to me to share life with. My issues were safer with those boys at school. I bottled the rest for safe-keeping.

One time, Ackeem and I got into a fight over a girl — a great history-making bout, if you ask me, because by that time, we were two of the most, ahem, distinguished prefects in sixth form, and prefects didn't get into fights.

Hinkson's office is big enough for one dean and perhaps one or two unruly boys. There is a desk, too small for a man with so much power, covered with books and scripts waiting to be marked or returned.

There is a small, blue container for sterling pieces of chalk. The room is unattractive, but many students find themselves drawn to the place. I never thought I'd be sitting there doing anything but discussing why I deserved at least 95 percent in the last assignment and not 91 percent, as had been reported in error on my script by "a certain French teacher."

Ackeem and I sit opposite each other when Hinkson escorts us from the courtyard outside the Science Block minutes after the fight.

I try to look away. Ackeem is staring at me, unable or unwilling to break his gaze.

I remember thinking surely that would have been it, but Hinkson, with his baseless pedagogy, did nothing about us. We weren't even reprimanded. I recall him saying something silly about us working it out for ourselves and holding no grudges. So we did.

No grudges. We never once felt about Ackeem the way society felt about the Muslimeen. They called for Muslimeen heads. We were either making jokes about Ackeem's or engaging it in some philosophical debate during GP. They began to distrust black Muslims. But for Ryan, Matthew and me, Ackeem was our brother.

They said "anything Jamaat" was no good. We could not agree. How could we? We limed with Ackeem and, truth be told, other Muslimeen sons. Muslimeen sons sat and ate with us in that architectural misfit that was our canteen. They laughed with us when somebody got capped with a 'swee drink' bottle during "football." They rallied with us during the real matches against CIC, which was a kind of war in itself. They achieved with us.

"Over the years, the Muslimeen have been well-represented in QRC, and I have to say that the parents have always been very supportive and understanding. Their sons were always very disciplined and they had warm personalities. Ayinde was a gentleman," Principal Hinkson says.

Ayinde is one of Bakr's QRC sons. In this lively plot, he was at the school the same time Ackeem was there. With Ryan, Matthew and me. Christian witnesses to the whole thing. And with David, the fella from the other class who lost his father in the coup.

"In QRC," says Hinkson, "there is a brotherhood; apparently, the good sense prevailed that as surely as parents cannot really control the thinking of their kids, kids cannot influence what their parents do. What they did certainly did not interfere with the brotherhood that the boys at QRC had."

He is right. I have lived to tell the story of how well those boys from a not-so-ordinary school all turned out almost 20 years later. Ryan, Matthew, Ackeem, the son of Bakr's right-hand man, and the other QRC boy, David, whose father died during the events of July 27, 1990. And me. Born July 27, 13 years earlier.

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